The Bristol Hi-Fi Show is one again upon us which means hordes of audio fans are descending upon the Delta Hotels Marriott to get a look and listen with the latest products from over 150 audio brands.

As ever, the What Hi-Fi? team is on hand at the Bristol Hi-Fi Show 2025 running a tech demo at our stand. On the off chance you fancy a chat or have questions make sure to stop by and say hi!

But this year we’ll also be running this live news hub direct from the show (if you spot a dishevelled looking writer with a What Hi-Fi? t-shirt at our stand manically typing away at a keyboard chances are they’re writing a post for this very page).

In it we’ll drop our hands-on impressions of all the latest audio treats we’ve seen as well as pics and insights from the experts we’ve spoken to – all in real time. So make sure to bookmark this page and keep checking back regularly.

On the off chance you’re not at the show and have a particular product you want hands on photos of, or a question about, also make sure to get in touch on our forums, social media pages or directly in this page’s comments section. We’ll then do our honest best to get the pic or answer you’re after.

Our 2025 demo is up and running!

If you’re at the Bristol Hi-Fi Show and fancy checking out some cutting edge tech being demoed by the What Hi-Fi? team, then make sure to pop by our stand!

This year we’re continuing our home cinema theme showing what a difference next-generation 8K resolutions makes to TVs.

Specifically we’ll be running a demo bespoke designed to demonstrate how video content has changed over the ages, showing the difference in quality between key formats including DVD, Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray and even 8K.

We’ll be doing this with some pretty cutting edge hardware that’s headlined by Samsung's top of the range 8K Mini LED TV and Wharfedale Linton full-blown 7.2 speaker package.

Just make sure you get there in good time as there’s limited seating for each demo and we’re running on a first come, first served basis – not line cutting!

Our hi-fi editor has a hitlist for this year’s show

As well as exhibiting, our team of experts also covers the Bristol Hi-Fi Show and, while there are always a few surprises, our intrepid hi-fi editor, Kashfia Kabir, went in with a hit list of products she planned to get a first look and listen to in the flesh.

These include the:

• Quad ESL-2912X electrostatic speakers
• Ruark Audio Sabre-R bookshelf speakers
• Devialet Astra streaming amplifier
• Acoustic Energy AE300 speaker range
• Wharfedale Super Linton speakers
• Rotel Michi Q5 CD transport/DAC
• Chord Electronics Alto headphone amplifier

You can get a breakdown of her specific reasoning for each here, but trust us, if you’re at the show you’ll definitely want to follow Kash’s lead and carve some time to check the products out. For those not lucky enough to attend, don’t panic! We’ll be publishing her thoughts after seeing each ASAP.

3 Temptations are at the show for the first time

Temptation level products are always interesting beasts that sit in the upper echelons of the hi-fi market for price – and hopefully performance.

And while Bristol isn’t as famous for hosting them as High End Munich, which is set to happen in May, this year’s UK show has three key Temptation products we haven’t seen or heard before on display.

First up are the Wilson Benesch Horizon floorstanding speakers. Sitting in the same family as the A.C.T. 3Zero and Discovery 3Zero we gave a five star rating when we reviewed them, you can hear the Horizon at Wilson Benesch’s stand throughout the event.

Next up is the Devialet Astra amp. We don’t know which speakers the unit is being demoed with but the $20,000 the unit is at Bristol and well worth a look at if you get the time.

Finally, you can also check out the Rotel Michi Q5 CD at this year’s show. Though it was unveiled last year, we haven’t had a chance to see the £5499 / $6999 / €5999 CD / Transport DAC in the flesh yet so we’ll be rushing to Rotel’s stand to take an opening look ASAP and recommend you do the same!

Michell Engineering has unveiled its Apollo phono stage and Muse power supply

Michell Engineering, best known for its iconic Gyro turntable, has taken the lid off the Apollo phono stage and Muse power supply.

The Muse power supply is all about reducing noise (“the enemy of phono stages”) and uses high quality components to deliver a clean supply to the turntable. The Apollo phono stage handles moving magnet and moving coil cartridges, has single ended RCA connections, and is linked to the power supply with a specially designed link cable.

The new Michell duo costs costs £3500 and will be available from March.

The WiiM Vibelink Amp is WiiM's first integrated amp with no streaming elements

WiiM's new amp foregoes streaming smarts in favour of a more stripped-back approach. The WiiM Vibelink Amp is the firm's first integrated amp to focus purely on amplification – its previous models (like the Award-winning Pro Plus) all have wi-fi for wireless connectivity.

So is this a new direction for WiiM? Or is it just a companion piece to its connected devices, like the Pro and Ultra? It's probably the latter – WiiM has built a solid reputation of late for producing high-quality hi-fi components that have smart connectivity without breaking the bank. Still, it's an interesting new device for the firm.

It's only been teased for now – we won't get the full details until it launches next month. Stay tuned for first impressions from the show floor.

FiiO's FT7 flagship headphones take the fight to pricier rivals

It wouldn't be Bristol without some flagship headphones, and these from Chinese brand FiiO do not disappoint. The FT7 follow the FT5 and FT3, but ramp up the premium-ness considerably.

How? With zebrawood grilles, earpads made of lambskin and suede, and Patent Pending Gold + Silver Precious Metal Multi-Layer Coating Technology, that's how.

They will cost "around $800" when they go on sale later this year. But FiiO claims that they will be worthy rivals to much more expensive pairs. Of course, it all comes down to how they sound.

Rega reveals 7th generation Brio amplifier – and this time it has a DAC!

Rega's Brio amplifier is now in its seventh generation, and the latest model comes with a DAC.

It retains the 50-watt per channel rating as its five-star predecessor, and the moving magnet phono stage. But the inclusion of a DAC shows how comfortable Rega is becoming with adding digital inputs that don't compromise sound quality.

We've waited six long years for the next generation of Brio, but now finally the wait is over. We can't wait to get one in our test rooms to see how it performs.

Neat Iota II's ultra-tiny speakers with big ambitions are ideal for small spaces

With a range of compact speakers, Neat Acoustics certainly lives up to its name. In fact, the Iota are some of the smallest hi-fi speakers to have graced our test rooms. But with their five-star rating, they are testament to the old adage about good things and small packages.

Now they have a sequel in the form of the Iota II. These retain the original's diminutive dimensions, but contain an upgraded mid/bass driver and improved crossover. Like their predecessors, they aim to sound much bigger than their small size suggests.

Given that we reviewed the original Iota in 2012, you can expect the sequel to be considerably more expensive. But hey, that's the way of the world...

Look out for a review soon.

Musical Fidelity's new stereo amplifier houses HDMI ARC and a built-in phono stage

You wait ages for new Musical Fidelity audio gear, and then two new devices turn up at once. This year's Bristol Hi-Fi Show is playing host to the B1xi stereo amplifier and B1xCD CD player, even though they're not set to launch for a few months yet.

The B1xi Class A/B amplifier has oversized transformers and 50 watts of power into 8 ohms, so should be able to drive most speakers without breaking a sweat. It has plenty of connections (including for a turntable and wired headphones) alongside Bluetooth wireless skills.

And the B1xCD? This too has a headphone input, plus a digital display, but otherwise not many details were made public. The B1x CD will likely cost around £599, and the B1xi around £699 – we'll bring you more info closer to launch.

Fyne Audio's mid-range F500S speakers aim for serious increases in sonic performance, not price

The new Fyne Audio F500S speakers sit above the F500 and F500E. The range comprises five models – two standmounts, two floorstanders and a mountable LCR unit.

IsoFlare driver tech is once again the order of the day, for improved stereo imaging. It's the same tech as found in the five-star Fyne Audio F501E, which certainly bodes well.

Each driver's low-frequency section uses a multifibre cone to create a natural sound, while the 'FyneFlute' roll surround should provide a clean transient response. Look out for them in the spring.

Day 2 is here!

Day one of Bristol Hi-Fi is done and dusted, but there's still two more days of the show to enjoy! On day one we say loads of great new products launch. We've got a full highlights reel incoming (make sure to check out our YouTube channel later). But until that's finished some highlights include:

WiiM's first integrated amp without any streaming capabilities.

A new Rega Brio amp with a DAC.

Musical Fidelity's new stereo amplifier.

The Apollo phono stage with a Muse power supply Michell.

Ruark's latest Sabre-R made quite the impression with their matching R610 music console

If you happen to be at Bristol either today or tomorrow, we'd advise you not to miss out on the Ruark Audio room located on the first floor. The British brand is currently showcasing its new Sabre-R standmounts coupled with its wood-clad R610 music system, a potent combination that we had the pleasure of hearing this Saturday morning. We'll need more time with the Sabre-R (and its R610 companion) of course, but the expansive, powerful and musical sound we heard emanating from what are still comparatively small units had us itching to discover more.

Our editor hunted down the top products from this year's

The Bristol Hi-Fi Show is always a daunting place to navigate thanks to the sheer volume of hardware on display. Which is why our editor took the time to race around the show with our video editor to capture the 11 coolest products worth seeing first at the show. These range from affordable new amps to powerhouse speakers.

These 7 speakers are the ones to keep your eye on

All the hard work has been done for you! Our hi-fi team have been trawling through each floor of the Bristol Hi-Fi Show to find the best speakers on offer. Here's what caught our eye.

• Ruark Audio Sabre-R 
• PMC Prophecy series
• Wharfedale Super Linton
• Wilson Benesch Horizon 
• Fyne Audio F500S
• Neat Iota II
• Morgan Acoustics Ten-12 

We haven't had the chance to get a lot of these into our test rooms, but from this initial introduction, we think these are the ones to watch. If you want to find out what makes these speakers stand out so much, check out the full story.

It's the final day!

We are in the final day of the Bristol Hi-Fi Show 2025 and what a show it has been. Since the event opened its doors two days ago we've seen everything from premiere amps, to cool new speakers appear, many of which are on display for the first time ever.

In case you missed the original news you can see a list of all the announcements in our Bristol Hi-Fi Show 2025 guide.

Or, if you're only interested in the most interesting items jump over to our editor's picks of the 11 coolest things he's seen at Bristol 2025.

If speakers are all you care about our hi-fi team's also penned a handy guide detailing the seven most interesting new ones they've seen at the expo.

If you're still at the show, make sure to pop by the What Hi-Fi? stand, say hi and check out our tech demo!

The LS3/5A were never meant to be heard by the public. The iconic BBC speakers were born out of the broadcaster's research and development department in the 1970s, whose engineers were tasked with designing and creating broadcasting equipment that the BBC needed but couldn’t source from external suppliers. 

In this instance, they were after highly accurate small monitors that could be used in the limited space inside the outside broadcast vans.

The BBC decided that nothing commercially available at the time was good enough for their needs, so the engineering division invested in a huge amount of research to find out what makes a good sound in speakers. Various speaker models were tested in scale model sizes, and that's how the renowned LS3/5A came to be.

Until this point, the concept of a small hi-fi speaker didn’t exist. You’re looking at fairly large cabinets for your average speaker before the 70s; the LS3/5A were attempts to get very high-quality sound out of shoebox-small nearfield monitors. Many of history's successful small speakers, such as the Linn Kan, numerous Spendor models, Harbeth speakers and the Neat Petite, to give only a handful of examples, owe their existence to these original LS3/5A speakers.

The BBC never actually made these speakers themselves. The corporation licensed out the specifications to various manufacturers, including Rogers Hi-Fi, Falcon Acoustics, Chartwell, Goodmans, Stirling, KEF and Spendor, while other brands, such as Musical Fidelity’s versions that we have been able to listen to, are inspired by those original R&D specs.

BBC’s research & findings: what makes a good-sounding small speaker?

What were the principles that came out of the BBC’s sound research? Firstly, they discovered that making a very rigid cabinet wasn’t very good for sound. If you make a box that’s too rigid, the resonance frequency – i.e. the frequency at which the cabinet resonates – keeps rising, falling into the midrange area where you’re more likely to hear its effect. Instead, if you make a less rigid box that’s heavily damped, it will resonate at much lower, bass frequencies, where the human ear is far less sensitive.

So the BBC decided to use cabinets with thin flexible walls and damp them heavily inside to move the resonance frequencies to the lower bass. The original LS3/5 speaker designs started with 9mm walls but changed to the now standard 12mm walls made of birch ply. The result? A lovely midrange, with a slightly plump bass.

The front and back panels of these early designs were also fixed with screws rather than glue, and this allows for a small amount of flex, compared with the more rigid design when the baffle is glued on.

We move on to driver material. At the time, paper cones dominated driver designs in speakers, but the BBC wanted to use a material that also didn’t ring or resonate as much and could be damped down. New plastics such as Bextrene and polypropylene were invented during this time, and they had exactly the light and rigid properties that the Beebs' engineers were looking for. 

The drivers in the original LS3/5A were a 110mm Bextrene mid/bass driver and a 19mm Mylar tweeter dome. These were originally made by KEF (T27 unit for the tweeter, B110 for the mid/bass cone) but are no longer in production. These days, you can buy various close-to-original reproduced parts of the LS3/5A speaker sold by Falcon Acoustics – a hi-fi brand founded by Malcolm Jones, a senior engineer at KEF who worked on those original drivers used in the BBC’s LS3/5a. (Hints of KEF’s BBC link are still present in the naming convention of their speakers today, from the LS50 standmount to the LSX wireless speaker systems.) The result of using a damped Bextrene cone? A really smooth sound, but it came at the expense of the punch and attack you tend to get with paper cones.

Thirdly, the LS3/5A is a small box, about the size of a shoebox. It has a five-litre cabinet volume with a small driver. It does deliver bass, but not a huge amount of it. The engineers introduced a small hump in the frequency response, at around the 100Hz mark – it’s not too deep, but this was to highlight any low-frequency problems or hums during the recording or transmission of a broadcast. It’s why, when listening to the Musical Fidelity LS3/5A, we found the amount or impact of bass changing from song to song – it depends on whether the song hits that 100Hz bump. This effect also adds richness to the voices, and it’s why the midrange sounds so full and appealing on these speakers.

Remember, these speakers were originally designed to monitor broadcasts in mobile units, with accurate reproduction of human voices, in particular, being the focus. The LS3/5A were only ever meant to be used by internal studio professionals – not for music or at-home listening. The other advantage of having screwed-on front and back panels was that the BBC pros could unscrew the baffle and quickly change the driver or components in case anything was faulty.

From research to reality: LS3/5A tech specs

The problem, if you can call it that, was that hi-fi enthusiasts who came upon the speakers really liked the way they sounded. Of the few models made available at the time, they quickly gained a reputation for their sonic talents, especially from such small speakers. And so it ignited not just a decades-long fascination with these original BBC speakers, but inspired many audio engineers to make their own small speakers – and they've never looked back since.

There are variations and versions of the LS3/5A models made, which is why you might find small differences in the specs of the LS3/5A speakers throughout the years.

But the essentials are: it’s a two-way closed-box design, with a 19mm tweeter and a 110mm mid/bass cone (although Falcon uses a 138mm cone), with a birch ply cabinet. The compact dimensions of the speaker measure 305mm x 190mm x 165mm (hwd). Early LS3/5A models were 15 ohm designs, while later ones were 11 ohm or 8 ohm designs. The frequency response measures 80Hz-20KHz (+/-3dB) and the crossover frequency is 3kHz. The weight of the speakers can range between 4.9kg to 5.5kg each today, while a variety of cabinet finishes are available depending on the manufacturer. 

The basic sonic character of the speakers, however, remains the same. 

It was this engineering research and subsequent speaker design that, in the UK at least, originated the idea of high quality small speakers that have been prevalent ever since. Small standmounters from PMC, Spendor, Linn, ATC, Epos, Wharfedale and many more can all trace their origins (and in many cases, the speaker engineer’s inspiration) back to the BBC, and while they don’t necessarily copy the same design principles as the BBC’s, we can find the fingerprints of the LS3/5A present in modern speakers. 

More recent examples include the Bowers & Wilkins 607 S3 (which have the near-exact-same compact dimensions) and the Neat Petite Classic (which prove you can have astonishing high-fidelity sound from tiny speakers).

Musical Fidelity LS3/5A: build & design

We haven’t been lucky enough to listen to the more reportedly faithful LS3/5A reproductions made by Rogers and Falcon Acoustics at any length of time, but we did spend several weeks with the new Musical Fidelity LS3/5A – not for a review, but for our own curiosity about what these LS3/5A-inspired speakers sound like. They were unveiled at High End Munich 2023 alongside the Musical Fidelity A1 integrated amplifier, a reimagined icon from the 80s. The speakers aren’t officially licensed by the BBC but are “manufactured according to the BBC R&D design 1976/29”
and adhere to the basic essential specifications we know so far. Ultimately, they are designed to deliver the original’s sonic signature. 

In person, it’s hard not to be charmed by the way these LS3/5A speakers look. The cabinet looks modest but is built and finished to a very high quality. It feels reassuringly solid and the finish in this particular Musical Fidelity edition is a rather lovely Palisander wood veneer, with darker black streaks running through the rich warm wood than a traditional Rosewood.

Contrasted against that are the functional drivers and utilitarian front panel. As with the originals, foam squares surround the tweeter to help damp reflections, while the velcro strips around the baffle edges are stapled on – and they’re not all entirely straight. The grilles that come with the speakers are plain enough and attach via velcro, but we leave them in the box during our time with them.

Next to the minimalist, sleek aesthetic of modern-day speakers where it’s practically a faux pas to see any fixings or bolts visible on the speaker’s fascia, the staples, foam and velcro of the LS3/5A are almost laughably workmanlike – but the speakers have their charm and we find ourselves endearing to them quickly.

The small footprint really is small. Measuring 30.5 x 19 x 16.5cm (hwd), the speakers can as easily be perched on desks and shelves as on dedicated speaker stands. As with most compact standmounters we test today, these speakers are easy to accommodate for small spaces, given time to run in and with care taken to position them well.

Musical Fidelity LS3/5A: sound quality

If the quality of the midrange, and how your hi-fi system reproduces and handles voices, is of utmost importance to you, then you might well fall in love with the LS3/5A. While not all-rounders and certainly flawed in some areas, they have a wonderfully natural way with voices. 

When we spoke to Andy Whittle of Rogers Hi-Fi in 2021, he said that the BBC speakers’ sound is “all about the vocal and the voicing. If it’s for an outside broadcast van and they are mixing, the vocals have to be 100 per cent spot on. If you get that right in the critical mid-band, the bass and top aren’t so critical. Get it right and you’re pretty much home and dry.” 

And that's exactly what we hear. The midrange is undoubtedly the star of the show here; voices, no matter in what song of what genre or recording quality, are delivered with a beautiful, natural quality that makes these speakers rather enchanting to listen to. 

Agnes Obel’s ethereal singing on her Aventine album shines through with delicacy and sweetness. Voices have character and texture; we cycle through Nick Cave, Taylor Swift, Bon Iver, Eminem, Portishead and more, and we don’t tire of listening to how well the LS3/5A relay every distinct voice. Play through some of our favourite piano tracks (classics such as Gnossienne No.1, Clair du Lune, or even Evanescence’s My Immortal), and the notes glide along in a tuneful manner that delivers the core essence of each track.

The speakers sound clear and smooth, with no harsh or bright edges, and they’re a dab hand at relaying the differences in recording eras and tone of the song. Compared with modern speaker standards, their timing isn’t entirely accurate and they prioritise frequency response over subtle, sweeping dynamics. But somehow, they don’t sound boring. 

Bassheads will undoubtedly miss the attack, scale and low-end prowess you don’t get with these petite speakers, but there’s a lovely quality to the sound it does deliver that keeps music-listening interesting.

That hump in the bass we mentioned before means it’s a lottery on when we'll hear an appropriately solid punch on songs. Outkast’s Ms Jackson was a limp bust; Eminem’s The Way I Am had surprising punch and intent. The bass on offer here is feather-light, but it is agile and nimble – Massive Attack's Angel isn’t anywhere near as deep and brooding as when heard through larger speakers, but it does make sense musically and hold our interest. 

Play heavy metal songs or Run the Jewels tracks, and we miss the slam and solidity that modern speakers are more capable of delivering. We expected the same when playing the Jurassic Park Theme, but, while we’d love to hear more low end authority and drive to the strings, those tuneful French horns, the way the orchestra flows as one, and the gist of the piece – they all come through rather sweetly through these LS3/5A speakers.

The integration between the drivers is decent, and while they won’t fill a very large room, they cope just fine with medium to small rooms. It’s a more focused spread of sound than wide open, but the imaging is very good.

There is just something about these speakers – they’re not the best in all areas of sound quality, but the areas that they are good in are worth the effort. Such is their talent with midrange, voices and piano (amongst other instruments) that their drawbacks didn’t stop us from listening.

Partnering with the right amplifier is key

We listened to these speakers in our dedicated, acoustically treated test rooms, and I was also able to take them home to see how they would fare in a much smaller, normal living room space. We had music playing from our Naim Uniti Atom Headphone Edition streamer and Cyrus CDi CD player, as well as the more modest WiiM Pro Plus streamer. 

Finding the perfect partnering amplifier that would complement the LS3/5A proved to be much trickier. We had a variety of stereo amplifiers in our test rooms at the time, so these speakers were plugged into our reference PMC Cor integrated, the Musical Fidelity A1, the limited edition Naim Nait 50, the Rega Brio and I also tried them with my mid-80s Mission Cyrus One amp at home. 

The ones that stood out are the A1 and Cyrus One pairings. Despite how small the speakers are and how low-powered the Musical Fidelity A1 amp is, we were confronted with a surprisingly authoritative sound. This combination was big and confident, full-bodied and smooth, even despite the speakers’ fairly low sensitivity. There’s not a lot of attack or drive, but this pairing leans into the easy-listening character of the LS3/5A in a pleasing manner.

Meanwhile, the Cyrus One is nimble and lightweight, articulate and precise with timing – and all these qualities complement the Musical Fidelity speakers’ richness well. The Cyrus does an admirable job of allowing the speakers’ strengths with midrange to shine, while bringing a touch of order, nimble bass and snappy timing to the pairing.

We thought that the Naim Nait 50’s enthusiastic, dynamic and lively character would work well with the LS3/5A, but – while their retro aesthetics look lovely together – they’re a mismatch in terms of personality. The LS3/5A struggle to keep pace with the Nait's boundless energy. We thought the Rega Brio might add some much-needed muscle and power to the speakers, but it drags down the delicate, light balance of the speakers – this pairing takes away what makes the midrange/voices sound so special. 

Ultimately, the pairing we liked most depended on our music tastes and the room the speakers were placed in. Our technical editor Ketan Bharadia preferred the Musical Fidelity A1 pairing for the fuller, more authoritative sound in a bigger room, while I preferred the Cyrus One partner for its speed, agility and clarity when used in a smaller room.

Our time with the Musical Fidelity LS3/5A speakers highlights just how important it is to match hi-fi products with the right partnering equipment – demoing and listening to different combinations to find the balance you like the most (and the compromise you’re happy to live with) will only give you a better picture of the strengths of our system.

If you have listened to any versions of the LS3/5A, do let us know what you thought about the sound, and if you own a pair, I'd love to know which amplifier you have partnered it with – let us know in the comments section below or on the forums.

Today’s small speakers are hugely capable designs that have been refined upon since the original BBC LS3/5A, but listening to the Musical Fidelity LS3/5A edition shows us exactly what it was that captured the engineers and audiophiles’ interest at the time. And despite knowing full well that there are better all-round and more accomplished speakers available now, we find the LS3/5A speakers have a particular charm that's difficult to ignore. If only they were going for cheaper retail prices (the Musical Fidelity pair costs £2349), I'd even consider buying a pair for myself...

MORE:

We asked top British hi-fi engineers for their favourite test tracks – this is what they said

That Was Then... Musical Fidelity A1 (1985)

Old amplifier vs new amplifier: does the best hi-fi stand the test of time?

Made in Britain: the biggest UK brands talk manufacturing, distribution and the future of British hi-fi

British brands have a long history of creating top of the range hi-fi equipment, including amplifiers, speakers, record players, and everything in between.

Many involved in the world of audio cite a unifying ‘British sound’ – an all-encompassing sonic quality that applies to the hi-fi products made by British companies. It’s a topic we have explored in the past, and the descriptions we heard were often along the lines of “accurate", "faithful" and "true”. 

Others pointed to changes in pop-music production in the 70s and 80s having shaped a certain British sound; but what do people think today? What is the British sound, and does it even exist?

“We have been asked this question before, and we don’t believe there is one,” says Simon Webster, sales & marketing coordinator at Rega. The Southend-on-Sea-based company has been building excellent hi-fi equipment for more than 50 years. 

“We work with multiple suppliers and design thousands of unique component parts,” Webster adds. “Our design signature has always been neutral and we do everything we can to design products and circuits that do not colour or distort the music. We aim to deliver the original recording as faithfully and accurately as possible.”

Peter Thomas, founder and owner of PMC speakers has similar thoughts. “I'm not convinced there is a British sound these days,” he says. PMC was founded in 1991 by Thomas after his time spent at the BBC, meaning he brought an incredible wealth of knowledge from a company that pioneered the loudspeaker industry.

“PMC has always made accuracy one of its main goals, which works for any country with any style of music.” He continues. “In the past, the compromises designers had to make were often geared to certain types of music and room designs. This often led to countries being associated with a particular sound.” 

Cambridge Audio, which was formed in the late 1960s, often states its opinion on the matter of British sound. On its website, the brand proclaims: “For us, ‘British Sound’ represents audio in its purest form. An unadulterated and true representation of what the artists intended when they first plugged in their gear at the recording studio.

“The Americans loved adding big, chunky bass to their recordings and the lovely folk in the far-east liked to boost their midrange to enhance vocal tracks” it goes on to say. “We Brits just wanted something honest and pure.”

The breadth of companies we have creating equipment in the United Kingdom means that we have quite a variety of sounds, a point that Stephen Oakes, the sales manager at Neat Acoustics touches on. Neat was formed in 1989 in the north of England and today produces several excellent speaker designs.

“I don't think there is a British sound!” Oakes says. “Some people associate the British sound with the BBC-style speakers from Rogers and Harbeth, but those designs have little in common with, for example, a Bowers and Wilkins product or Neat speakers. A Quad amplifier doesn't sound like a Naim, and a Rega turntable doesn't sound like a Vertere. There are lots of different ‘British Sounds’!”

This makes sense; with so many excellent brands vying for attention across the same categories, each company must display a level of variety, innovation, and differentiation to stand out from the crowd and capture an audience of its own.

Like Neat, Wilson Benesch was also formed in northern England in 1989. The brand is now known for making exceptional high-end audio equipment. “A Wilson Benesch loudspeaker sounds like no other,” says Luke Milnes, sales and marketing director for the company, echoing the same sentiment as Oakes. 

“The Wilson Benesch sound is characterised by its neutrality, speed, dynamics and its ability to faithfully communicate a recorded piece, be it a full orchestra or a solo vocalist," he adds. "Every loudspeaker we make is hand built and fitted with our drive units and tweeters which are also built in-house from our designs.”

James Luce, the creative director at Acoustic Energy comments, “Every product and manufacturer will have its flavours in the recipe, but the emphasis should always be on reproducing the recording as faithfully as possible.” He goes on, “I'd say the British Sound would be rooted in accuracy and an even-handed balance of the full musical range.” The company was founded in 1987 and has been based in the Cotswolds since the mid-90s; it acknowledges its links to the area by naming its most recent speaker Corinium, the Romans' name for Cirencester.

So, the experts have spoken. Rather than an overarching sound that applies to all the great British brands, we instead see more of a focus on faithfulness and accuracy. As a result, companies end up with a unique sound that distinguishes them from the rest of the crowd. 

Perhaps in the past, the UK had a more unifying sound due to the production limitations of the time. However, as processes change and companies set their course, we the listeners reap the rewards from a variety of exciting products that, in the end, each offer something different to suit different needs and tastes.

MORE: 

Read all of our British Hi-Fi Week 2024 reviews, retrospectives, features and more

We asked top British hi-fi engineers for their favourite test tracks – this is what they said

9 of the most underrated British hi-fi products we have ever tested

Yes, I’m well aware that it’s British Hi-Fi Week, but as What Hi-Fi?’s TV & AV Editor, I couldn’t resist cramming some home cinema action into our coverage.

It should come as no real surprise that the British brands responsible for some of the best hi-fi speakers in the world are also purveyors of quality surround packages, but did you know that one of the best AV receivers that money can buy is also from a British company? You do now. Or, more accurately, you will once you’ve scrolled down to read this round-up of the best home cinema products made by British hi-fi brands.

Wharfedale Diamond 12.3 HCP – £1299 / $2025 / AU$4122

Wharfedale has generally shown more commitment than most of its hi-fi peers to home cinema speaker systems, and the results speak for themselves: the brand took home three speaker-package gongs at the most recent What Hi-Fi? Awards alone.

Of those Award-winners, it’s the Diamond 12.3 HCP that we are flagging here. Using excellent stereo speakers in a surround package is no guarantee of success, but it certainly helps, and this package features two excellent pairs: the five-star Diamond 12.1 and Award-winning Diamond 12.3.

In a surround package such as this, the centre and subwoofer often feel like an afterthought. Not here, though, as the 12.C centre and SW-10 sub more than play their part, delivering clarity and tuneful weight respectively. All told, this is a classy and composed system with detail and dynamics for days, and it’s unbeatable at this price.

Read the full Wharfedale Diamond 12.3 HCP review

Bowers & Wilkins 606 & 607 S3 speaker package – £2496 / $3799 / AU$3947

Like the Wharfedale package above, this B&W package features two pairs of excellent stereo speakers. As the name suggests, the stereo speakers in question are the 606 S3 and 607 S3, both of which are current Award-winners that we love for their clarity, detail, spaciousness and all-round entertainment value.

Thankfully, these music maestros are not let down by the HTM6 S3 centre or ASW608 sub with which they are partnered in this system, and that translates to an awesome movie experience.

In fact, in our review, we wrote that ‘we find ourselves grasping at straws when it comes to finding things to complain about, as the Bowers & Wilkins 606 and 607 S3 Surround Speaker Package is nothing short of spectacular in the sonic department’. You can’t get much higher praise than that.

Read the full Bowers & Wilkins 606 & 607 S3 speaker package review

Arcam AVR31 – £5799 / $5250 / AU$11,495

AV amplifier land has been dominated by Denon for years now, but Arcam has recently proved that there is room for a sound-first, features-second AVR at the most premium end of the market.

Not that the AVR31 is exactly a slouch in the features department: it’s got umpteen HDMI 2.1 ins and outs, support for every sound format you are ever likely to need (and many you never will) and one of the best DACs in the business. Some people, though, will be put off the AVR31 because it has only seven channels of amplification, so going full Atmos requires the addition of extra amplifiers. You can buy a Denon AVR with more amplified channels than the Arcam for about a fifth of the price.

But it’s not the number of channels that matters, it’s the way you use them, as Arcam would almost certainly never say, and the AVR31’s premium credentials are made crystal clear through its sound, which combines delicacy and power like Blade Runner’s Roy Batty.

Read the full Arcam AVR31 review

Fyne Audio F8SP AV – £10,999 / $14,999 / AU$24,000

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again; the centre is arguably the most important speaker in a surround system. Yet, time and again, speaker manufacturers bundle their big, brilliant floorstanders with a weedy, undernourished centre that makes dialogue hard to decipher and robs the overall system of its cohesion.

That’s not something that you have to worry about with the Fyne F8SP AV package, though. Its F57SP-8 centre speaker is a beast that has clearly been carefully designed and tuned to be a perfect match to the gloriously imposing, five-star-rated F502SP speakers.

“The front three full-range speakers are almost disarming in their precision and speed, adding a tangible layer of excitement to action sequences and making nearly every sudden move in horror films unbearably unnerving,” we said in our review.

The F501SP floorstanders used as surrounds don’t quite match the other speakers tonally, so we would consider upgrading these to another pair of F502SPs if you have the money and space. The twin subwoofers aren’t the very best in class either, so you might want to consider specifying a non-Fyne alternative (or two!) there as well. Even as it comes, though, the F8SP is an incredibly entertaining speaker package.

Read the full Fyne Audio F8SP AV review

Q Acoustics 5040 5.1 Home Cinema – £2475 / $3595 / AU$5199

Q Acoustics is such a fixture of the British hi-fi scene that it’s easy to forget that the brand has only been in existence since 2006. Over the past 19 years, it has shown a real dedication to producing seriously good surround sound packages that feature its seriously good stereo speakers, and the 5040 5.1 Home Cinema is just the latest of those.

The Award-winning stereo speakers in question are the Q Acoustics 5040s that give this package its name. They feature as the front-left and -right speakers, with a pair of 5010s as surrounds, a 5090 centre and QB12 subwoofer.

Despite the use of different speakers throughout, the system produces a really cohesive sound that’s also packed with energy, detail and dynamism. The soft, modern look of the speakers will appeal to those for whom the straight edges and wood finishes of traditional hi-fi don’t appeal.

Read the full Q Acoustics 5040 5.1 Home Cinema review

Ever wondered what an industry expert's home hi-fi system looks like? Perhaps an extravagant set-up with stacks of separates, multiple sources and endless cable runs? Or maybe something much simpler – perhaps just a pair of active speakers to deliver hi-res music streaming?

Well, look no further, as we have spoken to five names from home-grown hi-fi brands as part of our British Hi-Fi Week 2024, and they've been kind enough to share what equipment they are currently using at home.

In a similar vein, you can also find out which test tracks some of the top British hi-fi engineers use when tuning products – and there's a playlist for you, too.

• Check out all the British Hi-Fi Week reviews, features and playlists

Peter Thomas, PMC founder and owner

"I love vinyl and I'm using two turntables, a Michell Orbe and a Vertere SG-1, plus a third for my 78rpm collection, an old Garrard 401. My preamp is a Bryston BP17 with two Bryston 7B Cubed mono-block amplifiers. CD playback is via a Mark Levinson 390S, and I use a Studer B67 tape deck for my tape collection with the PMC Fenestrias as my main loudspeakers."

Simon Webster, Rega sales and marketing coordinator

"Unsurprisingly it is all Rega, I use a Planar 6 with Ania Pro MC cartridge, a Fono MC MK4 phono stage, Elicit MK5 amplifier and I have an older set of transmission line Rega RS7 loudspeakers, which I love."

Stephen Oakes, Neat Acoustics sales manager

"I have an Atoll ST300 streamer/preamp and AM300 power amp hooked up to Neat Majistra loudspeakers. I also have a Funk Firm turntable and a Cyrus CDt-XR CD transport, but through sheer idleness, I mostly just stream from Qobuz or Tidal these days. The rack and stands are Lateral Audio and the cables are by Chord Company."

Luke Milnes, Wilson Benesch sales and marketing director

"Wilson Benesch A.C.T. 3zero loudspeakers with an original Wilson Benesch Turntable. Trilogy Audio System’s 994 Monoblock amplifiers and 914 valve preamplifier, along with a Ypsilon VPS-100 Phono Stage."

James Luce, Acoustic Energy creative director

"I currently use a pair of Acoustic Energy AE1 Active speakers paired with a Bluesound Node streamer/preamp, and a Samsung Galaxy S23 with Tidal as the main source!"

MORE:

We asked top British hi-fi engineers for their favourite test tracks

The biggest UK brands talk manufacturing, distribution and the future of British hi-fi

9 of the most underrated British hi-fi products we've ever tested

It's British Hi-Fi Week, meaning the spotlight is on iconic British audio brands, so who better to talk to than Bowers & Wilkins? We spoke to What Hi-Fi? alumnus turned Director of Product Marketing and Communications, Andy Kerr, about everything hi-fi, home cinema and even TV. We know it's hi-fi week, but I'd be remiss not to sneak in a hint of AV. 

So before we get stuck in, let's do a crash course on Bowers & Wilkins' (or B&W as it is commonly referred to) history. Before it became the titan of hi-fi, home cinema, headphones and car audio that we know today, the company began life as a radio and electronics shop. Established by John Bowers and Roy Wilkins after the Second World War, the shop soon became the base of operations for Bowers to begin tinkering with audio equipment. 

In 1966, Bowers started B&W Loudspeakers Ltd, and a year later the company's first commercially available speaker was launched, the P1. Since then, the company has been at the forefront of British audio innovation, and it has earned its fair share of Awards in the process.

In fact, it took home 2023's What Hi-Fi? Product of the Year in both the standmount speaker and home cinema speaker package categories, which brings us nearly to the first point of our conversation. 

Do you believe that a good stereo speaker package always makes for a good home cinema speaker system?

With the 606 S3, 607 S3 and 606 & 607 S3 speaker package taking home Awards, it's evident that the prowess of the individual stereo pairs is integral to the success of this system as a whole. However, it's not quite as simple as that, as Kerr informs us there's actually a secret ingredient that ties home cinema packages together, and it's right under our noses.

"The key to an effective multi-channel system is the cohesion from speaker to speaker," says Kerr. "The stereo pair designer focuses first and foremost on the integration and cohesion of left to right, but there are sometimes challenges with the centre speaker." The centre speaker is, therefore, what Andy Kerr believes to be the key to a home cinema speaker system's success. 

The trouble is that, as Kerr points out, the most cohesive systems use the same speaker in all positions, which isn't completely feasible for every set-up. Furthermore, a vertically oriented centre speaker simply would not work as it would block the screen, meaning horizontal is the only way to go. While this isn't necessarily the end of the world (we're yet to see a home cinema package that doesn't include a horizontal centre channel) it does pose questions about sound dispersion characteristics. 

So what's the answer? Kerr informs me that a lesson that B&W learned about 15 years ago is that "it's really important when developing home theatre packages out of stereo pair packages to tune as a coherent three". Changes in the design of centre channel speakers have been made since the brand's 2010 offerings, with the tweeter moving from a central position to a higher position, no longer in line with the mid/bass drivers. The goal here is to "better align the image from the left and right speakers that are on either side of it".

Ultimately, "The centre channel is the key," according to Kerr.

To what degree do you consider home cinema when creating stereo speakers?

"We do, absolutely," Kerr assures us, but the answer is more complicated than that. In reality, says Kerr, it depends on different markets and demands from consumers. Kerr is quick to point out the ever-increasing popularity of soundbars, more on which later. 

B&W creates a dedicated centre speaker for each series, including the 600, 700 and 800 Series of speakers, meaning each can be configured into a home cinema speaker arrangement. There are also equivalent-level subwoofers for each speaker series.

While B&W doesn't hone in on either just hi-fi or home cinema use with many of its speakers, it develops speakers to work with both categories – you could say the best of both worlds. Kerr tells us there is a "develop together and share common technologies" ethos that allows for B&W's speakers to be used for both hi-fi and home cinema use cases.

That being said, B&W does offer specialised custom installs for dedicated home cinema use, but as the name suggests they're customised to specific home theatre builds, and they're rather premium. 

Can a soundbar ever compete with a full home cinema speaker package?

Forgive me for asking this, because we already know the answer truthfully; but we always like to hear what individuals in the industry think of soundbars. Kerr has his own insight, stating that it depends on the room and the expectations of consumers. 

"I think a modern soundbar is a significantly more sophisticated and complex beast than we were making 15 years ago," he says, and we'd certainly agree with Kerr in this regard, as soundbars now come with more features than ever before. "The introduction of side-firing and upward-firing elevation drive units and Dolby Atmos," is what Kerr makes note of here, as these features can be easily implemented into a soundbar; less so on a surround sound system, of course.  There are also the benefits when it comes to space saving and budget too. 

That all being said, the sound it produces is very much dependent on your space. Kerr notes the positioning, ceiling height and distance to walls can all factor into the sound performance, and ultimately a soundbar can only go in one place; under your TV. 

As we expected, Kerr agrees that "the most convincing depiction of a home cinema experience is real speakers in real locations in a room". He furthers that sentiment by saying that it will "probably stay like that for quite a period of time because nothing quite beats that direct radiated presentation". He values the ability to precisely place a speaker in the correct position that will maximise sound quality over features such as phantom speakers (which a lot of soundbars use) that emulate the existence of speakers to produce surround sound.

However, Kerr does recognise the difference between enthusiast and non-enthusiast consumers, and the latter is where the soundbar market exists. Convincing someone who doesn't want to fill their room with speakers that a home cinema speaker package is worth it is no easy task, especially from a manufacturer standpoint. 

Soundbars might not be sonic equals to home cinema speaker systems, but perhaps we shouldn't look too harshly upon them for that. 

What was the inspiration behind the titanium dome tweeters on the 606 and 607 S3?

Bowers & Wilkins has experimented with various materials in the past when it comes to constructing tweeters within its speakers, with titanium being the latest development. Kerr explains that B&W has been exploring the use of titanium dome tweeters for around 16 years, and that its benefits over the use of aluminium mostly centre around distortion reduction. 

Its stiffness is similar to aluminium which, as Kerr explains, impacts its pistonic behaviour. This means it moves up and down in a more regulated and consistent pattern, much like its piston namesake. Moving in a linear way is important, as if the driver bends or flexes in use, then it will distort the sound. 

"The problem with titanium [is that] it was quite a lot heavier than aluminium, and that meant a significant impact on mass and therefore sensitivity. That created problems for the likely typical consumer that was looking into buying into the 600 Series of loudspeakers, as they tend to use more modestly sized amplifiers. So an insensitive pair of loudspeakers at that price didn't make sense, so we stayed with aluminium and worked to try and refine it."

Considering the 600 Series' price point and stature, we're certainly glad that B&W held off on advancing the material used in the 600 Series' dome tweeters until the time was right. Kerr continues to explain how the construction of the dome tweeters in the 600 Series played an integral part in deciding the material used. 

The dome tweeter is actually constructed from two pieces, an inner dome that is lighter and thinner, and a dome ring around that which is slightly heavier and thicker and reinforces the inner section. Adapting that idea from the older models with aluminium drivers to titanium was no small feet of engineering, as Kerr explains that the new dome is the thinnest that the company makes. 

At just 25 microns, the main portion of the dome is lighter and more sensitive, solving the roadblock that B&W came across when it first began experimenting with titanium in regards to compatibility with budget amplifiers. B&W also use a 30-micron ring around the titanium driver in order to reinforce it, thus reducing distortion. 

Another benefit of titanium is its improved behaviour when it comes to damping; referring to how aluminium can react dramatically to signals, which can lead to a brightness to the tonality of the sound. Titanium, on the other hand, retains the resolution and detail of the aluminium dome, but tends to sound smoother and more refined. 

The major inspiration behind moving to titanium is the change in standards around amplifiers. Kerr explains that, "Back in the 1990s, when the 600 Series were first developed, nobody was using Class D amplifiers," with a greater proportion of people using Class A/B. That has shifted in the last 15 years, with more people using cheaper mainstream amplifiers. The problem with that is that the 600 Series speakers are "quite revealing". The thinking here, then, was to create a speaker that sounds as good with a budget amplifier as it does with a larger Class A/B unit. 

As a British hi-fi company, what do you think 'British sound' is?

Kerr importantly first notes that it's important to remember how well connected the British hi-fi industry is; each company understands how their products interact with one another, and many use products from other brands based on their specialities.

Onto the notion of British sound itself, Kerr highlights the importance of "rhythmic musicality, rather than something like sound pressure levels or scale".

"We don't sit there and try to extract a particular element of the music. It's not all about the bass, for example, but it's how does it cohesively come together in such a way that makes my foot tap?" The importance here is not on hitting certain figures, but instead on making speakers that connect the listener with the music. Listening enjoyment is put first and foremost, which Kerr affirms is a mantra for many British hi-fi brands such as Rega and PMC. 

"Does it sound like real people, playing real instruments, in a real room, and do I feel like I'm listening to real musicians? Does it sound musical? Our emphasis is driven on that – we don't try to hit, for example, the target curve."

"What we're saying is when listen to it and when we measure it, do we enjoy it? Do we like it? Does it feel like what it’s delivering is, what we refer to as the 'true sound of the performance'?" Kerr infers that an authentic and musical sound reproduction is a high priority when B&W develops speakers.

"British sound, to me, is driven by a nation that loves music culturally. A nation where music is written strong and hard into the DNA of many, many thousands, if not millions, of people by music and by hi-fi. We've got a really powerful, influential music scene that's connected across the world and I think people here value music perhaps disproportionately higher than certain other people in other parts of the world," states Kerr, and frankly we couldn't agree more. 

MORE:

Check out more of the latest news, reviews and features this British Hi-Fi Week

Read our full Bowers & Wilkins 607 S3 review

And our B&W 606 & 607 S3 surround speaker package review

It is fair to say that Leema Acoustics hasn’t been the most prolific of late. Quantum is the brand’s first new range in over a decade, and at the moment consists of the Neutron preamplifier and Graviton power amplifier we have on test here, with a CD player called the Electron and a Positron music streamer to be added soon.

Unusually, given the generally international nature of electronics manufacturing, both these components are designed, engineered and built at Leema’s factory in Wales. We were surprised to find that the company even goes as far as making its circuit boards in-house rather than buying them from specialist OEM suppliers as most rivals do.

The engineering and design of these Quantum products borrow heavily from Leema’s flagship Constellation series. Any cost savings are made by reducing the complexity of the casework and simplifying the circuitry. Commendably, Leema has refused to compromise on component quality, with the Neutron and Graviton using many of the same parts as their upmarket siblings.

Features

While we’ve quoted the package price, it is possible to buy the preamplifier and power separately for £1500 (around AU$3330) each. You get very well-specified products for that money. The Neutron preamp is packed with useful features from a switchable moving magnet/moving coil phono stage to a DAC section with a 32-bit/384kHz-capable ESS Sabre 9018 chip at the heart of it. DSD256 file compatibility is also on the menu. The phono stage is said to be a clone of Leema’s award-winning Elements Phono, so the signs are good in an area where most manufacturers care more about ticking a box than producing truly great sound.

There are five line-level analogue inputs (including a balanced XLR) alongside three opticals, three coaxs and a USB (Type B) input. The provision for outputs is equally generous with two single-ended RCA stereo, a balanced XLR plus dedicated Tape and Subwoofer connections. Let’s not forget about the 6.3mm headphone socket on the front panel that’s powered by a dedicated amplifier circuit rather than just a feed from the preamp’s output.

The Graviton is a simpler beast, as power amplifiers usually are. It offers a single pair of stereo RCAs and balanced XLR inputs, as well as single-ended outputs that allow the user to daisy-chain another Graviton and bi-amp their system. This is a useful upgrade path that, in our experience, can work well. Even so, we doubt many will need to double up on power amplifiers, as even a single Graviton is something of a beast.

It is a powerful Class A/B design that is claimed to output a hefty 150 watts per channel into an 8 ohm load and a generous 260 watts per side as impedance halves. This should be more than enough to get high volume levels from any price-compatible speaker. There are two sets of speaker binding posts per channel; these are connected in parallel and included to make bi-wiring speakers a little easier.

Build & compatibility

We have no issues with the build quality of either component. Both feel solid and well made even if they are obviously products of a small company rather than a multinational behemoth. These products have a functional aura about them rather than luxurious, and we are fine with that. One thing to note about using either of these units is that their power buttons light up when the products are in standby mode and turn off when they are active.

The plastic remote is a small and simple affair. It covers the basics of volume, mute and input selection and proves satisfactory in use. As with the preamp itself, there is nothing flashy here.

Amplifiers at this level need to be partnered with good sources and speakers if they are to shine. We use our usual Naim ND555/555 PS DR music streamer, Technics SL-1000R/Vertere Sabre MM record player and ATC SCM50 speakers for the bulk of the testing, and use Ortofon’s Quintet Blue and Kiseki Purpleheart moving coil cartridges to stretch the phono stage. PMC’s Prodigy 5 floorstanders are also pressed into service to see how the Leema pairing copes with different characters of speakers and Chord’s 2go/2yu streamer is on hand to feed the Neutron’s range of digital inputs. Our MacBook Pro laptop (loaded with plenty of high-resolution files and Audirvana music-playing software) is used as a second USB source.

We haven’t come across many similarly priced pre/power combinations in recent years, so our comparisons are restricted to the Award-winning integrated duo of the Naim Nait XS 3 (£3499/$3999/AU$5250) and Rega’s excellent Aethos (£3300/$5395/AU$6995). Both are hugely capable one-box solutions, but neither offers the flexibility or range of features of this Leema pairing.

Sound

Given a few days to settle, the Neutron/Graviton pairing delivers some fine results. We start with the line-level inputs and are impressed by the scale and authority of the amplifier’s presentation. The Leemas sound big and brawny, capable of thumping out rumbling bass with gusto. Listen to Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar OST and it is hard not to be impressed by the power and composure of the amplification. There is plenty of detail too, and it is rendered with subtlety rather than artificially highlighted with hardness and sharp edges.

In our experience, Leema’s products tend to aim for neutrality and balance when it comes to tonality, and that’s the story here. The Neutron/Graviton combo sounds even and refuses to spotlight any specific part of the frequency range. This amplifier combo is decently refined but has enough transparency to show any flaws in the recording or source, so partner it with care.

Stereo imaging is a strength. This duo delivers a large and expansive soundstage that is crisply focused. They certainly do enough to make the presentations of both the Naim and Rega integrated amps sound relatively small. We love the Leema’s composure when the music gets complex, as it does in the frantic Cornfield Chase, and their ability to keep things organised in such circumstances. 

Are they exciting enough though? We start having some doubts when we listen to the track Coward. This is a dramatic piece that begins with a quiet menace underpinned by deep, brooding rumbles of bass that is slowly augmented by a relentless metronomic beat that drives the music forward. That steady beat is soon joined by swelling strings, hard-charging percussion and organ that together communicate the sense of danger and urgency of the scene in the film where this music is used. The Leema pairing manages to convey this to a degree, but switching to either the Naim or Rega shows that the pre/power doesn’t tap into all the excitement and tension present in the recording. While the two-boxer is happy to flex its muscles with hard-hitting crescendos and subterranean lows, it doesn’t quite communicate the momentum as well as its integrated rivals.

We investigate further when we switch from the line-level inputs to the phono stage. This is switchable from moving magnet to moving coil in the Neutron’s set-up menus and gives a good account of itself. There isn’t much in the way of noise and the gain levels are well chosen for our range of cartridges. 

The phono input mirrors the line stages when it comes to general character, with particular attention paid to detail resolution and tonal balance. It is insightful enough to stand up to the better outboard phono stages below the roughly £500/$600 mark. As we listen to Bob Marley’s Catch A Fire set we still want a bit more in terms of energy. It seems that the Leemas are more than happy to let the listener analyse a recording but a little less able to capture the emotions communicated in the music. Stir It Up lacks a little of its playfulness while the pain embedded in 400 Years is a touch diluted.

The story remains the same through the digital inputs. Pleasingly, there is real consistency between the USB and the SPDIF (coax and optical) inputs, and that isn’t always the case. The Neutron’s DAC shifts between file types without issue and retains the character of the analogue inputs. We’re equally positive about the way the headphone output mirrors the sonic signature of the preamp’s line output.

Curious about how they perform individually, we split the Neutron/Graviton pairing to see if either partner excels with non-Leema products. Of course, much depends on the partnering equipment chosen, but swapped with our vastly more expensive reference Burmester 088/911Mk III duo, we find that, surprisingly, it is the preamp that comes across as marginally the more transparent and expressive component of the two. The Graviton power amp is always big and powerful but lacks a touch of delicacy in comparison.

Verdict

We have to applaud Leema on launching a pre/power combination at a price that most rival companies only manage to field integrated designs. The Neutron/Graviton pairing certainly offers more than such rivals when it comes to flexibility, features and upgrade potential. It has many sonic strengths too, but perhaps suits those that like to analyse the music more than those who simply want to wallow in it. 

SCORES

• Sound 4
• Build 4
• Features 5

MORE:

Read our review of the Naim Nait XS3

Also consider the Rega Aethos

These are the best stereo amplifiers

It is British Hi-Fi Week and, in celebration, we have dusted off both the What Hi-Fi? magazine archive and, we confess, a page from whathifi.com to revisit some of the more bizarre, amusing or simply interesting advertisements from the British brands you love – from Arcam to Acoustic Energy and more.

It's always fun to take a nostalgic look back, of course; even better when, sometimes, we can genuinely say that things are better now than they used to be...

Forget Black Friday, let's bring back Unilet Hi-Fi's Blue Murder sales. Goodness knows what fatal anarchy occurred during the in-store rampages of the retailer's Blue Murder I, II and III events, but a month-long hi-fi sale does sound worth spilling blood over.

Guilty. We ran some questionable adverts ourselves within our pages – this one starring a member of staff who, like so many others, is now firmly ensconced in the dark side that is PR (hi Tim). But it is true, we did (and do) bring the bass to your place. And the tunes to your rooms. Or something.

Why is the advert referencing the common misquote in Casablanca, or perhaps a Woody Allen film? Why, in a magazine containing hi-fi reviews, would you want to dismiss them as 'just an opinion'? What relationship does that have to an ape? Why is said ape wearing a Superman t-shirt (that we now want to own)? We want answers and we want them now, Superfi.

Wait, that's not hi-fi. While this Superkings advert from an '80s What Hi-Fi? issue doesn't glorify cigarette smoking as much as some adverts of old, the World Health Organisation would no doubt have rather we stuck to promoting hi-fi brands, retailers and product.

Now this one takes us back to the early 1980s – as well as bringing up far more recent memories ("you're fired" etc).

Alan Michael Sugar Trading did a wonderful job of bringing relatively high tech to the masses, as clearly highlighted here in a double-page spread that covers fairly comprehensively all the budding hi-fi aficionado – and executive, of course – could possibly desire from their new set-up.

As we asked ourselves when coming up with our 10 strange and striking hi-fi adverts from the 1980s, what could be a better advertisement for hi-fi than the prospect of some hot and heavy penguin love? For Mordaunt-Short, there was clearly nothing better. Now excuse us while we go chill to some Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

This sneaky bit of indirect comparative advertising does rather remind us of a Lidl or Aldi campaign. Credit where credit's due, Wharfedale is responsible for some of the most interesting hi-fi print adverts over the decades.

What a tease, and a clever bit of marketing that may have put Tannoy fans off any spring purchases. Fair play, though; we can't help but think that if Apple put out something of this titillating nature today, the whole internet would be ablaze with interpretations and guesstimations within minutes. 

Linn was another perpetrator of amusing, and often metaphoric and random, adverts – and it even snapped up the ape before Cadbury got its hands on him.

If Owen Wilson ever wanted to play the role of a tough guy, he might need to create one of these adverts for himself. Dual, so famous for its turntables, clearly felt the need to shout about its other, much less renowned foray into electronics.

"Over the years he'll take your cat, your hard-earned cash and years off your life. Do you really think it will be any different with your Arcam?" A little morbid perhaps, but an affective Arcam (and anti-children) campaign nonetheless. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, we'd probably pass in inheriting that beast of a remote these days.

And here is another Arcam ad, this one from a little earlier in the company's history, when it was still known as A&R Cambridge. We're not quite sure what they are driving at here, but they clearly feel the company has a rosy outlook. (Sorry...)

We certainly hope he is – and of course these AE100s lived up to past Acoustic Energy successes. "The finest small speakers we've tested," we said in October 1995.

To echo our sentiment in our 10 weird and wonderful hi-fi adverts from the 1970s, Celestion's multicultural (but perhaps not quite politically correct) series of adverts is certainly something to behold. The "world of sound" is what Celestion seemed to be offering, even if the terminology seems a little hackneyed.

Celestion's Home Theatre in a Box not only promised 101 per cent sound (sigh) but also your own movie set without the need of "a degree in engineering or a Spielberg-sized budget"!

• British Hi-Fi Week reviews and features
• The 8 best British DACs of all time
• All the British entries in the What Hi-Fi? Hall of Fame

The man called ‘David Bowie’ was a recording artist between 1966 and 2016; Brixton’s David Jones tried and failed to have a hit single for a few years before he changed his name, and it would be the early 70s before he achieved anything approaching success. After that, though, the dam broke, and Bowie became a) the world’s premier gender-bending art-rocker, b) an inspiration to any number of subsequent musicians, c) a composer and performer of several genre-defying singles and albums, and d) shorthand for the sort of combination of ‘commercial appeal’ and ‘artistic integrity’ that most recording artists would conceivably kill for.

And on top of that, he was always profoundly concerned with the sound, and the texture, and the colour of his recordings, a fiend for an unusual arrangement, and extremely judicious in the people he chose to collaborate with – especially studio personnel. All of which makes many of his recordings excellent for revealing the secrets of the system that’s playing them.

Picking the dozen ‘best’ recordings from a career as long and varied as David Bowie’s is not only an exercise in futility, it’s a sure-fire way to start arguments and ruin friendships. So instead we have picked 12 tracks that will really let your headphones or speaker system show you what they’re made of.

• Listen to the best David Bowie tracks on Tidal

The Bewlay Brothers (Hunky Dory, 1971)

Close-mic’d acoustic guitar, front-line vocal that’s considerably closer-mic’d than that, and some oddly treated organ and bass form the basis of the deeply unsettling closing track from the 1971 album that almost, but not quite, brought Bowie to mainstream attention. The gentle ebb and flow of the arrangement and its instrumentation are a proper appraisal of a system’s ability to track minor harmonic variations, and the moments of attack (“oh, and we were gone”) test dynamic potency too. 

Most of all, though, this recording will give your system’s midrange resolution a thorough examination thanks to the occasional vocal double-tracking, the odd voice effects and background vocal lines – and that’s before you get to the “please come away” coda that sounds like a playground game in the most sinister primary school imaginable.

Buy Hunky Dory on Amazon

Lady Stardust (The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, 1972)

Bowie may have created a character of mascara'd androgyny who had apparently fallen to Earth in order to preach kinky sex and glam-rock redemption, but at no point during the course of the Ziggy Stardust album did he take his eye off the ball. The songs, without exception, are bullet-proof juggernauts – and even when, as with Lady Stardust, they are tenderly contemplative, they still feature hooks strong enough to hang an elephant off. 

This tune will test low-frequency speed and tonal variation, soundstaging, midrange fidelity (of course) – and when the chorus (which is robust enough to have been a football terrace anthem in another life) kicks in, stereo focus, separation and dynamic headroom all get a workout too.

Buy The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on Amazon

Cracked Actor (Aladdin Sane, 1973)

If you like your crunch and grind as crunchy and grind-y as possible, you have come to the right place. This extraordinarily libidinous cut from Aladdin Sane (a lad insane, geddit?) manages to out-Stones the Rolling Stones while remaining only and utterly a David Bowie recording, from the arch vocal delivery to the remarkable aggression and feedback of Mick Ronson’s guitar. If your system can’t fully describe the overdrive of the guitar sound, the almost tangible dirt under its fingernails, Cracked Actor loses a stack of its attitude – and on top of that, there’s low-frequency speed and momentum to be maintained too. 

Soundstaging needs to be sufficient to make the whole piece hang together as a singular performance, and midrange projection must allow the squealing harmonica some space in which to do its thing – even though it sounds like it’s barely keeping its head above the swampy, murky water.

Buy Aladdin Sane on Amazon

Stay (Station to Station, 1976)

During the couple of years Bowie spent in Los Angeles he developed a) an epic cocaine habit, and b) a theory of ‘the squashed remains of ethnic music… written and sung by a white Limey’. Both in equal measure inform Stay, a sweeping, warped dancefloor-friendly powerhouse of heroic ambition performed by a team of crack musicians. Rhythmic expression and positivity are key here, so control and intensity of both the low frequencies and percussive sounds at the opposite end of the range must be keen. 

The midrange here is mostly a scrap between desert-dry rhythm guitar, abrasive lead guitar and double-tracked vocal – only decent separation and focus will prevent them from collapsing in on themselves. And unless your system is capable of creating a convincing sense of scale, the breadth of the arrangement will lose a ton of impact.

Buy Station to Station on Amazon

Always Crashing in the Same Car (Low, 1977)

Newly enchanted with the idea of ‘European Man’ in general and the exciting new sounds of Germany in particular, Bowie decamped to Berlin, hooked up with Brian Eno (as well as long-time producer Tony Visconti) and created some of his most innovative, progressive music so far. The squalling, chilly, heavily treated sound of Low in general and Always Crashing in the Same Car in particular will severely test a system’s tonal response – especially the treatment on the drum kit, which came courtesy of an Eventide H910 Harmoniser which, according to Visconti, “fucks with the fabric of time”. 

The processed electronic sounds involved in this recording demand that your set-up is able to describe attack and decay with certainty, as well as being alert to the harmonic variations that are apparent throughout.

Buy Low on Amazon

Beauty and the Beast (“Heroes”, 1977)

In some ways, Beauty and the Beast is recognisable as pop music – it follows the verse/chorus/middle eight/chorus template pretty closely, after all. But then you realise that in 1977, no one else’s pop music sounded remotely like this – the brutality of the sound, the alienation and disconnect that’s tangible in the vocal performance, the overall sense of otherness. 

So what, in all honesty, is your system supposed to do with it? Well, there’s the backing vocal to be spotlit and its attitude to be revealed, the tacky tonality of the piano to be expressed, the gimpy rhythm to be gripped and subdued – and that, really, is just for starters. This is a recording that is seemingly determined to shake itself to pieces, and it’s up to your set-up to hold it all together.

Buy Heroes on Amazon

Fashion (Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), 1980)

By now, Bowie’s influence is such that any number of imitators are slapping on the make-up, demanding increasingly outlandish hairdos and adopting outrageous ‘gor blimey missus’ London inflections in their singing voices – but not one of them has a hint of his star-power, of course. It’s a state of affairs made only too plain by Fashion, an effortlessly classy slice of funk-rock punctuated by a Robert Fripp guitar line that sounds like animals fighting. 

The production is widescreen and complex, with a great many transient details to be revealed by your system – or ignored, if your system’s not up to it. The sinuous bassline is strongly opposed to the terse midrange punctuations, and if it’s going to glide as it should then your set-up has to have iron-fisted control of the lowest frequencies.

Buy Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) on Amazon

Absolute Beginners (Absolute Beginners OST, 1986)

The 80s were not exactly kind to David Bowie – he spent too much time second-guessing himself and worrying about how best to repay the absolutely enormous advance paid to him by new record label EMI America, and consequently, inspiration was at a premium. But when the pressure was off, as it was when composing the main theme to a film in which he was only too glad to accept a role, he remained capable of transcendence. 

A 60s-inflected slice of big-chorus pop music, Absolute Beginners rides on a bed of tambourine and piano – but the terse saxophone inputs need to be delivered with all their punch and blare intact, just as surely as your system needs to deliver all that character and attitude in the vocal harmonies. And the 114bpm tempo should just roll.

Buy Absolute Beginners OST on Amazon

Hallo Spaceboy (1. Outside (The Nathan Adler Diaries: A Hyper-Cycle), 1995)

“You’re released but your custody calls” – having finally emerged from a decade-long struggle for relevance, David Bowie launched a comeback with all arty-farty guns blazing. Co-opting the punishing industrial sounds of the likes of Nine Inch Nails and taking some inspiration from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, the 1. Outside album sounded like a blast furnace – and Hello Spaceboy was where its metallic attack combined with certainty of vision most effectively. 

What’s your system’s tonality like? Can it handle the pounding, the noise, the grating and droning? And most of all, what’s it like at teasing out the details from the depths of a foggy, opaque mix? If the answer to these questions is “not much cop”, this recording is going to sound like nothing more than a motorway pile-up.

Buy 1. Outside (The Nathan Adler Diaries: A Hyper-Cycle) on Amazon

Seven Years in Tibet (Earthling, 1997)

There was more than a hint of the ‘trendy uncle at a wedding reception’ in the drum’n’bass inflections of Earthling, but despite the over-earnestness, the album contains some of Bowie’s strongest writing in years. Seven Years in Tibet is – as a trendy uncle might say – an absolute banger, combining a great arrangement, a bomb-proof melody and a tangible sense of commitment. Ideally, it should be reproduced by a system with good insight and decent powers of detail retrieval, one that’s able to keep a close eye on the more minor events at the edges of the soundstage. 

This is a recording that is built from a lot of very disparate sounds, so your set-up will need to be able to unify it into a single piece – because otherwise, it could easily sound like a lot of discrete occurrences.

Buy Earthling on Amazon

I Would Be Your Slave (Heathen, 2002)

There aren’t all that many outright love songs in David Bowie’s body of work – but here’s one, and what a humble, vulnerable and heartfelt love song it is. There’s a delicacy and tenderness to I Would Be Your Slave that’s strongly at odds with the power-packed muscularity of his output from the previous few years – which means your system needs to exhibit deftness, manoeuvrability and a lightness of touch to allow the exposed and unguarded nature of the recording full expression. 

Midrange resolution in particular gets a thorough examination here, and the gentle dynamic variations in tone and texture need identifying if the song’s not going to sound rather one-note and expressionless. This is a late(r)-period gem, and deserves to be heard as such.

Buy Heathen on Amazon

★ (Blackstar, 2016)

He knew he was dying, of course, and with hindsight it’s obvious he intended to go out with his boots on. ★ is a restless, rich and thoroughly strange recording, ambiguous in a very deliberate way – nothing Bowie had recorded in the 21st century had prepared anyone for just how determinedly peculiar this song (and the album from which it’s taken) is. 

And just as it’s difficult, even now, to get your head around, it will put your set-up through the wringer in every respect. Tonal and textural variation, big dynamic upheavals, flinching electronics and strident jazz-inflected horns, a stage that’s full to bursting and a mix that delights in throwing wrong turns at the listener… there is no such thing as a full-system workout in a single song, of course, but this comes a lot closer than most.

Buy Blackstar on Amazon

MORE:

Our playlist of the best British rock songs to test your system

Prefer The Beatles? Here are the best songs from The Beatles

Or kick back with our list of the best Pink Floyd songs to test your hi-fi system

Britain is big on hi-fi. And there are some famous British hi-fi firsts we think are well worth shouting about, especially during our British Hi-Fi Week. 

But before we get into it, let it be said, you have to hand it to the Americans. When it comes to sound, they did an awful lot of the pioneering work. The first record player – American; the first amplifier – American; the first headphones – American; the first loudspeaker – American. You get the idea.

So we thought we’d better give British audiophiles some ammunition in case you ever find yourself in a heated discussion in a US bar. The good news is, we have plenty to shout about...

• Check out all of our British Hi-Fi week reviews, features and news

Microphone (1877)

Before the microphone, there were no audio recordings to listen to, so its creation is arguably the most significant in hi-fi. As it goes, it’s American Thomas Edison who holds the 1877 patent but historians credit the microphone’s invention to a Brit by the name of David Edward Hughes, who successfully demonstrated his creation at the Royal Society some time earlier, picking up and magnifying the noise of insects scratching inside a sound box.

Hughes’s ‘carbon microphone' was developed for telephony. It used a layer of loosely packed carbon granules sat in between two plates with a constant direct current through the assembly. One plate was a very thin diaphragm that was pushed by the source soundwaves, bringing the two plates closer together, periodically compressing the granules. This causes a change in resistance, modulating the current, which is recorded electrically as a sound signal.

Carbon microphones gave way to condenser mics and eventually the dynamic microphones we mostly see today, but there are still carbon mics in use in certain settings, such as chemical plants and mining operations where higher voltage equipment cannot be used. And there’s no doubt that it was Hughes' invention that was the granddaddy of them all. So that's one for the Brits.

The moving coil driver (1898)

If you thought that the dynamic loudspeaker was invented by Americans Edward W. Kellogg and Chester W. Rice in 1924, then you’d be absolutely right. It was and what the pair came up with is very much the ancestor of what we use in hi-fi listening today. 

But, if Kellogg and Rice were able to see far, then it’s because they were standing on the shoulders of giants – one of whom was Briton, Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, who gained a patent for a moving coil loudspeaker in 1898; a coil connected to a diaphragm suspended in a strong magnetic field.

Lodge’s cone loudspeaker which he called the ‘bellowing telephone’, was the first of its kind after fellow Brit, Alexander Graham Bell, had created an audio ‘transmitter’ for his telephone in 1877. In those days, of course, there was very little recorded music, which is why it took more than 20 years for Lodge’s idea to be refined, completed and popularised.

Fortunately, Lodge was able to keep himself busy with the invention of the tuning radio, something which he disputed with the Marconi Company until 1912 when Marconi bought Lodge’s radio patent and gave him an honourary mention as ‘scientific advisor’ in its creation. He also liked to keep fit while wearing a suit. You can see the original Lodge Loudspeaker in the Science Museum in London.

Stereophonic sound (1931)

Eat that, everywhere else. A Briton invented stereo. In 1931, Alan Blumlein of EMI was at the cinema with his wife when he decided he was going to fix a problem with sound during the old ‘talkies’ films. With everything recorded and played back in mono, you would often get the jarring situation where the actor you were watching was on one side of the screen, yet their voice was coming out of a speaker at the other, creating a disconnect between their body and dialogue.

Blumlein began experiments in what he called ‘binaural sound’ and lodged a patent in December 1931, which was successfully awarded in June 1933. It included recording two channels in the walls of a single record groove sitting at right angles to each other, 45 degrees from vertical. The first stereo discs like this were cut in 1933.

In 1934 Blumlein recorded the London Philharmonic Orchestra playing Mozart's Jupiter Symphony in stereo at Abbey Road Studios in London, which you can listen to here. He also shot the first ever film in stereo sound called Trains At Hayes, a clip of which you can enjoy above.

Despite the obvious success, EMI decided to shelve Blumlein’s work on stereo, stating that it had no immediate commercial potential...

Electrostatic loudspeaker (1952)

Electrostatic speakers are a little different to the more conventional cone-based, electrodynamic variety. Their goal is still to move a diaphragm backwards and forwards to create acoustic waves but the way that that force is generated is different.

It’s not about voice coils and magnetic fields. Instead, a statically charged, lightweight diaphragm sits within a high voltage electric field, which is created by two electrically conductive grids on either side. The audio signal is fed into those grids and, as the current changes, so does the electrostatic field between them. This then causes a changing force on the diaphragm, which moves it back and forward accordingly. With the whole moving surface lightweight and all actively driven, electrostatic speakers can have an incredibly clean, minimally distorted and dynamic sound.

Of course, this isn’t supposed to be a physics lesson, it’s a history one – British hi-fi history to be precise. It was Cambridgeshire-based Quad Electronics that made this history when its founder, Peter Walker, unveiled the world’s first full-range electrostatic speaker in 1956 – the Quad ESL-57.

The ESL-57 used an ultra-thin stretched Mylar sheet for the diaphragm, with perforated plates either side with a potential difference of up to 10,000 volts! Their high transparency and ultra low distortion led them to be used as studio monitors at Philips and the BBC. They weren’t without their drawbacks – reliability, scale and the lack of a serious bass response – but it doesn’t seem a bad deal for just £52.

Demand for the ESL-57 was such that it stayed in production until 1995. Quad still manufacturers electrostatic speakers today, albeit considerably more refined than that first and original generation.

Two-way speaker (1962)

Why have one driver doing all the work, when you can create more specialised units to reproduce certain frequency bands with more care and precision? That was radio engineer Frank Thistlethwaite’s thinking when he took the idea to the founder of Wharfedale, Gilbert Briggs, in 1947. 

Thistlethwaite had seen crossover networks used in cinema sound to divide the frequency spectrum between two or more loudspeakers. He set up a demo using Wharfedale speakers and the results were so good that the idea to produce the first domestic two-way speaker was born.

Quite a few years later, after plenty of engineering challenges around size and financial viability, the twin-speakered Wharfedale Corner Cabinet was born. It used a 10in W10/C drive unit for the treble, with a sensitivity up to 18kHz, and a W12/C for the bass, which bottomed out at 40Hz. The crossover took two grown men to lift. 

The cabinet itself measured 42 x 25.5 x 18.5in and weighed 90lbs. It was shaped to sit in the corner of the room where the walls could “act as reflecting planes and improve low note radiation by 100 per cent”. It was made from solid mahogany or solid oak – in any shade, to order – and cost over £48, which is closer to £1400 in today’s money. Like them or loathe them, it's kept crossovers in loudspeakers ever since.

Computer-analysed speaker production (1973)

It’s not easy to nail down which hi-fi company started using computers to make their products first, but British born KEF claims its 1973 Reference 104 speakers as the first mass-market speaker engineered using digital measurements taken with a computer. Each pair that came off the production line was measured and matched to the lab reference that the engineers had worked on, hence the 'Reference' part of its title.

KEF had borrowed the computer equipment from HP in 1971 and was so pleased with how it had gone that the company invested in its own Hewlett-Packard Fourier Analyzer in 1975.

Now armed with computer measurements, KEF began creating simple computer simulations to consider the interaction of the driver and the crossover, meaning that it was the first time a crossover was designed to take that into account. It was the KEF Reference 104aB, in 1976, that was the first to benefit, which seems to make it the first loudspeaker designed using computer simulation.

Some time later another British hi-fi company, Celestion, was involved in its own pioneering computer analysis work, more specifically focused on drive unit design. In 1982 they developed a laser Interferometric system so that they could observe the breakup behaviour of loudspeaker cones. It's not likely that Celestion was the first to use computers in driver design, though, as Sony was also working on similar lines in the late 1970s.

Above is a picture of the KEF Reference Model 105 speaker which, in 1976, was another of the first phase of loudspeakers created with computer-assisted design. It worked out as a modular three-way speaker with a separate, heavily-dampened enclosure for each drive unit. A 12in bass driver housed in a 70-litre closed cabinet sat at the bottom, with the B110 midrange and T52 high frequency drivers above. It was successful enough to spawn several later versions including the KEF 105/3, rated as one of the best KEF products of all time.

• A history of KEF speakers, from the K1 to the Concept Blades

Hi-res digital audio (1996)

Hi-res music files are nothing if we can’t hear them and for that you need a hi-res-capable DAC. Who was the first to make one of those? A British company, that’s who.

It was dCS who pioneered the hi-res space by launching the first ever 24-bit/96kHz-capable analogue-to-digital and digital-to-analogue converters. These were the dCS 902 and 952, which soon begat the dCS Elgar, launched as the first DAC designed for domestic use. Not long later, it also became the world’s-first 24-bit/192kHz-capable DAC, owing to a subsequent firmware update.

It was designed by Allen Boothroyd, design director at Meridian Audio, and creator of the outer cover for another British marvel, the BBC Micro computer.

Audiophile Portable DAC (2006)

Think of a DAC and the name Chord Electronics won't be far behind. While the Kent-based company wasn't the first on the scene, it's certainly taken the idea and run with it.

It was the first to supply high-end amplifiers to George Lucas’s Skywalker Sound, the sound division of Lucasfilm; the first company to supply the BBC with a modern audiophile amplifier for professional use. It was also the first (and only) hi-fi company to supply audio micro-systems to Google in the shape of 500 Chordette, which were made for Google executives.

What's more, Chord was the first to create a transportable and rechargeable reference-quality DAC so that audiophiles could enjoy top-of-the-line listening wherever they went – the Chord Hugo.

The Hugo – because hu-go anywhere with it (yes, really) – arrived in 2014 and quickly received the What Hi-Fi? five-star seal of approval, later picking up a Best DAC What Hi-Fi? Award in 2016. We loved its fantastic detail, dynamics, its Bluetooth connectivity, superb timing and organisation, and, of course, its portable design.

The Hugo has since been usurped by the Hugo 2, the Mojo and more, and there are now other companies who have got in on the portable DAC game – but it was Chord who got us moving first. 

Well done, Chord – and every British audio brand with a vision. We salute you, and long may it continue.

KEF Metamaterial Absorption Technology (MAT)

Anyone who’s ever heard the startling clarity and crispness of KEF’s remarkable LS50 Meta loudspeakers will understand exactly why we dubbed them worthy of a place in our coveted pantheon of 2022’s award-winning products.

What makes the LS50 Metas truly special is hinted at in the name. The superb speakers utilise something called Metamaterial Absorption Technology (MAT), hence the ‘Meta’ aspect, an incredibly smart piece of innovation that has given KEF the edge in the hunt for razor-sharp audio fidelity.

In layman’s terms, MAT is a solution to sonic rebound. Whenever a cone vibrates, sound fires into a chamber behind the dome, and while much of this sound is absorbed by damping materials, some energy always rebounds back through the dome, creating unwanted fuzz and distortion.

This is where KEF’s remarkable innovation comes in. The MAT is essentially a small disk-shaped device crisscrossed with rivets and channels, a bit like one of those ball-in-the-hole puzzle games you played with as a child. The sound feeds into the maze of channels and tubes, each one tuned to absorb a wide range of sonic frequencies far more effectively than a single block of damping material. 

This results in a far more sophisticated, faithful audio experience at the higher ranges. The MAT can absorb frequencies from around 600Hz upwards, reducing distortion and giving a cleaner, less deformed high notes. So effective is the technology that we felt its implementation in the LS50 Meta made the company’s previous five-star R3 speaker sound “congested and ham-fisted in comparison.” A serious leap towards outstanding sonic clarity.

MORE:

We asked top British hi-fi engineers for their favourite test tracks – this is what they said

The British hi-fi Hall of Fame: every British entrant from the last 48 years

Made in Britain: the biggest UK brands talk manufacturing, distribution and the future of British hi-fi

Check out all of our British Hi-Fi week reviews, features and news

Anyone with a love of hi-fi has a selection of test tracks ready to pull out at any given opportunity – be that for new kit they’re auditioning or to simply to show off the best abilities of a system they’ve already lovingly put together. 

For the hi-fi engineers tuning the speakers and hi-fi separates that make their way into your home, these test tracks are all the more important. And while the overarching advice for the best test tracks remains to pick songs that you know inside out, it’s always interesting to hear about new music that might help to push your system in new ways – or even show up areas where it could be improved.

As part of British Hi-Fi Week, we’ve spoken to British engineers from some of the industry’s most respected hi-fi brands to find out a few of their favourite tracks to listen to when tuning kit, and why.

"Put it into a playlist!" we hear you cry. Well you're in luck. You can check it out on Tidal here – though do bear in mind that some picks may be of specific vinyl pressings or album versions and we've included details of those when mentioned. Have a listen and keep reading for all the reasons behind the engineers' picks below.

David Bosch – senior research & development engineer, KEF

Laura – Bat For Lashes

This track has tremendous vocals and a piano melody that is excellent for gauging the tonal balance of a speaker, as well as any resonances in the upper bass and lower midrange – we’ll want to get rid of that for a truly realistic reproduction of voices. Finally, the recording is great to gauge a speaker’s ability to recreate a holographic image of the singer in the listening room.

The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea – Brendan Perry

This track has a very satisfying low rumble for a bassline and a panning percussion that is also excellent for tonal balance perception. In particular, this song doesn’t forgive a tweeter that’s being used harder than it should, due to a poorly designed crossover. Perry’s vocals are also potent, well centred and a great way to tell what’s going on that’s good (hopefully) or wrong in the low-to-mid crossover region.

Alan O’Rourke – managing director, Ruark Audio

Bluesville – Count Basie

From the opening piano and basslines, to the orchestra each taking their part, this is a gem of a track with wide-ranging dynamics that – on a good system – should absolutely swing and have your feet tapping.

Mary Magdalene – Meshell Ndegeocello

A wonderfully produced and recorded album with each track a gem, but I particularly like Mary Magdalene, which has a wonderful rolling bassline that underpins the entire track. If there are shortcomings in a system's dynamics and bass performance, this track will show it.

Mother Nature’s Son – The Beatles

I’m not sure of how this recording came about, but it’s only on Anthology 3 and it features Paul McCartney singing and playing on his own. It’s obviously quite an old recording, but with no added overdubs or effects it’s a beautifully natural recording and should sound so if your system is up to scratch.

Touraj Moghaddam – CEO, Vertere Acoustics

This Ain't No Game – Elles Springs

This record was half-speed cut and mastered by Miles Showell, and transferred from the original 1/4" tape by him too. I know the artist, know the recording and the master and can always directly compare to the source that Miles cut the record from to understand just how close we are to the original – you can't beat that.

Rough Ride – Paul McCartney

Flowers In The Dirt is probably one of the best albums by Paul McCartney and this track is one of my favourites. It has excellent dynamics with quite intricate playing of all the instruments, not the least bass and drums.

Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14, H. 48: IV Marche Au Supplice (“March To The Scaffold”) – Berlioz (The Utah Symphony Orchestra, Varujan Kojian)

This is an amazing recording and production with huge orchestral dynamic range, where – on good kit – every instrument should be easy to follow and hear its contribution to the whole.

Roy Gandy – co-founder and owner, Rega

Willow – Joan Armatrading 

At Rega, we don’t listen to the “sound” of our equipment, but rather listen for the intricacies of an artist’s performance, or the discernibility of complex musical arrangements. If we can correct any issues here, any issue with the sound is automatically corrected.

One of the earliest test tracks I can recall using for this, which we still use today, is Willow by Joan Armatrading from the 1977 album, Show Some Emotion. It’s a beautiful performance, arrangement and recording, which makes it easy to spot any issues in the sound reproduction.

I Want To Break Free – Queen

If you’re looking for something more upbeat to test your system, this is a great one, and needs little introduction. However, if you're looking for this on vinyl, be careful to only choose the 1991 pressing of the Greatest Hits 2 – many other versions of this song are less well pressed.

Philip Budd – head of acoustics and mechanical engineering, Linn

Idomeneo: Quanti Mi Siete Ontorno – Padre, Germani, Addio! – Mozart (Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Christian Baldini)

This album – Mozart: Opera Arias And Overtures – is beautifully recorded, and the whole orchestra is perfectly laid out, which is a great check for imaging.  The soprano in this track is powerful enough to highlight any and all issues in the midband, while the swing from piano to fortissimo allows a deep insight into any power compression.

Brothers In Arms – Dire Straits

Mark Knopfler’s vocal and guitar are wonderfully present in the mix and the drums are as clean as a whistle. If you want to check for tweeter resonance or over-hang, listen out for the rim-shots.

The Man With The Red Face – Meute

Plenty of impact in both the horns and drums, it’s great for checking the low frequency timing. There’s a lot of harmonic information in the horns as well, to check the midrange to low-frequency balance.

Chameleon – Trentemøller

Quite simply, can the system take the bass?

Nick Clarke – managing director, Cyrus

This Woman’s Work – Kate Bush

A great female vocal track, and a fabulous demonstration piece that you can’t help but be impressed by on a well set-up system. Pay attention to the gentle start and then how a system handles it as the track builds to a more complex ending, without going into harshness.

Déjà Vu – Roger Waters

Well recorded and exceptional production values with great attention to detail – there are lots of micro-details and subtle sound effects in the background that could almost be missed on lesser systems. Also listen for how well your system conveys the age and roughness in Waters’ voice.

Nine In The Afternoon – Panic! At The Disco

While not many people seem to use live recordings for demos, I think they have huge value in terms of showing the real performance – imperfections and all. Beauty is in the imperfections and most live tracks have a lot of beauty! It’s the job of the system to “get out of the way” and reproduce the music as it was performed, and in my opinion a live recording can really show that.

Leigh Evans – product QA engineer, Cambridge Audio

Spoons – Rudimental

The punchy beat and impeccable timing of this track make it perfect for testing. The energetic and rhythmic elements, characterised by a dynamic interplay of drums and bass, allow me to evaluate any system's ability to deliver a tight and impactful low-end response. The precision in timing and the intricate layering of electronic elements make it an ideal choice for assessing the hi-fi system's capability to reproduce intricate details and maintain a cohesive and well-timed musical experience.

Me And Your Mama – Childish Gambino

This track has plenty of diverse sonic elements that challenge a system's performance. The song's low frequencies are robust and deep, providing a thorough examination of the hi-fi system's bass response, while the track's vocal range, from smooth crooning to intense moments, allows me to assess the control over vocal harshness. The complex arrangement, featuring a fusion of genres and intricate instrumentation, serves as an excellent benchmark for evaluating the system's ability to reproduce detailed and dynamic musical compositions with clarity and fidelity.

Masquerade/Why So Silent – The Phantom Of The Opera

I use the song from the original cast recording of The Phantom Of The Opera because it offers a rich and dynamic audio experience. The track features a multitude of instruments, from sweeping orchestral arrangements to intricate solos, allowing me to assess the system's ability to reproduce a wide range of musical tones. Additionally, the intricate vocal performances and the juxtaposition of quiet and loud passages in the song help me evaluate the system's capacity for nuanced and detailed playback, ensuring a comprehensive assessment of its hi-fi capabilities.

Peter Comeau – director of acoustic design, IAG

Who Will Comfort Me – Melody Gardot

This track swings relentlessly. If it doesn’t have you jogging about in your listening seat and tapping your toes there’s a lot wrong with your system. There’s a lot going on in the mix, but it should all gel together. Melody should sound as though she’s in the room, having fun, kicking up her heels. Watch out for the sibilance which should be part of her voice and not spitting out of the speakers!

Corcovado – Jim Tomlinson featuring Stacey Kent

This opens with Stacey phrasing the intro just with piano accompaniment and she should be in the room with you if you just close your eyes. A double bass soon picks up the rhythm – make sure you can follow every note – while the percussion is so understated you might miss all its delicate detail if your system is not able to pull everything together. Jim’s sax underlines and expands on the melody and should have plenty of breathy presence.

Just A Little Lovin’ – Shelby Lynne

This has everything, from its opening percussion to the entry of the bass and, of course, Shelby Lynne’s emotional vocal immersed in a wave of reverb. The dynamics are surprising and should catch you out, the percussion should have excellent attack and the bass must be firm, solid and extended. But, most of all, the emotional pull and swing of this track should have you sliding off the sofa gracefully!

Jan Ertner – electronics design lead, Audiolab

At Seventeen – Janis Ian

In this wistfully emotional song, Ian recalls her own teenage years and tells a story of struggling to fit in socially and romantically. Timing is crucial here – if your system’s bass is not taut enough, the leading edges not crisp enough and the timing not ‘on point’, the song falls apart and its emotional potency is lost. Ian’s vocal is critical too, of course, with a suitably expressive midrange essential to ensure every word of her beautiful lyrics hits home.

Wheel Of Fortune – Hans Zimmer

Written for the second Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, Dead Man’s Chest, this composition by film score maestro Zimmer is an extraordinary test of large-scale dynamics and contrast. Clarity, soundstage, bandwidth and dynamic range are all tested to the extreme by this piece.

Lee Taylor – co-founder, brand ambassador and lead engineer, Leema Acoustics

Blind – Korn

This track from Korn’s eponymous debut album in 1994 is particularly useful for testing amplifier headroom, and was used in the development of our new Quantum-range amplifier, the 150-watt Graviton stereo power amp. It has to be played loud!

You Look Good To Me – Oscar Peterson

Peterson’s track is a very natural and detailed recording, with particularly nice low-level detail. Listen carefully and you can hear the bass player putting down his bow before changing to finger-style playing.

It Don't Mean A Thing – Chuck Brown And The Soul Searchers

This is a 1931 composition by Duke Ellington and is considered a jazz standard, which eventually made it into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It’s a great live track with brilliant timing. If your toes don't start tapping, something’s wrong.

Matt Bartlett – managing director, Chord Electronics

Save Me – k.d. lang    

This track has so much to offer anyone involved in testing audio equipment. It’s a brilliantly polished production, with layers of rich vocals and multiple instrumental tracks all woven into an enormously inviting soundstage. It enables the listener to assess image solidity, soundstage width, height and depth, as well as discerning a variety of instruments in a complex mix. The 24-bit/192kHz high-res version is a treat, too.

Tiny Foldable Cities ­– Orbital

Chord Electronics’ amplifiers are renowned for their transparency, timing ability and transient delivery, and electronica can be a particularly useful tool to provide a workout. Fellow men of Kent, Phil and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital, are a go-to for energetic electronic music and Tiny Foldable Cities is a handy track for assessing dynamics, low-frequency handling and detail clarity.

The Man Machine (Live) – Kraftwerk

Our love of music-making and live music brings us to this version of The Man Machine, which is a real test of capturing the ‘live’ sound: the venue, the atmosphere, the crowd and, of course, the music. There is some astonishing low-frequency detail to uncover, plus all the precision and detail that comes with any Kraftwerk production.

Bob Surgeoner – founder, Neat Acoustics

Hold On – Tom Waits

The gravelly voice of Tom Waits is not to everyone's taste, but I like it because he seems to really inhabit the characters in his songs. Hold On places his voice in stark isolation to the complex musical arrangement around him. There is a mix of guitars, banjos, percussion and old plumbing pipes, which he apparently reclaims from his local scrapyard. The choruses are enhanced by a subsonic bass note which can be difficult to resolve, but when its right, it's right.

All The Pretty Little Horses – Barbara Dickson

While she's better known for her top twenty hits and musicals, Barbara Dickson started her career as a folk singer, and this is a track from that time. With a very simple arrangement – vocal, double bass, and one ride cymbal – it's a great track for judging the weight and timbre of Danny Thompson's double bass, and voicing the speaker to highlight Dickson's crystalline voice and the ambience around it.

Chitlins Con Carne – Kenny Burrell

An instrumental blues-based jazz piece from the 1960s heyday of the Blue Note label, it's a sparse arrangement of drums, percussion, double bass and tenor sax played by the very best musicians of the era, with Burrell's Gibson L5 guitar front and centre. The guitar is played with a flat pick and, when reproduced correctly, you can almost feel the pressure of the pick on the strings. More important, though, is capturing the 'groove'. When a system gets it right, the momentum and pace of this track is something very special indeed.

Alan Gibb – managing director, Chord Company

Can’t You See – The Marshall Tucker Band

Recorded in 1973, this great American southern rock track incorporates elements of blues, country and jazz. The band played live constantly and this track shows it. The song starts quickly with lots of layers and instruments for your system to make sense of. Usefully, it shows differences quite easily.

Grace Has A Gun – Katie Pruitt

This country tune is very well put together, technically. Katie’s vocals are very expressive: again, it’s a good song for sorting out differences and spotting problems. Plus, it’s a good song in its own right.

Violin Concerto in D Major Op. 61: 1. Allegro, Ma Non Troppo – Beethoven, played by Itzhak Perlman

My favourite violinist and favourite composer; I have listened to this for years. Any improvement I make to my system makes this piece of music even more enjoyable – the violins and strings in particular are very demanding of even the best system.

Conrad Mas – founder and owner, AVID Hi-Fi

Looking Into The Eyes Of Love – Alison Krauss & Union Station

With many audio products, there’s a sense that they ‘run out of steam’, typically on sustained and elevated vocals and, in this track, Alison’s emotional and powerful voice makes the hairs truly stand up. Initially used to develop AVID’s phono stages, it has become my go-to track to make sure there is no suppression or distortion, especially on tough female vocal crescendos within our amplification. 

Mediterranean Sundance ­– Al Dimeola, John McLaughlin, Paco DeLucia

Dynamic speed and instrument separation is critical in any musical rendition – drawing you into the music, it creates the width and depth of the acoustic soundscape. This is our test track for a cartridge’s ability to trace the groove, our amplifiers’ dynamic abilities and our loudspeakers’ capability to resolve fast transients, so that you’re left breathless with a lifelike rendition.

Hotel California – Eagles

Anyone familiar with a live concert knows that when the bass kicks in, you feel it in the chest as well as hearing it! Great bass performance from a loudspeaker is achieved by the amplifier having a large power supply and current reserves, and with this track, we make sure our amps deliver that punch when the kick-drum thunders in, so it’s not just music, but a musical experience.

Jack Menadue – acoustics engineer, Q Acoustics

Is It A Bird – Elbow

A brilliantly produced and high-quality recording featuring raspy male vocals, deep bass notes and a lovely saxophone near the end of the track. This track is a great mix of features and instrumentation to demonstrate speakers across the bandwidth and highlight the lower midrange and bass regions. 

Through The Eyes Of A Child – Aurora

An excellent recording of a brilliant female vocal performance. The performance crescendos into a wide soundscape of harmonies with underlying piano and bass notes. A very soft detailed track to showcase the female vocals in the upper midrange as they glissando through a wide vocal register.

Jon Jeary – electronics engineer, Goldring and QED

Babylon Sisters – Steely Dan (from the original 1980 MCA pressing of Gaucho)

This track is extremely well recorded and retains much of the dynamics of the original master tape, so it allows us to get a really good overview of what a cartridge is capable of – particularly on coping with transients and providing a good stereo image.

In the chorus section comes a really good test of trackability and sibilance rejection when the backing singers sing the word “sisters” very high in the mix. We are looking for a clean delivery of the “esses” with no hint of distortion. As it is the first track on the LP, the groove is travelling fastest so it offers the best frequency response and lowest distortion.

Something To Believe In – The Steve Miller Band (from the original 1973 Capitol Records pressing of The Joker)

I have been listening to this track since it was first released, so when I test a new cartridge, I have memories of every type of record player with which to compare its delivery. As it is the last track on side two, the groove is moving slowest and so the inner groove distortion is at a maximum and frequency response is at a minimum. However, since the track is recorded with its full dynamics intact and is a very clean and smooth country song, any mis-tracking of the stylus is unmistakably brought into sharp relief.  

A Swingin’ Safari – Bert Kaempfert And His Orchestra

This is a superb recording and features a live orchestra in a top studio space mic’d up by an expert – Bert Kaempfert – to reveal an incredible stereo soundstage. With cable testing, we are listening for subtle changes to the soundstage and I particularly focus in on the position of the strummed acoustic guitar and the timing and separation of electric guitar and bass guitar.

Mat Taylor – head of product, dCS

Angel – Massive Attack

The opening track from Massive Attack’s third album is full of brooding menace that positively explodes halfway through the song. Listened to at near speaker-damaging levels, the result is both scary and disturbing, requiring a system that has real control while reproducing the powerful bass and explosive dynamics.

Save Me – Joan Armatrading

Brilliantly recorded analogue production by Glyn Johns, the CD remaster is one of the very few that has preserved the dynamics and tonality of the original recording. A cast of brilliant session musicians fills this track with sensitive playing, providing just the right support for Joan’s dynamic guitar and honest emotional vocal delivery. A good system should highlight the vivid enthusiasm and connection between the performers.

Claude’s Girl – Marika Hackman

From a first album full of imaginative ideas and genres, this deceptively simple song wonderfully captures Marika’s delicate guitar playing and ethereal voice. The better the system, the easier it becomes to appreciate the delicate layers of vocal and reverb that make this both poignant and captivating, while allowing yourself to become immersed in the sheer beauty of the performance.

Acoustic engineering team, B&W

Mother Nature’s Son (Anthology 3) – The Beatles 

This is an early rough-cut version of the song – take number two (there were 25 eventually) – and its composition is much simpler than the eventual release on the White Album in 1968. Featuring just Paul McCartney’s voice and his acoustic guitar, you’ll struggle to find a more immediate and real-sounding piece of recorded music – from the sheer presence of the performance to the ambience of Abbey Road Studio Two, and the spoken contributions of the engineers in the control room.

Blue Train – John Coltrane

Many consider Blue Train to be John Coltrane’s defining recording – including Coltrane himself – and he was re-joined for it by the rhythm section from his former collaborators in the Miles Davis band, alongside tyro trumpeter, Lee Morgan. The result is a stupendous album, at once dazzlingly complex and extraordinarily tight. You’ll struggle to pick out one demo track among the classics, but title track Blue Train is clearly the most well-known, so start there. Timing and resolution are all-important assets to make the most of this blistering performance.

You Look Good To Me – Oscar Peterson

First recorded in 1964, this outstanding recording is a masterpiece of high-resolution technique. This version of the recording, remastered by George Marino at Sterling Sound from the original analogue master tapes, allows you to hear every aspect of the performance – listen out in particular for the resolution in Ray Brown’s wonderful bass playing in the first minute of the piece. The image should be perfectly locked to the centre of your soundstage, so you’ll feel like the performers are giving a very special concert just for you.

Human – Sevdaliza

Tehran-born Sevdaliza fuses Portishead-era trip-hop with Björk-style inventiveness. Although the offbeat hooks of Marilyn Monroe are the closest she comes to being commercial, we prefer the dark, brooding menace of Human, its subterranean bass and broad, sweeping spaciousness providing a perfect accompaniment to her otherworldly and at times deliberately atonal voice. You won’t hear another track like it – and if you want to know how good your Bowers & Wilkins speakers are at delivering bass response, this is a great way to find out…

John Dawson – co-founder, Arcam

True Love Ways – Buddy Holly

These songs were usually recorded in one take, with no overdubs, so the band is effectively playing together "live". There is reverb but little by way of processing or compression. The mastering engineer who made the transfer to CD also treated the material sensitively, so the music is very natural sounding. In particular, listen for the smooth decays into silence when the band pauses or stops playing. It's hard to believe this was originally recorded over 65 years ago!

Famous Blue Raincoat – Jennifer Warnes

Jennifer Warnes was one of Leonard Cohen's backing singers, and the two were good friends. She has a fabulous voice, and here she has her own take on some of Leonard's best songs. The whole album is exceptional in terms of production and recording quality and makes great demonstration material – I have chosen the title track because it uses all acoustic instruments, sax, piano, string bass and a string quintet, along with fabulously poignant lyrics. Wonderful poetry, wonderful singing.

Brothers in Arms (1996 remastered edition) – Dire Straits 

Mark Knopfler has always cared about recording quality, and this is no exception. The album was a showpiece for CD, and the release used Sony's Super Bit Mapping – an advanced form of dithering – to get the best possible dynamic range and fidelity. The remastering of this 1996 edition is by Bob Ludwig, one of the best engineers in the business. The swirling organ background and thunder rumbles at the beginning really show off a good system. I recall being involved in testing interconnect cables in the late ’80s with Arcam's original Delta 70 CD player and being shocked by the differences between some of them when using this track.

Simon Quarry – audio designer, Musical Fidelity 

Low Desert Punk – Brant Bjork

A pounding groove and spoken, almost barked, vocals drive this stoner rock classic from Brant Bjork, who plays all the instruments on this track. Powerful bass and cymbals, which can easily get too splashy are quite prominent here – if there’s something not right about the amplifier, they will sound terrible. This is a great test track that comforts me when I can hear it being played right. Also worth a listen from same artist is Lion One.

Moon Love – Electric Moon

Whispered vocals from the band’s bassist, Lulu (no, not that Lulu…)  guide you through David Schmitt’s (aka Sula Bassana) gliding guitars and effects with solid and timely drumming, while the foundations build up, each supporting the next. This band carry many songs well over 20 minutes, this one clocking just over 23 minutes. I like longer tracks, as it allows greater time to settle into the music and therefore a more accurate conclusion. When a song’s soul is laid bare by the equipment you’re listening to, you know you’ve got your design right…

Psychic Chasm – Ozric Tentacles

This starts off in a misleadingly twinkly fashion, but then builds up seamlessly through several different musical styles – the usual musical genius I’ve come to expect from this band. Energy and delicacy within one piece is a wonderful way to listen to how an amplifier is articulating the music in a pleasing and immersive way.

I find it very much more interesting to deliberately avoid the mass produced/maintained types to discover the smaller, more varied, interesting  and definitely most talented artists!

Steve Sells – technical director, Naim

Brushstrokes – Natasha Kmeto

I have a playlist of 23 songs called ‘Demo Tracks’. I keep the list short, so if I add a track, I take a track off. It kicks off with this, I generally like something with vocals and I love Natasha Kmeto – she's amazing. Lost Cause by Billie Eilish is excellent, too

A Thousand Years – The Piano Guys

Piano is hard reproduce well and it will easily show if an amplifier is misbehaving. If an amp has parasitic distortion, you’ll hear a buzz. As you can imagine, this track shows up any issues like that pretty quickly.

Limit To Your Love – James Blake

I have a separate bass playlist to test the low end of any system, and James Blake’s Limit To Your Love is a favourite. I saw him at Glastonbury one year and I thought he was incredible; you could feel the bass from the groundshakers from across the field.

Hot In Her – Mr Oizo, Phra & Crookers

This is my endurance track. I don’t just play it once or twice; I’ll play it at full volume overnight or even a few weeks. It stresses every part of the product with heat and power. If a product can survive this, it will work through anything.

Peter Thomas – owner and founder, PMC

Bird On A Wire – Jennifer Warnes

When reproduced well, this track combines every element that makes a great test piece. It highlights spatial accuracy and three-dimensionality, especially for the main vocal and backing singers, plus the bass attack and depth, revealing everything you need to know about a system's performance.

James Luce – creative director, Acoustic Energy

Water Of Love – Dire Straits

We usually settle on a few different go-to tracks for each new project as development rolls on, but I'd say I always go back to this one – well-balanced, lovely percussion and a warm bassline with Mark Knopfler's soft vocal and guitar accents. A good system simply lets you just drift away with the music...

MORE:

The ultimate music tracks to test your hi-fi system

11 best prog rock tracks to test your hi-fi

12 of the best Kate Bush tracks to test your hi-fi

British Hi-Fi Week is all about the here and now – it's a celebration of what's going on in the British hi-fi industry. But it's worth remembering that many of today's products have a long and illustrious history.

Plenty of brands make a virtue of this fact, releasing products with a nod to their past. Whether it's speakers that are a wholesale revamp of a classic model, or radios packed with modern tech with retro-inspired designs, these devices combine contemporary performance and smarts with a look that's decidedly nostalgic.

Here are five of the best retro-modern hi-fi products. And they're all British!

Naim Nait 50

Naim was founded in 1973, but didn't launch its first integrated stereo amp until a decade later, in 1983. The Nait 1 (originally called the NAIT) left plenty puzzled with its low power rating, but went on to become a bona fide hi-fi classic. The Nait 50 pays homage to it, and launched in 2023 as part of Naim's 50th anniversary celebrations – only 1973 units were made.

In our hands-on review, we found it utterly charming. It looks just like the Nait 1 – with the same shoebox chassis and chrome bumper – yet the half-width design somehow seems quite modern. 

The insides have had a complete overhaul too, with more power (25W per channel into 8 ohms) and an all-new moving magnet phono stage. As a result, it sounds terrifically fun, with the same enthusiasm of the original but added punch. A must for fans of classic and modern hi-fi alike.

Read our Naim Nait 50 hands-on review

Mission 770

With the 770, Mission founder Farad Azima looked to improved upon the Spendor BC-1 loudspeaker by boosting the bass response. He launched his rival in 1977 for £357 – 46 years later, the modern-day 770 won a What Hi-Fi? Award.

As you can see from the photo at the top of this article, Mission has remained very faithful to the original design, right down to the white front baffle with its distinctive branding. But there are plenty of improvements.

The cabinet walls are more rigidly damped than the rather thin chipboard of the original. The polypropylene mid/bass cone is the same size as the original, but uses an open, rigid die-cast chassis and carefully honed motor system, while the 28mm microfibre Polyester dome tweeter has a modern vented design that’s linked to the mid/bass via a more complex crossover than before. Dedicated stands are also included in the box.

It all adds up to a superb package, with a beautifully finessed bass performance. Every inch the Award winner.

Read our Mission 770 review

And more background on the Mission 770 story

Ruark Audio R2 Mk4

Perhaps no brand embodies the retro-modern aesthetic better than Ruark. It has long championed the 'throwback, no go-back' style, creating devices that are eminently capable and visually appealing. And the Award-winning R2 Mk4 is one of its finest.

To call it a radio would be underselling it somewhat. Because while it offers FM/DAB/DAB+ tuners, internet radio and alarms, it's also capable of streaming over Bluetooth and various music apps and connecting using wired connections, making it a multi-talented modern music system. It also costs £479.

It looks sophisticated and stylish, with enough of a nod to its heritage without veering into kitsch territory. The tactile RotoDial is a joy to use, and there's built-in support for Spotify Connect, Amazon Music and Deezer.

One listen and you're sold. Retro meets modern in a thoroughly appealing package.

Read our Ruark Audio R2 Mk4 review

Music Fidelity A1

This is a remake of Musical Fidelity's most iconic product – the original A1 amplifier from the mid 1980s. But it's as faithful a recreation as it's possible to make while still adhering to modern standards. That means (mostly) the same circuit and same output of 25W per channel, though it does have new output devices and an improved power supply arrangement. It's more forgiving of partner speakers than you would think, and the unique sound holds its own, even against modern rivals – it's expressive and more fluid than most amps today. A fun listen, from a very fun product.

Read the Musical Fidelity A1 review

Robert Revival Uno BT

One glance and you know this is a Roberts product – the leather surround, the bronze grille, the foldable antenna and leather carry handle are all hallmarks of the firm's range of retro radios (as is the Roberts logo on the front, of course). But it has modern comforts like Bluetooth for wireless playback and an impressive 25-hour battery life (using four AAs).

Sound quality is very good for piano- and vocal-based arrangements, though it struggles to convey the full energy of some pop or rock tracks. Still, it's a solid performance for a small radio, and a great choice for fans of retro British design. 

Read the full Roberts Revival Uno BT review

MORE:

Check out all our British Hi-Fi Week features

These are 9 of the most underrated British hi-fi products we've ever tested

Listen to these: 12 of the best songs by The Beatles to test your hi-fi system

Here are 11 of the best Wharfedale speakers of all time

The idea of British hi-fi seems at once utterly natural and yet completely incongruous. Whereas once Britain led the way in the conception, design and manufacture of all things audio-related, our soggy little island feels increasingly dwarfed by the might of the economic superpowers in this ever-globalised, ever-homogenised world.  To paraphrase a popular internet aphorism: “Being British seems to be about driving a German car to an Irish pub, then going home for an Indian curry to watch US shows on a Japanese TV”. Substitute “shows” for "music" and “TV” for “turntable”, and it would doubtless work just the same. 

The true picture of Britain’s hi-fi scene though is, happily, a tad more complicated. There remain British-owned companies, though fewer in number than there used to be. You can count Chord Electronics, Fyne Audio, Linn, Rega, PMC and Wilson Benesch among them.

Admittedly, many brands have been forced to accept some degree of foreign ownership and/or stakeholdership, with many established UK names becoming amalgamated into wider overseas churches. The likes of Arcam, Audiolab, Bowers & Wilkins, KEF, Mission, Quad and Wharfedale are just a few obvious examples.

How, though, do these companies continue in this globalised, ever-competitive economy, and what does manufacturing and distribution look like for British companies in 2024? Most importantly of all: in this modern world, what does the term “British hi-fi” actually mean? With British Hi-Fi Week upon us and February’s Bristol Hi-Fi Show 2024 giving us the perfect time to chat with some of the industry’s leading lights, we seek to establish where British hi-fi came from, the current situation it's in and, crucially, where it’s headed.

What does it mean to be British these days?

What a British brand is, frankly, feels like a philosophical question as much as a categorical one, and an issue which can be as divisive as it is hard to define. Numerous brands simply trade on a British name while all manufacturing, development and assembly take place abroad, while others still have deep roots in Britain – Fyne Audio, for instance, proudly has its factory located in Bellshill, Scotland. This isn’t the case for many brands which simply sport a familiar name and some Union Jack branding in a bid to entice consumers enamoured with the idea of traditional British engineering. 

While there may be parts and components sourced from overseas (nothing comes for free), the idea of having a factory in this country is an important one, and Fyne isn't the only company where this is the case. PMC remains a proudly independent outfit without overseas ownership, whereas Wharfedale and Rega operate major factories in this country. That, naturally, is essential to Peter Comeau of AIG/Whardedale, as it’s something that consumers and buyers have come to demand: “They expect for (products) to be British, so they want to see ‘Made In England’ on the back,” he explains. “For our flagship products, it’s important that they’re made in the UK… so we try to source as much as we can (from Britain).” That includes crossovers and cabinets, and while there will inevitably be concessions, especially at the market’s lower end, consumers do seem willing to spend a little more for that British flavour. 

What that flavour is, exactly, is an interesting question. For Peter, the “British sound” remains a huge, alluring selling point, and something that can be defined and quantified, at least to an extent: “It perhaps came out of the class of speakers that the BBC was producing, and even before that... the early products from Wharfedale defined a sound that was natural, realistic and brought instruments into your living room – that set British sound apart from the rest of the world.” Whereas America “majored on dynamics rather than the accuracy”, British sound set up a tradition for pure instrumental reproduction “which continues to this day”, explains Peter.

To an extent, PMC’s Oliver Thomas agrees, although he views things from a slightly more engineering-focused perspective. “If I were to generalise about British brands, it’s that the products never stray far from the core principles of audio engineering design that ensure the truthful, always accurate reproduction of audio is the key design goal. British sound is accurate and refined.” After listening to the Award-winning PMC Prodigy 5 floorstanders, we’d go so far as to say that it is indeed a refined, deeply musical sound those speakers produce.

Getting that distinctive profile comes not only from a somewhat unified sonic philosophy but also from the components and technologies used on these very shores. Rega is a prime example of British engineering at the cutting edge, as Simon Webster explains: "We have designers and manufacturers building on that heritage and pushing the boundaries with innovative designs. We've also benefited from strong press championing our industry and a vast network of experienced retailers." With a high-tech factory operating out of Southend, Rega feels like a collision of the traditional and the cutting-edge, harnessing CAD software, 3D printing and laser cutting alongside a team which assembles its products by hand. Combine that with a "British sound" that still carries weight and it's not hard to see why many domestic brands continue to survive and thrive.

Back to PMC's Oliver Thomas, and the picture is again one of innovation and advancement on a more intimate scale: "The higher quality through smaller scale manufacturing is important to our brand... We benefit from our investment in R&D and technology which ensure our products perform better than anything else out there. The UK has a fantastic engineering-based higher education system with enough heritage to tailor towards audio design specialities." As we'll see below, British engineering is still very much in demand. 

Fool Britannia? The bonuses and burdens of Brexit 

This all, inevitably, leads us to the big “B”. Whether you’re wilfully pro or despondently against, Brexit has had – and will continue to exert – a seismic influence on manufacturing and distribution, colouring every aspect of the UK’s relationship with foreign players and suppliers as a result of our island nation deciding to cut de jure ties with the single market.  

The effect has been profound more generally, and the hi-fi sector hasn’t been immune, as Peter Comeau explains: “I am very disappointed that people voted to come out of the EU… I initially persuaded my parents [we should] join because we’re a tiny little island with not many people on it and we’ve got this huge market.” While international ownership and having EU-based distributors helps, it doesn’t remove the impact entirely. “If our distribution in Europe needs anything to come from our UK warehouse, that’s problematic,” he explains. There’s also that one issue that feels welcome to no one: “The paperwork is a nightmare!”

That said, Oliver Thomas asserts that PMC has been less hard hit than the casual onlooker might imagine. As he explains, “The initial impact from Brexit was positive for us, as we trade internationally, the immediate ‘drop’ in value of our GBP resulted in our export sales jumping up as customers enjoyed the exchange rate benefit.” Looking into the future, Oliver says, “I do not believe there have been wider more significant implications for our business, but that is mostly to compliment ourselves for being adaptable and versatile.”

In any case, Britain’s departure from the EU has made the country’s economic waters uncertain, and with what seems to be a lifetime of legislative red tape to sever, stick back together and then re-erect across new lines, answers relating to the question of how British industry will look in the long-term remain all but unanswerable. Stephen Oakes of Neat feels that in fact "there is not a proper manufacturing base in the UK, so sourcing components is not easy. There's little or no government support for specialist manufacturers, and Brexit has brought its own set of challenges". 

The future of UK hi-fi

This, naturally, turns our conversation to the future of hi-fi. The last fifty or so years have seen a colossal shift in the ways that British companies have been run and even in how they have identified, with foreign investors and shareholders exerting influence to varying degrees across domestic brands. Where that leads us as new players emerge is an intriguing question. For PMC, there are benefits to being a medium-sized privately owned organisation, as while sourcing and logistics can be tricky, especially post-Brexit, such companies can "adapt to market changes quickly in a way that larger-scale manufacturing cannot".    

It also throws up a more existential question of what it means for a brand to have a given national identity. If you source, manufacture and put together British parts in a British factory with a British name, you're a British brand. If you source components from foreign shores but assemble them in this country while retaining the power of your own directorship, it's likely the same story. The picture becomes foggier when things are split somewhere down the middle, where directorship is foreign but construction takes place domestically, or when parts are developed abroad but put together in the UK. Toyota pumps out countless cars in the UK from a major site in Derbyshire, but nobody's suggesting that Toyota isn't a Japanese company.   

What’s clear, however, is how much weight the idea of British hi-fi still carries. As Peter Comeau of Wharfedale emphatically points out, Chinese markets have always been willing to pay a bit extra for a product with the Union Jack positioned somewhere upon its cabinet or marketing bumph. No matter how good countries like China, Japan or South Korea become at manufacturing and engineering, there still exists an admiration for the idea of British engineering, innovation and design. “British sound is known internationally,” he asserts, and adds that that still carries significant weight. 

Perhaps that’s enough. For Oliver Thomas, the future of British hi-fi is all about education and the public’s perception of the industry. The problem, as he sees it, is not that Britain has a shortage of ingenuity or acumen, but rather that it is in danger of suffering from an internal image crisis which prevents younger participants, particularly young women, from getting involved in the first place. 

Events such as the Bristol Hi-Fi Show are all well and good, but they could be in danger of pandering to an established crowd rather than, as he suggests (perhaps only half in jest), “Where are the smoke machines?” On a more serious note, his suggestions for the future are robustly optimistic: "We should look to our own investment in the future," he says. "We should be confident we will innovate and develop world-leading products with world-leading engineering." This, he goes on to add, should be built on a foundation of education and a healthy skill base.

British hi-fi manufacturing is not a remnant of the past, nor is it merely an idea to which brands cling in a bid to sell more speakers at inflated rates. Whether it’s PMC’s meticulous development of speakers via its forensic use of domestic anechoic chambers or Rega’s blending of machine-rendered and handmade production within the walls of its Southend factory, much homegrown research, construction and development remain just that: homegrown. Here's hoping that continues. 

MORE:

What Hi-Fi? unveils plans for British Hi-Fi Week 2024!

8 of the best new speakers at the Bristol Hi-Fi Show 2024

65 great British albums to test your hi-fi system

Even though we’ve been reviewing Neat Acoustic speakers for decades, we’re still impressed by just how infectiously entertaining the brand’s speakers typically are.

The Neat Petite Classic speakers we have on test here are the fifth generation of the Petite model, which originally began production in the early 1990s, and have remained not just one of the most well-liked but also the biggest-selling speakers in Neat’s entire catalogue.

Build & design

The Petite Classic sticks with the same dimensions as the original, measuring a very, ahem, petite 30 x 20 x 18cm (hwd). These would be ideal for when you want a premium hi-fi set-up but don’t have a large space – their compact footprint means they should be easy to accommodate in most rooms that aren’t cavern-like halls.

The last time we reviewed a Petite speaker was the fourth-generation Petite SX in 2010 and, apart from the size of the cabinets, pretty much every other aspect has been changed. Neat revived the Petite model for its 30th anniversary in 2021, and it's the upgrades made to this limited edition model that have made their way to the current Petite Classic speakers. They remain a two-way design, with a new AMT ribbon tweeter that claims to deliver better high-frequency performance and a 15cm mid/bass driver with a cone made of mineral-loaded polypropylene. Neat says that despite being a smaller diameter than the original (which was 16.8cm), this mid/bass unit should produce deeper bass thanks to a more powerful motor. 

Internally, there is a new crossover network with updated, high-quality components, and you only get single-wire terminals now instead of the bi-wire terminals of previous generations. 

The cabinet is well-made, and although there’s nothing particularly luxurious to shout about, we like that there are no visible fixings or bolts around the drivers, leaving a minimalist, clean fascia. It perhaps doesn’t exude the perceived value you’d expect from a premium pair of standmounters, but we have no complaints whatsoever about the fit and finish of the Petite Classic. Passing our hand over the cabinet surface, we like the quality of the wood grain finish of our oak review sample.

These Neat speakers are available in four finishes: textured black, satin white, oak and walnut. You do pay a £305 premium for the wood finishes, though. 

At this new £1995-£2300 price range, the Petite Classic have formidable rivals to contend with, such as the larger KEF R3 Meta (£1999), the long-running ATC SCM 19 (£2400) and the pricier ProAc Response D2R (£3000).

Compatibility

It may be tempting to put these small speakers anywhere, but take some time and care with positioning and you’ll be richly rewarded.

We experimented with a few positions in our listening room, and found the speakers sounded best when placed on dedicated speaker stands (a must), set roughly 30cm from the back wall, and toed in slightly to our listening position to get the best stereo imaging. 

Neat also includes two staggered bass ports at the rear of the speaker. These are of different sizes and tuned to different frequencies, so you can adjust the amount of bass on offer to the size of your room. The recommendation in most cases is to plug the larger port with the included foam bung and keep the smaller port free. We find this combination works well in our listening room – it helps to keep the bass more controlled and reined in; otherwise the amount of bass is just a bit too prominent and a touch boomy. We would recommend trying out a few combinations of port-blocking and positioning for yourself to find a balance that you’re happy with.

For our review, we plug the Neat Petite Classic into our reference set-up of the PMC Cor integrated amplifier and Naim Uniti Atom Headphone Edition music streamer. We also pair the speakers with the Naim Nait XS 3 (£2499) as a more price-appropriate partner. This Neat/Naim partnership is one we’ve recommended before, and we’re glad to find it still works a treat.

Sound

We could, quite honestly, quote portions of our Petite reviews from 1992, 1993 and 2010, and the words would apply just the same to the current model. Terrific rhythmic ability, wide and rock-solid soundstage, great interplay between vocals and instruments – these are traits of the Petite model that have remained consistent throughout the decades. 

We applaud any brand that has managed to keep its sonic identity consistent throughout its existence, and the pure musical joy that these mini monitors deliver is worth the expense. 

These speakers are just fun. Toe-tappingly, grin-inducing fun. Their rhythmic ability is stunning – it’s infectious, agile, precise and zippy. There is a sure-footed handling of every beat and note in a song that is endlessly enjoyable to listen to. 

That precision with timing means the speakers are a dab hand with any genre you play through them: we play The Beatles, Dr Dre, Major Lazer, Massive Attack, Agnes Obel, John Williams, Led Zeppelin, Elliott Smith, and many more from our test track collection – and the Petite communicate the inherent musical composition and message of most songs with ease. That’s a difficult quality for any speaker to manage successfully, and it’s even more impressive coming from these small boxes. 

The Petite Classic do have a slightly smoothed-off treble that makes listening a tad “nicer”, and coupled with fairly low distortion levels, it means we don’t have any problem cranking up the volume and getting fatigued with any brightness over time. They’re just as tuneful and hold our interest when the volume levels are low, too. 

We’re not expecting lashings of bone-thudding bass here, but the low end on offer is tuneful and grippy. It underpins and drives the beat to Massive Attack’s Paradise Circus, while Pon De Floor by Major Lazer has punch, attack and zeal. This is further emphasised by a sound that is extremely solid – there’s a beautifully grounded quality to every note that’s rather astonishing for speakers of this size. 

There’s ample detail here too, with a particularly lovely way with voices. The delicate folk qualities of The Unthanks are relayed with a lightness of touch while Eminem’s intense, aggressive rapping has the requisite crackling spitting rage. The speakers aren’t the last word in refinement and analysis – these are for those that simply want to enjoy the music rather than inspect every element with fervour.

That being said, the Neat speakers are considered enough to know when to rein in that liveliness and deliver the more contemplative and meditative moods of, for instance, the Theme For Schindler’s List or a sombre Nick Cave track well.

Give the speakers a few days of running in, and you’ll find they breathe more freely. They pump out quite a decent spread and volume from their compact dimensions, and the stereo imaging you get is top-notch when positioned with care. They don't sound as large-scaled as the bigger KEF R3 Meta speakers, granted, though it’s only really obvious when playing more complex and grand orchestral pieces. 

If absolute tonal neutrality and transparency are your priorities then you’ll want the ATC SCM 19 speakers at this level, while those wanting subtler insight and greater dynamic contrast should look toward the ProAc Response D2R. Again, it’s that knack for spot-on timing and cohesion that is the Neats’ crowning glory – these are eminently likeable and fun speakers that put enjoyment above all else. 

Verdict

If it isn’t clear by now, these Neat speakers are delightfully good fun. They do have a specific balance and a specific purpose, and if you go in knowing full well the restrictions of these “Petite” boxes, then you’ll have a grand time. 

They may look unassuming and the fairly high price tag will raise eyebrows, but pair them with high-quality tracks and a good partnering amp, and their inherent musicality will keep you entertained for many, many years.

SCORES

• Sound 5
• Build 5
• Compatibility 4

MORE:

Read our review of the KEF R3 Meta

Also consider the ATC SCM 19

Read our ProAc Response D2R review

Best speakers: budget to premium hi-fi speakers tested by our expert reviewers

The broad story of Kate Bush – the child prodigy who caught the ear of David Gilmour, who was signed to EMI while still in her mid-teens, and who became the first female artist to have a UK Number One single with her own composition – is pretty well-known. Kate Bush achieved ‘national treasure’ status some time ago, after all.

What’s perhaps less well-known, but is pertinent for those of us who would like to find out what our audio system is made of, is the level of control over the recording and production of her music she exercises. ‘Complete’ might be the best way to describe it: she writes and produces everything herself, and records in a home studio. There are no demos; the first her record company knows about her music is when it’s delivered. 

Which, presumably, is a big part of what makes listening to a Kate Bush recording such a singular experience. 

She's also, aptly, this year's Record Store Day ambassador, telling the BBC that it is "a great privilege" to be part of RSD, and noting that the music industry "had decided to leave vinyl far behind, but it would seem that not everyone agrees! I love that!"

Indeed, we heartily recommend listening to her albums on vinyl if you can. But whatever your chosen source, here are 17 of her more overt system-pleasers…

• Listen to the best Kate Bush tracks on Tidal

Rubberband Girl (The Red Shoes, 1993) 

Perhaps one of Bush's more straightforward pop songs, the lead-off single from 1993's The Red Shoes has a shimmering quality that follows the more or less one-chord tune built around a suitably funky bassline and pounding, slightly gated drums. Although she's swapped her usual, often ethereal style for bouncing pop melodies, Bush's vulnerability still shines through in her lyrics and their delivery, as she sings about wanting to be able to 'bounce back' from set-backs. 

As always her off-kilter vocal patterns and overdubs should be clear and easy to track through the broad spread of instruments backing her. If your system is a master of the midrange, this track will sound gloriously fun, while a good grip of the low end will track that bouncy bass. Overall, you should really get that sense of elasticity that the band is trying to convey.

Buy The Red Shoes on Amazon

Cloudbusting (Hounds Of Love, 1985)

The sumptuous strings that provide the rhythmic drive of the track as well as its glorious hook should lift you out of any rainy day blues. "I just know that something good is going to happen, just saying it could even make it happen," spells out the relentless sense of positivity here, in a song whose theme is of an otherwise heartbreaking perspective of a child being unable to prevent the loss of their father to arrest and imprisonment. Bush based this on the real memoirs of the son of fascinating, controversial psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich – a story that's well worth exploring. 

Two drummers compete with a military cadence and pounding timpani-like beat to drive the track's building momentum, while the mantric backing vocals harmonise beautifully with one of Bush's more affected vocal performances. With production as lush as this, you'll need your system to be detailed yet warm enough to invite you into the middle of this richly-told story, while prickling the hairs on the back of the neck every time.

Buy Hounds Of Love on Amazon

Wow (Lionheart, 1978)

Kate Bush's vocal range – rising and falling here through the registers – should in itself be quite the test of your system's integration. Bush said at the time that the track is about showbusiness (quite uncynically, her amazement at it all), and that she had initially set out to write it as Pink Floyd-esque (unsurprisingly, since David Gilmour had been her her mentor and champion at the outset). And you can hear some Floyd-style spaciness in the arrangement, which almost seems to map her career to that date, beginning with just Kate's vocal and piano and rising to a crescendo that reflects that genuine amazement with cymbal hits and tom breaks punctuating the disparate but equally beautiful instrumental lines. 

You'll want your system to be able to organise this into a cohesive whole while still allowing you to pick out and appreciate the individual strands. Wow, indeed.

Buy Lionheart on Amazon

The Sensual World

The word 'sensual' really is apt. Listened to through a detailed but cohesive hi-fi set-up, this is a real treat for the senses. From the church bells that open the track, through the exotic, swirling Uileaan pipes melody, thudding bass, programmed percussion, a swishing fishing rod (!), and of course Bush's central vocal performance, it's utterly rich with musical detail. And it's also sensual in that way; Bush's delivery here is almost indecent, with her compellingly seductive and sultry rhythmic reciting of lyrics inspired by the sexier parts of James Joyce's Ulysses. 

So, of course, her vocal performance is the star again, even as the rest of the track's instrumentation is both luscious, grooving and dramatic. You'll appreciate it best through a system is particularly well integrated while keeping the midrange focus on her vocals, but with plenty of scope to pick out those alluring pipes and percussion that make it such a musical feast.

Buy The Sensual World on Amazon

Hounds Of Love

The insistent rhythmic drive of this track is a great test of timing for your system, as well as its low-end as it pounds through those lower registers mimicking both the drama of a chase and a heart's exacerbated pounding. As the track builds to include cello and insistent, sustained keys, Bush's spacey vocal performance somehow manages to feel otherworldly while also conveying real human emotion.

It's fair to say that Bush's auteur-like control over her music really had a hand in making the Hounds Of Love album a masterpiece of considered production. Everything from the Fairlight synths, trad Irish instrumentation and strings to the sample underpinning the start of the title track (taken from 1957 horror film Night Of The Demon, dontcha know) feels thoughtfully and perfectly placed, making it a joy to listen to through a system that's sufficiently rhythmically talented to follow the thrill of the chase. 

Buy Hounds Of Love on Amazon

The Man with the Child in His Eyes (The Kick Inside, 1978)

Though only 18 years old at this point and still a complete novice where the music industry was concerned, Kate Bush wrote The Man with the Child in His Eyes more than five years prior to recording it for her debut album – not quite a prodigy in the Mozart sense, sure, but pretty impressive nevertheless. And doubly so when you consider just what a mature, musicianly and complete composition it is. Unlike a lot of her early recordings (before she had taken control of the entire process), the arrangement here is quite understated and supportive of the song, rather than attempting to tart it up. 

So your system will obviously need to focus on the midrange where the voice and much of the piano sits, but also has to demonstrate good powers of soundstaging as well as well-controlled dynamic variation.

Buy the The Kick Inside on Amazon

Wuthering Heights (The Kick Inside, 1978)

This, of course, is The One. Seemingly from nowhere, the teenage Kate Bush arrived in the public consciousness fully formed, fully in possession of her own talent, and with a song the arrangement and delivery of which was strongly at odds with anything else 1978 had to offer. A rabidly committed retelling of – hey! – Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, it proved almost perversely catchy and established a witchy, wide-eyed persona she was only too happy to live up to (for now, at least). 

What’s your system’s midrange fidelity like? Can it cope with the slightly hard-edged soprano of the vocal? And what about rhythmic expression? The song is mostly in 4/4, but strays into 3/4 and 2/4 in the chorus… For your system as for your ears, this is far from the easiest listening.

Buy the The Kick Inside on Amazon

Don’t Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake (Lionheart, 1978)

A lot of artists struggle when it comes to ‘second album time’, but Kate Bush, of course, had been writing songs for half of her life by the time of Lionheart. What she hadn’t been able to break free of just yet, though, is her record company’s notion that they knew better than her what her records ought to sound like. 

Consequently, Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake is overblown and bombastic for no apparent reason, but it does at least give your system a chance to show what it’s got where dynamics and straightforward attack are concerned. The wedding-cake arrangement needs careful handling, too – unless your set-up can unpick it, it will sound less like a performance and more like a collision.

Buy Lionheart on Amazon

Army Dreamers (Never for Ever, 1980)

In case anyone was in any doubt as to the single-minded and non-conformist nature of Kate Bush where writing and recording were concerned, surely Army Dreamers was all the confirmation they needed. It’s a spare, wide-open and foreboding recording of unusual, spindly instrumentation, percussion derived from rifle bolt-handles, backing vocals partly composed of parade-ground shouting, and heartbreakingly direct lyrics (“what could he do? Should have been a father – but he never even made it to his twenties”). 

Not every system is capable of giving the spaces and silences in this recording the weight and emphasis they require – and if yours can’t do so, the atmosphere of the song will be badly compromised.  

Buy Never for Ever on Amazon

Get Out of My House (The Dreaming, 1982)

For her fourth album, Kate Bush persuaded EMI – a relatively conservative record label at the best of times – to allow her to produce herself. She wouldn’t look back, but, as she recalls, when it first heard The Dreaming, EMI assumed “she’s gone mad”. At 40-odd years’ remove, it’s an absolute – but the lack of an obvious single, and the performer’s inexorable (and not, to EMI, welcome) journey from ‘ingenue’ to ‘artist’, raised many an alarm. 

Get Out of My House is the album in microcosm: broadly impenetrable, groaning under the weight of ideas (French accents? An impression of a donkey?) and thoroughly, unarguably individual. Your system needs to be able to make sense of the maximalist overload where focus and separation are concerned – and it needs to be able to make a woman trying to sound like a mule sound like a mule.

Buy The Dreaming on Amazon

Running Up that Hill (a Deal with God) (Hounds of Love, 1985)

As an object lesson in how to cook without any discernible heat, Running Up that Hill (a Deal with God) is the most effective thing this side of a microwave oven. Those who were there at the time will know this was never a typical mid-80s sound, and by the time Stranger Things had introduced the tune to a younger audience it sounded even more peculiar. Your system will need to deal with attack and decay of the stentorian drum pattern with complete authority, have the wherewithal to keep the remarkably abstract backing vocals distinct, and express a rolling-yet-lurching rhythm naturalistically. 

And, of course, be able to communicate the lead vocal (as well as the midrange in general) with confidence and positivity.

Buy Hounds of Love at Amazon

Mother Stands for Comfort (Hounds of Love, 1985)

Not for the first time and not for the last, Kate Bush makes found sounds (and they are almost always crashes, collisions or shatterings) an integral part of a recording. Here they are more apparent than ever, thanks to the quiet, open nature of the song and its arrangement. The sentiment is obvious, but the colours and textures used to illustrate what is a universal story of maternal give and take are unusual in the extreme. 

Which means your system will have to cope with queasy fretless bass, absolutely desert-dry drums and a keyboard sound that is halfway between pan pipes and a swanee whistle – as well as some exquisite piano that sounds as though it was recorded by mics mere nanometres above the instrument’s strings. Plus, of course, the spaces and silences need observing too.

Buy Hounds of Love at Amazon

Hello Earth (Hounds of Love, 1985)

In which Kate Bush crams more ideas, more tones and textures, more mystery and more emotion into 6m 13s than most artists can muster through the course of an entire album. Because it was released in 1985, Hounds of Love was divided into ‘side one’ and ‘side two’ – and ‘side two’ was a concept/song-cycle affair entitled The Ninth Wave, of which Hello Earth comprised the climax. 

There isn’t really enough space here to go into just what a test of tonal fidelity, frequency response, soundstaging, midrange reproduction and rhythm management this recording is – and besides, it’s just a thrillingly ambitious piece of music no matter what your system is like. But if your set-up can’t cope with its scope, a stack of its atmosphere and impact will be lost – which would be a shame. 

Buy Hounds of Love at Amazon

Rocket’s Tail (The Sensual World, 1989)

‘Rock’ songs are at a premium in the Kate Bush catalogue – and it’s no surprise whatsoever that a Kate Bush ‘rock’ song, despite being complete with great big drums and extended Dave Gilmour guitar solo, is about as far from the mainstream idea of a ‘rock’ song as it’s possible to get. Rocket’s Tail combines a kind of steampunk superhero aesthetic (“...dressed as a rocket on Waterloo Bridge… size 5 lightning boots too…”) with an obtuse tribute to a cat called – guess what? – Rocket. 

It’s an absolutely fearsome test of your system’s midrange fidelity, given that the first, pre-’rock’, portion of the song features Bush plus the massed voices of Trio Bulgarka, and its tonality will also be examined closely by the none-more-Pink Floyd guitar sound.

Buy The Sensual World on Amazon

Top of the City (The Red Shoes, 1993)

You make your own mind up, of course, but while the original 1993 version of Top of the City suffers somewhat from the Big Drum Sound that was so fashionable at the time, its intensity and dynamic impetus is, I think, preferable to the relatively neutered reimagined version that featured on 2011’s Director’s Cut. So, as long as your system doesn’t let the percussive bombast get entirely out of hand, this recording is a great test of dynamic headroom, management of rhythm and tempo, and – but of course – midrange fidelity thanks to the ‘close-mic’d-even-by-her-standards’ vocal performance (as well as the Nigel Kennedy-derived violin and viola interjections).

Buy The Red Shoes on Amazon

An Architect’s Dream (Aerial, 2005)

It may have been a dozen years between albums, sure, but as far as her music, its development and production were concerned, not much changed in Kate Bush-land. Her voice may have dropped an octave, but otherwise it was high-quality business as usual – and she remained beholden to no one but herself. 

‘Comeback’ album Aerial was a big, sun-dappled and lazy afternoon of a record, warmly organic and basically masterful in its execution. ‘Good taste’ is often a hi-fi euphemism for ‘tedious’, but in the case of An Architect’s Dream there’s no equivocation – this recording is in exquisite good taste, and only a system with sweet tonal fidelity, an assured way with rhythmic expression and significant powers of soundstaging will be able to bring this painstaking, high-gloss recording properly to life.

Buy Aerial on Amazon

Wild Man (50 Words for Snow, 2011)

At seven songs and over 65 minutes, 2011’s 50 Words for Snow takes its sweet time – but the languorous nature of the record suits the richer tonality of the Bush singing voice. Wild Man is the most direct and immediate song on the album, and it’s weirdly moving in its use of the Yeti (or ‘wild man’) as a metaphor for mankind’s treatment of animals and the planet in general – her “run away, run away!” extortion is poignant in the extreme. 

As far as your set-up is concerned, there’s the staccato insistence of the instrumentation that requires careful management, the customarily conspiratorial, intimate vocal performance to be described, and a wide, tall canvas of a soundstage to be organised properly if the scope of the recording is going to be properly explained.

Buy 50 Words for Snow on Amazon

MORE:

10 of the best Björk songs to test your hi-fi system

Prefer Radiohead? Here are our favourite Radiohead songs

Treat your hi-fi system to the best test tracks from The Beatles

The What Hi-Fi? Hall of Fame is a very exclusive club. To pass muster, a product has to not only excel in its particular category, it must be a landmark in its field, setting a new standard to which its rivals can only aspire. We give quite a few products five-star reviews every year, but only let one into the hallowed environs of the Hall of Fame.

Of the 47 products admitted entry since What Hi-Fi? magazine first hit the shelves in 1976, 21 are British. That's an impressive rate of just under 45 per cent. But what's more impressive is the impact these products have had on hi-fi history, from the Rega Planar 3's dominance of the late ’70s turntable scene to KEF's mighty LS50 Wireless system in 2017, and plenty more besides.

We've listed these highlights below and the year in which they were inducted into our Hall of Fame. Join us as we celebrate some of the greatest hi-fi products these isles have ever produced.

Linn LP12 (1976)

If you were compiling a list of the most popular high-end turntables ever, the Linn LP12 would be near the top. Launched in 1972, it proved dominant for decades, and with a range of compatible arms and cartridges, it was like a blank canvas for your turntable aspirations.

Nearly every aspect of the design has been redeveloped over the years, from the suspension to the power supply, resulting in all sorts of performance gains. This also changed the nature of the deck – while early models had a rounded, rich balance that proved a lively listen, latter versions tended towards a more neutral sonic profile, providing greater insight.

A true British hi-fi classic.

• Read our Linn Majik LP12 review from 2009
• And check out 12 of the best Linn products of all time

Rega Planar 3 (1978)

This is another British-made turntable that exploded onto the scene in the late 1970s (1978, to be exact) and went on to dominate for years. It was more of a mid-market affair than the Linn above, but it too has had numerous improvements over the years, most notably gaining a revolutionary RB300 arm in 1983.

In its various iterations, it has won our sub-thousand pound turntable Award so many times we’ve lost count.

But despite its many re-workings over the years, it's remained at heart a simple, well-made design based on sensible engineering principles. It's always been a superb performer without making a fuss – and what's more British than that?

• Read our Rega Planar 3 review – one of the many Award-winning iterations
• Here are 12 of the best Rega turntables of all time

A&R Cambridge A60 (1979)

A&R Cambridge went on to become Arcam, but before then, it came out with the A60 amp, its first product. And what a splash it made.

Considered an upgrade on NAD's contemporaneous budget amps, it was very much the Harry Kane of its day – unassuming, dependable and solidly built. But this modest exterior belied a class-leading audio performance that excelled with a wide range of partnering kit.

• That Was Then... A&R Cambridge A60 (1976) vs. Arcam A19 (2013)

Wharfedale Diamond 1 (1982)

It's amazing how many of these products went on to dominate their respective categories for so long. 1982 saw the introduction of the Wharfedale Diamond, a budget speaker whose latest incarnation earned a five-star review, 41 years later.

Bass was chief among its strengths – despite standing just 24cm tall, the Diamond packed a lot of wallop that never overwhelmed the tonal balance. They undercut the competition too, costing £65 a pair when most rivals were closer to £100.

Better tweeters and more refined finishes are among the improvements over the years, and they still look very reasonable compared to a lot of the competition. Shine on, you crazy Diamond.

• That Was Then... Wharfedale Diamond review

Michell Gyrodec (1982)

The Gyrodec hasn't changed much since it first appeared, which is testament to the original design. And unlike some flash-in-the-pan rivals, it's not merely a looker – it's a piece of engineering art that feels better built than other-brand decks at double the money.

It's still available today, and still needs to be assembled, like a piece of flatpack furniture. But it's a breeze to put together thanks to the easy-to-follow instructions. 

Of course there's another reason it's endured: sound quality. With a detailed, expressive performance, the Gyrodec is that rarest of beasts: a product that sounds as good as it looks.

• Read our Michell Gyrodec SE review from 2008

Audiolab 8000A (1983)

In many ways, Audiolab owes it all to the 8000A. The amp came out of nowhere to knock industry favourite (and fellow Hall of Famer) the A&R Cambridge A60 off the top spot and set a new benchmark in the mid-range.

It did so thanks to a combination of great build quality, excellent feature set (including tone controls, a headphone output and a phono stage) and plenty of power. But the sound quality proved divisive – yes it had impressive dynamics, plenty of insight and a tonal evenness, but some bemoaned its lack of rhythmic subtlety.

This was the ’80s, though. For the time, the 8000A was a true fit-and-forget amplifier – a go-to recommendation that would serve most people just fine.

• Read our Audiolab 8200A review from 2011
• More great premieres: 9 debut stereo amplifiers from iconic hi-fi brands

Mission Cyrus One (1984)

Another debut product that qualified for the Hall of Fame, the Cyrus One was an amp built for purists. It was all about the resolution, and as long as you were on board with its somewhat lean 25W per channel output, it provided stunning agility and dynamic expression. Its insight and detail levels rivalled amps costing twice as much.

The first models included a plastic case to minimise distortion effects, but this was later upgraded to a metal version that was punching above its weight as a budget amp. And if you wanted more power? The Cyrus One had a more capable sibling, the Cyrus Two.

Cyrus began life as the electronics arm of speaker company Mission. But with products as accomplished as this, it soon spun off into a separate entity.

• Read our Cyrus One review from 2016
• And our Cyrus One HD review from 2018

Naim 32 preamplifier/SNAPS/250 power amplifier (1984)

Naim's classic high-end combo came in three parts: the 32 preamp, a high-grade dedicated power supply and the legendary 250 stereo power amp. Because Naim was closely affiliated with Linn at the time, the amp was often partnered with an LP12 turntable, to devastating effect.

Like a lot of fondly-remembered ’80s icons, it hasn't aged brilliantly. By today's standards, the audio could be more transparent and the soundstage more open, but at the time it made quite an impact, with plenty of punch, great organisation and a fantastic sense of rhythmic drive. 

• Read our Naim Nait 5si review from 2013

Acoustic Energy AE1 (1988)

The world of premium speakers had never seen anything like the original AE1s. Despite standing little bigger than a shoebox, they boasted incredible detail and dynamics – outperforming rivals that dwarfed them in terms of size. They were very much the David to the Goliaths of the high-end speaker market.

This was achieved thanks to their all-metal drive unit configuration – which was highly unusual at the time – and plaster-lined cabinet that improved damping. 

They weren't for everyone. To get the best out of them, you had to perch them on their dedicated stands, which cost half as much as the speakers themselves. And partner kit? Think high quality, with plenty of power. Anything less was like putting olive oil in a Ferrari. 

Treat them right though, and they still stand up today. Proof that a classic design really is timeless.

• Read our Acoustic Energy AE1 Classic review from 2011
• That Was Then... Acoustic Energy AE2 Signature – the AE1's successors

Mission 753 (1993)

Our first British entrant of the 1990s breathed new life into the market for sub-£1000 floorstanders. That wasn't exclusively thanks to their sound quality, though they did offer strong dynamics, a quick response time and plenty of detail. Their design also played a part.

At the time, Mission was accomplished at producing speakers with a hi-tech aesthetic. The 753 cemented its reputation, making the competition look positively old-fashioned. But they weren't too space age for a domestic setting, looking right at home in the home. It's a fine balance to strike, and a lesson some sections of the industry are still yet to learn.

• Mission 70 MkIIs: Old speakers vs. new speakers: How do they compare?

Arcam Alpha 7SE (1999)

In the ’90s, the affordable CD player market was dominated by Arcam, thanks to the brand's formidable sound quality and excellent build. This all culminated with the 7SE, a £350 player that shredded its similarly-priced rivals and lay down the gauntlet to more expensive players.

For its price, it sounded fantastic – refined, but without sacrificing dynamics. It unearthed lots of detail too, and was adept at organising it all into a wonderfully entertaining presentation.

The plastic front shows it was very much a product of its time. But then going through this list is a bit like flicking through an old photo album – you're as often warmed by fond memories as you are embarrassed by old haircuts. 

• Read our Arcam CDS27 CD player review from 2020
• Read our Arcam CD5 CD player review from 2023

KEF KHT2005 (2000)

Around the turn of the millennium, surround sound were the words on everyone's lips. As a prospect, it was thrilling, but in practice, much less so – who wants to be hemmed in by six massive speakers? Wouldn't it feel like you're about to be mugged?

Thankfully KEF came up with a workaround. The company put all of its technical expertise to good use with the innovative KHT2005 5.1 speaker package, aka ‘Eggs’.

Widely renowned as the first home theatre speakers that most people would be happy to have on show, they also delivered a thrilling performance that engrossed the viewer in whatever they were watching.

Often imitated, never bettered, they were a hit, and each subsequent iteration has only added to their legacy.

• Read our KEF Q350 AV 5.1 review from 2017

Bowers & Wilkins PV-1 (2004)

If you listen to B&W, this isn't just a subwoofer. No, the PV-1 is a 'pressure vessel', though it performs exactly the same function as a sub. That got our cobblers antennae going like the clappers, but it turns out there was something in it.

Because so dominant did the PV-1 become at the annual What Hi-Fi? Awards, we retired the subwoofer category altogether. It was either that or rename it the PV-1 Award.

Mostly this was due to its performance, which we described in our review as "stunning". We went on: "The B&W generates clean, uncoloured, amazingly deep bass: push the limits with some of Dr Dre's sillier low-end-licks, and you're left in no doubt about the sonic authority on show."

But the design was an integral part of its success. At the time, subs were so boring that manufacturers encouraged their customers to hide their products out of sight. But the PV-1 deserved pride of place. British design at its best.

• Read our B&W PV1D review from 2012

ATC SCM11 (2006)

These Gloucestershire-built speakers might look a bit homely, but don't let that fool you: they're among the best pound-for-pound speakers you can buy. Even by 2006's standards, they looked slightly retro, but that just makes their success all the more impressive.

They've been tweaked over the years, with better drivers and improved materials and cabinet finishes, helping them stay more relevant than ever. Homely? Underestimate them at your peril...

• Read our ATC SCM11 review from 2013

Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin (2006)

The Zeppelin was unlike any iPod dock that had come before it. For a start, it cost £400, which was crazy money – so much so that we reviewed it in the Temptations section of the magazine, which is home to the highest of high-end kit. But it was the iconic design that really turned heads.

Back in 2006, most iPod docks were made by manufacturers of PC peripherals. With B&W's considerable sonic – and design – expertise behind it, the Zeppelin flew. The company had been honing its knowledge of amplification with its amp-powered subwoofers, and it put this, along with its developing interest in Digital Signal Processing, to good use.

The Zeppelin Mini followed in 2009, then B&W revived the product in 2019 with the Zeppelin Wireless. Gone was the 30-pin iPod connection, but the same winning design and focus on sound quality helped it earn a respectable four stars from us. Not quite the same breakthrough as its predecessor, but the mould had already been broken.

• Read our B&W Zeppelin Wireless review from 2019

Roksan Caspian M2 (2010)

Some Hall of Fame products come out of the blue, while others evolve over a long time. The Caspian M2 is the dictionary definition of a slow burn: Roksan's Caspian integrated stereo amp had been around in some form for the best part of 15 years before the M2 variant appeared. But what a difference it made: the build quality, ease of use and performance were all sublime for the price.

It won plenty of Awards, so many that Roksan pushed the price up. It's testament to its quality that it still remains a very good buy indeed, even all these years later, and at a higher price.

• Check out the best stereo amplifiers around

Chord Hugo (2014)

The Hugo is Chord through and through. The casework is delightfully tactile, the lights are different colours to show what the unit is doing, and the inputs are slightly too close together. But it's the performance that really sets the Hugo apart from the competition, British or otherwise.

Chord doesn't buy in DAC chipsets, preferring to design its own programmable circuits instead. This results in more nuance, and a great degree of dynamic subtlety than in rivals at the same price. It's more transparent than some, so will show up any sub-par recordings, but the timing and organisation are spot on. Hugo, you've done Britain proud.

• Read our Chord Hugo TT review from 2015
• And our Chord Hugo 2 review

Naim Mu-so (2014)

Before the Mu-so, wireless speakers were the poor relation of their wired counterparts. But Salisbury-based Naim elevated them to the level of 'proper' hi-fi, and in doing so, single-handedly created a market for £1000 wireless speakers.

It did so by refusing to compromise. The materials and components, the functionality and design aesthetic are all first-rate, and the sound has a power we could only describe as "astonishing" in our original review. We went on: "It drives all songs with a sure-footed sense of rhythm, rich detail and lashings of deep, rumbling bass we’ve never heard from a wireless speaker before."

The Mu-so 2 followed in 2019, with even better performance and a higher price, along with the Award-winning Mu-so Qb 2nd Generation, both of which are among the best wireless speakers around.

KEF LS50 Wireless (2017)

KEF wasn't the first company to bundle streaming support into a pair of active speakers. But it did it the best.

It helps that the LS50 were already Award-winning speakers. But with support for Tidal and Spotify, Bluetooth, a hi-res-capable DAC and preamp built-in, they became simply unstoppable. They're basically an excellent pair of hi-fi speakers with a lot more technology crammed inside, and KEF managed it without affecting the sound quality: the musicality and timing are as captivating as ever, the performance remaining clean and precise. Proof Britain is at the forefront of wireless speakers.

• Read our KEF LS50 Wireless review from 2017
• And the more recent KEF LS50 Wireless II review

B&W 606 (2019)

B&W's entry-level 600 Series was introduced in 1995, but it was the sixth-generation model that really hit the sweet spot. For the money, they delivered in spades, with a precise sonic balance serving up a crisp, clear treble, cavernous bass and class-leading detail and dynamics.

Like previous 600 Series speakers, they've aged very well. In fact, if it wasn't for the 606 S2 Anniversary Edition and 607 S3 (both Award-winners), we'd still be recommending the sixth-gen model.

Cambridge Audio CXN V2 (2023)

This was the first music streamer to qualify for our Hall of Fame, and it's something of a legend within the category. It won six What Hi-Fi? Awards in a row, and if you include the original CXN's gongs too, the model has been decorated every year since 2015. Staggering.

It's achieved this feat not only through its excellent performance, but by staying relevant with software updates. Both Chromecast and Tidal Connect have arrived on Cambridge Audio's StreamMagic platform over the years, breathing new life into an already formidable proposition.

Other streamers have come and gone, and while some have impressed, none has had the staying power of the CXN (V2).

• Read the full Cambridge Audio CXN (V2) review

MORE:

12 of the best songs by The Beatles to test your hi-fi system

9 of the most underrated British hi-fi products we've ever tested

There’s a young lad somewhere in Argentina who has quite the sporting family. His father, Sergio Agüero, is generally considered to be one of the finest strikers in Premier League history, while his grandfather (and Sergio’s father-in-law) was also a keen footballer by the name of Diego Maradona. If you’re wondering how one child could surround himself with any more footballing prowess, he also has a godfather. That man’s name, almost inevitably, is Lionel Messi. 

Whether the young man ever chooses to go into football or not, he is surrounded by excellence, so much so that the weight of expectation must be galactic. That feels akin to the situation we have with the new Bowers & Wilkins 603 S3, a pair of floorstanders that are central to the brand’s new 600 Series and that have the weight of some serious pedigree, not to mention competition, firmly upon their metaphorical shoulders. 

The much-coveted 600 range from Bowers & Wilkins has produced multiple What Hi-Fi? Award-winners in the past few years, including the 607 S2 Anniversary Edition and 606 S2 Anniversary Edition standmounts, while the new series continues that trend with table-toppers in the shape of the 606 S3 and the 607 S3 standmounters. Our expectations, it’s fair to say, are rather high, and we’re excited to see not only if the 603 S3 can live up to an almost royal legacy, but whether they can outperform some very capable rivals at this level. 

Build & design

The general design of the 603 S3 floorstanders is relatively consistent with the rest of the B&W 600 S3 range. Like their five-star stand-mounted S3 siblings, these are nicely made towers that look handsome enough, even if our white and oak test pair do have just a whiff of “Don Johnson’s jacket from Miami Vice” about them. Still, other colourways, including black or red cherry are available (the latter is for Asia Pacific customers), or you can double down and go for an all-white finish if you’re truly stuck in 1984.

The 603 S3 floorstanders are the largest and most costly speakers in the entry-level 600 series, designed mainly for “larger rooms and home theatres”, packing in a 25mm titanium dome tweeter, B&W’s custom Continuum 15cm midrange cone and a pair of 16.5cm paper bass drivers. They’re relatively sizeable towers, too, standing at 102cm high when mounted on the plinths and dwarfing its rival, the shorter, slimmer PMC Prodigy 5 by over 10cm. Those plinths, incidentally, come as standard and screw into the bottom of the towers, with four spikes attached to the base.

Staying at the underside of the towers, look around the back and you’ll find twin terminals – giving the option of bi-wiring. They’re also rear-ported, and Bowers & Wilkins will supply you with a pair of foam plugs that can be used to lessen the impact of the bass response if absolutely necessary. It’s a fine option to have, but we’d recommend only using the plugs if you’re forced to place your speakers right up against the wall and want to mitigate some of the excessive low-end muddiness that will potentially result.

Like their standmount counterparts, the upgrades to most components and elements are rather extensive. The all-new titanium dome tweeter, kitted out with an acoustically transparent grille mesh, promises “resolution and insight”, while that Continuum cone has been designed to avoid “abrupt transitions in behaviour that can impair performance”.

Much of the internal DNA and clever tech from the more costly 700 series has trickled down to the new 600 range, including a more powerful motor assembly for the midrange driver which, rather than using a conventional rubber surround, uses a special type of foam which is claimed to damp down resonances more effectively. The new towers also employ higher-quality bypass capacitors within the crossover and a longer tube-loading system for lowering the levels of unwanted radiation from the rear of the tweeter.

We use our reference system of the Naim ND555/555 PS DR music streamer alongside a Burmester 088/911 Mk III power amplifier at the start of our testing, but we spend much of our time using the 603 S3 alongside the more price-compatible Naim Nait XS 3 amp (tested at £2199 / $2999), a point at which the B&W towers are clearly more comfortable.

Sound

The 603 S3 are fascinating for several reasons, and that fascination only grows after spending a good deal of time listening to them. They’re saddled with a fine name and a proud legacy, have quite a few serious rivals at this level and, most importantly, serve up a rather distinct sonic character. 

Let’s start this story at the beginning. You join us in our testing rooms as we fire up a recording of Björk’s Bachelorette and enjoy the weight, breadth and scale the 603 S3 bring to our favourite Icelandic songstress’s sumptuous, lush recording. There’s fullness and weight to the rendition, with lots of drive and power that will please anyone looking for their music to enjoy a whole load of weight and muscle.

There’s also real clarity and detail out on display, especially across an impressively exact midrange. Björk can be a seriously tough nut to crack, and many speakers and systems aren’t able to bring out the intricacies of her lavish, layered productions, but the Bowers have absolutely no issue in revealing those details and nuances that truly make a track sing. Violin tones come through as vibrant and textured, while the whispers and idiosyncrasies of Björk’s unique vocals are communicated to the listener with clarity and insight.

The 603 S3’s sturdy, muscular aspect gives the speakers real authority and scale, and although our dedicated test rooms aren’t exactly rivals for the Albert Hall, we can imagine that the Bowers would perform ably in a larger setting thanks to their powerful, potent sonic presentation. Play Mombasa from the Inception soundtrack and you’ll receive an engaging, forceful performance that benefits from the speakers’ taut, focused yet undeniably robust bass. 

That lower end is one of the speakers’ trump cards, delivering plenty of pace and snappiness alongside real weight and force, driving the aforementioned track along with the sort of kinetic energy that gives you that sense of propulsion found in the on-screen chase sequence it accompanies. The new floorstanders are great not only at adding true lower-end robustness, but they’re also adept at bringing clarity and focus to each layer of a track’s sonic presentation. Mombasa can tend to sound overly messy and chaotic (and not in a good way) through less competent products, a trap that the 603 S3 avoid thanks to their talent for organisation, cohesion and control.

That knack for control and authority is admirable in the above contexts, but a little less attractive in others. Ploughing through many of our favourite test tracks (and quite a few wild cards), we’re somewhat struck, and a little disconcerted, by the sense that something is missing. The 603 S3 are lacking in a certain je ne sais quoi, and it takes a good deal of listening and comparison with some high-class rivals to figure out exactly what it is. 

Soon, though, the picture becomes clearer, especially when the 603 S3 go head-to-head with the PMC Prodigy 5 (tested at £1995 / $2510 / AU$3399), our Award-winning rivals that just slightly expose the Bowers towers’ slight inability to cut loose and really have fun. The 603 S3 feel slightly restrained and dynamically flat, with a propensity to colour tracks with a refined yet slightly fettered sonic temperament. Whether you’re listening to an old, swinging recording of Nina Simone’s My Baby Just Cares For Me or alt-J’s bold, textured Dissolve Me, there’s just a lack of dynamic verve and contrast that doesn’t allow for instruments and voices to truly express themselves to the fullest.

Delibes’ Flower Duet is a revealing example of this. Listening to the recording unquestionably provides us with a feeling of power and assertiveness from the opening vocal performance, yet there’s a subtle lack of conviction and energy to the delivery that we can only conclude comes from the Bowers’ slightly restrained nature. The spaces around the voice aren’t always convincingly displayed or communicated, and the singer appears to be giving us a rendition that feels a little like a rehearsal rather than the key performance on opening night.

Verdict

With this in mind, the Bowers & Wilkins 603 S3 may be a pair of floorstanders that appeal to the casual market more than to genuine audiophiles looking for exceptional sound at this level. For very similar money, the PMC Prodigy 5 will offer more nuance, excitement and dynamic interest than the B&W towers, but if you prioritise a robust, full sound that can go to levels their PMC rivals can’t reach, the 603 S3 still make a fair degree of sense. 

SCORES

• Sound 4
• Build 5
• Compatibility 4

MORE:

Read our review of the PMC Prodigy 5

Also consider the Spendor A7

Read our ProAc Response DT8 review

Best floorstanding speakers: budget to premium

Naim’s Mu-so Qb 2nd Generation wireless speaker arrived all the way back in 2019, but it’s a testament to the smart speaker's quality that roughly five years later we're still singing its virtues and handing it Awards like the Academy hands Meryl Streep Oscars. 

The superb Mu-so Qb 2 can be yours for just £649 at Richer Sounds when you use the Promo Code VIP50, knocking an extra £50 off an already decent discount from its original £799 RRP, and dropping the Naim down to its lowest price in a good while. 

A perpetual winner at the What Hi-Fi? Awards, the mighty Naim was crowned Best Home Wireless Speaker Over £500 for the fifth year running in 2023 – that's the sort of quality we're talking about here. 

There's no doubt that the Mu-so Qb 2nd Generation is one of the best premium wireless speakers we've tested in recent memory. Under that cloth-bound exterior are five mighty speaker units – a bass driver, dual tweeters and a pair of midrange drivers – all arranged to fire out a broad, cohesive and spacious soundstage. Inside you'll find Naim's streaming engine that can also be found on its flagship standalone streamer, and you'll find the gorgeous illuminated control/volume dial on top, just like its bigger brother Mu-so 2. It's not the biggest unit by any means, but it has a claimed 300W of power, and the speaker cube is more than capable of filling rooms with sound without suffering from distortion or fuzziness.    

Feature-wise, it's still keeping up with the newest models around. The Naim supports Tidal Connect and Spotify Connect, not to mention AirPlay 2, Chromecast and Bluetooth built-in. You can even use the Naim app (available in both iOS and Android form) to tune into internet radio (and various settings and EQs), plus it’ll let you access any hi-res files (up to 32-bit/384kHz) that are stored on your network.

No matter your musical tastes and preferences, the Mu-so Qb 2nd Generation sounds downright sensational; it’s open and expressive without losing out on detail, with plenty of punchy bass and a cannily sharp sense of timing. Even at its full price, there’s very little competition within a few hundred pounds that comes close.

If its multiple Award-winning credentials weren't enough to convince you, maybe this rather juicy discount will. Head over to Richer Sounds and use Promo Code VIP50 to knock an extra £50 off what is already a very good deal on a superb speaker.

MORE:

Read our full Naim Mu-so Qb 2nd Generation review

What Hi-Fi? launches British Hi-Fi Week 2024 – fresh reviews, retrospectives on classic amps and more

Competition alert! Win a Cambridge Audio CXN100, worth £899 this British Hi-Fi Week

The ideal What Hi-Fi? timeline for any great product is as follows. It is introduced, it is reviewed and gets five stars with a glowing write-up. Said product then officially goes up against the current class leaders in a What Hi-Fi? group test and emerges victorious. An Award win follows, making the product a staple recommendation for anyone looking to buy a component of that type and price. And possibly, it even enjoys repeat Award wins in the coming years simply because it is so good.

Unfortunately, not every excellent product enjoys such an illustrious journey. Some miss their rightful time in the spotlight. Why? Perhaps there are several superstar contenders in their category, and the product, good as it is, never quite escapes their shadow. Maybe their talents are not as obvious to the wider hi-fi community as they were to us, or their looks are divisive. The problem could be poor marketing or limited availability. Or, all of the above. 

Here, we have a list of a few British favourites that we think are underrated or unfairly overlooked by too many people. Some are well-established designs that have been around for decades and now maybe don’t get the love they deserve because newer, shinier rivals have come on the market. Others are more recent efforts that we feel deserve more respect for their immense talents. Either way, you would do well to search them out, because all are excellent performers that we would happily use at home.

Fyne Audio F1-8 standmount speakers

When conversations turn to high-end standmounters, the usual names always get mentioned. You have the rather lovely Bowers & Wilkins 805 D4, KEF’s hugely capable Reference 1 Meta and the likes of the Sonus Faber Electa Amator III alongside equally worthy alternatives from the likes of Magico, Dynaudio and Focal. All are excellent in their own way, but if we were lucky enough to have car money to spend on standmounts, Fyne Audio’s divisive F1-8 ((£7499/$10499)) would be high up on our shortlist. Divisive? Just look at them. These are a Marmite design, and that’s okay with us. 

Fyne Audio is a baby compared to any of its rivals. It was founded in 2017 so it simply hasn’t got the heritage that means so much in this part of the market. But the people behind the brand have been in the business for decades and that shines through in the quality of the engineering and the excellence of its sound.

The beautifully built F1-8 speakers use a co-axial driver array that puts the 25mm magnesium dome compression tweeter at the centre of the 20cm multi-fibre mid/bass driver. This kind of arrangement has all sorts of advantages over conventional configurations, from even dispersion to allowing a degree of time alignment between the two drivers so that the sound from both reaches the listener at exactly the same time. This bodes well for focus and precision.

These Fynes are also wonderfully dynamic performers that are as comfortable scaling Hans Zimmer’s epic Interstellar OST as they are playing the blues-tinged soul of Bill Withers. The F1-8s are agile and insightful, capable of digging up loads of detail and arranging it into a musical and entertaining whole.

They may not be the most tonally neutral performer at this level but little does better when it comes to communicating the musical message. Give the F1-8 a listen. You won’t regret it.

Read the full Fyne Audio F1-8 review

Graham Slee Gram Amp 2 Communicator phono stage

This unassuming moving magnet budget phono stage keeps things gloriously simple. It has a single set of inputs and outputs, and that’s all. The Graham Slee Gram Amp 2 (£180/$299) is neatly made, but its lightweight anodised aluminium enclosure won’t fool you into thinking that you’ve spent more than you have.

The sound quality probably will though. It is an articulate and energetic performer that is a match for the Rega and Pro-Ject phono stages that dominate this part of the market. The Gram Amp is upgradable too, and so making it a fine investment for those who want to improve their budget record-playing system over time.

Read the full Graham Slee Gram Amp 2 Communicator review

Leema Tucana II Anniversary integrated amplifier

Leema Acoustics’ Tucana is one of a number of products on this list that used to be considered front runners in their category but have been around so long that newer, shiner rivals have grabbed the limelight. The Tucana was originally introduced way back in 2006 and since then has enjoyed a steady evolution, with this Anniversary version being the most ambitious. Despite the design’s age, the Tucana II (£6044/around $7600) remains one of the finest premium integrated amplifiers we know.

The vinyl revival hadn’t taken place when this integrated was first introduced, so it isn’t a surprise to find that it is a line-level unit only. There are plenty of inputs and balanced XLRs are on the menu alongside the usual stereo RCAs. It has always been a powerhouse though with a claimed output of 150 watts per channel into an 8 ohm load that’s enough to drive any price-compatible speaker to high levels.

Add crisp stereo imaging, a neutral tonal balance and strong dynamics into the equation and you have an amplifier that will shine in any carefully chosen system. This Leema is beautifully built too, displaying a level of solidity that inspires confidence.

Read the full Leema Tucana II Anniversary review

Michell Gyrodec SE turntable

How many hi-fi products first introduced in the 1980s still look as fresh as Michell’s Gyrodec? We can’t think of any. In our view, it could be launched today and still be viewed as modern.

While the Gyrodec has always had aesthetic appeal, we think it deserves even more credit for the quality of its engineering. Over the years we’ve tested many versions of this fully-suspended deck and never failed to be impressed by the company’s attention to build and finish.

This isn’t a hard turntable to set up, and the carefully considered design means that the Gyrodec SE (£3500/$3999) is easy to maintain. The price we’ve quoted is for the deck itself, but Michell can supply tonearms and cartridges if required. You can go to third-party alternatives, of course, and this deck will prove relatively unfussy provided those components are suitably talented.

How about sound quality? Despite its maturity, this Michell remains as capable as any that we’ve heard at this price. It produces a delicate and informative sound, one that is wonderfully open and articulate. If you are looking for a top-class turntable at this level, don’t ignore this one.

Read the full Michell Gyrodec SE review

Musical Fidelity MX-VYNL phono stage

Musical Fidelity’s MX-VYNL (£749/$849) has been around for the best part of a decade and remains one of the finest MM/MC phono stages available for below a grand. It is a compact design that is superbly made. The casework feels impressively solid and all the controls work with crisp precision.

The front panel dial is an elegant solution to selecting the correct cartridge loading option and is certainly preferable to the myriad of tiny dip switches most rivals use to accomplish the same task. Take a look inside the MX-VYNL and you will find neatly designed, fully balanced circuitry.

All very nice, but it is the MX-VYNL’s excellent performance that impresses us the most. It is a sweet and fluid performer that manages to resolve a massive amount of detail from the cartridge’s signal. This phono stage sounds dynamic and punchy yet has the refinement and smoothness to work well with thin and aggressive recordings. The Musical Fidelity MX-VYNL is a product that deserves a high place on any premium phono stage shortlist.

Read the full Musical Fidelity MX-VYNL review

Naim CD5si CD player

We were looking at the Naim website the other day and were shocked to find that the company only makes one CD player, and that’s the CD5si (£1699/$2299). It seems Naim has decided that the silver disc is old news, but that doesn’t mean the CD5si should be ignored. It is a hugely talented and musical player that is still right up there with the best at the price.

We love its back-to-basics approach. In place of a conventional motorised disc tray, the CD5si uses a manual design that arcs outwards and contains the entire transport mechanism. The disc itself is secured by a magnetic puck. The claim is of a better sound. 

We like the simple display too, which just shows the essential pieces of information and nothing else. This concentration on essentials continues with the lack of a digital output, though perhaps it goes a little too far when we find that the company has also dropped its traditional provision for upgrading with one of its stand-alone power supplies. Yet, overall it is hard to deny the focus on performance.

This is an area where the CD5si needn’t fear any rival. It has a bold yet refined sound that concentrates on the essentials. You won’t get the airiest of presentations, nor the most expansive of soundstages, but you will get the music’s energy and exuberance delivered unambiguously. In the end, we can ask no more than that from any piece of hi-fi.

Read the full Naim CD5si review

Neat Iota Explorer floorstanding speakers

We talked to Neat representatives recently and in passing asked how the Iota Xplorers (£4825/$5195) were doing relative to the company’s more conventional-looking designs. It turns out that most people like normal. That's a shame, because these odd-looking floorstanders really are something special.

First off, they are an isobaric design where the downward-firing 17cm driver in the base has an identical companion driver inside the cabinet mounted directly behind it. These twin drivers move in tandem, fooling the visible unit into believing that it is in a much bigger cabinet. The result? Way more bass than you would expect from something that just stands 74cm tall, provided you put the speakers relatively close to a wall as intended.

The top end is taken care of by an AMT (Air Motion Transformer) tweeter giving a lovely crisp presentation. The Iota Xplorer aren’t the most neutral or detailed speakers that you can buy for the money, but they are so much fun to listen to. They sound solid, punchy and have a purposeful sense of rhythm. If you need premium speakers that can work close to a wall there are few better at this level.

Read the full Neat Iota Xplorer review

PMC Cor integrated amplifier

How’s your Latin? If it barely extends to remembering your old school motto, you might like to know that 'cor' means 'heart'. (Okay, we Googled it). It’s a fitting name for PMC’s first stand-alone domestic amplifier, which is the heart and hub of a system. The core, if you like.

This integrated amplifier is a simple beast at heart. The designers aimed for transparency and musicality above all else, and such qualities tend to be stifled when combined with a complex and/or extensive features list.

The Cor (£6995/$9999) is a purely analogue amplifier with short, clean signal paths. It uses Class A/B circuitry and produces 95W per channel, which rises to 140W into a 4 ohm load. On paper that’s a good-if-not-exceptional set of figures, but in use this amplifier belies those relatively modest numbers by delivering high volume levels with a whole range of speakers.

We’ve been using the Cor for the best part of a year in one of our reference systems and it has never missed a beat. It works well with a wide range of sources and speakers and has the kind of unassuming sound quality that has all the insight, dynamics and rhythmic drive you could hope for without the amplifier shouting about it.

Read the full PMC Cor review

Q Acoustics Concept 500 floorstanding speakers

We wouldn’t blame you if you thought Q Acoustics was all about excellent budget speakers, after all that’s how the brand established itself. So successful have its more affordable efforts been that it is easy to overlook the company's high-end flagship, the Concept 500 (£3599/$6999). It looks like that is exactly what most people have done given that the floorstander's price has actually gone down since its launch in 2017. Contrast that with the generally huge price rises we've seen elsewhere across the board.

The shame is that these remain excellent speakers, and easily outperform most competitors anywhere near their price. Build quality is terrific. Their 115cm-tall cabinets are made using no less than three layers of MDF separated by a soft decoupling material called Gelcore and then strategically braced. This type of construction means that any vibration travelling through the wooden panels is absorbed and turns into heat. The result is as inert and well-damped an enclosure as we’ve come across at this level.

The drive units may not appear unusual on paper – the twin 16.5cm mid/bass drivers use treated paper cones and the tweeter is a conventional soft dome design – but there has been plenty of engineering effort expended on the details of suspension, motor system, diaphragm profiles, material and drive unit mounting to extract the most from these ingredients. The same can be said of the crossover design and the components used in it.

The result of all this work is a beautifully balanced performer that delivers a sense of scale and power well beyond what would be expected from a speaker of this size. These speakers are also detailed and expressive, working as well with the symphonies of Beethoven as they do with the works of Outcast. There is all of the smoothness and refinement we’ve come to expect from the brand but also the detail resolution and transparency that’s expected from a top-quality high-end floorstander. Judged on ability and build it is fair to say that the Concept 500 are a high-end bargain.

Read the full Q Acoustics Concept 500 review

MORE:

The What Hi-Fi? Hall of Fame: the best tech products of all time

10 of the best Hans Zimmer movie scores to test your hi-fi system

Standmounts vs floorstanders: which speaker type should you buy?

Literally tens of millions of words have been written about The Beatles, covering everything from the minutiae of their recording sessions to the all-encompassing nature of their impact on popular culture. One book takes almost 50,000 words to get to the point where five teenagers leave Liverpool for the first time in 1960 for a series of performances in Hamburg.

So there seems little point in trying to add to those words here – everyone already knows, after all, that The Beatles rank alongside William Shakespeare and football where British contributions to global happiness are concerned. Instead, we’ll restrict ourselves to selecting a dozen of their recordings that happily combine a thorough examination of your audio system’s talents with the band’s customary knack for exquisitely, instinctively correct pop music.

• Listen to the best tracks by The Beatles on Tidal

Can’t Buy Me Love (A Hard Day’s Night, 1964)

They have been recording artists for less than two years at this point, but already the development that would gather almost comical momentum is beginning to show. It’s upbeat, sunny and poppy, just as surely as most of their output has been until now, but Can’t Buy Me Love also demonstrates new confidence in their songwriting abilities and a knack for a catchy arrangement that can’t be entirely credited to producer George Martin. Momentum and rhythmic positivity are among the key elements your system must demonstrate to bring this recording to life, but the nature of the recording means control of treble frequencies is almost as important. 

‘Hardness’ or ‘splashiness’ are seldom welcome traits in an audio set-up, but this recording is just desperate to tip over the edge – high-end authority is essential. And management of the percussion, driving-yet-rolling in the already-established Ringo manner, is critical too.

Buy A Hard Day’s Night on Amazon

You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away (Help!, 1965)

The songwriting is maturing nicely now – this is perhaps the first example of John Lennon writing from a position that seems strongly at odds with what one might imagine a man in his position might be feeling (see also the title track of the album Help!). The desire to be taken as seriously as someone like, say, Bob Dylan, rather than be regarded as a loveable moptop fit only to be screamed at, is getting stronger and stronger… You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away is very midrange-heavy, so your system’s tonal variation and powers of separation need to keep competing elements distinct from each other while still delivering the recording as a unified whole.

There’s little broad dynamic variation here, but in the acoustic guitar and woodwind especially there are plenty of harmonic under- and overtones around the fundamental note to be revealed. Or not, if your system’s not up to the task.

Buy Help! on Amazon

Nowhere Man (Rubber Soul, 1965)

Slowly but surely, the sepia of The Beatles’ previous recordings is becoming Technicolor. And between the telepathic vocal harmonies, the remarkably aggressive lead guitar sound and better-identified and -defined drumming, the recordings are starting to sound less like ‘live in the studio’ affairs and are starting to utilise the recording studio as a greater resource. Lyrically, the journey from ‘sweet’ to ‘bittersweet’ is becoming more and more apparent, too. 

All of which means your system needs to demonstrate proper poise and balance where the frequency range is concerned, as this is a fuller sound than the band had previously enjoyed. Low-frequency control becomes an issue (this is one of McCartney’s first true show-off bass lines), midrange focus and fidelity are an even greater issue than before thanks to all that bounceback echo around some of the voices, and the primitive stereo separation is a proper test of focus too.

Buy Rubber Soul on Amazon

Rain (B-side, 1966)

The confidence and ambition are ever more apparent, the medicine has properly started to kick in, and The Beatles are trying to advance the art of the pop song exponentially – even if, as with Rain, they’re only courageous enough to do so as a B-side at this point. Nevertheless, it’s an outstanding song in every department – melody, rhythm track, inventive use of the studio and the effects available therein… John Lennon’s vocal performance lasts less than three minutes, and yet Liam Gallagher managed to turn a facsimile of it into a 30-year career. 

How does your system handle the sinuous bass line, the stop-start journeys around the drum kit, and the none-more-jangly guitar sound? There’s plenty going on that will trip up a set-up that can’t handle itself where rhythm, tempo and tonality are concerned, and it will need to know what’s what when it comes to the prolonged decay of sounds too.

Buy Rain on Amazon

Tomorrow Never Knows (Revolver, 1966)

And now here are the 60s as everyone at 60 years’ remove understands them. It’s probably safe to say very few people had heard anything like Tomorrow Never Knows before the moment it was released, and certainly not when it was the product of what was definitely a boy band the last time anybody checked – “listen to the colour of your dreams” indeed. The Beatles lay it on with a trowel here: backwards tapes, guitar feedback, sitar drones, a drumbeat for the ages and a treated vocal intoning The Tibetan Book of the Dead. 

Need I say without undue emphasis that your system had better be able to establish some clarity and separation in what is a foggy hot-box of a mix? That it needs to be particularly attentive to the ‘soft’ attacks produced by running tape backwards? Probably not…

Buy Revolver on Amazon

Lovely Rita (Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967)

If ever an album could be said to have a smell, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has a smell – the sulphurous tang of spent matches, in my opinion. It may have been billed as a ‘concept’ album, but really it’s a collection of quite disparate songs, the most engaging and exuberant of which is Lovely Rita. One of McCartney’s many ‘story’ songs with one of McCartney’s many indestructible melodies, Lovely Rita needs your system to have a proper grasp of soundstaging, good separation and focus, and the sort of tonality that can differentiate acoustic clanging from metallic clanging without difficulty. 

And it needs to have the sort of rhythmic positivity that makes the coda to the song sound like it should: that’s to say, like the perfect sample for a yet-to-be-recorded smash-hit hip-hop tune.

Buy Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on Amazon

I am the Walrus (Magical Mystery Tour EP, 1967)

No two ways about it: by this point, the boy band that conquered the world and became bigger than Jesus is an overt drugs band, and is rather pleased about it. I am the Walrus is an acid-fried slice of Lewis Carroll-inspired psychedelia, all glissando and portamento with extra-vivid nonsense imagery (“goo goo ga joob!”), detuned radios and an overall whiff of a playground game gone badly awry. 

There’s plenty for your system to be getting on with here – the tonality of the strings alone, as they glide and lurch from one note to the next, is a pretty stern test. And the fact that the stereo version of the song switches from ‘true’ to ‘fake’ stereo at around the two-minute mark (because radio extracts were added directly to the mono mix and were unavailable for the stereo version) will only really become apparent on a system with the sort of robust staging and stereo focus to reveal it.

Buy Magical Mystery Tour EP on Amazon

While My Guitar Gently Weeps (The Beatles, 1968)

Apart from various members of various orchestras (and Yoko Ono), very few people appear on records by The Beatles who aren’t, well, The Beatles. Eric Clapton is one – his coruscating solo on the George Harrison composition While My Guitar Gently Weeps elevates the tune to the status of ‘essential’ in The Beatles’ catalogue. Its tone and sheer attack are testing enough for your set-up, which also has to be able to cope with the extraordinarily assertive hi-hat inputs from the drumkit without getting in any way sharp or edgy. 

The chugging low-frequency input from the bass guitar requires careful handling, too, and midrange resolution should be able to reveal just how difficult George always found it (or how unwilling he was) to remove the Scouse inflections in his singing voice.

Buy The Beatles 1968/The White Album on Amazon

Happiness is a Warm Gun (The Beatles, 1968)

The four members of The Beatles couldn’t agree on much by this point, but they each declared Happiness is a Warm Gun to be their favourite of the far-too-many songs on The Beatles. It’s pretty obvious why: it’s inventive, it’s alive with tricky time changes, it features utterly committed contributions from all performers, and it managed to get banned by the BBC thanks to its ill-defined but absolutely apparent undercurrent of (whisper it) sex. 

Rhythmic expression and a facility with tempo- and attitude-changes are among the biggest tasks facing your system here. Midrange fidelity gets a big workout too – and separating the contributions of the lead from the background vocalists while keeping each distinct and characterful isn’t easy either. It’s a stiff test of dynamics, too, with both broad shifts in intensity and constant tonal variations to attend to.

Buy The Beatles 1968/The White Album on Amazon

Hey Bulldog (Yellow Submarine, 1969)

Even at their lowest ebb, even when inspiration was at a premium and willingness even harder to come by, The Beatles seemingly couldn’t help but turn out direct, melodic and somehow unerring music whenever the need arose. Hey Bulldog emerges from a piano riff (and so is one of very few of their songs not built on a guitar part) and wastes no time establishing itself as one of those ‘big verse/bigger chorus’ Beatles tunes that somehow manage to avoid cliché and stay fresh even after the 100th listen. 

The attacking tone of the lead guitar is a great test of your set-up’s balance, and the square four/four rhythm isn’t as straightforward to describe as it might at first seem, either.

Buy Yellow Submarine on Amazon

Come Together (Abbey Road, 1969)

Has there ever been a more obliging song, where hi-fi systems are concerned, than Come Together? The opening track of the final-album-that-wasn’t-the-final-album in The Beatles’ catalogue is beautifully performed, exquisitely recorded, and so wide open that it can’t help but dish the details of your set-up’s abilities – for better or for worse. It’s a recording with a huge amount of space in it, and those spaces and silences need to be given just as much emphasis as the events of the recording themselves. 

There’s an extraordinary amount of detail just waiting to be retained and revealed here, too, from the fretboard noises of the bass guitar to the exact distance of the harmony vocal relative to the lead. And above all else, your system needs to present this as genuine performance, with the protagonists responding to each other, rather than as a collection of discrete occurrences.

Buy Abbey Road on Amazon

Don’t Let Me Down (Let It Be… Naked, 2003)

By the time the band had finished recording sessions for Let It Be, they were sick a) of the sound of it, and b) of each other. So the tapes were handed over to Phil Spector (still an icon to people like The Beatles, and not yet revealed to be a murderous head-case) and he was asked to get on with it. The result was the opposite of the ‘back to basics’ recording they had envisaged – the Spector treatment called for baroque orchestral arrangements and contributions from huge choirs. 

Early in the 20th century, Paul McCartney instigated an effort to return the album to what had originally been intended… which meant, in part, including Don’t Let Me Down. Perhaps the most straightforwardly soulful recording the band has ever made, it’s a stern test of midrange resolution, tonal variation and rhythmic expression – and plenty more besides.

Buy Let It Be… Naked on Amazon

MORE:

Check out the best British rock songs to test your system

Prefer Pink Floyd? Here are our favourite Pink Floyd songs

12 of the best Muse tracks to test your headphones or hi-fi system

What Hi-Fi?’s British Hi-Fi Week special event is here and to celebrate we’ve got a special treat for you, our lovely readers.

Specifically, we’ve got a shiny new Cambridge Audio CXN100 music streamer, worth £899 to give away to one lucky reader.

How do you win it, you ask?

To secure your chance to win a Cambridge Audio CXN100 worth £899 all you have to do is answer the question below!

From there we’ll pick a winner at the end of British Hi-Fi Week and get in touch to arrange delivery. The one caveat is that you must be based in the UK to win.

The Cambridge Audio CXN100 was unveiled earlier in February, and is the latest music streamer from the iconic British Brand. 

We haven’t had a chance to fully review the Cambridge Audio CXN100 in our dedicated listening rooms, but our testers did manage to have an opening play with it during a special press event at launch. 

At that, our team was optimistic about the device, which has had a complete redesign internally in a bid to improve its audio quality. While it's too early to give a definitive verdict, early listening sessions at the event yielded positive feedback, with our testers reporting: 

“Our first impressions of the CXN100 are certainly positive – let's hope it delivers on its full potential once we get a full sample in for extensive testing. Stay tuned for the full review.”

Cambridge Audio also has a pedigree in the streaming space. The Cambridge Audio CXN (V2) entered our distinguished Hall of Fame last year after winning the What Hi-Fi? Award in the best music streamer category six years in a row.

Make sure to keep checking back with What Hi-Fi? this week for all the latest coverage celebrating the British hi-fi industry.

MORE:

These are the best bookshelf speakers we’ve reviewed

Check out our picks of the best wireless speakers

Looking for a one-box solution? These are the best hi-fi systems money can buy

What Hi-Fi?’s British Hi-Fi Week is reaching its end this weekend, and there are plenty of features, reviews and insights to sink your teeth into.

In the past week we've published reviews from Leema Acoustics, Neat and B&W, highlighted the most underrated gems in hi-fi from recent years, looked at five modern products celebrating British hi-fi heritage, asked hi-fi brands if such a thing as "British sound" exists and what it is, and asked top British hi-fi engineers for their favourite test tracks – there are some cracking selections there.

Our special British Hi-Fi Week event runs between Monday 4th March and Sunday 10th March. We've been highlighting the biggest players in British hi-fi (those that were founded and continue to operate in the UK) as well as retrospectives on some of the most iconic products to come from our native shores. We've also been picking our favourite songs from The Beatles, Kate Bush and David Bowie that we love listening to and testing out our hi-fi system with.

But it's not just about us – we also want to hear from you, our lovely readers, about your favourite British hi-fi products. Make sure to get involved in the conversation in the comments section, as well as on our forums and our social media accounts.

You will be able to keep tabs on all the latest features and reviews via our dedicated British Hi-Fi Week 2024 hub page or get the highlights below, where our team will drop links to all of our exclusive coverage.

British Hi-Fi Week is a staple event in the What Hi-Fi? calendar, with the brand having covered the manufacturers and products for most of our existence – our magazine, after all, was launched all the way back in 1976.

All our latest British Hi-Fi Week coverage

Reviews

• Leema Acoustics Neutron/Graviton review
• Neat Petite Classic review
• Bowers & Wilkins 603 S3 review

Interviews

• We asked top British hi-fi engineers for their favourite test tracks – this is what they said
• Made in Britain: the biggest UK brands talk manufacturing, distribution and the future of British hi-fi
• What is British sound? We asked five big names in hi-fi
• Bowes & Wilkins says the "centre is the key" for quality home cinema sound
• What systems do the people who make your hi-fi use at home? Time to find out

Retrospective features

• Musical Fidelity's LS3/5A and the enduring appeal of BBC-inspired small speakers
• 9 of the most underrated British hi-fi products we've ever tested
• Throwback Thursday: 5 British hi-fi products that celebrate their heritage
• 15 peculiar British adverts from the What Hi-Fi? magazine archives
• The British hi-fi Hall of Fame: every British entrant from the last 48 years

Playlists

• 65 great British albums to test your hi-fi system
• 12 of the best British indie and alternative tracks to test your hi-fi system
• 12 of the best David Bowie songs to test your hi-fi system
• 12 of the best Kate Bush songs to test your hi-fi system
• 12 of the best songs by The Beatles to test your hi-fi system

Best of

• The best home cinema kit made by British hi-fi brands
• 12 of the best British stereo amplifiers of all time
• 8 of the best British DACs of all time
• 13 of the best British CD players of all time
• 11 of the best Arcam products of all time
• 11 of the best Wharfedale speakers of all time
• 10 of the best Naim Audio products of all time
• 16 of the best Rega products of all time: turntables, amps and phono stages

Competition

• Competition alert! Win a Cambridge Audio CXN100, worth £899 this British Hi-Fi Week (ends Friday 8th March)

MORE: 

Check out our pick of the best stereo amplifiers

We detail the best floorstanding speakers we have tested

These are the best turntables money can buy

These are the good old days. Because tempting though it may be to reminisce about the "golden age" of British hi-fi, it's worth remembering that present day products are pretty awesome too.

In fact, since the dawn of the millennium we've seen some of the best hi-fi products of all time, as technology advances and design is refined. As part of British Hi-Fi Week 2024, we've collated our 28 favourites from all manner of British brands.

They include everything from speakers from B&W and ATC, hi-fi systems from KEF and Naim, a CD player that ruled the roost for many years, and some stupidly high-end turntables. And all as British as James Bond driving an Aston Martin off the top of Big Ben, only to be saved by a Union Jack parachute. 

Yes, all of the below are British, but in truth, they would all make a list of this century's best hi-fi gear from any country, such is their quality. 

Cups of tea at the ready then, as we count down the best British hi-fi products of the 21st century so far...

Quad ESL 988 (2000)

We could easily have picked one of Quad’s legendary electrostatic speakers from both sides of the millennium – after all, the 2008 ELS 2805 were positively stunning in our books – but the ESL 988 (smaller versions of the ESL 989 pictured) were standouts, and as well as delivering a memorable sound were also interesting for their place in the British company’s history. They were essentially designed as a similar but improved successor to its 1988 ESL-63 when the International Audio Group (IAG) acquired Quad in 1998. But inside were advanced components, a new transformer and they were more rigidly constructed. Plus their sound rocked, which always helps.

Mission 780 (2000)

Mission’s diminutive 780 were the first standmounters to really grab us at the turn of the century, winning the stereo speaker Product of the Year award in both 2001 and 2002. Despite their relatively compact (for their time) dimensions – they were the smallest of the company’s 78 Series – they produced a size of sound that belied it. Their clever tweeter isolation system and ceramic mid-bass driver produced an even-handed tonal balance that made them wonderfully listenable, with the sonic highlights being its impressively transparent midrange and powerful bass.

Arcam DiVA A85 (2001)

“The A85 blasts away any preconceptions of what an Arcam amplifier sounds like with the ferocity of a sledgehammer smashing through glass” – that's how we opened our DiVA A85 review in 2001. In place of Arcam's warm, smooth, safe sonic signature we had come to know and love was a different approach entirely – clear, powerful and bursting with energy, with a midrange clarity and resolution that was unrivalled. 

For the A85, Arcam introduced entirely new circuit designs in both the pre-amplifier and power amplifier sections, and that new approach to the internals paid off. It said its A85 was “unquestionably a class-leading integrated amplifier” – and we could only agree.

Wilson Benesch Full Circle (2001)

“The Full Circle is an elegant product: for its build, ease of use and sound it's highly recommended… an open, even-handed record player that works well with all types of music.” We’ve used higher degrees of superlatives to describe products than the ones we reached for in our Full Circle review, but make no mistake, we were blown away by this round layer-cake-shaped Wilson Benesch desk – back in 2001 and for years to come. 

Like many Wilson Benesch products of that time, including its only descendant at that time, the 1991 Wilson Benesch Turntable, the Full Circle used chiefly carbon fibre in its construction, from its armtube to its cantilevered suspension technique. The result was a precise, spacious sound complete with a smooth treble and full bass.

Cyrus 8 (2002) & CD 8 SE (2008)

It’s hard to pick between the Cyrus 8 Series amplifier and CD player (pictured), so we won't. The 8 (and its multiple variations) has been a case of familiar design, familiar sound and familiar result throughout the model’s history, which began in 2002 as a successor to the well-received Cyrus 7. Familiar in a good way, that is, like when your favourite meal is placed in front of you. The 8 amplifier represented everything we had come to expect from Cyrus – classic looks and trademark transparency. 

The CD8SE proved equally accomplished and just as valuable to the 8 series, offering, as we said at the time, “effortless musicality, forensic detail retrieval and masterful control of timing… it makes for an endlessly absorbing player that can rob you of your time in the most gripping way.”

Naim CDS3/XPS2 (2003)

A rather frightening performance befitting a rather frightening price tag (£10k). We heralded this two-box Naim CD transport/DAC (CDS3) and power supply (XPS2), which was an alternative to the typical two-box configuration (transport in one box; DAC in another), as one of the world’s best CD players. “There are products that cost many times more (honestly) that would have trouble bettering this performance,” we said in our review. 

Timing was its forte, allowing the musicality of songs to really come through, and its level of resolution and clarity contributed to how emotional content was able to come through the player untainted.

Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 (2004)

Another ‘best of’ list, another Wharfedale Diamond inclusion. We know, we know – but we can’t help it. The Diamond really has been an iconic speaker range over the decades, and the 9 Series was one of the standout iterations. Representing it here are the 9.1 bookshelf speakers, which deserve to go down in history as one of the greatest budget loudspeakers ever made. 

Back-to-back What Hi-Fi? Award winners, designed and built in-house, and with 13cm Kevlar mid/bass woofers, 25mm textile tweeters, and custom crossovers at their engineering core, they looked and sounded like a much more expensive speaker. 

Roksan Xerxes 20 (2006)

The Xerxes design originated in the 1980s and was developed over the next two decades, with every iteration delivering an improvement on the last. “The Xerxes is arguably the first turntable to give the previously all-conquering Linn Sondek LP12 a real run for its money,” we said at the time. It might not have looked all that special – not like the Wilson Benesch further up this list. 

But what it lacked in aesthetic distinction it made up for in first-class engineering. A motor that turns on its axis to compensate for torque fluctuations, a bearing designed to minimise noise, and rubber suspension tuned to dampen specific frequencies were just some of the flourishes Roksan engineers worked into the Xerxes to make it perform as it did – exceptionally.

Audiolab M-DAC (2011)

Like the Grado SR325 headphone, the M-DAC was a product we championed for years. We couldn’t help it: the multi-Award-winner had it all. Punchy timing, seamless dynamics and plenty of space in a well-constructed stereo soundfield, not to mention class-leading features (hi-res connections, XLRs, several DAC filters), a well-constructed build, and a price tag rival brands couldn’t undercut with something better during those years of domination. 

It was finally knocked off its perch in 2015 by the Chord Mojo (which is still dominating that slice of the market eight years on) and succeeded by the bigger, better-sounding and more equipped M-DAC+. As we introduced the M-DAC+ back then, “for every tough-act-followed-with-aplomb like Kasper Schmeichel there’s a Jordi Cruyff…”

ATC SCM 11 Mk2 (2013)

Both the first generation of ATC SCM11 (2006) and the Mk II deserve their place on this list, such has been their collective dominance over the past nearly two decades. That's thanks to the in-house manufactured soft-dome tweeter and the classier curved cabinets.

But the main innovation was the sealed cabinet. This was meant to improve sound quality, though there were some concerns that bass would suffer. They proved unfounded, however, as the Mk2 matched class rivals in terms of low frequencies while outdoing them for detail, dynamics and rhythmic ability. 

These ATC monitors went on to dominate their price point at the What Hi-Fi? Awards for the next five years and remain first-class contenders, even today. Impressive doesn't do it justice.

Read the full ATC SCM11 Mk2 review

B&W 606 (2019)

The entry-level 600 Series from B&W was introduced back in 1995, and in the two decades since it has picked up multiple What Hi-Fi? Awards. It uses top technology from its cutting-edge speakers, repackaged in a more affordable chassis.

Our pick of the current range? The 606. They might feel a little less premium than their more expensive stablemates, but they still ooze quality. They're a good size too, with everything in proportion.

And they sound amazing. The sonic balance is spot on, with clear treble, cavernous bass and class-leading detail and dynamics. With such a legacy behind them, the 606 model is proving to stand the test of time, with the Award-winning 606 S3 continuing to do the brand proud.

Read the full B&W 606 review

Cambridge Audio CXA81 (2019)

This Cambridge Audio amp is still a relative newcomer, but in its pretty short life it's already had a seismic impact on the market. It immediately set a new standard for integrated amps at this price – one that still stands five years later.

Give it a whirl and it's clear why. Feed it any genre of music, and you're met with a delightfully punchy, dynamic and detailed presentation. It's powerful and weighty in the low end without sacrificing agility, while the treble is blissfully free of harshness.

In terms of features and connections, it improves on every front compared to its predecessor. And it makes the competition sound positively cloudy by comparison. A more-than-worthy Award winner, and comfortably one of the best products of the decade.

Read the full Cambridge Audio CXA81 review

Chord Hugo (2014)

The original Hugo set new standards for portable audio (and in the process, embarrassed pretty much every similarly priced battery-powered DAC on the market). 

It was all thanks to the FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), which came loaded with proprietary software that handled all the digital processes tasked to the DAC. Chord used this instead of off-the-shelf chips, which gave it much more control over how the music signal was handled. This put it head and shoulders above the competition.

Four years later, the Hugo 2 bettered the original and is still a benchmark setter (and could well be until a Hugo 3 comes along). But it couldn't be as groundbreaking. Few products are.

Read the full Chord Hugo review

Cyrus CDi (2013)

For as long as we can remember, Cyrus' CD players have been up there with the best in the world. And the CDi was its best-sounding yet. Don't believe us? It's won the What Hi-Fi? Award for Best CD Player in its price bracket for 10 years in a row!

Hitting the market in 2013, its audio output was on a par with much more expensive players. It sounded pleasingly weighty but still fast and fluid, with pace and momentum exercised with articulation and vibrancy.

Yes, its blocky, black-on-green display looked dated in 2013, so it looks positively ancient now – though maybe that now qualifies as retro cool (much like CD players in general). A classic CD player that shows Cyrus at its best.

Read the full Cyrus CDi review

KEF LS50 Wireless (2017)

Believe it or not, this is a full hi-fi system. The pair of active speakers have preamp functionality, Bluetooth, and music services built in. They also have streaming functionality to entertain tunes stored on a NAS drive or computer over your home network. 

In short, the Award-winning LS50 Wireless does away with the decades-old vision of a hi-fi system involving lots of boxes spread around the room. For that, it's a genuine landmark product.

The sound quality is up there with that of a separates system. They may not be completely wireless (each speaker has a mains cable, and there's a wire connecting them), but it's still a very neat and clutter-free way to enjoy a high-quality audio performance. The LS50 Wireless II has taken sound quality even further, not to mention its convenience factor by removing the interconnecting speaker cable, and for that deservedly takes the reigns as the best all-in-one stereo speakers at this level.

Read the full KEF LS50 Wireless review

Linn LP12 Klimax (2017)

The Klimax has some serious heritage: the original Linn LP12 dates from 1973, and by the 1980s was the dominant deck in the UK. With such an illustrious pedigree, expectations were high when we ushered the latest model into our test room, but needless to say it didn't disappoint.

It feels like it's built to last decades. That's not hyperbole - the original LP12s can be retrofitted with more modern parts to bring them up to today's standards. Sound bursts with detail, while still coming together as a wonderfully compelling whole. There's an evenness to the presentation that means peaks and troughs in the frequency range never become too distracting.

The result? An immediacy and agility to proceedings that most rivals fail to muster. Pricey, sure. But this is one piece of hi-fi kit that truly endures.

Read the full Linn LP12 Klimax review

Naim Mu-so (2014)

Pre-2014, wireless speakers were mostly cheap, portable and a little bit underwhelming. Then 'proper' hi-fi company Naim came along and rewrote the rules. Awesome sound quality? Check. High-quality materials? Check. A refusal to compromise on design aesthetic? Check.

By treating wireless speakers with the same reverence as it does its wired models, Naim reinvented the wireless category, and inspired a host of imitators in the process. So it wasn't surprising when a better-sounding sequel, the Mu-so 2, showed up in 2019 to remind rivals who is boss.

Read the full Naim Mu-so review

Rega Planar 3/Elys 2 (2016)

Rega's Planar 3 turntables have been massively influential since they originally launched in the 1970s, and to this day they're still the go-to for vinyl aficionados around the world. But success brought a cautious approach, with each new model being more of an evolution than a revolution. Until this model touched down in 2016.

Just about every part of it had been rethought and reengineered. Combined with the slick new look, it made for a turntable that appealed to newbies and Rega diehards alike.

But one thing didn't change: the simplicity. The Planar 3 remained as easy to use as ever, and provided you take some care with placement, it's still tremendously pleasing to the ears. It's cleaner and clearer than its predecessor, with great transparency and more detail.

Read the full Rega Planar 3/Elys 2 review

Roksan Caspian M2 (2010)

More than a decade after hitting the market, this amp is still one of the best at its price. That's quite an achievement. The excellent build quality and superb sound make the M2 easy to recommend, even after all these years. 

It only shows its age when it comes to the feature set. There are no digital inputs whatsoever, no streaming skills, not even a phono stage in sight. It's strictly an analogue-only affair. Old school.

But if you can live with that, you'll love the levels of dynamic expression, insight and rhythmic coherence on show. Bravo.

Read the full Roksan Caspian M2 review

Naim ND555/555 PS (2019)

It took a while for music streamers to seriously impress in the sound department, so it was probably sensible that Naim didn't bless its flagship 5000 Series with one until fairly recently. The two-box offering – again, one for the source (ND555), the other for the power supply (555 PS) – was the best digital streaming source we had come across by 2019, and remained so until the Linn further down this list showed up. For its £20k/$30k asking price, the pair was (and still is) as mature a streamer as you could expect, combining class-leading streaming software with decades of experience going into Naim’s purist analogue audio circuitry. 

And yep, it remains a vital part of our hi-fi test room’s reference set-up because of that.

Read the full Naim ND 555/555 PS DR review

KEF LS50 Meta (2020)

The KEF LS50 Meta have already qualified as some of the all-time greats – certainly if you add their success to that of their descendants, the definitely-legendary LS50. The multi-Award-winners threw down the gauntlet when they arrived in 2020 with their exemplary resolution retrieval and effortless musicality, and their impact is still resonating around the market. Untouchable… as of yet.

Read the full KEF LS50 Meta review

Vertere DG-1 (2021)

Vertere has secured a brace in its DG-1 and subsequent DG-1 S release. The former launched as a breath of fresh air in 2021 for its standout design and clever engineering (like its flat, triple-layered, aluminium alloy/polymer sandwich arm). The latter has since taken engineering plaudits – and consequently performance – even further. The result is a record player that is unrivalled for entertainment and insight at its high-end (well, entry-level high-end) price point.

Read the full Vertere DG-1 Dynamic Groove review

Linn Klimax DSM AV (2021)

If you have read our Klimax DSM AV review, you probably would’ve known this entry was coming. The music streamer is second to none when it comes to streaming sound quality, period. It’s the best standalone streamer we’ve heard by a mile, an accumulation of streaming experience that is pretty much unrivalled in the market (Linn has been in the ‘serious’ streaming game far longer than many). When you also consider that it’s vastly furnished with features, upgradeable and modifiable, and has perhaps the most intuitive, seamless app platform and operation in the business, its inclusion speaks for itself.

Read the full Linn Klimax DSM AV review

PMC Fact Fenestria (2022)

This is a landmark product in speaker history, and is well worth its place in this list. PMC's reference towers are as nuanced and agile as they come, ruthlessly revealing, and natural-sounding to the nth degree. Prohibitively expensive (for many), yes. But they're a great advert for PMC’s engineering principles and vision, and indeed the wider British hi-fi industry at that.

Read the full PMC Fact Fenestria review

dCS Rossini Apex DAC (2022)

Rarely does a product live up to a model name with such strong positive connotations, but the dCS Rossini really does represent the apex of DAC design. The ‘Apex’ in the product name actually signifies a major overhaul of the company’s hugely celebrated Ring DAC circuit, which combines with a solid streaming module (yes, it’s a music streamer too), a significantly improved analogue board, and more connectivity and tweaking options than you need or will likely ever use to produce an outstanding all-round performer. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine how this DAC performance can be bettered.

Read the full dCS Rossini Apex DAC review

SME Model 60 (2022)

SME’s reputation is built on exceptional build quality and the Model 60 maintains that high standard. One look at that handsome precision-machined aluminium chassis and you can be in no doubt you’re looking at a turntable most people could only dream of owning. But that’s just the icing on the proverbial cake, of course. The Model 60 is the company’s first new flagship player in three decades, taking that esteemed position from the Model 30 which launched in 1991, and has been every bit worth the wait. 

“There’s a very real feeling that the turntable is digging up every last bit of information from the record groove,” to quote our review. “It’s a convincing performance that transports us in time and space to the point the music was recorded. We can’t ask for more than that.”

Read the full SME Model 60 review

Rega Naia

If you're talking about the best British turntable of the last few decades, the Rega Naia must be in the conversation. Though it didn't launch until 2023, the project started in 2009, when Rega started researching the limits of low mass and high rigidity. With the sky as the limit, no expense was spared, and the result, the legendary Naiad turntable ended up as a victim of its own success. Because while it was intended purely as an experiment in what could be achieved, it was so good that plenty of people wanted to buy it.

And so, after a limited run of 50 units of the Naiad, Rega set about creating a production-ready version. The result is the Naia, a truly outlandish deck that reimagines what's possible from a home record player. Truly awe-inspiring.

Read the full Rega Naia review

Wilson Benesch A.C.T. 3Zero

During our testing every year, we listen to hundreds of products, some good, some bad, but rarely are any as sublime as Wilson Benesch’s A.C.T. 3Zero. These floorstanders share some of the same DNA as the firm's A.C.T. One, which acted as part of our reference system for testing during the late 90s. They swap the One's carbon fibre composite enclosures for a biocomposite that's not only more sustainable but stiffer and better damped. 

The results speak for themselves – they sound exceptional, with levels of transparency and insight that are rarely heard. The result is they uncover new subtleties in familiar tunes, breathing new life into even well-worn tracks. What more could you ask for?

Read the full Wilson Benesch A.C.T. 3Zero review

MORE:

See all our British Hi-Fi Week 2024 coverage

The British Hi-Fi Hall of Fame: the best British hi-fi products of all time

Check out 10 of the best Naim Audio products of all time

DACs don’t necessarily get all the headlines when we’re talking hi-fi. Stereo speakers and integrated amplifiers are a little sexier, that’s for sure, but don’t underestimate the importance of a good digital-to-analogue convertor.

They exist in a lot of products we use day-to-day and we’ve tested our fair share over the years, from traditional standalone separates to more modern DACs, complete with digital inputs and a built-in headphone amplifier.

And, it’s fair to say British manufacturers have had quite an impact in this particular market. We've seen some of the best DACs to have blown us away over the years come from UK shores, many of which have walked away with multiple, coveted What Hi-Fi? Awards. You'll find those and more below, in our list of the best British DACs we’ve had the pleasure of testing in recent years…

• Read our British Hi-Fi Week 2023 news, reviews and features
• 8 most exciting British hi-fi products launching in 2023
• The 12 best Radiohead songs to test your hi-fi system

dCS Lina DAC (2023)

We'd normally describe a product like the dCS Lina DAC as a music streamer instead of a DAC, but the Lina deserves a place in this list because of its amazing sonic abilities. Granted there are cheaper DACs out there, but it is entry-level by dCS' high-end standards. The DAC remains honest and truthful to the original recording at all times – as we said in our review, it's "an organised and controlled performer that ticks every box when it comes to the mechanics of hi-fi" and had no problems slotting into our reference hi-fi system. Add the convenience of a hugely capable streaming module and you've got quite the British proposition.

MORE: read our dCS Lina DAC review

dCS Rossini Apex DAC (2022)

We called the dCS the "most capable digital-to-analogue converter we’ve ever reviewed". So, you can understand why it needs to be on this particular list. Sure, at £26,775 ($32,800 / AU$46,995) it isn't cheap, but this kind of quality rarely is. It's actually described as an upsampling network DAC which means streaming abilities are also there to be enjoyed, courtesy of a streaming module, but, there's no doubt this DACs primary focus is on conversion. The sense of scale, transparency and its stunning rhythmic skills need to be heard to be believed. A stunning performer.

MORE: read our dCS Rossini Apex DAC review

Chord Mojo 2 (2022)

Mojo stands for ‘Mobile Joy’ and boy does it deliver exactly what it says on the box. The original was brilliant (see below) but unlike a lot of sequels, the second coming was even better. It took the benchmark set by its predecessor to a whole new level. Mojo 2 introduced a new, powerful ‘UHD DSP’, a faster, more efficient charging system and added USB-C to its list of inputs. Not only that, the sound quality was improved in virtually every area. A bigger soundstage, more detail, extra dynamic subtlety and a greater sense of refinement all combine to make this an easy recommendation at its price level.

MORE: read our Chord Mojo 2 review

Chord Qutest (2018)

If you’re not looking to plug in a pair of headphones and just want a standalone DAC between your digital source and amplifier, then Chord has a product that fits the bill perfectly. The Qutest is largely based on the Hugo 2, which features below. It keeps the same DAC architecture, software coding and filters but loses the headphone amp and rechargeable batteries. So you can probably guess how it performs. In our review, we highlighted its “rhythmic mastery” and the fact it’s “as happy rocking out to tumultuous tunes as it is rolling with classical compositions”. It’s a brilliant DAC that to this day struggles to be beaten.

MORE: read our Chord Qutest review

Chord Hugo 2 (2017)

The Hugo 2 was another update to a class-leading DAC/headphone amplifier that took performance to a whole new level. It’s a quirky design (it’s not the most portable DAC/headphone amp we’ve seen) that takes some getting used to, thanks to the use of colour to communicate what it’s doing and the signals it’s receiving. Once you’ve acclimatised, though, you’re treated to a fantastically musical performance, whether you’re listening through the headphone amplifier or using it between source and amp as part of a more traditional separates system. Chord’s super-charged and bespoke FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) does the number-crunching with hugely impressive results.

MORE: read our Chord Hugo 2 review

Chord Mojo (2015)

The original Mojo arrived back in 2015 and it changed the game for DACs/headphone amps. By Chord’s standards, it was an entry-level product with a more minimalist design than we’d seen from the brand. Its footprint was barely larger than a credit card. Yet, despite its small size, Mojo packed a serious punch, producing one of the most informative, subtle and dynamic sounds we’d heard from a DAC/headphone amp at its price point. It boasted a good range of connections, solid build quality and eight-hour battery life for anyone wanting to take it on the move.

MORE: read our Chord Mojo review

Arcam irDAC (2013)

In 2013, Arcam produced the irDAC, a fantastic box of digital tricks that took some design cues from the company’s high-end FMJ D33 converter. It offered a suite of digital connections, including an asynchronous Type-B USB input and a Type-A connector that allowed you to feed digital music files from an iPod. Remember those! The “i” in irDAC wasn’t related to its Apple support but the fact a remote control came in the box. And it’s fair to say we were huge fans of the level of performance on offer. In our review we said, “across all inputs, this small black box gives music a quite breathtaking sense of rhythm”.

MORE: read our Arcam irDAC review

Naim DAC-V1 (2013)

Naim wasn't among the first brands to embrace the world of DACs but when it finally brought out the original Naim DAC in 2010 it served up something pretty special. The DAC-V1 was its successor which arrived in 2013 and added a headphone amplifier and asynchronous USB port to connect straight to your laptop. The half-rack design meant it was great for desktop use and it was topped off with Naim's trademark and distinctive green and black styling. It also delivered Naim's signature sound with a beautiful balance of drive and finesse aided by its superb sense of rhythmic ability. A fantastic five-star performer.

MORE: read our Naim DAC-V1 review

What Hi-Fi?'s British Hi-Fi Week is back, baby! 

Between Monday 20th and Sunday 26th March, British Hi-Fi Week 2023 is our annual seven-day salute to some of the most influential British brands, products and technologies from our home nation.

While the definition of a British company has become increasingly blurred, there remains a great number of audio companies from the British Isles that have delivered (and, in the face of Brexit and the pandemic, overcome unprecedented adversities to continue to deliver) great hi-fi products for our listening pleasure. Why, British hi-fi continues to punch above its weight when it comes to delivering great sound, from speakers to streamers, amplifiers to turntables. And when you consider too that a few of the country's (and industry's) most revered hi-fi brands are celebrating their 50th anniversaries this year, you'll agree there is plenty to celebrate this week!

You can tune into all of the event's coverage through our British Hi-Fi Week 2023 hub (or peruse it below), where we are dropping news, features and reviews throughout the week for your browsing leisure. You can expect exclusive interviews with big names in the British hi-fi industry, retrospective looks at some of the most iconic British products to have passed through our listening rooms, a review of a brand-new British £32,000 loudspeaker, curated lists of the best British songs to test your system... and much, much more!

And be sure to get involved with the conversation on What Hi-Fi?’s social feeds and forum. Our experts are always happy to answer any questions you might have.

This week-long event holds a special meaning to the team, with What Hi-Fi?’s origins starting covering British hi-fi all the way back in the 1970s – and boy have things changed since then.

“There’s a rich tradition of British hi-fi, innovations and music that forms the heart of what we do at What Hi-Fi?, and it feels apt to celebrate the widely varying flavours of home-grown products, manufacturers, technology and sounds that make up the current audio landscape,” said What Hi-Fi?’s hi-fi and audio editor, Kashfia Kabir. 

“Of course, none of this would be possible without music. We’re highlighting some of our favourite songs and albums from a huge melting pot of artists, influences and styles – encompassing jazz, R&B, electronica, heavy metal, and indie rock – without which there would be no point in all the lovely hi-fi we listen to.”

Read our British Hi-Fi Week 2023 news, features and reviews:

• 7 best Pink Floyd tracks to test your hi-fi system
  What better way to conclude British Hi-Fi Week than with a list of Pink Floyd tracks that are perfect for putting systems through their paces? After all, the band's attention to detail and musical invention make their recordings perfect food for hi-fi gourmands. And if you need further reason to give Floyd a spin this Sunday, it's Dark Side's 50-year anniversary.
  See which 7 Floyd tracks make particularly great test tracks

• 9 British audio firsts that made hi-fidelity sound possible
  From the microphone to the moving coil driver, British inventions in hi-fi haven't been far and few between. And we are still at it – we have updated this original list to include an innovation from the past few years.
  Read our British audio firsts feature

• 26 of the best British hi-fi products of the 21st century (so far)
  Honestly, while this is purely a list of kit from British brands only, many of them would appear in a world-encompassing list were we to open up the borders to create one. That's how good British hi-fi is.
  See our pick of the best British hi-fi products since 2000

• This Naim-powered CD and vinyl system celebrates the best of British hi-fi
  A fab four of Award-winners (Naim, Vertere, ATC) come together to create an outstanding premium stereo system for the ages.
  Read the best premium 2023 system for CD and vinyl 

• Engineering over chasing a sound: how Monitor Audio is designing Hyphn for the new generation
  Monitor Audio's technical director Michael Hedges tells us how its upcoming flagship speakers are a "statement of intent" of how the company puts solid engineering first when designing a loudspeaker.
  Read the Monitor Audio Hyphn interview

• 7 of the best British DACs of all time
  Stereo speakers, turntables and integrated amplifiers might hog the spotlight, but don’t underestimate the importance of a good digital-to-analogue convertor. We shine a light on some of the best UK-based DACs we've heard.
  See our pick of the best British DACs

• 67 great British albums to test your hi-fi system
  A definitive list of the best British albums simply cannot exist, but we've compiled some of our favourite music the UK has ever produced from the '60s to the present day, across a wide range of genres and styles. Dig in.
  See our pick of the great British albums

• 19 best British rock songs to test your hi-fi system
  Motörhead to Muse to Mogwai – team What Hi-Fi? picks their favourite rock classics that will give your hi-fi system the vigorous workout it demands.
  See our pick of the best British rock tracks

• Wilson Benesch A.C.T. 3Zero speakers reviewed & rated
  Yes, these are hugely expensive floorstanders but they are extraordinarily talented too. Wilson Benesch's relentless search for improved performance has resulted in one of the finest speakers we've heard...
  Read the full Wilson Benesch A.C.T. 3Zero review

• Monitor Audio thinks separates are more sustainable than all-in-ones
  We spoke to Monitor Audio's technical director Michael Hedges about why he thinks hi-fi separates might be more sustainable in the long run, and how the company plans to make the best of this claim.
  Read the full Monitor Audio interview

• 8 most exciting British hi-fi products launching in 2023: Rega Naia, KEF R3 Meta and more
  Some seriously cool products including turntables, speakers, music streamers and more from big names in British hi-fi are coming this year. These are the eight we’re most looking forward to listening and reviewing.
  Read the list of 2023 products we're excited about

• Step-up British hi-fi system for CD and streaming joy
  Continuing our series of compiling a great separates system out of British products, this is a stunning (and perhaps a little quirky) step-up hi-fi system to do your CD and streaming proud.
  Read the best 2023 system for CD and streaming
  

• Back to the future: Cambridge Audio on selling CDs and separates to the next generation
  Cambridge Audio CEO Stuart George reveals the biggest changes he expects to see in the world of hi-fi – including his belief that CDs are on the verge of a big comeback.
  Read the full Cambridge Audio interview

• The 12 best Radiohead songs to test your hi-fi system
  The Oxford-based band's vast catalogue of innovative, eclectic work makes the band an ideal candidate for putting your hi-fi system to the test. We pick a dozen of our favourite tracks from the genre-defying British band.
  See our pick of the best Radiohead tracks

• 13 of the best British CD players of all time
  CDs are making a comeback, haven't you heard? We round-up some of the best British-made CD players to ever grace the hi-fi world, including some stellar entries from Meridian, Exposure, dCS, Cyrus and more.
  See our pick of the best British CD players ever

• Rega talks digitising amplifiers & the product it’s been happiest with for years
  In its 50th year, the revered British hi-fi brand is still nailing its niche. We discuss with British turntable legends Rega its journey towards digital amplification, and what the future might look like for the next 50 years.
  Read the full Rega 50th anniversary interview

• Spatial Audio makes more sense in a car than a living room, says Cambridge
  Cambridge Audio CEO Stuart George says the company is currently limiting its scope for Spatial Audio to the car space, as he feels there are too many variables and unknowns around how to make it work in normal homes at the moment.
  Read the full Cambridge Audio spatial audio interview

• 12 of the best British stereo amplifiers of all time
  This list of our favourite British stereo amplifiers from the pages of What Hi-Fi? showcases the power providers that have helped to get the most out of our set-ups over the years. The mighty from Blighty, if you will.
  See our pick the best British stereo amps ever

• 11 of the best British record players of all time
  We've been reviewing audio equipment for the last 47 years, so while some companies are still going strong, others are sadly no longer with us. Regardless, all of these record players are brilliant examples of British audio engineering that well and truly stand the test of time.
  See our pick of the best British record players ever

• This terrific-value hi-fi system is great, British – and punches above its weight
  Given what we are celebrating this week, what better excuse to come up with a wonderful system comprising the best of British components? The affordable set-up we have here is thoroughly 2023, embracing as it does the double joys of streaming and vinyl in one neat system.
  Read the best 2023 British system for streaming and vinyl

• 7 of the best British hi-fi innovations and technologies
  Britain has always been a nation that prides itself on its engineering and science pedigree, which is why it’s no surprise that it’s been the birthplace of some of the most interesting innovations in the hi-fi space. We’re picked the biggies that our team of experts personally list as their hallmarks for British hi-fi innovation.
  Read our pick of the best British hi-fi innovations and technologies

• Cambridge Audio CXA81 vs Rega Elex Mk4 head-to-head
  The integrated amps from these two British hi-fi brands have faced off against each other in hotly contested battles in previous years, with Award wins changing hands as a new contender emerges at this price. So which mid-range marvel deserves to take the mantle today?
  Read the full Cambridge Audio CXA81 vs Rega Elex Mk4 comparison

• Castle announces UK-made Windsor Series loudspeakers
  The Castle Windsor Series is a new range of loudspeakers that comprises the Duke and Earl models. They're the first Castle speakers for many years to be UK-made – taking advantage of parent company IAG's new 9000-square-foot production facility in Huntingdon – with every critical part developed and manufactured in-house. 
  Read the full Castle Windsor news

• Cambridge Audio Alva TT V2 turntable reviewed & rated
  The Cambridge Audio Alva TT V2 is a thoughtful and well-made turntable package that’s easy to live with. The inclusion of a good phono stage and Bluetooth module makes it an attractive proposition. But it isn't perfect...
  Read the full Cambridge Alva TT V2 review

• Why the 1970s were the perfect time to start a British hi-fi company
  With so many British brands celebrating 50 years this decade, our technical editor Ketan Bharadia wondered whether there was something special about that time which encouraged people to start hi-fi companies. So he asked some industry folk...
  Read the full feature here

• The best British speakers you can buy
  I know, we are biased. But it's true: British hi-fi brands offer some of the finest speakers money can buy. So whether you're on a tight budget or looking to drop some serious coin, speakers from Britain's best audio brands are a great place to start your search. Honestly, our best British speaker list isn't too dissimilar from our best speakers from everywhere list!
  See our pick of the best British speakers

To call Rega a little bit dominant in the world of turntables would be quite an understatement. After all, the brand has picked up more Awards than we can count in the best turntables category – nearly half of the ones from the last decade alone!

The current Award-winning and five-star turntables didn’t come out of nowhere: they’re the culmination of five decades of tireless development and refinement and built upon the legacy of the turntables that have gone before.

But while record players and cartridges are what Rega is most renowned for, the British company has also excelled in a range of electronics (mainly amplifiers and phono stages) over the years that have many an accolade and an impressive heritage of their own. It's got a few pairs of speakers under its belt, too, having recently launched the Aya model.

The Southend-on-Sea-based brand celebrated its 50th-anniversary last year with special edition turntables and a new flagship model, but there's no sign of Rega slowing down – it started this year with a preview of a high-end pre/power amplifier combo launching later this year.

We've hit our archives and highlighted the very best of Rega's products that we've come across and tested over the decades. From its very first turntable to its most recent What Hi-Fi? Award-winners across a number of categories, here are Rega's greatest hits.

• Rega talks digitising amplifiers, the product it’s been happiest with for years, and what's next

Rega Planet (1973)

Pre-Rega, founder Roy Gandy spent his free time installing, upgrading and repairing turntables. Dismayed by the poor reliability of the decks he was seeing, Gandy set out to make an alternative with real solidity and longevity.

He also wanted his first turntable to look different to everything else that was available at the time. “Why can a turntable not have three outrigger points spinning round, that people might buy as a piece of sculpture?” he asked.

The result of his experience, goals and theorising was the distinctive Rega Planet, with its three-spoke, steel and aluminium platter and Acos Lustre tonearm. This was also the beginning of Rega as a company. Not a bad start for the now 50-year-old brand.

• Interview with Rega's Roy Gandy: "I don’t think I’ve ever been interested in hi-fi"

Rega Planar 3 (with RB300 arm) (1983)

As you'd assume from the name, the Planar 3 was not the first Planar by Rega. What's more, the model we're highlighting here wasn't even the first Planar 3. What makes this the Planar 3 to focus on is the RB-300 tonearm that came pre-installed on it.

Having used Japanese and Danish manufactured arms for the first decade of its life, Rega's own RB-300 and RB-250 took performance to new levels and received plaudits that you might not expect, with Modern Metals magazine proclaiming that it was 'still trying to figure out how you produce such a long cored hole so accurately'.

More importantly (we hope), What Hi-Fi? proclaimed at the time that the RB-300 edition of the Planar 3 "seemed to get so much more off the discs". This is arguably the point at which Rega came of age.

Rega Brio (1991 and 2018)

The original Brio amplifier was first launched in 1991 – it was the company's third model after the higher-end Elex and Elicit – and ever since, it has pedalled a reputation for being a musically engaging affordable amplifier. 

The generations we've seen over the years have all stayed true to the original's musical foundations, managing to be sonically engrossing to entertaining and mostly class-leading degrees. And while they haven't strayed far from the original design in terms of aesthetics and connectivity – half-width casing and analogue-only connectivity are infused into their design DNA – the performance benchmark they set has continued northwards. 

The current, sixth-generation Brio – the standout iteration alongside the first-gen model – is the best in the line yet: a stickler for detail and dynamics, rhythm and timing and, perhaps the simplest, truest summation, outright fun.

• Read the Rega Brio review

Rega P5 (2002)

Rega spent much of the '80s and '90s focused on electronics and speakers, ensuring that someone looking to build an entire two-channel system could do so using Rega components alone. New decks were occasionally launched along the way, but it's the P5 and its 15mm glass platter of 2002 that we're highlighting here.

The idea here was to bring some of the features of the company's more premium turntables – particularly the P25 of 1998 – within the reach of more hi-fi fans, hence the aluminium surround, complex CNC machined skeletal low mass micro-fibre plinth, and the RB700 tonearm of the step-up P7 deck.

Rega P3-24/Elys 2 (2007)

It would take Rega 24 years to launch the second-generation Planar 3, called the P3 2000, but then just seven years to launch the third model: the P3-24.

This model kept much of what made the original Planar 3 great but added some serious upgrades, including a new plinth, arm and motor.

You could buy just the turntable and arm for £400, but our sample was also fitted with Rega’s own Elys 2 cartridge, a model that would become part of the Rega furniture for years to come.

It was a terrific-sounding package, with class-leading and rival-obliterating drive and rhythmic ability. It’s fair to say this turntable left a lasting impression, so much so that it won the What Hi-Fi? Product of the Year Award twice in a row.

• Read the Rega P3-24/Elys 2 review

Rega RP8 (2012)

Rega's goal of combining lightness and rigidity bore striking fruit in 2012 with the launch of the RP8.

The now familiar skeletal plinth was constructed using little more than foam – closed cell, polyolefin foam to be precise. Phenolic resin skins were added to both top and bottom surfaces to deliver higher rigidity and an element of damping, but the RP8's plinth still wound up being seven times lighter than that of the original Planar 3.

To say we were impressed by the RP8 – which is still available, by the way – would be an understatement. 'When the company really goes for it, shooting for the stars rather than trying to meet a price point", we said, "the results are spectacular".

• Read the Rega RP8 review

Rega Naiad (2013)

It should be clear by now that Rega is renowned for building brilliant turntables at the relatively affordable end of the spectrum, which is why the Naiad might come as a bit of a surprise – it costs £30,000. Not that you can buy one even if you had the money: only 50 were ever made.

Built as an R&D exercise to celebrate Rega's 40th birthday, the company considers the Naiad to be the ultimate representation of its engineering ideas when executed with little regard for cost or ease of manufacture. It has materials sourced from suppliers to the MOD and Formula 1 industry, and each Naiad can only be painstakingly handmade and assembled by just three of Rega’s highly skilled craftsmen, including CEO Phil Freeman, a watch/clockmaker by trade who has the skill to put all of the parts together. In other words, it's the best deck Rega knows how to make.

We've not tested the Naiad – there'd be little point reviewing a product almost no one could buy - but by all accounts, it's very special.

Luckily for us mere mortals, ten years later for its 50th anniversary, Rega announced it was able to make a full production version of the Naiad, called the Naia. With updated materials to make it easier to mass produce but still very much a high-end proposition, this model delivers on the Naiad's original concept, with a sound that digs up exceptional detail resolution and offers a beautifully natural as well as transparent presentation.

• Rega Naiad to Naia: how a no-expense-spared R&D turntable became a £12k reality
• Read our Rega Naia/Aphelion 2 review

Rega Elex-R (2014)

Rega's Elex-R arrived in 2014, 13 years after the original Elex, which was the company's second-ever amplifier following its debut Elicit the year prior. It's still going strong today – something we're very thankful for. Because while the Elex-R's five-time What Hi-Fi? Award-winning streak came to an end in 2019 when Cambridge Audio's better-connected CX models showed up, it still remains a go-to for analogue purists who aren't worried about digital connectivity. Currently, the Elicit Mk5 and Elex Mk4 represent the brand's most up to date amplifier offerings, bringing refinement, insight and more features (even a DAC!) into the updated models.

As with the Elicit and Brio siblings, the Elex's biggest strength lies in its effortless, uncompromising musicality; it's the kind of product that gets straight to the heart of the music and conveys all the emotion in the recording with ease.

• Read the Rega Elex-R review

Rega RP1 Performance pack (2014)

We've always been fans of Rega's entry-level turntable, the RP1, but this enhanced version took things to a new level.

Mostly, this is the same turntable we know and love, but with a few key tweaks. For starters, there’s a new, thicker drive belt. You also get a new mat: it’s thicker, and made of natural wool as opposed to the synthetic material of the original. The moving-magnet cartridge is new, too, with the standard Ortofon OMB5 having been replaced by Rega’s own Bias 2.

We proclaimed the RP1 Performance pack a "blindingly good turntable for the money, and a great entry point into the world of vinyl".

• Read the Rega RP1 Performance Pack review

Rega Planar 2 (2016)

In 1976, three years after Rega’s creation, the Planar 2 launched as one of the brand’s very first turntables. Its S-shaped tonearm was then replaced in 1984 with Rega’s RB250, and at the turn of the century a brand new version of the deck – fittingly named the P2 2000 – took its place in Rega’s catalogue until 2005.

Over a decade later, the Planar 2, having been developed over the past two years, was brought back from the dead – this time with the unabbreviated ‘Planar’ name.

The only things existing from the original being the drive belt and the plastic mouldings for the dust cover lid hinges, despite the two decks looking remarkably similar. But changes included a new plinth, power switch, 24v low-noise motor, central bearing, platter and feet. Quite a lot, then.

Most importantly, the Planer 2 received Rega’s new RB220 tonearm, which features new ultra-low friction ball bearings, a stiffer bearing housing and an automatic bias setting, making it virtually plug ’n’ play.

We proclaimed it a "proper step-up in performance from the RP1", which is saying quite a lot.

• Read the Rega Planar 2 review

Rega Planar 3 (2016)

Despite there being a 40-year gap between the original and current Planar 3, we surmised that if we put the two side-by-side, "most people would be hard pushed to find any differences beyond the smarter plinth and the updated tonearm".

In actual fact, almost every part had been revised since the last iteration, the P3-24 of 2007. The company had, fairly unusually, put some real effort into the styling, too. The core of the turntable was the same, though: simple, well-engineered and designed to put performance first. We think this is the best RP3/Planar 3 that Rega has made so far, adding heaps of clarity and insight into what was already a snappy, musical sound.

"Want the best value turntable on the market?", we asked. "This is it".

Even with newer models from rival Pro-Ject muscling in and the price of the turntable rising higher in recent years, this Planar 3 remains a firm recommendation.

• Read the Rega Planar 3 review

Rega Planar 6 (2017)

Back in 2017: we surmised £1400 is no small price to pay for a turntable, particularly when a perfectly capable version of the same turntable is available for £200 less. But, such is the quality of the combination of Planar 6 and Ania cartridge, that – even with its price inevitably creeping up in intervening years – it's a price well worth paying.

"It’s a frankly astonishingly refined and mature sound", we said in our review of the Planar 6, "with refinement adding to the deck’s customarily musical and insightful performance".

It won an Award that year and has continued to pick up trophies since then, most recently winning a 2023 Best Buy Award. Quite the reputation.

• Read the Rega Planar 6 review

Rega Aura MC (2018)

While Rega is a leading light at the more affordable end of the turntable and electronics fields it is a part of, it certainly knows how to make high-end products too. The Aura MC phono stage, which launched at £3999 ($5995), demonstrates that entirely.

Largely thanks to a three-stage symmetrical FET (Field Effect Transistor)-based main circuit board that's packed with good quality components and driven by a generously specified power supply, the Aura MC is a virtuoso with moving coil cartridge-fitted record players, able to squeeze every last drop of energy from music signals it's handed – not surprising considering that's what Rega components do best. "If you have a system that can make the most of a phono stage of this level, dive right in," is how we ended our review, and five years on from penning that statement, we still stand by it.

• Read the Rega Aura MC review

Rega Planar 1 Plus (2018)

When we heard Rega had finally developed a turntable with a built-in phono stage, the reaction of the What Hi-Fi? reviews team was a mixture of bewilderment, anticipation and a fair bit of "about time, too".

The Planar 1 Plus is essentially the Rega Planar 1 turntable with Rega's budget Fono Mini A2D phono preamp built in. Both are Award-winning products, of course, and Rega says it only felt natural to combine them together. We absolutely agree.

"Rega has struck gold in combining two superb products into one", we said, commenting that in some ways it's actually a better performer than when the turntable and phono stage are bought and used as separates. It doesn't compromise Rega's purist approach in the slightest, and we applaud the brand for joining plenty of other renowned turntable brands in making the vinyl experience that bit more convenient and appealing for modern fans.

• Read the Rega Planar 1 Plus review

Rega Planar 10 (2019)

If you're not one of the lucky 50 who managed to get hold of the Naiad (above), you should probably take a good look at this Planar 10, which is designed to encapsulate the essence of the Naiad at a far more affordable price (and more affordable than the new flagship Naia, too).

While the sparkliest jewels of Rega's crown are arguably its lower-ranging Planar decks, its mainstream range-topper demonstrates the level of impressive engineering available at this price point.

It's an exceptional performer that packs clever engineering and fine build into a visually striking design. In fact, the Planar 10 is the most sonically capable turntable we’ve heard at this price. If you really want to find out what’s hidden in that record groove, start here.

• Read the Rega Planar 10 review

Rega Aethos (2020)

We should be ending this 'best of' list on a turntable, but we feel Rega's electronics deserve equal billing.

Rega's Aethos integrated amplifier – a representative from its premium amplifier range – is a multiple Award winner and remains a purely analogue line-level performer designed to relay the music signal as purely as possible.

"Think of this integrated as an Elicit-R turned up to 11 and you’re close to the mark," we said in our review.

A pinnacle of the brand's amplifier design and performance, the Aethos would make a stellar partner to any of Rega's Planar 6/8/10 decks, and delivers an exceptional combination of insight, dynamics and rhythmic precision to produce class-leading sound at its £3000 price point.

• Read our Rega Aethos review

MORE:

10 of the best Naim Audio products of all time

12 of the best Cambridge Audio products of all time

11 of the best Wharfedale speakers of all time

A definitive list of the best British albums would be impossible and we'd be fools to even try. Subjective factors of taste are too strong, and one person's golden oldie will be another's dated trash destined for the musical scrapheap.

Instead, we've compiled a chronological list of albums that we think offers a decent cross-section of what this country has offered to the music world over the past several decades. These are all great testers, and if you’re in the habit of digging out the records we mention in our reviews across the years, much of what's to come might not surprise you.

The albums below are not necessarily those with the highest production value (that's a different list), with every instrument polished to the bone, but they all highlight those facets of reproduced sound that any good system has to get right. There are tricky rhythms, exaggerated dynamic shifts, emotive vocals and of course plenty of dense textures to sonically explore. Most of all, these are albums we love listening to, and there's no better test of your system's prowess than with a record you genuinely love.

• Read all our British Hi-Fi Week 2024 news, features and reviews

1960 - 1969

Van Morrison - Astral Weeks (1968)

It takes less than ten seconds of Astral Weeks, Van Morrison's second studio album, for the great man's voice to be heard, and that’s exactly how it ought to be. At once laid back and effusive, the Northern Irish singer-songwriter’s voice is among the most recognisable in Western music, and lays waste to anything attempting to reproduce it without sufficient dynamic aptitude or a spacious enough soundstage.

• Astral Weeks by Van Morrison vinyl

The Beatles - The Beatles (1968)

If there’s one band you should hear today, it's The Beatles. This Liverpudlian quartet were shamefully overlooked at the time, but after several bootlegs emerged at car boot sales around Merseyside, they are finally getting some of the recognition they deserve. 

Nobody knows for sure whether this record, named simply The Beatles, originally had its own artwork, but it is today known among fans as The White Album due to its plain blank sleeve. Folklore aside, it is quite frankly one of the greatest pop albums ever made and laid down a marker for nigh-on all that followed.

• The Beatles by The Beatles vinyl

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II (1969)

Whether or not Led Zeppelin II is the greatest hard rock album of all time is not for us to say, but it definitely is. It opens with Whole Lotta Love, for starters, and continues to hammer home some of the meatiest riffs ever written. Robert Plant has not always been complimentary of the way this album was recorded and mixed in various locations, but it is masked well by the versatility of the songwriting on what is the band’s most complete collection.

• Led Zeppelin II by Led Zeppelin vinyl

King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King (1969)

Combining blues, jazz and classical influences, with grand orchestration and regularly changing time signatures and tempos, King Crimson’s debut is one of the first and undoubtedly one of the most influential progressive rock albums ever recorded. 

Countless subsequent bodies of work in the genre have appeared little more than a good workout for your system, but, while In The Court Of The Crimson King still definitely serves that purpose, it remains an exquisitely well stitched-together record irrespective of its instrumental mastery.

• In The Court Of The Crimson King by King Crimson vinyl

The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed (1969)

Psuedo-Brit rock rivals The Beatles tend to see a lot more of their albums included in these sorts of rundowns than Jagger, Richards and co., but when the Rolling Stones were at their best, even those mop-haired Liverpudlians couldn't touch them.

1969's Let It Bleed definitely feels like the Stones hitting a peak run of form that would last well into the '70s, an irrepressibly exciting whirlwind of a record that benefits from some of the band's most enduringly exquisite works. Both sides of the album are full of goodies, but Gimme Shelter (possibly the best rock song ever written) is worth the price of admission on its own. 

• Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones vinyl

1970 - 1979

Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath (1970)

There are certainly more modern British metal albums that could easily have made this list, but this particular record is proof that it doesn't take eight distortion pedals and a double kick drum to create a petrifyingly heavy sound. Just listen to the opening riff of the title track if you need proof. 

This is an album as entrenched in psychedelia as it is heavy metal, and we defy any first-time listener to Black Sabbath to guess that it's celebrating its 54th anniversary this year.

• Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath vinyl

Nick Drake - Pink Moon (1972)

If the idea of improved sound quality is to bring the artist closer to the listener, then there can be few better examples of its importance than a suite as intimate as Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. As much as you can hear fingers shuffling between the strings and live in the body of Drake’s guitar, it is said intimacy that here helps foster an even more tender relationship between the listener and the music.

• Pink Moon by Nick Drake vinyl

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973)

In many ways, The Dark Side Of The Moon is akin to classic literature. For one, far fewer people have actually heard and enjoyed it than claim to – at this point t-shirt and poster sales must almost outweigh physical copies sold of the album – but it is also unquestionably one of the most influential British records of the past 60 years. There’s little to say about it that hasn’t already been written and then plagiarised a hundred times, but there is still no way we could have left it from this list.

• The Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd vinyl

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (1977)

Considering the amount of interpersonal relationship issues that plagued the band (one divorced couple who wouldn’t speak to each other, one ongoing on/off relationship, the fifth’s marriage on the rocks), it’s a miracle that Rumours even got made. But a look at the very personal lyrics shows just how cathartic (and equally emotionally chaotic) recording the album must’ve been, once the band put all aside to make the music. Bittersweet for them, lucky for us. 

The result is one of the greatest albums of all time, with the cheery rock-pop hits masking the bittersweet, sarcastic and pointed lyrics about separations, new relationships, drug use and, eventually, love. So much care was taken to record the beautiful songs – from the lush vocal harmonies to the piano on Songbird – along with rich layers of acoustic and electronic instruments. All intertwine in a medley of musical perfection, with high production values ensuring they endure both as a whole album and as trusty test tracks. 

• Rumours by Fleetwood Mac vinyl

Siouxsie and the Banshees - The Scream (1978)

Recorded in a week and mixed in three, The Scream’s conception somewhat echoed the frenetic nature of the Siouxsie and the Banshees’ fabled live shows that preceded it. That feverish atmosphere is just as well harnessed in the recording itself, with Siouxsie Sioux’s manic vocal encouraged by distorted, discordant guitar lines and tribal drumming that could appear one-dimensional were it not for the variety on offer within.

• The Scream by Siouxsie and the Banshees vinyl

Gang of Four - Entertainment! (1979)

Gang Of Four’s debut album as good as defines the word angular as a musical descriptor. Andy Gill’s guitar lines jut through Entertainment!’s schizophrenic phrasing like broken glass and benefit infinitely from having their lines finely drawn by a high-resolution reproduction and sufficiently talented hi-fi system.

• Entertainment! by Gang Of Four vinyl

The Clash - London Calling (1979)

Alongside The Sex Pistols’ Never Mind The Bollocks…, this represents one of Britain’s most iconic punk albums, but in reality it is far more diverse than that. With a double album and 18 tracks to play with, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones also flirt with roots, ska, R&B and hard rock, taking The Clash’s sound on new adventures and lacing each one with their own indomitable character.

• London Calling by The Clash vinyl

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures (1979)

Here lies another album it seems absurd was written in the last century, let alone more than 40 years ago. Unknown Pleasures shaped British guitar music in such a way that it is difficult to imagine where we’d be without its release, with such beauty to be found in the spaces between Bernard Sumner’s often hauntingly sparse guitar lines and Ian Curtis’s affecting vocal. It's over four decades since Curtis tragically took his own life, and there seems no more fitting tribute than to celebrate his most seminal work at every given opportunity.

• Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division vinyl

Marianne Faithful - Broken English (1979)

The story surrounding Broken English is well told ­– Marianne Faithful had been squatting in a roofless, bombed-out building in London, dependent on drugs and seemingly creatively washed up ­– but it’d be criminal to reduce this album to mere folklore. While admittedly intimate and vulnerable in much of its subject matter, there is a rhythm and sass to prove Faithful had foregone none of her singular personality in a somewhat strangely triumphant return.

• Broken English by Marianne Faithful vinyl

1980 - 1989

New Order - Power, Corruption & Lies (1983)

Despite Movement having been released two years previous, Power, Corruption & Lies was arguably the record that defined New Order as being a band apart from Joy Division. Its use of synthesizers is far broader than on the band’s debut, but still intelligently intertwined with guitars and acoustic percussion for a sound that is at once texturally dense and refreshingly spacious.

• Power, Corruption & Lies by New Order vinyl

Kate Bush - Hounds Of Love (1985)

Few would argue against Hounds Of Love’s status as one of the great British albums, and those who would are fundamentally wrong. It wasn’t the first time Bush had used complex electronics and musical computers to guide her compositions, but it is this record that most comfortably inhabits the spaces in between the electronic and the human, the earthy and ethereal. And that’s not to mention the songwriting that witnesses Bush at the top of her craft.

Running Up That Hill has gained a new lease of life thanks to Netflix's Stranger Things, but Watching You Without Me has been a staple of our listening room for decades.

• Hounds Of Love by Kate Bush vinyl

Prefab Sprout - Steve McQueen (1985)

Released as Two Wheels Good in the United States due to a threat of legal action from Steve McQueen’s estate, Prefab Sprout’s second studio album is an undeniably smart and sophisticated example of great British indie songwriting. Backed by a gang of clean, reverberant guitars, and held aloft by Thomas Dolby’s sparkling production, Paddy McAloon’s smooth vocal guides us through 11 tracks that pass like a cool breeze, begging us to do lap after lap in order to take in every last detail.

• Steve McQueen by Prefab Sprout vinyl

808 State - 90 (1989)

It feels crass to pigeonhole any genre with one definitive album, but if needs must then 90 would surely be it for acid house. Certainly it is an album to which British electronic music owes a huge debt, helping pave the way for musicians on these isles to reinterpret rather than ape the great American art forms of house and techno. It is equal parts atmospheric and aggressive, blending beats and infectious melodies at tempos that refuse to allow you to remain sedentary.

• 90 by 808 State vinyl

The Cure - Disintegration (1989)

The fact that songs such as Lullaby, Lovesong and Pictures Of You can be considered the singles from a top ten album is a glorious reflection on British music, as far as we’re concerned. It isn’t that they aren’t melodious – Robert Smith’s move away from the pop sounds that garnered The Cure much of their mainstream appeal wasn’t at the expense of some masterful songwriting – but this album’s dense, thoughtful textures along with its almost psychedelic gothic bent is far from the clean-shaven production you might expect to do well in the charts.

• Disintegration by The Cure vinyl

The Blue Nile - Hats (1989)

In stark contrast to the rapid turnarounds of many of the albums on this list, the gestation period for The Blue Nile’s Hats was five years. The time between the debut A Walk Across The Rooftops and this album was in fact the shortest gap between any of the band’s four records, but certainly it was long enough to create a near-perfect misty pop album, where it is often the space between the lines, and a refusal to settle for pedestrian melodies or instrumentation, that invite our ears for deeper listening.

• Hats by The Blue Nile vinyl

The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses (1989)

There was no shortage of admirers for The Stone Roses upon its release, thanks to its dexterous fingering of rock and dance music injected with an enviable swagger, but it was arguably some years before the album received its due appreciation. Lighting a torch carried by the copious British guitar bands that ruled the 90s, this is an album with a lasting impact that still sounds fresher than many of those it inspired.

• The Stone Roses by The Stone Roses vinyl

1990 - 1999

Cocteau Twins - Heaven Or Las Vegas (1990)

Shoegaze ended up a genre with so many imitators it was chastised by vast sections of the music press, and often used as an insult stickered to pretty much anything similar enough that it didn’t like. But a minor resurgence in recent years has given us all reason, if needed, to revisit the shimmering guitars and gliding vocal lines of Cocteau Twins’ Heaven Or Las Vegas.

The often indiscernible lyrics might mean we end up singing along with all the wrong words, but there is so much here to dig through that it usually pays to listen in silence.

• Heaven Or Las Vegas by Cocteau Twins vinyl

Depeche Mode - Violator (1990)

In Violator, their seventh studio album, Depeche Mode crafted the perfect synth-pop album, and the world evidently agreed. It is a collection of nine songs, any of which could have been released as singles (almost half were), which remains strikingly fluid despite the apparent rigidity of their definite rhythms. There remains wide-open space in the mix, which never threatens to be clogged despite the vast collection of auxiliary lines there to be discovered.

• Violator by Depeche Mode vinyl

The Durutti Column - Obey The Time (1990)

Most evidently influenced by 808 State and their acid house contemporaries was Vini Reilly, who wrote and recorded this Durutti Column album almost by himself. Introducing his guitar to the electronic music scene, Reilly accomplished a miraculous crossover feat that eschews genre without disgracing any of those styles from which he pinches tropes. 

You perhaps wouldn’t instinctively pair this and the above album if you heard them both for the first time – Reilly’s take is often a more ambient affair – but they make fine bedfellows thanks to their rightly iconic hooks.

• Obey The Time by The Durutti Column vinyl

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless (1991)

Arguably the poster album for shoegaze, Loveless is a masterpiece combining elephantine riffs with dream-pop haze, awash with reverb and overdriven guitars – and complemented by an equally iconic sleeve of cherry-drop psychedelia. While Vini Reilly had changed opinion on where the guitar was welcome with The Durutti Column, Kevin Shields here altered ideas of how it could be used as an instrument.

• Loveless by My Bloody Valentine on CD

LFO - Frequencies (1991)

How otherworldly Frequencies sounds now only goes to emphasise how alien it must have appeared upon its release 30 years ago. A masterpiece of the UK's acid house explosion, LFO's debut album has the industrial eeriness of Kraftwerk's seminal records mixed with the energy of hip-hop and house that followed – an equation the result of which was simply one of the greatest electronic albums ever recorded.

• Frequencies by LFO vinyl

Primal Scream - Screamadelica (1991)

Recipient of the first Mercury Prize – where it beat competition from Erasure, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Simply Red and U2 – Screamadelica is the sound of another musical crossover: an indie band accepting and embracing house music and the consciousness-expanding drugs associated with it. 

The styles cohabit harmoniously, thanks in no small part to the unmistakable production of Andrew Weatherall, producing an infectiously uplifting set punctuated by timeless singles such as Movin' On Up and Loaded.

• Screamadelica by Primal Scream vinyl

The Orb - Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld (1991)

As its name suggests, The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld is less an album and more a psychedelic sonic journey built on ambient electronics, eclectic samples and found sounds. The result is undoubtedly a record built to be listened to in its entirety – made impossible in the US at the time of its release thanks to a criminally truncated version designed to fit on a single disc – with a spacious sound system and an even more open mind. 

• Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld by The Orb vinyl

Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children (1992)

We've waxed lyrical about the qualities of Scottish ambient electronic masters Boars of Canada before, even granting the duo their own best test tacks rundown in honour of their clear suitability for testing out the best headphones and hi-fi kit in the business. 

To call the Scottish duo's tracks little more than testing fodder, however, would be to damn them with faint praise. Music Has the Right to Children might be a ridiculous name, but it's rightly been received as a landmark electronic release that has helped continue the resurgence of Scottish music into the 21st century.

• Music Has the Right to Children by Boards of Canada vinyl

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (1992)

It's difficult to comprehend, but Richard James has claimed blissful ignorance to any of the classical or electronic artists by whom he appeared to have been influenced by while creating Selected Ambient Works. Regardless, there is a definite otherness to the record that, despite its apparent forebears, keeps it from being at all derivative in a way that tempts us to believe those comments are true.

• Selected Ambient Works 85-92 by Aphex Twin vinyl

PJ Harvey - Rid Of Me (1993)

This follow-up to critically acclaimed debut Dry finds Polly Jean Harvey’s twisting songwriting meld beautifully with the abrasive production of Steve Albini, forging a caustic 14-song set that juts between loud and quiet without a moment’s notice. Its contrast with the album before it provided early insight into Harvey’s marvellously varied output, which has rightly positioned her as a British music icon.

• Rid Of Me by PJ Harvey CD

Portishead - Dummy (1994)

Involving, menacing looped beats contrasted with Beth Gibbons’s gorgeously mournful vocal, and some of the finest theremin work outside of the theme tune to Midsomer Murders, Portishead’s debut was hugely influential in the 90s ascent of trip hop and yet it doesn’t feel to have aged a day. 

That’s in part due to the fact Dummy was already intended to sound somewhat ‘vintage’ at its time of arrival, but that’d mean little were it not for the inventiveness of its hooks and guitar playing in particular.

• Dummy by Portishead vinyl

Fila Brazilia - Old Codes, New Chaos (1994)

Despite its significant contributions to the arts, Hull is not necessarily the city conjured most immediately when confronted with the Balearic warmth of Fila Brazillia's Old Codes, New Chaos. 

Though its smoothest house beats lend themselves more readily to the White Island than the Humber, the duo's debut album is a diverse exploration of rhythm, ambient keys and sampling that goes beyond mere beachside accompaniment.

• Old Codes, New Chaos by Fila Brazillia CD

Massive Attack - Mezzanine (1998)

While Blue Lines is arguably an even better album – which goes to say something when you consider how incredible Mezzanine is – this, Massive Attack's third album, features one of the sternest tests your bass driver will face in opening track Angel. It's a darker, less jazzy atmosphere than on the group's previous records, and one that relies on keen dynamic expression to deliver its full terror.

• Mezzanine by Massive Attack vinyl

Talk Talk - Spirit Of Eden (1998)

Spirit Of Eden is more of a meditation than simply collection of Talk Talk songs. It feels meant to be listened to as a whole, fashioning an immersive ambiance rooted in texture as much as melody or driving rhythm. It flirts with jazz and avant-garde without coming across trite or contrived, providing a soundstage ripe for sonic exploration.

• Spirit Of Eden by Talk Talk vinyl

2000 - 2009

The Streets- Original Pirate Material (2002)

“I do the science on my laptop, get my boys mashed up,” poses Mike Skinner on this album’s lead single, Has It Come To This?. Indeed, few before or after the release of Original Pirate Material have manipulated the potential of a computer and digital audio workstation with such mastery. 

Recorded mostly within the confines of his Brixton home over the course of about a year, Skinner’s debut album as The Streets is an inventive collage of beats and lazily delivered lines about life among Britain’s working class that proves there is worth in music recording now being at every person’s fingertips.

• Original Pirate Material by The Streets vinyl

Gorillaz - Demon Days (2005)

There’s so much for a hi-fi system to do with Gorillaz’s second full album that it can be hard to know where to start. The virtual group’s introduction to the very real music scene came via their 2001 self-titled release, but it was 2005’s fully-fledged follow-up that saw creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett stretch their creative legs. 

Polished to perfection by legendary producer/musician Dangermouse, Demon Days incorporates the broad, experimental palette that increasingly defined the group's musical identity. From the ear-worm funk of Dirty Harry to the melancholic yearning of Feel Good Inc. and the irrepressible disco pop smash Dare, Demon Days is crammed with varying influences, flavours and textures that somehow coalesce into a cohesive, truly satisfying package.

• Demon Days by Gorillaz CD

Muse - Black Holes and Revelations (2006)

Aside from maybe 2003’s Absolution, 2006’s Black Holes and Revelations feels like Muse’s finest moment, an explosion of sound that remains unlike anything released at the time. 

From the anthemic hand-clapper Starlight to the dirty dance-rock of Supermassive Black Hole and the thumping percussive numbers of Exo-Politics and Assassin, there’s such a wide range of influences and textures on display. Knights Of Cydonia, meanwhile, remains one of the group’s defining records thanks to its western-inspired guitar riffs and grand, epic scope. 

• Black Holes and Revelations by Muse vinyl

Gallows - Orchestra Of Wolves (2006)

Gallows’ debut was another British album attempting to capture a frenzied live show on disc, with terrifying results. It’s a hardcore punk record that feels as though it couldn’t have been made anywhere else in the world, with Frank Carter’s often-incomprehensible cries still always carrying the inflections that take us right back to his home in Watford. Rarely does a band sound quite this tight at these breakneck speeds.

• Orchestra Of Wolves by Gallows CD

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006)

There have been very few groups before or since who can truly be said to have exploded onto the scene, but Arctic Monkeys certainly earn that clichéd accolade. Thanks to the popularity the group cultivated online and via the live scene, a debut album for Sheffield’s fresh-faced garage rockers became an absolute inevitability. 

What ultimately followed was 2006’s proper studio debut, a raw, unfiltered masterclass that exhibited that gnarly, working-class edge that would become the group’s signature. Even with tweaks and touches of polish brought in by Jim Abbiss’s careful production, there remains a real pleasure in how unrefined and unfiltered Whatever People Say I Am... sounds to ears so accustomed to highly edited, often manufactured rock and pop.

• Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not by Arctic Monkeys vinyl

Amy Winehouse - Back to Black (2006)

It’s unfathomable that Amy Winehouse only made two studio albums. Back to Black was her second and final, and it’s astonishing the legacy she leaves behind with her still oh-so-distinctive '60s jazz/soul-inspired voice. 

Songs about heartbreak, guilt, rehab and trauma aren’t a barrel of laughs, but her richly textured, croaky yet soulful vocals manage to convey every strain of hurt, defiance and sorrow without ever sounding maudlin. And equally, delivers the more poppy/R&B hits with levity and a playful but wry tone.

• Back to Black by Amy Winehouse vinyl

M.I.A. - Kala (2007)

While British music is responsible for the creation and mastery of many styles, it is equally able to celebrate those artists who appear not to fit into any particular category at all. Kala brought Maya Arulpragasam her first major hit with the single Paper Planes, but the album as a whole is more agitated and eccentric than you’d expect anything with chart success to be allowed. If nothing else, M.I.A.’s ability to piece together chopping rhythms from sonic scraps is something to behold.

• Kala by M.I.A. CD

The xx - xx (2009)

At the turn of the last decade, there was barely a moment of dramatic TV viewing that wasn’t coated in The xx’s sparse, reverberant guitar lines and breathy vocals. The band’s self-titled debut album would likely still be accompanying all relevant programming now, had it not been so overused back then, thanks to its marvellously subdued yet atmospheric arrangements, that feel at once intimate and still wide open for analysis and blissful relaxation and reflection alike.

• xx by The xx vinyl

2010 - 2019

Four Tet - There Is Love In You (2010)

Undoubtedly, There Is Love In You marked a high point in Kieran Hebden’s solo career as Four Tet. The record’s somewhat idiosyncratic rhythmic patterns are often deceptively simple, choosing just a few overlapping motifs, often bound by an acoustic drum kit, over a cacophony of percussion. The key is in how these strands interact, dynamically and in terms of intensity (such as in top test track Circling), so they require a taut and subtly expressive system to reveal their full beauty.

• There Is Love In You by Four Tet vinyl

Radiohead - The King Of Limbs (2011)

To call this Radiohead’s least accessible album probably says quite a lot, but it is also likely the most rewarding through a competent hi-fi system. There are few phrases you’ll find yourself whistling as you make your morning toast – though that’s not to say The King Of Limbs is bereft of melody – and much of the arrangements’ ornamentation can appear arbitrary and haphazard when heard on sub-par kit.

This is a lesson in organisation and the knitting together of a piece of music; when your system is tidy and times well, all of the decisions made on this record begin to make sense.

• The King Of Limbs by Radiohead vinyl

The Unthanks - Last (2011)

While Here’s The Tender Coming from 2009’s album gets a lot of replay in our test rooms, it’s follow-up album Last that best displays the English folk group’s enchanting and unique talent. With songs and lyrical styles inspired by old English folklore (especially Northumbrian folklore) and mixed with eclectic modern touches and instruments (kalimba, dulcitone, ukulele…), it’s a stunningly haunting, wistful, sublime sound that will always be timeless. 

Mournful songs mix with ditties and a near-unrecognisable cover of Tom Waits’ No One Knows I’m Gone – it could all be rather elegiac and melancholy, but there’s so much beauty and depth in the melodies and clear vocals that it’s utterly mesmerising. 

• Last by The Unthanks CD

Ghostpoet - Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam (2011)

The title of Obaro Ejimiwe’s debut album as Ghostpoet somewhat belies its darkness, to be listened to after midnight with city lights reflecting through the window. It rides on a wave of grimy, undulating synths and fractured beats, with Ejimiwe’s languid delivery hovering like a cloud of industrial smoke. Nominated for the 2011 Mercury Prize, as was his third album Shedding Skin four years later, Peanut Butter Blues… was far from ignored upon its release but only seems to improve with age.

• Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam by Ghostpoet vinyl

Hot Chip - In Our Heads (2012)

There’s more than enough time in our listening rooms for chin stroking and pensive reflection on mids, treble and stereo imaging, but if that were in lieu of simply having fun then we’ve entirely missed the point of music. After 2010’s One Life Stand saw Hot Chip mature somewhat, adding more dimensions to their dance-pop song craft, In Our Heads focused almost single-mindedly on playful entertainment. The record offers a few breathers, chances to ponder, but mostly it’s a test of your system’s timing and punch – as well as how loud it can go.

• In Our Heads by Hot Chip vinyl

FKA twigs - LP1 (2014)

LP1 is a meld of electronic experimentation and sharp-tongued lyricism juxtaposed with Tahliah Barnett's almost angelic vocal. It was followed by MAGDALENE, an equally inventive but decidedly more vulnerable and refined record, which proved we’ve only just begun to experience the breadth of FKA twigs’s considerable talent.

• LP1 by FKA twigs vinyl

The Twilight Sad - Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave (2014)

If you’re looking for guitar textures worthy of an archaeological dig, few have been offering them on the same scale as The Twilight Sad over the past decade or so. Nobody Wants To Be Here… is the band’s fourth studio album – preceding IT WON/T BE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME– and its songwriting really is the most complete, with certain anthemic melodies deserving of a larger audience. From a hi-fi perspective, its marginally reduced tempos open the window for more analysis of those grimy, reverb-drenched arrangements.

• Nobody Wants To Be Here & Nobody Wants To Leave by The Twilight Sad vinyl

Max Richter - Sleep (2015)

Born in Germany but brought up in Bedford, Max Richter is among this country’s foremost purveyors of modern classical, and Sleep is arguably his masterwork so far. Composed for piano, organ, strings, soprano vocals and various electronics, this 8.5-hour project, comprised of 31 compositions, is so called due to its intention of scoring a full night’s slumber. The only problem is the ease with which you can get lost in its blissful arrangements, floating in between the notes and so never really nodding off in the first place.

• Sleep by Max Richter CD

David Bowie - Blackstar (2016)

No list of greatest British albums would be complete without Bowie, of course, but the difficulty is always deciding which to include. We have cherished this Tony Visconti-produced gem since its release on Bowie’s 69th birthday, only two days before he died, marvelling in the way his creative genius is complemented gorgeously by jazz saxophonist Donny McCaslin and his quartet. As parting gifts go, Blackstar has to be among the finest.

• Blackstar by David Bowie vinyl

Szun Waves - New Hymn To Freedom (2018)

London's burgeoning modern jazz scene is no more aptly showcased than by Szun Waves' improvised, unedited second album New Hymn To Freedom. The trio of saxophonist Jack Wyllie, electronic producer and experimental synth player Luke Abbot and drummer Laurence Pike craft a psychedelic landscape that is at once sonically dense and gloriously fluid. 

Though with a sound that is distinctively their own, it requires the same of your speakers as any great jazz recording: expert timing to navigate obscure rhythmic patterns, space for each instrument to articulate its lines and dynamic versatility to capture the nuance and unpredictability of its improvisation.

• New Hymn To Freedom by Szun Waves vinyl

Young Fathers - Cocoa Sugar (2018)

Young Fathers softened some of the edges with this, their third studio album, but the result is no less arresting. Cocoa Sugar could perhaps be described as much as an experimental electronic record as a straightforward rap or hip-hop album, driven by often off-kilter rhythms and served with a generous helping of low-end that your speakers will have to keep taut while also delivering textural insight.

• Cocoa Sugar by Young Fathers vinyl

Jon Hopkins - Singularity (2018)

Blurring lines between ambient techno and acid house, Jon Hopkins's Singularity is a masterpiece of fractured beats and blissfully pulsing bass. At once seemingly minimal yet with deeper listening revealing auxiliary synth strands, without which the record would lose its sense of euphoria, it is a record deserving of a pair of speakers that possess the dynamic range to accentuate those leading notes that drive Hopkins's compound rhythms.

• Singularity by Jon Hopkins vinyl

PSYCHODRAMA by Dave (2019)

It’s galling to think that Dave is still only 25 years of age. He was far from an unknown quantity ahead of releasing his debut album in 2019 – with his punctuated delivery of often wryly humorous, always self-aware social commentary already having elevated him to semi-stardom with a list of singles and EPs – but PSYCHODRAMA is undoubtedly on another level. 

Indeed, it is on another level to much of what has come before it generally. His wordplay is such that references will still be being unearthed long after their cultural significance is lost, but it is toned down somewhat in an important collection of songs exploring what it means to be young, black and in tune with the fragility of mental health in today’s fractured UK.

• PSYCHODRAMA by Dave vinyl

2020 - 2023

Rina Sawayama - SAWAYAMA (2020)

It would take a fool to attempt confining Rina Sawayama to any particular genre, but suffice to say she proves on SAWAYAMA – the roots of which are in pop music, R&B, hip-hop and metal – that she is a master of many. This is an album heavy with experimentation, toying with the indelible hooks that are easily durable enough to carry that weight.

• SAWAYAMA by Rina Sawayama vinyl

Moses Boyd - Dark Matter (2020)

We fell in love immediately with Moses Boyd's first album as bandleader and producer, with Dark Matter fittingly getting its release on Valentine's Day this year. You'll find it in the jazz section of your local record shop, but so sprawling is its reach that it could easily sit among an electronic, Afrobeat, R&B or grime selection. The south London drummer draws on an eclectic musical upbringing to drive his genre forward in the fashion its spirit deserves.

• Dark Matter by Moses Boyd vinyl

Charli XCX - how i'm feeling now by (2020)

Charli XCX's fourth album was written and released during lockdown, encapsulating elegantly the confusion, loneliness and boredom of the time. But, though it will undoubtedly and rightly be used as a kind of sonic photograph in the years to come – both due to its subject matter, and how Charlotte Aitchison used social media to workshop the tracks – how i'm feeling now is a timeless triumph of the Cambridge-born songwriter's knack of finding an absorbing melody among some compelling DIY electronics.

• how i'm feeling now by Charli XCX vinyl

Kelly Lee Owns - Inner Song (2020)

Kelly Lee Owens sets out her stall early on Inner Song, the Welsh artist’s second full-length album: it opens with an instrumental cover of Radiohead’s Arpeggi, with a dream-pop follow-up before a techno banger for track three. In short, this is a record not chained to any style – even for two tracks at a time. More than a musical tasting menu, though, this feels like a full, cohesive set thanks to Owens’s sturdy-yet-delicate songwriting that forms its spine.

• Inner Song by Kelly Lee Owens vinyl

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - Viscerals (2020)

Despite the band's moniker, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs's approach is far more elephantine as mammoth riffs tear through the speaker cone and plant their feet square in your gut. Playfully eccentric as much as it is colossal, Viscerals shares a Sabbath-like nous for using rhythm and pace as much as pure noise to achieve a truly British style of heaviness.

• Viscerals by Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs vinyl

Arlo Parks - Collapsed in Sunbeams (2021)

We once saw Arlo Parks perform live in the earlier months of 2020, when she said how a song she was about to sing was written when she was younger, but she’s much older now. She was 19. Now 22, her debut album took the 2021 charts and music awards season by storm. A lockdown album that sounds gorgeous, nostalgic, intimate and reflective - yet incredibly fresh – her songwriting and almost-spoken-word vocals are delivered with a maturity far beyond her young age. 

• Collapsed in Sunbeams by Arlo Parks vinyl

Bicep - Isles (2021)

If Bicep’s self-titled debut album introduced the Northern Irish duo to the mainstream in 2017, Isles is surely about to launch them into the stratosphere. It was preceded by a trio of euphoric singles in Atlas, Apricots and Saku – all of which are primed for the dance floor or festival fields – but also showcases the pair's talent for soundtracking the end of the night (or morning).

• Isles by Bicep vinyl

Mogwai - As The Love Continues (2021)

As The Love Continues, Mogwai’s first non-soundtrack album since 2017’s Every Country’s Sun, came out on 19th February – exactly 25 years since the band released its first single, Tuner/Lower – and fantastically it scored them a first ever UK No1. The Scottish post-rock pioneers have evolved a lot since then, as has the instrumentation of their work, but their output is no less atmospheric as a result. Here's to As The Love Continues being the first No1 of many.

• As The Love Continues by Mogwai vinyl

Wet Leg - Wet Leg (2022)

Whether Wet Leg’s debut album stands the test of time remains to be seen, but boy is it full of catchy tunes. Viral hit Chaise Lounge has been a constant earworm since 2021, which perfectly encapsulates their niche: repetitive verses, incredibly catchy rhythms and a droll wit behind the languid vocals that make the Isle of Wight duo stand apart from the crowd as the voice of this generation.

Mixing hazy melodic pop with guitar hooks that sink into you, the songs grapple with modern anxieties and add a big dose of silly wordplay and double entendres alongside the incisive lyrics. Which is all part of the duo's charm.

• Wet Leg by Wet Leg vinyl

MORE:

• 15 of the best-produced recordings of all time to test your hi-fi speakers
• The best John Williams movie scores to test your hi-fi system
• 11 best Boards of Canada tracks to test your hi-fi system
• 12 of the best Muse tracks to test your headphones or hi-fi system
• 11 best prog rock tracks to test your hi-fi system

Since it first landed in 1983, CD has had a huge impact on how we consume music and over the years, even if the format is somewhat dwindling in the face of upsurging popularity of vinyl, streaming and even cassettes. In that time it's fair to say we've been spoiled by some truly stunning CD players.

So to help us celebrate British Hi-Fi Week, we've been through the archives to track down some of the best CD players of British descent to pass through our test rooms over the last three decades.

There are some serious classics on display here, from exceptional entry-level players to outrageously entertaining high-end machines.

Meridian MCD (1985)

To say the Meridian MCD bore a striking resemblance to Philips' CD100/CD101 players is an understatement.

Meridian took the shell of Phillip's player and painted it graphite grey. But that's where the similarities end. The MCD's innards were a completely different matter as Meridian rebuilt the output stage and tweaked the servo and error-correction systems.

This resulted in a player with a sweet and musical sound, tidy with low frequencies and good with scale. Like many early efforts, it had basic features (no remote, for instance), but the sound was its main appeal. This player proved to sceptical audiophiles that the new-fangled disc could sound great.

Philips and Sony might have invented the CD player, but it was Meridian who executed it best during its formative years.

Cambridge CD1 (1986)

Cambridge Audio's CD1 cost a fortune when we reviewed it in 1986. At £1500, it was double, if not triple the cost of most other players on the market at the time.

It was also the first player to be split into two separate boxes, the upper half was where the disc tray and power supply were located. The bottom half housed the DAC.

It featured three 14-bit DACs (with oversampling) per channel. Two worked together for speed and accuracy, while the third smoothed out any errors.

The result was a broad soundstage with great depth, space and loads of detail. It might have been pricey, but it was head and shoulders above other players at the time.

• 12 of the best Cambridge Audio products of all time

Meridian 200/203 DAC (1991)

Arguably the best value premium player of its time, we found Meridian's 200 CD transport to have a "distinctly extrovert" sound when we first heard it in 1991.

The soundstage was wider, deeper and more forward than its peers. It was bold in how it attacked a piece of music, and was capable of handling busy tracks without tripping over itself.

It was excellent on its own and even better when partnered with the half-width 203 DAC (pictured above). The clarity of the 200 was a good match for the warmer sensibilities of the 203 - together they boasted an impressively musical partnership.

Arcam Alpha 7 (1996)

Based on Arcam's landmark Alpha One, the Alpha 7 left the competition in its wake with a Best Buy win in 1996. It was budget king and dominated Group Tests and rival Japanese players for generations. Not many British-made players can claim such success over the years.

The Alpha 7 featured a modular design, so an upgrade path was possible. A new DAC board and a quick change of badge and your Alpha 7 could be transformed into an Alpha 8.

It had a smooth, mature and relaxing sound, which made for treble that was softer than other players. But the sound had good weight to it, which helped some tracks sound big and substantial.

• Arcam Alpha 7SE – The What Hi-Fi? Hall of Fame: 1990s

Meridian 508.24 (1998)

Meridian's 508.24 was an evolution of its 20-bit 508 CD player.

On the outside, the extra cash bought you a badge change. Otherwise, it had the same connections, motorised transport and almost tablet-sized remote.

The real evolution was the 24-bit upgrade. It continued Meridian's tradition of belting out rich and melodious sound.

Though previous Meridian players faltered in terms of muscularity, the 508.24 liked to rock. It produced a good sense of energy with fast, controlled bass.

Feed it good recordings and the 508.24 was an ideal premium CD player for those who liked a lush and punchy sound.

Naim CDS3/XPS2 (2003)

This Naim emerged in 2003 and was part of our reference hi-fi system for the best part of a decade.

Made for those who wanted the best sound no matter the price, it was a two-box combo that defied the established wisdom of keeping delicate circuitry separate. Here, the transport and DAC were in one box with the power supply hidden away in the other.

The Naim pairing needed a lot of running in – a week! – but every minute was worth it. The pair delivered a stunning, finessed sound with great timing and attack. When in full flow, the Naim performed on a completely different level to to anything else at or around the money.

• 9 of the best Naim Audio products of all time

Quad 99CD-P (2003)

Quad's 99CD-P was a very quirky (and memorable) effort.

Accessing inputs or adjusting the volume could only be done with the remote, and the display was so dimly lit you could barely see what was on it.

It was the first CD player we'd seen that could also be used as a preamp, but only with sources such as a digital recorder or digital radio tuner.

Nonetheless it was a powerful performer, with plenty of punch and drive but also capable of producing a sense of warmth too.

An odd, but hugely impressive CD player that summed up the eccentricity of the Quad brand nicely.

• Inside the test rooms: Audiolab, Quad, Wharfedale

Exposure 2010s (2005)

Best known for its amps, Exposure had shown promise with an early iteration of the 2010, but it was the 2005 vintage that saw performance reach a new high.

Compared to other CD players it looked dated, but improvements had been made over the original. The controls on this version were more precise and the casework gave the player more of a desirable sheen.

This player was all about unearthing the emotion from the music. With a fast and punchy sound, it worked well with all kinds of music, laying bare the detail and intricacies within a track.

It made listening to music fun. That's why it was one of the most entertaining and musical players of its time.

dCS Scarlatti (2008)

Could any CD/SACD player be worth £33k? If you were lucky enough to hear the Scarlatti back in 2008, you'd know the answer - a resounding yes.

Not only was the price unusual, but so was the design. The Scarlatti wasn't just one box, but three: a transport, a DAC and a clock unit more often found in the pro world. The clock ensured the other two worked in perfect harmony.

Stick a CD in and you were treated to an unbelievably transparent performance that was as insightful as they came, with staggering amounts of detail and a fine understanding of complex, multi-layered tracks.

A thrilling high-end player capable of stunning high-end sound.

• Read our full dCS Scarlatti review

Roksan Caspian M2 CD (2010)

A multiple-award winner, Roksan's M2 CD (along with its matching amplifier) dominated better-specc'd rivals for years after it first came out.

That was principally down to how good it sounded. It was full of character, but also combined refinement, bite and rhythmic ability better than any of its closest rivals.

Its build and design certainly facilitated its sonic performance. The CD transport was softly suspended, a move which minimised the "amount of vibration fed into and out of the mechanism".

No other player in its price range could budge it for a long time. A truly captivating machine.

• Read our full Roksan M2 CD review

Cyrus CD8 SE2 (2012)

The CD 8 SE was stunning. The CD 8 SE2 was even better.

The SE2 looked exactly like the original, but brought updates that softened the player's more temperamental nature.

It was less fussy with discs and Cyrus claimed it could more accurately read a compact disc's data. It had an excellent a sense of organisation, as well as musicality and punch that was very much in Cyrus mould.

Like the company's other products, an upgrade path was possible. Slot in a PSX-R power supply and an extra dose of bass weight, authority and finesse were yours for the taking.

• Read our full Cyrus CD 8 SE2 review

Chord Blu MkII (2018)

Chord's best known for its Award-winning DACs, but that's one component you won't find inside this stunningly musical high-end CD transport.

What it does boast is a high powered upscaler that features lots of clever processing tricks to extract CD's 16-bits of data as accurately as possible.

The end result is a performance that's exceptional at insight and dynamics.

Combine it with the Chord's own DAVE DAC and we doubt you'll find a better-sounding set-up.

• Read our full Chord Blu MkII review

Cyrus CDi (2018)

When it comes to CD players, Cyrus' track record is nothing short of phenomenal. The CDi had huge shoes to fill when it launched, as it replaced both the Cyrus 6SE and 8SE, both stunning CD players in their own right.

But, Cyrus absolutely nailed it. At the time Cyrus claimed it was the company's best-sounding CD player ever and we struggled to disagree. Its stunning rhythmic ability immediately caught our attention as did the player's wonderful sense of agility and amazing level of insight. Even now, it's still the CD player to beat at this price.

MORE:

Read our full Cyrus CDi review

How to get the best sound from your CD player

9 of the most underrated British hi-fi products we've ever tested

12 of the best songs by The Beatles to test your hi-fi system

Check out all of our British Hi-Fi Week reviews, features and news

A stereo amplifier is the beating heart of any hi-fi system. While loudspeakers and turntables get most of the attention, the humble stereo amplifier shouldn't be overlooked, as without it, your hi-fi would be sitting idly on your rack.

As it's British Hi-Fi Week, we thought we'd take the opportunity to collect our favourite amplifiers from British hi-fi brands, stretching all the way back to 1979. We've seen some excellent amplifiers come by in those 44 years, with everything from top-of-the-range flagship amplifiers to brilliant budget offerings making this list.

These are the amps that have left the biggest impression, whether that's down to their design, feature set or pure performance. 

• Our pick of the best amplifiers right now

• Welcome to What Hi-Fi?'s British Hi-Fi Week!

A&R Cambridge A60 (1979)

Arcam got off to a flier with its first product, the A60. It was a well-equipped amp, with a decent array of line-level inputs and a capable moving-magnet phono stage, and we were very much taken by its sound quality back in 1979. To this day, it's still able to showcase the smooth presentation and expressive midrange that made it such a fun and entertaining listen. And that wood finish was, indeed still is, rather lovely.

MORE: That Was Then... A&R Cambridge A60 (1976) vs. Arcam A19 (2013)

Audiolab 8000A (1983)

Audiolab's 8000A caused a stir thanks to its "superb finish and styling", although today it looks like a grey tinged box with lots of dials. Still, distinctive looks aside, it offered excellent sound and features including bass and treble controls, a stereo balance control and a separate record selector, so you could "listen to one source while taping another". The sound was smooth with "plenty of presence and detail". Add its fine build and features and the 8000A was great value for money.

MORE: Audiolab 8300A review

Mission Cyrus One (1984)

The Mission Cyrus One – back when Cyrus was a part of Mission – was very much a product for audiophiles, despite its budget price. It had no tone or balance controls and carried plenty of inputs for sources. The One communicated a precise soundstage, but it was also capable of handling low-level details that other amplifiers "repressed or simply rendered messy". Combine that sound with a superb build quality, and you had an amp whose performance could rival pricier options.

MORE: Cyrus One review

Naim 32/Snaps/250 power amp (1984)

This Naim came in three parts, with the 32 pre-amp, its accompanying power supply and the now legendary 250 stereo power amplifier. It was a popular combination that made up many hi-fi users' systems in the 80s, and was capable of delivering drive, dynamic punch and powers of organisation that few could match. It was an impressive combination and the 250 has proved to be so popular that it's received several makeovers since, getting better with each iteration.

MORE: Naim NAP 250 review

Arcam DiVA A85 (2001)

The A85 was different from its forebears. Where previous Arcam efforts veered towards warm and safe, the A85 had the ferocity of a sledgehammer smashing through glass. It worked well with all genres of music, with no trace of boom or bloom, and a clarity that extended throughout the frequency range. We noted its "immaculately clean" midrange that had a resolution its rivals couldn't match. The A85 was a sonic leader in its class, a fully featured amp that blew away the competition.

MORE: Arcam FMJ A39 review

Roksan Caspian M2 (2010)

The Caspian amp had been around the block a few times, as Roksan improved the design and performance. The fruit of that labour was the Caspian M2. With a revised circuit layout and upgraded components, it had a bigger, more powerful presentation than before. It had a sense of authority, along with a dynamic sound that was full of detail, finesse and a rich tonality, making for an immensely capable effort. The build and finish were excellent, it was easy to partner with and, while its distinctive look caused some consternation, there was no doubting its status as an exceptional performer.

MORE: Roksan Caspian M2 review

Naim Supernait 2 (2014)

We weren't fully convinced by the original Supernait, which sounded less dynamic than we liked. This issue was not a problem for its successor, a "supremely stable, confident-sounding" amplifier that boasted excellent bass performance and surefooted rhythms. Throw in the potential for upgrades and a terrific build, and the Supernait 2 was a superb amplifier that delivered Naim's "addictive sound" for a reasonable price.

MORE: Naim Supernait 3 review

Rega Elex-R (2014)

The Rega Elex-R spent five years as our favourite stereo amplifier costing less than a grand – that's longer than the time spent in office by certain US Presidents. Its last What Hi-Fi? Award was collected in 2018, but even since then it has remained a reference component here thanks to its articulate and inherently musical performance. While it's now been superseded by the new Elex Mk4, the Elex-R is sure to be an amp searched for by hi-fi enthusiasts for decades to come.

MORE: Rega Elex-R review

Leema Tucana II Anniversary Edition (2017)

Established in 1998 by two ex-BBC engineers, Leema Acoustics quickly established itself as one of our favourite specialist hi-fi brands. This anniversary model of the amplifier that helped launch Leema encapsulated everything we love about the company's products. It looks superb and feels built to last - and the individual passport signed by the engineer who approved the product is a lovely touch. Leema keeps it analogue on the inside, preferring to suggest you add external digital components should you need them, helping no doubt to deliver that clean, punchy, powerful sound. Rich and smooth without lacking attack, the performance is precisely as impressive as you'd expect from a £5000 amplifier.

MORE: Leema Tucana II Anniversary Edition

Cambridge Audio CXA81 (2018)

If you've heard the mighty Rega Elex-R (above), you'll understand just how big a feat it was for another sub-grand integrated to knock it off its perch. The Cambridge Audio CXA81 didn't just do so in 2018, it left more feathers strewn than after a Sandringham pheasant hunt. It proved sharper and more detailed, and stamps its authority with that supremely confident Cambridge presentation.

MORE: Cambridge Audio CXA81

PMC Cor (2018)

We all know PMC's excellent speakers, but don't be thinking the Cor, the company's first dedicated consumer amplifier, is entirely new territory for the company. Since 1991 PMC has been making the amps for active speakers such as the BB5s, the reference monitors found in the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios. And that experience shows. Like so many engineer side projects, this one's a doozy, so we hope PMC sticks with it. Transparency is the name of the game here, the Cor delivering a faithful, balanced, neutral sound. The Cor comes "highly recommended".

MORE: PMC Cor review

Chord Ultima Pre 3/Ultima 6 (2022)

The new Ultima Pre 3/Ultima 6 is Chord’s starter(!) full-size stereo pre/power pairing, and is an excellent example of the qualities the company's new designs offer. 

The Ultima Pre 3 (£6000 / $8945 / AU$10,440) is a pure line-level device with five standard inputs, two of which are balanced XLRs.

The Ultima 6 power amplifier (£7000 / $9925 / AU$12700) is even simpler, with just the option of balanced and single-ended inputs and a chunky set of speaker outputs to grab the attention. It’s a powerful unit though, despite its relatively compact dimensions, and outputs a claimed 180 watts per channel. 

This pairing is closer than most to being an ‘all things to all people’ amplification solution. Take care to partner with suitably talented and sympathetic partnering equipment and it will sing.

MORE: Chord Ultima Pre 3/Ultima 6 review

Read our British Hi-Fi Week 2023 news, features and reviews

• Got one of these but don't know what to pair it with? Check out the best British speakers of all time

Since the company was founded over 80 years in the business, Wharfedale has produced numerous amazing-sounding speakers, some of which have made it into the What Hi-Fi? Hall of Fame. 

A key reason for this has been the company’s ability to create fantastic value for money speakers that offer reliable audio, despite costing less than you’d expect. As a result, Wharfedale speakers have been a staple sight in our test rooms and magazine pages since What Hi-Fi? first opened its doors in the late 1970s.

Recently, Wharfedale’s shown it is not above celebrating its heritage by launching new entries into classic lines of speakers like the new Wharfedale Super Denton it launched at the Bristol Hi-Fi Show earlier this year.

This is great, but with so many great products in Wharfedale’s history, you may justifiably be wondering which are THE best of the best. Here to help we’ve created this guide detailing the British firm’s best speakers, past and present as part of our latest British Hi-Fi Week special event.

If you think we’ve missed any, make sure to get involved with the conversation on social media feeds and forums!

• 12 of the best KEF products of all time

Wharfedale Bronze drive unit (1932)

Gilbert Briggs founded Wharfedale in 1932. Briggs was a keen music and audio enthusiast and developed the company’s first product – the Bronze drive unit – in his cellar. At the time such things were considered cutting edge technology and involved much experimentation. He lived in Ilkley, Yorkshire, in a valley known as Wharfedale, and so that’s what he called his new company.

That original drive unit was initially sold as a single driver, as back then early audio enthusiasts built their own enclosures. It wasn’t until 1934 that the Bronze featured in a fully assembled Wharfedale ‘cabinet speaker’ and that was called the Nubian.

Wharfedale Corner Cabinet (1947)

After the war, Briggs continued to develop his speakers. In 1947 the company released the Corner Cabinet, claimed to be the first two-way hi-fi speaker for home use. At the time multi-way speakers were the preserve of cinemas and theatres, so this was a massive technological leap forward for home audio.

The Corner Cabinet’s enclosure was made in solid mahogany, though a solid oak  option was also offered. By current standards they were pretty big boxes at 107 x 65 x 47cm (hwd), though would have probably have been considered reasonably compact for the time. The claimed frequency response was an impress 40Hz to 18kHz and the power handling was rated at a modest 10 watts. A three-way version was also subsequently developed.

Wharfedale SFB/3 (1956)

The Wharfedale SFB/3 was Briggs’ answer to Quad’s ESL57 electrostatics. It was a three-way, open-back speaker with a sand-filled baffle. The idea behind the filled baffle design was to create a rigid but well-damped structure for the drive units to work from, but the lack of a box behind was just as unusual. This approach avoided the cabinet resonances that are part and parcel of any enclosure.

The three-way drive unit array was made up of 3in, 10in and 12in units, with the two larger drivers being connected in parallel, and the tweeter crossover consisted of a single capacitor.  

Wharfedale recommended using an amplifier with at least three watts of power to get decent volume levels. The SFB/3s measured 79 x 86 x 30cm (hwd) and weighed in at around 29kg.

Wharfedale Linton (1965)

The original Linton went on to become one of the best selling speakers of its era. It started off as a two-way model with a 3in tweeter and 8in bass unit, but over time developed into a three–way design called the Linton 3XP.

That original stood out for the innovative use of a Flexiprene roll-surround in the suspension of its bass unit. The tweeter was also unusual in being encased in its own acoustic dome to isolate it from the vibrations generated by the bass unit.

Wharfedale Diamond Mk1 (1982)

When Wharfedale launched the original Diamond Mk1 in 1982, we doubt whether anyone – even Wharfedale – anticipated the scale of their success. The Diamond quickly became the core of the company’s product output and spawned various off-shoots, including a ‘before its time’ powered model, as well as a luxury version called the Super Diamond, which was wrapped in a smart real-wood veneer.

That Mk1 was a squat thing standing just 24cm high and had an internal volume of just 5.2 litres. It cost just £65 on launch and soon built up a mighty reputation for being musically talented. These speakers delivered surprising bass weight for their modest size and had far more finesse than their lowly price suggested.

The sonic balance was a little rounded at the top end to avoid the basic tweeter becoming exposed, but the capable 11cm long-throw polypropylene mid/bass unit compensated.

Given a decent source and good budget amplification they delivered entertaining results. At the price, little came close.

Wharfedale 708 (1985)

Wharfedale was flying high in the mid-80s thanks in no small part to the success of the Diamond. At this point the company pushed hard on engineering innovation and the result was the impressive £300 708 standmounters.

The big news here was the enclosure material. Wharfedale’s chief engineer had just come over from Celestion where he did pioneering work on speaker cabinets using an aluminium honeycomb material in that company’s SL600 high-end flagship. This material’s rigidity and low mass resulted in vanishingly low levels of cabinet colouration compared to the wooden alternatives of the time. The same material couldn’t be used for Wharedale’s 708 because of their more modest selling price, so a more economical alternative had to be found. And it was.

The 708’s 28mm-thick panels were formed by sandwiching polystyrene foam between two sheets of Melamine. It worked really well from a performance point of view, giving the speakers an astonishing clean presentation for a model at their price.

Of course, having one of the best metal dome tweeters on the market helped, as did the use of a high quality loaded polypropylene mid/bass. The engineers also did away with conventional bolt fixings for the both drive units, developing a camera-lens-like screw fit into the cabinet instead. The advantage was claimed to be more even clamping pressure, and let’s not forget it looked neater thanks to the lack of visible fixings. The 708 were hugely impressive design on so many levels.

Wharfedale 505.2 (1990)

The 505.2 were another massive success for Wharfedale, sitting in the mid-market and delivering a sound of impressive polish and insight. They were a £169 two-way standmounter that echoed the clean-cut appearance of the mighty 708, but at around half the money. There was no fancy lightweight cabinet here, though, as the budget couldn’t accommodate such extravagancies. 

The standard 505.2 used a basic chipboard box, but there was also a luxury version available at a premium that used 18mm MDF, covered with a rather nice mahogany real-wood veneer. The pricier version justified its premium on sonic grounds too, with a clearer and more composed presentation.

Wharfedale made some hugely accomplished drive units at the time, and they were masters at making sweet-sounding metal dome tweeters (at a time when most rivals struggled to do the same). The one in the 505.2 delivered impressive clarity and insight. These speakers were open and articulate performers capable of a surprisingly subtle performance when suitably partnered. They began to sound ragged if pushed too hard, but beyond that led the class in most other respects for a number of years.

Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 (2004)

We could have filled this list with various generations of the Diamond, but have chosen to pick out the ninth-gen model of the more recent editions. Why? After a relatively fallow period – the fifth to seventh generation models weren’t great – there was a return to form with the eighth. This was much more like it when it came to sound, but these speakers still leaned heavily on under-cutting their obvious rivals on price for their appeal. 

Things changed with the 9.1. This was the Diamond back to its ambitious best with fancy curved cabinets, a sophisticated Kevlar-coned mid/bass unit and a rather sweet-sounding tweeter. Build was excellent too – something not always a strength of earlier versions.

The 9.1 sounded detailed and transparent, could play all types of music with ease, and offered a level of insight well beyond their £180 price level. Later Diamonds took things even further, but for us the 9.1 still sticks in the mind.

Wharfedale Evo 4.4 (2019)

We don’t give Awards lightly, so when Wharfedale’s Evo 4.4 floorstanders picked up a Best Buy gong for 2020 you can be sure that we compared them to every possible rival. Against them, they came up trumps.

We’re still impressed at the ambitious engineering of these speakers. You’re looking at a true three-way design with an AMT (Air Moton Transformer) tweeter, a 5cm dome midrange and a pair of 15cm bass drivers. Add a carefully calibrated crossover and excellent build quality and you have a class-leading tower.

The Evo 4.4 are mature and insightful-sounding performers, as comfortable exploring the subtleties of instrumental textures and dynamic nuances as they are pounding out bass beats and delivering thundering crescendos. It’s all done with a sonic sophistication that’s more usually found at higher price points.

Wharfedale Linton Heritage (2020)

The current love of all things retro hasn’t been ignored at Wharfedale Towers. As you’ve seen, the company has a rich history to mine, and the first fruits of that are the new Lintons. These are massive three-way standmounters that echo the proportions and styling of speakers made back in the 60s and 70s but are packed with modern innards and engineering.

Their sonic balance also reflects the past with a big hearted and rich presentation that’s quite alien to most modern alternatives. But Wharfedale has been smart in not taking the retro theme too far, so the new Lintons are as detailed and dynamic as the best of their modern price rivals. 

Add some great-value dedicated stands (that also double as storage for records) and you have a pair of speakers that represent excellent value for money. They’ve been a huge hit for the company since their introduction, and rightly so.

 Wharfedale Diamond 12.3 (2020)

Talk about Wharfedale’s Diamond series with any hi-fi fan and 99 per cent of the time the first thing that’ll come into the conversation is that they are great value standmounters – which makes sense as that was the first type of speaker to carry the name when it launched back in 1982.

But this may change in the very near future as the company’s latest Diamond series floorstanders are well worth talking about as well, based on our testing. The current What Hi-Fi? Award-winning Diamond 12.3 are a seriously good, affordable set of floorstanders that easily deserves a place on this list as one of the best speakers ever made by Wharfedale.

The speakers feature a 2.5-way design that uses the upper 13cm driver to cover everything from the midrange downwards. A second driver is then used to reinforce the low end. Backing this up they then use the same tweeter seen throughout the Diamond 12 range – a 25mm tweeter coated in a woven polyester soft dome.

The combination works a treat, letting them deliver the best audio experience we’ve had at this price. If you’re still in doubt as to why these speakers deserve a place in this list, our original Wharfedale Diamond 12.3 review says it all: “Don’t buy another tower at this level without hearing this one first.”

MORE:

10 of the best Naim Audio products of all time

9 of the most underrated British hi-fi products we've ever tested

17 of the best Bowers & Wilkins products of all time

We're celebrating all things British hi-fi this week on What Hi-Fi?, so we had to include our updated round-up of our favourite sets of speakers to have emerged from our modest little island.

This list includes some big, some small, some heavenly high-end, some much more affordable – but all straight from the top draw when it comes to performance-per-pound value. There's also a lot of history here, with our rundown going back to the early '80s and then running all the way through to speakers built within the last few years.

What's clear is that the hi-fi industry has been - and continues to be - spoilt with British engineering talent, as you can see for yourself from the following list of superlative hi-fi speakers. From pioneering Wharfedales to ever-dependable ATCs, British hi-fi has produced some absolute gems.

• What Hi-Fi? launches British Hi-Fi Week 2024 – fresh reviews, retrospectives on classic amps and more
  

Wharfedale Diamond I (1982)

The original Wharfedale Diamonds were the seeds for what has become one of the most successful speaker ranges of all time and that, in itself, is a deeply impressive legacy.

While speakers these days come in more shapes and sizes than ever before, these pint-sized efforts stood at just 24cm high and were designed for those who needed a speaker to fit into a tight space. Hi-fi isn't always seen as something "for the masses", but the Diamonds made that musical, insightful Wharfedale sound accessible to practically everyone, not just those lucky few pulling in substantial salaries.

The handsome little units had a particularly praiseworthy midrange and bass considering their budget price, though they were slightly fussy in terms of partnering kit, working better with more upmarket amplification. With tuneful lows and musical highs, the Wharfedale Diamonds paved the way for one of the most successful British speaker ranges of all time.

• That Was Then... Wharfedale Diamond review

Heybrook HB1 (1983)

Heybrook was a British hi-fi manufacturer that started life in 1978 and was named after Devon's Heybrook Bay, which was near the site of the company's original factory. It's no longer around in its original form, but the legacy of the HB1 is enough to keep the name alive well into the 21st Century.

Heybrook got off to a flying start after its inception, though, with the Peter Comeau-designed, entry-level HB1s proving a highlight of What Hi-Fi?'s early years. It was the first product to win three What Hi-Fi? Awards in a row, and that's a tricky thing to do even today. Not many products manage to even nab a single one.

With a sealed box design, they worked well when positioned close to a wall or surface, but what made them special was the fact that - thanks to a high-quality finish and dynamic sound - the HB1 were another example of a speaker that could hold its own against much more expensive efforts. 

Acoustic Energy AE1 (1988)

Acoustic Energy's AE1 were also smaller speakers whose performance belied their rather restricted size. They were capable of impressive punch and dynamic reach - in part thanks to their metal drivers, which were rare at the time. 

They also weren't limited to one decade, evolving over several years and several variations to inspire what is today one of our favourite active speakers, the suitably-named AE1 Active, a former What Hi-Fi? Award-winner that owes a great deal of its sonic character to the fun, excitement and rhythmic sharpness of the 1988 speakers.

Epos ES11 (1991)

We enter the 1990s with Epos' ES11, which were similar in sonic character to the legendary ES14 but available for a fraction of the price. A win-win for both the speakers and the consumers, then.

As was usual for the brand, the crossover was minimal – it employed a single capacitor for the tweeter – helping them produce surprisingly sturdy bass and excellent resolution, in addition to superb rhythmic drive and dynamic expression.

A modest-looking but really musical pair of speakers, they could deliver just the right amount of aggression, delicacy and restraint as a song demanded, earning them a place on this list with ease.

Monitor Audio Studio 20 (1992)

The Studio 20 were, back in 1992, one of the most detailed-sounding speakers we'd ever encountered. They've got that classic, old-school look, too, consisting of a large wooden profile with a couple of drivers plonked at the front of the cabinet, yet the whole thing just seems to work from an aesthetic, as well as audio, perspective.

They needed some fine-tuning and a fair bit of running-in thanks to those metal drivers but, these issues aside, they were incredibly well-finished and sounded terrific, treating listeners to transparency and clarity that very few rivals could contend with.

It was no surprise that their successors, the new-and-improved Studio 20 SE, arrived a few years later and occupied our test rooms as our reference model for many years. We sometimes miss them...

• 13 of the best Monitor Audio products of all time

Mission 753 (1992)

The 753 were an important speaker in Mission's history, ushering in a new slim floorstander design no wider than an, erm, ice skate. If you don't believe us, just see the picture above.

Both looking and sounding the business, they had a smörgåsboard of drive units with four 13cm drivers – two mid/bass drivers, two low bass units – and a single 25cm dome tweeter, through which a fast and punchy sound ensured whatever they were playing was enjoyably involving. They may have been slender and unassuming, but the sound they delivered was anything but anaemic. 

Tannoy Mercury M2 (1997)

The Mercury M2 made an immediate impression when they burst onto the scene in the late 1990s. Back then, we said they were the closest anyone had come to creating the perfect mass-market standmounter, and we stick by that assertion as we look back at the M2 with only slightly rose-tinted spectacles.

Quite frankly, our ears hadn't heard a more satisfyingly musical all-rounder at their price of £150, so it's hardly surprising that we called them "an extremely safe bet (that) will suit a wide variety of systems". Yes, £150 doesn't get you as much these days thanks to inflation, but these were some of the best-value all-rounders you could ever hope to find back in 1997.

Wilson Benesch A.C.T. One (1999)

Five years after launching its first product, the Wilson Benesch Turntable, the British company launched a second: the A.C.T. One speaker.

Unveiled at the 1994 Frankfurt High End show, the floorstanders were made mostly out of carbon fibre (like many Wilson Benesch speakers after them), introducing the world’s first curved carbon fibre composite panel in a speaker design. That distinctive shape helped to reduce the build-up of internal standing waves, while the speakers' eponymous acronym (which stands for "Advanced Composite Technology") meant a combination of carbon fibre, wood and metal coming together to give class-leading rigidity and resonance control.

It all paid off. These superbly engineered and elegant-looking towers were the most analytical and musical speakers we'd heard before the turn of the century.

Read the full Wilson Benesch A.C.T One review

Quad ELS 2805 (2008)

This side of the millennium we have the Quad ELS 2805. After all, it would be sacrilege to not include one of the British company's legendary electrostatic speakers in this list. So here it is.

"Fifty years after its electrostatic speakers first wowed the hi-fi world, Quad breaks new ground," we said of the 2805 in 2008, marvelling at a pair of speakers that felt innovative and cutting-edge at the time. 

These one-way speakers (meaning there was no crossover in the signal path) fired equal amounts of sound backwards and forwards, so care was needed when setting up. Any bother was well worth it, though. The lack of punch and slightly lumpy bass were drawbacks, but in every other way, they were truly exceptional performers.

Read the full Quad ESL-2805 review

B&W 800 Diamond (2012)

Continuing the high-end trend, these £18,500 speakers represented the pinnacle of B&W's cutting-edge technology back in 2012: "The ultimate expression of all the company’s trademark technologies," as we wrote in our original review . This has since manifested itself in the latest Diamond range.

From tweeter domes made out of diamond, to cleverly braced and shaped cabinets, to cones made out of Kevlar, they were innovative speakers that at the time showcased unrivalled clarity, dynamic reach and volume. The bass was stunning, as was the detail, and all of this sound was delivered with speed and kinetic punch.

Read the full B&W 800 Diamond review

KEF LS50 (2012)

The KEF LS50 were, and remain, blindingly good speakers. They've won multiple What Hi-Fi? Awards over the years and have recently formed the basis of active versions in the shape of the LS50 Wireless II and LSX, as well as the passive LS50 Meta – all three What Hi-Fi? Award winners themselves. 

Of course, a hat tip deserves to be directed to KEF’s trademark Uni-Q array (an aluminium dome tweeter in the centre of a magnesium/aluminium–coned mid/bass), which was largely behind the LS50's insightful and musical, bassy yet balanced sound.

Read the full KEF LS50 review

Neat Iota (2012)

He who dares wins, right? With a sideways orientation that makes them look more like an AV centre channel speaker than a pair of stereo speakers, the 13cm-tall Neat Iotas were certainly different, but brilliantly so.

The Teesside-based speaker company's unusual design allowed us to experiment using them with the tweeters placed on the inside or outside, the latter of which we preferred. The Iotas sounded remarkable - big and bold, with plenty of detail, weight and scale on offer. And their tiny-boxed design only added to their appeal.

Read the full Neat Iota review

Q Acoustics Concept 20 (2013)

The strength of the competition at this price is always fierce, but it speaks to the talents of Q Acoustics' Concept 20 that they remain firm favourites even after more than ten years in the game.

The Concept 20 utilise what is still some of the company's top-tier technologies, such as the complex cabinet design that sees two layers of MDF separated by a lossy Gelcore material in an effort to dampen resonances. Thanks to such innovative engineering, they produce a multi-talented, all-round sound that delivers everything from punch and attack to subtlety and precision.  

Budget speakers are worthy of just as much praise as super high-end ones, especially if they deliver on the promises they make at their more modest level. As their multiple Awards have demonstrated, the Concept 20 are one of the bargains of the decade.

Read the full Q Acoustic Concept 20 review

PMC Twenty 26 (2014)

Speakers from PMC’s Twenty range have not only been winning awards in recent years but also occupying our test rooms. 

Few rival floorstanders are as musical or as balanced as the Twenty 26, whose strong dynamics, impressive detail, even tonality and seamless integration are hard to find fault with. These may not be the latest models in the Twenty range, but they are among our favourites, demonstrating the British brand's commitment to engineering innovation and consistent quality across the board. 

While more Recent PMC speakers, such as the Prodigy 1 and Prodigy 5 models, have demonstrated the brand's capabilities at the lower end of the market, we still have a huge soft spot for the Twenty 26 floorstanders.

Read the full PMC Twenty 26 review

Spendor SP2/3R2 (2016)

It'd be easy to dismiss Spendor's SP2/3R2 as a retro throwback, but that would be to miss out on a stellar speaker that very much deserves the attention of anyone with this budget. "Despite a design ancestry that dates back to the 1970s, there’s much this dinosaur could teach its modern competition," we noted in our 2016 review.

Sonically, they're huge, with a scale and authority that's made for epic blockbuster soundtracks. Yet there's absolutely no shortage of dynamics or detail either, and while they don't deliver the last word in punch or drive, rhythms are delightfully measured and controlled. If you favour a smooth, refined yet deeply insightful presentation, the SP2/3R2 remain a high point for British hi-fi. 

Read the full Spendor SP2/3R2 review

ATC SCM 50 (2019)

We’ve been using ATC’s SCM50 as our reference speakers for well over a decade, and in that time they’ve been connected to just about every piece of electronics that has passed through our test rooms. And guess what? They've never let us down after all these years, rewarding us time and again with the sort of reliability and dependable quality you'd normally see reserved for your pet labrador or favourite pair of slippers.

Every so often we come across rival speakers – usually of higher cost – that better these ATCs in some respect, whether it’s outright resolution, openness, stereo imaging or rhythmic precision. 

Yet we haven’t managed to find something that’s as satisfying an all-rounder or as practical to use as a day-to-day review tool. Considering the SCM50 was originally introduced in the mid-80s, that’s quite some achievement. It seems great engineering doesn’t age after all.

Read the full ATC SCM 50 review

ProAc Response D2R (2019)

Don't let the lack of curved cabinets or fancy cone materials fool you. The ProAc Response D2R are among the finest speakers we've ever heard and are more than worthy of their spot on this list. They were What Hi-Fi? Award-winners in 2021, after all, with our expert test team hailing them as being "as insightful and entertaining as any speakers at this level". High praise indeed!

You'll need suitable stands, suitable electronics and the patience to spend a suitable amount of time tinkering with positioning, but once you've got those elements sorted, these exceptional standmounters will deliver an intoxicating mix of detail and entertainment that is very tough to beat at this price. They're also very easy with partnering and beautifully made, making them a pair of all-rounders that won't let you down no matter the situation. 

Read the full ProAc Response D2R review

PMC Fact Fenestria (2022)

The PMC Fact Fenestria might be one of the tallest speakers to have been through our test rooms; they're also one of the best speakers we've heard. We liked them so much that they unanimously won the Best Temptation Award in 2022 – high praise indeed. 

Yes, they're very expensive, but they were designed as an opportunity for PMC to take a fresh look at every part of loudspeaker design and come up with engineering solutions that are as free from budget constraints as they can be. Highlights include a lot of decoupling of the driver units from the baffle (and the cabinet itself) and implementing techniques used in skyscrapers to mitigate the swaying motion for the construction of its tall cabinets. It has clearly worked, too; these speakers deliver an awe-inspiring sound that simply demands to be heard.

The Fenestrias deliver sound with a deeply impressive impartiality, handling all genres of music with balance and precision, along with a deep, powerful bass that's never strained nor loose. These are big speakers so you can expect scale, dynamism and authority to match, all delivered with an incredible sense of realism and accuracy.

Read the full PMC Fact Fenestria review

Wilson Benesch A.C.T. 3Zero

Wilson Benesch’s speakers are usually quite something to behold. We used the original A.C.T. One as part of our main reference system in the past, and it's been so gratifying to see the One’s exceptional DNA running through the quite incredible A.C.T. 3Zero floorstanders.

The 3Zero make use of the One's pioneered curved cabinets, a shape which diminishes the build-up of internal standing waves within the speaker, alongside a biocomposite developed as part of a pan-European research project with €7.4million worth of EU financial backing. That all gives the 3Zero superb rigidity and dampening, proving that Wilson Benesch is still keen to push the engineering boundaries in a bid to eke out as much performance potency as possible.    

We could go (and have gone) into even greater detail regarding the speakers' impressive Fibonacci hybrid tweeters, 3D printed faceplate or isotactic polypropylene-coned crossover, but what matters to us is how the 3Zero sound. As we stated in our review, they deliver music "in a full-throttle manner", treating you to thrilling dynamic swings complemented by power, punch and precision alongside some of the most insightful and natural sound we've ever heard from a floorstanding speaker.

For us, testing the A.C.T. 3Zero wasn't a job or a chore; it was an experience.

Read the full Wilson Benesch A.C.T. 3Zero review

MORE:

11 of the best British turntables of all time

12 of the best British stereo amplifiers of all time

What Hi-Fi? launches British Hi-Fi Week 2024 – fresh reviews, retrospectives on classic amps and more

Why the 1970s were the perfect time to start a British hi-fi company

Read all our British Hi-Fi Week 2023 news, features and reviews

An iconic name in the British hi-fi industry (pardon the pun), Naim is a company that needs no introduction. Producers of amplifiers, streamers, CD players, wireless speakers and practically any other hi-fi component you can imagine, it's a company with a rich history. 

Founded in 1973 by Julian Vereker MBE (1945 - 2000), the brand has just celebrated its 50th anniversary, and in those five decades, it's launched a formidable portfolio of excellent products. As part of its golden jubilee, it launched the limited edition Naim Nait 50, an homage to its original, wildly successful Nait 1 integrated amplifier.

Verker, an avid race car driver turned self-taught engineer, switched from building high-performance motor vehicles to loudspeakers and amplifiers in 1960. Twelve years later, he won a bid to supply then start-up radio station, Capital Radio, with audio equipment. From there Naim was born, and it's since progressed to the company we know it to be today. 

While it was acquired by French audio brand Focal in 2011, it remains a staple British audio brand; in fact, you can still find its headquarters in Salisbury where the company originates from. 

1. Naim 32/Snaps/250 (1984) 

This particular piece of Naim wizardry came in three parts: the 32 pre-amp, its accompanying power supply and the now legendary 250 stereo power amplifier.

It was a popular combination that became the beating heart of many hi-fi users' systems. It was capable of delivering drive, dynamic punch and powers of organisation that few could match.

The system enjoyed enviable and admirable success, with the 250 in particular proving so popular that it received several makeovers, getting better with each iteration.

2. Naim Nait 1 (1983)

Nait 1 was Naim Audio's first integrated amplifier and it remains one of the firm's most iconic products. Over 36 years later, the brand's still building on it. Capitalising on the reputation of its celebrated amp is the latest in the Nait range, the Supernait 3 and Nait XS 3. They both received coveted five-star reviews from this publication in 2019 (no easy task), but without that 1983 blueprint, these new iterations could never have come to fruition.

Naim has said of the range: "The term Nait doesn’t just describe a product range, it defines a philosophy; a way of thinking born with the original Nait 1. It places the highest value on simplicity and focus. It demands that we attend to every detail in design; it’s the only way we can give you the best possible sound."

If it means products like this, we're all for it.

3. Naim ARO tonearm (1989)

Naim hasn't launched many tonearms in its history: the inaugural ARO was followed up with an arm-lifted device, the Aromatic, in 1991 (see what they did there?) but when Naim set about engineering this tonearm, it got it right. 

The ARO features a unique, unipivot design, with the entire 'bearing' comprising a spike sitting in a cup atop the pillar. It uses an extremely rigid arm-tube (its name is taken from the precision aluminum-alloy tubing of which the main tube is made) and for a long time showroom visitors were offered the challenge: "if you can bend the tube with your hands, we'll give you an ARO". It remained in the Naim catalogue for over 20 years, quickly becoming the preferred audiophile tonearm for partnering with esteemed turntables such as the Linn Sondek LP12, with Linn Troika cartridges. 

Now, the Aro is the preserve of specialist dealerships of course, but it was an easy shoe-in for this list. 

4. Naim CD5si (2012)

We know. We've only gone and mentioned a product from the past decade, haven't we? Naim launched this CD player in September 2012, with an asking price of £995. 

Essentially an update on the firm's 2007 CD5i player, the CD5si featured a new transport mechanism and the Burr-Brown PCM 1793 DAC. 

Under intense review that same year, we commented, "The CD5si bends over backwards to deliver an exuberant and enjoyable performance, and it was its unmatched enthusiasm and concrete drive that we took to instantly. The What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision team listened to this player for hours, and we still enjoyed sitting back to a wholehearted rendition of Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ By The Way. In terms of musicality and cohesion, it’s spot on."

Such was the CD5si's success – stealing the crown from our long-reigning favourite Audiolab 8200CD, scooping not only a five-star review from this publication but also our Product of the Year gong in 2013 – that Naim hasn't felt the need to do anything to it since. 

5. Naim ND555/555 PS DR (2018) 

This combination features the ND 555 music streamer and 555 PS DR power unit. The former is the first of Naim’s streaming products to gain 500 series status – meaning, in Naim speak, that it’s the very best it makes right now.

And Naim is right to be proud. The ND 555 focuses on the firm's traditional, evolutionary approach rather than trying to reinvent anything – building on the 2012 NDS network player. If you assume that spending £13k on a music steamer means it'll work straight from the box, however, you'd be wrong. The ND 555 doesn’t have a built-in power supply, so you need to add at least one of the company’s 555 PS DR outboard power units, and another £7k to your budget.

What this combination really means, in layman's terms, is a £20,000 music streamer. And you know what? We have loved it from the moment we first heard it. A cursory glance at our Naim ND555/555 PS DR review proves it too. 

6. Naim NA SBL floorstanders (1986) 

In the year that Phantom of the Opera premiered in London's West End and Richard Branson broke the world record for the fastest boat crossing of the Altantic, Naim released its first in-house designed and built floorstanding speakers, made expressly for people to bring into their homes (rather than for Capital Radio). 

A two-way, two driver loudspeaker system with a claimed frequency of 30Hz to 20kHz, 75W power handling and 885 x 266 x 270mm dimensions, its sloping looks are perhaps more reminiscent of a Victorian writing desk. 

With its unique three-box design, some users – even seasoned reviewers – struggled to assemble it and get it sounding right. But when it sounded right, driven by a full-house Naim system, it was (and still is) something truly special. 

• A famous Naim for 40 years 

7. Naim Supernait 3 (2019) 

"If you’re looking for an entertaining yet informative integrated amplifier, the Supernait 3 is a brilliant choice" – that's what we said in our Supernait 3 review, leaving us with little choice but to hand over a prized What Hi-Fi? 2019 Award not long after.  

As is Naim’s way, this third generation Supernait may not exude a luxury aura, but it is a quality product born of a rich heritage of quality products. Honestly, we can’t currently think of a more capable alternative when it comes to rhythmic drive and precision for your system. The Supernait 3 conveys the changing momentum of music brilliantly, capturing various mood changes between tracks with conviction.

8. Naim NAC-N 272 (2015)

Essentially, there are just two things you need to know about the Naim NAC-N 272: it’s a fully featured streaming preamp and it sounds utterly lovely.

OK, there's hardly a shortage of music streamers out there that also have a volume control, but he NAC-N 272 isn’t like most of them. It uses a fully analogue preamp section, so performance through the analogue inputs – one DIN and two RCAs – always had the potential to be really good. But this is also a forward-thinking unit, so there are digital inputs as well as optical and coax connections, and also aptX Bluetooth.

Naim being Naim, a great deal of engineering was undertaken to avoid features like wireless connectivity spoiling the sound. The digital and analogue sections communicate through optical isolation chips to minimise any interference. 

The Naim NAC-N 272 could have easily turned out to be too much of a compromise; a poor relation to the company’s long established line of dedicated separates. It simply isn’t though – and it deserves its place in this list. 

9. Naim Statement Series NAC S1/NAP S1 (2014) 

On 10th January, 2014, Naim used CES in Las Vegas to launch a true piece of statement engineering, the $200,000 Naim Statement. As we said at the time, "Naim products have long-since been associated with dynamic performance, but the Statement combination looks to be in a different league altogether."

The idea for an entirely new kind of amplifier, the kind that could set a new reference standard in high-end audio reproduction, was three whole years in the making at Naim. But granted, it is still an awful lot of money. 

The Naim Statement's dark, dramatic, flashy aesthetic also marked a radically different approach for the company. It may seem like an odd departure from Naim Audio tradition, but the organic, wave-like flow of the heat sinks in Naim's Statement project paved the way for subsequent triumphs like the Mu-so Qb and Mu-so, now both into their second iterations and revelling in the five-star reviews. 

10. Naim Mu-so Qb 2nd Generation (2019)

Naim struck gold with its Mu-so Qb wireless streaming speaker, and yet it managed to somehow improve upon the formula with the second-generation model. The Naim Mu-so Qb 2nd Generation was unveiled in the latter half of 2019 to critical acclaim, earning itself an immediate five-star review and the prestigious Product of the Year Award in the wireless speaker category for four years in a row. 

In fact, the cons column of our review reads "nothing at this price" – high praise indeed. There are, however, plenty of pros when it comes to this speaker. Its stylish, premium build and excellent wireless streaming compatibility are, of course, a nice touch when it comes to initial impressions, but its stunning sonic capabilities are what really let it shine. We called it expressive, and went on to detail and appreciate its sparkle.

It also carries an impressive amount of bass weight, which is an impressive surprise considering its form factor, reminding us never to judge a book by its cover (or a speaker by its enclosure).

If the Naim Mu-so Qb 2nd Generation proves anything, it's that Naim isn't afraid to embrace change, and how it can adapt its skills to constantly changing times. With the streaming age changing the landscape of hi-fi as we know it, Naim used its Mu-so series to prove it can apply its renowned design and audio philosophies to the latest trends and developments. 

MORE:

Check out the latest British Hi-Fi Week news, reviews and features

As well as our Naim NAP 250 review

And 9 of the most underrated British hi-fi products we've ever tested