Three veteran British brands combine to produce a great system to meet your vinyl and streaming needs
Audiolab 6000N Play I £449
We kick off our collection of British-born systems with a set-up that is both steeped in tradition and thoroughly modern. Not only does it comprise products from long-established and respected manufacturers, it also embraces the double joys of streaming and vinyl in one neat system. What’s more, for the price of a (decent) all-in-one system, you can enjoy the undoubted benefits of having specialist pieces of kit doing what they do best – and providing a sound that is unrivalled at the price. The joy of selecting products for a top-value system comprising British kit alone is the sheer volume of choice that that ‘restriction’ brings. Of course, that very benefit brings about some serious selection headaches. Which stellar performers to leave on the bench for the final? “What?” we hear you cry, “Despite their years of sterling service? Harsh…”
Well, perhaps. But such decisions must be made, and when we look at the kit that makes the cut, we can’t think of many products we would rather have in each position, British or not.
Here, then, we present our first-team representatives for an all-round terrific-value best-of-British streaming and vinyl stereo system. It would do the UK proud in a hi-fi World Cup, of that we have no doubt.
Music streamer: Audiolab 6000N Play
An Award-winner, no less, to kick us off. Having DTS’s Play-Fi hi-res, multi-room platform at its software core means that, when connected to a network through ethernet or its dual-band wi-fi, the 6000N Play can access services such as Spotify Connect, Tidal, HDtracks, Deezer, Qobuz, Amazon Music, Napster, TuneIn, iHeartRadio and SiriusXM.
It also means it can stream hi-res music files up to 24-bit/192kHz from networked servers, thanks to DLNA and UPnP compliance. In other words, it covers most of the bases for the modern world of digital music streaming. There are digital and analogue outputs, the latter of which can be plugged into Rega’s io amplifier (below) in this system.
The Audiolab is an insightful and involving listen, with great clarity, openness and a down-the-middle tonal balance that keeps us agreeably entertained. It reveals a wide-open canvas, colouring it with well-imaged detail lavished with a welcome amount of subtlety and space. It has insight into a track too, and has the dynamic interest to grab the listener’s attention and hold it for the duration of a piece.
Turntable
