OHHIFI

The ultimate destination for audiophiles. Unbiased high-end audio reviews paired with high-energy music videos and diverse tracks for the true music lover.#HIFI

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Full DALI Opticon 8 MK2 review over on OHHIFI👉 https://t.co/lf9bwymeOs

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DALI Opticon 8 MK2 — Big Danish Bass That Needs Room to Breathe

There's a recurring mistake I see with this speaker: someone falls for the spec sheet — two 8" woofers, a dedicated midrange, a ribbon tweeter past 30kHz — drops them in a small study, then wonders why the bass sounds boomy and trapped.

The Opticon 8 MK2 ($3,999/pair MSRP, now drifting toward $4–5k) is not a small-room speaker pretending to be big. It's a big-room speaker that looks tidy enough to talk its way into the wrong space.

Get the room right and it's one of DALI's more quietly persuasive floorstanders at the money:
🔊 Bass — full, weighty, agile for the quantity. Bonobo's "Kerala," Zimmer's "Time," Daft Punk's "Contact" all land with proper authority. But it needs 220+ sq ft. In a box room it overwhelms — get the Opticon 6 MK2 instead.

🎙 Midrange — natural, uncoloured, fatigue-free. Slightly polite. Plays the long game.

✨ Treble — that hybrid tweeter (29mm dome + 17×45mm ribbon) stays smooth and consistent across the whole sofa, not just one chair.

🎭 Soundstage — big and room-filling, real scale on Mahler & Stravinsky. Scale over surgical imaging.
Two non-negotiable setup rules: zero toe-in (DALI's own advice, and the character changes dramatically with it), and keep those rear ports off the wall. 4-ohm load wants real amp current too.

vs the field: KEF R7 Meta for imaging + smaller rooms. B&W 703 S3 for detail + premium finish (digs less deep). Focal Vestia No.3 for energy. The DALI's lane is depth + ease in a big room, and it owns it.

Verdict: 8.5/10. Respect what it is and it's a confident buy.

Full review linked below👇
#Hifi #DALIAudio #Floorstanders #Audiophile #HomeAudio

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Every Year, an Entire Italian Town Builds Towering Paper Giants — Then Throws a Party by the Sea
#ViareggioCarnival #Carnevale #Italy #ItalianCulture #PapierMache

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There's Something Oddly Satisfying About Organizing a CD Collection
#CDCollection #PhysicalMedia #OddlySatisfying #MusicCollection #Nostalgia

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For Anyone Who Loves the Smell of the Sea — A Soft, Simple Piano Piece

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When Dandadan Meets Cardi B, the Energy Goes Crazy

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Beethoven's "Spring" Sonata: The Best Things in Life Don't Cost a Thing
#Beethoven #SpringSonata

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Reviewed the KEF Muo — and it's the rare portable that didn't forget it has a job to do.

At $249.99 it's KEF shrinking its loudspeaker engineering into a 740g aluminum wedge: proper two-way array (racetrack mid/bass + a dedicated 20mm tweeter), IP67, 24hr battery, Lovegrove design lifted from the £180k Muon.

The sound is pure KEF house voice — balanced, clean, vocally honest. Norah Jones and Joni Mitchell come through unforced and textured; treble is detailed without drawing blood. And crucially it sounds right at low volume, where most portables collapse into thinness.

The catch is the one every honest listen agrees on: sub-bass is the ceiling. Massive Attack and Zimmer imply weight but never load the floor. It's control over slam, on purpose.

So at $250 it's mono when the Bose SoundLink Flex ($149) and JBL Charge 6 ($199) get louder, bassier, and offer real EQ for less. The app is preset-only. The buttons aren't backlit.

But nothing in the bracket matches its build + tonal refinement. Buy it for what it is.

8.0/10 — premium sound, premium price, zero apologies.
https://t.co/rUvGNGYuVX

#BluetoothSpeaker #KEFMuo #PortableAudio #HiFi #OutdoorAudio

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For years the Wharfedale Diamond 12.3 was the default answer to "best budget floorstander." Now the 12.3i replaces it — and it's a bolder beast.

The changes look trivial on paper: new finishes, a redesigned rear port, tweaked damping. Drivers carry over untouched. But that port work matters. Bass has more authority and punch (Bonobo's Kerala lands with real pressure), dynamics are more vivid, and oddly the treble sounds a shade more forward despite the identical tweeter.

The Klarity midrange is still the headline — Jill Scott's voice has body and grain, De La Soul comes through with clarity and fun. It's a slim 18cm tower that throws a big, dramatic stage.

Two catches. It's fussier about placement than the old model — give it 70cm of breathing room or that new bass turns thick. And bi-wiring is gone.

The real story for US buyers: UK price held at £499, but the US sticker jumped from $798 to $1,198. At that money the Fyne F302i ($745) and Dali Oberon 5 sit right in the crosshairs.

Verdict: 8/10. Brilliant in the UK, a "do the homework" buy in the US.
https://t.co/0N6OY6PdcA

#Wharfedale #FloorstandingSpeakers #BudgetHiFi #Audiophile #HiFi

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Have You Ever Dreamed of a Place Like This?

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He Covers "Creep" on a Traditional Chinese Lute — in Full Hanfu

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Making Trap Beats Anywhere — Just a Pad and a Phone

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Sony Bravia 9 II: the last great Sony TV bets everything on True RGB

This is probably Sony's final premium TV as a standalone maker before the TCL merger — so it's swinging hard. The Bravia 9 II is Sony's first "True RGB" Mini LED set: red, green and blue diodes instead of white-LED-through-a-filter. Starts at $3,599 (65"), shipping June 3.

The pitch: 2x the colour volume of the old Bravia 9, 4x the Bravia 8 II OLED, and ~4,000 nits in its accurate Professional mode, tuned to match Sony's mastering monitor. Best trick? Coloured blooming — any glow around a bright object takes on that object's colour, so your eye reads it as natural light, not a halo.

Caveats keeping it honest: early testing found the red Blade Runner 2049 titles came out pale/pink — a clip a flagship should ace. It also runs ~25% fewer dimming zones than the Bravia 9, still only TWO HDMI 2.1 ports in 2026, and Sony-tuned bass-light sound.

On paper this could be the best backlit TV ever made. An OLED killer? No. OLED still owns that solid, 3D pixel-level pop. But for a bright room and big colour, watch this one closely.
https://t.co/dIXQ4yJr8d

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Astell&Kern is bringing the A&ultima SP4000T to High End Vienna 2026 (June 4–7), and it might be the first portable player to pack FOUR vintage Raytheon JAN6418 MIL-Spec vacuum tubes — two per channel. No price yet, but the base SP4000 already runs $4K+, so don't expect mercy.

These aren't Korg Nutubes like most rivals use. They're genuine MIL-Spec subminiature tubes, individually noise/gain-matched, isolated on flexible PCBs, behind a new five-stage anti-microphonic chassis to fight pocket-jostle pinging.

The tuning matrix is wild: three tube modes (Triode / Pentode / Ultra Linear) × three amp modes (solid-state / tube / five-level hybrid) × adjustable tube current = up to 54 sound combinations. Whether you hear 54 real differences is another story.

Digital side inherits the SP4000 platform: dual AK4499EX DACs + AK4191EQ per channel, 32-bit/768kHz PCM, DSD512, Android 15 with full Google Play, 256GB + microSD to 1.5TB, dual Wi-Fi antennas, LDAC/aptX Adaptive. Ships in Italian Badalassi Carlo leather.

The Clarus IEM rides along too — a 9-driver tribrid per side (dynamic + BA + MEMS) in 6061-T6 aluminum. Demo-only at the show.

The real fight is the Cayin N8iii ($3,999): modern Nutubes vs A&K's vintage glass, same buyer, two philosophies.

My take: most serious tube statement A&K has made, but the price math worries me and 54 modes could mean three good ones plus a lot of placebo. Tube DAPs live or die on texture vs mush. A&K nailed the SP3000T; the category has also blown it. Ambition isn't in question — the sound is, until I hear it.
https://t.co/oqwNPC2KiL
#DAP #AstellKern #TubeAudio #HighEndVienna2026 #PortableAudio

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JBL just dated the Japan launch of the Xtreme 5 — June 4, black only, $399. Same rugged party cannon, now with ambient lighting and a wired lossless input.
What's new under the grille: one 98×145mm "racetrack" woofer (replacing the old twin-woofer layout) + dual 20mm tweeters + twin passive radiators. Power jumps to 130W on mains / 90W on battery, up from 100W / 70W on the Xtreme 4.
Tech stack: AI Sound Boost (always-on, cleans up the lows at volume), Smart EQ Mode, a 7-band app EQ, Bluetooth 6.0 (SBC/AAC/LC3), Auracast pairing, and lossless audio up to 24/48 — but only over wired USB-C. Every wireless path is still lossy. No aptX, no LDAC.
24hr battery (28 with Playtime Boost, which thins the bass to get there), IP68 dust/water/drop-proof, built-in powerbank, ~2.9kg.
My read: the bigger single driver is a smart call for outdoor slam, and reviewers say the mids stay clean. But it's heavier and $20 dearer than the Xtreme 4, the low end swamps a normal room, and the now-discounted Xtreme 4 keeps coming up as the smarter buy. Bass monster done well — just know what you're paying for.
https://t.co/UTA4wEZyHr
#BluetoothSpeaker #JBLXtreme5 #PortableAudio #OutdoorSpeaker #PartySpeaker

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The high-end has lied to us for 40 years: that heavy = serious.

The Linn Klimax Solo 500 calls the bluff. A 250W monoblock that weighs 10.6kg — a case of wine — for £23,500. A channel.

So where's the rest of it? Machined-from-solid aluminium, three boards, and a cooling system run by its own FPGA chip that keeps twin fans whisper-quiet. You'd have to press an ear to the case to hear them.
The sound is the opposite of an effects box. Ruler-neutral. It hands you the recording, not a prettier version. Johnny Cash's "Hurt" arrives with all its grain intact. Massive Attack's "Angel" hits with sternum-weight bass that stops exactly when the recording says — damping factor north of 800 will do that.

The party trick isn't the bombast. It's that it's just as convincing being small. Gillian Welch's "Time (The Revelator)" keeps its intimacy instead of being inflated into something it isn't.

Caveats: no independent bench test yet (the 85× lower distortion vs the old Solo is Linn's own claim), it's happiest into 8Ω, and £47k/pair buys a lot of bigger, heavier rivals — D'Agostino Progression, Boulder, Gryphon.

But as a statement against the heft-equals-merit reflex? It's the most subversive amp I've seen in years.
https://t.co/3MJX5iQae3
#HiFi #Linn #Audiophile #PowerAmplifier #HighEndAudio

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One year later, and this The Weeknd transition still goes off
#TheWeeknd #AfterHoursTilDawn #Starboy #AfterHours #LiveMusic

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String muting is one of those skills every guitarist fights with for years. This one found a shortcut: snip off every string you're not using.
Down to a single string and a pair of wire cutters, they go on to play the whole "Hotel California" solo — bends, slides, the works — like it's the most normal thing in the world.
Can't mute strings that aren't there. Hard to argue with the results.
#ElectricGuitar #GuitarSolo #HotelCalifornia #OneStringSolo #Guitarist

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This Is What a Real Dolphin Show Looks Like
The best animal shows were never the ones in captivity. They're out here, where the dolphins decide when the show starts. Hard not to grin watching it.
#WildDolphins #DolphinSuperpod #OceanLife #Wildlife #MarineLife