Based on the slimmer, lookalike TA1, the TA2 features twice as many output transistors, a far beefier PSU and three times the output... All this, a DAC/preamp and FM radio too
You shouldn't even need to see the £1099 price tag of Emotiva's BasX TA2 to understand it's one of the American manufacturer's entry-level products: the clue is in the name. Yet this integrated amplifier is about more than just covering off the 'basics', not least as it's positioned as a step up from the £669 BasX TA1 [HFN Nov '22].
This landmark album rewrote the folk rulebook, but that didn't stop the band splintering before it was released. Steve Sutherland hears the recent reissue on 180g vinyl
Way back in the day, I was telling Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead about one of those weird cartoons that used to pop up in episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus on the telly. The particular cartoon in question featured a giant big toe, sliced off at the joint, which had been re-assembled as the tip of the trunk of some kind of prehistoric mammoth – an error in extrapolation which sought to ridicule scientific assumption in a similar vein to the way the Pythons mocked religion and politics, etc.
No citadel in the sky, these latest Castle speakers are firmly grounded in great sound courtesy of the FinkTeam
What do you get if you take a venerable British loudspeaker marque, mix with the (from 2007) owners' fabrication facility in China, stir in a highly respected German loudspeaker designer and top the whole creation with British assembly? In this case, it's the Castle Windsor Duke loudspeaker, an elegant £4500 standmount design that's the fruit of a truly worldwide network.
A spot of R&R in Jamaica, followed by a lakeside recording set-up back in Blighty, was all it took for a disillusioned John Martyn to recapture his music mojo. The resulting album, released in 1977, mixed folk, electronica and the sound of geese...
For much of the '70s it was customary for bands or recording artists to retire to a rural bolthole for a spell, hoping the country air would help them get their head together. Disillusioned and burnt out from recording and touring, in 1976 John Martyn tried this himself. But in his case the destination was another country, halfway across the world.
Korea's HiFi Rose has moved upmarket with its first DAC-less, transport-only network player – the result is an impressive combination of purity and innovative technology
As if on a one-company mission to prove all the variations possible when it comes to network audio, Korean brand HiFi Rose has gone in very short order from being an upstart newcomer to its current role as a pillar of the digital establishment. And it's done so not by the simple expedient of taking one platform and pitching it at a range of price-points, but rather by expanding its offering to fill every niche from the all-in-one 'just add speakers' system [HFN Mar '22] to the highly-focused high-end network component explored on these pages.
This month we review: Fuge, Williams, Singapore SO/Venzago, Freiburg Baroque/Von Der Goltz, Lied Haga, Apekisheva and Weser-Renaissance Bremen/Manfred Cordes.