Open, natural and dynamic. They are available in Silver or Palladium ribbon versions, screened or unscreened.

The ribbon is threaded in ptfe tubing creating a virtual air dielectric with silk damping material and carbon anti-static outer braiding.

Silver ribbon costs twice the price of the same weight of round-section silver and sounds far more natural.
These cables are low capacitance and therefore work perfectly with passive pre-amps unlike some silver cables on the market.

It can be seen that you really can get a great sound just using the convenience of a Squeezebox Touch into a respectable DAC like the Peachtree iNova.

We have the fantastic Italian DACs and streamers from Blacknote that sing on the end of a Squeezebox Touch – or a Computer using the Asynchronous USB implementation that Blacknote are proud of.

Come to us for an alternative to the Arcam rDAC, Musical Fidelity DAC, Rega DAC etc – find out what our Italian DACs are capable of!

Blacknote are also soon to release a budget DAC that also includes their asynchronous USB technology called the DAC 7 so watch this space, we expect them to be very popular in that market space.

We certainly hope to fulfill your home audio needs. Come and visit us for an audition.

The Triode/Ultralinear switch is another dubious one because a circuit is either optimised for one or the other. Such amps often sound worse in triode mode giving a softer focus and a slightly echoey effect which some interpret as greater depth. Ultralinear has more leading edge bite. Even with the 104db Loth-X Polaris, they don`t respond to triode mode on most EL34 triode/ultralinear switcheable amps – just sounding more round-shouldered and wishy washy.

Yet reviewers extol these gimmicks as if they are the way forward.

2  I recently discovered that many CD players with a valve output stage reverse absolute phase.

This means one should reverse phase to the speakers for CD use and return it for Vinyl use!

(If in doubt check with a CD test disc.)

The manufacturers keep this card close to their chests. I suppose it happens because a CD player is designed phase coherent from the outset, then a valve output board is added and phase is reversed.

Balanced outputs solve the issue, therefore balanced outputs are `more betterer`…

3  Why are spade connections so cynical in design? One make of spade doesn`t mate with another make of terminal post width-wise. Fork lengths vary and can cause shorts on some amps if applied carelessly. Stiff cables usually cause most spades to loosen however tightly they are applied.

Thank God banana plugs allow less scope for manufacturers to mess about !

The review is from Phillip Holmes – normally a digital hater – but in this case he was impressed with the fatigue free and analogue sound of the CDP300 – something we at AudioFlair concur with.

Compact, modern in appearance and well-priced, they integrate with most environments offering a small footprint and work admirably on bookshelves or other pieces of furniture.

What is deceptive, however, is their performance: They image beautifully (excellent crossover design), produce a tight, deep bass which belies their size (thanks to transmission-line loading) and offer a genuine `high end` sound.

I`ve seen a few jaws drop as customers are convinced a bigger pair of speakers are playing.
The bar has now been lifted regarding the level of performance possible from compact enclosures.

The move away from birch-ply to MDF has been cost-led and a very retrograde step as this material, due to its uniformity, stores energy at a certain frequency often leading to a lumpiness somewhere in the mid bass. Actually, chipboard which is more `random` in form sounds more open and natural.  E.g. Mission 770 mk2.

To compensate for this overdamped thickness, stark, metal-dome tweeters are often used which can never match the tone of their bass-mid drivers unless they too are of a similar material. And yet, when `brave new world` materials are used for tweeter and bass/mid, they often fail to deliver because although detailed, the result is just not natural. 

I look out for designs which use birch-ply or go for differing thicknesses in their cabinetry to disperse energy more randomly.

Silk-dome tweeters and paper or hemp mid/bass drivers are often more natural.

Ribbon tweeters are extremely detailed but their coherence with a conventional bass driver often leads to a total mismatch.

It`s not just about detail and using the latest technology, some artistic licence and emotional intelligence is needed to make a design coherent and involving.

It does not `run` nearly as well, it requires much more heat so there is more chance of damaging delicate components.

I can see why some experienced `solderers` consider it inferior to lead.

If the 2 parts of the join are in proper contact and you`re not using the solder as glue, the better flow of lead solder and lower temperature required are surely superior and there`s much less likelihood of dry joints.

Not to mention the environmental issues.

Anything that is well designed should reach near optimum performance within half an hour.