Review: Mark Craven

Review: Mark Craven,  |  Jul 24, 2025  |  Published: Jul 01, 2025  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingCompact, flexible and a significant refinement over the original, the ‘Black Edition’ of Unison Research’s Triode 25 integrated is a gateway to tube sound without the hassle

Hailing from Treviso in northeast Italy, Unison Research is a brand with an obvious love of tubes, to the point that you half expect to find a hot bottle or two incorporated in its Malibran and Max loudspeakers. Its CD players, the Unico CD Uno and Due [HFN May ’16], have tube-based output stages, while the solid-state amps in the same series have tube-based inputs. But the company is best known for its all-tube amplifiers, of which there are 15 spread across integrated, pre and power ranges.

Review: Mark Craven,  |  Jul 23, 2025  |  Published: Jul 01, 2025  |  0 comments
hfncommendedPiega makes its Premium 301 loudspeaker better – and smaller – in this elegant Gen2 revision

While the usual rallying cry of a Hollywood producer is for any movie sequel to be ‘bigger and better’, Piega’s approach for the Gen2 iteration of its Premium 301 loudspeaker is to make it better while also making it smaller. And considering the original model, released in 2019, was itself described as a ‘compact loudspeaker with a baffle about the size of an A4 sheet’, this is perhaps something of an achievement.

Review: Mark Craven,  |  Jul 21, 2025  |  Published: Jul 01, 2025  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingFirst rung on Pass Labs’ ‘XA’ series of Class A amplifiers is a stereo model weighing in at a full 40kg, but don’t let the seemingly parsimonious 30W rating fool you – this is a beast!

In this era of all-in-one amplifiers and ‘crossover’ products, where even a tube amp might come to market with a built-in USB DAC, there’s something refreshing about Californian brand Pass Labs. Now approaching 35 years in business and named after founder and chief designer Nelson Pass (also the man behind Threshold in the 1970s), the company has long been known for its focus on frill-free, performance-first designs.

Review: Mark Craven,  |  Jul 02, 2025  |  Published: Jun 01, 2025  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingPromising digital audio bliss without the fuss, this second-gen flagship server from the music management maestro combines beefed-up processing with all-new casework

At the UK Hi-Fi Show Live in Sept ’24, during a chat with an industry colleague, our discussion moved on to Roon. His opinion was, ‘you either love it, or you haven’t used it yet’. Such is the passion for this music management system among those who have invested in it. And now Roon is offering the ultimate investment, in the shape of its £3899 Nucleus Titan server.

Review: Mark Craven,  |  Jun 28, 2025  |  Published: Jun 01, 2025  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingNovel thinking is in generous supply inside this line-only preamp with its high capacity PSU, transformer-coupled four-tube audio circuit and 140-step, remote volume control

Balanced Audio Technology, otherwise known as BAT, doesn’t beat about the bush when it comes to its audio philosophy. The main page on the US manufacturer’s website lists core principles, all of which have an engineering bent: ‘balanced is best’, ‘dual-mono construction maximises performance’, and ‘zero global feedback achieves natural sound’. All three of these are at play in the company’s VK-90 preamp.

Review: Mark Craven,  |  Jun 22, 2025  |  Published: Jun 01, 2025  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingMarantz returns to the premium hi-fi sector with a trio of heavyweight flagship models including an SACD player/DAC, integrated amplifier and network-attached preamplifier

At the tail end of 2020, when Marantz released its Model 30 amplifier [HFN Jan ’21], the name paid homage to the brand’s Model 1 preamp of 1954 while the chassis styling nodded at past Marantz designs from hi-fi’s ‘golden age’. However, this was not a case of the New York-born (but now Japan/California-based) company jumping headfirst into the so-called ‘nostalgia economy’ with a retro/vintage-inspired product, more the first step in a complete overhaul of its brand image. Since then, there have been various additions to the new-look Model catalogue, but all have sat below the Model 30. Until now...

Review: Mark Craven,  |  Jun 05, 2025  |  Published: May 01, 2025  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingFurther proof that there’s audio gold in pursuing ‘purism’ comes courtesy of Norway’s Hegel and a USB DAC that eschews streaming. We listen as the Raven takes flight...

Hegel is fond of its idiosyncratic product names. In 2023 the Norwegian brand felt confident in christening its new CD player the ‘Viking’, ignoring a model number altogether [HFN Sep ’23]. In the same year it also launched the P30A preamp and H30A power amp [HFN Jun ’23] – separates also known as the Conductor and the Orchestra, respectively. 2024 saw the arrival of the H400 integrated amplifier [HFN Oct ’24], aka the Streamliner due to its networking features, and now we have the new D50, a DAC that Hegel says is ‘affectionately named the Raven’.

Review: Mark Craven,  |  Jun 02, 2025  |  Published: May 01, 2025  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingLeveraging its 30 years of innovative speaker design, the Orion features Rockport’s ‘next generation’ cabinet

Named after the Maine town where it started in 1984, although now based down the coast in South Thomaston, Rockport Technologies has been known by audiophiles since the 1990s as a manufacturer of high-end – and heavyweight – loudspeakers. The Orion floorstander tested here is no exception, weighing 163kg per piece and selling for £165,000. Suffice to say, it’s a far cry from the early sub/sat systems of chief designer Andy Payor...

Review: Mark Craven,  |  May 30, 2025  |  Published: Nov 01, 2024  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingIndustry ‘disrupter’ WiiM continues its campaign to shake up the audio scene with another comprehensively-equipped streamer, this time with a Class D amp on board

If I had a pound for every time I’d heard someone talking about WiiM in the last year I would easily be able to afford the £329 streaming amplifier auditioned here. Since its arrival in the UK in 2023, WiiM – the consumer-facing brand of California-based smart technology company Linkplay – has earned a reputation for compact, networked hi-fi products that combine wide feature sets and a forward-thinking control app, but at prices that would have seemed like science-fiction just a few years ago.

Review: Mark Craven,  |  May 30, 2025  |  Published: Nov 01, 2024  |  0 comments
hfnoutstandingInspired by its long-running Studio series, born in the 1980s, this modern-day D’Appolito standmount also illustrates Monitor Audio’s long-term use of metal-coned drivers

As anyone who tried to buy tickets for Oasis’s 2025 reunion tour will have discovered, nostalgia is big business. The hi-fi industry knows it too, and in recent years has been scouring the 1970s for speaker and amplifier designs to either leverage into new models or directly resurrect. Monitor Audio, however, has now jumped a decade ahead, launching a new speaker ‘inspired by the 1980s’. Seeing as Hollywood has been tapping into that decade with revisits to the Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun and Ghostbusters franchises, the British manufacturer might be onto something.

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