ALPHASON: What happened?

“Made the HR100S and HR100s MCS arms in the late 80’s early 90’s, it’s a medium compliance unit featuring a ultra rigid design machined from titanium right from the bearing to headshell as a one piece, features a ceramic gimbal bearings and was designed by Mike Knowles, the Xenon was a slightly cheaper version of […]

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WHAT HI-FI? Choice picks / Awards 2022 – A great selection of outstanding wired and wireless pairs

The What Hi-Fi? Awards 2022 winners have been announced, and the headphones category has no fewer than 12 winning pairs deemed worthy of Best Buy gongs. They’re spread across both wired and wireless styles, in-ear and over-ear designs. We’ve got a lot of familiar faces in the wired headphones sub-category, including repeat winners from Austrian […]

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KOETSU: Best arm for a Koetsu Rosewood ?

Having sold many kosher ones from Ricardo and avoiding the clever copies, I used mine on a Gyro with a Breuer 8-Dynamic arm for many years. That arm was hard to obtain and so I had to find alternatives for my customers. They and I achieved excellent results via: Syrinx PU2 Syrinx PU3 Sumiko MDC-800 […]

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APOGEE / KRELL: Their golden era. The KSA 80 and the pursuit of RMS quantity over RMS quality. And in passing, the Boothroyd Stuart Meridian 107

  Dear Howard, I purchased a Benchmark DAC Pre from you some time ago – it is the best purchased I have ever made. My question relates to power amplifiers. Can you suggest power amplifiers which will be suitable for Apogee Scintilla loudspeakers which present a 1 ohm load. I should be grateful for any […]

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HELIUS: The evolution of tonearm design and consider aspects of various designs that most influenced my approach to Helius

Geoffrey Owen – head of Helius Designs writes: In this episode I’m going to discuss the evolution of tonearm design and consider aspects of various designs that most influenced my approach to Helius. My own hi-fi journey started with the most classical of 1970’s choices – an SME 3009 mounted on a Thorens TD125 MKII […]

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