Welcome to this Newsletter #34, looking back on Awards Season, November 2023, and looking forward to future reviews.

Awards Season

Awards Season has concluded, with a further ‘Best of..’ Award likely to follow from an ongoing review…

The Awards have been many and varied but reflect the Key Moments this year at HF&MS, not necessarily the Best Something. For example, the Eversolo Streaming DAC took a lot of attention this year and it is certainly not better than the T+A DAC 200 but it took a ‘Best of 2023’ award for its performance, quality and price point.  The full list of awards follows:

Hylixa Signature

Vertere DG-1S

Eversolo DMP-A6 Watch the video here.

REL Carbon Special Watch the video here.

Chord Poly (for Hugo 2)

Serhan Swift mu2 MkII Watch the video here.

T+A Solitaire T

Kudos Titan 505 Watch the video here.

Rega ELEX Mk 4 Watch the video here.

Cambridge Audio ALVA TT V2

If you like the videos, do please subscribe to the channel to keep it going next year.

Album of the Year

Bewitched, HF&MS Album of the Year 2023

The Album of the Year award went to Laufey’s Bewitched album, which is simply dreamy, wonderful to listen to, and well-produced.

Reviews this Month

With Awards Season it has been a busy month but there have been a few reviews, notably on the T+A DAC 200. It is the DAC you could probably just buy and live with for the rest of your HiFi journey, if it is on your budget of course. It received an Outstanding Award.  We said of the DAC 200;

…the build quality is second to none…

And we concluded;

…this DAC is an outstanding piece of equipment.

There was nothing to fault with this fabulous piece of equipment.

Also reviewed recently was the twenty thousand pounds plus Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista stereo power amplifier.  We concluded;

…the sound I have is just about as open and clear and resolving as any I’ve experienced in my listening room.

Moon 250i v2
Moon 250i v2 with Meze Audio 109 Pro

There was also a review at the beginning of the month of the MOON by Simaudio 250i v2 integrated amplifier, an update on the original, sparkling, 250i, reviewed in September 2022.  We loved the updated 250i saying;

Investigate, do your research, listen to MOON then spend your money wisely!

The MOON playlist was good by the way, have a listen here.

Music this Month

There has been some excellent music out this month.  Arguably the Album of the Year could have been Vince Clarke’s Songs of Silence, a beautifully reflective album exploring, during lockdown, his Eurorack modular synthesizer.  The last track, Last Transmission pays homage to Joy Division, no less.  There has also been a reworking of some old Beatles albums, notably the Red and Blue compilation albums this month.  These build on the last single from The Beatles, Now and Then.

Reviews on the way

Look out over the festive period for reviews of Cyrus’ new Stream XR and the Auralic Aries G2.2 streaming transport, both of which are very interesting indeed, featuring the two best streaming experiences in the HiFi world at the moment.

There will also be a review of some Mavros cables from Atlas Cables.  In a series of articles to follow we will listen to the new Mavros loudspeaker cable and then listen to some original Mavros loudspeaker cable upgraded by Atlas with their Grun earthing system, this is a new service from Atlas.  This will be a very interesting project hinting at the sustainability of cables going forward and incorporating new techniques and thinking in cable production.