Displaying items by tag: hiend - StereoLife Magazine

Audio Analogue celebrated its twentieth birthday by launching a line of bang-up-to-date 'Anniversary' editions of the company's earlier classic amplifiers. Now, the Puccini and Maestro integrated models are joined by the new Bellini preamplifier and Donizetti power amplifier. Audio Analogue's original Bellini and Donizetti amplifiers were two of the brand's early classics, first launched at the turn of the millennium. The new 'Anniversary' editions may share a name with these originals, but in every other respect, they are originals in their own right, featuring completely new designs and technologies.

Remaining committed to Sonus Faber's mission of creating an immersive and realistic listening experience and eager to enhance the Voice of Sonus Faber, company's engineers have pushed the limits of their existing technical knowledge to bring to life a new project. The result is the Sonus Faber Palladio - a collection of custom installation speakers, In-Wall and In-Ceiling loudspeaker systems that stay true to the Sonus Faber heritage.

Less than three years after the launch of the Utopia open-back headphones, Focal returns to center stage with its closed-back headphones of outstanding quality - Stellia. Equipped with the brand's very best technology, incorporating numerous innovations and providing excellent soundproofing, Stellia delivers exceptional sound quality everywhere you go, without compromising on style or sophistication. Because, at Focal, innovation goes beyond technology, it influences product use and aesthetics.

Q Acoustics has been a success right from the start. Its first products, the 1000 Series, shook up the UK loudspeaker industry, received unprecedented praise from reviewers worldwide and scooped prestigious awards. More awards followed with the release of the upgraded 1000i Series, and even more for the 2000 Series. However, not satisfied with merely designing conventional loudspeakers, Q Acoustics' design team introduced Q-AV - the world's first speakers to feature BMR (Balanced Mode Radiator) drive units, enabling for the first time, the whole family to hear perfect home cinema sound, wherever they sat within the room. The Sunday Times predicted that "some day all speaker systems will be like this".

With its 30th-anniversary year fast approaching, Chord Electronics has launched Ultima, a new state-of-the-art flagship amplifier featuring John Franks' latest circuit topology, the first all-new design in three decades. Ultima is the Ultimate expression of the finest high-performance, ultra-fast, ultra-high-power amplifier technology available today. Comprising a reference-quality preamp and two mono power amplifiers, Ultima is Chord Electronics' most accomplished amplifier in its 30-year history and one that draws on the company's three decades of research, design and engineering in Great Britain. The Ultima mono power amplifiers have been designed and engineered for the very finest hi-fi systems, those which by their very nature, have the most demanding and difficult-to-drive speakers.

After Elear, Utopia and Clear - its three leading open-back headphones - Focal set itself a new challenge - to integrate the best of its technologies into an unprecedented closed-back solution, to experience absolute sound everywhere and anywhere. Integrating speaker drivers into closed-back headphones, without making any concessions on the reproduction of the lowest frequencies - that is the new chapter in the Focal story that the engineers have just finished writing by pushing the limits of acoustic research and development. By creating Elegia.

New Italian audio brand Pegaso may be just a year old, but already it comes with decades of design expertise and a wealth of hi-fi know-how, thanks to the company's family tree. What's more, it plans to specialize, focusing purely on valve-based electronics. First 'out of the stable' is the P50A integrated amplifier.

AK T5p 2nd Generation is the latest collaboration between Beyerdynamic - the renowned German manufacturer with almost 100 years of headphone-making heritage - and Astell&Kern, the market leader in premium portable music players. A closed-back design, the AK T5p 2nd Generation is tuned for optimal audio performance with Astell&Kern's portable players, providing peerless clarity across all frequencies, plus excellent bass reinforcement. It uses high-efficiency Tesla Technology and comes with an audiophile-grade 2.5mm 99.8% pure silver and OCC hybrid detachable balanced headphone cable. The headphones, which are handmade in Germany, also feature high-quality ear pads, to provide excellent comfort - even for long listening sessions. We increased the perfection of the product with a black metal faceplate.

Kudos Audio unveiled a brand new member of its flagship Titan series of loudspeakers. Previewed at the 2018 Bristol Sound & Vision Show, the Titan 505 is a standmount model designed to deliver stunning, top-of-range performance to a wider reach of spaces and budgets.

As highly regarded as it was (and it was), the MCX series had just one potential drawback - it was massive. Which wasn't a problem in the days of 'bigger is better' but lately our living spaces are becoming more compact and we're living an increasingly mobile lifestyle. During 2016 and 2017 Exposure introduced its innovative XM series of hi-fi components, each of which sports an impressive complement of high quality features in a neat, half-width size. So, having perfected the art of packing a great deal of high-performing technology into a smaller space, the company then turned its attention to revisiting the top end of its offering and the question of how to create its finest combination of amplifiers yet at a fraction of the physical size. The result is the brand new 5010 series which features two products - a preamplifier and a pair of mono power amplifiers.