Naim Audio at last offers a CD player, but how does the CDS compare with its rival from Linn, wonder Christopher Breunig and Steve Harris
Apr 1992
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.
The BBC isn’t just a creator of content – since the early days of hi-fi it’s collected and archived commercial music. But has its operation become too big to continue, wonders Steve Harris
When you’ve got a million records, some of them might have to go. In January the BBC began a series of online auctions to dispose of unwanted vinyl from its fabled record library. In a tweet, Omega Auctions said it had spent a productive few days clearing out thousands of LPs from the BBC’s archive. You wonder whether this was just another job to them, or whether they thought they’d died and gone to heaven.
Steve Harris on a small British manufacturer making a bid for the high ground with a single-ended amplifier offering a choice of output valves
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the audio underground in the US and Europe finally picked up on the efforts of Japanese audiophiles two decades earlier, and started a revival of single-ended triode amplification. The American interest really got going when enthusiasts started salvaging dusty pre-war systems out of old movie houses. Western Electric's 300B triode, dating back to the dawn of cinema sound systems, became the tube of choice.