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Move over Stockholm: when it comes to coolness, Gothenburg has all boxes ticked. Sweden’s laidback second city is a cultural oasis, so it’s little surprise that there are plenty of compelling reasons for vinyl tourists to head over and dig Göteborg’s bulging crates. This beautiful, compact city is easy to navigate by bus, tram or as a pedestrian. Don’t worry about the language barrier, either: just like the inhabitants of relaxed Scandinavian neighbour Copenhagen (see HFC 417), Göteborgare are friendly people capable of largely flawless English.

Building on the success of its first ever digital headphone amplifier (the HDVD 800), Sennheiser has showcased its successor at the Tokyo Headphone Festival. The HDV 820 has an all-new digital section, which is powered by an ESS SABRE32 digital-to-analogue converter in a completely balanced topology. The DAC operates at up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM resolution and up to 12. 3MHz DSD and is claimed to provide unequalled dynamic range, ultra-low distortion and unmatched audio clarity.

Originally launched back in 1996, the first AE109 set new standards for what was expected from an entry-level speaker, and now it’s set to return in the form of the new AE100 Series, consisting of the AE100 standmount, AE109 floorstander, AE108 subwoofer and AE107 centre speaker for home cinema setups. The AE100 standmount (£199) utilises a 110mm drive unit complimented by a 28mm soft dome tweeter featuring AE’s Wide Dispersion Technology, there’s also a slot-shaped bass duct port. Aiming to replicate the same effortless room-filling ability of its namesake from 20 years ago, the new AE109 is a slimline floorstander with a 2. 5-way driver configuration.

Designed for those that are short on space but don’t want to compromise when it comes to sound, McIntosh’s MXA80 is the ultimate in unashamedly luxurious home audio. The setup features a miniaturised 50W (into 8ohm) stereo amplifier, plus a pair of specially designed aluminium chassis two-way desktop loudspeakers. There is a choice of four digital inputs (optical, coaxial, DIN and USB) – with the former three capable of handlingup to 24/192 resolution music files and the latter 32/384 – while the onboard DAC also supports DSD and DXD. Two additional analogue inputs cater for existing equipment.

Italians have often been thought of as the masters of design, and the term 'made in Italy' is synonymous with elegance, craftsmanship and style. These have always been very desirable factors in hi-fi, and Florence-based Gold Noteis hoping that its sumptuous designs – where every product is built by hand from scratch with high-quality materials – are going to attract the eyes and ears of audio aficionados here. Distributed by Audio Pinnacle Ltd, the new-to-the-UK brand has existed in its native Italy in one form or another for more than 20 years,and has plenty of experience with OEM collaborations worldwidein engineering and designing a complete line of domestic analogue audio equipment from amplifiers to loudspeakers, cables and turntables. Visitors to the High End Show heldin Munich will be familiar with the Gold Note brand and this year's May event sees it displaying the newly introduced XT-7 floorstanding loudspeaker.

Danish manufacturer Densen has launched, the Cast amplifier, described as the brand’s first streamer. It’s the first product of the company’s new half-width Dino range, and boasts power output of 2x 60W into an 8ohm load or 2x 120W into 4ohm. A scaled-down version of the B-390 power amplifier that’s been 15 years in the making and is set to be released by Densen later in the year, the Cast amp utilises Google Cast Audio technology so that users can stream music directly from services such as Tidal via Chromecast-enabled devices. It can also be used with Google Home to implement multi-room listening.