Page 24 - News

Every time we do a demonstration of some proper hi-fi kit (separate amplifier, CD player and speakers), we invariably get asked to compare a few cable brands or the customer ends up bringing their own cables.

We've carefully picked a range of cables at each price bracket and in the £100-200 range, we're always a little hesitant to try Blue Heaven. Not because it's bad cable, but because it's such a special alternative and we never know what sort of reaction to expect. This isn't

Saved up some cash to buy your favourite hi-fi lover the perfect present but not sure what to buy? There are some great stocking fillers to be had for anyone who enjoys great sounds, whether you’re looking for an original gift for the hi-fi fanatic or hoping to splash out on something with the ultimate wow factor. Here are ten gift ideas to start you off – and you can find more at the Christmas Gift Ideas shopping section.

1. Fatman iTube Carbon Mk2 Valve Amp & iPod Dock - £199.95

A Christmas gift

A pre amplifier and power amplifier combo has always been something to aspire to in hi-fi. Pre/power combos generally offer much better performance than a single box amplifier as the separate components have been built to perform their function perfectly without cutting corners - as is often the case in single box models.

In a pre/power set-up, each unit has a dedicated power supply, dedicated circuitry and dedicated chassis (avoiding vibrations or noise caused by the other circuitry) allowing each

Microsoft could be dominating the seasonal holidays this year with its release of Windows Phone 7, and the long anticipated Xbox 360 Kinect. Kinect brings games and entertainment to life in extraordinary new ways, with full body play. Arms, legs, feet, and hands, with Kinect there are no controllers, just you. It’s so natural, so intuitive that technology evaporates, letting the natural magic in all of us shine through.

Hard to find great matching CD/Amp at this price. The M3-series shares the same new, elegant casework of the M6-series, but in a slightly lower-profile chassis. As with M6, the M3-series front panels are custom extrusions of solid metal finished to a high standard, with knobs and buttons also machined from solid. Fit and finish is impeccable!

Continuing the tradition of producing outstanding digital products, Musical Fidelity presents the ultra-high value M3i CD player. The M3i CD features

Musical Fidelity was pretty well the first company in the world to make a DAC. Since then they have an unbroken lineage of top performing, top value digital products.

The new M1 DAC is the fruit of their 23 years experience of making top performance DACs. It has four digital inputs; coax, optical, balanced and USB.It will also lock on to any SP diff signal at; 32kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz. The input sampling frequency is displayed on the front panel.

The M1 DAC has

To those familiar with PSB, the acronym (Paul & Sue Barton) could very well mean People, Sound and Business. For years, audio critics have attributed the performance of PSB Speakers with founder, Paul Barton and his love and passion for music and loudspeakers. A look back into the history of PSB will show you why… Paul's admiration for natural sound recreation was key to PSB's beginnings. However, today, it is easy to see that PSB is no longer a small business operation; it's no longer

Meeting Abbas (Managing Director, Wireworld UK) is quite an experience. Aside from loving the brand and it's abilities, Abbas is positively exstatic about the benefits of Wireworld over other cables, due partly to precision design and manufacturing and partly to their unique testing process. Rather than testing the sonic and visual capabilities of their cables /against /other branded cables, they test each cable against the banchmark of /no cable /to test how close their cables are to a direct connection.

It has been said that the Hi-Fi is as an essential component of a Bachelors pad as the cocktail bar or signature furniture. Finding the perfect sounding Hi-Fi is difficult enough; we’re all different and what sounds perfect to one can grate on another, indeed it doesn’t help that at times separates can be uninspiring to look at and won’t sit well in a distinctive listening room. This is an especial problem for audiophiles who live in contemporary / statement homes; a boring hi-fi system, no matter

There is something dark stirring in the heart of the nation’s underground music scene. Something dark and rather camp.

The vogue for all things vintage has extended to music, where live cabaret-style events are proliferating. The emphasis is mostly on tongue-in-cheek fun—everywhere you turn there is a ukulele for every tassel-twirling burlesque act.

At the “straight” end you have events like Voix de Ville at Proud Cabaret (1 Mark Lane, London), mixing traditional burlesque cabaret with