Innholdsfortegnelse for May - June 2016 i Australian HiFi

Astell&Kern’s new AK320 has optional accessories including an amplifier, cradle and CD ripper, so you can rip your discs straight to the player. It supports high-resolution files up to 24-bit/192kHz, can operate as a USB DAC and has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 aptX built in, so you can wirelessly stream your music at the touch of a button to your headphones or to your hi-fi system. ‘This music player has all the features you need for the ultimate listening experience,’ said George Poutakidis of BusiSoft. ‘It offers not only brilliant stereo sound in the palm of your hand but also the opportunity to send uncompromised audio to your system, allowing you to explore intricate musical details with this high definition audio device.’ The AK320 features a Voltage Controlled Crystal Oscillator…

Melbourne’s Class A Audio is inviting all audiophiles and music lovers to attend an audio event called ‘Sunday with GoldenEar Technology’ on Sunday 29th May, 2016. GoldenEar Technology speakers are distributed by Kedcorp in Australia, a US-based company founded by Sandy Gross, who previously co-founded both Polk and Definitive Technology and says his purpose in founding GoldenEar was ‘to make high-end affordable.’ On Sunday May 29th, experts from Kedcorp, in partnership with Class A Audio, will demonstrate a range of new models from GoldenEar, including the GoldenEar Triton Towers. ‘The Triton Tower loudspeakers are GoldenEar Technology’s premiere products, embodying all of GoldenEar’s cutting-edge technologies,’ said Kevin Yu, of Class A Audio. ‘These sleek, black towers are sonically balanced in such a way that you can use them to create an…

Klipsch has released a limited edition version of its Heresy III loudspeakers to celebrate its 70th Anniversary. Originally designed in 1957 by the company’s founder, Paul Klipsch, and now only in its third iteration, the Heresy is a compact, three-driver three-way loudspeaker using a 304mm fibre-composite cone bass driver, a horn-loaded midrange driver and a horn-loaded tweeter. ‘While the design of the speaker has remained remarkably similar to the original, the Heresy III was given a substantial upgrade in recent years to include a higher-efficiency bass driver and a bi-wire network, as well as a new 45mm midrange compression driver and new 25mm tweeter compression driver, both featuring titanium diaphragms for smooth and accurate definition,’ said Alex Leopold, of Klipsch. The crossover frequencies are at 850Hz and 5kHz. One big…

Greg Borrowman: You’ve been Music Hall for so long that I really know nothing about what you were doing prior to founding that company in 1985. Roy Hall: I was working for Linn Products. I grew up with Ivor Teifenbrun in Scotland. When I told him I was moving to America in 1975 he asked if I wanted to build speakers in America, because he wanted to start manufacturing in the United States. I told him: ‘No, you’re my best friend; I’ll never work for you, so go f**k yourself.’ Four years later, after having being fired by Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Bamburgers and every other major retail company in America, I phoned Ivor and asked him: ‘Do you still want to do something in America?’ The result was I went back…

Australian hi-fi industry pioneer Maurice Chapman has died aged 105. Chapman was the founder and manager of several of the first Australian companies to import and distribute hi-fi equipment. As Maurice Chapman & Co, Chapman imported and distributed BASF tape. As Magnecord Sales and Service, he imported and distributed products from America’s Magnecord Corporation, including Standard music systems and cassette tape recorders. As Akai Australia, Chapman imported and distributed Akai tape recorders and hi-fi equipment. All three companies operated from 276 Castlereagh Street, Sydney. Prior to founding these three companies, Maurice Chapman was one of the pioneers of Australian commercial radio broadcasting, starting with radio 5AD in Adelaide as a junior announcer in 1931 and in turn becoming a scriptwriter, actor, producer, program manager and production manager, until in 1938…

In sum, the Moon 780D Evolution Series DAC delivered truly state-of-the-art performance Newport Test Labs tested the Moon 780D Evolution with both CD standard (44.1kHz/16-bit) and AES standard (48kHz/24-bit) signals and for both formats, across all tests, the Moon delivered truly state-of-the-art performance, with almost-perfect test results across the board. Output voltage (balanced output) was measured as 2.0802 volts for the left channel, and 2.0908 volts for the right channel, so there’s more than sufficient voltage to drive any follower component, but these results also means channel balance was within 0.0025dB, which is one of the best results for this test Newport Test Labs has ever measured. Inter-channel phase was perfect at 1kHz (0.00°) and almost perfect at both 20Hz, where it was 0.02° and 20kHz, where it was also…

Trace Sphere | Gathering Rains | Kimnara nara016 While this music is improvised, master-drummer Simon Barker ‘composed’ the band, assembling the collective brilliance of Korean Pansori singer Il Dong Bae, guitarist Carl Dewhurst, pianist Matt McMahon and trumpeter Phil Slater. Meanwhile the shakuhachi offerings of new addition Riley Lee are as right as white clouds against a blue sky, so that Lee almost seems the missing link in the project’s evolution. Barker has conceived of a series of smaller groups interacting within the sextet, and the ineffable sadness of the shakuhachi helps glue Bae’s searing contribution to the surrounding gentler music-making, just as Barker’s drums and percussion do in a very different way. All is poetry on what is surely one of the high-water marks in Australian spontaneous composition, and…

NEWS LETTER No. 225 To say there has been a lot happening during the last couple of months at the store would be an understatement. At one end of the price scale we now have Dave – this is an extraordinary new $17,000 DAC from Chord. This exquisite handmade product is based around new proprietary electronics offering ten times the program capacity of the previous model. This translates into a playback experience with unmatched reality, musicality and an unrivalled timing response. At the other end of the scale we now have our hands on the Naim Mu-so Qb, the smaller version of the bigger Muso released last year – it loses little to its bigger brother on musical performance, proving how quickly compact wireless speaker technology has evolved. Naim has…

German turntable manufacturer Clearaudio has released a ‘Double Matrix Professional Sonic’ record-cleaning machine which it says is its best solution yet to the challenge of keeping LPs in perfect condition. Every audiophile knows that playing an LP contaminated with dust, dirt or fingerprints will adversely affect the sound quality, but not all know that dust and dirt particles can also damage both the LP and your stylus. Then there’s the fact that new records have chemical residues that should be removed prior to playback. ‘Clearaudio’s ‘Matrix’ record cleaners have long been renowned for their gentle yet highly effective vacuum-cleaning capabilities,’ said Nigel Ng of Kedcorp, which distributes Clearaudio in Australia. ‘Now, this latest addition to the Matrix series combines this same double-sided vacuum cleaning technology with a new sonic component.…

64-Audio’s (formerly 1964 Ears) professional in-ear consumer earphones are now available in Australia from Minidisc Australia. They use a patented technology called ADEL (Ambrose Diaphonic Ear Lens) which the company claims delivers a louder, more spacious and richer sound while minimising the risk of hearing damage. The 64-Audio ADEL U-Series is a new custom in-ear monitor offering a variety of speaker options ranging from the U2 (which has two-speakers in each ear-piece) up to the U12 (12-speakers in each earpiece) and come with a specially angled universal-fit spout and four different sizes of tip to ensure the perfect fit. ‘We are the company only brings highest fidelity products, but also offers a real solution to hearing loss, which is a known problem in the music industry,’ said Vitaliy Belonozhko, Founder…

UK-based ATC has released an active version of the SCM19 speakers, called the SCM19AT which uses unique, proprietary drivers in a slender, floor-standing design that is less than a metre high. The new ATC SCM19AT is acoustically identical to ATC’s award-winning passive SCM19 two-way system but uses the same 19-litre volume in a slim tower format, and has ATC’s discrete Class A/B MOSFET modules on board to individually power the two drivers: 150-watts continuous for the bass/midrange driver and 32-watts continuous for the tweeter. The bass/midrange driver is 150mm in diameter with a doped fabric cone to which is fixed a 75mm soft dome, a technique ATC says delivers exceptionally broad and even dispersion of mid-band frequencies. The cone is driven by an ‘under-hung’ (short coil/long gap) motor using a…

The Owner’s Manual provided with the musicbook:55 says the amplifier is rated to deliver a power output of 240-watts into 4 loads for durations of less than one minute. Newport Test Labs found it delivered around 0.6dB less than this, albeit over a little longer period of time: 205-watts per channel (single or both channels driven into 4 ). Lindemann does not provide a power output specification into 8 loads, but Newport Test Labs measured 110-watts per channel into 8 . (The music-book:55’s protection circuit triggered automatically when the laboratory attempted to measure power output into 2 , hence the lack of results for this test load.) The protection circuit auto-resets very quickly, so once the 2 load was replaced with a higher resistance, the protection instantly reset itself—no user…

Jeff Buckley | You And I A four-year recording career—one studio album, one live, one posthumous collection. What, then, is left to release? ‘You And I’ proves no barrel-scraper, rather a 52-minute selection from three days of recording when he signed with Columbia in 1993—an effort, as with Dylan’s Witmark sessions, to find a direction among songs he was performing in New York’s folk café scene. So the recordings are pristine as he soars through solo takes of Dylan’s Just Like A Woman, two Smiths songs, Sly Stone’s Everyday People, Zeppelin’s Night Flight, and a spine-tingling Calling You. He offers one fledgling composition of his own, delivering the complexity of Grace in a nervous flow of guitar parts, and he improvises a second, the title track here, explaining as he…

Simon & Garfunkel | Complete Columbia Albums Collection | Sony/ Legacy (6LP Box Set) Paul Simon’s dynamic song-writing skills and both his and Art Garfunkel’s incredible voices combined to make some of the most unforgettable folk rock music of all time. The Complete Columbia Albums Collection encompasses the relatively brief recording career of perhaps the greatest duo in rock annals with all five studio releases and a greatest hits compilation superbly re-mastered to 180-gram vinyl. The vocals are warm and pristine and guitars and piano have crispness and deep tonality. The album format enhances the sequential order of the songs, the original covers and liner notes are intact and there is a full-size booklet with loads of vintage photographs. Additionally, there are downloadable cards. There are so many truly great…

Tannoy has upgraded five models to new ‘Gold Reference’ standard, starting with the compact Tannoy Stirling Gold Reference. At the top of the Gold Reference Series are the Canterbury Reference Gold and the Westminster Royal Gold Reference [pictured], both of which have 381mm diameter dual-concentric coaxial drivers with a newly-developed cone material. ‘To increase rigidity across the larger surface area of these 15-inch dual concentric drivers, the fibrous mix within the cone material has been revised to realise further improvements in the cone’s mechanical characteristics,’ said Dr Paul Mills, Head of Product Research at Tannoy. ‘Modern imaging technology affords incredibly detailed analysis of cone mechanics under load and many versions of the cone pulp mix were evaluated prior to the final selection of this vital component. The final selection of…

KEF has re-engineered its iconic compact EGG speakers by building in amplifiers, a DAC, and Bluetooth aptX to make a stand-alone music system. ‘KEF’s new EGG wireless digital music system, provides 21st-century music consumers with the perfect blend of functionality, quality and design for their homes,’ said Michael Di Meglio, National Sales Manager of Advance Audio Australia, which distributes KEF in Australia. ‘Offering both Bluetooth aptX functionality and high-resolution music compatibility via USB, this new EGG is also the most sophisticated and acoustically accomplished version yet of KEF’s iconic ‘egg’ compact speaker.’ As you’d expect, the new EGG provides a nest for KEF’s Uni-Q driver array which, according to KEF, not only delivers perfect ‘point-source’ sound, but simultaneously disperses sound more widely and evenly through the room than is possible…

PSB Speakers was founded by Canadian loudspeaker designer Paul Barton and his wife Sue (Paul and Sue Barton… get it?). Their company became so successful that the privately owned Canadian Lenbrook Group (which also owns NAD and Bluesound) made them an offer for it that they couldn’t refuse… particularly since they wanted Paul to stay on as head designer. Barton is renowned as a ‘sound first, looks second’ designer, one who won’t sacrifice sound quality for fashion, but his philosophy isn’t exactly evidenced by the SubSeries 300 because, although it’s not particularly small, I think it’s spectacularly good-looking for a subwoofer. Most subwoofers look ‘boxy’ to me, but I think the PSB SubSeries 300 is rather elegant… at least for a subwoofer! It was amongst the first-ever PSB subwoofers to…

Out of Australia and into the US market has Audiofly boldly gone, creating a brand reputation that has been bolstered by the involvement of professional musicians using their in-ear monitor designs. And in recent local news The X Factor in Australia signed up to use Audiofly’s flagship IEMs for all its contestants. I have been waiting a while now for the company’s first design which surrounds the ear, an experience I prefer to shoving things up my delicate canals, and here at last, after extensive voicing development, is the AF240. You can see the price in the panel below right—but I didn’t know this until my review time was nearly complete. My listening notes included small issues in the difficult upper bass/lower midrange area, but I loved their musicality, their…

As you can see from Graph 1, the frequency response of the Richter Merlin V, as measured by Newport Test Labs, was very flat, extending from 70Hz to 20kHz ±3dB. It was also very linear, so the response is not skewed in a way that would emphasise any particular region of the response. You can see that from 300Hz to 5kHz, the response virtually tracks the graphing line. There are small lifts in the response centred at 150Hz and 10kHz, but they’re very minor. In other words, an excellent frequency response. Measured high-frequency response is shown in Graph 2, using a gated sinus technique to permit greater detail. Here you can see the response is still within ±3dB from the lower graphing limit (400Hz) up to 27kHz, where the tweeter…

Here in Australia, Pioneer’s audiophile products have been absent for some years now, but now that Powermove has assumed responsibility for distribution I’m assured that this will change, not only because of Powermove’s involvement but also because of Pioneer’s sale of its audio division to Onkyo, which will now be responsible for building the products for both brands. THE EQUIPMENT If you haven’t ever used a portable hi-res player and were expecting the Pioneer XDP-100R to be solely a hi-res audio player, you will be in for a surprise, because it’s actually more akin to a micro-tablet computer than a hi-res player. Or perhaps even more appropriately, more like a high-end mobile phone that also happens to be a hi-res audio player… except without the phone capability! This comes about…

Classic Albums: So — Peter Gabriel 2012 Starring: George Acogny, Laurie Anderson, David Fricke, Daniel Lanois, Peter Gabriel, Gary Gersh, Wayne Jackson, Manu Katché, Kevin Killen and Larry Klein. Peter Gabriel’s 1986 breakthrough album, ‘So’, came and went without me noticing. Young parenthood and all that. So lucky me: I’ve recently had the rare dual pleasure of listening to the album thoroughly for the first time, and learning about it thanks to the Classic Albums documentary on the making of ‘So’. I confess to some initial reluctance. I generally regard the 80s as a low point in modern music. But despite a certain conformance as to the sensibilities of time and place, ‘So’ turns out to be much more than I’d expected. Without this documentary I’d never have realised that…