The Parasound Halo 2.1 Integrated Amplifier with DAC is a fully featured integrated amplifier with an on-board DAC and much more. David Robson takes a listen to this £2999 well specified amp. More »
Search Results for: festival of sound
Handmade Festival will be returning to Leicester’s O2 Academy in 2018 for two days of the finest music, comedy, art, film, performance and photography, hand-picked and carefully curated. The festival will take place on 5th & 6th May 2018. More »
Certain to be of big interest in the DIY Audio community, Burning Amp Festival 2017 is coming to the Fort Mason Centre in San Francisco on Sunday, November 12th from 8:30 a.m. to 8:00 PM. This year BAF’s hours have been extended due to the increased interest and popularity of DIY audio amongst music-loving enthusiasts and audiophiles of all ages. More »
exaSound are a Canadian brand that make just a handful of products. Here David Blumenstein takes delivery of their $3499.00 e33 Digital to Analogue Converter. More »
Cambridge Folk Festival is delighted to reveal exciting new additions to this year’s bill, including Lisa Hannigan and Martin Simpson. They join a line-up that brings together up and coming artists and established folk legends in the grounds of Cherry Hinton Hall. More »
There’s a certain transcendent magic that happens when two contrasting voices coalesce in perfect harmony – think The Everly Brothers, Simon & Garfunkel or George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Imperceptibly, they can raise you from the temporal to the spiritual in the breath of a song, and set you floating among the firmament infused with a sense of wonder – just like Sound of the Sirens. More »
There’s a certain transcendent magic that happens when two contrasting voices coalesce in perfect harmony – think The Everly Brothers, Simon & Garfunkel or George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Imperceptibly, they can raise you from the temporal to the spiritual in the breath of a song, and set you floating among the firmament infused with a sense of wonder – just like Sound of the Sirens. More »
Handmade Festival will be returning to Leicester’s O2 Academy in 2017 for two days of the finest music, comedy, art, film, performance and photography, hand-picked and carefully curated. The festival will take place on 28th, 29th and 30th April 2017. More »
You may not have heard of the Crescendo festival that takes place each August in the beautiful French tourist resort of Saint Palais sur Mer in the Poitou Charente area of France, but it’s possibly the best organised festival I’ve ever attended and is in an absolutely magnificent setting on the cliff tops looking out to sea. There are very good campsites within 600m of the festival site, great restaurants and bars and the festival itself is safe, clean and attracts brilliant bands under the broad umbrella that is progressive rock. We visited first a few years ago when Hawkwind were headlining the Saturday night and this was sadly the last gig that their keyboard player Jason Stuart would ever play before he died. More »
A great festival of technology that showcased many great British Hifi Brands including modern favourites such as Naim, Cyrus, Michell and Tannoy, and also the big boys including Pioneer and Yamaha with Sony’s 84 inch 4k TV attracting huge amounts of interest, the 4k is the resolution, not the price tag, which is more like 25k!
I was able to wander with relative comfort around the slightly sprawling hotel layout that had demo rooms spread over several floors. It was interesting how well sound proofed the bedrooms were compared to how they normally are when you want to sleep in them. More »
Fine Sounds SpA of Milan, Italy, owner of Sonus Faber, Audio Research Corporation, Wadia Digital and Sumiko, has acquired 100% of McIntosh Laboratory, America’s formidable producer of hi-fi systems. Fine Sounds is owned by Quadrivio, an Investment Management Company also based in Milan, Italy. The acquisition of McIntosh, a Binghamton, NY based company which had been previously owned by D+M Group, represents a marquee investment for the group, whose strategic direction is to offer products that are “the best in the world in their category”.
McIntosh rose to power in the ’50s, ’60s and 70’s as the rock & roll movement emerged as the defining musical genre in America and throughout the world. Beginning with the Beatles’ Shea Stadium performance in 1965, countless rock & roll acts became so popular that only huge stadiums could handle the crowds. It was McIntosh that ultimately pioneered systems capable of delivering clean, high-quality sound that could stand up to these vast arenas of screaming fans. The first was the system assembled for Woodstock in 1969, where the rock festival’s organizers were forced to develop a system capable of reaching to hundreds of thousands of fans. Five years later, the Grateful Dead – who would become the premier American touring band for a generation – unveiled its “Wall of Sound” on March 24, 1974, and set new standards for live performances with arguably the greatest PA system of all times. McIntosh amps drove both of those legendary systems.
Fine Sounds and McIntosh believe the acquisition will deliver important benefits to McIntosh’s customers, sales partners and employees by providing opportunities for building on Fine Sounds Group’s product development capabilities, distribution synergies and financial resources. With Fine Sounds’ support, McIntosh is now poised to elevate its brand to higher acclaim, expand its distribution as well as its reach into new international markets. “We are thrilled to welcome McIntosh, one of the industry’s most illustrious brands, into our portfolio,” says Mauro Grange, CEO of Fine Sounds Group. “McIntosh is dedicated to the highest caliber of high-end audio and is a perfect fit with our own culture and vision. We will treasure and protect the legacy of McIntosh as well as its people and reputation.”
The acquisition of McIntosh is an important one for Fine Sounds. “McIntosh will help strategically strengthen our brand portfolio, allowing us to have a broader product offering, covering more categories, offering customers a complete solution. It does not compete with any of the other brands we hold – it is positioned quite differently – and offers opportunities for great synergies which we can leverage,” added Grange.
It’s always fun to visit a new-to-us Hifi Show and we had been thinking about going to XFi, in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, for the last two or three years, but unfortunately, it clashed with Festival of Sound in London. This year, however, we planned to get there for one day but then, as FOS was canceled, we thought “why not?” and decided to become Media Partners with the Dutch show and visit for the whole weekend. We were very happy that we did.
The XFI Premium Audio Show 2019 took place in the Netherlands last weekend and of course, Hifi Pig was there to bring you loads of pictures and comments from the show. Here is Stuart Smith’s first report from a superbly well organised and very well attended event.
Janine Elliot takes a look at the innovative IsoTek Evo Ascension C15 mains cable costing £3000. More »
October has been a very busy month, so catch up with everything that happened with our news round up. There is plenty of news and of course reviews, plus show reports. This month we are very much looking forward to the Audio Video Show in Warsaw, where we will be bringing you extensive coverage or Europe’s second biggest Hifi Show after High End Munich! More »
Chord Company has introduced an upgrade to two of its most popular loudspeaker cables. They have upgraded the two-decade-strong Rumour and popular Shawline, with the introduction of a new insulation material, XLPE. More »
September was a very busy month here at Hifi Pig Towers, we were out and about seeing the Hifi Lounge Radical SR1 car (who we sponsor) race at Donnington, we popped up to Glasgow to visit Linn and experience their new Selekt DSM Network Music Player and finally we had a trip to London for the Festival of Sound Audio and Music show, with whom we are media partners. We also brought you a report from the Audio Show Live, Leamington Spa. Have a read through of all the other news that happened too below, with links to everything we covered last month, plus links to the reviews we published in September. More »
The Chord Company has launched SignatureXL, the latest evolution of a classic Chord speaker cable and one that introduces modern technology plus the new silver-plated ChordOhmic plugs. More »
August is traditionally a quiet month on the Hifi calendar….but you wouldn’t have thought it with all the Hifi News and Hifi reviews that we brought you. Hopefully all our readers and industry friends had a brilliant summer and are now feeling refreshed and raring to go in September! More »
Acoustic treatment manufacturer GIK Acoustics has announced the release of five new designs available in the company’s Impression Series line of acoustic panels and bass traps. More »
AVM’s latest Compact Streaming CD Receiver, the INSPIRATION CS 2.2 4T will be unveiled by PMC UK Distribution at Festival of Sound in September. Based on the CS 2.2, the enhanced CS 2.2 4T now features the latest Bluetooth 4.2 standard, with a dedicated second antenna on the rear of the unit. More »
Chord Electronics will be at the Festival of Sound for the third time this year. If you didn’t get a chance to experience the new Chord Hugo M Scaler at CanJam London then you’ve got another chance at the Festival Of Sound the last weekend in September. More »
ENGLISH ELECTRIC EE1 ETHERNET FILTER REVIEW
The £250 English Electric EE1 Ethernet Filter is an in-line filter designed to improve your streaming system. Read on…
HiFi PiG’S STUDENT HiFi BUYING GUIDE 2024
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HiFi PiG’s guide for students looking to get the best musical experience.
Fiio FT3 HEADPHONES REVIEW
Whilst the Fiio FT3 may not be the brand’s latest release, they were the first full-size dynamic headphones from the company and deserve a full review here on HiFi PiG.
