The Concept 20 loudspeaker from Q Acoustics is a smallish standmount speaker which comes with its own very attractive support stand. It’s been getting rave reviews from all over the place and so we thought it about time that we had a listen to see if the praise they were receiving was justified. “One of […]
Everyone loves a freebie and we were really please to hear that Computer Audio Design (CAD), manufacturer of the CAD 1543 USB DAC, has created a number of free system set-up and optimisation guides, which are now available to download from their website. With computer audio destined to be the dominant source of high-quality music […]
McIntosh Laboratory has introduced the latest version of its free AP1 Audio Player app and very cool looking it is too for a freebie. Version 1.5 can be downloaded from the Apple Store, allowing iTunes® to be run with the classic look and feel of a full sized McIntosh component. Featuring the ‘McIntosh Blue’ watt […]
Commencing on the 1st November, Hi-fi and Custom Installation specialists Music Matters will be hosting a month long series of events based in their Midlands branches and London store showcasing a series of events for customers old and new – The Hi-Fi Festival! “We’re delighted to be hosting this four week Hi-Fi Festival as its […]
Aries Cerat got in touch with Hifi Pig to tell us all about the concept behind their latest preamplifier, the Incito. The Incito preamp comes about from the desire for Aries Cerat to find a high performance preamplifier that matched their latest tube amplifiers whilst keeping costs and size to manageable levels. The Incito has […]
“Hey there sugar with your eyes so blue, ridin’ around in your red HQ!”. Haha, those lyrics… they warm the cockles of my rural Aussie heart! After releasing a couple of well received EPs, the four Findlay siblings and best known band from the tiny rural town of Darraweit Guim if you can believe it, […]
Grace Slick’s “Dreams” was originally released on the RCA label in 1980 and here it rears its head again on Morello Records. Now, cards laid on the table I like Grace Slick a lot – who couldn’t fail to love someone who when invited, mistakenly, to the Whitehouse planned to spike then President Nixon with […]
AKG have announced its new K812 reference headphones – a completely new open-back design. The K812 offers an oversized 53mm drivers and copper-covered aluminium voice coils partnered with adjustable headband and extremely soft ear pads which AKG say will ensure comfort in any application, for extended periods of time. “The AKG K812’s are not only […]
Bath Audiofest was launched just four years ago and in that time has grown to become one of the highlights of the high-end audio industry’s calendar. The show is staged annually in October and is organized by high-end audio specialist Cool Gales, as an opportunity for customers to meet the select group of manufacturers they […]
Seasoned readers of the Album review section of Hifi Pig will already be aware that you have a bit of a space-case fanboy of the undisputed kings of the spacerock genre in the form of yours truly and so it was with a good deal of excitement that I went and collected the latest release […]
Squeezed neatly on the fashionably cool Great Portland Street between food emporium Villandry and Regents Park’s Frieze Art Festival is “Ideaworks”, the venue for the preview of Anthems new AVR range, built on their two and a half year old MRX range and 30 years of research. Ideaworks is a stunning showpiece of conceptual sound […]
There’s a huge problem with HD music today say Benchmark and recent advances in high-resolution digital formats have well outpaced most existing amplifier technologies they say. Whilst recordings are possible that have dynamic ranges that exceed 120 to 125 dB Benchmark claim it’s hard to find a power amplifier that can deliver more than 100 […]
Oppo, those of the famous DVD and BluRay players, have announced they will be launching a new Planar Magnetic Headphone (PM-1) and a headphone amplifier (HA-1). The PM-1 headphones use an FEM optimised magnet system with very high energy Neodymium magnets. The headphones magnetic system and conductor patterns are said to be optimized for maximum […]
“The Cartridge Man is Len Gregory and he’s been making cartridges for a good number of years now. He used to produce a cartridge based on the AKG P8ES, but as AKG ceased production and were eventually bought this eventually meant that Len’s supply of components dried up. Around the same time (twenty-ish years ago) […]
Forming part of the bijou Chordette range, the new Qute EX adds a new chipset and circuit board which enables decoding at up to 384kHz PCM and DSD 128 over USB (against the QuteHD’s 192kHz PCM and DSD 64). Existing QuteHD DACs can be upgraded with the new chipset and board at the factory for […]
JoSound Cartouche loudspeakers use a Voxativ driver and an innovative bamboo construction that makes these €22 000 loudspeakers really stand out from the crowd. “We first came across the JoSound range of loudspeakers twelve months or so ago when we attended the Paris Hifi and Home Cinema Salon and were very impressed with what we […]
Norwegian-based manufacturer and quirkily named QNKTC (Quantization Noise Killed The Cat!) has unveiled its new competitively priced DAC, the £110 AB-1.2. The device has is roots in an open source project, as a hardware implementation of the Audio Widget venture. The project was started by an online group who wanted to develop the very best […]
Brand new to me but a staggering forty five years old Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera’s eponymous album is enjoying a re-release on Grapefruit Records and it’s a really entertaining listen indeed. Starting out as an R&B/Soul band called the Five Proud Walkers, EGVO took a pretty dramatic change in direction in 1967 after supporting Pink […]
Hifi Pig announced the launch of these new loudspeaker cables from Atlas way back in June and here Jerry takes a listen to them and gives his impressions of how they perform in his system. “The cables appear well made and very easy to use – the “Z-plugs” (4mm banana) on the set of cables […]
At the top of the Tellurium Q range the Black Diamond USB cable comes in at £636 for a 1 metre length. Dan gives it a serous listen and see if it reaches muster. “The Black Diamond, as all other Tellurium products, doesn’t come accompanied with a huge white paper of techno-babble, it simply comes […]
“So much to see here in the darkness…” Australia (and indeed the world) is enjoying a wealth of heavy music right now. Metalcore, new-school thrash, death and progressive metal are all thriving and our newsfeeds are chock full of new releases, gigs, tours, mind boggling arrays of sub-genres and all manner of heavy goodness. Yep, […]
Kathryn Williams is Liverpool-born but resides in the fine city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Crown Electric, the company Elvis used to drive for before finding fame, is her tenth album and her first solo record in four years. The album is the distillation of over sixty songs that were narrowed down to the thirteen we hear on […]
