The latest of Hifi Pig Extra is out and ready for you to download…AND IT’S FREE. It’s a fab issue with loads of reviews, loads of music reviews, live music, great columnists, a great Readers’ Lives article that follows a father and son through their audiophile journey, Forever Changes by Love is the Classic Album and there’s a Behind The Brands Interview with Frederick Davies.

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Take closer look at what’s in this month’s Hifi Pig Extra… 

Reviews 

Zontek Turntable

So, was this all worth €11,990. Well, compared with a number of other turntables this is a small price to pay for the experience I had with my music, especially considering it includes the lovely arm and looks worthy of a place in Tate Modern. 

Timestep T-01MC Phonostage

This phonostage needs to look like a box of Black Magic, because that’s what it is. 

Transfiguration Axia S Cartridge

£1375 certainly isn’t cheap, but the Axia S is one hell of a musical player, not sheepish in trying to extrapolate the best from the music, and more than justifies it price when comparing with others at this price point. 

Devialet Ensemble

Yes, our reference system (also using class D amps incidentally,but with a valve pre in place) gives me more of everything but then for the cost of my speakers alone you could have the whole kit and caboodle from Devialet gracing your living room and not wanting to take over your space completely. 

Primare I32 Integrated Amplifier With DAC and Media Board

The I32 will take all your musical tastes and run wild with them. It’s not coloured or warm, it’s rich and vibrant, it’s not sterile or analytical, it’s clean and accurate. 

Tisbury Audio Passive Pre Mk 2

So transparent is the Tisbury that it has very little influence that I can detect in my system. 

Etalon Solo DAC/PRE

It is a raw hard edged recording and with the Etalon it really was stripped out to the bare bones with nowhere to hide away from it.

Ophidian Minimo Loudspeakers

The sound field is wide and open spreading way beyond their tiny dimensions.

WAY Cables Silver 1 and 4 Interconnects

Whereas the Silver 2 never did engage me completely, the Silver 4 certainly did from the first bar onwards. 

Second Reviews 

Triangle Titus Loudspeakers

Flare Audio R2Pro and R2A Earphones 

Vintage Audio 

Retro Bites – Philips DCC900

This clever machine meant that a new technology was backward-compatible so you didn’t need to eject (permanently) your old recordings of Des O’Conner, and you could now listen with good signal to noise without missing some of the tops, as Dolby B did. 

Columnists 

The Voice Of Dom – Mains Cables Part 1

So then, the basic minimum criteria for a mains cable’s performance is that it must get the old juice from the wall socket to the input of my hi-fi component without spilling any of it on the carpet. 

Fidelity Matters – Boxing Clever

Never content to rest on my laurels, upgrade after upgrade followed and when I got a full time job the floodgates were opened to many new adventures in quality equipment. 

Birds Eye View – Women in Hifi (Cover Story)

Please grow up and have an educated conversation with your fellow audiophiles and you might learn a few things…in the meantime us women have better things to do, like listening to music on, rather than showing off about, our hifi. 

The Views of Stu – CDs

I even recall one very animated presenter smearing jam, or was it marmalade, over one of the discs, wiping it off and then playing the disc…revolutionary to say the least, particularly given the number of breakfast time vinyl incidents reported in the eighties. 

Dealers View – Internet Shoppers and High-End Dealers

“You dealers make a fortune”.  Well it looks like the gig is finally up!!!!  Yes people one of the larger problems we have is a proper investment strategy from the millions of dollars we make weekly… 

Readers Lives – Generations

Of course finding consensus amongst the gathered throng as to which bun is best is a challenge, but it’s also really interesting (and often contentious) when Whitesnake or Beethoven is cooking the air at 90dB+.

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Album Reviews

Nikki Lane – All or Nothin’ (New West Records)

Cocksure – Corporate Sting (Metropolis) Records)

Leon Bridges – Coming Home (Columbia) Records)

Daniel Cacija – Lifeline (Mons Records)

Idris Muhammad – Boogie To The Top. The Very Best Of (Robin Songs / Cherry Red)

James Taylor – Before This World (Concord Records)

Jens-Uwe Beyer -The Emissary (Kompakt)

John McCullagh & The Escorts – New Born City (359 Music)

Kevin Borich – Totem (Self Released)

Max Richter – ‘SLEEP’ (Deutsche Grammophon)

Neil Young And The Promise Of The Real  – The Monsanto Years (Reprise)

Pixx – ‘Fall In EP’ (4AD Records)

Ranagri – Fort Of The Hare (Stockfisch)

The Bird and The Bee – Recreational Love (Rostrum Records)

Rhoda Dakar Sings The Bodysnatchers (Cherry Red)

Various – Dust On The Nettles (Grapefruit)

Live

John Otway – The Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh

In the the early Seventies Otway and his on-off musical partner Wild Willie Barrett were carving a rut in the road to obscurity until a legendary moment of TV history turned Otway into the pop star that he was always destined to be. 

Tubular Bells For Two –  Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh With Band Interview

We base the show around our own strengths.   It might be that for one section Danny’s more the kind of wizardy guitar and I’m more the bottom-end stuff.  

Dean Friedman – Sweet, Edinburgh

Friedman is a fine songwriter and I was looking forward to hearing his songs in a live context but I’m sorry to say that this evening’s performance didn’t really work for me.

Classic Album

Love – forever Changes

Lee’s lyrics are abstract but turn into an apoplectic, apocalyptic vision where bathtubs run with blood. 

Behind The Brands

Frederick Davies, Creator of the AXJET Loudspeaker system talks to Hifi Pig

The resurgence … well fashion mostly, and the illusion that horn speakers inevitably work better with valves. This is just because lots of horns are badly designed and shouty and this is moderated by the wooly valves 

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