Spendor D1

The D1 is beautifully finished in a dark wood veneer, and the crisp lines, perfect joints and attractively crafted binding posts all speak of attention to detail and a certain tactile quality. And yet, at least at face value, it seems an unremarkable design - just another face in the two-way speaker crowd.

Snap off the magnetically located cloth grilles, however, and you immediately spot something that is remarkable: a very unusual tweeter, featuring a wide all-metal mounting plate, and a what looks like a finely perforated metal grille instead of a conventional tweeter dome.

Marantz PM7005

The return to stereo has been almost as remarkable as the resurgence of interest in vinyl. At one stage it looked as if multichannel home theatre had all but exterminated the stereo market, leaving the two-channel segment to a motley crew of purists, traditionalists and music lovers.

Home theatre has always been sold as home entertainment for the whole family, while stereo is often considered a somewhat solitary pastime. That notwithstanding, stereo is back on the map, encouraging the emergence of a new generation of two-channel gear.

Samsung Galaxy A7

A Galaxy Note-esque phablet with a lower price but it compromises on power and battery

Once upon a time, you used to be able to set your watch by smartphone releases. Apple would release a new iPhone in the autumn, while Samsung and HTC would follow up the next spring with their own competitors. And then sure enough, just a few weeks after that, both would follow up with ‘Mini’ versions of their new Galaxy S or One Android phones, which tended to cut costs by ripping out all the premiums, including their classier casings and materials.

Inside Videocore

The GPU in the Raspberry Pi is remarkably powerful and energy-efficient. Tim Anderson talks to its creators…

“This is for me probably the finest bit of engineering I’ve ever been involved in,” says Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. He is talking about VideoCore IV, the Broadcom GPU (graphics processing unit) in both the original Raspberry Pi and the newer Raspberry Pi 2.

We chatted to Eben, along with director of software Gordon Hollingworth and director of hardware engineering James Adams, about the history of VideoCore, what makes it so impressive, and how you can take advantage of it in your own projects.