Best Buys – Audio & AV

It’s been a busy month at Len Wallis Audio. Firstly we were honoured to receive a ‘Cinema Design Gold Award’ from Sound+Image magazine for one of the dedicated Home Theatres we completed this year. This was a very special project. It is a 13.4.6 Atmo

There are such things as native 4K UHD projectors, which have the full 4K’s worth of pixels on a single chip. But these remain expensive, and are often physically large. In the sub-$5000 AV projector market, pixel-shifting is the way to go if you wan

A recent survey in Europe found that four out of five people think a big TV picture makes viewing more enjoyable. And frankly we can’t imagine what the fifth person is thinking — of course it does, and screen size is high on everyone’s wish-list when

Once upon a time when you’d think of Bowers & Wilkins loudspeakers, you’d think of tradition, of leather armchairs in English clubs, of Queen and country. And of solid loudspeakers, engineered to produce fine sound. All that’s still the case with man

We had a moment during the unboxing of Yamaha’s YAS-209, turning the soundbar around between our hands, feeling its weight, seeing how the blue-black fabric wraps right around to meet the sturdy base at the back, leaving a top lozenge of surface, lig

Regular readers will have seen us reviewing a chain of JBL Link units since this range of voice-controlled speakers first arrived — indeed several have won Sound+Image awards for their combination of sound quality and value at the price. The Link ran

It’s a great time to buy a turntable, with record companies continuing to ramp up the release of recordings new and old on vinyl, the second-hand LP market thriving through record fairs, and regular new turntable releases as well — when only a decade

Meridian’s 200 Series is something different in the world of wireless multiroom audio. Many companies have had a go at the market defined first by Sonos, delivering their own ecosystems of wireless speakers, soundbars and streaming electronics, and m

When the compact disc was introduced in the early 1980s, nearly everyone in the world said it was the end of the vinyl era. The CD was smaller, played for longer, was more robust and, according to co-inventors Philips and Sony, would deliver “perfect

What’s the most important part of a turntable? Vinyl fans debate every aspect of turntable design. Should the plinth be heavy, or light and rigid? Should arms be long or short, straight or S-shaped? What material makes the best platter? Even the mat

The Cyrus One amplifier design has had quite the evolution. The very first Cyrus One was launched in 1984, but the friendly yet purposeful re-design pictured here arrived a few years back, as an entirely analogue amplifier. Then a version with digita

We are happy to bet that one of the reasons you’re reading this review is because you’ve never heard of an ‘ampli-tuner.’ Neither had we, but there it was, written on the side of the box. Which was weird because written on the top of the box was ‘Net

The McIntosh MA252 integrated amplifier is the first ‘hybrid’ integrated amplifier that this world-famous American company has ever built. That’s an important statement given that McIntosh has been building amplifiers for 60 years. So the McIntosh MA

If you’re looking at buying a simple hi-fi system, smart amplifiers can make that job a whole lot easier. Smart amplifiers are boxes which stream music in addition to providing power — so that they can be used as an easy just-add-speakers system solu

The Overture O202B is this small Lithuanian company’s entry-level offering, and it’s an unusual speaker, to say the least, mostly because of design decisions made by founder and lead design engineer Gediminas Gaidelis. Indeed you only need look at th

Some manufacturers are a little vague about the rooms in which they think their loudspeakers will perform at their best and the amplifier power most suited to their capabilities. Not Italian manufacturer Chario. For its Constellation II Delphinus mod

Radically different. Those are the words which come to mind when I consider the Genelec 8331A active loudspeakers. In large part that’s because these are not designed primarily for the home. They are studio monitor speakers. Genelec is a Finnish firm

Klipsch has been in the loudspeaker business since 1946, when founder Paul Wilbur Klipsch developed his famous ‘Klipschorn’, which took advantage of horn-loading technology to improve both low and high-frequency performance while at the same time usi

In an old land like the United Kingdom, full of famous, longstanding loudspeaker brands, you’d think that it’d be hard for a newcomer to find any space. But Q Acoustics managed it, starting up only a decade and a half ago, and since receiving accolad

Aussie company Richter Audio says its Wizard speakers, now in their sixth generation — or should that be incarnation, seeing as they’re wizards? — hold the record for being the world’s best-selling Australian-designed loudspeakers. Given the number o