THE REVIEWS
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AUDIO HUNGARY QUALITON PHONO PREAMPLIFIER - PREVIEW
Audio Hungary made quite an impression on us with their X200 tubed integrated amplifier. We were eager to hear more of the company’s products. The Qualiton tubed phono stage arrived to satisfy that desire. Our review unit came smartly finished in polished stainless steel, and features an outboard power supply. The unit retails for $5000.
BLUE HAWAII SPECIAL EDITION - REVIEW
The first thing one notices about the Blue Hawaii SE is its naturalness, its ease, and its gravitas—or its ability to put flesh on the bones of real performers/performances across the frequency spectrum—its palpability. There is no thinness, nor ghost-like apparitions wafting about the stage with hollow voices. There is instead the solidity of female and male vocalists, a strummed viola-de-gamba, a plucked upright bass, a raging Steinway, etc.
AUDIO HUNGARY QUALITON X200 INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER - REVIEW
The Audio Hungary Qualition X200 is in our estimation a highly successful product, and even more so when taking into consideration it’s price point. You get a heck of a lot for $6500. Along with high grade workmanship, a slew of welcomed features like built in Phono, headphone amp, subwoofer outputs, remote control, and more…
THE SPENDOR A2 Speakers - REVIEW
Perhaps the ultimate strengths of the Spendor A2 are imaging and coherence. To our ears, everything just sounds correctly sorted out. No furrowed brows, and no areas of the frequency spectrum that felt under served. The A2 are a great example of what makes two way speakers so appealing, and that is the seamless, articulate presentation of music.
THE GOLD NOTE A3 EVO II Speakers - REVIEW
I can sum up the Gold Note A3 EVO monitors by saying they occupy that rare territory where recording accuracy and musical satisfaction interact. This is generally never an easy task from a designer’s standpoint. However, Gold Note has done it here. For those who have had their interest piqued, but who have large rooms, it would be a very good idea to audition the Gold Note floor-standing models. In our opinion, at around the $5000 mark per pair, the A3 EVO is a superb value.
ACCUSTIC ARTS PLAYER II - REVIEW
Formidable. The Accustic Arts Player II rendering of CDs bested its streaming counterparts and even higher resolution versions of the same CDs(!) time and time again, regardless of genre. And this came as quite the surprise. It is also preternaturally engaging and immersive, alive, dynamic, incredibly resolving, and, at the same time, the doppelgänger of analog.