LATEST ADDITIONS

In high-end hi-fi, it’s common to see the phrase ‘two-man lift’ applied to heavyweight loudspeakers, amplifiers and subwoofers. Yet the top-of-the-line InPoL Legacy from Italian manufacturer Pathos goes one (well, two) better. This integrated amplifier, priced £51,995, arrives in a purpose-built wooden crate on wheels, along with two metal ‘pull-up’ bars that slide underneath the chassis once the crate has been disassembled. It’s then a four-person job to lift the bars and manoeuvre this 140kg beast into position.

To misquote those old M&S adverts, this isn’t just a network streamer, this is the HiFi Rose RS451 Master Fidelity Network Streamer. The latest addition to the Korean company’s ever-expanding digital audio offering, it features second-generation technology trickled down from the high-end RS151 [HFN Jul ’25] launched earlier this year. This makes it, in HiFi Rose’s terms, ‘a semi-reference level network streamer’.

It never hurts to have a sibling manufacturer making phono stages when you’re also offering cartridges. Better still is having a range of tonearms and turntables in the family, too. In this case, the oh-so-Britishly-named Kensington Audio can boast being part of the Talk Electronics group, along with Edwards Audio and Kestrel Audio, so its quintet of cartridges is in good company.

You know where you stand with Rotel. This is a long-running company, still family-owned after almost 70 years, and with a commitment to spending money on what’s on the inside of its products rather than the cosmetics. It still winds its own transformers, and tightly specifies other components it buys in. Its halo brand, Michi, has striking looks [HFN Apr ’25 & May ’24] – from the originals with their Japanese lacquered side-panels to the understated chic of the black-on-black current generation – but the core products remain plain and simple [HFN Apr ’22], looking functional to the point where some might even consider them dour.