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Just for the record Can a humble cartridge-maker craft the perfect phono stage? Dynavector’s radical P-75 looks to invigorate Jason Kennedy’s LP collection In many respects you would expect companies that make cartridges to be the best placed to design a phono stage, but this is still quite a rare practice (van den Hul and Rega are notable exceptions). Dynavector is not just a cartridge maker of course, it has an electronics wing in New Zealand and used to make an amplifier with stereo- enhancing circuitry, there is also a discontinued head amplifier on its website. Its compact P-75 phono stage is now in its second generation and has something of a cult following, so we thought it time to investigate. Degrees of grain The P75 does a couple of things rather differently to most.

Can't knock Okki Nokki Cleanliness is next to fidelity when it comes to vinyl, but where on earth did this device get its name? Jason Kennedy scrubs his grooves Okki Nokki distributor Ken White has been selling second-hand records since the nineties, so he knows a thing or two about filth, enough it would seem to have sought out this strangely named machine and decided to bring it to the UK. It’s certainly priced right at £395 – we don’t know of a cheaper alternative that has built-in vacuuming capabilities and the ability to spin in both directions. Not only that, but it comes complete with concentrated cleaning fluid and a goat’s-hair brush. The name, incidentally, is Dutch for ‘thumbs-up’.

The new romantic Emille brings modern, digital inputs to old-fashioned valves in its most affordable amplifier ever as Ed Selley finds his top pick of 2011 so far Emillé takes its name from a giant, ornate bell that is considered a national treasure in its native Korea. Its range of well thought-out integrated, pre/power amplifiers and phono stages is entirely valve-based and has worn commensurately high-end price tags up until now. The £2,450 Ara is not exactly cheap, but is comfortably Emillé’s least expensive integrated amp ever and targets a rather more accessible and competitive price point. The good news is that there is little sign of cost-cutting.

Island in the stream A music file player that doesn’t stream, what’s going on? Jason Kennedy examines the first in a new breed of transports The engineers at Brystson have made the radical decision to build a digital music player that doesn’t stream music from a computer. Their angle is that streaming is bad, but digital music files are not. Is this then a brief diversion from the tidal onslaught of streamed music over solid software, or it could signal a new angle that brings us music files without the complications of streaming. Bryston’s approach is to let you access music files stored on USB drives, be they thumb drives or hard drives which you stock up with music on the computer and then plug into the player.