It may be a Bank Holiday in our native land, but that hasn’t stopped our ardent team of hi-fi and home cinema experts from bringing you a fresh entry into our weekly news digest, Rewind.
Despite our heartfelt pleas to the audio-visual gods, it was another busy week for the team. Over the past seven days, we have covered everything from new CD spinners to Big Tech attacks on lossless audio.
If you have struggled to keep on top of it all, don’t panic, you’re definitely not alone. Here’s everything you need to know.
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Apple thinks lossless audio is kind of pointless for most people
Lossless audio, like speaker cables, seems to be a hot topic. In one camp, you have people such as veteran rocker Neil Young, who famously called for “real” fans to listen to his music on services that support it, so they can hear “everything” he recorded.
Others are convinced it doesn’t make a difference. We have heard arguments from both sides for years, but last week, we were surprised to hear Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music, throw shade at lossless audio. Specifically, while on the Billboard’s On The Record podcast, he suggested that most people can’t hear the difference between standard and lossless streams.
The statement is a little odd, given Apple Music offers tiers with hi-res streaming, and the firm makes a robust library of HomePod smart speakers, Apple TV streamers and iPhones that support the technology. But hey, each to their own, we guess. As we’ve said before, if you really can’t hear the difference, fair enough. You have probably just saved a lot of money in the long run…
Read the full story: Apple Music exec: “Most people can’t hear the difference with lossless audio”
NAD’s got a new “precision-engineered” CD player
If you’re a fan of CDs, have cash to spare and want a “life-like” sound from your shiny discs, then NAD’s new C 589 may be the player you’ve been waiting for.
NAD unveiled the new CD player last week, promising its use of high-end parts and a clever Qrono D2a filtering technology, developed by reader favourite MQA Labs, will let it offer unparalleled levels of performance and a holistically more natural, life-like sound.
Considering our experience with the filtering technology on the Award-winning Bluesound Node Icon last year, the pairing piqued our interest. Here’s hoping we get the new player in for testing soon, to hear how it performs in the real world.
Read the full story: NAD’s “precision engineered” CD player uses advanced digital filtering to deliver a lifelike and precise sound
We reviewed a Product of the Year winner’s floorstander sibling
The Acoustic Energy AE309 Mk2 are the floorstander sibling of the AE300 Mk2 standmounts we reviewed last year, which gives them some pretty big shoes to fill. Not only did the AE300 Mk2 earn a five-star rating, they also went on to win a Product of the Year accolade at the 2025 What Hi-Fi? Awards.
The AE309 Mk2 share a lot of common DNA with their standmount siblings, using the same drivers and having a similar (albeit larger), understated look. They also deliver the goods sonically.
Matched with price-appropriate hardware, such as the Arcam A15+ we used during testing, the speakers deliver a wonderfully natural, balanced sound that’s full of detail and insight. So much so that our reviewers didn’t find themselves pining for our current recommendation at this level, the Award-winning Fyne Audio F501E.
As we say in our Acoustic Energy AE309 Mk2 review: “Credit to Acoustic Energy, we now have another member of its 300 Series that comes highly recommended by our test team. The compact AE309 Mk2 stand tall in a tough sector of the loudspeaker market, but their superbly balanced and musical sound is a match for any rival. These are speakers that definitely deserve your time and, potentially, money.”
Read our full Acoustic Energy AE309 Mk2 review
Our senior staff writer saw Samsung’s next-gen TV
There’s been a lot of chat about RGB Mini LED TVs recently – including from us – we have our first set with the tech, the Hisense UR9, in for testing right now.
This is a new panel technology being pitched by numerous companies, including Hisense, Samsung, Sony, TCL and more, as the future of premium TVs. Philips is also using it in some sets, but was more reserved with its performance claims when we spoke to the brand last month.
While we are too early in our reviewing journey with the tech to confirm if it is the “OLED-killer” that companies are promising, based on our senior staff writer Lewis Empson’s latest hands-on experience with Samsung’s R95H, which uses its RGB Micro LED version of the tech, it’s certainly interesting.
Seeing the set next to Samsung’s latest OLEDs at a press demo, including the Samsung S95H, it was the R95H his eye kept coming back to. So much so, that he reported:
“Using a medley of reference clips we often use for testing, from films including Oppenheimer, Blade Runner 2049 and Pan, I got a flavour of what this TV can do. It’s safe to say that I walked away rather impressed.”
Read the full story: I’ve seen Samsung’s 2026 lineup early: there’s one TV I can’t stop thinking about – and it’s not an OLED
Our other senior staff writer went to a Dolby Atmos music mixing studio
While Lewis was having fun with Samsung, our other senior staff writer, Harry McKerrell, was jetting off to LA.
As well as taking some personal time to try to sell his screenplay, Harry also managed to visit Larrabee Sound Studios, to find out how Dolby Atmos music is mixed and why so many new artists are obsessed with it.
Featuring Studio 4, a specially designed room, the tour gave him a fly-on-the-wall look at how mixing maestros leverage Atmos’s ability to create a dome of sound to help make music “more immersive”. And it’s not as simple a process as you might think.
Read the full story: I heard a Dolby Atmos mix in a professional recording studio – and it has changed my view of spatial audio
MORE:
These are the best TVs we have reviewed
We rank the best floorstanding speakers
Our picks of the best stereo amplifiers
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.whathifi.com ’
