Lab: Paul Miller

Review: Mark Craven,  |  Sep 27, 2024  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingPowerful, but trading subtlety and musical sensitivity over brute force, Ed Meitner’s flagship MTRS stereo power amplifier finds its perfect partner in the all-analogue PRE

The promotional literature for EMM Labs’ MTRS stereo power amplifier is so sure of its designer’s cachet within the audiophile community that it simply refers to him as Ed. For those not in the know, Ed is Ed Meitner, founder of Canada’s EMM Labs, and – back in the day – the engineer tasked by Sony and Philips to help with the development of SACD. The company that bears his initials operates in the high-end (there’s a more ‘accessible’ Meitner Audio brand) and maintains a boutique separates catalogue.

Review: Mark Craven,  |  Sep 27, 2024  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingOhio-based SVS throws all its speaker know-how into a high-value concave cabinet bristling with custom drivers

Between 2017 and 2022, SVS comprehensively overhauled its range of subwoofers, introducing models from the 80kg PB16-Ultra to the compact 3000 Micro. A quiet spell followed as SVS tackled a new project – an all-new flagship loudspeaker series, topped by the model on test here.

Tim Jarman,  |  Sep 09, 2024  |  0 comments
hfnvintageGimmick or grand plan as Toshiba looks to spice up the mid-’80s CD scene with a dual-disc player offering over two hours of continuous music. How does it fare today?

Anumber of our recent Vintage Reviews have featured CD players designed to broaden the appeal of the format by making the hardware available at progressively lower price points. This was one way to maintain sales, but another approach was to add additional features at little or no extra cost.

Review: Andrew Everard,  |  Aug 30, 2024  |  0 comments
hfncommendedWith visuals inspired by JBL’s hi-fi products from the 1960s, the brand’s ‘Classic’ range of separates are populated by technology familiar to audiophiles some 60 years later...

Think JBL and, not unreasonably, you’ll probably think ‘speakers’. The company has been in the loudspeaker business for getting on 80 years, having been founded in California in 1946 by James B Lansing, from whom it takes its name. Lansing himself took his own life just three years later but left an insurance policy to keep the company going, in which form JBL has become an internationally famous audio company and, since 1969, part of what is now Harman International. In 2017 Harman became an independent subsidiary of South Korea’s technology giant, Samsung.

Review: Adam Smith,  |  Aug 30, 2024  |  0 comments
Clearaudio’s entry-level deck for over a decade, the Concept is refreshed with ‘TSC’ (Tacho Speed Control) and speed selection, plus a selection of arms and cartridges

Thanks to the continued resurgence of the vinyl format, enthusiasts can now choose from a good number of plug-and-play turntable packages. Even better, the quality of these complete solutions – once considered a first step on the vinyl ladder for those wanting ease of use, or for whom the dark arts of turntable setup were a terrifying mystery – has been creeping ever higher.

Jamie Biesemans,  |  Aug 30, 2024  |  0 comments
The ‘ultimate version’ of B&W’s 700 series flagship gets the Signature treatment, including two bespoke colour options

It’s only about two years ago that Bowers & Wilkins introduced the S3 generation of its 700 series. A major overhaul of the venerable British brand’s popular midrange offering, its attention-grabbing improvements included a notably curvier front baffle with protruding drivers (housed in ‘pods’) and an elongated tube for the ‘Tweeter-on-Top’. This was all quite familiar for anyone who saw the earlier revamped 800 D4 series, so B&W isn’t being untruthful when it claims to deploy trickle-down technology.

Jamie Biesemans,  |  Aug 29, 2024  |  0 comments
This Slovakian brand’s premium phono preamp is an all-tube design – with transformer step-up for MCs – and one of the latest to jump aboard the ‘balanced bandwagon’!

Canor Audio has been around for nearly three decades, but it’s only in the past few years the Slovakian company has stepped fully into the limelight. If you asked how the brand would describe itself, Canor’s founders would likely say ‘tube specialists’. This is fair, considering how much effort it puts into validating and testing valves before pressing them into its many tube products – and those it builds for other major brands, too. But if that might ...

Andrew Everard,  |  Aug 29, 2024  |  0 comments
hfncommendedThis boutique brand from China’s technology hub squeezes a truly high-end DAC and analogue headphone amp into a bijou, alloy enclosure. It puts the ‘mini’ into minimalism

Okay, so let’s get the ‘death ray’ jokes out of the way right at the start: what we have here is a high-aiming DAC-equipped headphone amp from a Chinese-based company that’s new – to me at least – but has a growing range of digital products, all with slightly odd names. High-aiming? Well, the rather literally-branded Listening M1 might be tiny, but it sells for a punchy £2599 alongside the £399 Pegasus SG1 Bluetooth headphone amp and Prelude DTR1+ portable music player.

Review: Mark Craven,  |  Aug 07, 2024  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingGerman marque’s flagship B series floorstander offers smart bass-tuning potential. Is this the speaker for every room?

Although the largest and most expensive member of Burmester’s B series loudspeakers (which are ranged below its BA and BC models), the £22,700 B38 doesn’t – when viewed front on at least – look quite like the all-singing, all-dancing range-topper you might expect. Yes, it’s marginally taller than the step-down B28 (£17,600), at 1165mm versus 1144mm, but it’s also slimmer, its 210mm width shaving off 13mm. And then there are the drivers, with the B28 having four cascading down its front baffle, while the B38 features just two…

Review: Ken Kessler,  |  Aug 07, 2024  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingThe hi-fi world’s most powerful amplifier – the aptly named Relentless – has spawned two new offspring, but the ‘baby brother’ of the duo still weighs in at 145kg apiece

Lame analogies – both banal and obvious – spring to mind when one is directed to review an amplifier which is a little over half the power of its predecessor. One thinks of cars offered with engines of half the horsepower of a dearer sibling, of second growth wines, and other half-pint offerings. But the D’Agostino Relentless 800 Mono Amplifier – a heady £236,000 per pair – delivers the wattage that provides its model name: 800W per chassis. And that is conservative.

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