Lab: Paul Miller

If anyone doubts we are treated to as much, if not more novelty than back in the day when LPs ruled, EAT’s Fortissimo turntable and F-Note tonearm will put paid to that. Like TechDAS’s vacuum hold-down and air bearing [HFN Jun ’19], or the Reed deck [HFN Apr ’24] available in idler- and belt-drive versions, this EAT combination bursts with clever features.

Marten Parker Trio is not, of course, the name of a new jazz act. Marten is the Swedish loudspeaker manufacturer, established as a family business by Leif Mårten Olofsson in 1998, and Parker Trio one of its floorstanding options. Yet the jazz angle still applies, as the company's other speaker ranges are Coltrane, Mingus, and Oscar. Perhaps Olofsson, who heads up the company as its chief designer, has Monk or Davis in mind for the future...

Relaunched in mk2 guise, ELAC’s most compact two-way gets a boost from the latest generation of its iconic ‘JET’ tweeter. We fuel up the afterburners and listen at Mach 2

In the last few years audiophiles have witnessed a spate of companies celebrating 50th anniversaries, a reminder that the early 1970s were a hotbed of hi-fi development. ELAC, however, can claim a much longer heritage, having been founded in Kiel in Germany in 1926, originally as a specialist in sonar technology before expanding to consumer audio. No doubt it is working on a 100th anniversary product launch – having previously marked 90 years with the Miracord 90 turntable [HFN Jul ’17] – but in the meantime it has delivered an update to its Vela series of loudspeakers.

Conceived as the ‘command centre’ of a modern high-end system, T+A’s powerful all-in-one system embraces CD and streamed audio, in all its flavours, and radio too...

Looking for a simple, no-frills, ‘straight wire with gain’ amplification solution? If so, it’s a case of ‘move right along, please – nothing to see here’, for T+A’s R 2500 R, available in black or silver at £12,905, is a prime example of large-scale integration in the quest for one of those ‘just add speakers’ systems. Yes, you could connect other source components to it, thanks to a choice of analogue and digital inputs – but really, why would you want to?