Tel: (020) 8942 9567
Unilet Sound & Vision
The Hidden Hi-Fi Store
HOME >> Take a look our History >> Reaching for the Ultimate Sound
Reaching for the Ultimate Sound
Telegraph Sunday Magazine, 1984
“Equipment doesn’t have to be expensive to sound good”, he cautions. “In almost every case I am able to assemble a fine sound system for less than a person’s budget”. Here Mr Churchouse has gathered some components for an enthusiast for whom price is no object.
Directly in front of him is a Sony CDP-5000 compact disc player (named after its price of £5,000). The eight-foot high Magneplanar loudspeakers (£2,500) are only two inches thick.
A hi-fi expert would recognize the black and silver boxes which surround him as some of the most exotic audio machines on the market: the Sequerra radio tuner, for instance (to the back, on the right), has an electrocardiogram-like oscillator which monitors the quality of the signal received from the aerial. President Reagan has a limited edition gold-plated model. We show the £5,000 version.
The pre-amplifier (to the back, on the left) is from Audio Research in Minnesota. It comes with its own power supply, to ensure that the wave form it receives is as clean as possible. It costs £3,245. The pair of Krell power amplifiers (in the middle row) place ultra-high sound purity before efficiency; each one is capable of handling only a single stereo channel and even then requires a built-in fan to remove excess heat. The power amplifiers cost £3,000 each, £6,000 for the pair – with no discount.
The pair of headphones (SR Sigma electrostatic model by Stax) cost £212, not including the SRM-1 Mark 2 energiser (£275) to regulate the power supply.
A rosewood case and solid-gold plating add elegance to a Nakamichi TX-1000 cassette deck, and push its price up to £2,800.
The turntable at the front (from Oracle of Canada, £898) costs less than its custom-fitted, high rigidity arm, supplied by American designer David Fletcher for £950. But the finishing touch is a Japanese Koetsu Gold (“The Signature” model) cartridge (£1,250), carved from a piece of onyx.