Horizon

1 AUDIOLAB 6000A PLAY

• £799, audiolab.co.uk

Does your home stereo need a new heart? Transplant in Audiolab’s exquisite 6000A Play and it’ll beat stronger than ever before. Cheesy cardiac intro aside, this is something of a hybrid device, comprising the amplification electronics of the company’s highly-rated 6000A and the streaming smarts of its class-leading 6000N. What results is a finely-balanced and delicatelooking amplifier that’s as adept at blasting out the signal from your CD transport as it is streaming 24-bit/192kHz hi-res audio.

The core of that streaming platform is DTS Play-Fi – quickly becoming something of a standard in audio streaming – which links the 6000A Play to a laundry list of music services, streaming radio stations, or your own hi-res collection via the Play-Fi app. That’s not its only trick; you can also hook up the likes of Spotify Connect, or just connect and stream via aptX Bluetooth. With four digital audio inputs, three line-level RCA