The range of Transfiguration phono cartridges from Japanese Immutable Music is a deliberately limited one, focusing on just three exquisitely innovative models. But there seems to be no limit to the number of awards they’re notching up…
Positive Feedback’s Writers’ Choice Award 2015, Hi-Fi World Product of the Year 2016, The Absolute Sound Editors Choice Award 2017… Transfiguration’s flagship Proteus just keeps on impressing reviewers around the globe. And now it’s the proud winner of the 2017 Hi-Fi Plus Award for the top phono cartridge. Continue reading Transfiguration Proteus wins Hi-Fi Plus’ 2017 Award for best phono cartridge→
“Headphones now rule – period,” affirms Ken Kessler in the latest issue of Hi-Fi News. And when it comes to headphone amps, few can claim to stand head and shoulders above the rest quite like the Metaxas Marquis ‘Memento Mori’.
Could this be the finest tonearm you’ve never heard of? Timestep’s Dave Cawley firmly believes so, which is why he has just signed an exclusive distribution agreement to import Glanz tonearms from their native Japan to the UK. What can we anticipate from these ‘masters of precision’?
The festive season is upon us, which can only mean one thing. No, not Slade and Greg Lake playing on repeat day after day in Sainsbury’s (not just that anyway). ‘Tis time, audiophiles and music lovers, for the annual Hi-Fi News Yearbook with its round-up of “the hardware that inspired our senses and the music that stirred our souls throughout 2017”. So grab a mince pie, pull up a chair by the fire and join me in celebrating some of the 65+ goodies reviewed in this special issue. Continue reading Hi-Fi News Yearbook: the mighty fine kit that moved us in 2017→
Danish Scansonic shares a parent company, Dantax, with the highly covetable loudspeaker brand Raidho and the relationship between the two goes more than skin deep: Scansonic’s flagship HD range is created by Raidho’s design team, promising a raft of ‘Raidho DNA’ but at a considerably more affordable price. The Audio Beat’s Roy Gregory explores how much of that original DNA can be found in the MB-1 standmount model and asks the question, would I recommend it to a friend? Continue reading “What I’d recommend to a friend”: The Audio Beat reviews Scansonic’s MB-1 loudspeaker→
“It’s difficult to believe, but the wretched, guilty truth is that not everyone that plays music in high-quality stereo wants large areas of their house to be occupied by hi-fi equipment,” writes David Price in the November issue of Hi-Fi Choice. Fortunately, British audio brand Exposure has come to the rescue with its niche XM series which packs “a serious punch in half-sized boxes”. Price puts the XM7 preamp/DAC and XM9 mono power amps to the test.
“Clearaudio’s Maestro positions itself as an intentional disruption to shake most shoppers from lurching around with ‘MC tunnel vision’ and have them stop for a moment to consider what a carefully crafted moving magnet product can bring to the table,” writes Buzz Hughes in the October issue of Hi-Fi Plus. So does it succeed?
“Clearaudio’s Maestro has no intention of playing second fiddle to the MC crowd,” says Hughes: “from the first look and touch of the cartridge the Maestro is effectively drawing a line in the sand saying ‘I dare you to find a better value at my price point…’”
Clearaudio Maestro V2 MM cartridge
Hughes takes up the dare and dives straight in with some testing tracks. First up, Roy Ayres’ Change up the Groove album, whose vibrant vibraphone will clearly reveal just how much an MM cartridge can “intrude onto a moving coil’s holy ground sound signature, the treble.”
The results are immediate. “The clarity and depth of the notes coming through the Maestro is unmistakably impressive… there is no stretch or reach to produce the sweet highs and breathtakingly long decay… overlapping and rapid vibraphone strikes take flight and hover in the ether with enough space and time to take them all individually, examine them, and let them float away into a spaciously dark background.”
Hughes puts the bass to the test with Mad Season’s track ‘Wake Up’ on the album Above. “The bass extension was one of the lowest I have heard come through my system.” Not only did it dive Hughes lower than he had been prepared to expect, but the Maestro also “opened up the texture on the bass as well as revealing quivers and shimmers of low frequency sound that simply were not there before.”
In his evident enjoyment of the Maestro, Hughes confesses to being very much a fan of a “front row and centre of aisle” style of musical presentation, appreciating the way that the cartridge “pushed me right up into the act and let me feel like I was holding the bands’ microphones and amps.”
Does this mean that the Maestro lacks a certain subtlety? Not at all. “While [it] excels with driving, pumping music like MM cartridges are reputed to do, I found that the real strength of the Maestro cartridge is the ability to control its power and still achieve a neutral canvas for the other aspects of my music regardless of genre.”
“One of those special cartridges that is smart enough to do it all and makes you want to buy more LPs instead of more equipment.”
Read Hughes’ full review in the October 2017 issue of Hi-Fi Plus.
“Inside and out, there is no doubting the quality of construction of the Puccini Anniversary,” writes reviewer Chris Frankland in the latest issue of Hi-Fi Critic. Launched in 2016 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Italian brand Audio Analogue, the Puccini Anniversary is named not after the great composer Giacomo Puccini, but after the product’s designer, Andrea Puccini. But will this zero feedback integrated amplifier be music to Frankland’s ears?
David Denyer PR | The hi-fi specialist 