It may be Bank Holiday in our country, but that hasn’t stopped our passionate team of hi-fi and home cinema experts from bringing you the latest in our weekly news digest, Undo it.
Despite our heartfelt pleas to the audio and visual gods, it’s been another busy week for the team. Over the past seven days, we’ve covered everything from new CD spinners to Big Tech’s assault on lossless audio.
If you’ve struggled to stay on top of everything, don’t panic, you’re definitely not alone. Here’s everything you need to know.
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Apple thinks lossless audio doesn’t mean anything to most people
Lossless audio, like speaker cables, seems to be a hot topic. In the other camp, you have people like veteran rocker Neil Young, who became so famous that he invited “real” fans to listen to his music at concerts, so they could hear “everything” he recorded.
Some believe it makes no difference. We’ve heard arguments from both sides for years, but last week, we were surprised to hear Oliver Schusser, Apple Music’s vice president, throw some shade at the unmissable sound. Specifically, while Billboard’s On Record podcast, he suggested that most people can’t tell the difference between a regular broadcast and a lossless one.
This statement is unusual, since Apple Music offers quality with hi-res streaming, and the company makes a strong library of HomePod smart speakers, Apple TV streamers and iPhones that support the technology. But hey, each to his own, we guess. Like we said before, if you really can’t feel the difference, that’s okay. You probably just saved a lot of money in the long run…
Read the full story: Apple Music CEO: “Most people can’t hear the difference with lossless audio”
NAD has a new “precision engineered” CD player
If you’re a CD lover, have money to spare and want “lifelike” sound from your shiny discs, then the new NAD C 589 might just be the player you’ve been waiting for.
NAD launched a new CD player last week, promising its use of high-quality components and Qrono D2a filtering technology, developed by the student favorite MQA Labs, will allow you to provide unparalleled levels of performance and more natural, life-like sound.
Considering our experience with filtering technology in Bluesound’s Award-winning Node Icon last year, the pairing piqued our interest. Here’s hoping we get a new player to test soon, so we can hear how it performs in the real world.
Read the full story: NAD’s “precision engineered” CD player uses advanced digital filtering to deliver lifelike and precise sound.
We’ve reviewed the baby floor winner for Product of the Year
The Acoustic Energy AE309 Mk2 are the successors to the AE300 Mk2 standmounts we reviewed last year, giving them excellent shoes to fill. Not only did the AE300 Mk2 receive a five-star rating, it also won the Product of the Year award in the 2025 What Hi-Fi? Prizes.
The AE309 Mk2 shares a lot of common DNA with its static siblings, uses the same drivers and has a similar (albeit larger), understated appearance. They also distribute goods according to gender.
Compared to hardware that’s worth the price, like the Arcam A15+ we used during testing, the speakers deliver incredibly natural, balanced sound that’s full of detail and clarity. So much so that our reviewers didn’t find themselves looking for our current recommendation at this level, the award-winning Fyne Audio F501E.
As we say in our review of the Acoustic Energy AE309 Mk2: “Credit to Acoustic Energy, we now have another member of their 300 Series that comes highly recommended by our review team. The compact AE309 Mk2 stands up well in the tough field of the speaker market, but their balanced and musical sound is a match for any competitor.” These speakers are worthy of any of your competitors.
Read our full Acoustic Energy AE309 Mk2 review
Our senior staff writer saw Samsung’s next-generation TV
There’s been a lot of talk about RGB Mini LED TVs lately – including us – we have our first set with the technology, the Hisense UR9, to test right now.
This is a new panel technology that has been touted by many companies, including Hisense, Samsung, Sony, TCL and more, as the future of premium TVs. Philips also uses it in some sets, but was very reserved about its performance claims when we spoke to the brand last month.
Although we are still very early in our review and technology journey to confirm whether it is the “OLED killer” that companies promise, based on the recent experience of our senior writer Lewis Empson with Samsung’s R95H, which uses its version of RGB Micro LED technology, it is quite interesting.
Seeing a near set of Samsung’s latest OLEDs at the press demo, including the Samsung S95H, it was the R95H that kept his eye on. So much so, he even reported:
“We’re using a medley of reference clips that we often use for auditions, from feature films Oppenheimer, Blade Runner 2049 again PanI got a taste of what this TV can do. It’s true that I left 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 OLED.
One of our senior writers went to a Dolby Atmos music mixing studio
While Lewis was having fun with Samsung, our other senior staff writer, Harry McKerrell, was headed to LA.
As well as taking some personal time to try to sell his screen, Harry was also able to visit Larrabee Sound Studios, to find out how Dolby Atmos music is mixed and why so many young artists are obsessed with it.
Featuring Studio 4, a specially designed room, the tour gave him a first-hand look at how mixing maestros enhance Atmos’ ability to create a sound dome to help make music “more immersive”. And it’s not as easy a process as you might think.
Read the full story: I heard a Dolby Atmos mix in a professional recording studio – and it changed my perception of spatial sound
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