LATEST ADDITIONS

Integrated Amplifiers
Resolution Audio Cantata- £3,995
Ed Selley  |  Feb 02, 2011  |  0 comments
Count on Cantata Jason Kennedy looks at the matching 50-watt integrated for our favourite CD player of 2010. Can Resolution Audio shine with its amps, too? Last year we had some bad news. Resolution Audio discontinued one of our favourite CD players, the Opus 21. The good news, however, was that it replaced it with the Cantata Music Centre, which went on to win several HFC awards in our 2010 Awards issue.
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Cables & Accessories
PURE I-20 - £80
Ed Selley  |  Feb 02, 2011  |  0 comments
PURE brilliance PURE’s ground-breaking £80 digital iPod dock brings hi-fi sound to Apple devices for pin money. Ed Selley plugs in 2011’s super transport The iPod transport, a dock that extracts a digital signal to output to an external DAC, has been with us for a few years now and the price of models has drifted progressively lower. From the £2,000 MSB iLink (which only worked with a specially modified iPod), we now have the PURE i-20 which will function with any iPod connected to it and will produce the all-important digital signal for a princely £80. If this was the only feature the i-20 offered, we would be fairly impressed.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Michell Gyro SEduction - £2,245
Ed Selley  |  Feb 02, 2011  |  0 comments
The art of SEduction Michell has built just 99 examples of what might prove to be the best ever Gyro. Jason Kennedy unravels the story of the cool-blue SEduction The Michell Gyro SE is a classic British turntable that consistently scores well in our reviews, so it didn’t take much for the company to tempt us with this limited edition version in a ‘blue steel’ and black finish. The SEduction version of the Gyro SE is being sold as a complete package with Michell’s TecnoArm, HR power supply and matching record clamp. What’s more, there’s only 99 serial-numbered examples being made.
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Outboard DACs
Furutech GT40 DAC - £395
Ed Selley  |  Feb 02, 2011  |  0 comments
Analogue appeal Richard Black discovers a neat little DAC from Furutech which doubles up as a phono stage and A/D convertor, too – enter the GT40 In last month’s Hi-Fi Choice (HFC 341), our Blind-listening Group Test concentrated on a variety of DACs, all of which accomplished hi-fi nirvana in their own unique way. But this month’s one-off review of the Furutech GT40 is something different again. Have a close look at the front panel and you’ll see mention of ‘phono’. That’s right, this DAC is also an ADC and a phono stage.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Edwards Audio TT1 - £325
Ed Selley  |  Feb 02, 2011  |  0 comments
Edwardian splendour Malcolm Steward assesses a Rega-based turntable from Edwards Audio, a new outfit from the Talk Electronics stable The Edwards Audio TT1 starts at a very reasonable £325 without a cartridge, but is also available with an Edwards Zephyr £60 cartridge for £375 (a £10 saving when purchased with the deck as a complete record-playing package). This cartridge is similar to the popular Goldring Elektra, supplied with this review sample on the highly respected Rega RB250 [OEM] tonearm. Clearly this turntable is targeted at those who want to be able to enjoy their vinyl, without having to remortgage their homes or sell any of their internal organs to fund the investment. Rega revisited The TT1 differs from the timeless Rega P2, upon which it is based, in that it features a clear, naked acrylic platter.
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Headphones
Klispsh Image X10i - £229
Ed Selley  |  Feb 02, 2011  |  0 comments
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.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Dyanvector DV-20X2L
Ed Selley  |  Feb 02, 2011  |  0 comments
Needle- sharp Dynavector has added two new moving coils to its small, but well formed range. Jason Kennedy finds out what they can do for your vinyl We have yet to encounter a Dynavector cartridge that we don’t like, but new ones don’t come along very often, so when two arrive like buses on a cold night, it’s a cause for celebration. As is the Japanese company’s style, the new DV-20X2 is available in low and high output varieties, the low output version requires a transistor phono stage or step-up device, while the high can be used with valve and MM phono stages. This, combined with a traditional two-gram down-force, makes the DV-20X2 a very easy cartridge to accommodate on modern turntables, or even older ones so long as they don’t have a very low mass arm.
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Disc Players
Arcam CD37 - £1,300
Ed Selley  |  Dec 12, 2010  |  0 comments
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.
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Disc Players
Cambridge Audio Azur 650BD - £400
Ed Selley  |  Dec 12, 2010  |  0 comments
Cambridge Audio Azur 650BD - £400 The budget-priced player of the bunch, the 650BD is remarkably good value and holds its own admirably Is it hi-fi, is it home cinema, or is it a bit of home computer equipment? In the days of Blu-ray, USB and internet with everything, the Azur 650BD is all three – with bells on. The 10 front-panel logos denoting specific technologies suggest at once that this is a pretty well-featured unit, while closer investigation doesn’t disappoint. It handles almost every variation of silver disc – CD, SACD, DVD and Blu-ray. Despite that, the insides are not really any busier than most CD- only players.
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Disc Players
Marantz SA8003 - £829
Ed Selley  |  Dec 12, 2010  |  0 comments
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.
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