|
Hello from Sounds Of Music, we hope you are well.
As always, there are some wonderful new products to tell you about and as usual this time of year, we have the opportunity to tempt you with some of the Worlds very best Hi-Fi products currently available. So what’s new ? Well on the electronics side, we have new products from Ypsilon, Boulder, Coda, Krell, TVA, Vitus, Ayon, Hovland, Quad, Luxman, PS Audio, Canor, Gamut, Acoustic Arts, Exemplar Audio and on the accessories and cables etc, Furutech, Acoustic Systems, HRS Stands, Nordost, Vertex AQ, Sound Smith and many many more.
Where do we start....
Amplification
New to us this year are the truly amazing Hovland Stratos monoblock amplifiers (best sound of the recent London Hi-Fi show and the subject of a superb Hi-Fi Plus review just about to emerge). True beauty in performance and aesthetics. The Vitus amplification has really taken off for us and we apologize for the waiting time for this also truly amazing product. New deliveries in soon. The Ypsilon VS valve stereo amplifier is truly a new statement in valve amplification and the new Quad 80’s are not too far behind either. Both products a real joy to listen to and own. Another new amplifier from our PS Audio colleagues is the TLA range. Single ended and one to watch very carefully. A Lumley Metropolis monoblock beater ???. We will see. The more moderately priced Coda amplification is just flavour of the decade at the moment (one of my particular favorites) with a great many new users falling in love with this range on an immediate first listen. In pre-amplifiers the Exemplar is of special note. I have lived with an XP 1 for some months and it truly has pushed everything aside. The XP2 has just arrived and so far it appears I may have to re-assess all the other top pre-amplifiers that I have worked with. It is truly a reference product and defies all my known parameters so far. There is also a new Hovland pre out soon and this also promises to be something very special. We will see.
CD Players 
The new Boulder CD is just about to arrive. Will this be the best yet and will it beat the new Hovland ? Another wait and see. We have also just received the new Acoustic Arts valve DAC and as you will be aware, this range is also one of our great favorites in many cases beating a lot of the higher priced competition. There is also a new Gamut CD2 at just over £3K which fills a gap here very nicely. And what about an Ipod player. Yes it’s really true, the new Krell Kid is fantastic. Just see the review.
Loudspeakers
Always a special item for us at SOM and our range just gets better. At the recent London Hi-Fi show we had a truly magnificent sound from the latest Hansen Princes which really are something special. Driven by the Hovland Stratos amplifiers and the Lumley Stratosphere, it was a sound to be proud of. The new Ypsilon statements are a new sonic achievement in loudspeakers and we are very excited about the new range of Arts which have had a facelift and will now fit into almost any domestic environment without too much hassle. The new range of Ayon’s are just incredible value for money and the LSA 1 Statement’s are a bookshelf speaker that take some believing for their price too. Eben is also a new range to us and it already has a worldwide reputation of being something very special -- still under test at the moment. And of course, the amazing Nola Grand Reference’s are installed at home. An absolute bargain for £99.000.00 and another alternative to my Lumley Concert Grand’s or are they ? Call me for an update here. We continue to lead the field with our tremendous loudspeaker selection and with products like the Ypsilon’s, Rockport’s, Kharma’s, JM Lab’s, Sound Lab’s, Lumen White’s, Martin Logan’s, Wilson’s, Lumley’s, Hansen’s, Sonus Faber’s, Quad’s, Eben’s, Ascendo’s, Art’s and a few more very special new models just about to arrive, I believe we can say that we really do have the best collection in the UK.
Analogue 
Keeping it brief here, the main new addition is the Lumley Heliosphere at £2495 which has many of the characters of the world famous Stratosphere at a much more affordable price. Coupled with the Edgar phono stage, this superb turntable makes a great sound. The new PS audio phono stage breaks all barriers coming in at just over £700 and here too the performance shatters many references at that particular price point. The Edgar TP 305 phono stage still beats all comers under the £2K mark and has to be the quietest valve phono stage we have encountered. We have a couple of special MC cartridge bargains, a Koetsu Red Signature hardly used and a MySonic with even less use. Both great performances from world renowned examples of the genre and available on a one off basis at very special prices. Please call us for more details. And the Stratosphere ? Another fantastic review in Greece (would you believe) and with the last few modifications that I have added to this amazing turntable, I am now confident that it surpasses ANY other turntable under the £15K mark and possibly even higher. Yes it is expensive but once heard you will understand just how much information there is on a record and it’s retrieval via a Stratosphere will surely provide you with wonderful music for 50 years. Yes, it’s a lifetime product. All the original Stratospheres can be upgraded to the mark 2, the difference being acknowledged as startling.
Accessories and room tuning etc
Always controversial and always a great talking point. You may have seen recently the Acoustic Systems room tuning devices which must be the most family acceptable of them all and as the designer says, ‘believe it or not, they really do work’. So confident are we that these little devices really will improve your sound that we will send out on a full refund basis a trial set for you to prove us all wrong or prove that you too have joined the ‘silly society’. We are not really into a great many system tweaks but there definitely are some products out there that defy all scientific reasoning. The various mains conditioners that have flooded our market over the last few years are also the subject of much discussion and controversy but here again, we have the best. Ps Audio, Vertex, Burmester, Q etc to name just a few of the best and all available from us as usual on a full home trial basis. HRS is a relatively new company working with vibration control and their stands, albeit at quite a high cost, are very special indeed. The new HRS support systems however are truly magnificent and a great and comparatively cheap upgrade to almost any system. We will be delighted to send out any of the above items on a full refund basis (less P & P) so if you are interested here I am sure you will be surprised at some of the results that can be achieved. The Furutech cables are gaining a great reputation at the affordable end of the cable market and the Furutech Demagnetizer and De-Stat are another great way to improve performance. A recent visit to our premises by a team from Hi-Fi Plus were absolutely astonished as to the improvement gained when using a De-Stat and the De-Mag improves performance of CD’s and Vinyl replay which has to be heard to be believed. Richard is hot on all of these products and has a wealth of knowledge that will get the best performances for your own particular environment. I guess that as you are already good customers, you will be well aware of the services and set up that we have here at Cross In Hand and with our ever expanding portfolio, we hope we can continue to provide you with all the best products and service coupled with our now world famous one months home trial system which will allow you to move forward maybe with some of our new products above to an even greater Hi-Fi level. Don’t’ forget our 75% upgrade scheme. Yes you do have to double your investment to achieve this incredible offer but it does show our commitment to help our loyal customers and it has to be the best upgrade offer in the Hi-Fi trade.
Good listening and very best regards,Jamie, Richard and John. |
