Bargains are something we like, so an all-valve pre/power combination for under £7000 is worthy of all our attention – say ‘hello’ to Fezz Audio’s Sagita Prestige and Titania
Baffled by its name, I assumed Polish manufacturer ‘Fezz’ took it from its distinctive toroidal transformer covers, which reflect the shape of the famous Moroccan hat if not the city itself. Here was a valve amplifier with the full complement of toroidal transformers – not all that common with tubes – but there’s even more novelty to the Sagita Prestige preamplifier (£3499) and Titania power amplifier (£3495). Eastern European price advantages are just the start.
EAT’s first-ever phono amplifier, the all-valve E-Glo, is retiring after a decade of service. Its replacement is the E-Glo 2 with fresh styling, balanced inputs and illumination!
After ten faultless years of duty, my trusty reference phono stage, the EAT E-Glo, has been superseded by the E-Glo 2 (£7999). The changes turn out to be more than merely cosmetic, as I was first led to believe in a hasty conversation with EAT (European Audio Team) founder and CEO Jozefina Lichtenegger. She matter-of-factly explained that, due to customer demand, the company redesigned the look of the E-Glo in a number of ways.
Hi-fi’s style icons of the ’60s are reimagined here over a half century later combining a sympathetic industrial design with a performance beyond the reach of its ancestors
It’s taken long enough but Quad has finally revived one of the best-selling pre/power amp combinations of all time. Between 1967 and 1982, 120,000 Quad 33 ‘control units’ were sold, while the 303 power amplifier remained in production until 1985 to reach 94,000 sales. So these new Quad 33 and 303 models have big shoes to fill, but retaining the original model designations and dimensions are a start. And that’s pretty much where the resemblance stops. Welcome to the 21st century.
To celebrate a half century of the Wilson Audio family brand, it returns to its founding and arguably most iconic loudspeaker - The WATT, with bass support from the Puppy!
Whether it be cars or guitars, anniversaries benefit small manufacturers because they present authentic marketing opportunities. One of these is a reason to release a special model while another is to declare one's provenance. You can't fake longevity, so the real value is that anniversaries cannot be 'made up' as they arrive only with the passage of time. And while it's hard to believe, 2024 marks the first half-century of Utah-based Wilson Audio Specialties, and the designated birthday cake is The WATT/Puppy you see here.
Is this the largest cartridge manufacturer we've never heard of? Stepping out of the OEM shadows to unveil its own-brand MCs, Skyanalog looks set to be a major disruptor
Two things struck me when PM said we'd be reviewing a cartridge from a new manufacturer. The first thought, from my glass-half-empty side, was: do we really need another? But the second was: this must be proof that the vinyl revival is substantial enough to warrant it. When told that the company was planning a 25th anniversary model, my curiosity about Skyanalog was truly piqued. 'New' it most certainly isn't.
Bigger brother to the standmount two-way Revela 1, the three-way ’2 lifts Quad’s engineering into a floorstander
Quad’s Revela 1 is a classic two-way standmount offered at £1799 per pair minus supports, or £2498 if bought as a set. The floorstanding Revela 2 tested here sells for another £1k at £3499, complete with fitted, spiked plinth. The basic technology defines both speakers, but for the Revela 2 it has been doubled up and more. The test, then, is to discover how much extra that £1000 delivers...
Still big in Japan, the SACD takes pride of place in Soulnote's 'ultimate digital playback system' that also includes the option of digital filterless conversion and external clocking
With Soulnote having already proved its analogue mettle in these pages with the E-2 phono preamp , does the brand have similar prowess with digital? And not just with CDs, for this S-3 flagship is a fully-fledged SACD player.
The 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.
Every product range has its sweet spot and the combination of EAT’s C-Dur deck with C-Note tonearm and optional Jo No5 moving-coil pick-up makes it the ‘plum’ choice
Just below the mid-price point of European Audio Team’s (EAT) nine-model range, the C-Dur belt-drive deck looks likely to identify a new price/
performance benchmark. We have been flooded with decks at the £10,000-£12,000 mark to designate entry to the
scary high-end, and companies such as MoFi, Thorens and Pro-Ject have numerous models from £500-£3000, but something was needed in between from, say, £3000 and £5000. At £3500 with arm, EAT’s C-Dur – German for C major – fits the bill.
Taking its cues from the industrial design and Darlington topology of the L-509X, the latest L-509Z variant demonstrates how subtle revisions can exert a big sonic impact
At first glance, since they look like twins, you might wonder what Luxman has done to the L-509X integrated amplifier [HFN Jan ’18]
to justify the Z suffix. The pesky price increase from £8500 to £10,999 reflects six years of inflation and recent world turbulence, but don’t be fooled by nearly identical looks. The devil is in the details.