Take-over, distributor margins plus possibly greater dealer ones too and extra fingers in the pie all round. The Acos arm as pictured with the 401 isn't bad at all I remember but obviously it's not the same as a 60's SME in style.

Zebbo and I both heard some lovely sounding Cube 1's at a particular owner's house in West Kent (he'll correct me, but I believe Zebbo bought these Cube 1's when they were replaced by Cubix in this system). This chap had also previously upgraded from Martin Logans admittedly the smaller ones I belie...

Not too difficult Lindsay, but the room has to be suitable and the speakers placed close to a back wall. Me again DQ? Not sure what age has to do with it to be honest. I did this comparison so many times in different venues and with different pairs of arms and cartridges the difference was real and ...

NVA amps do rather well in tunedem parameters...

In any vinyl system, let alone analogue gear in general, the source really is the limiting factor in my experience - these days it's the LP itself which has all manner of things done to the music to make it playable, let alone mass producable - loads online if anyone bothers to look. Lose it there a...

Why? The SHL5+ which replaced my previous model had a much brighter and clearer tone, albeit needing plenty of power to wake them up a bit, and reviewers and owners world wide absolutely wet themselves stupidly over them and with plenty of measurements in-room to back up the subjective opinions. Oth...

... and a slightly clearer sound for all the internal component upgrades the anniversary models offered...

Always the brainwash marketing mantra thing coming over here which is largely bollocks I honestly think and largely based on one person's bad memories of *some* dealers in the mid 80's, as the peeps who bought into it for fashion reasons, soon moved the stuff on once the next big thing came along. T...

Things have changed so much in the last thirty years with this godamned industry I seriously don't think it applies any more. Linn and Naim barely perform anything like their ancestral products in my recent experiences.

As requested by savvy, here goes - 'Once you get used to a particular sound presentation and like it, nothing else will do. If you like Cubes, especially the smaller models, nothing else sounds like them so you're on a non-starter listening to anything else without some kind of re-adjustment. Not ju...