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American brand, Belles (Power Modules Inc. ) is not one we come across often in these pages despite it being around for some 36 years – in fact the last time we saw anything from it was back in issue 325. David Belles has been behind a host of sensibly priced, high-quality amplifiers since 1978, both under the Belles brand and as a talented hired gun for other leading hi-fi companies. His prowess with electronics even played a part in the space race at mission control a little while ago, so he knows all about important signals getting through correctly.

Voice control was among one of the biggest advances in 2017, and it hasn’t taken multi-room giant Sonos long to bring this functionality into its ecosystem. The new One is the first Sonos multi-room speaker to include Amazon Alexa voice control (and from 2018, Google Assistant) built in. The speaker uses six far-field microphones and voice capture technology with echo cancellation tech to ensure it receives voice commands clearly. A volume ‘duck’ feature drops the music level as soon as you start talking.

Pioneer has announced details of its new reference disc spinner in the form of the PD-70AE. Able to play CD and SACD via its large aluminium drawer-loading mechanism, the player promises to be a usefully flexible CD source and also act as a DAC via optical and a coaxial digital inputs at the rear. Decoding is handled by a pair of ESS9026PRO DACs and the entire circuit has been assembled to be fully balanced. A three-mode adjustable filter fine tunes the presentation with a choice of Slow, Sharp and Short settings.

Inside the January 2018 issue we take anexclusiveIn-depthlook at Auralic’s Aries G2 network streaming transport, whileExoticafeatures Yamaha’s NS-5000 standmount loudspeaker. Regular review pages feature VPI’s Player turntable package, Chord Electronics’ Poly wireless streaming add-on, T+A’s Cala SR one-box system and Bowers & Wilkins’ PX wireless noise-cancelling headphones. Plus,Beautiful Systembrings together US and Canadian brands VPI, Simaudio and Totem Acoustic whileMusic Legendscharts the life and times of the original king of rock and roll Fats Domino, and our six-wayGroup Testlooks at six in-ear headphones from Final, NuForce, oBravo, Oriveti, Sennheiser and Westone. Plus: Get our AVTech Awards 2017/18 supplement absolutely free.