This week’s 4 best hi-fi news announcements

The Most Interesting Hi-Fi (and Head-Fi) News for Week 33, 2022.

Same outer shell, all new innards. That was reportedly the design brief behind a new UK integrated amplifier Cyrus audio, starting this week. The new Classic AMP is an upgraded version of a previous model, however featuring a completely redesigned circuit built with a new component selection and a new power supply modeled after a 304VA toroidal transformer. The net result is 91 WPC into 8 ohms. According to the back of the device, however, standard banana plugs do not have to be used. There we notice four analogue inputs plus a pair each of TOSLINK and coaxial – indicating the presence of an internal DAC – as well as an MM phono input and a headphone jack. Price: £1995.

To join PSBThis week’s flagship of the Synchrony line of passive speakers is a new TOTL model. The T800 floorstanding speaker is reportedly equipped with larger drivers, delivers greater bandwidth and has a greater power handling capacity (up to 300 watts) than the more recent T600 floorstanding speaker and B600 bookshelf. The T800 is a line array design that uses a 4th order Linkwitz-Riley crossover to mate a trio of 8″ woofers and a 5.25″ midrange driver mounted above the 1″ titanium – Dome tweeter is seated. The T800’s low-frequency performance is rated at just 3dB lower at 21Hz to make it nearly a full range. You have a choice of Satin Walnut or Gloss Black. $11,999/pair.

The refinement (is that a word?) of Bluetooth headphones continues with the latest announcement from clip. The storied American brand has teamed up with EAR Micro to create a new true wireless IEM called (*clears throat*) Bespoke T10 Ear Computers. Sit down? prices here begins at $2500/pair. Customers in the US can choose from a range of sustainable materials to give the case their own unique style. This unique design is then color-matched to the earbuds themselves, which are smaller than much more affordable true wireless IEMs, implement Class-D amplification, and specify the lossy LDAC codec. That’s too bad if Bluetooth audio appears to be lossless only around the corner; a fact that probably won’t move customers looking to buy a pair of custom T10 earbuds to brag about, lifetime warranty or ease of use.

Brits say “technics”. Americans say “techniques”. The latter reign supreme this week with the announcement that Technology is at last Brings his SL-100C turntable to the US. The SL-100C is essentially an SL-1500C that has had its internal phono preamp removed and its factory fitted Ortofon 2M Red cartridge swapped out for an Audio Technica AT-VM95C. The bottom line is we get a direct-drive turntable with push-button speed control and stop/start action but without all the DJ bells and whistles, all for $999. I have owned an SL-1210GR for two years and have never once touched the ESC or the pop-up light.