From the Vault

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Review: Ken Kessler  |  Jun 04, 2025  |  First Published: May 01, 2025
hfnvintageThe latest ES model from the SACD originator is a luxury player at a middle-market price. Ken Kessler samples its sound in stereo and 5.1

You don’t have to be a marketing analyst with a subscription to the Financial Times to understand why SACD might win the format war. Clearly, the SACD crew has delivered more hardware and (most importantly) in the order of ten times more software than DVD-Audio, according to the estimates of music vendors I’ve canvassed. All of which makes the arrival of a high-end SACD player with a mid-range price point something worth considering.

Dave Berriman & Paul Miller  |  Apr 27, 2025  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2025
hfnvintage

This pre/power system from the boutique UK marque benefits from its designer’s attention to detail and tube know-how, says Dave Berriman

Every so often, you stumble across something a bit special. Well, ‘stumble’ is perhaps not quite the right word, but I did hear a rather captivating sound coming from the GATE room at one of the UK’s smaller audio shows a year or two ago, and then again at the Heathrow-based Hi-Fi News Show last year.

Trevor Attewell  |  Apr 09, 2025  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2025
hfnvintageBritish company steps up with a three-way reflex-loaded loudspeaker with a twist, but will its sound have Trevor Attewell head over heels in love?

The Point 5 from Nightingale Acoustics is a very unusual loudspeaker, which might be said to wear its heart on its head. Starting at the other end, its body is a basically rectangular cabinet made of 19mm particle board with an integral front panel that is stepped inwards by 24mm over the top 180mm, the two levels being joined by a slope.

Review: Ken Kessler  |  Apr 01, 2025  |  First Published: Feb 01, 2025
hfnvintage Designer looks, battleship build quality, superior sonics... Ken Kessler is beguiled by an amplifier that shows off its manufacturer’s true colours

True story: a knowledgeable audiophile arrives at my listening room in mid-November. Pink Triangle’s Integral integrated amplifier is driving a set of Wharfedale Diamond 8.1s, its badge covered with tape. I state to this collector of some repute with a memory spanning 35 years, ‘You will never guess who made this amplifier. Never’.

Steve Harris  |  Mar 12, 2025  |  First Published: Jan 01, 2025
hfnvintageThe well-received Sonata turntable has been developed and refined as the Symphony. Is this Alphason’s masterpiece? Steve Harris investigates

Few brands have been more dedicated to perfection than Alphason. Although the company is now also very successful as a supplier of hi-fi furniture, and has launched an innovative loudspeaker range, the £1860 Symphony turntable remains a flagship product.

Review: Paul Miller  |  Mar 03, 2025  |  First Published: Dec 01, 2024
hfnvintageThis stylish, slimline partner for the British brand’s amplifiers adopts familiar Philips technology but makes its own mark, says Paul Miller

Much gnashing of teeth and wringing of corporate cheque books later, and the B&W Group has become the latest recipient of Philips’ cherished Red Book licence: an exorbitant magic wand that bequeaths the rights to design and assemble own-brand CD players, rather than simply modify an existing box. Incidentally, I hear from trusted sources that manufacturers who have traditionally opted for this cheaper halfway-house will soon be stomped on from a great height. B&W can therefore sleep soundly at night as two variants of a new BitStream player are launched under its ‘Aura’ brandname.

Ken Kessler  |  Nov 20, 2024
hfnvintageAcoustic Research launches a range of electronics that aims to combine good looks, useful facilities and fine sound. Ken Kessler hears a selection

For as long as hi-fi has existed, consumers have been forced to choose between pure sound quality and ergonomic/aesthetic delight. In short, the best-sounding equipment has always been either spartan, ugly, expensive, or simply a pain in the butt to live with or to use.

John Atkinson  |  May 24, 2025  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2024
hfnvintageJohn Atkinson clears space for a towering full-range electrostatic speaker from the Netherlands as Audiostatic’s Monolith II lands on UK shores

Blame Stanley Kubrick. Until 2001 burst onto our cinema screens, the lay conception of outer space had settled down as a mixture of flying saucers and little green men. Why green? Why little? But this was irretrievably displaced by an alien ex machina presence that set the style for, yes, the shape of electrostatic loudspeakers to come.

Paul Miller  |  Oct 21, 2024
Some costly 'jitter-busters' are less than successful at cleaning up the digits, so can this one justify its high price tag? Paul Miller crunches the numbers...

If the market for two-box CD transport/outboard DAC combinations has waned in recent years, then the same cannot be said for those little black boxes conceived to nestle in between. I refer, of course, to the add-on accessories often rather optimistically promoted as 'Jitter Busters'. Typically, these rely on a Crystal interface chip and one or two PLLs to suppress jitter while recovering the data clock.

Christopher Breunig, Steve Harris  |  Oct 08, 2024
hfnvintageNaim Audio at last offers a CD player, but how does the CDS compare with its rival from Linn, wonder Christopher Breunig and Steve Harris

My patience was put to the test with the Naim CDS. As I unpacked the two units and coupled them together I experienced a flush of old 'brand loyalty'. Since the days of the original 12S preamp and NAP160 power amp, my meetings with company founder Julian Vereker had been cordial and I had spent several pleasurable years with my NAP250. My frustration came with the waiting time for the player to warm up before listening began.

Review: Paul Miller  |  Apr 25, 2025  |  First Published: Oct 01, 2024
hfnvintagePaul Miller compares the Philips DCC-600 with the Marantz DD-92, two DCC recorders with the same PASC encoder but different ADCs and DACs

This review deals with two first-generation DCC players. Philips and other companies are committed to this medium, to judge from the fast expanding list of pre-recorded software, if not in the range of hardware to match. DCC will certainly not oust CD: it is better to think of it as a stepping stone between analogue compact cassette and the digital audio systems of the future – systems that must surely avoid the cumbersome format of tape. But for the time being, these machines may be counted a success.

Peter J Comeau  |  Sep 11, 2024
hfnvintageWhat could match a Lumley Stratosphere turntable better than Lumley’s LM2 speakers and PS2/M250 pre/power amps, says Peter J Comeau

It was back in the March 1996 issue of Hi-Fi News that I took my first look at the £6250 Stratosphere ST1 – a turntable that proved out of this world in sound quality as well as name. Now John Jeffries of Reference International (the name behind both the Strat and Lumley) has delivered a complete system including the £4500 LM2 loudspeakers.

Ken Kessler  |  Jul 29, 2024
Apogee follows the Stage with the hybrid Centaurus Major and Minor but has it made its ribbon technology more accessible

Feeling a bit like the boy who cried ‘Wolf!’, I still can’t help but regard this new range of speakers from Apogee as ‘ribbons for the masses’. But unlike the last models that inspired this sort of reaction – the Stages [p129]and Calipers – the new Centaurs really do make Apogees accessible to a wide range of consumers. And not only by virtue of their cost.

Ken Kessler  |  Oct 20, 2023
hfnvintageAt last, an output transformerless tube amplifier that needn't play second fiddle to transistors, says Ken Kessler, as he hears the GM 200

Given that few people will defend tube/transistor hybrids, how do you go about satisfying the valve-oriented consumer who wants his or her amp to have everything under one cage? And without simply adding to the buttonry? Italian company GRAAF (Gruppo Richerche Audio Alta Fidelta) has as its slogan 'II Suono Fatto A Mano', which I think translates into 'Hand-Made Sound'. This is about as cool a way of saying 'Lunatic purism' as I can imagine.

Ken Kessler  |  Aug 19, 2022
hfnvintageKen Kessler explains why he believes Audio Research's Reference 1 preamp and Reference 600 power amplifiers are in a class of their own

Whatever your response to once-in-a-generation revelations, the Audio Research Reference 600 monoblock amplifiers and the matching Reference 1 preamp will render all who hear them something akin to 'gob-smacked'.

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