What Hi-Fi?

It pains me to say it rather, but there goes summer. As I write this, the schools have gone back, the commute to work is suddenly crowded again, and those evenings are getting longer by the day. That doesn’t mean all should be doom and gloom, though.

At first glance, there seems little difference between Atacama’s Evoque Eco 60-40 SE2 and its Award-winning predecessor. But if you think that means Atacama’s engineers have been twiddling their collective thumbs over the past few years you’re wrong.

The AKG K175s are £100 on-ear headphones that raise a question. What’s the difference between a pair of professional studio headphones and a pair made for people who just want to listen to music on the way to work? In some ways the AKG K175s seem per

KEF has been on quite some run of form in recent years. From class-leading active stereo speaker systems to our current Product of the Year passive speaker, the R3, it seems the company can hardly put a foot wrong. On paper at least, the R5s look lik

HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel) is a clever protocol that sits within the HDMI standard and, in theory, it can help simplify a complicated AV set-up and reduce the number of cables you need. But what’s the point of it? Should you be concerned about t

Because these Philips TVs were engineered with an incredible Bowers & Wilkins audio package built in, Let The Light In needed a score to match. So it was in Studio 2 of Abbey Road Studios, where The Beatles famously recorded, that our A-list session

TELEVISION Sony KD-65XF9005 £1500 BLU-RAY PLAYER Sony UBP-X700 £185 AV AMPLIFIER Sony STR-DN1080 £397 SPEAKER PACKAGE Q Acoustics 3010i 5.1 £790 SYSTEM TOTAL £2872 When we first tested Sony’s mid-range 65in set less than a year ago, it would have set

PROJECTOR Epson EH-TW7400 £1799 4K BLU-RAY PLAYER Sony UBP-X700 £185 AV AMPLIFIER Denon AVR-X3600H £999 SPEAKER PACKAGE Monitor Audio Silver 200 AV12 £2865 SYSTEM TOTAL £5848 While ginormo-screened televisions are no longer the preserve of millionair

TELEVISION Panasonic TX-50GX800B £699 SOURCE Apple TV 4K £179 SOUNDBAR Q Acoustics M2 £169 SYSTEM TOTAL £1047 When we first put this system together we had to redo the sums a few times. We couldn’t quite believe that a system so accomplished, and so

TELEVISION LG OLED65C9PLA £2999 SOURCE Sky Q £varies BLU-RAY PLAYER Sony UBP-X1100ES £749 SOUNDBAR Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar £2199 SYSTEM TOTAL £5947, plus Sky Q Now this is a soundbar system; a simply stunning television with the best soundbar we’ve

Nobody buys discs any more, do they? Wrong, actually. True, the emergence and growth of streaming services has meant the end of the days when every home had a small black or silver box beneath their TV, and a bookcase full of once-watched movies gath

Phono stage £3999 SOUND FEATURES BUILD • Terrific clarity and detail resolution• Agility and rhythmic drive• Expressive dynamics• Excellent build and finish • Lacks the feature set of some rivals If you’re looking for an insightful and exciting high-

When collating a list of our favourite film scores a while ago, we distinguished between music written specifically to accompany a movie and soundtracks – compilations of songs and instrumental works already in existence. These too deserve their own