Review: Andrew Everard

The miniature hi-fi trend continues – those short of space or simply seeking an inconspicuous yet high-performance set-up can rejoice. The new arrivals here come in the form of the £4200 DSS 2 network transport and £4300 DSC mini DAC from French company Métronome, as part of its ‘Digital Sharing’ range that also includes the £4400 DST CD transport.

Sometimes, sitting in front of a product for review, a degree of puzzlement sets in. Yes, the style of the £40,000 Sphinx Audio Element 3 speakers, which made their debut at the UK Hi-Fi Show Live in Ascot in Sep ’25, is entirely in accord with the name of the brand. The stone-effect outer panels, harp-like side profile and sphinx-like head housing the tweeter are all redolent of the 1920s Art Deco Egyptian revival, following the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in November 1922.

You know where you stand with Rotel. This is a long-running company, still family-owned after almost 70 years, and with a commitment to spending money on what’s on the inside of its products rather than the cosmetics. It still winds its own transformers, and tightly specifies other components it buys in. Its halo brand, Michi, has striking looks [HFN Apr ’25 & May ’24] – from the originals with their Japanese lacquered side-panels to the understated chic of the black-on-black current generation – but the core products remain plain and simple [HFN Apr ’22], looking functional to the point where some might even consider them dour.

Back in the day, when CD players started splitting into separate transports and DACs, the question was ‘does the transport really make a difference?’. After all, we all knew that different DACs had their own influence on the sound – despite the protestations of the ‘all properly designed digital gear should sound the same’ brigade – but transports? Their sole purpose was to deliver digital data from disc to DAC.