NEWS ARCHIVE

"Excel Sound Corporation has created another superb-sounding cartridge with the Hana Umami Blue. One listen to a well set-up Blue will give you another slightly different, mouthwateringly delightful taste of Umami. Lightning did, indeed, strike again and this time, it’s blue"

“The Hana Umami Blue brings that high end cartridge ‘wow’ factor at a stunning, attainable price. It looks great and it sounds great. If it were any more Umami, you’d probably want to eat it!” — Alan Sircom, hifi+ Magazine (2023 Awards Issue)

"DS Audio's Grand Master Extreme is that kind of cartridge. It should come with a warning: you need to bring plenty of food and drink into your listening room because you will not want to leave."

" – you have the ears and the gear, then you will find this as indispensable as a dust brush." "...if you live for vinyl and want to extract the best of your LPs, you'd better start saving."

DS Audio Grand Master cartridge - "A Grand Masterpiece that well deserves TAS’ 2023 Cartridge of the Year Award.” Hana Umami Blue cartridge - “With the Blue, Hana has set another baseline of performance-for-cost, even against competitors in the upper four-digit range.”

"The DS Audio ES-001 Eccentricity Detection Stabilizer IS ONE OF THE MOST AMAZING LP ACCESSORIES I’VE EVER RUN ACROSS! I would NEVER have believed how much impact it can have if I hadn’t heard it! Simply a superb accessory, bordering on a necessory, especially if you have an exceptional analog front end… WOW!"