Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2021 i Hi-Fi Choice

We used to say that sorry was the hardest word, but it seems like everyone’s saying it these days. Sorry your Valentine’s day card didn’t arrive – the post’s been a ‘mare. Sorry there are no bananas in the supermarket, darn those Brexit teething problems. Sorry you can’t go out for a pint… If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em so here’s a quick apology if you’ve been missing some of your HFC favourites recently. We’ve been unable to run any Dealer Visits lately for obvious reasons, and it hardly seems appropriate to publish Destinations when all the bricks-and-mortar record shops are unable to open. Both of these perennials will, of course, be reinstated as soon as we can but, in the meantime, it allows us more pages to attend…

Over its long, proud history, Cambridge Audio has come up with a wide range of interesting, innovative and often quirky products that have one thing in common – a laser-like focus on offering value for money. With its clean-looking, smooth front baffle and slim and tall proportions, the SX-80 is one of the company’s most attractive speakers and looks rather more expensive than its price tag would suggest. Only the lack of magnetic grille fixings let it down visually – but that’s to be expected at this price point. Twin 165mm mid/bass drivers sit D’Appolito-style above and below a single 25mm silk dome tweeter. This gets a foam damper behind its diaphragm that’s said to reduce sound wave reflections. The crossover is claimed to be “precisely optimised” – well, you’d…

This popular British brand is renowned for making affordable speakers that look and sound better than they should. The latest Bronze series is the neatest yet – the range has come a long way since launched 20 or so years ago. The Bronze 200 is easily able to pass for something that’s twice the price in terms of finish. It’s the cheapest speaker in the group to have slick, magnetically attached grilles – as opposed to the flimsier clips of the Cambridge Audio and DALI. This 2.5-way floorstander combines the company’s 25mm C-CAM gold dome tweeter, along with a special waveguide and distinctive acoustically transparent hexagonal dispersion pattern grille. The twin 135mm mid/bass units now have updated cone geometries and are reflex loaded by Monitor Audio’s rear-firing Hive II port.…

One school of thought when it comes to phono cartridges is that moving-coils are a step up from moving-magnet options. However, as ever in hi-fi, it really isn’t quite as simple as that. In an MM cartridge, the coils of wire are fixed in the body and a tiny magnet is attached to the cantilever. When the stylus plays a record, the cantilever moves the magnet close to the coils and induces voltage in them. This type of cartridge has a number of advantages. It is relatively easy to manufacture and so the cost is lower than a moving-coil. Also, the stylus/magnet assembly is usually removable, which allows for the stylus to be easily replaced when it gets worn out or damaged. A variation of an MM cartridge is the…

CD Frederic Chopin Institute WHILE IT’S KNOWN that Chopin himself performed these works with scaled-down ensembles, there’s no extant chamber version from the composer’s hand. These arrangements for quartet with double bass stay close to the full-orchestra originals, while sounding far more transparent and intimate. The result is very expressive and sensitive, allowing lots of subtle detail to be savoured. Soloist Kevin Kenner (winner of the Chopin competition in 1990) plays the music with great love and the recording sounds clear, open and detailed. After this, I’m not sure I’ll ever need to hear the original orchestrations again!…

Charles Tolliver Connect 180g vinyl Gearbox RELEASED AS PART of Gearbox’s Japanese series, this album was originally recorded back in 2019 at RAK Studios in London when Tolliver and his band were on a European tour. They are joined on two tracks by British saxophonist Binker Golding. Trumpet player Charles Tolliver’s career started in the Sixties and his work can be found on labels including Blue Note and Strata-East among others. His style is still very reminiscent of that era with a strong post-bop vibe underpinned by grooves that make the music accessible to most. His band features the talents of Keith Brown on piano, Jesse Davis on alto, Buster Williams on double bass and none other than Lenny White on drums. They play with the sort of energy and verve…

CD Memphis Industries MUSH’S 2020 DEBUT saw the Leeds quartet hailed as the finest young British guitar band in an age. But the year ended in tragedy with the death of guitarist Steven Tyson. Lines Redacted saw his distressed bandmates dig deep to find the strength to continue. Led by Don Hyndman’s slurred vocals, the lyrics have a dystopian feel while musically it’s an album full of surprise. Sardonic funk (Blunt Instrument) mixes with acerbic post-punk (Morf) while there’s more than a touch of Blur to Drink The Bleach. Best of all is Lines Discontinued, a thrillingly audacious composite of Television and the Velvets, given a contemporary twist.…

CD Deutsche Grammophon MUTTER AND MA previously recorded Beethoven’s Triple with Karajan for DG back in 1979 at the start of their careers. This new recording with Barenboim as conductor/pianist is a hugely enjoyable performance; well played, full of fun and very much a team effort. In the 7th Symphony, tempi are broad and weighty. Exposition repeats are eschewed in the outer movements, but most unusually Barenboim plays the four movements attacca; with no pauses between them. The live recordings (made in Berlin and Buenos Aires) sound impressively refined, lustrously rich and sonorous – sumptuous is not too strong a word.…

CD Champs Hill Records THIS WELL-FILLED CD mixes well-known Strauss with pieces that are extremely rare – including an early string quartet. The disc begins and ends with late pieces – the silvery prelude to Capriccio and the moving Metamorphosen, written at the close of World War II. The latter is heard in an arrangement by Rudolph Leopold based on Strauss’ original 1945 draft-score for seven strings. Exquisitely played, reduced forces allow the utmost expressiveness and intimacy. The recording is clear, open, refined and detailed, giving the small ensemble an orchestral sound.…

2x CDs Sony Classical KONCZ PLAYS MOZART’S five violin concertos on Wolfgang’s own violin – the very instrument Mozart himself played them. For Koncz, the experience was like: “being in dialogue with him over the centuries”. Amazingly, Mozart’s violin was never modified, and therefore remains close to how it sounded over 200 years ago. The performances are bright, lively and stylish. Koncz plays with no vibrato and Mozart’s violin produces a light silvery tone that’s bright and clear, without sounding harsh. The recordings are crisp and open, with excellent fine detail.…

CD Deutsche Grammophon RECORDED LIVE IN the Wiener Musikverein, 87-year-old John Williams conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in a selection of excerpts from his film scores. One assumes the VPO can hardly have performed this music before, yet they play idiomatically, with total relish. As recorded, the tone of the orchestra is impressively burnished, rich and lustrous – less brilliant than the LSO, but wonderfully deep and resonant. DG’s recording sounds sumptuous with impressively weighty bass and a warm golden sonority. It’s amazing how the engineers obtained such a deep spacious sound in such a small hall.…

1938 Fela Ransome Kuti is born in the town of Abeokuta, Nigeria to middle-class parents. 1958-62 His parents send him to London to train as a doctor. But within weeks he enrols at Trinity College of Music and spends the next four years studying piano, trumpet composition and music theory. 1962-68 He moves back to Nigeria and becomes a trainee radio producer with the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Lagos. Forms Koola Lobitos and is fired from his radio job after a few months. With Koola Lobitos, he begins to assemble the musical elements that will become known as Afrobeat. 1969 He takes Koola Lobitos to America, where they struggle on a chaotic tour playing small clubs. But he meets such black power activists as Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael and…

UTILISING SOME OF Black Rhodium’s latest ‘supercharged’ design and materials, the Calypso mains cable aims to offer much of the performance of its higher-end brethren but at a lower cost. In addition to being fitted with a standard UK 13A mains plug, it can also be supplied with European Schuko or US plugs. At the other end, it usually comes with C19 IEC sockets for hooking up to the audio equipment, but there is the option for it to be fitted with C19 (high current) or C7 (two-pin) connections. The Calypso is screened to reduce the effects of external interference and has a continuous current rating of 13A. Connecting the cable to my valve preamp power supply in place of a standard mains ‘kettle’ lead, I start off by playing…

BASED ON ITS Operetta RCA interconnect (HFC 459), Black Rhodium’s Operetta 2 DCT RCA, hand assembled in Derby, is designed to offer a much higher performance at a more reasonable price. Deep freeze The signal conductors are subjected to a deep cryogenic treatment to give a more natural and detailed sound. These are insulated in a combination of PTFE and air to minimise distortion. The 5.7mm cable is screened with a closely woven silver-plated copper braid and sheathed in a translucent blue outer sleeve. A conductive layer is installed between the insulation and screen to minimise microphonic noise. In the middle of the cable there is a ferrite tube to reduce noise arising from RFI. The cable is terminated with specially manufactured, high-quality, gold-plated RCA plugs. I install the cable…

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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…

This British brand arrived on the scene a decade and a half ago, and soon had the competition raising its eyebrows. An unashamedly budget marque, it combined European design and Chinese manufacturing to make superb value speakers. Its products have improved markedly since, and the 3050i is its entry-level floorstander. A fairly conventional two-way reflex ported design, it’s one of the tallest and heaviest here. It uses a 22mm dome tweeter that sits between twin 165mm mid/bass drivers in a D’Appolito arrangement. The former is decoupled from the cabinet by a compliant suspension system to minimise vibrations, and the latter use precision cones made from impregnated, coated paper affixed to rubber surrounds. These reside in an MDF cabinet with point-to-point bracing. Four finishes are offered; Graphite Grey, English Walnut, Carbon…

When the time comes for a company to update a popular line, there are a few schools of thought as how best to go about it. Some rework their offerings and release something that looks decisively different. Others proceed to gently evolve a design over years or even decades, pursuing incremental changes but keeping a consistent basis. PMC has found a third way where it releases a range of speakers that looks superficially identical to what came before, but with a significant amount of change. The twenty5i range is, as the ‘i’ suggests, an improved version of the preceding twenty5 series. The 23i is the smallest of three floorstanders and if you stick it next to its predecessor, discerning between the two is like a fairly stiff game of spot…

CD RCA/Roswell BY HIS OWN admission, Dave Grohl’s contribution to rock and roll in his first band consisted of: “hiding behind a huge set of drums with my head down, just there to make a f***ing racket”. It has been fascinating in the years since to follow his transition from Nirvana’s drummer and Kurt Cobain’s barely noticed sidekick to charismatic front man in his own right with Foo Fighters. Medicine At Midnight marks the band’s tenth studio album and was ready for release a year ago, before the first lockdown. The itinerary of the group’s 25th anniversary world tour was in place, the merchandise had been manufactured and the pantechnicons were loaded and ready to roll. Then the world changed and Grohl found himself stranded at home in Hawaii. Months passed…

CD Bella Union TENSE, NERVOUS, HEADACHE? Lost Horizons is rolling out a remedy for all those craving something melodic, heartfelt and healing. “These days, we need hope more than ever’ says Richie Thomas who with former Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde and a queue of guest vocalists are doing their bit for global serenity. It hits the ground ambling, if not quite running, with the trip-hoppy beauty In Quiet Moments. Then things go a bit Alan Parson’s Project with Grey Tower which is lovely, while John Grant’s vocal on the spacious Cordelia will lift you out of this world and into the cosmos. A warm blanket of an album in every way.…

CD City Slang STUART STAPLES AND his melancholy band of minstrels recorded this in lockdown, keen to try out new techniques. The result is a pristine journey into the traditional Tindersticks sound, but with extra layers that lift things to entirely new levels. Opening Man Alone is an epic 11-minute repetitious piece that builds in its intensity and ends up being quite unsettling, while Lady With The Braid has a melodic refrain in the second half so wistful and gorgeous you’ll never want it to end. Thanks to their open-mindedness, Tindersticks are quietly still one of the UK’s most interesting bands.…

CD AVi WITH THIS RELEASE, Adam Fischer completes his cycle of Mahler symphonies for Avi. The performance lasts 79 minutes and displays lucid clarity with a scrupulous adherence to Mahler’s dynamic markings. It’s not a highly emotional ‘frayed-nerves’ roller-coaster sort of reading. There’s no attempt to over dramatise things. Yet Fischer offers plenty of heart and feeling. There’s a Zen-like equanimity – a quiet honest sincerity in every bar. The recording is beautifully open and natural sounding, with a wide dynamic range and an unforced clarity that lets you hear every tiny detail of Mahler’s incomparable orchestration.…

CD XL Records YOU CAN’T FAULT Smerz for lacking ambition and variety. Over its 16 tracks, Believer allows Norwegian duo Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt to jump between operatic stylings (The Favourite) to sassy R&B (Flashing), via hip-hop (Rap Interlude) and an explosion of noise that Aphex Twin or Squarepusher would be proud of (Believer) in an effort to come across as some sort of musical Zelig – effortlessly flitting from genre to genre. The resulting mix of piano and strings one minute with spluttering, grinding beats the next is nothing if not exciting, though probably not ideal for those of a delicate disposition.…

CD Mascot Label WILLIAMS’ 11TH ALBUM sees him roping in some tasty players including legendary bassist Leland Sklar and perennial all-stars Lenny Castro and Nathan East. The music has Steely Dan and Steve Miller sensibilities, but Williams is enough of his own man to take on Peter Gabriel’s Don’t Give Up (daughter Hannah filling in Kate Bush’s shoes spectacularly) and The Beatles’ If I Fell to make them sufficiently distinctive. The album has a tiggerish energy that avoids being overbearing with Black Dhalia and the late-night recriminations on No Lessons littered with licks and sneaky hooks.…

CD Verve WHILE BRUBECK MADE his name in the Sixties, the pianist’s recording career continued right up until 2010 when these 13 lullabies were laid down for his family and the wider world to enjoy. It’s a lovely record and all the more impressive given that the man was nearly 90 at the time. It contains five originals and some fine interpretations of classics including Summertime. The sound is bright and modern and while the playing is not quite as mellow as you’d expect given the theme, it’s open and clean with no studio frippery. It’ll put you to sleep, but only if played extra quietly.…

CD Mascot Label Group TOTO’S GUITARIST HAS temporarily left his bandmates for his first solo adventure. It has a lot of Toto’s DNA as would be expected: pristine production, rocky riffs and top-notch musicianship. A cover of Traffic’s The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys is as good a bluesy belter as you’ll hear this year, while weighing in at over 10 minutes it’s a super-sized portion. Journey Through is a window-rattling instrumental driven in the main by Lukather’s epic guitar noodling. There’s nothing especially earthshattering on offer here, but its classy, competent and sincere stuff.…

1971 FELA’S LONDON SCENE Recorded in London at Abbey Road studios with Cream co-founder Ginger Baker drumming alongside Tony Allen, this is where the Fela legend takes off… 1971 WHY BLACK MAN DEY SUFFER Fela gets in a deep groove on a record with just two long, simmering pieces exploring black consciousness in a tight mesh of burning horns and polyrhythmic percussion. 1972 ROFOROFO FIGHT Four songs clocking in at between 12 to 17 minutes, including Question Jam Answer, which leans on James Brown and Sly Stone for its taut and supple funk groove. 1972 SHAKARA Notable for arguably one of Kuti’s best-known songs, Lady, heard here in a surprisingly breezy 13-minute version, alongside the biting sarcasm of the title track. 1973 GENTLEMAN A masterful set full of stinging attacks on the…

IF YOUR AMPLIFIER doesn’t support bi-wiring or if your wallet doesn’t stretch to running double strands of good-quality cables to your speakers, these jumpers offer a viable and affordable alternative. Bi-wireable loudspeakers usually have low-cost metal links installed for use with single-output amplifiers. The Nordost Norse 2 is made from a silver-plated 99.99999 percent solid-core OFC conductor wrapped in a spiral of micro mono-filament, which is then covered in an outer layer of FEP insulation. The jumpers are cut to a specific, mechanically tuned length for optimum performance and low loss. They can be supplied with either gold-plated spade connectors or Z-plug banana plugs. The review samples are fitted with spade connectors at both ends and have a thick heat-shrink insulation that extends neatly over the spades. Playing Eleanor McEvoy’s…

As the flagship offering in Acoustic Energy’s entry-level 100 series, the AE120 also happens to be the most expensive contender in this group. No pressure, then! Like the ELAC coming up, it’s a true three-way design, with the company’s own 25mm soft dome tweeter married 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. Acoustic Energy explains that the crossover is impedance-compensated, with particular attention paid to the phase and time alignment. The MDF cabinet has 18mm-thick walls and is mass loaded and internally braced. A satin…

Debut 2.0 Series by Andrew Jones,” is how ELAC describes its new budget range – alluding to the fact its designer is something of a speaker design rock star, with experience stretching back to pioneering days at KEF. The company has certainly been through some changes of late, and the results to my ears have been wholly positive. What then of this modestly priced floorstander? Well, it’s a clean-sheet design with a new 25mm silk dome tweeter and a waveguide to improve directivity and damp down diffraction. This is married to no less than three 135mm aramid cone drivers, two of which work in parallel to handle the bass. That makes this speaker the only true three-way design here, aside from the Acoustic Energy. Each driver has its own slightly…

Radical changes to a design philosophy are rare things to encounter in the audio world, but the journey that Neat Acoustics has been on in recent years most definitely warrants the term. Since the arrival of the tiny but brilliant Iota (HFC 357), the company has created a family of speakers in interesting shapes and sizes using a variety of different drivers. Recently, the duo of Ekstra floorstander (Beautiful System, HFC 469) and the Ministra standmount that won the Group Test in HFC 465 have combined a true ribbon tweeter with a 134mm unit in differing isobaric layouts to great effect. The Orkestra is an enlarged Ekstra, but this description underplays the changes that have taken place in scaling up the smaller floorstander. The fundamental layout is the same, however.…

Sponsored by: THIS MONTH ED SELLEY EXPERTISE: REVIEWER Active in the industry since 1999, Ed’s first record was Boss Drum by The Shamen. He splits his time between reviewing and protecting hi-fi kit from his son Will. NEVILLE ROBERTS EXPERTISE: ENGINEER Neville has an eclectic taste for classical baroque and jazz. His wife was forced to marry his transmission line speakers in the eighties and he collects BBC test card music. JASON KENNEDY EXPERTISE: REVIEWER Editor of HFC from 1998 to 2001, Jason’s first turntable was Rega’s Planar 3 and Elvis’ 40 Greatest Hits was his first vinyl, so don’t go stepping on his blue suede shoes. CHRIS WARD EXPERTISE: REVIEWER Like his first kiss, Chris will never forget the sound of his first amp – an Aura Evolution VA-100.…

When maverick singer Ariel Pink was captured in an online video taking part in the pro-Trump rally that gathered at the Washington Capitol Building recently, it got me revisiting that thorny old subject of whether you can ever really separate an artist from their art. Not that I’m a massive Ariel Pink fan or anything – apparently he has an appalling track record when it comes to making pronouncements such as: “racism isn’t illegal” – but when his current record company immediately dropped him on the back of the Washington riot, I wondered where I actually stood when it comes to cancel culture. Over the past year or so, a number of artists whose work I’ve long enjoyed have revealed themselves – or been exposed – as more monstrous than…

CD Fat Possum OVER THE COURSE of four exquisite albums, Canadian singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman has emerged as an arresting vocalist, whether writing about the personal (relationships and mental illness) or the political (climate change and ecological disaster). Ignorance represents a musical if not lyrical change of direction, taking her well-established folk-poet strengths and painting them in bold new colours as ravishing, technicolour soundscapes. From the skittering beats and angular, layered rhythms of opener Robber, it’s clear the acoustic fingerpicking has been replaced by something more muscular. The rhythmic keyboards and taut percussive beats lend a classic Eighties pop aesthetic to Tried To Tell You, which sounds like it should have been a hit for Eurythmics, Parking Lot channels Fleetwood Mac, while the epic beauty of closer Subdivisions aches with echoes of…

Do you agree with our reviewers? Decide for yourself and listen to some of this month’s tracks at www.hifichoice.co.uk CD Naxos ALL FOUR OF these Liszt works for piano and orchestra are infrequently recorded. But, to make things even more interesting, the versions of the Rhapsodie and Totentanz differ in detail to those that are usually heard, having been edited/arranged by Ferruccio Busoni. Likewise, the Hungarian Fantasy is a ‘performing edition’ by soloist Goran Filipec, who plays with impressive virtuosity. He’s serious, without being heavy or portentous and is ably supported by Imre Kollár who brings much-needed drama and tension to Liszt’s orchestral writing. The Naxos recording sounds clean, detailed and tonally open, with excellent clarity.…

180g vinyl Craft Recordings THE PERFECT WAY to kick off Crafts Small Batch Series of curated audiophile recordings, this 180g one-step lacquer pressing sees engineer extraordinaire Bernie Grundman give the analogue mastering treatment to the original 1961 tapes. With the legendary lineup of Coltrane blowing sax accompanied by Donald Byrd on trumpet, Art Taylor on drums, Paul Chambers on bass and Red Garland on keys, the modest melodic simplicity of the arrangements comes through thanks to a recording of the highest possible quality that sounds so pure it could ve been made yesterday. Play it on a decent setup and be blown away.…

With a new long player in the pipeline that he’s promising will be his band’s “heaviest” and “coolest” yet, what better time to hear Metallica’s drummer extraordinaire, Lars Ulrich, wax lyrical about three of the albums that have most inspired the man and his music? Alice In Chains Dirt Columbia (1992) With songs focused on depression, pain, anger, anti-social behaviour, relationships, drug addiction (primarily heroin), war, death and other emotionally charged topics, this is not exactly a stroll in the park. “It still sounds as raw, transparent, honest and courageous to my ears as ever” said Ulrich recently. “What an incredible record. It just still sounds so timely… It’s such an incredibly deep, dark record… super heavy, short songs, just great.” Rage Against The Machine The Battle Of Los Angeles…

CD Bella Union FOR THEIR SECOND LP, the Norwegian pop-punk four-piece really go for it. Over the course of 10 seat-of-the-pants tracks, Ragnhild Fangel Jamtveit and her gang make a gleeful racket full of catchy, turn-it-up-loud brilliance. Songs like Like A Lady and Andy Go To School are positively giddy, but there’s always an unexpected twist – whether it be Jamtveit’s Deerhoof-esque falsetto, off-kilter tuning, tangential endings or spiky middle eights, they always catch you off guard. It’s a fun, breathlessly exciting record with plenty of highlights.…

Vinyl Mute/BMG ALISON GOLDFRAPP’S EARLY works are getting the reissue treatment on coloured vinyl. Presented as a bright yellow pressing, this still remains one of her best – if not best – album. Pastoral, floaty and almost hazily summery, Seventh Tree is a journey into a lush, neo-folk wonderland. The 10 tracks showcase Goldfrapp’s love of glamour, but also her vocal dexterity. One moment she’s a new Joni Mitchell on Clowns, the next she’s exploring English romanticism on the Beatles-like Happiness. All in all, it’s a classic that’s well worth tracking down.…

WHEN IS A weight not a weight? When it’s a Gravity One record weight from Origin Live. Although it’s called a record weight, the Gravity One might more aptly be described as a record puck as this add-on – designed to sit on a record over the centre spindle – weighs only 67g. 80mm in diameter and 25mm high, it is designed to fit over spindles that protrude between 8.5mm and 23mm above the record when sitting on the platter. The rationale behind the Gravity One is that it’s intended to remove harmful vibrations from your vinyl while it’s playing and so improve the sound quality. According to Origin Live, the idea came about when they heard the Shun Mook record weight in action at an audio show and found…

THE REDLINE IS optimised for conducting the delicate phono signal with its substantial RIAA equalisation. This, according to Vertere, provides the low frequencies – which are recorded at attenuated levels – alongside the much higher-level upper frequencies with an equal drive. Seven internal wires are used: three ground conductors, two signal conductors and two signal returns. Under the skin The signal conductors are silver-plated high-purity copper and the ground conductors are tin-plated high-purity copper. The conductors are surrounded by low-dielectric constant FEP insulation and then screened by a braid and a special inner wrap. The cable is terminated with a Vertere Redline five-pin 90° tonearm connector at one end and bespoke RCA jacks at the other. All contacts are gold-plated with three times the standard plating thickness. I commence auditioning…

These pages are a must-read if you’re thinking about buying used kit, or if you have hi-fi you want to sell. It’s free – simply submit your ad with no more than 50 words (we reserve the right to edit it if not), remembering to include your email, phone number and county. Simply email your ad to: letters@hifichoice.co.uk. This service is open to private advertisers only. Just one ad per household and please note that images are for illustration only and do not represent what is for sale. FOR SALE ICON AUDIO MB845 MkI monoblock amplifiers, upgraded to SE version with new Mundorf capacitors, new 845 valves on one amp, boxed, sensible off ers: 0771 7752288 or email: captain_b99@yahoo.co.uk (Bristol). SBOOSTER BOTW MkII power and precision audiofile linear power supply,…