LATEST ADDITIONS

Review: Jamie Biesemans,  |  Mar 01, 2026
hfnoutstandingArguably the most iconic electronics brand from Poland’s communist era has returned, albeit thoroughly refreshed with capitalist investment! Here’s the flagship integrated...

While not a household name in the UK, the Warsaw-based Unitra brand caused quite a stir in its native Poland when revived in 2021. Its storied past played a role in this, but so did the reimagined products themselves, thanks to their nostalgia-inducing 1970s aesthetic. Moreover, while the new Unitra designs are predictably more up-to-date under the hood, they sport some idiosyncratic features. The monochrome E ink display of the CSH-801 CD player is an illustration of this, as are the remote-actuated lever switches on the £4499 WSH-805 auditioned here.

Review: Ken Kessler,  |  Mar 01, 2026
hfnoutstandingCompact in stature only, Nagra’s svelte MC-focused phono preamp is offered with the optional Compact PSU and a vibration-damping base. Should you budget for them all?

You gotta love a product that lives up to its name. With a footprint of only 185x166mm and a height of 41mm, the Nagra Compact Phono is just that: compact. It’s also about as far removed as possible from the all-singing, all-dancing, all-valve two-chassis £68,500 HD Phono [HFN Jun ’25]. The Compact Phono costs £4500, is solid-state, MC-only and as minimalist as a phono amp can be.

Review: Andrew Everard,  |  Mar 01, 2026
hfnoutstandingOffered in limited edition 25th anniversary and standard guises, the X2t is Raidho’s entry-level X series floorstander

Getting big bass from a loudspeaker, many think, requires huge drivers able to shift a lot of air. However, big drivers mean big cabinets to house them, and both skill in their tuning as well as capacity on the part of the amplifier. The former, at least, is something Danish company Raidho has clearly got under control with its X2t, although these £12,500-per-pair floorstanders opt for 135mm bass drivers – one covering bass/mid up to 3.5kHz, the other purely bass to 140Hz – for a slender form factor. The cabinet is just 143mm wide, and the whole speaker only 300mm wide including its aluminium outrigger feet, of which more later.

Review: Adam Smith,  |  Mar 01, 2026
hfnoutstandingJapanese cartridge artisan, Excel Sound, has launched a new flagship moving-coil fitted with a gold-plated rare-earth magnet, 4N copper coils and a diamond cantilever

For a brand that’s a relatively new name to the hi-fi industry, Hana is already making big waves in the vinyl community. With four distinct cartridge ranges (moving-coil only) comprising the E, S and M models in both high- and low-output versions and topping out in the Umami series, it previously had options covering a price range of £419 to £3399. However, that selection has now been crowned by a no-compromise flagship, the £7995 Umami Black.

Review: Mark Craven,  |  Feb 27, 2026  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2026
hfncommendedLeveraging the DC-coupled amplifier circuitry used in its latest 5510 series, Exposure’s first standalone DAC in over a decade, and sans streaming to boot, is one for the purists

According to the marketing materials accompanying Exposure’s latest product launch, ‘a great DAC is at the heart of almost every modern hi-fi system’. Few audiophiles would argue with this statement, but it’s perhaps something of a surprise coming from this particular UK brand. After all, an onboard DAC isn’t offered as standard in Exposure’s integrated amplifiers, and the new model on test here is only its third ever outboard converter, following the 2010S2 launched some 14 years ago, and the subsequent 2010S2 DSD upgrade, retired in 2019.

Review and Lab: Paul Miller  |  Feb 27, 2026  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2026
hfnedchoiceA founding father of the hi-fi cable boom has launched a new flagship boasting zirconia ceramic boots...

Co-founder, Bob Abraham, would surely never have guessed his classic figure-of-eight 79-strand speaker cable (now circa £2/m) would still be going strong some 50 years after its launch in 1976. The QED brand was formed in 1973 and despite dalliances with hi-fi separates and accessories has remained most firmly associated with cables. QED’s design theories were outlined in its 1995 ‘Genesis Report’, this informing the X-Tube (XT) cable range, and refined in the 2007 ‘Genesis Report II’ from which this latest Supremus Zr flagship is derived.

Review: Andrew Everard,  |  Feb 27, 2026  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2026
hfnoutstandingHailing from down under, Burson’s flagship Voyager series is ruled by the Conductor DAC/preamp/headphone amp – rated at a stupendous 10W, and with features galore

Though perhaps not so well-known in some hi-fi circles, Australian brand Burson Audio has built itself quite a following among head-fi’ers – those devotees of headphone listening – thanks to an impressive range of amplifiers dedicated to that cause. Its models range from the £849 Playmate 3 up to the Conductor Voyager we have here, at £3900 in standard guise.

Review: Ken Kessler,  |  Feb 19, 2026  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2026
hfnoutstandingDeVore’s ‘Orangutan’ loudspeaker range has a new sibling, based on the established O/96 but hosting bronze-chassis drivers and ports inspired by the flagship O/Referencer

At the risk of making an inappropriate statement, size really does matter, at least in the realm of the loudspeaker. Being an owner of the smaller DeVore Fidelity O/93 [HFN Mar ’23], I learned this again after listening to the manufacturer’s larger DeVore O/Bronze (£28,998). It was a similar situation to hearing Quad’s newly launched ESL 2912X [HFN Feb ’26] right after spending time with its slightly shorter grandfather, the otherwise similar ESL63. But more about this aspect in a moment.

Martin Colloms,  |  Feb 12, 2026  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2026
hfnvintageA new reference? Martin Colloms and Ken Kessler assess the performance of the American manufacturer’s dual-box flagship DAC

The Mark Levinson No30 can be regarded as the ultimate exposition in digital decoding design at the present state-of-the-art. A matching transport, called the No31, will soon be made available, for the designers are anxious not to be found wanting in any department – save, it must be said, that of economy.

Review: Tim Jarman,  |  Feb 11, 2026  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2026
hfnvintageTop dog in a five-strong, pre-CD range of stereo amplifiers and receivers from Philips, the AH 606 also marked a turning point in the brand’s aesthetic design language

In its hi-fi heyday, Philips was one of those audio brands that seemed to delight in being unconventional. Be it in styling or engineering, its products were usually distinctive, which delighted some but confused just as many. Neither is it necessarily an advantage when the equipment has to be combined with units from other brands to form a system. Philips receivers in the early 1970s, often made in the firm’s factories in Finland, were difficult to build a system around if you wanted to use anything other than Philips source components and loudspeakers.

Pages

X