Hi-Fi+ February 2024

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hi-fi+ Magazine February 2024

hi-fi+ is a magazine that is serious about hi-fi. Our articles are intended to help you get the best from your system, rather than simply telling you to buy another one. Our reviews only cover product that we think is worthwhile. You can read more about that by looking at our reviews policy, but lets just say that our attitude to equipment is rather different, and we hope, much more informative. We haven't forgotten that hi-fi is supposed to be fun!

Editorial: CES, AI, And Your Music
AI's enhanced ingress into our lives is still a few years away.
Editorial By Alan Sircom
It's been some years since we went to the annual Consumer Electronics Show. Despite missing the winter desert sun in Las Vegas (especially in the UK, where the sun disappears around mid-November only to return some time in April), Las Vegas had become a busted flush for high-end (or 'specialty') audio. Some audio brands still attend the event, but the relevance of the show waned for the audio world in the 2010s, and by the later part of the decade it had become unsustainable for audio. As the name changed from the Consumer Electronics Association to the Consumer Technology Association in 2015, so the CES subtly changed emphasis, moving increasingly toward wearable tech, health tech, and most recently Artificial Intelligence. While embedded AI in consumer goods is still something of a novelty (who really needs an AI-enhanced kettle?), it's set to dominate the consumer electronics market. And, it's likely to do so fast. Although high-end audio no longer attends the show, that doesn't mean it is immune to the same market forces. AI is coming to your audio system! Get used to the idea.
---> CES, AI, And Your Music.

5 Incoming! Your views on all things audio.

Features
103 Meet Your Maker
Dr Daniel Twitchen of diamond dome building experts, E6.

Equipment Reviews
10 Børresen Acoustics X2 Floorstanding Loudspeaker

17 Bowers & Wilkins 801 Signature Floorstanding Loudspeaker

25 Trafomatic Audio Rhapsody Integrated Amplifier

35 Audiovector QR1 SE, QR3 SE And QR5 SE
Stand-mount and floorstanding loudspeakers.

45 Chord Electronics BerTTi Power Amplifier

51 Rockna Audio Wavelight Music Server

57 Gold Note PSU-5 Phono Stage Power Supply

63 Musical Fidelity A1 Integrated Amplifier

69 Bricasti Design M1 Series II DAC

75 Mola Mola Lupe Phono Stage