There was quite a large price and performance gap between Focal’s Electra Be and Utopia ranges, but not anymore, at the Munich High End show they unveiled Sopra, Italian for ‘above’. Sopra consists of a bookshelf No.1 and the No.2 floorstanding models, both built around the same core design. The cone drivers remain Focal’s W sandwich type but their motors systems (magnets)…

Naim’s display at the High End show in Munich focussed on its NAP power amplifiers, most of which have benefitted from Statement tech trickledown. This comes in the form of the NA009 transistor developed for the range topping S1 mono power amps, which is quite a serious slice of silicon. Naim’s engineers took a year to investigate how to make a better output device and…