I first listened to a Model One back when its designer, Henry Kloss, was still building them. He was a giant in the audio industry and developed the AR1 acoustic suspension speaker that revolutionised speaker design by making small speakers sound like big speakers. His Model One made radio sounded good and given it cost half as much as a Wave Radio, about the only other good sounding radio at the time, some reviewers dubbed it the ‘Bose Killer’. Um, it didn’t sound that good, but it helped grow demand for quality radios as people realised that radio, even AM, didn’t have to sound crook. Kloss died in 2002 after mentoring a lot of the current movers and shakers in audio.

That original Model One (still available with AM and FM only) didn’t just sound good, it was also exquisitely tactile with a five-to-one geared tuning dial that was lovely to use, as well as giving highly accurate station placement. It’s a shame this has been lost with the Model One Digital; digitals don’t need a tuning dial. But AM and FM do and so you spin the big dial directly until the desired frequency comes along. In digital mode the dial is used to scroll through listed stations. It’s accurate and feels nice to use but it’s not as nice as the original.

The sound quality is, as a very honest department store salesman observed, good but not great. I remember the original as being better. The bass can become ragged down low and the definition gets a bit fuzzy at high volumes, but for filling a study, a kitchen or indeed a caravan with good music the Tivoli does an entirely respectable job. It’s not on a par with a Wave Radio but it costs half as much and sounds better than the vast bulk of radios, be they digital or analogue. And it has AM.

It also has Spotify, Tidal, Deezer and Wi-Fi to get internet radio. There’s Bluetooth and you can hook in your phone or music player with a cable to the 3.5 mm auxiliary input.

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