LATEST ADDITIONS

Total Klipsch With a sleek line of in-ear earphones, US giant Klipsch is finding favour with discerning mobile music fans. Dan George plugs in We first discovered good things from Klipsch’s svelte bullet-shaped in-ears following a round-up for our sister mag T3, back in 2010. The company swiftly suggested we try the new X10i, clearly confident that it was a good match for demanding ears. But that’s not all.

Arcam CD37 - £1,300 SACD playback has a low profile in the case of the CD37, but the presence of a Wolfson DAC is definitely a bonus As SACD players go, this one is remarkably low key. There is an SACD logo on the front, but it’s not immediately obvious and the legend at top right clearly says ‘Compact Disc Player’. But it does handle the hi-res discs, thanks to a DAC which handles DSD (the SACD ‘bitstream’ format) in native mode. That’s an interesting detail, as most DACs these days convert both high-bit PCM (CD, DVD-A etc.

Marantz SA8003 - £829 Marantz's reputation for its own 'house sound' is on show here with a player that fares well against the competition Marantz used to append the great man’s initials to models ‘breathed on’ by Ken Ishiwata, but there’s nothing in the nomenclature to give that away here. In fact, this is basically a souped-up SA7003, sharing a basic spec, but adding touches like the copper-plated chassis, toroidal mains transformer and a sprinkling of audiophile passive components. Speaking of components, this player is decidedly old-fashioned-looking inside, with the majority of electronic parts being through-hole types. There are quite a lot of discrete transistors around, made up into Marantz’s trademark HDAM circuit, which performs the same function as the more common op-amp chips, but (we’re assured) to a higher standard.

Pioneer PD-D9 Mk2 £750 Pioneer's keenly priced CD/SACD player has a lot to offer in terms of electronic wizardry and audio performance his model was one of a handful that marked Pioneer’s return to serious hi-fi separates a few years ago. Now in Mk2 guise, it remains largely as it was then, a simple stereo-only CD/SACD player with little in the way of fancy features. Indeed, so devoid is it of frills that it doesn’t even offer track skip from the front panel; the only controls are tray open/close and play/pause. Beneath the lid it’s filled with components, including a screened switch-mode power supply, with considerably more smoothing capacitance than is usually found.