Monday, 2 May 2016

Sonus faber Pryma 01

Sonus faber Pryma 01

Few will dispute that Sonus faber’s entry into the headphone scene is destined to become a design classic. But does its sound quality match those sumptuous looks?

It had to happen. Sooner or later, Sonus faber – creator of some of the most stylish loudspeakers on the planet – would surely follow in the footsteps of other speaker manufacturers – B&W, KEF, Klipsch, etc – in turning its hand to headphones. The result, the £380 Pryma (designated Pryma 01), is intriguing for being both predictable and delightfully unpredictable, all in one.

What’s predictable is that the closedback, over-ear Pryma is a looker: the sort of headphone product that many will fall in love with the moment they set eyes on it. Plus it is solidly constructed and immaculately finished – as you’d also expect of Sonus faber.

Melco N1-ZH60

Melco N1-ZH60

Japanese IT giant Melco has the desire and scale to deliver truly bespoke audiophile storage and server solutions. Will its latest, middle-of-range model hit the sweet spot?

So you’ve bought one of the many world-class USB DACs/network streaming players and have it connected via USB to your desktop or laptop computer, or even networked via your home hub. Really? Our own experience suggests that while ‘data is data’ there are sufficient causes of interference and jitter from circulating noise, including RF earth currents, and invasive traffic from ISP-supplied network routers, to prompt very measurable differences in performance once this data is finally crunched through an outboard DAC.

Saturday, 30 April 2016

Death of Mozilla

Death of Mozilla

David Briddock asks if open-source stalwart Mozilla is about to self-destruct

Mozilla has been around since the dawn of the web. Over the years, it's made an invaluable contribution to the open-source movement in terms of projects, products and funding support.

However, as it celebrates its 18th birthday Mozilla's future looks uncertain. It has decided to forgo its primary funding stream, terminated its high-profile smartphone initiative and now appears to be veering off in a brand new direction.

What's really going on at Mozilla?

Top 10 Calendar Tips


The Windows 10 Calendar has steadily improved since it was first seen and is now a useful tool. Roland Waddilove list his top 10 tips

1 Enable The Live Tile


This is the simplest tip of all, but it is one of the most useful. The Windows 10 Start menu contains tiles for starting apps, but they can also show live content. Right click the Calendar tile on the Start menu and select More, Turn live tile on. Then right click it and select Resize, Large so there is room to display events from your Calendar. It shows today's appointments and it means you can see what it coming up without even opening the Calendar app.

Has Amazon Cleaned Up Its Act?

Has Amazon Cleaned Up Its Act?

Avoiding tax, mistreating workers, pricing competitors out of the market... Amazon's been criticised for a lot over the last few years. Sarah Dobbs checks in to see if things are getting better

Remember when Amazon was just a site for buying books more cheaply than you could in 'real world' bookshops? Now it seems to have taken over almost every aspect of commerce - it sells everything you could ever want, with next day delivery and a super slick checkout that almost completely removes the pain of handing over your money. It's got its fingers in plenty of other pies too, from its own publishing platform, electronics, film studio, and so, so much more.