Review: Adam Smith

The birthday cake supplier to the audio industry has been having a busy time over the last couple of years, but it seems they are needed once more. This time, cards and presents should be sent in the direction of Cambridge, as AVID HiFi has reached the ripe old age of 30. And what better way could there be to celebrate than with a new turntable? Hence the Relveo, which retails for £5500, or £6900 with the partnering Altus V2 tonearm.

Everyone loves celebrating a big birthday, and the hi-fi industry is no exception. That said, very few manufacturers make it to the big 100 and so, when they do, the results are usually quite special. At the time of writing [late-2025] we are days away from Bang & Olufsen’s centenary, and Luxman released a complete system earlier this year to celebrate a century in business.

While Compact Disc’s 1982 promise of ‘Perfect Sound Forever’ was largely aimed at the silver discs themselves, hardware engineers were not sitting back and thinking ‘job done’. Disc transport, error-correction, digital audio processing and DAC technology progressed at pace with players becoming bigger and more feature-laden. It was around the middle of the decade that ‘proper’ flagship players arrived, often in multiple enclosures.

For a company not exactly known for ‘product churn’, SME has been uncommonly busy with the release of several new turntables, including the flagship Model 60 [HFN Jul ’22], the Model 35 [HFN Jul ’25] and now the £9999 Model 8. The latter replaces the Model 6 that, fitted with an SME M2-9 tonearm, marked a departure for SME on its release in 2020. Not only was it the company’s first ‘entry level’ design, it was also the first to utilise a solid, non-suspended plinth arrangement and the first SME deck to employ an AC motor.