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Audiophile Vinyl
Audiophile: Vinyl, April 2026
Ken Kessler  |  Mar 10, 2026  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2026

This month we review: Stevie Nicks, James Brown, Catalyst, and Katie Spencer

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Disc PlayersVintage
Meracus Imago transport
Ken Kessler  |  Mar 07, 2026  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2026
hfnvintageMounting its disc mech beneath a motorised cover, this German-made transport appeals to Ken Kessler’s sense of style. But how does it sound?

No, I don’t know what ‘Meracus’ means, and I stopped playing around with anagrams after I reached ‘rum case’. How about ‘US Cream’? No way: Meracus is so decidedly, unabashedly a German company that it couldn’t possibly apply. If you’ve ever studied a hi-fi magazine from the Fatherland or visited the Frankfurt or Berlin audio shows, you’ll know what I mean: staggering build quality, weird shapes, bold colours, lots of glass, wholly unique operational procedures. And the £4000 Meracus Imago is almost deliberately ‘unexportable’, because the customer has to be on some Teutonic wavelength to get to grips with it. Study the photos. You’ve never seen another CD transport like it, right?

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Classical Companion
Tchaikovsky Symphony No.6, ‘Pathétique’
Peter Quantrill  |  Mar 07, 2026  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2026

A huge field of options on record leaves Peter Quantrill searching for those versions which embrace the violence and volatility of the composer’s ‘farewell symphony’

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Opinion
Reborn turntables
Steve Harris  |  Mar 07, 2026  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2026

Steve Harris on why modern versions of classic amplifiers sensibly make use of new technologies, leaving reborn turntables as the best place to get your genuinely authentic vintage fix

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Opinion
Pressing matters
Mike Mettler  |  Mar 07, 2026  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2026

Aided by the resurgence in vinyl, it appears that anyone can put their music out on wax these days. Mike Mettler approves of enabling artists, both young and old, to pursue their dreams

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Opinion
BBC Repair Shop
Jim Lesurf  |  Mar 07, 2026  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2026

Health and safety concerns? Soldering irons a switch-off? Jim Lesurf wonders why the BBC’s massively successful Repair Shop series appears uninterested in restoring electronics

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Opinion
Machine music
Barry Willis  |  Mar 07, 2026  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2026

An AI-generated song has topped the country charts in the US. Barry Willis, who grew up reading comic books warning of a dystopian future, knows exactly where this is headed...

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Opinion
A walk down memory lane
Barry Fox  |  Mar 07, 2026  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2026

When Barry Fox met Sony CEO Akio Morita to discuss the launch of the Walkman, he had little idea how successful the portable music player would be – or the legal battle it would create

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Investigation
Top 20 classic heavy metal albums
Mark Craven  |  Mar 07, 2026  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2026

Out of the hard rock swamps of the early 1970s rose a new form of guitar music that wanted to turn everything up to 11. Mark Craven searches for the origins of heavy metal

While music historians debate when and where exactly the heavy metal genre began – some cite songs from the 1960s and even the 1950s – what is inarguable is that by the early 1980s the name was well established. And what did it mean? A particular breed of guitar music where the tempos were faster and the solos were longer, accompanied by lyrics that touched on more than the usual rock ’n’ roll tropes. Singing about sex and drugs had become, for the most part, passé.

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Pre/Power Amplifiers
CH Precision L10/M10 pre/power amplifiers
Review: Mark Craven,  |  Mar 01, 2026
hfnoutstandingTry as we might to resist descriptive tropes like ‘Swiss precision’, the plain fact is that CH Precision’s flagship amplifiers are the epitome of sophistication, style and... slam

We’re all familiar with the idea of ‘trickledown’, where the R&D of a flagship product then informs the development of a brand’s more affordable models. But what we have here, in CH Precision’s L10 preamplifier and M10 power amp, is a case of ‘trickle-up’. The Swiss marque has taken the designs of its 1 Series amplifiers [HFN Sep ’25], with which it carved its high-end reputation, and comprehensively upgraded them to birth a new top-flight package.

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