Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2022 i Hi-Fi Choice

PRICE: £8,500 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: SOUNDDESIGNDISTRIBUTION.CO.UK SOUND DESIGN DISTRIBUTION is making Hong Kong-based LUMIN’s P1 player/preamp available in the UK. “Precision engineered to deliver an elite level of signal processing and versatility to the heart of every two-channel audio playback system,” the company claims, “the P1 is LUMIN’s most versatile design to date”. Marketed as a high-quality streamer, a DAC, preamplifier or all three, the P1 is dual-mono from input to output, involves dual Femto re-clocking oscillators, dual ES9028PRO Sabre DACs, 32-bit precision volume control and a fully balanced analogue output stage, fed by a new dual-toroidal linear power supply. Nine digital/analogue inputs provide access to the P1’s audiophile topology. The XMOS USB input supports native DSD512 and PCM 384, while coaxial, optical (RCA) and AES inputs support up to 24-bit/192kHz…

PRICE: £329 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: POLKAUDIO.COM AMERICAN COMPANY POLK Audio has launched its first Dolby Atmos soundbar system. The Signa S4 features seven drivers, including two upward-firing speakers. When paired with the included wireless subwoofer, the company says the Signa is a: “complete soundbar system, which provides a thunderous, crystal clear, cinematic surround sound experience”. The upward-firing speakers deliver Dolby Atmos height channels to create: “lifelike overhead sound, perfect for immersive Dolby Atmos music, films or gaming”. The Signa S4 can also up-mix non-Dolby Atmos content rendering height, surround and centre channels to create a virtual Dolby Atmos experience. In addition, the Signa S4’s seven-speaker array features a centre channel and optimised left/right tweeters and bass drivers. The dedicated centre channel is paired with Polk’s patented VoiceAdjust technology, intended to…

Hi-Fi Choice employs the most methodical test and measurement regime in the business. Here’s how we do it… INTERCONNECT CABLES GROUP TEST GENERALLY SPEAKING, CABLES need a minimum of 10 hours of use before they start to sound at their best. Therefore, before any serious auditioning is undertaken, all of the interconnects are subjected to the rigours of an audio cable burn-in CD set on repeat for a day. This should ensure that any variations resulting from different amounts of burn-in being provided by the manufacturers are minimised. This can be quite a time-consuming process that can be simplified by connecting all of the cables in series using RCA female-to-female adapters between them. In order to ensure consistency across all of the listening tests, the interconnect cables are connected between…

DETAILS PRODUCT Black Rhodium Intro ORIGIN UK TYPE RCA analogue interconnect FEATURES ● Conductors: 0.58mm diameter copper ● Dielectric: polyethene with 30 percent glass fibre ● Screening: double screened with a mesh outer braid ● Connectors: goldplated REAN RCA DISTRIBUTOR Analogue Seduction Available in a choice of seven rather fetching hues of outer braids that will suit any colour scheme, the idea behind the Intro brand is to offer low-cost cables at an accessible price to encourage consumers to try out the company’s handmade options. Although the cost is relatively low, this interconnect still benefits from the newly researched technology that Black Rhodium has applied to its more expensive high-end ranges. The Intro employs 0.58mm diameter copper wire for the signal conductors and is fitted internally with a double screen.…

DETAILS PRODUCT QED Performance Audio 40i ORIGIN UK TYPE RCA analogue interconnect FEATURES ● Conductors: one OFC and one silverplated OFC ● Dielectric: foamed polyethylene ● Screening: braided foil shield ● Connectors: Anamate low eddy current RCA plugs DISTRIBUTOR FutureShop Sporting a number of major improvements over its predecessor, the Performance Audio 40i employs the company’s Solid Core Complementary Conductors, designed to reduce capacitance by a quarter in comparison with the original, which in turn is intended to enlarge the stereo soundstage. The new cable has an OFC and a silver-plated OFC conductor to carry the audio signal. According to QED, this offers alternative routes for the high and low frequencies to improve rhythm, clarity and bass control, and reduce any smearing that might otherwise occur in a single, one…

DETAILS PRODUCT MoFi UltraGold ORIGIN USA TYPE Medium-output moving-coil cartridge WEIGHT 7.3g FEATURES ● Nude Shibata stylus ● Boron cantilever ● Aluminum body DISTRIBUTOR Karma-AV WEBSITE mofielectronics.com karma-av.co.uk There is much to be said for record labels also manufacturing playback equipment. As is the case with Decca, EMI, RCA and a few others in the past, Mobile Fidelity, aka MoFi, has continued to demonstrate this synergy through its portfolio of turntables, phono stages and three moving-magnet cartridges. The UltraGold is the first MoFi movingcoil offering, and priced at £1,500, it raises the brand’s price point. Working backward, with a £700 gap between this and its dearest movingmagnet cart, there’s still a hole which could be filled with a less-expensive MC, but the UltraGold is such a classy offering at its…

DETAILS PRODUCT Copland CSA70 ORIGIN Denmark TYPE Integrated amplifier WEIGHT 13kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 435 x 135 x 370mm FEATURES ● Quoted output power: 2x 70W (8ohm) ● Inputs: 3x stereo RCA; MM phono stage ● Digital board: 1x optical; 1x coaxial; 1x USB-B DISTRIBUTOR Absolute Sounds TELEPHONE 0208 9713909 WEBSITE copland.dk absolutesounds.com Some companies are intractably wedded to a single design philosophy and will employ it across everything they make. Others adopt a more flexible approach, tweaking the basics to best suit the role in question. Few companies are quite as adaptable as Copland, though. Its current range comprises both hybrid and all-valve designs, but for its latest amplifier it has gone exclusively solid state. This isn’t the first time it has done this, but it’s still unusual to have…

Cassette was the most unlikely music format you could imagine – at least at the time of its launch in 1963. It was originally designed by Philips as a dictation medium and no one imagined it would ever become the world’s most popular prerecorded music carrier – at least in the Sixties. Yet something strange happened. The Japanese, who’d proved to be particularly good at making high precision miniature electronics, took the design and ran with it. After Philips began to sell licences to make cassette players and recorders to hardware manufacturers, Japan pretty much made the format its own. By 1982, a range of manufacturers offered amazing decks, from Akai to Hitachi, Pioneer to Technics. Aiwa had been right at the forefront, and its new range launched in autumn…

Back in the Sixties, all of us electronics enthusiasts hankered after Heathkits – the build it yourself kits produced and marketed by the Heath Company. Alas, my pocket money didn’t stretch to one, so I contented myself with little kits that you could buy from mail order companies containing a printed circuit board and components to build things like radios, power supplies and audio amplifiers. Cases for the finished item were not usually included, so these had to be fashioned from plastic food containers and bits of wood. My father was working in California at the time and I was fortunate enough to be able to study electronics at high school. The course was centred around the Heathkit EK-1 series to teach basic electronics. The nice thing about Heathkits was…

DETAILS PRICE £160 for a 1m cable TELEPHONE 01332 367261 WEBSITE black-rhodium.co.uk OUR VERDICT RECOGNISING THERE’S A growing number of people listening to high-quality streaming services on smartphones, Black Rhodium has released a high-quality audio cable for connecting the phone directly to an audio system. Although the most convenient way to do this is Bluetooth, it doesn’t deliver the best results. A far better approach is to use a cable. As well as the USB-C-to-RCA version reviewed here, the Adagio is available as a 3.5mm-to-RCA or Lightning-to-RCA interconnect. It is available in lengths of 1m, 3m, 5m and 10m, so you should have no problem reaching your favourite listening position. I connect the Adagio to my Samsung Galaxy S20 smartphone and the other end to a spare input on my…

Hi-Fi Choice Recommends ESSENTIAL HI-FI YOU’LL WANT TO OWN CD players p110 Amplifiers p111 Pre/power amps p111 Cables p112-113 Network audio players p114 Music servers p114 DACs p115 Loudspeakers p116-118 One-box systems p118 Turntables p119 Cartridges p119 Phono stages p120 Headphones p120-121 Portable DACs p121 CD PLAYERS Audiolab 6000CDT PRICE: £380 REVIEWED: HFC 447 The 6000CDT is exceptional at revealing what’s on your discs to deliver a great big soundstage with plenty of detail inside. It can dig down deep into the mix to eke out the different musical strands while dynamically and rhythmically it’s hard to beat at the price. In short, it’s a super, highly affordable audiophile CD transport. Cambridge Audio AXC35 PRICE: £300 REVIEWED: HFC 454 Something of a budget marvel, you’ll have to work extra hard to…

PRICE: £1,200 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: REGA.CO.UK REGA IS INTRODUCING a new all-in-one, ready-to-go-right-out-of-the-box analogue setup, the Rega System One comprising a Planar 1 turntable, io integrated amp, Kyte speakers, a mini remote plus 3m of Rega speaker cables. The Planar 1 turntable is a plug-and-play design incorporating Rega’s handmade RB110 tonearm, with pre-set bias and factory-fitted Carbon cartridge. The company claims setup: “is possible in under 30 seconds”. It weighs 4.2kg and measures 447 x 117 x 360mm (WxHxD). Tested back in HFC 475, the io integrated uses the same amplifier stage as the Brio (HFC 446) now re-designed to run at 30W per channel into 8ohm loads. The io features two line-level inputs, a high specification Rega moving-magnet phono stage and a high-quality headphone output. It weighs in at 2.9kg…

PRICE: £89-£139 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: DENON.COM DENON HAS LAUNCHED its first pair of true wireless in-ear headphones – the Noise Cancelling Earbuds (Denon AH-C830NCW) and Wireless Earbuds (Denon AH-C630W). Compatible with any Bluetooth-capable playback device, both sets of true wireless earbuds feature large-diameter dynamic drivers with the AH-C830NCW offering additional noise cancellation leveraging dual-microphones in each earbud and what the company calls advanced processing to reduce ambient noise for the listener. With Transparency Mode, the noise cancelling and ambient sound mix functions can be switched with a touch sensor, while a wear detection function detects wearing and removing movements and automatically plays and pauses music. Denon says that both earbuds have been designed using extensive ear canal simulations, enabling its engineers to sculpt: “the perfect shape for all users” and…

PRICE: £185-£400 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: ATLASCABLES.COM KILMARNOCK COMPANY ATLAS Cables has been extra busy of late and has just announced the introduction of two new components: the Eos Modular 2.5 power distribution block and the Hyper AES/EBU balanced digital audio cable. The company says: “The Eos 2.5 has been designed to replace existing cheap multi-way power blocks with something better, a quality connection”. It’s housed in a conductive aluminium chassis and internally wired with 2.5mm² copper conductors with the intention of ensuring unimpeded power transmission between individual sockets with minimal resistive losses. “We live in an electrically noisy soup, permeated by all manner of potential interference,” Atlas explains. “The ‘household’ mains distribution blocks and extensions often used for audio/AV systems can actually contribute to performance degradation, offering little in the…

PRICE: £8,500-£16,990 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: FINESOUNDS.UK NEW YORK COMPANY, McIntosh, has announced the launch of its new C12000 Preamplifier, which comes in a two-chassis design that isolates the audio section from the control and power section. In addition to 12 analogue inputs, six balanced, four unbalanced and two phono inputs, the C12000 offers valve and solid-state output for flexibility with partnering equipment. The preamp comprises the C12000 Controller Module and C12000 Preamplifier Module. All power control, data ports and external control connections reside in the C12000 Controller, where dual isolated power supplies drive the left and right channels, while a dual microprocessor governs the control system. The C12000 Preamplifier Module houses the audio connections and circuitry. Inside, the left and right channels are electrically and mechanically isolated to allow what…

WHEN INSTALLING A new piece of audio equipment into your setup, most of us dive back into the packaging to extract the set of interconnects that come bundled. In a similar vein, when fitting a piece of second-hand hi-fi there is always the temptation to pop to a local DIY store or supermarket to pick up a blisterpack of cables from the array that hangs in the electrical section next to mains extension leads and accessories for your smartphone. However, finding a good interconnect cable that can make a real improvement to the sound when compared with those that come supplied is another issue altogether. Cables, including analogue interconnects, all have their own sonic signature and not all are born equal. Even at the budget end of the market, two…

DETAILS PRODUCT Chord Company Clearway ORIGIN UK TYPE RCA analogue interconnect FEATURES ● Conductors: oxygen-free copper ARAY conductor geometry ● Dielectric: FEP ● Screening: coax construction only ● Connectors: VEE 3 RCA DISTRIBUTOR Analogue Seduction I’ve tried out a number of Chord cables over the years and they never fail to impress. The Clearway is no exception and features the company’s proprietary ARAY conductor geometry, which has been developed from its Sarum Tuned ARAY geometry. This has been designed so that the cable carries high levels of detail and dynamic information plus signals with real musical coherence. Every Clearway interconnect is constructed and tested at Chord’s UK facility. The conductors are manufactured from high-quality, oxygen-free copper and insulated with an FEP dielectric. The cable is shielded by dual-layer heavy gauge…

DETAILS PRODUCT True Colours Industries Fierce ORIGIN UK TYPE RCA analogue interconnect FEATURES ● Conductors: PC-OFC alloy ● Dielectric: PE ● Screening: coax construction only ● Connectors: 24K gold-plated RCA DISTRIBUTOR Analogue Seduction TCI has always focussed on producing cables that have a neutral presentation and good imaging, and to this end, the company uses listening tests as the main criteria when designing. Not only does it produce its own cables, it also makes the plugs for terminating them. TCI considers that the only way it can produce a high-quality product is by specifying every component itself. This interconnect features a balanced and twisted quad-core design that employs aerospace-grade alloy conductors and insulation. This design is intended to resolve more detail with increased dynamics and improved imaging compared with the…

To shuffle, or not to shuffle… that is the question. Adele gave us her uncompromising answer when she persuaded Spotify to hide the button so that listeners have to listen to the songs on new album 30 in the order she wants us to hear them. “We don’t create albums with so much care and thought in our track listing for no reason. Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended,” she said with the sort of grandness previously associated with Bono. In principle I’m sympathetic to her argument. I came of musical age at the time when the LP was replacing the 45rpm single as the paramount format. Back then albums were only available as 12in vinyl and you had to get…

DETAILS PRICE £845 for 1.5m cable TELEPHONE 01458 251997 WEBSITE telluriumq.com OUR VERDICT ONE OF THE driving ambitions of Tellurium Q is to continually upgrade its products. To this end, it has recently updated its Black range of power cables with the release of the Black II, at the same cost as the original. The company focuses its research on electric signals, physical phenomena and choice of materials. As a result, the Black II has different conductors, insulators and conductor geometry, as well as improvements to the overall shielding, compared with the original. For the review, I have been sent both cables. They look similar and are fitted with high-quality Furutech connectors, but the Black II is slightly more flexible. I connect the original power cable to my valve phono…

1 DORSET & MATCH PJ Harvey (pictured right) will publish a new narrative poem, Orlam, via Picador Poetry in April. According to the press release: “The full-length work is composed in the Dorset dialect and set in a magical realist version of Harvey’s native West Country.” Fear not though, a page-by-page English translation is included. The Scottish poet Don Paterson, who edited it, says: “Orlam not only breaks new ground as a long poem, it brings an entire dialect back to life from the edge of its own extinction, and reminds us how radically the world is altered by how we speak of it”. A special edition illustrated by Polly Jean is expected to be available from October. 2 UP THE AMAZON Auralic Inc. has announced that it will now…

PRICE: £1,600 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: AUDIOLAB.CO.UK AUDIOLAB IS LAUNCHING a new all-in-one, just-add-speakers music system, the Omnia. Housed in an aluminium enclosure, it features an integrated CD player, inputs for external sources – including a phono stage for a turntable – hi-res network streaming, the ability to form part of a synchronised multi-room system and amplification – which the company says is high quality enough: “to make the most of whichever speakers or headphones the user chooses to partner it with”. Billed as: “The ideal system for every music source”, the Omnia offers hi-res network streaming supported over dual-band wi-fi and Ethernet, alongside Bluetooth for wireless reception from smartphones, tablets and so on, plus an integrated CD player incorporating a high-precision optical system and low-friction loading tray, with an electronic…

PRICE: £1,000 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: CHORD.CO.UK CHORD COMPANY’S SIGNATURE range is expanding with the introduction of a new, high-performance power cable, the SignatureX Power. Handmade in the company’s Wiltshire factory, the new SignatureX Power features Chord’s proprietary ARAY mechanical tuning technology, plus the latest XLPE insulation, as seen in many of its newer loudspeaker cables. It directly replaces the previous Signature ARAY power cable and benefits from heavier-gauge conductors, offering lower resistance and improved efficiency, a high-quality foil with high-density braid screen, plus a PVC outer sleeve. SignatureX Power’s heavy-gauge multi-strand OFC copper conductors with ARAY geometry are terminated with custom-designed IEC and outlet connectors, which are specially engineered with silver-plated external and internal contacts. The new SignatureX Power comes with Chord Company’s renowned lifetime warranty and is available in…

PRICE: £45,000-£49,000 AVAILABLE: NOW WEB: DANDAGOSINO.COM ABSOLUTESOUNDS.COM BACK IN THE January issue we ran a story about Dan D’Agostino Master Audio Systems’ new Relentless Preamplifier. Eye-wateringly expensive at £165,000, it was a thing of beauty and no mistake, and now the American company has seen fit to “trickle down” the Relentless technology to its Momentum S250 and Momentum M400 amps. Dan D’Agostino says the new Momentum S250 MxV stereo amplifier: “delivers the extraordinary sound quality of the Momentum M400 MxV monoblock in a more affordable stereo design. The circuit topology and construction of the stereo amplifiers mirror those of the monoblock, using the same ultra-efficient copper heat sinks with venturi cooling, the same one percent metal-film resistors, 69MHz output transistors and fully complementary balanced configuration… “The Momentum S250 MxV models…

DETAILS PRODUCT Exposure 3510 ORIGIN UK TYPE Integrated amplifier WEIGHT 12kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 440 x 115 x 300mm FEATURES ● Quoted power output: 2x 110W (8ohm) ● Inputs: 6x RCA line-level ● Outputs 2x pre; 6.35mm headphone ● Optional MM, MC or DAC board DISTRIBUTOR Exposure Electronics Ltd. WEBSITE exposurehifi.com Nostalgia doesn’t come any better than this: an integrated amplifier that looks like it escaped from the Eighties, all minimalist and line-level and 440mm wide. But Exposure has been around for close to 50 years, so this isn’t just some exercise in retro from an arriviste brand with cod heritage. Rather, the 3510 is a device for reminding people of hi-fi life in simpler times. Even its realistic price of £2,250 equates to around £440 in 1980 money, typical of…

DETAILS PRODUCT Atlas Cables Element Achromat ORIGIN UK TYPE RCA analogue interconnect FEATURES ● Conductors: OCC copper ● Dielectric: PEF ● Screening: coax construction only ● Connectors: achromatic RCA DISTRIBUTOR FutureShop Sporting an elegant pearlescent white outer sheath, the Element Achromat certainly looks quite fetching. The term ‘achromatic’ literally means without colour, which fittingly enough is also Atlas Cables’ sonic design goal. The Element Achromat makes use of conductors with an increased OCC copper content when compared with the company’s previous Element interconnect. The OCC (Ohno Continuous Casting) process was developed by Professor Ohno from the Chiba Institute of Technology to manufacture a very high-purity single grain copper or silver wire. The Element Achromat also has a new physical design that is intended to stabilise the concentricity along the complete…

DETAILS PRODUCT Ecosse The Conductor CA1 ORIGIN UK TYPE RCA analogue interconnect FEATURES ● Conductors: multi stranded UHP-OFC ● Dielectric: lowloss polyethylene and FPE ● Screening: UHP-OFC closelapped braiding ● Connectors: MACH1 gold-plated copper RCA DISTRIBUTOR FutureShop A particular feature of this cable is the use of a sandwich of two dielectrics employed to insulate the central conductor. These are a high-grade, low-loss polyethylene and an ultra-low-loss, increased-air, gas-foamed polyethylene (FPE). As for the central conductor, it’s a multi-stranded UHP-OFC (ultra-high purity, oxygen-free copper). Over the top of the dielectrics is a conductive PVC covering, designed to provide screening from RFI, EMI and ESI (electrostatic interference). This screening is further enhanced by a layer of close-lapped braiding of UHP-OFC to ensure maximum protection from external interference. This approach, according to…

DETAILS PRODUCT JBL L52 Classic ORIGIN USA/China TYPE 2-way standmount loudspeaker WEIGHT 5kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 197 x 330 x 216mm FEATURES ● 1x 20mm titanium dome tweeter ● 1x 133mm pulped paper mid/bass driver ● Quoted sensitivity: 85dB/1W/1m (4ohm) DISTRIBUTOR Harman UK WEBSITE jblsynthesis.com JBL’s re-released Classic series channels the design language of its Seventies models and the L52 brings all the principles of the series down to a size where they’ll fit into most spaces. Like the larger L82 (HFC 473), the L52 is not a reproduction of a speaker it produced in the Seventies but an ‘inspired by true-life events’ take on the style of the time. A two-way design it uses a 25mm titanium dome tweeter (as seen in the other models) placed in a shallow waveguide.…

DETAILS PRODUCT Orchard Audio PecanPi Streamer ORIGIN USA TYPE Network attached streamer/DAC/headphone amp WEIGHT 1.6kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 195 x 100 x 120mm FEATURES ● Supports sample rates up to 24-bit/192kHz ● Wired networking ● Balanced and XLR outputs DISTRIBUTOR VAL HiFi WEBSITE valhifi.co.uk Hi-fi can be a maze of competing ecosystems with the capacity to confuse and coerce as much as connect on a bespoke level. But one that seems to be hitting the sweet spot with increasing real-world relevance is the low-cost, no-frills, function-first, high-performance, multi-tasking, software-flexible, plug-and-play little black (or silver) box. And Orchard Audio’s PecanPi Streamer appears to be exactly that. The cute word play references the RaspberryPi 3B+ platform inside, replete with tell-tall input socket group poking through the back plate. A fully balanced, dual-DAC chip…

DETAILS PRODUCT iFi Audio ZEN Stream ORIGIN UK/China TYPE UPnP streaming transport WEIGHT 578g DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 158 x 35 x 100mm FEATURES ● Supports: PCM to 384kHz and DSD256 ● Outputs: 2x USB; optical ● UPnP, HQ Player and Roon Support with AirPlay ● Tidal and Spotify Connect DISTRIBUTOR Armour Home Electronics WEBSITE ifi-audio.com As part of its ongoing mission to create a digital device for every eventuality, iFi Audio has developed some interesting solutions built around its decoding platform. The ZEN Stream represents something of a step change because it’s not equipped with any decoding of its own and is designed to turn both its – and anyone else’s – DAC into a network audio player. To do this, the ZEN Stream is a network streamer fitted to work…

As 2021 drew to a close – and millions of people were warming up their credit cards for the Black Friday online sales bonanza – the Wall Street Journal published an article declaring that: “Cool kids are wearing wired headphones”, though it wasn’t interested in mundane matters such as sound quality or the details of lossy-versus-lossless audio compression, simply treating headphones as just another fashion accessory. Its argument was that wireless earbuds, such as the ubiquitous AirPods, are now so common that they’re no longer considered to be cool. In contrast, the article cast an admiring glance at a number of celebs who have been seen wearing “blatantly corded headphones” – and even sometimes opting for larger over-ear headphones too, rather than mere earbuds. It’s barely five years since Apple…

Idly scanning through the myriad favourite artists’ end-of-year announcements, pronouncements, predictions, resolutions and reminiscences recently, I stumbled upon this rather uncharacteristically grumpy post on Tumblr courtesy of Sufjan Stevens: “Any band that is still together after ten years – Please. Break up. Do your solo albums. Move on.” OK, so it’s a pretty trite plea that smacks a little of the sort of bratty stuff young punk bands used to say back in 1976/77 when they were dead set on overthrowing the empire, but I thought: “Why not put it to the test?” And here’s what I found after an hour or so on Wikipedia with band discographies, using LP releases as our measure. Starting with the classics – minus The Beatles whose stretch from their debut Please Please Me…

DETAILS PRICE £45 for a 1m cable TELEPHONE 01980 625700 WEBSITE chord.co.uk OUR VERDICT AVAILABLE IN A variety of lengths and terminated with various combinations of Toslink and mini-jack optical plugs, the version of C-lite Optical cable reviewed here is the 1m Toslink-to-Toslink. This is an original Chord design that uses a wide bandwidth PMA optical cable with polished ends to improve transmission. The conductor is protected by an internal jacket of soft PVC and the cable is sheathed in a hard skin PVC outer jacket to provide enough flexibility to allow a reasonably tight bend radius without risk of damage to the conductor. The Chord C-lite is available in 1m, 2m, 3m, 5m, 8m and 10m lengths in both Toslink-to-Toslink and mini-jack-to-Toslink configurations. Lengths of 15cm and 30cm come…

DETAILS PRICE £300 for a 1m RCA-to-RCA TELEPHONE 07481 271006 WEBSITE gekkocables.com OUR VERDICT AN UPDATED VERSION of the original Red Dusk RCA (HFC 456), the Mk2 is designed to offer a significant improvement when compared with its predecessor. Gekko has been around for 10 years and as all of its cables are handmade, they can be tailored to a customer’s requirements. All of the cables use pure UK silver, UP-OCC and OFHC copper solid-core annealed wires. For insulation, Gekko uses cotton as it has a Dielectric Constant of 1.2, which is closer to that of air than Teflon. Cotton also plays an important role as a cushion that reduces unnecessary vibrations and the resulting microphonic effects. The Gekko Red Dusk Mk2 RCA interconnect is a directional, unshielded cable made…