LATEST ADDITIONS

For a while, the amplifier combo you see here was almost literally the elephant in the editor's listening room. Delivered for review just at the end of 2018, its sheer mass – 28kg for the £12,500 Strumento No1 mk2 preamp alone, plus a further 95kg for the No4 mk2 power amp, which sells for £16,250 – defied almost all efforts to move it into PM's lab for test work before I could listen. It finally inspired our esteemed editor to relent and buy himself a trolley – and so, at last, the review literally began to roll...

The hype cycle is well under way. 5G is coming, starting slowly this year and rolling out through 2020 and beyond. But who cares? It's nothing to do with hi-fi and music, is it? Just the Fifth and latest generation of phone technology, which – yawn, yawn – works faster and better than the Third and Fourth Generations that have previously been heralded as the be all and end all of mobile phoning and lo-fi MP3 streaming.

A tough review for me to write, at least objectively: I'm rooting for the CS 600 to be something special because my first turntable was a Dual and I recall it with fondness. I want the CS 600 to be a champ like the all-conquering '505 was back in the days of the NAD 3020-based systems. But this new deck costs £1199 in black, or another £200 in gloss black or white (as reviewed), and the competition for turntables with tonearms is fierce around this price point.

The first Stereo 40 tube integrated amp arrived in the year 2000, and according to Icon Audio's founder and chief designer David Shaw, 'is the heart of what we do'. It's the metaphorical ham sandwich of the valve amplifier world – the staple diet of audiophiles wanting a simple, affordable, user-friendly integrated that offers classic tube sound and some interesting features too. This new £2200 Stereo 40 MkIV sits bang-smack in the middle of the range and, as claimed, is uncommonly versatile.