HEADPHONES: Choosing the right ones

Bowers & Wilkins write … How do you listen? The first thing to think about when choosing headphones is how they will be used. Is the primary purpose of these headphones to help you withdraw into your own world? Are you buying them as a gift for a daily commuter or for a frequent flyer […]

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ORTOFON: MC-3000 MC phono cartridge – test review

The Ortofon MC-2000 may just have been the most impractical cartridge to be unleashed upon the audio community for some years. With a high compliance (20cu) that made it ill-suited for most tonearms, it also had a preposterously low signal output of 50 microvolts, which gave new meaning to the terms hum and noise. Few MC preamps […]

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FANE ACOUSTICS: What happened?

We are told … Company founded on the 11th of February 1993 in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, UK as Raftmill Ltd. but changed its name to Fane Acoustics after buying the trademarks and other assets of the bankrupt Fane Loudspeakers company. Restarted production of loudspeaker drivers in the Leeds, Yorkshire factory that Fane Loudspeakers had been using […]

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Quill

BRINKMANN: La Grange and one of the world’s first fully balanced vinyl replay systems

Originally published here in February 2006 Howard, is it true that way back you were the owner of the World’s first fully balanced vinyl replay system? Possibly the first; certainly one of the first three ….. so I’m told. I purchased the Brinkman 10.5 tonearm before I became a dealer, and paid £2,200 from the […]

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HELIUS DESIGNS: Their tone arm trade-in policy defined

They say: Occasionally, Helius will acquire some of its past products. There are primarily two reasons, the first is to maintain a stock of older parts for purposes of repairing the classic tonearms. We do this because it is uneconomical in today’s CNC machnining environment to have small numbers of the larger components machined, so […]

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AURELIA LOUDSPEAKERS: News

Aurelia’s speakers use a completely unique structure. The biggest advantage compared to a conventional speaker enclosure is the much stronger structure of the enclosure we designed. In terms of production, the structure is very flexible and allows the production of different surface variations in a significantly shorter time than in traditional enclosures – so special […]

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POLK / RESERVE SERIES: News

They write ….. With the custom transducers from Polk’s flagship Legend Series and new Polk innovations in cabinet and port design, Reserve delivers flagship music and movie sound.  Designed by Polk for the flagship Legend Series, the Pinnacle Tweeter features a finely tuned waveguide that dramatically improves the dispersion of high frequency energy, ensuring a […]

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ELITE GRAMOPHONES: What happened?

We are told … Tiny manufacturer of turntables based in Hersham, Walton-On-Thames, in Surrey, Britain. Founded in the late 70’s to commercialise an unusual high end turntable/tonearm combination that was developed at the Cranfield Institute of Technology, but it appears that the company in the end only shipped the turntable in the form of the […]

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BEETHOVEN: 50 of the finest Beethoven recordings available and more

The list is organised by genre, beginning with orchestral works, then moving though chamber, instrumental and vocal. We have also included, where possible, the complete original Gramophone reviews, which are drawn from Gramophone’s Reviews Database of more than 40,000 reviews. To find out more about subscribing to this unique and endlessly fascinating resource, visit: gramophone.co.uk/subscribe.

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