Oh look, it’s spring!
Welcome to our latest brazen attempt at encouraging wanton consumerism.

Leaves are appearing on trees, the grass is growing, daffodils and crocuses well underway. This most upbeat time of the year (for me, anyway) is almost with us. Picking up on the seasonal vibe, we’ve been having a spring clean / sort out.

With the business being located in my home from inception until we moved to St Cecilia’s House in 2017, the old store-room in Bucklesham has retained a surprising, not to say inexcusable amount of audio related clutter. We’ve been shifting box loads of the stuff to Trimley.

Upshot is that our website now has a clearance section!

signals clearance

Let’s have a plug for SFP
Pictured above is an SFP plug and it seems to be becoming unexpectedly relevant to high end networked audio.

Melco’s snappily named C1-D20 SFP terminated copper cable has arrived hard on the heels of last year’s ADOT product launches. ADOT involved using fibre to transmit data via SFP adapters instead of conventional ethernet. The premise was that, by providing physical break from potential electrical noise on the network, a significant uplift in audio quality was possible. It has certainly been a great success.

SFP sockets are on some high end data switches, including the Melco ones, It’s also on some high end network players such as Linn Klimax DSM and on the new Melco N1 and N5 music stores / servers.

SFP connectors do not have to relate to fibre and, with C1-D20, Melco are making a good case for a native electrical link. Bear in mind that any fibre connection requires an SFP module to convert from electrical to optical so it’s arguably slightly less ‘pure’.

ADOT is great at detaching the replay chain from network noise. Once this bridge in place, there is a strong argument for using, where possible, a high quality, native, copper data link thereafter. Melco explain it rather well here.

There is also a very good review in The Ear.

the ‘R’ is for reduced height
Ortofon 2MR moving magnet cartridges feature a specially designed cartridge body tailored for turntables and tonearms such as Rega, taking account of their requirement for low-form factor cartridges. With its shallower cartridge housing, it integrates without the need for modifications or spacers under the tonearm. Once aligned it offers quick and easy mounting with just two screws.

We’ve always been fans of the 2M series and removing the need to adjust arm height can only increase the appeal. There are six in the range with various stylus options including mono, 78 and right up to nude shibata on the top (black) version. Upgrading is simply a matter of swapping the styli.

Sbooster developments
We’ve been selling Sbooster power supplies for about a year now. They are proving to be particularly effective and cost-effective upgrades for ADOT and Chord (M Scaler). There are various output voltages and both DC and AC outputs are available.

A new arrival is an adapter kit that fits inside a Bluesound Node music streamer and allows it to be powered via an external Sbooster supply.

Now available for demonstration.

Innuos Pulse
The Innuos Pulse series of network audio players. have been inexplicably overlooked in previous news splurges. They are really rather good both is terms of sound quality and user interface. Quite possibly top of the tree at the relevant price points.

They offer both analogue and digital outputs and the entry level Pulse Mini routed through the DAC inputs on the latest Rega integrated amplifiers makes an especially good case for itself.

Demonstrations are our speciality, so come on down! But please book first, we’ve actually managed to have the odd ‘traffic’ jam!

Vertere cartridges
The full set of cartridges look like the contents of a sweetie box, (hint: sweets are generally cheaper).  We now have the full set of Vertere Moving Magnet and Moving Coil cartridges on demonstration and just thought we should mention it!

And, yes, they are very good indeed. And far better for your teeth.

Coming soon . . .
Launched at the recent Bristol Show, Kudos have finally been demonstrating the Simao Drive ‘powered by silence’ external sort of active crossover for their loudspeakers. This is something we had hoped to have at Audio Show East last April.

“Sort of’ active? Whilst it sits in line between pre and power amps allowing each power amplifier to connect to each driver directly, it is actually passive in design. More news on this soon.

and finally . . .
PMC have plenty of history making active loudspeakers for their professional  ranges. This expertise has now been applied to ‘activating’ their established Twenty5i series.

The amplification kit is available to apply this upgrade retrospectively to existing passive loudspeakers. Alternatively, you can simply buy them pre-built in active form. We look forward to finding out more.