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You’ve read the reviews obsessively. You’ve gone to your local bricks and mortar or a hi-fi trade show and sat shoulder-to-shoulder with others to listen to them, or stopped round to a mate’s flat for a pint and heard them. For all those out there in audiophile-land who have been hemming and hawing about whether to lay down some cash on KEF’s award-winning LS50 or LS50 Wireless loudspeakers, the time may have come to get off the fence and commit to buying a pair.

When Bel Canto’s Michael McCormick reached out to me to see if I would be interested in reviewing their freshest-of-the-fresh e.One Stream ($1,599 USD MSRP) I was ecstatic and within a couple weeks I had a production unit land on my doorstep.

Upgrade-ability. In the digital realm, unlike the analog kingdom, upgrading a component has turned into a vastly simpler, quicker and in most cases free proposition to drastically improve the sonic performance of a high-fidelity source component.

For those audiophile souls whose hearts beat a little faster when they know there’s a hi-fi show to attend, then either reset your pacemakers, put down that whisky, or throw on a sweatband because – steady on now – there’s two shows this weekend on either side of the pond as our British kin love to call the Atlantic Ocean.

What do you do if you’re one of the largest, most successful speaker manufacturers on the globe with one of the all-time, best-selling stereo wireless speaker designs currently in production? If you’re KEF you follow up with a new design packed with the latest state-of-the-art streaming, amplification and wireless technology, make it more compact and drop the price.

Being able to hop in a car, or a jump into a cab and in 10 minutes be at a bricks & mortar high-fidelity store of substantial selection and really personalized service is an experience that is becoming more rare.