Hi-Fi Choice Yearbook 2022

Considering the mag you hold in your hands is our 2021 Yearbook comprising of all the most highly recommended new Hi-Fi kit we’ve come across in the last 12 months, it came as some surprise to discover that in all the 164 pages of this bumper issue, there was only one product described as a “masterpiece”. Fear not, though, because on further investigation I quickly unearthed a tsunami of “class act”s, “talented”s, “wonderful”s and “as good as it gets”. In fact, as I get paid to do this kind of stuff and it’s such a lot of fun, I scoured each Our Verdict at the end of every review and have compiled, for your delectation, a league table of HFC Yearbook superlatives. Tied at number six we have “terrific”, “impressive”,…

A true three-way design, the AE120 marries a 25mm soft dome tweeter to a wide dispersion waveguide. A single 110mm doped paper cone midrange driver is fitted beneath this, with twin 110m bass units placed further below. The former drive unit gets its own dedicated enclosure inside the cabinet; this is expensive to do, but mitigates against the harmful effects of rear wave reflections. The MDF cabinet has 18mm-thick walls and is mass loaded and internally braced. A satin black plinth further aids stability. The rear slot ports complete what is a well-made and finished, attractive-looking speaker available in a choice of satin black or walnut vinyl wraps. The manufacturer quotes a frequency response of 40Hz–35kHz, with no cut-off points listed. Nominal impedance is said to be a slightly lower…

Twenty five years is a long time in the world of Hi-Fi. It’s sufficient to see off many rivals altogether, so it’s impressive that Bowers & Wilkins has now been producing the 600 Series for a quarter of a century. In that time every part has changed, but the job of the range has remained the same: to give an affordable flavour of what the more expensive models the company offers can do. Also during this time, the series has spent an impressive amount of time being seen as the benchmark at the price too. The latest range of loudspeakers to be described as Anniversary products comprise four models, two standmounts, a centre for AV duties (subwoofers continue in a parallel in their own range) and the range-topping 603 S2…

Sounding like something from an Ian Fleming novel, the Spektor 6 is the Danish company’s most affordable floorstander. Despite this, few of the company’s design flourishes seem to have been omitted on what sounds like a speaker that’s more expensive than its sticker price. It has a pair of 165mm mid/bass drivers and a 25mm tweeter, the former using paper cones reinforced with wood fibre, said to minimise resonance. The tweeter is a woven fabric soft-dome design claimed to weigh half the average of its market rivals, at 0.056mg/mm2; this should bring faster transients and higher efficiency. The drivers are carefully matched so the crossover doesn’t need to be as complex as it would otherwise be, the maker explains. A fairly easy-to-drive design with a quoted sensitivity of 88.5dB, DALI…

My first ever experience of transmission line speakers was in the mid-Seventies when a friend invited me over to hear his newly purchased IMF TLS80. I was impressed by the tight, punchy, extended and well-controlled bass coming from the legendary KEF B139 bass driver. This doesn’t have a conventional paper cone, but rather an expanded polystyrene piston laminated with a thin aluminium sheet. As the piston is solid, it doesn’t suffer from break-up associated with paper cones when operating at low frequencies and being driven hard. Consequently, it can move large volumes of air. Falcon was founded in 1972 by Malcolm Jones, who had previously worked at KEF as Senior Development Engineer. While there, Jones was responsible for designing many drivers and systems, including the B139 woofer, the B110 midrange…

A young loudspeaker company can dream of endless innovation, but it can’t hope to roll out freshly designed new product forever. With proprietary tech, model span and price boundaries established, there comes a point where the potentially open-ended process of evolution begins. For Fyne Audio, the launch in 2020 of the F502SP we’re reviewing here was its very own ‘return to go’ moment. From a standing start in 2017, the fledgling operation, formed by key personnel from a recently bought-out Tannoy, hit the ground running and extended its portfolio to seven model lines in under two years – remarkable, and certainly enough ‘all pockets’ breadth to stand comparison with veteran British rivals like B&W, KEF and Monitor Audio. Echoes of Tannoy were, perhaps, inevitable and nowhere better illustrated than the…