Equipment+
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IsoAcoustics Gaia I, II, and III loudspeaker isolation feet
|As late as the middle of the last decade, the only legitimate audiophile option for the interface between loudspeaker and floor was the spike. You drove them as hard as possible into a wooden or ...read more -
RME ADI-2 DAC digital converter/headphone amplifier
|In all honesty, most domestic DACs fall somewhere between ‘inadequate’ and ‘woefully inadequate’ when it comes to telling the world what they are doing. There are exceptions of course – Chord Electronics and its colour-coded ...read more -
ELAC Vela BS 403 stand‑mount loudspeakers
|ELAC has clearly grasped that if you are to sell loudspeakers to an audience that would instead prefer things were invisible (or at least no bigger than a Coke can), you have to make it ...read more -
Transparent Reference PowerIsolator power conditioner
|It’s not so long ago that power conditioners were not a ‘thing’, especially in the UK and many European audio circles. We used to pride ourselves on having ‘clean’ power, as the juice coming into ...read more -
Schiit Audio Jotunheim Multibit headphone amp/preamp
|When Schiit Audio introduced its Jotunheim headphone amp/preamp in 2016, it was considered a technical marvel and a bargain. Jotunheim used a unique balanced circuit topology, called a ‘Pivot Point’ gain stage, developed by company ...read more -
Dynaudio Xeo 20 active stand-mount loudspeaker
|Dynaudio is that rare combination of industry titan and innovator. Typically, brands get large, then they get hide-bound by their own conventions, and smaller, more agile companies come along and develop new concepts for the ...read more -
Raidho XT-5 floorstanding loudspeaker
|The XT-5 is a Raidho speaker, but it’s a Raidho speaker with a difference. If you think you know how it’s going to sound, best think again. When Alan Sircom reviewed the company’s flagship model, ...read more -
Bowers & Wilkins 606 stand-mount loudspeaker
|Things are afoot in Steyning. Bowers & Wilkins’ research facility in the sleepy Sussex town is being broken down and boxed up, but fear not; this is not the end of the UK’s most extensively ...read more -
Neat Acoustics Ultimatum XL6 loudspeaker
|Neat Acoustic’s Ultimatum range is a three-strong expression of Bob Surgeoner’s distinctive take on loudspeaker design. It comprises a stand-mount Ultimatum XLS, the flagship XL10 tower, and this, the XL6 floorstander. The logic behind having ...read more -
Audiovector R8 floorstanding loudspeaker
|Audiovector has something of a gap problem. The Copenhagen-based brand has a couple of ranges of superb loudspeakers that cover the entry-level and attainably-priced regions of the audio market, it has the R11 flagship that ...read more -
Vitus RI-101 integrated amplifier
|It’s interesting how having a high quality streaming capability and a Tidal account changes your style of listening. As a result, I have been on a bit of a retro kick recently and looking more ...read more -
Moon 390 network player/preamplifier
|I’ve come across Moon’s output several times in my reviewing career, as a few years ago I was asked to review a Moon phono stage. I enjoyed living with it; it was not only well-constructed, ...read more -
Aurender S5W active loudspeaker system
|We are living in an age where convenience trumps quality almost every time; commercially speaking MP3 makes all other music formats look insignificant and lossy streaming is so much bigger than its pricey lossless cousin ...read more -
Cayin iHA-6 headphone amp, iDAC-6 DAC, and iDAP-6 digital audio player
|If you jumped into an audiophile’s time machine and went back about a year and a half (to late 2016), you might have seen and heard two compact yet very impressive new components from Cayin ...read more -
AKG N5005 earphones
|Victoria Station to Ealing Broadway, on the District Line of the London Underground. At around 9:15 on the evening of Thursday 23rd August, 2018. That was the precise moment I understood why the AKG N5005 ...read more