System of the month

We partner a pair of brand-new five-star products with a recent Award-winner for a classy streaming set-up

The system

• Streamer

Audiolab 9000N £2499

• Amplifier

Arcam A15 £1099

• Speakers

Monitor Audio Studio 89 £1999

TOTAL PRICE £5597

Our recent review of the Monitor Audio Studio 89 standmounters revealed speakers that perform admirably for their price, and certainly merit a place on any shortlist at around the £2000 mark.

At roughly the same time, give or take a week or two, our team also had Audiolab's new music streamer to put through its paces. Which we also rather like, of course. It didn't then take too long to wonder how we could get these two five-star winners together in a system that might do even a touch more than merely doing them justice.

Enter Arcam's Award-winning A15, which covers some of the feature gaps that the Audiolab has, while also providing top-sounding amplification for the money. As always, it pays us to state here that it doesn't always follow that chucking three five-star products together will produce a stunning five-star system-life just isn't that easy. Our hi-fi team, though, know their stuff and have many, many years of experience at solving just this sort of challenge. Here, then, our three five-star pieces of hi-fi combine to create a sound that is more, even, than the considerable sum of their parts.