LATEST ADDITIONS

All-In-One Systems
Cocktail Audio X30 - £999
 |  Jan 19, 2015  |  0 comments
Music centres combining record deck, cassette recorder and tuner were big business back in the late seventies through to the early eighties, with fans keen to enjoy music at home on all the main analogue formats of the day. Today in the mostly digital era the idea of the ‘one box does it all’ approach goes against serious audiophile thinking, with the general consensus being that dedicated components being assigned to specific tasks is the best way to guarantee pure, interference-free playback of your music collection. With the world of audio moving towards streaming and downloads, we’re told that the desire for physical digital media (CDs) is falling rapidly. So, what to do with that sizeable CD collection and how best to migrate to streaming are regular questions being asked by music fans looking to move with the times to a less tangible music playback system.
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Loudspeakers
Tannoy Precision 6.1 - £900
 |  Jan 19, 2015  |  0 comments
Costing the considerable sum of £900, Tannoy’s new Precision 6. 1 has to be demonstrably better than the large number of cheaper standmounters around to attain serious success. It has to give at least a taste of greatness, if not the full culinary experience! Reflecting this, it is a purposefully styled product, with a design suggesting few compromises. Being a Tannoy it has a Dual Concentric drive unit.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Parasound Halo P5 - £999
 |  Jan 19, 2015  |  0 comments
A preamplifier’s life is not a happy one. In the olden days, when mammoths roamed the wild planes and Duran Duran were at number one, its job was clear. A preamp sat in front of the power amp, because without it there was no way of getting music from your sound source. Music came from vinyl, and its meagre output was such that plugging it directly into a power amplifier would have produced all the power, as Captain Blackadder once said, of an asthmatic ant.
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Disc Players
Marantz CD6005/PM6005 - £350/£380
 |  Jan 15, 2015  |  0 comments
Flashy products come and go, sensations soar up the sales charts and then fizzle away and a procession of award winners fill dealers’ shelves. But amidst all this drama and chaos, there’s one thing about which you can always be sure – Marantz budget separates will always offer quality. Marantz’s entry-level CD playerand amplifier are never going to be stinkers! Nor, to be frank, are they going to be dramatically different from their predecessors, save a tweak here and a feature change there. Residing on the very first rung of the Marantz silver disc-spinning range ladder, the CD6005 doesn’t offer SACD playback functionality.
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Network Media Players
Sony NWZ-F886 - £250
 |  Jan 15, 2015  |  0 comments
When the first Walkman cassette player went on sale in 1979 I lusted after it almost as much as I did Debbie Harry. Then everything went digital and Sony forgot that the reason the Walkman sold so well was because it was the best player of a universal format. The first network Walkmans weren’t compatible with MP3 files, but Sony changed tack and embraced MP3, and the Walkman re-emerged – as did Blondie – so that both enjoyed moderate success albeit, both a shadow of their former selves. Fast forward to today and the tide may look high for MP3, which is good news for audiophiles.
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Headphones
Focal Spirit Classic - £299
Hi-Fi Choice  |  Jan 15, 2015  |  0 comments
Headphones have taken over the audio world for all but the cognoscenti (that’s us, we know about sound). And the well established hi-fi brands have all been scrambling to get on the band wagon too, even brands that have previously not been involved with domestic audio are getting in on the act; I even saw some Marshall branded headphones in a Paul Smith store theother day! Focal got its first headphone to market a couple of years ago, that was the Spirit, late last year it added two more models, the Spirit Pro and Spirit Classic. The latter is an audiophile version of the Classic with higher build and, its claimed, sound quality than the standard Spirit. The two models are very similar in appearance, but when you put them side by side the Classic looks positively deluxe with its leather padding and brushed aluminium metalwork.
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All-In-One Systems
Sony HAP-S1 - £800
 |  Jan 15, 2015  |  0 comments
It can be difficult to predict format trends, and even consumer electronics giants can be caught off guard, but a new range of hi-res music machines sees Sony make a welcome return to the hi-fi arena. Things got difficult back in the late nineties, when MP3 files began to replace Compact Disc. The company’s instinct had always been to maintain control of the entire music recording and replay chain, from record company to format to player. But for once, this great innovating consumer electronics group was caught on the hop.
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Loudspeakers
Cambridge Audio Aero 6 - £650
 |  Jan 15, 2015  |  0 comments
Back in the November 2013 issue (377) we reviewed the £350 Cambridge Audio Aero 2 standmount loudspeaker. The Aero 6 is a larger, floorstanding version of the same design, deploying identical drive units with the far larger cabinet volume that comes from having a big box that sits securely on terra firma! Many will expect the Aero 6 to be better, then; after all, it’s nearly twice the price and has far more air inside its capacious cabinet. Trouble is, in doing a floorstanding version of a smaller standmount speaker, you open yourself up to a problem that’s never easily solved, especially in budget designs, which is how to keep the cabinet under control. The thing is, that bigger box might let the bass driver move air easier, but there’s also the worry that it will also move the cabinet.
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Loudspeakers
Dynaudio Excite X34 - £2,000
 |  Jan 15, 2015  |  0 comments
Eagle-eyed readers will no doubt have spotted thatan almost identical looking Dynaudio floorstander graced these pages back in the October 2013 issue and earned itself a prestigious Recommended badge. That speaker was the Xeo 5, an active design with a wireless receiver. Its cheaper passive cousin, the X34, comes minus the Xeo’s internal amplifier, freeing it up to be drivenby one of your choosing. The X34 model shares air-moving hardware with the Xeo 5, so you geta pair of Dynaudio’s 5in MSP (magnesium silicate polymer) long-throw woofers with aluminium voice coils and die-cast aluminium frames.
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Network Media Players
NAD D 7050 - £799
 |  Jan 15, 2015  |  0 comments
You may think you’ve already seen the D 7050 gracing our review pages in recent months, as it looks strikingly similar to NAD’sD 3020 amp and D 1050 DAC, bothof which we tested back in issue 379. The D 7050 here, however, is an altogether more thorough package, and employs NAD’s Direct Digital circuitry (see Q&A), handed down from the company’s high-end Masters Series. This circuit ensures all preamp functions are performed in the digital domain, which NAD says helps keep unwanted noise low. Being a digital amp means that the D 7050 is bereft of analogue inputs, but digital inputs are well served across four S/PDIF sockets shared over coaxial and optical, alongside USB and Ethernet ports.
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