If 1962’s Live In Paris was breathtaking, Sinatra At The Sands from ’66 defies categorisation. I mean, accompaniment by Count Basie and his Orchestra, conducted and arranged by Quincy Jones? And it was recorded at the Copa Room of the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas? If ever there was a Rat Pack-less souvenir of Sinatra at the top of his game, a primer in cool stagecraft, this LP takes the honours. All of his standard showstop tunes were delivered, up to and including ‘It Was A Very Good Year’. Add to that slick patter, ‘All Of Me’, plenty of the Basie band, ‘One For My Baby’, ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ … there’s a reason why Ol’ Blues Eyes still remains the Boss.
If the Platinum Series was designed to enhance Monitor Audio’s ‘street cred’ among audio purists in the 21st century, it certainly hit the mark, the compact PL100 standmount and fl oorstanding PL300 having garnered numerous awards and accolades around the world.
In photographs the ’200 might look identical to the PL300 but sit them side by side and immediately you’ll notice that it is unquestionably better suited to cramped living spaces, being 155mm slimmer, 85mm shallower and standing 115mm shorter at 998mm (39in) in height.
The ribbon tweeter employed is formed of a material that Monitor Audio calls C-CAM: Ceramic- Coated Aluminium/Magnesium, the company claiming an output approaching as high as 100kHz. The ribbon was developed to work in a two-way speaker so it had to be able to operate from 2.
As soon as B&W introduced diamond tweeters to some of its 800 series speakers in 2005, people began asking for a diamond tweeter to be fi tted to the smallest model in the range, the 805. Well, the wait is over – the offi cial 805 Diamond is here – though its price has more than doubled over the old 805S.
The good news is that this isn’t a mere swap job: B&W has taken the opportunity to re-engineer the 805 thoroughly. For instance, the input terminals are more than chrome plated, with metal ‘nuts’ replacing the previous plastic items.
In 1955 Wireless World published articles by Quad’s Peter Walker on the practical and theoretical aspects of making a full range electrostatic speaker. That year, he demonstrated two different prototypes developing one for the first public demonstration at the 1956 Audio Fair. Due credit must be given to Walker for the huge amount of pioneering work involved and the brave decision to make it a commercial product.
When first introduced, a single ESL would have set you back £52, yet demand was far greater than supply.
With the introduction of stereo LPs in 1958, Leak wasted no time in bringing stereo equipment to market. The fi rst public demonstration of the Stereo 20 amp and matching preamp took place in April 1958 at the Audio Fair in London. This must have been quite a coupe for Leak as most rival manufacturers at the show were demonstrating mono equipment.
The price of the Stereo 20 was 29 Guineas with its partnering Point One stereo preamp costing 20 Guineas.
The Pyxis is a sturdy, handsomely-styled preamp which, in the best modern fashion, can be used with all manner of amplifi ers despite a plethora of Leema-only features. Pyxis provides both fully-balanced and single-ended analogue operation, with extensive custominstall/ home cinema-friendly settings and sockets. Its price is further ameliorated by the inclusion of digital ins and outs, including USB and S/PDIF in both directions, so the Pyxis is able to accommodate all of your digital sources and feed a computer for archiving.
For another £500, the Pyxis can be supplied with an onboard phono section (based on Leema’s £3k Agena).
With the C-600f preamp and the M-600A stereo power amplifiers, Luxman has delivered its interpretation of current generation solid-state excellence. The power amp offers balanced or single-ended operation, the option of converting it into a bridged monoblock of up to a specifi ed 120W/8ohm, plus a couple of neat touches on the back. Like all new Lux products, an indicator tells you with the press of a button if your mains polarity is correct. Another rear panel delight is a quartet of the largest speaker terminals I’ve ever seen, a nod to those who like tight terminals, but with an aperture for banana plugs.
Leading from the top of this amplifier’s trump card specifi cation sheet is the £20,000 price tag, followed closely by the two-box design and claimed delivery of 1kW into an 8ohm load. Reading the spec-sheet alone does little to prepare you for the sheer size, weight and physical presence of the two-box Titan. It is massive, with a combined weight over 110kg, each unit boasting a footprint the size of a small chest of drawers.
Sitting side-by-side you have two enormous works of art in milled aluminium – low, wide and deep.
Bottom of the five-model XA. 5 series of mono power amplifiers, all of them true Class A designs, the XA60. 5 offers a rated output of 60W and, it’s claimed, much higher current capability than previous XA models: to the tune of a fi ve-fold improvement. So tough loudspeaker loads, of which there are still many, are grist to the XA.
Radford Electronics was set up in Bristol by Arthur Radford back in 1959. In some ways Radford was a late starter in the world of high fi delity, especially compared to Peter Walker of Quad or Harold Leak, and the electronics refl ect this. Indeed, Radford’s designs are often described as being the most ‘modern’ of vintage amplifiers.
It was the Series Two amplifiers, soon changed to Series Three, that put Radford’s designs on the map, the Series 3 range comprising two monoblocks – the MA 15 and MA 25 – plus two stereo versions, the STA 15 and STA 25.
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