Hi-Fi Choice

Loudspeakers
Polk Audio RTIA1 - £299
Hi-Fi Choice  |  Feb 05, 2015  |  0 comments
What’s the best kind of hi-fi product? The only problem with a dreamy vision of ‘the-one-that-gets-you-closest-to-hi-fi-heaven’ is the painfullyhigh price tag or, worse still, a speech bubble that reads: “if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it”. Life’s cruel. Fortunately for most of us, there are more hi-fi designers and engineers tasked with wringing the last drop of performance from every pound you spend than those chasing sonic Shangri-La at any cost. As Ross Walker, son of Quad founder Peter Walker, once told me: “Any fool can design a great-sounding amplifier for £30,000, the trick is to do it for £300.
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Phono Preamplifiers
Icon Audio PS3 MkII - £2,499
Hi-Fi Choice  |  Feb 05, 2015  |  0 comments
Getting a valve phono stage to work well is no easy task when you bear in mind that on the quieter parts of a record, the output from a moving coil cartridge may only be about a millionth of a volt. This needs to be amplified up to a standard line-level output of around 1. 2Vrms, so for a start the whole circuit and power supply needs to be as quiet as a mouse. Then the stage itself also has to be first rate and stable under all operating conditions.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
The Funk Firm Flamenca - £850
Hi-Fi Choice  |  Feb 05, 2015  |  0 comments
When The Funk Firm releases a new turntable, you can expect innovation to be high on the agenda. Challenging the norms of turntable design is what company founder Arthur Khoubesserian is all about. Let’s not forget that this is the man who some decades ago first introduced novel ideas like fitting DC motors to belt drive decks alongside acrylic platters for placing your LPson sans mat. Back then this wastruly leftfield thinking, but now it’s commonplace on many of today’s high-end vinyl spinners, showing that Arthur was clearly ahead of the game.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
VPI Nomad - £795
Hi-Fi Choice  |  Feb 02, 2015  |  0 comments
Choosing a turntable is never an easy business and often the more you spend the harder and more complex the choices become. After finding your preferred basic deck, you’ve then got to consider what cartridge to go for to complement your tonearm, and which phono stage will get the best out of your cartridge while allowing for upgrades further down the line, all of which makes choosing a CD player seem like child’s play in comparison. That’s why for many a plug-and-play vinyl solution makes a lot of sense, provided the components are carefully chosen and quality prevails over convenience. Step forward New Jersey’s VPI Industries, a company renownedfor its high-end decks usually with four-figure price tags.
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News
On sale now!
Hi-Fi Choice  |  Jan 20, 2015  |  0 comments
Welcome to our January 2015 issue. This month’s group test looks at the latest USB DACs to upgrade your hi-fi and sound on the go, and we also go In-depth with a stunning Primare pre/power combo. Four of the best sounding DAB radios get rated, plus we listen to B&W’s T7 Bluetooth speaker and celebrate Topic Records at 75! Clickhereto buy a copy or become a subscriber by clickinghere. .
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Headphones
Focal Spirit Classic - £299
Hi-Fi Choice  |  Jan 15, 2015  |  0 comments
Headphones have taken over the audio world for all but the cognoscenti (that’s us, we know about sound). And the well established hi-fi brands have all been scrambling to get on the band wagon too, even brands that have previously not been involved with domestic audio are getting in on the act; I even saw some Marshall branded headphones in a Paul Smith store theother day! Focal got its first headphone to market a couple of years ago, that was the Spirit, late last year it added two more models, the Spirit Pro and Spirit Classic. The latter is an audiophile version of the Classic with higher build and, its claimed, sound quality than the standard Spirit. The two models are very similar in appearance, but when you put them side by side the Classic looks positively deluxe with its leather padding and brushed aluminium metalwork.
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Loudspeakers
Spendor A6R - £2,495
Hi-Fi Choice  |  Jan 15, 2015  |  0 comments
One of the best things about Spendor is that when its ranges are refreshed, it’sa worthwhile update. The company’s MD Philip Swift ‘gets it’ that buyers aren’t always taken in by the addition of an alloy trim ring, a five percent more expensive crossover capacitor and set of gold-plated spikes. So when it does something,it’s worth sitting up and taking notice. Any ‘R’ version (as it’s ‘Revised’) really is worth paying attention to.
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Network Media Players
FiiO X3 - £159
Hi-Fi Choice  |  Jan 15, 2015  |  0 comments
You might be forgiven for gaining the impression that there is really only one option when it comes to portable digital players capable of 24/192 resolution – Astell&Kern. But it was always only a matter of time before other players appeared. Those in search of an alternative to the somewhat pricey players from iRiver pricked up their ears whenFiiO trailed the availability of a more affordable unit using the same Wolfson WM8740 DAC. A similar frisson was felt when it released an excellent portable headphone amp – the E17 – a year or two ago.
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Headphones
Bowers & Wilkins P7 - £330
Hi-Fi Choice  |  Jan 14, 2015  |  0 comments
The latest and most expensive Bowers & Wilkins headphones are also the most desirable. The smell of the leather as you open the box, the contrast of chrome and black, it all says luxury. You also get a lot in the box. There are two alternate cables, one for use with Apple portables with inline volume and play/pause control, and another straight wire (without gain) for more discerning listeners.
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Network Media Players
Cambridge Audio Minx XI - £600
Hi-Fi Choice  |  Jan 14, 2015  |  0 comments
By combining hi-fi sound quality with real world convenience, all-in-one digital music players signify a step-change for the hi-fi industry. Their allure is like that ofCD in the eighties, appealing to both audiophiles and music lovers alike who simply want a fuss-free way to hear music, which in the modern age could be stored on a smartphone, laptop or sophisticated NAS drive. Cambridge Audio clearly gets this and its Minx Xi combines features cherry picked from its affordable separates range, packed into an even more affordable do-it-all single box. So what you get is a 40W (claimed) Class AB amplifier derived from the company’s 351A integrated amp, dual Wolfson WM8728 DACs lifted from the 351C CD player, the streaming functionality of CA’s NP30 network player and Bluetooth connectivity courtesy of the company’s BT100 apt-X receiver.
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