Hi Fi News November 2022

There are occasions, possibly just once in a lifetime, where an event of such momentous, historic importance stops us in our tracks. Wherever we were, whatever we were doing, these are the rare moments that become indelibly imprinted upon our personal and collective memories. For many of us, Thursday the 8th September 2022 will be that day. Early that morning the great and good of the hi-fi industry had begun to arrive at the Ascot Grandstand, home to the UK Hi-Fi Show Live in September and, to the wider world, Royal Ascot in June, the crowning glory of the premier horse racing calendar. Huge flightcases, crates and boxes were being lifted up through the Grandstand’s four main elevator cores and the world’s most exciting, and rare, audio systems were taking…

The last PS Audio model to be designed by veteran engineer Bascom H King, who passed away in May this year, the PerfectWave BHK 600 Mono Power Amplifier becomes the company’s flagship amp. Priced £32,000 per pair, and offered in silver or black, each 49kg unit claims to deliver 600W/8ohm (1kW/4ohm), and continues the Boulder, Colorado company’s hybrid amp design approach. A vacuum tube/rectifier input stage (using Gold Lion devices) is combined with a solid-state N-channel MOSFET output, the latter given its own separate 1.6kVA power transformer. Fully balanced throughout, although with single-ended RCA inputs in addition to balanced XLRs, the BHK 600 features continuous microprocessor monitoring of its PSU, bias levels, and ‘extensive protection circuitry’. PS Audio says this allows the amp to be safely left ticking over to…

OK, so it wasn’t quite as if the Covid pandemic had never happened, but it felt great to see a crowd of audiophiles eager to find some bargains. The first Tonbridge Audiojumble since February 2020 was held in May at the Angel Centre in Tonbridge, and it only took a few seconds for it to sink in that normalcy might return. In the interim, vinyl continued its vertical trajectory, while there was a palpable increase in interest in open-reel tape–apparently, it’s not just my imagination. I scored a boxed Revox A77 Mk IV Dolby (I swear this is gonna stop…) and the best moment for me was meeting Instagram’s hifi.david, a recent convert to reel-to-reel and, to paraphrase Dean Martin talking about Sinatra and Mia Farrow, I have bottles of…

It can often seem as if music critics cannot help but refer to ‘quantity over quality’ when reviewing double albums. While fans might love the avalanche of new music, it’s perhaps an easy win for more sceptical observers to decide that the pick of the tracks therein could make ‘a great single album’. But even with classic single albums, there are very few you couldn’t imagine benefiting from losing one or two of the most skippable tracks. With the best doubles, though, the overall breadth and depth of quality makes even the less memorable songs hard to dispense with, as they are punctuation points on a longer journey. Fans of either extreme of The Beatles’ output, for example, might sit with gritted teeth through ‘O-Bla-Di…’ or ‘Revolution 9’ depending on…

You hold in your hands the world’s oldest and most respected hi-fi magazine–Hi-Fi News–where heavyweight audio engineering is our stock in trade. All our review products are typically subject to a one-month test process from shipping, unpacking, installation, photography, lab work, extended listening, disassembly/packing and collection. This practice was maintained right through the pandemic period, with full Covid biosecurity adding to the logistical complexity of our fourweek issue schedule. But we did it… never missing one issue of the magazine or compromising the ‘Hi-Fi News Pledge’: 1. Our hardware reviews are never brief ‘hands on’ experiences of a product from a press conference, brand-led demo or distributor’s back room spun up into a four or five page article. 2. Products reviewed in Hi-Fi News already have secure distribution and retail…

Headphone use has changed in recent years, from something to be endured through necessity to its own subset of hi-fi listening, with no shortage of ambitious and upmarket hardware currently available. Now dCS is on that bandwagon, for while it’s been busy launching its APEX DAC technology for its ‘full-size’ offerings [HFN Jun ’22] it’s also developed the Lina, which is not so much a headphone amp as a complete playback system. The ‘stack’ comprises the £11,750 Lina Network DAC, £8400 Lina Headphone Amplifier and £6750 Lina Master Clock, all three units housed in identically sized casework of remarkable quality and weight. Each is just 22cm wide in its black machined aluminium housing, with the weight hovering around 7kg per box. The compact industrial design is something of a departure…