LATEST ADDITIONS

Bob Dylan will be releasing the latest volume in his acclaimed bootleg series of previously unreleased studio recordings –including never-before-heard songs, outtakes, rehearsal tracks and alternate versions from theBringing It All Back Home,Highway 61 RevisitedandBlonde On BlondeSessions – on 6 November. Bob Dylan: The Best of The Cutting Edge 1965-1966, will be available in special double-CD and tripple-vinyl packages and focuses on the trilogy of albums that secured Dylan's reputation as a songwriter and performer of unprecedented depth. All recordings included are pristine transfers and mixed from the original studio tracking tapes. The packagecomes with an annotated book featuring hundreds of rare and never-before-seen photographs and memorabilia and new essays penned especially for the collection by Bill Flanagan and Sean Wilentz.

All headphones offer a degree of passive noise reduction by simply placing the earpeiceson your ears. Some offer greater background noise reduction than others, and in-ear types cut this more significantly simply by inserting earbuds into the ear canal to block out the interference. With active noise cancelling technology added to an on-ear headphone, ambient sounds can be significantly reduced thanks to the use of built-in microphones that analyse any background noise and regenerate it out of phase so that it is effectively cancelled out in the listeners’ ears. It’s a clever technique, and one that gets more sophisticated with each new generation of noise-cancelling cans.

Audio-Technica has unveiled it latest turntable, the AT-LP5. First revealed to the world at this year’s IFA show in Berlin, the new deck is a direct-drive vinyl spinner that provides playback for 33 and 45rpm discs. Based on an original design from the sixties, the J-shaped 247mm tonearm has a 17mm overhang and is claimed to minimise tracking errors. It comes fitted with Audio-Technica’s lightweight AT-HS10 headshell and the exclusive AT95Ex dual moving magnet cartridge.

“Striking sound that can both soar and soothe” is how Danish manufacturer DALI describes the ethos that is at the heart of the new Opticon range. Consisting of seven models, the hand-assembled speakers boast a unique SMC-based magnet motor system alongside hybrid soft dome ribbon tweeters and wood-fibre, low-loss cones. The £499 Opticon 1 is a compact standmount with a 26mm soft dome tweeter and a 120mm wood-fibre, low-loss woofer. The slightly larger Opticon 2 (£649) increases the woofer to 165mm and partners it with a 28mm tweeter.