Earlier this month we revealed the What Hello-Fi? Awards 2023 Greatest Purchase winners. And in case you took the time to take a look at these winners you’ll have seen it’s been an ideal yr for hi-fi techniques, with quite a few new merchandise incomes full marks after passing by means of our check rooms.
Placing apart our greatest techniques class, take a look at our greatest floorstanding audio system and finest standmount speaker winners checklist and also you’ll see various techniques creeping in, which in my thoughts is a good factor.
Why’s this superior? First, the winner checklist exhibits that hi-fi producers are taking the class critically and are conscious of the attract merchandise just like the Apple HomePod 2 and Sonos Period 300 have for the plenty.
The KEF LSX II and Triangle AIO Twin are nice examples of this, with each providing compelling sound and nice bang on your buck, and the latter equating to roughly the worth of two Period 300s.
Second, as a result of the rationale folks like them is fairly apparent – they’re straightforward. Having a easy plug-and-play set-up that doesn’t require an excessive amount of tweaking or handbook tinkering, and that additionally doesn’t take up oodles of area, is a critical draw for most individuals.
I personally skilled this shifting into my new home late final yr, with my lounge merely not having the area, and my diminished financial institution steadiness not having the capability, to accommodate the separates set-up I dreamed of in my head. For this reason, for the time being, in my lounge you’ll see me rocking the Technics SA-C600 system paired with a set of Q Acoustics 3030i audio system through a Chord Firm RumourX cable.
And for the previous 12 months, I’ve been undeniably pleased with that. The app’s slightly bit finicky to get Tidal Join operating, particularly since my spouse appears to have a magical capacity to steal management through Bluetooth each time I begin taking part in something too “noodly” – she’s a philistine who doesn’t respect the majestic chops of Steve Vai or epic ballads of King Crimson.
The simplicity and plug-and-play nature of it’s sensible and the sound, contemplating the associated fee, makes the set-up unbelievable bang on your buck. It additionally helps that its sound high quality remains to be a minimize above what you get in most non-audiophile properties – to the purpose the place friends usually touch upon how a lot better it’s, at which level I normally bore them to dying explaining codecs and bitrates…
I additionally love the smugness of having the ability to level out that Technics has gained awards a number of years in a row and remains to be very a lot a best-in-class product at its value level.
However, regardless of being “superb” with the set-up, throughout Awards testing particularly I felt a rising twang in my coronary heart. Watching our resident audio specialists focus on and examine the varied candidates for stereo amplifier, community streamer, CD participant, turntable and speaker trophies, I used to be reminded how a lot I like creating a correct separates system from scratch.
Bounce on over to our methods to construct the proper hi-fi system information and also you’ll get an in depth breakdown of why. The quick model is that there’s an artwork, or in my case Frankenstein science, to matching separates. And the method of listening to how the mixture of components you suppose will work collectively truly performs in the true world is a really particular expertise.
This expertise brings me again to my youth when my dad and I might hop on over to our nearest hi-fi store and spend an hour or two trying out the newest {hardware}, getting the poor store attendant on responsibility to swap out components and put up with our “acquired” tastes in late ’70s prog, as we tried to create the proper system.
It’s additionally as a result of, as Monitor Audio’s Michael Hedges famous in an earlier interview with us throughout What Hello-Fi?’s British Hello-Fi Week 2023, there’s extra longevity in separates.
As a result of a rack can have new components swapped out and in, the place a system is just about ‘what you see is what you get’, separates supply the power to evolve and have new performance added over time at a {hardware} degree.
That is notably true this yr, the place we’ve seen a lot of nice community streamers seem, just like the Award-winning Cambridge Audio MNX10which opens the door to giving older hi-fi a brand new lease of life. In case you take a look at our Technical Editor Ketan Bharadia’s “That Was Then…” sequence of articles, you’ll know numerous older hi-fi nonetheless performs surprisingly effectively sonically, so having the ability to add streaming smarts is a blessing that opens up an entire new alternative when planning your subsequent system. His take a look at the Rotel RA820BX (1984) in January is a good instance of this.
Even whenever you’re accomplished, there’s nonetheless the enjoyable of planning the place and the way you’re going to arrange the system in your house. As we famous in our previous methods to arrange hi-fi information, the little issues actually matter and this may be some of the enjoyable and most difficult components of the method – particularly in case you don’t have oodles of area.
And that’s why I’ve felt an actual pang of jealousy watching our intrepid workforce of hi-fi reviewers work, going by means of this course of whereas selecting this yr’s What Hello-Fi? Awards winners, and why I’m having to struggle the urge to hurry to the closest Richer Sounds, Peter Tyson or Sevenoaks Audio and begin planning my subsequent separates system.
Or on the very least put it off till later in November, after we’re anticipating a lot of Black Friday hi-fi offers to look…
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