Rupert Neve is a name that will trip of the tongue of anyone who has been interested in or worked in recording studios; put simply he is a giant/demi-god in the industry. Neve has now put his name to a £469 headphone amplifier and who better to put it through its paces than Janine Elliot.

“Having spent a quarter of a century listening to various form of Neve mixing desks at the BBC, whether the GP desk produced under licence by them and two other companies (Calrec and Audix), or my favourite the Neve 66, I have got accustomed to the sound produced by this great man. Air Studios in London have three specially made Neve consoles. Legendary Beatles producer and founder of Air Studios, George Martin (1926-2016) was heavily involved with Rupert Neve in the design process of what was a radical new desk at the time. With toroidal wound transformers it was clear that sound quality was the key aim here, as it always should be. As a new BBC sound engineer in the 1980’s aiming for the best in sound quality, with Neve desk plus Quad 405 bi-amped into LS5/8 speakers I was near to heaven….”

Read the full review here