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SPEAKERS
1 WHARFEDALE DIAMOND 12.3
Diamonds are an audiophile’s best friend. You don’t just get a lot of speaker cabinet for your money with the Diamond 12.3; the 98cm-tall towers are tonally smooth operators, delivering insight through the balance of entertainment and refinement that guarantees a good time. The 12.3 keep Diamond’s impressive legacy alive. £499, wharfedale.co.uk
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STEREO AMPLIFIER
2 MARANTZ PM6007
You’ll need some power behind those streamer skills, and Marantz shows that you don’t have to sell a kidney to get sophisticated sound quality – or suave hi-fi casework. Connect the Cambridge Audio streamer into one of the Marantz’s analogue or digital inputs, and you’ll be blessed with clean and punchy audio that’s transparent enough to reveal the detail in those lossless streams. £349, marantz.com
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MUSIC STREAMER
3 CAMBRIDGE AUDIO MXN10
Cambridge Audio has packed plenty of streaming smarts into its most affordable music streamer yet, with its established StreamMagic platform offering AirPlay 2, Google Chromecast, Spotify and Tidal Connect, internet radio and Bluetooth. The MXN10 has the performance to boot, too, cementing itself as an ideal gateway into streaming. £449, cambridgeaudio.com
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HEADPHONES
4 GRADO SR80X
We all need some privacy with our music from time to time. These musical Grados overears, plugged straight into the Marantz’s 6.3mm headphone output, will only encourage you to seek out more occasions for personal listening. As the SR80x are open-back designs, they leak sound both in and out – so you’ll get maximum aural bliss with the door closed. £99, gradolabs.com
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HEADPHONES
5 GRADO SR325X
Look familiar? One model up from the SR80x in terms of price and performance level, the SR325x are, like their siblings, one heck of a headphone. They too are audibly leaky (both in and out) and aesthetically questionable (think air traffic control headsets from around the 1940s), but they set super-high sonic standards. And that’s all
