While old and new may blend wonderfully when it comes to barn conversions and Lucy Dacus covering Carole King, it doesn’t always in the case of hi-fi system aesthetics. We should know – on our rack we have an old-school, dial-heavy Marantz integrated amplifier sitting below a sleek, minimalist Cambridge Audio streamer. And, to make it worse, one is silver, one is black. The company badges don’t remotely line up. Visually, they are as compatible as wedding invitations and the Goosebumps font.
On the flip side, there are surely very few things more beautiful to the eye of a hi-fi enthusiast than a handsome rack of matching separates. Naim’s streamlined black-punched-with-illuminated-green, heavy metal components spring to mind, as do the attractive tiers of blue glow that come from the marriage of
