Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2017 i Australian HiFi

Have you ever been rick-rolled? I have…several times. I didn’t really find it funny, just confusing, because I had no idea I was the butt of an Internet joke. (I don’t get out much.) If you’re reading this and thinking I’m hopelessly naive, read no further unless you want to find out what’s not quite so funny about rick-rolling. If you’re wondering what the hell I’m on about, being ‘rick-rolled’ is when you click on a link that you think is taking you to one place, but it instead re-directs you to a YouTube performance of Rick Astley singing his hit ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ from which you then can’t escape… trying to exit the clip just opens another version of the same clip in a new window. Hilarious!…

Bose has released two new ‘Lifestyle’ home entertainment systems, the Bose Lifestyle 600 ($5,499) and Bose Lifestyle 650 ($6,999). The more expensive 650 is a 5.1-channel system that has the smallest satellite speakers Bose has ever made. Called ‘OmniJewel’ speakers, each satellite measures 47×147×47mm (WHD). They’re complemented by a slim-line centre-channel speaker and a bass module that delivers both the sub-bass frequencies and the bass. ‘The OmniJewel speakers include new high-excursion transducers positioned in opposing fashion for dramatic output,’ said Peter Ogley, of Bose. ‘Together with the centre-channel and bass module they deliver jaw-dropping omni-directional sound. For people who want the finest quality in sound, aesthetics, materials and build, there’s nothing else like it. When it’s seen and heard for the first time, it simply suspends belief.’ The 650 uses…

Denon has released an AV receiver which has Denon’s HEOS technology already on-board, thus enabling it to access music streaming services and deliver multi-room audio. The new Denon AVR-X4300H ($2,999) is fitted with nine amplifier stages, each one rated at 200-watts, so it’s already set up to deliver Dolby Atmos or DTS:X without need for additional equipment. In home theatre set-ups that don’t require all nine amplifiers, unused ones can be re-assigned to drive speakers in a second and/or a third audio zone (room), using the same or a different source than the main room. All audio signals undergo Denon’s unique AL24 Plus processing in combination with 192kHz/32-bit DACs and Denon Link HD Connection enables jitter-free connection to a Denon Blu-ray player. Thanks to its 11.2-channel processing capability and 11.2-ch…

Many audiophiles, for reasons of domestic harmony, are obliged to listen to smaller loudspeakers than they’d like, which means that although they can usually enjoy superb midrange and treble, they miss out partially—or almost completely—on deep bass. Those same audiophiles, again for reasons of domestic harmony, are also unable to add a large subwoofer in order to deliver that bass. If this sounds like your situation, help is at hand, because for US manufacturer Sunfire has come to the rescue with its XTEQ 8 subwoofer, which is so tiny that you’ll be able to sneak it into the room under your jumper, install it by hiding it from sight under a chair or behind your equipment rack and then simultaneously rejoice in the sudden addition of deep bass to your…

Newport Test Labs’ speed accuracy testing proved that the Rega Planar 3 runs at exactly the correct speed at both 33.33 and 45 rpm. Wow and flutter at 33.33rpm was measured at a very good 0.08% unweighted RMS, while at 45 rpm it improved even further, to return a result of 0.06% unweighted RMS. Newport Test Labs also measured wow separately from flutter, using the DIN standard, at 33.33 rpm. Wow was measured at 0.12% unweighted (DIN) and flutter at 0.04% unweighted (DIN). Rumble was low with Newport Test Labs measuring it at –61dB. Power consumption of the Planar 3 was also very low, pulling only 3.95-watts. The frequency response of the Rega Elys 2 phono cartridge was excellent, as you can see from Graph 1, which shows both the…

So, you’re a young person who’s heard your dad talk about the golden days of hi-fi and you’re interested. The idea of hearing your music as clearly and enjoyably as possible seems to have a certain merit, and the concept of having a tune send shivers up your spine instead of just being a vague noise playing in the background carries a certain appeal. And you can’t think of any negatives to hearing the soundtrack of a movie being crystal-clear either. But then the boring old fart (known henceforth as BOFs) starts talking about Class-A amplifiers, thermionic valves, how MP3s are a tool of Satan, ‘front end first’ and separate power supplies for every component, and the good old days of sacrificing virgins as part of the process of setting…

A few years ago Naim embarked on a project to produce a preamplifier and power amplifier combo that it intended to be a testament to the company’s design and engineering capabilities. The budget was unlimited, and all involved were told by Naim’s management team: ‘no holds barred, let it rip…’ The result was the Naim ‘Statement’ amplifier system which, at near $360,000 in Australian money, still stands as the pinnacle of Naim Audio’s technological expression in amplification. But for Naim’s engineers, having manifested their greatest artistic creation, what remained? Basically, their next challenge was to trickle-down aspects of the new technology into more affordable ‘bread-and-butter’ products that would be more financially accessible not only to Naim’s ardently loyal client base, but also to new customers. Hence it is that the…

Graph 1 shows the in-room frequency response of the Sunfire XTEQ 8 subwoofer for four different settings of the crossover. The traces show that the response in ‘Bypass’ mode (black trace) is almost identical to the response with the crossover control set to 100Hz (red trace). In these modes, the Sunfire XTEQ 8’s response was measured as being 30Hz to 140Hz ±3dB. With the crossover set to ‘Normal’ (65Hz), shown by the blue trace, the Sunfire’s response was 28Hz to 95Hz ±3dB. With the crossover set to the minimum position (30Hz) the Sunfire’s response was measured as 27Hz to 100Hz ±3dB. These are all very close to Sunfire’s specification, which claims 22Hz – 100Hz but I can’t say how close because Sunfire doesn’t state whether the two figures in its…

BeyerDynamic, the German company best-known for its professional headphones, has released a model designed specifically for domestic use, the Amiron home. As with the professional models, the Amiron home uses Tesla drivers, but the company says they have been refined for use in the Amiron home. ‘Modifications to the transducer have diminished unwanted vibrations to an absolute minimum and completely eliminated annoying treble resonances,’ said Wayne Farran of Syntec, which distributes BeyerDynamic in Australia. ‘The placement of an additional fabric in front of the multilayer compound calotte reduces high-frequency resonances. In addition, the acoustic transducers are damped on the rear to ensure an even more balanced midrange response and a new ear pad filling material used to increase bass precision. All in all, this adds up to a warm, stress-free…

German company Audionet has released a new range called the ‘Scientist Series’ because each model in the range is named after a famous scientist. The range comprises the ‘Watt’ integrated amplifier, ‘Planck’ CD Player & DAC, ‘Ampere’ power supply and ‘Heisenberg’ Mono Amplifiers, respectively named after Scottish engineer James Watt whose surname is now the SI unit of power, Max Planck, the German theoretical physicist whose work on quantum theory won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918, André-Marie Ampère, French mathematician and physicist, considered the father of electrodynamics whose surname is the SI unit of current, and Werner Karl Heisenberg, the German theoretical physicist and one of the key pioneers of quantum mechanics. The range also includes the ‘Stern’ preamplifier, which is named after the not-so-well-known German physicist…

YG Acoustics has released the Sonja XV, an ‘extreme’ four-tower version of Sonja, created to celebrate YG Acoustics’ fifteenth anniversary. They retail for $415,000 per pair. Yoav Geva, the founder and owner of YG Acoustics, said of the new Sonja XV design: ‘It combines everything that we know about speaker design, and incorporates several next-generation technologies that cannot be found elsewhere, with innovations that include a breakthrough tweeter made in-house, and proprietary cost-no-object bass inductors.’ The bass, mid-bass and midrange drivers (a total of 18 of which are used in the Sonja XV) are made in-house at YG Acoustics, each one being machined from a slab of aircraft-grade aluminium. ‘This process offers overwhelmingly superior dynamics, musical delicacy and low distortion due to industry-leading rigidity and accuracy,’ says Geva. The brand…

Decibel Hi-Fi, recently appointed the Australian distributor for Germany manufacturer Intona Technology, has released that company’s new USB High-Speed Isolator. ‘The Intona USB High-Speed Isolator is the world’s first fully integrated solution for the galvanic isolation of the USB 2.0 bus in high-speed mode (480 Mbit/s), thus providing an ultra-clean and stable USB-connection with separate grounds,’ said Brian Maddern, of Decibel Hi-Fi. ‘Simply connect it between the USB port of a PC and the DAC, and it will provide an instantly-audible improvement in sound quality, so it is ideal for all audiophiles running computer-based home audio systems.’ According to Daniel Stämmler, CEO of Intona Technology, the company did not originally intend the isolator to be used in home audio systems, and only realised its potential in the consumer arena when…

The arrival of the Boenicke W5 (SE) speakers reminded me of the ancient parable concerning the number of teeth in a horse’s mouth. A group of Greek philosophers in a tavern were arguing about the number of teeth in a horse’s mouth, each claiming a different number and offering scientific arguments as to why they were correct, such as stating how many teeth might be required for grinding, how many for biting, the necessity to fit a long tongue within and so on. While they argued, an Arab who had been drinking in a corner of the tavern went out the front door, only to return five minutes later and declare loudly that they were all incorrect, and that the correct answer was that a horse had 40 teeth. ‘What…

This is a slightly unusual review because we obtained the Korg DS-DAC-100m USB DAC and headphone amplifier not for the purpose of reviewing it, but to use it with an editorial project because, rather unusually, it has the ability to convert digital music between formats, including to that most stand-offish of formats, Direct Stream Digital. But, once that project was complete, which in the process exposed us the Korg’s very considerable other capabilities, all delivered at a remarkably low price, we thought we’d be remiss not to cover it in its own right. THE EQUIPMENT The Korg DS-DAC-100m is a portable variation on Korg’s desktop DS-DAC-100 (which retails at around $549), offering the same performance and features, but in a more pocket-able form, and at around half the price. The…

Dynaudio is one of those increasingly-rare companies that’s not only a specialist loudspeaker manufacturer (that is, it makes only loudspeakers, not amplifiers, streamers and so on) but is also a loudspeaker company that makes its own drivers as well (that is, it doesn’t buy drivers from other manufacturers). This not only gives the company total control over all the speakers it builds, but also means it’s able to use technologies and techniques that are rarely found in loudspeakers made by manufacturers that don’t make their own drivers. THE EQUIPMENT The Emit M10 is the smallest loudspeaker in Dynaudio’s range, measuring just 170×292×240mm (WDH). To save you reaching for your ruler, if you clench your fist, the height of the Emit M10 is about the same as the distance between the…

“The best loudspeaker isn’t the one that gives the most; it’s the one that loses the least.” John Bowers Over the past five decades, one English company has created, diversified, evolved, perfected, scrutinised and studied the elusive everyday nature of sound. Bower & Wilkins’ founder John Bowers – a classical music enthusiast in the grand tradition of soldering-iron-wielding British boffins – set himself on the hi-fi trail after wondering why stereo recordings rarely matched the vibrancy of a live concert. We are still hearing the benefits of his pioneering research 50 years on. The company’s inception came in 1966, in a small Worthing TV rental and repair shop which had a sideline in PA systems for schools and churches. Bowers began designing and assembling loudspeakers at the back of the…

“To hear something that, at the time, was nearly perfect, absolutely floored me. It was in the early 60s when I had that experience.” ‘It took me a long time to work it out—why he did what he did—and it’s the reason that—unlike some others—I stick closely to the design he set when I restore the constituent parts of the Quads to their original parameters.’ John knows the exact composition of the coatings on the diaphragms, the microscopic thickness of the Mylar (and the changes Walker made in refining the treble panels in the 57s later on), the crossovers and EHT high-voltage sections; everything is dissected and reconstructed to make the restoration just that—a fully-restored Quad panel loudspeaker. It’s been a long journey, he says. He’s been into audio for…

Spec Corporation is something of a rarity: a newly-founded (2013) high-end audio company that manufactures its products in Japan…though some might say that because Spec is a Japanese company (founded by Syuzou Ishimi), manufacturing its products in Japan makes perfect sense. The company’s product line is a little eclectic, because although it includes stereo amplifiers and a phono preamplifier, it also ranges a string-driven turntable, a device called a ‘PSP-901EX Real Sound Processor’ that says it ‘absorbs back-emf from speaker systems’ and a range of Mica capacitors that electronic technicians can use to replace or bypass the capacitors in valve amplifiers made by other manufacturers. Indeed the company places more importance than most on the design and manufacture of the capacitors used in its products. One example of this is…

Italian high-end manufacturer Gold Note has released a new moving-coil cartridge, available in both high-output and low-output versions, called the Donatello. The Donatello Gold is the low-output (0.5mV) version, which retails for ($1,790 RRP), while the high-output (1.8mV) model is the Donatello Red ($1,190 RRP). Both models have bodies machined from duralumin, as well as aluminium cantilevers and micro-elliptical diamond styluses that Gold Note says were developed exclusively for the company by Adamant-Namiki. They also have copper coils and samarium-cobalt magnets. ‘The idea was to bring some of the premium features introduced on our flagship lines into a lighter, smaller body in order to create a cartridge compatible with a wide range of tonearms, without compromising the design and the build quality,’ said Maurizio Aterini, of Gold Note. ‘For instance,…

Synergy Audio Visual has announced the arrival in Australia of Audio Research’s ‘Foundation Series’ of components, which it says was designed by the same design team responsible for its award-winning Reference Series. ‘The Foundation family of vacuum tube components has been created to provide incredible musical experiences,’ said Philip Sawyer, of Synergy Audio Visual. ‘The new DAC 9 digital-to-analogue converter is a wonderful example, with state-of-the-art solid state circuitry provided to decode most formats natively or upsampled to 384kHz, with selectable digital filters to allow customisation of the digital signal, and a pair of 6H30 vacuum tubes at the heart of the analogue circuitry, provide spatial definition, dynamics and detail abound while providing the most natural musical experience.’ The DAC9 has five digital connections—USB, RCA, BNC, AES/EBU, and Toslink and…

Indi Imports, which now distributes Cyrus in Australia, has announced the arrival of Cyrus’ latest amplifier, the Cyrus One, with the latest V1.3 firmware that allows the Cyrus One to be controlled from any smartphone or tablet using the free Remote Bluetooth app, which can be downloaded from the ‘Play’ or App Store. The Cyrus One uses Cyrus’s own third-generation Class-D amplifier technology. Power output is quoted at 100-watts continuous into 6 . The new integrated amplifier incorporates aptX Bluetooth, a high-power/high-voltage Class-AB headphone amplifier, and has four line-level inputs as well as a MM phono stage. ‘Incorporating Bluetooth, a phono stage and a high-quality headphone amp, the Cyrus One gives Australians the opportunity to enjoy this superior British brand at its most affordable price ever,’ said Paul Riachi, of…

Klipsch has made only 70 pairs each of its Cornwall and La Scala models as part of its 70th Anniversary Heritage Series, and only one pair of each is available for sale in Australia. These limited-edition models were made by hand at Klipsch’s manufacturing facility in Hope, Arkansas, and feature an Australian Walnut wood veneer, a silver-lustre grille cloth, ‘Special Edition’ badging and a signature 70th Anniversary plaque identifying its numbered sequence in the series. Nothing at all to do with the English county of the same name, the Cornwall got its name from being the first Klipsch loudspeaker designed to operate from either a corner or against a wall (corn(er)/wall). It’s a three-way design using horn-loaded compression drivers for the midrange and treble and a direct-radiating 381mm (15-inch) bass…

The frequency response of the Boenicke W5 SEs was not particularly flat, as you can see from Graph 1, where Newport Test Labs has spliced two traces together: the pink noise trace from Graph 5 and the high-frequency trace from Graph 2. You can see that the trace is admirably uniform from about 58Hz up to 5.5kHz, where it’s only ±3dB but above 5.5kHz it rises to +7.5dB at 7.5kHz, then to +11dB at 13kHz. Although this rise starts at a frequency that’s above that of the highest note on a piano keyboard (which is 4.1kHz), I would expect that this speaker would sound bright, due to this rise’s effect on harmonics. I would also expect some audible effects from the wideband lift in the frequency response between 80Hz and…

A list of famous high-end turntables would include the Caliburn, the Clear-audio Statement and of course the venerable—if rather long in the tooth Linn Sondek—but if talk were to turn to the compiling of a list of iconic real-world turntables, that list would surely be topped by the Rega Planar 3. Introduced in the 1970s, the Planar 3 was radical in its time and it still retains certain ‘rebel’ philosophies even after several and various revisions, which included the arrival in 1983 of the almost equally-legendary RB300 tonearm, which was the long-awaited replacement for the Acos-derived R200 and the first tonearm to be manufactured at the Rega factory. Notable for its beautifully cast single-piece arm tube and headshell, close-tolerance bearings, rigid bearing housings and magnetic frictionless bias compensation, the RB300…

The frequency responses returned by the Dynaudio Emit M10 in the tests conducted by Newport Test Labs were uniformly excellent. Graph 1 shows the overall in-room response and you can see it’s exceptionally flat, extending from 78Hz to 23kHz ±3dB. This response is a ‘free-field’ response, with the speaker positioned on a stand well away from room boundaries, so moving the speaker closer to one or more boundaries would increase and extend the low-frequency response. Graph 2 shows a detailed view of the high-frequency response of the Emit M10 with its grille on (red trace) and with it off (black trace). You can see that the grille causes a very small, narrow-band dip in the response centred at about 3.8kHz. This dip is so high in frequency and so narrow…

Under Newport Test Labs’ standard testing conditions, Spec RSA-717RX did not meet its claimed power output into either 8 or 4 test loads. (The lab didn’t test the third load specified by Spec, of 6 ). Into standard 8 loads, the Spec delivered only 40-watts per channel, both channels driven, at 1kHz, so overall output was around 10-watts (0.98dB) lower than Spec’s specification of 50-watts per channel. Driven into 4 loads, for which Spec claims an output of 100-watts per channel, our test sample managed only 77-watts both channels driven at 1kHz, slightly more (78-watts) when driving a 10kHz load and only 64-watts when a 20Hz test signal was employed. All these figures fall well short of Spec’s specification of 100-watts per channel for this load. When tested with 2…