Hi-Fi Choice

Launched in France in 1981 by electronics professor Yves-Bernard André, YBA today is a very different thing to the company that it once was. Some might lament the way the EU is dissolving national borders, but the real story of the past few decades has been the wholesale move of manufacturing from the West to the East. This was already happening in the seventies, with British brands beginning to manufacture first in Hong Kong, then Taiwan and eventually China.

Another day, another newcomer to the UK audio cable market. German company Viablue’s SC-4 mid-range speaker cable is formed from a combination of silver-plated strands for the high frequencies and tin-plated ones for the lower frequencies. Within each cable are four leads (two for the signal and two for the return) consisting of seven wrapped bundles of oxygen-free copper wire. The cable is sheathed in a ‘cobra’ satin matt sleeve to protect it and at each end are vibration-absorbing splitters to separate the two connections.

Increasingly, the entry-level turntable market is in pursuit of convenient plug ‘n’ play solutions, with everything that’s needed in one complete package to make spinning LPs as simple a process as possible. This is not typically the audiophile way of going about things, but with a growing desire for quality turntable solutions to appeal to new or returning vinyl fans, the move towards one-stop solutions that combine cartridge and phono stage preamps, reducing the box count, is enormously appealing.

Started in 1996 by electronics engineers Massimiliano Marzi and Andrea Nardini, Audia Flight’s philosophy is to use solid state in an interesting way, and the company’s first product – the 100 power amplifier – sported current feedback design, something that’s shared by its distant descendent the FL Three S. Being Italian, style is also a big thing – what would you expect from the land of La Bella Figura?