Musica HPA60 V2 headphone amplifier

There's nothing like at the end of a long stressful day on a cold winters night than putting on your favorite pair of slippers, sitting in your favorite place on the sofa, ignoring the family to start listening in pleasure to your fav tunes in darkness, the dog is sitting by your feet wagging his tail craving for attention, but all you want to do is kick back, relax and listen to the new Musica HPA60 headphone amplifier.

 You look admirably at it's slick black lines, in the darkness of your room you see the tender glow of the little valve and give it the nod of approval.

 

Let the magic begin, if you know that special musica sound you know the brand are capable of delivering one of the most delicious and open trebles in the business, there is always something special and beguiling about how they achieve this kind openness and sweetness, it's just so delicate.

  You close your eyes, a grin appears on your face as your forget the days stresses they now seem so distant and far away as you submerse yourself by the beautiful sounds your ears are be massaged with, oh the beauty of sound is such a delight.

 Musica have done it again with the HPA60, you've discovered the pleasure you get when listening to this new headphone amplifier, your fully engrossed in it's temptation, it's got you seduced, but suddenly you feel a tap on your shoulder, you jump up, open your eyes to hear the words 'dinner's ready!'.....oh well.....all good things come to an end.

 Click here to purchase Musica HPA60

Edwards Audio APP-HA Britain fights back.

Over the last decade or so a lot of manufacturing including HiFi shifted to China, but of late it appears as if some manufactures are getting more competitive and competing against this trend. What was once never thought possible has been turned on it's head, things can be made in Britain the can easily compete against something that has been made in China.

 One of the leaders is Edwards Audio, of late they have developed a range of products called the Apprentice, clearly shows that affordable, good looking, great sounding HiFi can be made in the UK. One of the latest additions to that line is the cracking little headphone amplifier t a price you simply wont believe. It's a simple plug in, play, and enjoy, it really does rock! We can happily report it sounds a real blast.

  

You can purchase Edwards Audio here

JohnBlue JB3F finally arrive

Patience is a virtue, so after a long wait we were delighted to be informed that our JohnBlue JB3 had finally arrived by boat from Taiwan.

 Eagerly we unpacked them, unbeknown to the surprise that was to great our eyes. Photographs of the JB3 looked very promising, but sometimes advertising shots don't quite meet our expectations once we actually set eyes and get a feel for a product.

 The first thing you notice about the JB3F is the diminutive size at just 75cm tall, even though these are floorstanders these are some of cutest wee speakers we've seen, they are also extremely slim. These will for sure be wife pleasers as they have a very high WAF, goody goody! The next thing you instantly notice is that tiny wideband driver, it's tiny, I mean really tiny, these reserved speakers don't shout out, "hey look at me, I'm gonna shake the walls with earth trembling bass"  forget it, your just not going to get it. In fact you might even start to get a few niggling doubts creeping in wondering if these diminutive sized speakers are going to make any kind of worthwhile sound at all.

  I've always found that JohnBlue's range of speakers work perfectly with Musica from Japan amplifiers, so naturally I partnered the JB3F's with the Music int60 amplifier. Another vital and very important factor to keep in mind is that JohnBlue's widebanders sounds absolutely rotten straight out of the box, when you first switch everything on and start listening you are greeted by a horrid sound, they sound compressed, thin, hard, all pretty yucky, so take this on board, JohnBlue speakers need a lengthy running in period, if you go to a dealer and you see they are fresh out of the box, forget it as they sound like previously described.

 Lets skip forward a couple of days.....You really start to notice that sound has changed remarkably, the sound has opened up remarkably, where the sound was confined to the speakers in the beginning, the sound now breathes freely from the speakers, I love a holographic sound where the speakers sonically disappear and sound is left hanging in front of you and behind the speakers, this what I am now experiencing.

 The JB3F excel in the midrange, I've found this with all of JohnBlue's speakers so this comes as no real surprise, the tone is very pure and realistic sounding, they really excel with natural real sounding instruments. The soundstages width  isn't the widest you are ever going hear, but even though it is more compact in it's width, it is extremely well focused making it is very easy to differentiate each individual instrument, there is no blur where all the instruments become muddled in there sound, instead you can hear very clearly each individual instrument, these are definitely speakers that prefer natural sound i.e "real" instruments.

 Remember I mentioned about the very small size of these speakers?, this makes them very appealing for those who have small rooms, close neighbors, but for others they make take one look at their size, another look at the size of the main driver at start to snigger, they wont believe these speakers can produce any kind of bass, let me tell you now that you will surprised at what they can actually achieve. OK, they wont thump you in the chest with hard hitting bass, or get your trousers flapping, but the bass is there, it's tuneful and very easy to follow, I hate speakers that produce to mass bass or it's a boom and bloom type of mess, the JohnBlue's to me strike a very nice balance.

 The more I am listening to them, the more they are opening up and sounding better, I'm finding very little to critisize here, I'm sure some will love these at first site, I am also sure some will just ignore them due to their size and the full range driver size, but to me these sound really quite wonderful and breaking in, listen to their strengths and I'm sure you will just love them.

Strong points:

Great looks.
High WAF.
Dont take up real estate.
Charming Sound.


JohnBlue JB3F

DUNU DN1000 - The best earphones we've ever heard.

We've been totally blown away by the sound of the new Dunu DN1000, these little buds sound absolutely mind blowingly good, they just sound incredible, they are quite simply the most realistic sounding earphones we've heard.

 Expect the usual high quality build from Dunu, but what will surprise you the most is the leap in sound quality over the rest of the Dunu range, these little beasts are in a different league.

 You're going to be shocked at the growling deep bass, (which is adjustable depending on what colour ring you chose to use) we went for red. It is deep, rich and powerful, it's not a rumble or a blur of a sound, but a tight and crisp punchy bass that is full of impact. Everything about this new earphone is startling, you are lead to believe you're listening to a high end system where in fact you are actually listening to a earphone that costs under 200euros.

 

Midband is spellbinding as the vocalist will enter your head, vocals sound lush and highly believable which are match to that incredible treble, they sound heavenly, the treble is just so pure and clear, the shimmer of a cymbol will send a shiver down your spine with its realistic tone.

 These Dunu's have it all, we just love everything about them, from the quality of the accessories, to the top notch build and that oh so beautiful sound, these really are rather something very very special.

Edwards Audio - Little Belter

The British made Rega turntables have always been firm favorites for receiving mods and upgrades. Just recently Edwards Audio have introduced there own range of turntables which improve significantly on the basic Rega turntables. One of those modification involves the changing of the standard Rega belt to this high performance BLUE belt from Edwards Audio.

 This is a simple and fuss free modification that is a must for all Rega owners and their derivatives. It's simple and very cost effective, plus it's cheap!

You can purchase it here

Astin Trew Concord USB cable

Over the past decade we've seen many audiophiles ditching there once loved CD players in favor of using their computer as their source, this is all well and good as it is a extremely comfortable way of accessing all of your music, the popularity of computer has escalated with the amount of new DACs now on the market, but there is one huge problem when it comes to computer audio and that is they simply were not designed in most cases with audio in mind, our computers are very noisy environments, audiophile sound quality was not really in the minds of modern day computers designs, computers were not designed for high quality audio.

 With all this dirt and noise generated by our computers we see some companies making steps to try to make the signal to our DACs less contaminated.   For example KingRex have gone down the route of supplying battery power to their UD384 DAC, while Japanese brand Acoustic Revive has designed a very effective USB isolator.

 Now we have a exciting new product from AstinTrew, theBritish manufacture of highly affordable hifi products. The concord USB power cable is very unique in it's design.

Almost all USB receiver chips in DAC's (regardless of the price of the DAC) are powered by the 5V line through the USB cable from the sending device (PC/laptop/streamer etc.); and this results in degraded audio performance. It is well known that clean and stable power supplies are essential for a high quality and true musical performance; and power leads in close physical contact with data leads, as in most USB cables can also degrade the signal, or add noise to the music signal.
The Concord powered USB cable removes the power cable right away from the data lines (they meet just at the USB input plug) and uses a patented power supply design, offering COMPLETE isolation from the mains supply - offering an ultra low noise regulated 5V to power the USB input chipset. The earth line and power are therefore separated from the data line.
This cable option uses a very high quality coaxial pair of true 90 Ohm cables (1.4mtr. long), with a PTFE dielectric between data and screen. Most USB cables are manufactured with twisted pairs of data and earth, and are not 90 Ohm. The send and receive USB chipsets are specified to require a 90 Ohm connection for optimum quality signal transmission. The Concord USB cable offers exactly that, for minimum data transmission distortion.

 

PerfectSound S301 canjams arrive at Mundoaudiofilo

We were thrilled with the Perfectsound Dido 901 and now we have some more good news with the arrival of the beautifully styled S301, just take a look at these.

Available in a choice in three colours (White, Black and Brown) there is a colour for everyone.

We're sure these are going to be highly successful due to those modern slick lines and a great sound making the perfect package.

 You can buy them here