LATEST ADDITIONS

Steve Sutherland | Oct 13, 2023

This facility's clients have ranged from Arctic Monkeys to Nina Simone, and it has also pioneered solar-powered sound. Steve Sutherland on a studio not afraid to innovate

Of all the many weird and wonderful characters who have populated our Inside The Studio feature down through the years, if my memory serves me right we have never ever come across a giant rabbit. Still, there's always a first time...

Loudspeakers

KEF R3 Meta Loudspeaker

Review: Mark Craven, | Oct 12, 2023

KEF's innovative 'MAT' absorber has pushed the performance of Uni-Q to new heights. Now it's in the seven-strong R series

It still surprises me that KEF's R series, which features seven models in total, includes only one standmount/bookshelf option. Surprising because compact speakers are extremely popular, and because the R series is the company's mid-tier proposition, above the entry-level Q and a considerable way below the Reference range. Yet the previous generation, which launched in 2018, featured just one standmount – the R3 – so it's deja vu five years later.

Classical Companion

Ernest Ansermet Stereo Maestro

Peter Quantrill | Oct 10, 2023

Friend to Ravel and Stravinsky, hi-fi buff, mathematician and philosopher – there was more to the Swiss conductor than his dusty demeanour, as Peter Quantrill explains

Ansermet made his first recordings in 1915, as a conductor of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes while on tour in New York, and always thereafter took a keen interest in the potential and the limits of recording technology. In September 1929 he became the first non-English conductor to make records for Decca, with a set of six Handel Concerti Grossi performed by a pick-up band at the Chenil Galleries studio in Chelsea.

Loudspeakers

Wilson Audio Sasha V Loudspeaker

Review: Ken Kessler, | Oct 09, 2023

With technology drawn from its flagship Chronosonic XVX, and already implemented in the Alexx V and Alexia V, the Sasha V is now the most affordable of this new series

Those of an historical bent will know that Wilson Audio's Sasha V isn't merely the fourth-generation Sasha, nor is it simply 'Sasha DAW 2.0'. This two-box floorstander is to the original WATT Puppy [HFN Nov '90] what the current Porsche 911 is to the 911 of 1964: a carefully-developed, decades-long evolution of a brilliant initial concept.

Vinyl Release

Daft Punk: RAM (180g vinyl)

Steve Sutherland | Oct 06, 2023

Four years in the making, this swansong album from the electronic music pioneers swapped samples for session musicians. Steve Sutherland celebrates its brilliance

What if you could reinvent your life and have another go at it, starting somewhere, somewhen else? Me, I'd opt to have been born a decade earlier and I'd have moved to Los Angeles in 1965, aged 17. That way I'd have been hanging around the Sunset Strip in 1967 where, at the Whisky A Go Go alone, I'd have seen Love, The Doors, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix, Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape, Spirit, Janis Joplin, and Them with Van Morrison. I might even have hopped a short haul or thumbed a ride to Monterey where the Pop Festival was, as they say, happening.

Pre/Power Amplifiers

Electrocompaniet EC 4.8 MKII/AW 800 M Pre/Power Amplifier

Review: Andrew Everard, | Oct 05, 2023

Celebrating a legacy that stretches back 50 years, the Norwegian brand stamps its authority with the heavyweight AW 800 M flagship amplifier – a solid cube of power!

There's a classical simplicity about this flagship pre/power amplifier combination from Electrocompaniet. The style – realised here with clear-on-black acrylic fascias with gold detailing – harks back to its first amp, 'The 2 Channel Audio Amplifier' [HFN Dec '11], based on Dr Matti Otala's tackling of 'Transient Intermodulation (TIM)' distortion, shortly after it began operations in 1973.

Vinyl Icons

Waterboys: This Is The Sea

Mike Barnes | Oct 03, 2023

Led by singer-songwriter Mike Scott, The Waterboys honed their 'big music' sound on this 1985 album where rock guitars were joined by saxophone, piano and celeste to create an expansive work that was epic yet spiritual, and at times even political...

On the song 'The Big Music', from The Waterboys 1984 album A Pagan Place, Mike Scott sang 'I have heard the big music/And I'll never be the same' – and he wasn't kidding. Nowadays, the 1980s might be more readily associated with glossy, primary coloured pop but it also opened the doors to something quite different – an earnest, yearning, expansive rock music drawn with broad brush strokes, but with enough space for some fine detail. The Waterboys exemplified the desire to make this 'big music', as did contemporaries such as Echo & The Bunnymen, U2, Big Country and Simple Minds.

Disc Players

Hegel Viking CD Player

Review: Mark Craven, | Oct 02, 2023

As Hegel's previous 'last ever' CD player – the Mohican – gets the chop, the audio world faces a new invasion from the Norwegian longships, courtesy of the Viking...

When Hegel announced its Viking CD player, the phrase 'never say never again' sprung to mind. You don't need to have a particularly long memory to recall the company's previous silver-disc spinner was named Mohican [HFN Oct '16] because – geddit? – it was going to be the last such machine the Norwegian company would make. The format's popularity was seemingly dwindling in the face of music streaming and the vinyl resurgence. Hegel even made commemorative t-shirts for its final fling with CD.

Audiophile Vinyl

Audiophile: Vinyl, September 2023

Ken Kessler | Sep 29, 2023