LATEST ADDITIONS

Pre/Power Amplifiers
Tsakiridis Devices Alexander/Artemis - £1,450/£1,450
Ed Selley  |  Sep 15, 2010  |  0 comments
Tsakiridis Devices Alexander/Artemis - £1,450/£1,450 Variations in performance levels are disappointing New to us in the UK it may be, but Tsakiridis Devices is a brand with over two decades of history. A family-run outfit from Greece, it makes valve-based audio with the emphasis very much on affordability. Many of the basic themes will be familiar to valve aficionados, including the use of simple circuits with little or no feedback, thus ensuring that the valves’ character is unchecked, for better or worse. The Artemis power amp comes with a choice of EL34 or KT88 output valves fitted.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Cyrus Pre XP D/8 power - £1,350/£875
Ed Selley  |  Sep 15, 2010  |  0 comments
Cyrus Pre XP D/8 power - £1,350/£875 A traditional-sounding pre/power amp combi from Cyrus, that works hard to establish itself against the competition Built, as ever, into the famous Cyrus diecast chassis, these units are picked from among the comprehensive range of pre and power amplifiers in the company’s catalogue. To some extent we’ve chosen an unusual pairing as the preamp significantly exceeds the power amp in price and its usual partner would be the X Power, but apart from anything else, Cyrus offers an upgrade path to take the 8 to X status, so the model chosen initially matters less than usual. In addition, the preamp includes DAC functions so its price can fairly be thought of as including a DAC, as well as an analogue pre. We mentioned upgrades and this is a major attraction of Cyrus.
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Pre/Power Amplifiers
Parasound P3/A23 - £800/£900
Ed Selley  |  Sep 15, 2010  |  0 comments
Parasound P3/A23 - £800/£900 This pre/power duo boasts a sound performance that adds extra dimension to vocals Parasound is a name which will be familiar to those interested in American audio, but historically it’s not had much visibility in the UK. These two products are part of the company’s ‘Halo’ range, value audiophile products designed in America but built in Taiwan. Very nicely built, too -– the cases are well finished and exceptionally solid, while the look and feel are generally first-rate. The P3 preamp is well equipped with inputs, including a balanced line input and also a phono stage.
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Loudspeakers
Teufel Ultima 800 - £2,498
Ed Selley  |  Aug 27, 2010  |  0 comments
New way to play Direct-seller Teufel's ambitious Ultima 800 loudspeaker is not only innovative, it's redefining value for money, says Alvin Gold Teufel is set up quite differently from most of its rivals, with a range of loudspeakers that must be ordered off the page, rather than through traditional hi-fi dealers. This does mean making a purchase without the usual safety net, but then part of the deal is that you do get the opportunity of an extended trial period before committing yourself irrevocably. You also get an extended guarantee period – twelve years – and full phone/web-based technical support. Above all, the simplified retail structure means that more of the manufacturer’s resources can be invested in R&D, so factor in unusually strong value for money.
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Integrated Amplifiers
Luxman 550A-II - £3,500
Ed Selley  |  Aug 27, 2010  |  0 comments
Luxman luxury For sheer musicality and agility, the Luxman L550A-II has the potential to delight vinyl lovers everywhere. Ed Selley cues up Luxman has begun to rebuild a worldwide reputation as one of the premier Japanese audio brands. The current product range is considerable and expanding and features a bewildering variety of solid-state and valve amplifiers, SACD and universal disc players and phono stages. The latter is an interesting product line for Luxman to make as every single integrated it produces, be it valve or solid-state is already equipped with an internal phono stage.
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Cables & Accessories
Isol- 8 Powerline Axis Mains Filter- £499
Ed Selley  |  Aug 27, 2010  |  0 comments
Current affairs Mains filtration removes high-frequency noise, but as Richard Black discovers Isol-8’s Powerline Axis goes the other way, removing direct current ains treatment specialist Isol-8 has been around for quite a while, but has not been over-keen to offer product for review. Evidently, the reason for this decision was due to the fact that advanced sales had outstripped supply, apparently! Now that this problem has been addressed, we’ve finally been able to get our hands on a sample and a fascinating product it is, too. In its basic form, the PowerLine is ‘just’ a mains distribution board – though it’s actually about as deluxe as such a thing can get, with silver-plated wiring, high-quality sockets, a solid metal chassis and so on. But the Axis variant adds something very unusual in mains filtering called DC blocking.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Audiomods Series III Micrometer Tonearm - £695
Ed Selley  |  Aug 27, 2010  |  0 comments
Beautiful bolt-on The most dramatic Rega arm rebuild yet encountered sounds as good as it looks according to Jason Kennedy People have been modifying Rega’s classic RB series tonearms for some time now, but never have we come across such a dramatic transformation as the one achieved by Audiomods. It uses the arm tube, lift mechanism and rest clip from an RB250 and replaces everything else with machined aluminium parts that, like the tube, are polished for a perfect finish. If that weren’t enough, Audiomods adds a micrometer to the system that allows precise VTA adjustment on-the-fly. The arm is also presented in a padded wooden box and comes with alternative counterweights.
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Turntables, Arms & Cartridges
Dr Feickert Analogue Woodpecker- £2,995
Ed Selley  |  Aug 27, 2010  |  0 comments
Altered images Jason Kennedy investigates an intriguing turntable from Dr Feickert which takes a new approach to the challenges of perfect vinyl replay This stylish German turnable is the first we have encountered from the elusive Dr Feickert, seen and heard at Munich’s High End show in May. The Woodpecker is the least expensive turntable that he makes, yet it embodies the principles that you find in the top Twin and Triple designs whilst managing to look entirely contemporary. It’s distinguished by a large cut-out which means you can slide the armboard along and accommodate tonearms between nine and twelve inches in length. This makes it one of the most flexible, yet elegant turntables we’ve seen in a long time.
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Disc Players
Audio Analogue Rossini VT 2.0 - £1,200
Ed Selley  |  Aug 15, 2010  |  0 comments
Audio Analogue Rossini VT 2. 0 - £1,200 The addition of a valve in the output stage gives this player a distinctive character all of its own Version 2 of a product can signify something as trivial as a new front panel layout, but this CD player looks distinctly different internally, from the original Rossini. It’s unique in this group, in that it incorporates a valve; a 6922 twin triode (one section per channel) in the audio output stage, which is likely to give it some degree of distinctive character. In fact, Audio Analogue acknowledges, with admirable candour, that the valve adds some ‘colour’ to the purity of digital sound.
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Disc Players
Cyrus CD 8SE - £1,300
Ed Selley  |  Aug 15, 2010  |  0 comments
Cyrus CD 8SE - £1,300 Cyrus has included its own servo evolution platform, bringing CD replay close to perfection we’ve seen this model before (HFC 310), but it has been very slightly revised, so we thought a re-test might be a good idea. Many of these revisions are cosmetic, including a new window for the display and a redesigned bezel, which fronts the slot-loading transport and puts the mind at rest about scratching discs (not that we hand any such concerns in the first place). But there have also been some changes to the software which controls the disc-reading servo. This servo was the ‘big news’ about the 8SE (the letters standing for ‘Servo Evolution’) and was something of a novelty for a specialist manufacturer such as Cyrus, in that it optimised disc-reading from a high-quality audio standpoint, rather than the more common trade-off between read quality and performance with dodgy or damaged discs.
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