You’re looking to buy a good vintage or second-hand amplifier, so do you go for tube (valve) or transistor? This is a difficult question to answer. On the face of it, tube amps are an antiquated technology with performance that is grossly inferior to modern solid-state designs: tubes have characteristics …
The analogue revival is no longer confined to vinyl LPs; welcome back, the reel-to-reel tape recorder. It’s a surprising development given that pre-recorded open reel tapes were only ever a tiny part of the market even when at their most popular in the 1960s (pre-recorded tape had to wait until …
One of our customers has recently moved from a high-end, floor-standing, active loudspeaker to a seemingly more modest system built around the Jordan Eikona 2 Reflex 7 kit. The results surprised him: I’ve been meaning to write this for a fortnight – but have been too busy just listening to …
The Bigger Is Better loudspeaker project began on DIYaudio.com some years ago. The design is based on the quarter-wave tuned pipe, developed in 1934 by loudspeaker pioneer Paul Voigt. Voigt’s design is a tapered tube, tuned to a quarter-wavelength of the lowest frequency to be reproduced. It is a simple, straight …
No, it’s not the title of the latest Richard Curtis rom-com. Passive, active and single refer to the three primary ways of designing hi-fi and studio loudspeakers. Most loudspeakers feature multiple drive units, each of which has a restricted bandwidth. For instance, in a typical two-way design the bass/mid unit …
