Review: Mark Craven

Here's a fun game to play: look through the product catalogue of US manufacturer Balanced Audio Technology and try to spot the odd one out. It should only take you a matter of seconds because all of its current models, bar one, employ tubes in either their power or preamp stages. And if you still haven't realised I'm talking about the new REX 500 power amplifier, it's the one that's roughly twice as big as all the others.

While the list of 'legacy products' on Matrix Audio's website begins with the DA-100 Plus DAC, which debuted in 2006, the Chinese brand insists it only really began life in 2013 when it was registered as Matrix Electronic Technology Co. 'Before that, Matrix Audio existed in the form of a studio', says marketing manager Yang Tao. This explains why the literature for the new Element X2 Pure network DAC (and the sticker that graces the top of the unit) proclaims it a celebratory model, launched to mark the company's 10th anniversary.

By Copland's own reckoning, its noughties-era CTA405 integrated amplifier [HFN Aug '07] was an 'object of desire for audiophiles worldwide'. Now, some 16 years later, it has taken the idea of that model and considerably overhauled it – the £6500 CTA407 is both recognisably a descendant of the '405 and also markedly different.

It still surprises me that KEF's R series, which features seven models in total, includes only one standmount/bookshelf option. Surprising because compact speakers are extremely popular, and because the R series is the company's mid-tier proposition, above the entry-level Q and a considerable way below the Reference range. Yet the previous generation, which launched in 2018, featured just one standmount – the R3 – so it's deja vu five years later.