Innholdsfortegnelse for Dec-18 i Hi-Fi Choice

PRICE: £1,250 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 01480 869900 WEB: AVIDHIFI.COM FOLLOWING THE INTRODUCTION of its Ingenium turntable design almost half a decade ago (HFC 379), Cambridgeshire-based AVID Hi-Fi has unveiled the Ingenium Plug&Play. Priced at £1,250 and fitted with a tonearm and moving-magnet cartridge, the packaged deck replaces previous Ingenium models and the company says: “Everything on this turntable has been reworked, from the chassis design that now sports AVID’s trademark oversized A emblazoned into the body, to the new inline power switch – now 5A with dual pole switching to allow total power isolation to the motor”. A new bearing hub has been designed with future upgradability in mind, allowing for the supplied MDF platter to be changed to a precision aluminium version to further enhance sound quality and lower…

PRICE: FROM £7,000 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 08454 586698 WEB: KUDOSAUDIO.COM ON DISPLAY AT The Hi-Fi Show Live 2018 – which runs from the 10-11 November (see preview opposite) –, the Titan 505 standmount is the latest to join the Kudos Audio flagship series. The two-way isobaric bass reflex design features two new double-coated hard paper cone mid/bass drivers crafted by SEAS in a back-to-back arrangement. Quoted sensitivity is 87dB/1W/1m into 6ohm with a frequency range of 40Hz to 30kHz. The tweeter is said to be a “precisely tailored” 29mm fabric dome and the loudspeaker’s internal crossover can be bypassed to enable active operation with selected systems including Linn Exakt and Devialet Expert. Prices start at £7,000 for tineo, red tineo, walnut, satin white and black oak finishes, with special-order editions…

Hi-Fi Choice employs the most rigorous test and measurement regime in the business. Here’s how we do it… PORTABLE BLUETOOTH SPEAKERS GROUP TEST BEFORE ANY LISTENING takes place the battery in each portable speaker is fully charged and the speaker is then run-in streaming a Tidal playlist to ensure that the drivers are given suitable time to bed-in and reach optimal performance. The listening test itself is carried out with each speaker placed on a small table 2m from the listening position. In the case of the twin-speaker Cambridge Audio Yoyo (M), an additional set of tests is carried out with the speakers placed at greater distance apart to check the stereo performance. The source for the main tests is Essential’s PH-1 smartphone. This has a ‘clean’ Android installation and…

Unlike the two other models that make up Cambridge Audio’s Yoyo range (the S and L) and the rest in the test, the Yoyo (M) comes as a pair. Each speaker is equipped with a 30mm high-frequency driver and 75mm mid/bass driver, while each driver has its own Class D amp. Turn the speakers on, and they find each other to work as a pair and connect to a partnering control device. Designated as left and right models (the one with a grey circle on it is the right channel), the Bluetooth implementation is 4.0 but there is no aptX. There is a USB socket for charging your phone, while battery life is claimed to be 24 hours and a 3.5mm aux input is provided. The top panel has a…

Described as a 2.1 speaker by Klipsch, The One makes use of two 57mm drivers underpinned by a single 114mm bass driver all powered by a 30W amplifier. Unlike some of the models here that deliver audio from several directions at once, all of the drivers are front facing. The Bluetooth implementation is listed as v4.0 and supports aptX. A 3.5mm line input is also provided and battery life is claimed at eight hours. Klipsch has a different approach to portable Bluetooth speaker design, and The One mimics its Heritage line of loudspeakers (see boxout) with its retro design. While on the one hand it feels solid and carefully assembled, considering it costs £300, The One lacks a lot of features that are present elsewhere – such as a USB…

As last month’s Group Test of entry-level network audio players showed, the streaming sector is hotting up with a wide selection of easy-to-use players to choose from at some very attractive prices. As if to further demonstrate the growth in the market, Yamaha has introduced its keenly priced MusicCast NP-S303 music streamer that’s designed to be an easy network audio add on to an existing hi-fi setup, or to partner with its matching full-size integrated amplifiers as part of a unified system. We’ve seen a steady increase in the number of features being added to music streamers recently, and the NP-S303 has an impressive list of facilities for an entry-level model. It can be connected via Ethernet or wi-fi home network connections and supports 24-bit/192kHz music streams and up to…

For any business, the problem of out growing your space is a double-edged sword. Obviously, the only reason you would find yourself in such a position is because trading has been sufficiently successful that you need extra room to do more of it, but the challenges of finding a new space are considerable. When you are a hi-fi dealer your new premises needs to deliver sonically as well as the other areas retail requires. Nintronics has been trading for a decade from its location on the outskirts of Welwyn Garden City and after an extended hunt for something larger, has ended up selecting a unit on the same estate as the original store. This has allowed it to use the old space for storage and for its existing demo room…

As Sir Elton John embarks on what he insists will be his farewell tour, there are a number of ways we might remember him and his extraordinary contribution not only to popular music but to the spirit of the age. We could recall the sensitive young singer-songwriter and compositions such as Your Song, Rocket Man and Tiny Dancer, which in the early seventies made him Britain’s answer to such great American troubadours as James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell. We could remember the outrageous showman jumping on top of his piano, dressed like Liberace on acid in spangly costumes, platform boots and an array of outlandish glasses. Or we might call to mind the sombre figure so movingly performing Candle In The Wind at the funeral of his friend…

KNOWN FOR ITS specialist tonearms, Jelco – distributed in the UK by Divine Audio, but supplied here by ISOkinetik – has made its SG-1 digital stylus pressure gauge available as a separate item priced at £79. Previously supplied with its flagship TK-950 tonearm (HFC 438), the SG-1 is a well-made gauge with a non-magnetic stainless-steel bracket fitted to the sensor plate. Pressing the on button illuminates the green backlit LCD display and zeros the balance. The scale defaults to grams, but can be changed to ounces, tael (a measurement used in China and East Asia), grain, troy ounce, pennyweight and carat by repeatedly pressing the unit button. The tare button resets the scale to zero for measuring differential weights. The gauge is supplied with a carbon-fibre stylus brush and comes…

PRICE: £379 & £599 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 01480 447700 WEB: AUDIOLAB.CO.UK 2018 HAS BEEN a busy year for Audiolab which has seen the hi-fi specialist move into the in-ear headphone market with two M-EAR designs and unveil its £149 M-DAC Nano DAC/headphone amp (right). The company is well regarded for its DACs and traditional components and the arrival of the new 6000 Series shows it hasn't forgotten its roots. The familiar design builds on the highly-regarded 8000 Series with two new full-width components in what it describes as its best value components ever. The new 6000 Series builds on the 8000 Series launched in 1983 Priced at £599, the 6000A is a Class AB integrated amplifier rated at 2x 50W into 8ohm that incorporates two optical and two coaxial digital…

Sometimes, the arrival of an entirely expected model can still be surprising. For the last couple of years Rega has been replacing its RP series of turntables with Planar decks, so it didn’t take an enormous amount of deduction to work out that this would continue up the range to include the RP8. What wasn’t so obvious is that the Planar 8 would be so different to its predecessor and almost every other Rega turntable that came before it. The Planar 8 takes concepts that we have seen in the RP8 and Planar 6, but also borrows from the Naiad – the flagship design that’s built to order in extremely limited quantities that embodies design concepts that until now have not found their way into series production Rega turntables. The…

THE DEVELOPMENT OF the Bluetooth short-range (usually up to 10m) wireless audio transmission system has totally revolutionised the portable speaker market and indeed how many younger users now start out listening to music. The open standard has gone from a wildly compromised convenience feature lacking in audiophile appeal, to something that can now handle lossless and even some hi-res files. Thanks to the flexibility of smart devices, there’s a huge choice of music apps that can quickly stream to a paired Bluetooth speaker. With a phone or tablet acting as the source, the speaker cabinet can be divided between amplification, speaker driver and power supply more effectively, with optimal space given to each. Absolute beginners The portable speaker market is a significant growth area in the world of audio with…

As the smallest offering from DALI’s Active Series of speakers, the Katch is also the most affordable. For your money you get aptX-enabled Bluetooth 4.0 and a 3.5mm line input, plus a USB charge output port to allow for network streaming to be added using Chromecast Audio (see p115) for extra functionality. A pair of 25W amplifiers under the hood power two 21mm soft dome high-frequency drivers and a brace of 90mm low-frequency units that are further bolstered by a pair of rectangular passive radiators arranged on either side of the unit to achieve an arc of sound. A second Katch can be added to operate as a stereo pair. Two preset EQ modes (see boxout) provide a degree of tonal tailoring and battery life is quoted at 24 hours…

Adopting a slightly different approach, Tibo makes a selection of Bluetooth-only portable speaker designs at lower price points, but by the time you reach its Sphere range you get a lot more to play with. As well as aptX Bluetooth, the Sphere 6 is fitted with wired and wireless internet allowing for network streaming, access to Tidal, Spotify and Napster plus internet radio services (see boxout). The speaker has two 19mm tweeters placed either side of a single 127mm driver and is the only model in the group to be bass reflex ported. The built-in amplifier power is quoted at 80W, while battery life claims to give a minimum of eight hours. Its considerable bulk comes across more as a powered speaker than a truly portable one, but along with…

Hi-fi and record collecting go hand in hand. But if you already own every commercial recording of your favourite artist, how do you take things to the next level? As fictional pop group The Rutles said: “All you need is cash”. Mega-collectors are well served by auction houses and websites. On the rare occasions one comes up for sale, a demo copy of Frank Wilson’s Northern Soul classic Do I Love You (Indeed I Do), one of only 250, will set you back £25,000+. Jack White picked up the test pressing of Elvis’ first-ever recording, My Happiness, for a cool $300,000 (around £230,000). But the gold medal for indulgence goes to charmless ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli who was the owner of the only copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s 2015 album Once…

They say that you can’t have too much of a good thing, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if that’s really true. While I’d certainly like to have more time, money and a bit more space in which to house my ever growing hi-fi, I’m not so sure the maxim works for everything. Take music for example. While I’ve been in love with it since the age of 13 and my collection of cassettes, CDs and vinyl has continued to grow over time, I’m beginning to realise that maybe, just maybe, it’s possible to have too much. I guess it was the music streaming services Group Test back in HFC 440 that got me thinking seriously about my changing relationship with the way I consume music. Back when I…

As audio enthusiasts, we seem to be obsessed with hi-fi components that claim the lowest distortion figures. So why is it that, as an audiophile friend pointed out to me recently, I love the sound produced by PIO (paper in oil) capacitors when an oil dielectric has such bad soakage? The term ‘soakage’ is used to describe the non-linear behaviour of capacitors resulting from dielectric absorption. This effect on capacitance has been a thorn in the side of circuit designers since the invention of capacitors over 100 years ago. When analogue signals are stored as a voltage in a capacitor, errors in this voltage (and so the analogue signal) are introduced over time as charge ‘soaks’ into and are released from the dielectric material. Soakage for polymer film capacitors is…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH Yoko Ono Warzone CD Chimera John Lennon Imagine: The Ultimate Edition 4x CD/2x Blu-ray Universal AT 85, IT is time to praise Yoko Ono, who tirelessly continues her mission both to promote her late husband’s music and to forge her own singular path as a creative artist with a resolute imagination. Had she not married John Lennon, Ono would surely be better recognised as a major avant-garde artist, with some 20 albums to her name recorded over half a century in a corpus of work that shares a similar fearlessness with the likes of Laurie Anderson, Diamanda Galas, Nico and even Björk. Instead, she became derided as ‘the woman who broke-up the Beatles’ and, following Lennon’s death in 1980, as a 'professional widow'. Such brickbats have been grossly…

Being the latest Quad power amplifier is rather like being a rock superstar’s son. However good or bad it/they may be, there’s no escaping past glorious achievements of the family. And with all that celebration comes the inevitable, “But does he really take after his dad?” That’s what Quad’s 909 power amplifier had to endure upon its launch in 1999, and the chatter never subsequently stopped. It was arguably the last of the classic Quad power amplifiers and yet it still looks and sounds unerringly modern. In order to understand what is one of the best affordable high-end power amplifiers of the past two decades, it’s necessary to go back to 1967 when the Quad 303 was launched. This was Quad’s first ever solid-state consumer hi-fi power amplifier, and won…

A MAINS FILTER that is fitted with a standard 10A IEC C14 input socket, the EVO3 Gemini has two output sockets also rated at 10A. The unit features star earthing internally and a delta filter topology to ensure filtration of both common mode and differential mode mains noise. Common mode noise is interference that appears on the live and neutral mains connections simultaneously and is often caused by external sources, such as RFI, which affects both mains conductors. Differential noise is interference generated between the live wire and the neutral wire and is often created by the connected equipment. The filtered mains is delivered to the two outlets, which are both independently isolated to prevent cross-contamination of any mains noise that is generated by the plugged-in devices. In addition, 13,500A…

PRICE: £1,999 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 0208 2008282 WEB: ASTELLNKERN.COM Following the introduction of its £3,299 SP1000 portable music player last year, Astell&Kern has announced a new flagship in the form of the SP1000M priced at £1,999. Another bold industrial design, the body shape uses the company’s distinctive, irregular split planes to give the SP1000M a similar tactile quality to its upmarket sibling. Smaller and lighter at just over 200g, thanks to an aluminium case and a new 4.1in touchscreen display, the company says the more pocketable player can be controlled with just one hand and that its navigation system uses an improved version of its A&ultima interface. Battery life is expected to give 10 hours of hi-res music playback, while wi-fi connectivity, USB DAC functionality, DLNA networking, digital audio output…

PRICE: £299-£1,099 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 01732 740944 WEB: SEVENOAKSSOUNDANDVISION.CO.UK Reimagining its hi-res streaming and wireless lineup, Bluesound – the Canadian multi-room music system specialist – unveils its Generation 2i (Gen 2i) platform, with extensive hardware and software updates. The comprehensive redesign sees updates in all Gen 2i models that includes dual-band wi-fi, AirPlay 2 support and two-way Bluetooth with aptX HD support. A 3.0 version of its BluOS control app is included in the Node 2i network streamer (£499), Powernode 2i network streamer and amplifier – now with two Toslink/3.5mm optical and analogue inputs – (£799) and Vault 2i network streamer and CD ripper (£1,099). All multi-room speaker systems also include the latest BluOS control app software, and the Pulse 2i (£749), Pulse Mini 2i (£499) and Pulse Flex 2i…

As the name suggests, the Xtreme 2 is designed for outdoor use – something that’s further underlined by its shoulder strap and the fact it can be completely immersed in water. The driver complement is more conventional. Two 20mm tweeters are partnered with a pair of 70mm mid/bass drivers that form the ends of the cylindrical body of the speaker and are supported by a pair of bass radiators. These are powered by two 20W amplifiers, while battery life is quoted up to 15 hours. Bluetooth connectivity uses v4.2, but there is no aptX support. It does have some interesting additional functionality for multiple speaker use (see boxout) and is fitted with a USB output for charging a device and a 3.5mm input. The Xtreme 2 is a rather different…

THE HIGH PERFORMANCE levels on display here will put to bed any notion that Bluetooth is solely a convenience feature as each speaker has something to offer. Klipsch’s The One is the most specialist design in the test and while it’s well made and has an aesthetic that will appeal to many, the limited specification and some sound niggles count against it. By contrast, Tibo’s Sphere 6 offers a great spec at a very competitive price, but the hard sound and narrow stereo separation, fussy controls and limited portability – despite the presence of a carry handle – are less desirable. The JBL Xtreme 2 has a deceptive boom-box look and comes with a shoulder strap, but there’s a lot to like about the way it sounds despite the rugged…

There’s much debate about the direction the UK economy will take post-Brexit, but we’re already seeing a shift to things being made in Britain again. With this in mind, it’s good to discover that this flagship pre/power amplifier combination is made here in Blighty. While we expect Bremont watches and Aston Martin cars to be manufactured here, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that Mitchell & Johnson is turning out this £2,598 amplifier combo from a factory based in the Midlands. As the first two pieces in the company’s new top-of-the range 800 Series, they are entirely designed, engineered and built in the UK and company boss David Johnson says that making its top series here means better control of product quality. Founded in 2012 and with…

We think of music as something benign and beneficial to uplift and inspire the soul, a universal language of mankind not merely there for our entertainment but capable of aesthetic and even spiritual ennoblement. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, E. M. Forster wrote, “is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man” and the notion of music as a “civilising” or “moralising” force dates back at least as far as Plato’s Republic. Music, we like to believe, represents the best in human creativity. It can ease stress and create an island of calm in an ocean of chaos. Sad songs may reflect pain, loss and heartbreak but in doing so help us to cope with our own experience of those emotions. But what music would you play…

When a strange, new piece of music comes booming out of the Rogers and you see faces light up and heads turn, that excitement and buzz is exactly why I got back in to this,” grins George Clift, co-owner of Hot Salvation Records along with his partner, Natalie. The shop opened in autumn 2014 after a summer of pop-up trading. It’s the model of the contemporary record shop – distressed walls, industrial styling, Scandi-chic vinyl browsers, interesting new and second-hand stock and friendly, knowledgeable proprietors with a passion for multi-genre sounds. “Nat and I both come from record store backgrounds, so this was a natural choice for us,” George explains. Kent’s music obsessives were able to breathe a sigh of relief: “Apart from a couple of small, long-standing used shops…

FOLLOWING APPLE’S MOVE to drop the headphone jack from the iPhone and the news that Samsung will follow suit with its flagship Galaxy models in 2019, the portable headphone market has gone wireless crazy. Like many brands, 1More has been quick to respond and takes its £100 wired Triple Driver in-ear headphone design – reviewed in HFC 425 – and adds wire-free connectivity and noise-cancelling for just £20 more than its wired counterpart. While Bluetooth may be a red flag for audiophiles, 1More has included the ability to receive hi-res audio in the form of Sony’s LDAC codec (up to 990kbps) to deliver the best possible quality the short-range wireless connectivity standard can currently offer. It also supports Apple’s AAC codec (up to 250kbps), which – while having a more…

DAMPING PUCKS FULFIL a number of useful functions, such as helping to keep the surface flat during vinyl playback or by adding to the rotation mass to reduce instantaneous speed changes when tracking loud passages of music and limiting record slippage. The DPS claims to go one further by collecting and removing unwanted vibrations during playback. It’s made from Sound Damped Steel (SDS), a special noise-absorbing, non-magnetic stainless steel that converts unwanted vibrational energy into negligible amounts of heat in order to reduce sonic colouration. Weighing 780g it stands 40mm tall by 80mm wide and fits comfortably on top of the record label when placed on the platter. For anyone with lightly sprung sub-plinths where the additional weight could compress the springs to a sub-optimal position, there is a lighter…

NEATLY CONNECTING UP all of your audio equipment has always been a problem. One very elegant solution is the TCI Constrictor power block, which provides connection for up to six components and is fitted with a 2.4m-long Constrictor cable that incorporates RFI filtering. Hi ho silver! The conductors in the cable are made from 8x PTFE-insulated silver-plated, OFC wires and claim a greater cross-sectional area and more silver plating than on the company’s entry-level Emerald Constrictor. The wires are braided in a non-inductive and self-screening construction to provide the RF rejection and filtering wrapped in a polyolefin/polyester outer braid and terminated with the company’s 13A UK True-Plug. There’s a master on/off switch and an EU socket version is also available at the same price. Connecting my audio equipment to the…