There are countless different audio products claiming to pursue sonic accuracy, but Barry Willis believes the hi-fi industry would be much better off if it admitted things are not that simple
Early this past summer, I enjoyed dinner with an audiophile friend. While he puttered in the kitchen, I perused his hi-fi publications. Among them was a 2024 equipment guide, an incomplete but aspirational compendium of products currently on the market, and in a couple of cases, no longer produced but still in plentiful supply. The listings included hundreds of items - phono cartridges from US$99 to $20,000 each, and amplifiers and loudspeakers from a few hundred up to the purchase price of an exotic high-performance automobile.
Internet radio promises unrivalled listening choice, but what happens when your favourite station goes missing? Barry Fox gets to grips with tweaking TuneIn and adding third-party hardware
A friend gets cross when I reckon that most IT is designed by engineers who don't think about the people who will use it. He says I shouldn't expect computers to work like hi-fi systems. Which is ironic because many modern hi-fi boxes are disguised computers reliant on networking, and they really need to be connected to a monitor screen because a strip display is only adequate for basic control needs.
This month we review: Bavarian Radio Chorus/Peter Dijkstra, Castalian Qt, Bbc So/Thomas Kemp, Mahler Academy Orch/Philipp Von Steinaecker, and Sara Costa
Sitting bang in the middle of a six-strong range of loudspeakers, the Cantor III was in production from 1983-85. How does this 'compact two-way system' fare today?
If you were to attend a classic car show and make a beeline for the enthusiasts exhibiting vehicles made by mass-market manufacturers, it would be easy to predict the kinds of designs you'd see on display. Most space would be given over to the noteworthy models: the big-engined ones, the sporty or luxury variants, the rare limited editions. And yet the bread-and-butter models that carried sales reps up and down the land and took many of us to school as children are largely forgotten. They were workhorses, used until the end of their lives and then replaced.
To celebrate a half century of the Wilson Audio family brand, it returns to its founding and arguably most iconic loudspeaker - The WATT, with bass support from the Puppy!
Whether it be cars or guitars, anniversaries benefit small manufacturers because they present authentic marketing opportunities. One of these is a reason to release a special model while another is to declare one's provenance. You can't fake longevity, so the real value is that anniversaries cannot be 'made up' as they arrive only with the passage of time. And while it's hard to believe, 2024 marks the first half-century of Utah-based Wilson Audio Specialties, and the designated birthday cake is The WATT/Puppy you see here.
Sitting bang in the middle of a six-strong range of loudspeakers, the Cantor III was in production from 1983-85. How does this 'compact two-way system' fare today?
To celebrate a half century of the Wilson Audio family brand, it returns to its founding and arguably most iconic loudspeaker - The WATT, with bass support from the Puppy!
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