Simaudio have announced the release of three new bits of kit which should be ready for shipping with immediate effect.
The MOON 810LP Phono Preamplifier, a dual-mono fully balanced design and said by Simaudio to be an “all out assault” on phono preamplification. It has selectable gain, impedance loading, capacitance loading and equalization curves (accomplished using DIP switches.) The 810Lp is said to work with virtually any cartridge. 
Western Electric and the Western Electric WE300B valve has long been the holy grail for aficionados of that particular flavour of tube, but rarity has made them all but impossible to buy and prices are astronomical.
All that searching and saving could now be at an end…sort of as Chinese tube manufacturer Psvane Audio has stepped up to make a 1:1 replica of the original WE300B.
According to Psvane Audio, “the Psvane WE300B Replica is: “100% 1:1 replica of WE300B, including materials, structure, internal and external size – up to the detail of a tiny screw used”.
The Western Electric 300B replicas will be sold in pairs, are delivered in a beautiful presentation box and likely to be expensive – 1000$ a pair in the US.
The weekend of Saturday 24th March sees the Weybridge Hifi show. It’s billed as being “A High End Audio and Home Entertainment” event and takes place at the Oatlands Park Hotel in Weybridge, Surrey. A weekend ticket £18 if you buy it on the door and £15 if you buy it on line.
The show is hardly a massive affair with just 28 exhibitors at time of writing, but is this necessarily a bad thing; the argument goes that with so few exhibitors visitors will be able to get around the show more easily and actually be able to listen to the systems on show.
Highlights of the show, as advertised on Chester Groups website, are Inspire Hifi demonstrating of their direct drive Monarch turntable, Fidelity Arts new Akkus loudspeakers and the appearance of German manufacturer Burmester’ products at an English show after an absence of almost 10 years.
Reference Fidelity Components (RFC), the UK based hi-fi cable manufacturer, has announced that it will soon be stocking Talk Electronic’s widely regarded Talk 3 loudspeaker cable. The loudspeaker cable has been very favourably received by customers since its launch and has reviewed well in the Hifi press.
This is what Talk Cables have to say about the Talk 3:
“… our all new TALK 3 speaker cable, a spaced pair of 2.5sq mm OFC copper cores which have been insulated with a thin layer of our own proprietary material we call ‘TALK Flex’. These are then placed into a dark green PCV jacket for protection from pulling and scraping during installation.” More »
Universal Island Records..Cat Nr 2722538
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Monster, has announced its new iSport LIVESTRONG branded in-ear headphones for athletes and enthusiasts. The headphones boldly feature LIVESTRONG’s iconic bright yellow on both the cable and earpieces. 
A portion of the proceeds from sales of the iSport LIVESTRONG headphones will be donated to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, created in 1997 by the cancer survivor and champion cyclist, to serve people affected by cancer and empower them to take action against the world’s leading cause of death. The foundation is now known publicly by its powerful brand – LIVESTRONG – and is a leader in the global movement on behalf of 28 million people around the world living with cancer today.
Having just bought a new pair of lovely “audiophile headphones” I thought “Why keep your headphones stuffed into a cupboard or drawer, getting the cable and the cable extension tangled up?” The house is already a bit of a sty after all and i really don’t need any more clutter! 
Having spent so much of my hard earned cash I want them in plain sight, on a bookshelf or right next to my hi-fi where I can get at them with ease? In short I want to show them off a bit whilst having them close at hand. A quick search found CA Electronics, a Dutch manufacturer of connectors, isolators, damping plates, loudspeakers and hand-made, hand coated headphone stands that look very nicely made indeed.
Each headphones stand is powder coated by hand which provides a very durable finish to maximize the stand’s longevity.
The HS-1 looks just the job and is described as being the “perfect stand for any headphone”. It’s made of 3mm thick curved aluminium, stands about 25ch high and is about 10cm deep. The stand has been designed so that the curve of the stand supports the headband and the narrow end holds the ear-pads in place. The slight flexibility of the stand is said to leave headphones resting in a natural position when not in use and CA claim this will enhance a headphones lifespan.
Hifi Pig has snoofled out some very interesting news for valve amplifier fans and enthusiasts of the iconic Radford STA15 and STA25 valve hi fi amplifiers.
UK based Radford Revival have announced the limited edition reissue of Radfords classic series 3 hifi amplifiers. The father and son team of Steve and William Moores hand-build these beautiful amplifiers to order and make them from the original, and hand drafted 1964 blueprints and the original hand-written transformer winding specifications.
Steve has a long history with Radford and has perhaps the largest collection of Radford amplifiers and transformers in the world.
The new transformers on the reissued amplifiers are superior to the originals in several respects. They are machine wound to modern safety and insulation standards. Superior termination is provided by tags embedded in the plastic bobbin, which are much stronger than the original tags, which were glued to the outer insulation of the winding and had a tendency to fall off.
Metal components and casework in the amplifiers are also reproduced from original blueprints (meticulously scanned and converted into metric) and the company used happens to be the very same company contracted by Radford in the 80s to product the metalwork for the Mk4 STA25.
I’m sure you will agree with HiFi Pig that these valve hi fi amplifiers are truly things of beauty and we wish the company every success for the future. We hope to have a review of the amplifiers in the very near future.
The STA15 is £2750 and the STA25 is £2800 which Hifi Pig thinks is a very reasonable sum for such a well crafted piece of engineering.
MartinLogan, well known the world over for their electrostatic speaker technology, announces this month the slender Motion® SLM, a wall-hanging or free standing LCR speaker that is ”powerful enough to stand alone and detailed enough to be used in conjunction with floor standing MartinLogan speakers”. The Motion SLM features dual four-inch, ultra-slim fibre cone woofers and dual four-inch high-velocity passive bass radiators, paired with a Folded Motion™ tweeter – all in an ultra-slim profile designed with super-thin TVs in mind.
The speakers are slim enough to complement even the thinnest of wall-mounted HD displays (even projection screens) and the Motion SLM is designed to step in where underpowered, unnatural sounding TV speakers fall short. The Motion SLM’s is said to have a “larger-than-its-size performance” and this down to the dual ultra-slim fibre cone woofers and high-velocity passive bass radiators, which provide low-end bass extension from an ultra-slim profile combined with the advanced resolution Folded Motion tweeter. The high-gloss black SLM cabinet is only 1.45-inches thin, for a total wall protrusion of 1.83-inches when used with magnetic grille and included wall mount bracket. More »
Electrocompaniet the Norwegian hifi manufacturer of CD-Players, Dacs, amplifiers and loudspeakers launched the EMP 2 multiplayer in October of last year. Whilst this isn’t up to the minute “news” Hifi Pig thought it worth including in this section of the site.
The EMP 2 is part of the company’s Classic line and is a fully fledged and versatile player with support for all modern audio and video formats and media including Blu-ray in 2D and 3D. CD, SACD, DVD and DVD Audio. More »
NAD has announced the imminent launch of its Masters Series M51
Direct Digital DAC. The M51 includes many ‘firsts’ for the DAC product category: first to support HDMI, first to support USB Audio Class 2 with support for 192kHz, the first to use digital error correction, and the first
35 bit architecture to be found in a DAC. 
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With immediate effect – and until the 31st May 2012 – customers can obtain a minimum trade-up value from an authorised Meridian retailer on selected CD Players and Controller products against the purchase of a new 800 Reference Series product.
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For the 4th successive year, the HiFi Wigwam internet hifi & music forum has organised its very own hifi show. This is hosted in the spacious Scalford Hall Hotel in the heart of rural Leicestershire UK, just outside the town of Melton Mowbray, which is otherwise famous for its pork pies! Hifi Pigs beware …
For the first 2 years the Show was held in collaboration with Chester Group, who are experienced with organising hifi shows worldwide. For 2011 and 2012, though, the Hifi Wigwam forum has been solely responsible.
Other than in the main reception area, hifi dealers and manufacturers are not allowed in! Instead the show’s focus is on the real life hifi systems belonging to forum members.
Some 50 systems were presented this year, each in their own room, ranging from the small and low cost end of the spectrum to no holds barred super systems, and with components from well known established manufacturers to vintage hifi, and DIY constructions of amazing appearance! More »
Naim has announced a new addition to its network player range – the NDS. The new reference network player joins the NDX and ND5 XS and completes Naim’s range of streaming separates sources.
The NDS is an audiophile source, capable of playing and streaming audio over a home network at up to 24bit/192kHz resolution. It offers internet radio yet forgoes a DAB and FM radio tuner to minimise noise. It includes three S/PDIF digital inputs for connection to external digital sources, such as a computer or CD player. A front-panel USB port complets the feature set – either connect an iPhone or iPod digitally to allow the NDS to control and play stored audio or play audio from a USB memory stick, even hi-resolution WAV or FLAC files, with full on-screen control. The NDS will support all the main file formats. WAV, FLAC, AIFF, ALAC, AAC, Windows Media-formatted content, Ogg Vorbis and MP3 files are all catered for, as is gapless playback.
In true Naim reference engineering style, the NDS requires the use of an external power supply. The XP5 XS, XPS and 555 PS are all suitable matches. Performance can be further enhanced by the addition of a second Burndy cable (in the case of 555 PS only) splitting out the analogue and digital sections, which a second 555 PS will bring about even greater gains.
Like its fellow network players, the NDS can be controlled by Naim’s n-Stream control app for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. The app also alows control of a Naim system’s inputs and volume. The supplied remote and front-panel interface provide simple and easily accessed control.
How many times have you listened to a set of ‘speakers in a showroom to be surprised, or even disappointed when after purchasing, dragging them (carefully) home and impatiently setting them up only to be rewarded with something that bore no relationship with the sound that you heard at the dealers? Besides the usual caveats of allowing ‘speakers to break-in for 50 hours or more so that the moving parts can free up slightly, what else is there to be concerned with? More »
Old Records or Old Friends?
I was discussing with a fellow hifi nerd (sorry audiophile) the merits of CD over vinyl and during the discourse he happened to mention that he was firmly in the digital hi-fi camp and had sold all his vinyl, 400 albums or so, about 10 years ago. This reminded me and caused a certain melancholy to descend as I thought back to the day I sold my beloved record collection.
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