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I have a reflexive twitch whenever a company hides two glowing tubes behind an acrylic panel and tells me my digital music is about to get its soul back. You know the pitch. Warmth. Analog richness. That little "tube hug" for your ears. Nine times out of ten it is a solid-state amp wearing two tubes like costume jewelry, contributing nothing but a soft orange glow across your desk. So when the xDuoo MT-02 showed up at $149, I sat down fully prepared to write something snarky.

This is sort of part 2 of my review of Eversolo DMP A8 Master Gen2. Please look at that review to have a full picture of what i am talking about: https://www.hifidaydreaming.com/post/i-waited-long-time-for-streamer-like-this-and-it-finally-arrived-eversolo-dmp-a8-master-gen2-re Five machines. One family. I'm going to tell you exactly what you get and exactly what you lose as you move up and down this range, so you stop guessing which Eversolo is actually yours. And than we ar

*A lot more images and videos of this product in video review! So, my first Eversolo review. It's not that I didn't have any chance to listen to the DMP-A6 Gen 2 and DMP-A8 Gen 1. It's that I listened to them much too late, so everyone already did reviews, and I honestly thought that my review would be one too many. But then Eversolo announced the DMP-A8 Gen 2 Master Edition, with a fully functioning CD player. Me, a huge enthusiast for CD players, with the combined power and

Long-time readers of this site know I have a weakness. It is British, it weighs as much as a small dog, and it says Musical Fidelity on the faceplate. I called the M3si big, bold and best in class. I called the M5si the most affordable end game amp on the market, nine years after its release, which is not something a sane reviewer should be able to say about any electronics. So when Musical Fidelity announced the M6xi, the long-awaited successor to the M6si, I felt two things

So I recently got the SMSL PL150, and with that I had in my possession the entire new line of SMSL CD players. While I could do a regular review of the PL150, with my previous reviews of the PL100 Pro and PL200 I think there is not much I could have added here. So something came to my mind as I listened to all of their CD players. Four CD players. One company. And somewhere between 150 and 670 dollars, there is a line where spending more stops making sense. Today, we find tha

There's a drawer in my studio I don't open anymore. It's where budget chi-fi goes to die. Dozens of little resin shells, each one purchased in a moment of weakness, each one promising to "punch above its price," each one now tangled in a mass grave of cables I'll never untangle because life is short and I have speakers to review. So when the CCA Xyrra landed on my desk, my expectations were somewhere between "landfill" and "landfill with a nice faceplate." And honestly? I owe

If I had a euro for every comment asking me whether it's time to upgrade from a PM6007, I could almost afford the amp that just replaced it. Almost. Marantz has officially retired the PM6007 integrated amplifier and the CD6007 CD player, two machines that spent nearly six years as the default answer to "what should I buy for my first proper system?" In their place: the Model 70 and CD 70, landing on 15 August in black or silver-gold. The end of an era, and the end of a look T

There is something about speakers that are built with the heart of music at their center. Something about speakers that breathe and radiate pure joy and fun. Something that was not built to win measurement reports or for clean analytical sessions, but rather speakers that truly understand rhythm and passion, and tell your body to move your legs to the tempo of the music. That is the Canton Vento 31. I was shocked by how much fun and joy it brought out of me, and by the sheer

I'll be honest with you. When a Snowsky box lands on my desk, I brace myself for something shaped like a cassette tape. That's what this sub-brand has been so far: FiiO's playground for retro nostalgia and pocket-money prices, aimed at people who think a Walkman aesthetic is a personality. So when the Oak Nano showed up, a 449 dollar flagship IEM machined from pure titanium, my first reaction wasn't excitement. It was suspicion. A flagship with a complicated birth certificate

I can tell you right now, there are four reasons to get this amp: great vintage-style real wood panel looks, the FiiO app's PEQ, big power output, and good sonic quality. That makes it one of the most complete packages in this cheap Class D market. Let's go into a little more detail. Build Quality/Specs Jade Audio is FiiO's newer sub-brand, and the Level 1 is its first stab at a desktop power amplifier. It lands at $139.99, built around the Texas Instruments TPA3255 chip that

Primo V3 debuts with a redefined approach to streaming DAC performance- Third generation of Volumio’s Primo offers improved performance, premium components and more- Florence, Italy. 8 July 2026 - Volumio, the leading audio software platform for music streaming and playback, today announced the launch of the third generation of Primo, the company’s beloved first streaming DAC. Primo V3 is a streaming DAC completely reinvented around Volumio’s latest engineering solutions to s

This isn't a full review, but rather a continuation of my Onkyo A-50 review. I recommend you watch that review first, and the link will be in the description of this video. Onkyo A-50 review: https://www.hifidaydreaming.com/post/absoulte-best-buy-amp-currently-on-market-onkyo-a-50-review Onkyo M80 Overview I love going to music stores and demoing audio gear. While I was ready to acquire the Onkyo A-50, the store's staff actually set up the M80 for me to listen to. At first si

Onkyo spent most of the last decade as a cautionary tale. A name that meant something in the receiver years, then a bankruptcy in 2022, then a long quiet stretch where you weren't sure the brand still existed. So I came to the Icon A-50 with a raised eyebrow. The comeback integrated is a genre that usually overpromises. What landed on my rack is more interesting than a nostalgia play. The A-50 is the centrepiece of the new Icon line, built around a simple, slightly aggressive

Yeah, new day new amazing budget gear coming from east. And it seems like every year we can start to repeat ourselves, and it probably will again in 6 months. We have a constant influx of new gear that pushes what is possible in this cheap budget price range. We are surprised, amazed and always appreciative of the technological progress of these companies, and once again Topping is trying to redefine what is possible in this price range. Topping is trying to redefine best va

These are the list of my favourite speakers. Awards are just awards and it does not mean that you should only look at gold award. Maybe that silver or bronze fit better your needs and budget and is therefore a perfect pair for you. I will give 5 awards and additional 10 more speakers that I really love. Somewhere here is certainly a perfect speaker for you. Best Budget Speaker -Dali Kupid Don't let the price fool you, and don't let the size fool you either. The Kupid is the s

Hello and welcome to my channel. Let's go through my favorite amps that you can buy now. I will give 5 awards. The gold, silver and bronze, and best budget, and best value. After that I will quickly go through alternatives that I also recommend. The thing is that it does not mean that the gold award is the best amp out of the bunch, it just is best in the crossroads of price, value, quality and versatility. But for you bronze might be the one, or best value that will best fit

Every show leaves you with one product you keep circling back to. Not always the most expensive, not always the loudest in the room. Just the one your mind returns to on the flight home, the one you find yourself defending in conversations days later. For me, at the first-ever Vienna edition of High End 2026, that product was the For full coverage of High End Vienna 2026: part 1: https://www.hifidaydreaming.com/post/i-was-at-vienna-high-end-2026-and-this-are-my-favorite-devic

This marks the start of Part 2 of my Vienna High End coverage — if you'd like to see Part 1, click on the link below. https://www.hifidaydreaming.com/post/i-was-at-vienna-high-end-2026-and-this-are-my-favorite-devices-part-1-musical-fidelity-ortofon-a Volumio I stopped by the Volumio booth, where they had the Rivo Ultra on a big, shiny display. It does look like a Volumio product, but at the same time, it completely departs from their usual philosophy of no-screen, smaller de

I never made it to High End in Munich, but here I am in Vienna in 2026, right at the epicenter of everything hi-fi. High End — formerly anchored in Munich for decades — relocated to Vienna's Austria Center for 2026. The move was scrutinized before a single speaker played a note. It didn't need to be. The first Viennese edition landed well: rooms were busy, product pipelines were stronger than expected, and manufacturers showed up with hardware that suggests high-end audio may

There's a particular kind of audiophile frustration that nobody talks about loudly enough. You've spent real money on a DAC. You've agonized over its chip architecture, its output stage topology, its measurements. You've read every review. You bought it. It sounds good. Maybe even great. But there's something slightly veiled about it, something that doesn't quite let go, a faint hardness in the upper midrange that you keep telling yourself you'll get used to. You don't get us