Accessories

The No. 5909s are the first headphones of any description from Mark Levinson, and the company has elected to take the 'go big or go home' approach. Of the wireless models we've looked at recently, they've all resolutely stuck to sub-£500 price points. This pair blasts through that and comes in just shy of a grand – although perhaps that's to be expected from a company that sells stereo power amplifiers with five-figure tickets.

As well as multiple ranges of conventional passive speakers, Q Acoustics has been involved in making self-contained speaker solutions for most of the time it has been in business since 2006. The new M20 is the replacement for the long-running (but excellent) BT3, which launched in 2014, and takes its place below the more recent, and more sophisticated, Active 200 that we looked at in HCC #319.

The dedicated portable audio player market is not a massive one, and Korean brand Astell&Kern is the biggest fish in a relatively small pond. Its KANN series of players overlaps the more conventional A&Norma and A&Futura ranges, and is designed to be able to drive even very demanding headphones from a smallscale device.

Humax is hardly the most profligate of PVR makers. When it launches a set-top box, it tends to stick around, quietly serving its audience. Its new model, the Aura, is the company's first hardware overhaul in three years, assuming flagship status from its 2017-era FVP-5000T.