With Record Store Day having just passed, and turntable and vinyl sales bigger than ever, we thought it was our duty to offer some hints and tips on ways of setting up and getting the most out of your turntable. There may come a day when the upgrade fever hits, and you find yourself wanting more from your turntable setup. Don't fear! There are a variety of tweaks and upgrades that can be had without replacing your entire turntable.

Turntable Placement

Even the best designs of turntable are subject

As sales manager at Audio Affair, I get to listen to a fantastic variety of equipment, but I'll always have a special place for my first system and how its changed over the years. This "Diary of a system" series will chart my beginnings in hi-fi from the very start up until now. There aren't many photos of the early years, but bear with me, your patience will be rewarded as you read about the changes in my system and hopefully you'll pick up a few good tips or points for discussion when I speak to

Step inside any high street electronics retailer, and the chances are that all of the speaker systems and consumer amplifiers that you find are based on transistors. Yet among enthusiasts and hi-fi customers, the valve amplifier is still incredibly popular and desirable.

To the untrained eye, valve amplifiers are a thing of marvel – glowing bulbs of light, they seem more like something out of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory than a piece of hi-fi equipment.

The

With so many speakers out there, both floorstanding and bookshelf, it can be hard to narrow down a potential audition list, or to decide which design is more suitable for you. Unfortunately there is no blanket rule that makes one better than another, and most speakers will perform differently in different rooms and hi-fi systems.

Before I begin, bookshelf speakers will virtually always perform better on speaker stands, which is why we’d prefer if they were always called “standmount speakers”,

The debate around the effects and benefits of different audio cables and the use of high quality cable brands such as Nordost has been a heated one in audiophile circles, with opinions varying from the notion that a cable is a cable and can make no difference to your sound, to a cable is the most important part of your system and can have a profound effect on your music. My own opinion is that the reality is somewhere in between, and have definitely noticed the benefits of various cables and been

The vinyl movement still continues to gain momentum - for some it is the rekindling of an old flame, for others it is the beginning of a new love affair, you might even say Audio Affair! I fall in the latter statement, after inheriting my first turntable - a Trio KD 1033 with Ortofon Cartridge, the model escapes me now, I was hooked. Vinyl seemed so much more interesting, better art work and how did this disc with grooves create that sound!?

There has never been a better time to start looking

A large part of the fun involved with being an Audiophile (not my favorite way of describing myself but hey ho!) is tweaking, taking an already fantastic product and utilising ingenuity in order to improve its  performance  - in real world terms you can improve the performance of your system in many different ways with many different budgets!  Okay, you may now be thinking I sit at home twisting banana plugs left and right in order to gain some perceived improvement and you wouldn't be far

As some of you may know Hi-Fi is my passion - specifically two channel, turntables and valves! I feel quite privileged to be able to work in this industry, as my main hobby when not a work is Hi-Fi! Some may think I get my fix at work all day, but nothing can be further from the truth – I like to wind down listening to some of my favourite vinyl Vaughan Williams, Gorecki for example. So as you can see I have appreciation for sound reproduction. Hi-Fi is an art form, crafted by true masters and I

Valve amplifiers have been a staple of the audiophile world for many years and still continue to be, their aesthetic properties and more importantly sound quality make them attractive to all music lovers who want to enjoy there music in style. Over the years amplifier design has changed, where it was once valves that ruled, transistor is now king – this said however there are manufactures out there who still hold a flame for high quality valve amplification, I not talking cheap far east examples

SUMMER SOUNDS

Today your music collection is mobile: with the increase in technology you can take your collection wherever you go! This is great – it means on those summer days (which we seem to be getting a lot of at the time of writing this) you can sit in the park or garden and enjoy your favourite tracks. This said sound that comes from a phone or portable device is very often inadequate and lack lustre: due to the size of the device etc speakers capable of doing anything of merit cannot be fitted