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The LAST Record preservative is another veteran of the analogue scene and indeed a personal favourite. The original product from LAST, and now some 30 years old, it has been joined over the years by various interesting treatments intended to improve replay and enhance the life of both CDs and LPs. This preservative, however, is perhaps the most remarkable product in the LAST catalogue. It is a colourless, odourless fluid that is spread on the playing surface of an LP and it is claimed that it makes the disc much more resilient against the damage that can be done by a stylus

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As you might expect, Russ Andrews offers a wide range of LP maintenance and tweaking accessories, but I was particularly drawn to the Tip Tonic as it performs the same function as an old Audio Technica product (long discontinued), which I treasure and allows wet cleaning of a stylus. Obviously, loose fluff and suchlike can be dislodged easily from a stylus with any soft brush, but discs often have nastier stuff deep in the grooves, which leaves a hard and tenacious residue on the diamond. It may not even be possible to see this with the naked eye, but just the smallest buildup on the stylus will cause imperfect tracking and, all too readily, premature disc wear. One needs to be careful with wet cleaning, though, as the suspension at the back end of the cantilever may be weakened and/or hardened by use of the wrong chemical solvent, and on such small parts it’s likely that capillary action will draw the fluid up from the stylus to the suspension, however carefully one cleans. Tip Tonic is specially formulated for this job and a quick ‘nose test’ suggests that it’s not an aggressive chemical that’s likely to attack rubber suspension, but a couple of drops on the supplied nylon brush are highly effective at loosening gunge

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The Milty Pixall seems to have been around since the ark, so presumably someone is buying it. I’ve not seen many true audiophiles wielding one, though. Maybe people wonder about whether applying something sticky to the playing surface of a precious record is not such a good idea. The basic idea is exactly the same as those rollers used to take lint of clothes. The roller is sticky and has enough compliance to get some way into the grooves of an LP so as to pick up loose dust and fluff.

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There are considerably dearer and fancier record cleaning machines on the market, but the Moth Record Cleaning Machine follows the same basic principles as all of them. You spread a cleaning fluid over the disc then vacuum it off together with all kinds of dirt. There are various reasons why this machine is cheaper than most, and if £450 is too much, you can save a couple of hundred by building it from a kit. One of those reasons is that you have to apply cleaning fluid to the disc manually

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While all the other DACs use largely conventional tactics and components, turntable specialist Pro-Ject has adopted an approach beloved of some ‘digital retro’ enthusiasts, and built a filterless DAC. Now, there’s no shame in the company supporting digital formats, for plenty of CD titles have never been released on vinyl. But this move to filterless DAC technology is no ‘me too’ digital afterthought. The basic idea is to avoid all digital filtering, which is generally thought imperative to avoid aliasing distortion at ultrasonic frequencies, and instead use multi-bit conversion at the native data rate (no up-or oversampling). The claimed benefit of this is the avoidance of ‘time smear’ due to the long impulse response time of most digital filters

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Previous speakers made from glass have tended to sound rather brittle and bright, but then the construction of a glass speaker is an extremely bold move. Not only is the production process highly complex and expensive, but there are also serious sound quality concerns. But, by incorporating sophisticated damping techniques, Waterfall has refined the process to the point where its latest Evo range is in no way compromised by the material itself. Instead, what you get is a distinctive speaker with the positive benefits of glass, such as high density and rigidity. The question is, can function truly benefit from form?

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Designed to demonstrate some of the star quality of the larger A30, the A10 integrated valve amplifier is the newest and least expensive arrival in a range from Pure Sound which includes amps, preamps and phono accessories. In fact, due to market enthusiasm for the new amps, the A10 may well rule the roost in sub-£1,000 models. Vacuum minimalism The A10 is a class A Ultra Linear push-pull design.

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In a move that could shake the foundations of the high-end analogue world, Hanss Acoustics has created the T-30 – a high mass (37.8kg), multi-arm turntable that can be snapped up for just £3,600. Chinese company Hanss Acoustic makes phono stages, equipment supports and a CD player but its range of turntables is something else. The T-30 is the middle model of three substantial turntables with impressive build and an awful lot of precisely turned aluminium for the money. With two substantial motors, two armbases, a separate power supply, and no fewer than six belts, it ticks all the boxes for the hardcore analogue fiend. All you need is a big enough equipment support

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Simaudio claims that the Moon 750D contains not only its most advanced digital-to-analogue converter yet, but that it’s the first true 32-bit fully asynchronous digital audio player to reach the market. It also describes this substantial machine as a DAC plus a transport, which is odd given that in most respects it seems to be an integrated player. It’s the plethora of inputs and the fact that it can accept high-res digital signals that explains this approach. The 750D is a superbly built player from a company that has extremely good form, so expectations are high for this new midrange model. DAC or player?

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The Emotion was Clearaudio’s first budget turntable when it appeared two years ago. This new SE version is the German acrylic meister’s grown up incarnation of that simple, but beautifully executed record player. It comes complete with Clearaudio’s Satisfy carbon Directwire tonearm and a Beta-S MM cartridge as a fit and forget package with a good pedigree. Clearaudio, after all, makes some of the most ambitious designs in the high end market.

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