| Page 4 | Hi-Fi Choice

| Jan 23, 2015 | 0 comments

For this writer, one of the most disappointing things about digital audio – and especially CD’s 16/44. 1 specification where the problem seems most acute – is its timing. It just doesn’t quite seem to accurately reproduce all the nuances you hear in music when listening in real time. The major issue to my ears is that if you go to a jazz club to hear Randy Crawford sing, then come back home and play the CD the digital disc just doesn’t have the natural ebb and flow of the live concert.

Disc Players

Cyrus CD XT Signature - £1,750

| Jan 23, 2015 | 0 comments

History appears to be repeating itself. The sound of vinyl never really came good until the format looked distinctly over the hill, and now we see the same thing happening with Compact Disc. As DAC technology gets ever better, suddenly we’re finding that the little silver disc is actually capable of really rather fine sound. Digital-to-analogue converters are at last able to properly do the job they were designed for, and CD is finally beginning to sound right.

Loudspeakers

Morel Soundspot 2.1 Ultra - £699

| Jan 23, 2015 | 0 comments

With the exception of REL and other longstanding subwoofer manufacturers, the concept of the 2. 1 system is something that has really only come into its own since the arrival of the sub/sat package in the home cinema boom at the start ofthe millennium. The concept of small speakers that take up little space and are underpinned by a subwoofer that can be tucked away out of sight had advantages for getting a home cinema system into a space that otherwise couldn’t accept one. It didn’t take a genius to see this could be applied to a hi-fi setup too.

Loudspeakers

B&W 683 S2 - £1,149

| Jan 23, 2015 | 0 comments

Buyers have come to know what to expect from the £1,000 price point. Lavishing this sort of sum buys you a physically largish box that is nicely if not luxuriously finished. It gets you a decent set of drive units, and you’d expect to be looking at three per speaker at least – and that’s precisely what you get here. Here’s a three-way, four driver floorstander that’s just over a metre tall when sitting on its plinths (not shown).

Network Media Players

Krell Connect - £3,500

| Jan 21, 2015 | 1 comments

What the world needs now – to quote the great Burt Bacharach – is love, sweet love. Well perhaps, but there’s a sizeable number of consumer electronics companies who think this is no longer quite so pressing, and instead we should all be given network music players to play with. So much so that now it feels like you can’t move for the things. Love isn’t all around anymore – as The Troggs once sang – audio streamers are! Krell’s new Connect needs to be special then.

Disc Players

Creek Evolution 50CD - £950

| Jan 21, 2015 | 0 comments

And so it goes. The humble Compact Disc player, once a vestigial box with no inputs and a single pairof analogue outputs is increasingly becoming a preamp with a DAC and optical disc transport built in. Gone are the days when it was seen as an end in itself, now it is to all intents and purposes a digital music centre. Creek’s new Evolution 50CD silver disc spinner is precisely this, and costing under £1,000, is being positioned to take on the market leader, Audiolab’s 8200CD.

Integrated Amplifiers

Vieta Audio VH-HA100/VH-CD060 - £280/£350

| Jan 21, 2015 | 0 comments

While two-channel audio has been staging something of a fight back of late, the bulk of new product has come from existing manufacturers returning to the category, while new arrivals have tended to be at slightly higher price points than ones we would define as entry level. This makes the duo you see here especially interesting. Not only is Vieta Audio returning to the UK after sufficiently long a period of time that it is new for many people (me included), but the products it is returning with are at the affordable end of the market. The range arriving in the UK is an extensive one.

Outboard DACs

B.M.C PureDAC - £1,290

| Jan 21, 2015 | 0 comments

There’s more to life than hi-fi you know, and indeed many consumers are beginning to think the less of it you have, the better. This is heretical stuff to those who grew up during the seventies and eighties, when we were taught that if it didn’t come in umpteen separate boxes, it simply couldn’t be any good. Now, though, suddenly there are all sorts of possibilities presenting themselves. The most obvious example of this is the DAC/preamp.

All-In-One Systems

Cyrus Lyric - £3,000

| Jan 21, 2015 | 0 comments

It’s official, and you heard it here first – we don’t live in the seventies anymore. Like David Bowie, times have changed. He’s no longer the Thin White Duke and the world isn’t buying huge amounts of separates. Life moves on, and so does the way people play music.

Loudspeakers

JBL Studio 270 - £600

| Jan 21, 2015 | 0 comments

Floorstanding loudspeakers are hugely popular right now, with seemingly more models vying for our attention on a daily basis. It’s a competitive market that has been growing consistently stronger sincefloorstanders first grabbed our attention back in the nineties. Their popularity is a win-win for music fans as the wealth of models means quality is high and prices competitive. It’s fair to say that American loudspeaker companies are often viewed with slightly raised eyebrows in the UK, but here JBL follows more elegant speaker designs rather than the muscular monitors it is better known for.

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