Forget 2020: embrace music

We’ve got a nice mix, this month, of two-channel equipment both thoroughly up to date and just a little bit old school. Our round-up of stereo amplifiers (p28) brings you our pick of the best options for less than £1000. If you’ve got bang-on a grand to invest in your musical power provider, you should go for our 2020 Product of the Year Cambridge Audio CXA81. If your budget doesn’t stretch quite that far, we can help, with our favourites at all price points from £250-£950. Some of these are pretty traditional, some will have features such as streaming abilities – but all of them provide simply superb sound for the money. To bring things thoroughly up to date, we also have a fascinating test of all-in-one streaming systems (p43) which sees Naim’s mighty Uniti Atom take on rivals from Arcam, Linn and NAD. And we have our pick of noise-cancelling on-ear headphones at under £150 (p38), too.

Plenty, then, to get your teeth into to welcome in a new year that (surely?) should bring more joy to the world than the last.