Malcolm Steward: audio journalist

Steve Harris dropped by the other evening and emptied the boot of his car into my lounge, depositing several bits and pieces for me to play with and, I hope, enjoy. Trouble is, it’s going to take me a while to get round to doing this because I am busy on a couple of projects as well as writing reviews at the moment. I’m currently listening ‘professionally’ to the £9,000 digital hub, iPod dock, pre-amplifier thingy from Chord Electronics, the Indigo. That is a mind-bender, let me tell you. I’m also reviewing a promising 225W integrated amplifier from Canadian outfit Anthem, called, strangely enough, the Integrated 225. That is looking like it might fare well despite some seemingly contradictory facets in its design.

Steve also returned all my Indigo interconnect cables, all freshly upgraded by The Chord Company: all these Chords and Indigos are so confusing, are they not? What’s more he also brought me a new Naim CDX2 CD player to have a go with – that’s the version with the digital output, itself a first for the company – and left me a NaimUniti all-in-one audio box to investigate. So, internet radio and Naim CD through a DAC here we come! Before I get started with that, though, Steve also left me with a Chord HDMI cable to try out in my home cinema set up. I’ll let you know how that goes because my system seems unduly pernickety about HDMI cable quality.

Then a designer friend called by on Saturday and showed me a new power supply design he had developed that I am really keen to try on the rightfully-popular Cambridge DacMagic. We had been talking about him creating a sort of Super Supply for the DacMagic since mine arrived. I reckon there has to be a market for a decent upgrade supply for the cheap-as-chips WonderDac. He just happened to have it in his car while he was out with his children and was passing my house so he dropped by to show it to me. This ad hoc arrangement meant that I never got to audition it because he did not have any low-voltage interconnects with which to hook it up.

I don’t know when this, and the other supplies he currently has in his head, will materialize – designers are notoriously flaky when it comes to deadlines – but I will certainly let you all know first because I know from the site stats just how popular with you the Cambridge DacMagic is. If it sounds as good as it looks though, the first one will definitely be mine. Talking of firsts, however, I suspect that his first supply might well be an upgraded supply for the Well Tempered Amadeus turntable, which, I’ve noticed, also appears regularly in the reading and searching stats for this site.

Regardless, as it is now Sunday morning, I am about to retire before waking up in time, I hope, for the Hungarian Grand Prix. I trust it is going to be a good one otherwise I will be obliged to decamp to the garden and start refurbishing the set of rather cool alloys that I have just acquired for the Coupe… provided the Summer weather holds. Please Jensen, create some excitement out there – though no Felipe Massa-style dramas will be necessary – because I’m looking forward to a proper Lazy Sunday Afternoon rather than being up to my elbows in acid and wet’n'dry.