News

It’s been a while, but the Dutch company’s open-back cans return

The idea behind Pie & Vinyl is simple, a combination of “our love and passion for music with one of England’s favourite old-fashioned comfort foods”, reads the enterprise’s mission statement. So, now we’ve got your attention… “We wanted to create an experience. It’s my idea of heaven,” explains Pie & Vinyl’s founder and co-owner Steven Courtnell as he introduces some of the team behind this Victorian-themed feast for all the senses. Two smiling Robs – Rob Litchfield, co-owner who looks after the kitchen, and Rob Addison, retail general manager – offer a warm welcome as I begin to tuck in.

New wireless range from Switzerland

Swiss manufacturer Piega chose The Bristol Show (look out for a full report next month) to unveil its latest range of loudspeakers – the Premium Series. The three new speakers consist of a brace of floorstanders and a new standmount, and all come with a C-shaped chassis conceived by the renowned Swiss architect and designer Stephan Hürlemann. Manufactured from aluminium, the cabinet is claimed to be 30 percent more rigid while those distinctive curves have been adopted so that no standing waves can occur within the chassis, resulting – so Piega tells us – in a clear and precisedelivery of all medium and low-range frequencies. Meanwhile,bass plates and spikes have been introduced to the floorstanding designs to ensure interference-free sound reproduction.

Designed to appeal to hi-fi newcomers and experienced audiophiles alike, Pioneer’s new A-40AE integrated amplifier (pictured with the N-50AE network audio player) has been tuned to deliver low distortion coupled with fine resolution and clarity. Boasting a claimed 2x 76W power output into 4ohm, analogue connections include five line-level inputs. Turntables are catered for thanks to a moving-magnet input, while digital options include optical and coaxial inputs. There are terminals for two independent pairs of speakers (for individual or parallel operation), capable of taking 4mm banana plugs.

Pioneer has announced details of its new reference disc spinner in the form of the PD-70AE. Able to play CD and SACD via its large aluminium drawer-loading mechanism, the player promises to be a usefully flexible CD source and also act as a DAC via optical and a coaxial digital inputs at the rear. Decoding is handled by a pair of ESS9026PRO DACs and the entire circuit has been assembled to be fully balanced. A three-mode adjustable filter fine tunes the presentation with a choice of Slow, Sharp and Short settings.

Following the popularity of its XDP-100R(HFC 413), Pioneer has announced its latest digital audio player. The XDP-30R boasts a lightweight aluminium chassis with twin Sabre ES9018C2M DACs alongside ESS9601K amplifiers arranged in a symmetrical layout under the hood and supports 32-bit/192kHz PCM and DSD files up to 5. 6MHz. Meanwhile, support for MQA will become available later in the year via a firmware update.