Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2020 i Hi-Fi Choice

Hi-Fi Choice employs the most methodical test and measurement regime in the business. Here’s how we do it… STANDMOUNT LOUDSPEAKERS GROUP TEST THE FIRST CONSIDERATION is to get all speakers in a good state of readiness. Some manufacturers supply well-used examples, others are factory fresh and need to be run-in. That’s why plenty of time is spent using them at moderate levels for background music before an IsoTek Test and Burn-In CD is employed. This done, each speaker is listened to back-to-back, in ascending order of price and cross-referenced with the group. This involves a two-stage process to get the positioning right – either on 16 or 24in stands or in the case of the JBL the ones supplied. The designs require varied positioning, with some sat close to the…

A classic two-way design, the SCM19 is rare in this group as it’s a closed box or infinite baffle type. This means the cabinet has no bass port, which reduces sensitivity and/or bass extension. Yet fans of this design argue that it confers time domain benefits, especially a tighter and tauter bass. ATC is famous for making its own drive units, and here has fitted its 25mm SH25-76 tweeter, which is a tough soft dome design with a dual suspension system to suppress resonance. A powerful neodymium magnet is specified, and there’s a 5.5mm rigid alloy waveguide. This crosses over to a long-throw 150mm mid/bass unit with a heavy magnet system and tacky (as in sticky) doped fabric cone. The crossover features metalised polypropylene capacitors, large air-cored inductors and ceramic…

Making its name in the seventies with its (then) highly innovative BC1 and a BBC-licensed version of the LS3/5a compact monitor, Spendor has always been voiced to be subtle yet revealing, rather than machinegun the sound out at you. This might be the company’s entry level standmount, but its appeal hasn’t been diluted one little bit. The A1 is tiny, modestly presented and has no gimmicks. At its heart is a 150mm EP77 ‘engineering polymer’ mid/bass unit and a 22mm fabric dome tweeter. These are set in a compact sealed enclosure that comes in a choice of three real-wood veneer finishes – black ash, natural walnut and dark oak. The cabinets have relatively thin side walls – deliberately so – and are visco-elastic damped. Magnetically attached grilles are available, but…

Back in 1990 when the Stone Roses were laying down the foundations for what would come to be known as Britpop, another upstart – this time from the hi-fi industry – was also producing its own magnum opus. However, this particular legend in the making was not from Manchester, but some 200 miles South in the less glamorous confines of North-West London – Wembley to be precise. Its first ever venture into the world of super integrated amplifiers, Musical Fidelity’s A1000 received a similarly rapturous welcome, and like the Stone Roses’ eponymous album, continues to swap hands today for not insignificant amounts of cash. But while Ian Brown and chums would struggle to follow up their debut long players’ success, for the British hi-fi brand the A1000 was but the…

It’s been an unusually prolific period for Copland. Normally, new products arrive from the small Danish concern at about the same frequency as close passes with comets. In a little over a year, however, we’ve been treated to the sublime CTA 408 valve amp (HFC 450) and now, it’s been joined by the CSA 100 you see before you. This represents a considerable number of firsts for the company and delivers a very compelling specification indeed. Most notably, unlike the Copland amplifiers that we have featured in the magazine before – all valve designs – the CSA 100 is a hybrid offering that cunningly combines a preamp that utilises a valve circuit with a solid-state power amp stage. The actual level of valve involvement in the preamp isn’t that high…

Back in the early seventies, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, my record collection was heavily populated with albums by Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, Emerson Lake & Palmer and the Moody Blues. Prog-rock in all its glory was a many-splendoured thing – multi-part suites, symphonic bombast, complex shifts of tone and tempo, unconventional time signatures, virtuoso keyboard solos, abstract lyrics and abstruse concept albums with fantastical cover art. Essentially a British phenomenon, the musicians behind it believed that popular music was progressing towards what Jon Anderson of Yes rather grandiosely called: “a higher art form”. Then punk came along and prog was trashed. Punk was concise, catchy, working-class and favoured the visceral over virtuosity. Prog was longwinded, complex and middle-class and its adherents were declared to be the enemy. “Oh, I…

CD BMG THE INDEFATIGABLE CHRISSIE Hynde has kept Pretenders going for more than 40 years through turbulent times and the tragic drug-related deaths of two of the original quartet. Her first album with the band since 2016’s Alone is a rambunctious rage against the dying of the light, from the fizzing tribute to punk pioneers The Damned which is the album’s title track, via the distorted throb of Junkie Walk, to the glorious Byrds-like jangle of The Buzz with its tale of how love can turn to addiction, Guitarist James Walbourne – little more than half Hynde’s age – steps up for the first time as her co-writer and keeps the sound fresh while the production by Stephen Street (The Smiths/Blur) is crisp and invigorating. The result is an unvarnished, old-school…

Carmen Berganza, Domingo, Cotrubas, Milnes, London Symphony Orchestra Claudio Abbado 2x CD, 1 Blu-ray Deutsche Grammophon THIS FAMOUS RECORDING was made in 1977, following a run of performances at the Edinburgh Festival. It’s a vivid exciting account, and those who caught it live describe the experience as unforgettable. Teresa Berganza plays Carmen as a strong-willed woman – passionate, fearless and independent – rather than a cheap, slutty vamp. Domingo impresses as the doomed besotted Jose; Milnes swaggers as Escamilio and Cotrubas is a sympathetic Micaela. But the real stars are Abbado and the LSO who bring burning intensity to every note. For Blu-ray Pure Audio, DG has newly remastered the analogue tapes at 24-bit/192kHz (two-channel stereo and 5.1 surround), plus a Dolby Atmos remix at 24-bit/96kHz. The sound is even more…

SOME CABLE MAKERS seem wedded to the oft-cited “if it ain’t broke…” principle. Russ Andrewsdistributed Kimber Cable comes to mind. Its seminal 4PR speaker cable has been around, essentially unchanged, for donkey’s years and seems none the worse for that. Others prefer something closer to a state of creative restlessness and, among those, Merlin Cables freely admits its modus operandi in terms of a fast-track evolution where developments are made on a rolling basis, often unannounced. With this in mind, what we have here is the Mk 6 (or ‘latest’ as Merlin refers to it) edition of its popular Black Widow mains cable. In the company’s hierarchy, it sits one rung above the entry-level Tarantula range and, according to the company, occupies the “sweet spot” in Merlin’s lineup, delivering what…

CD PLAYERS Audiolab 6000CDT PRICE: £380 REVIEWED: HFC 447 The 6000CDT is exceptional at revealing what’s on your discs to deliver a great big soundstage with plenty of detail inside. It can dig down deep into the mix to eke out the different musical strands while dynamically and rhythmically it’s hard to beat at the price. In short, it’s a super, highly affordable audiophile CD transport. Métronome Technologie Le Player 2S PRICE: £5,100 REVIEWED: HFC 449 As good as the sweet treble and rich bass are, what really impresses here is how when fed weaker CDs and impoverished MP3s the delivery remains unflappable and composed as layers of detail are locked into sharp focus. Cambridge Audio AXC35 PRICE: £300 REVIEWED: HFC 454 Something of a budget marvel, you’ll have to…

“Music has been my passion literally since before I could talk, or at least so that has been reported to me by my parents! Because of that, the love of great sound has been a part of my life as far back as I can remember, so it is obvious to anyone who knows me why I was drawn to the audio industry,” notes SVS head honcho Gary Yacoubian who started the Ohio-based company with some audio engineer buddies in the late nineties. Since then the stated aim has always been to reflect a fusion of the best available technology, expert engineering, exhaustive real-world testing and the SVS team’s unrelenting passion for audio excellence. A common design principle that’s run through the entire subwoofer range from day one has centred…

THERE WAS A time when small loudspeakers were the things you bought when you couldn’t afford large ones. Before the seventies, no serious audiophile would even go near such a thing. But as hi-fi became a more mainstream pursuit, it had to adapt to live with people’s changing lifestyles, and so began the shift to more diminutive dimensions. The iconic BBC LS3/5a did much of the groundwork; this was a seriously small speaker designed for nearfield monitoring, but had a revelatory purity of tone. It never sold in large numbers, but conferred audiophile respectability on little cabinets. At last, discerning listeners with domestic space issues felt confident that it was possible to get decent results from small designs. Come the eighties and the arrival of the so-called ‘standmount’ speaker breed…

Stretching the standmount definition to its outer limits, the massive 4312G is a direct descendant of the seventies 4310 and 4311 monitors, harking back to when big speakers like Linn’s Isobarik and Yamaha’s NS-1000M sat on low stands. A large internal cabinet volume and bass reflex loading makes for high efficiency – in this case 90dB. Its large 300mm paper coned bass driver shifts large amounts of air with more ease than a smaller driver, and the three-way design sports a 125mm polymer coated, pulp coned midrange driver and 25mm magnesium/aluminium dome tweeter. This comes in a mirror image configuration, so one speaker has the tweeter to the left of the mid driver and the other to the right. Also old school are the treble and midrange level pads, that…

Sporting a gloss black cabinet that’s been crafted into an unusual and interesting wedge shape, the Ultra has a single 25mm aluminium dome tweeter and 165mm composite glass fibre mid/bass driver bolted flush to its front baffle. Meanwhile, its SoundMatch two-way crossover employs premiumgrade capacitors, air-core inductors and heavy-trace printed circuit boards. The cabinet’s use of non-parallel panels is said to reduce standing waves. It’s an attractive look and comes in a choice of white or black piano gloss or real black oak veneer. Our black review sample seems extremely well finished at the price, although the cabinet is a little more resonant than most when you rap it with your knuckle. Still, it’s a neat design – even down to the classy looking grille. The bass reflex port around…

When Chord Electronics’ Poly streamer (HFC 431) arrived a couple of years ago, it hooked up to the company’s entry-level Mojo portable DAC/headphone amp (HFC 461) to create arguably the best mobile music maker that money could buy. It really was that good, and all the more impressive because it was just about portable. You could squeeze it into a large pocket or small manbag, and get music on the move that sounded like nothing else around. Since then, it’s been inevitable that Mojo’s bigger brother – the Hugo 2 (HFC 428) – would get the same treatment. So here it is, the matching 2go streamer. A custom fit for the popular £1,800 DAC, it is also said to work with other digital converters if you add Chord’s 2yu interface…

Recent months have been tough for those looking for a new tonearm, with both SME and Jelco calling time on their ranges. Happily, some interesting options remain in the market including this more affordable offering from Vertere. Of course, this is a relative term, but with its Reference arm costing more than £30,000, £1,950 seems reasonable. The SG-1 is a unipivot-style tonearm in so much as there are no captive bearings, but it’s different to a classic unipivot. There are three silicon nitride balls placed equidistantly around a stainless steel pivot so the armtube moves and tracks in a more reassuring way. The tube is made from roll-wrapped carbon fibre and finished with an aluminium headshell that is mated to it via an alloy end plug. The headshell has plenty…

New Sumiko cartridges don’t happen terribly often so the company deciding to release both a new range of MM and MC designs at the same time is very literally a once in a decade event. The Songbird is the more affordable of two new designs and sits between the long-running Blue Point Evo III (HFC 461) and Blackbird, which continue as before. The Songbird shares a common design with the more expensive Starling in the form of an open, ‘skeletal’-type cartridge with a thick upper section of CNC machined aluminium that serves as the mounting for both the generator and stylus below, and the fixing point for the tonearm above via threaded inserts. The generator coils and wiring are copper and the cantilever is made from aluminium. Sumiko has deliberately…

Back in 1993, one of the world’s most famous musicians announced he would no longer go by his own name, but rather by a “Love Symbol”, which was a mash-up of the gender signs for man and woman. Then he did something even more controversial. He walked onstage with the word “SLAVE” crudely scrawled across his cheek. The superstar we’re talking about is Prince and his beef was that the way his record company treated him was paramount to slavery. They owned his name, his back catalogue and dictated his release schedule. Cut to 2 June 2020 and Blackout Tuesday, a music industry-endorsed initiative to go silent for a day following the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Promoted as “an urgent step of action to provoke accountability and…

Launched in 2008 as a way of encouraging collectors to frequent their local independent record shops, Record Store Day prides itself on offering rare, limited-edition releases which will not only tickle the fancy of uber-fans but, like works of art in other fields, also accrue value as investments. These are available only from participating stores who host their own events and, although it’s an international celebration, some are restricted to exclusive territories. This year’s RSD was initially set for Saturday, 18 April, then postponed to 20 June due to the Coronavirus pandemic. When it became obvious that the rearranged date wouldn’t work out, the organisation decided to spread it over three separate days to accommodate social distancing measures and aid stores who have suffered losses of revenue during lockdown. So…

The Beatles of electronic dance music”. It’s a colossal claim, for sure, yet it is impossible to imagine what popular music might sound like today without Kraftwerk. On albums such as Autobahn, Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine and Computer World, the group paved the way for synth-pop, hip-hop and the electronic dance beats of house and techno. Over the years their music has been sampled by artists as diverse as Afrika Bambaataa, Dr Dre, The Chemical Brothers, Justin Timberlake and The KLF. Madonna borrowed liberally from them and even Coldplay lifted elements of the group’s hit Computer Love. David Bowie was not so much a fan as a disciple. V-2 Schneider on his 1977 album Heroes was a tribute to the enigmatic Kraftwerk founder, although the reference to Nazi rocket bombs…

WITH ALL THE tiny electrical signals coming from a phono cartridge, it’s extremely important to use a top-quality interconnect between the tonearm and phono stage. The Heimdall 2 Tonearm Cable+ is designed to meet the needs of the discerning audiophile and incorporates a number of features that help to transfer the signal with negligible deterioration and interference. Named after a Norse god, the cable is part of the same range as the Heimdall 2 headphone cable (HFC 440) and shares a number of features. It is designed to be very low noise with a rapid transmission speed and a high bandwidth, achieved using a twisted pair design – employing Nordost’s proprietary Micro Mono-Filament technology and individual shielding of the internal wires. Norse code The cable also has a separately shielded,…

PRICE: £850,000 AVAILABLE: Q4, 2020 CONTACT: 0208 9713909 WEB: ABSOLUTESOUNDS.COM The 2m-tall, 454kg Magico M9 claims to be a “no-holds-barred assault in the limits of dynamic loudspeaker design,” and boasts that it’s the world’s first four-way, six-driver floorstanding speaker system enclosure to combine inner and outer skins of carbon fibre with an aluminium honeycomb core. It also reckons it’s the first system ever to employ a 28mm beryllium-diamond dome tweeter. This is combined with a 152mm midrange, two 280mm mid/bass and a pair of 380mm bass drivers utilising Magico’s Analog Crossover (MXO), which features Linkwitz-Riley filters to deliver 24dB per octave slopes at the crossover frequency of 120Hz. A pair of Magico M9s will require two stereo or four monoaural amplifiers in order to function and you will most likely…

Think of brands famous for small loudspeakers, and Acoustic Energy is bound to ping up on the radar. Its iconic AE1 from the late eighties pretty much made the case for the existence of the breed. The AE500 has little in common with this icon in technical terms, aside from its clear philosophical approach. Despite being the joint least expensive product here – along with the SVS Ultra Bookshelf – this is one of the most technologically interesting due to its use of carbon fibre in both the mid/bass driver cone and the dome tweeter. This means big weight savings – the former is only half as heavy as its predecessor. The AE500 mates a small 125mm mid/bass to a 25mm tweeter, via a simple crossover with good-quality components. The…

Standing out from the crowd thanks to its ribbon tweeter, the Ministra also has isobaric bass loading – not that you’d know either of these things from looking at it. Along with the AE and Spendor, this is one of the smallest speakers in the pack, and marries a 50mm true-ribbon tweeter to two 134mm treated paper cone mid/bass drivers – the second sat behind the first in the rugged cabinet that sports a tiny reflex port around the back. You might think this odd in an isobaric arrangement, but its designer sees it less of a port and more of a “controlled leak”. The enclosure is 18mm-thick MDF with real wood veneer or paint finishes; natural internal bracing comes from the mounting of the isobaric bass unit inside. The…

STANDMOUNT ROUNDUPS ARE getting ever harder to write as there are few bad loudspeakers. This means it’s much more down to taste and/or ability to work in real-world conditions than anything else. So it proves here with each option tailored to fulfil a particular role that varies from model to model. In sixth place the Ultra Bookshelf is a great buy and comes close to the top of the group for value. It gives a spacious, warm, engaging sound that’s ideal for inexpensive amplifiers. Only a lack of midband detail and grip let it down in this company. JBL’s 4312G is next, but heavy metal fans would put it top. It’s a headbanger of a speaker, with a huge, loud and highly enjoyable sound. High efficiency makes it a natural…

Loudspeaker manufacturers with a product lineup that runs from three to six figures are few and far between. Focal is one such example, however, and after a few years where the bulk of its new arrivals have been at the more premium end of the scale, the focus has shifted back to being affordable. The Chora series is the second tier of the company’s range and comprises two floorstanders and the 806 standmount you see here. It follows the basic pattern of Focal standmount speakers. It’s a relatively large, two-way design that’s front ported and single wired. While the formula hasn’t significantly changed, the ingredients have. The 25mm aluminium and magnesium tweeter has been seen before, but it now uses a surround made from a material called poron which has…

I suspect that for a few people who have turned the page to be confronted by a portable audio system, the idea of featuring equipment designed for use on the move after a sustained period of being invited to sit around going nowhere might seem a little perverse. Surely, this would have been the point where a veritable monolith, a no-holdsbarred tribute to the high-end might make more sense? My response is to invite you to hear me out on this one. For many of us, the reality of our enforced period of sitting around at home hasn’t completely matched expectations, particularly if your setup is in your living room and you share your space with others. Sure, you have had more time to listen to your system, but if…

Last year things began to take a turn for the worse in my listening room – which is also our sitting room – when I became increasingly troubled that the bass response was not as tight and well controlled as it had been in the past. I decided to look into it, starting with my transmission line loudspeakers. Had the long-haired wool that had been placed in strategic positions within the transmission line become compacted over the years? After some investigation, including changing their position in the room, I decided that the foam fitted to the exit port had become hard and set about replacing it. It didn’t make any difference, and even removing it to increase the dampening didn’t improve things significantly. A few months later I was watching…

CD Reprise WHY, YOU MAY ask, is a record made 45 years ago the album of the month? Better late than never is perhaps the best answer. Homegrown was due to be released in 1975 as the follow-up to Young’s On The Beach before he scrapped it and put out Tonight’s The Night instead. The release was never rescheduled and over the years has become one of the most celebrated ‘lost’ albums of all time. Now we finally can hear it, Homegrown lives up to its legendary status as a mislaid classic, up there with Young’s very best. Nothing he has recorded in at least the last 25 years comes even close. At the time of its recording, he was feeling uncomfortable with the rock star life of fame and fortune…

AIMED AT USERS looking for a good-value amplifier, the MX3 comprises a USB DAC, Bluetooth receiver, integrated 38W Class D stereo amplifier and headphone stage. It is fitted with USB, optical, and coaxial digital inputs in addition to the Bluetooth capability, has a 3.5mm jack headphone out, loudspeaker banana connectors and a dedicated RCA for a subwoofer. A USB cable is supplied, together with a Bluetooth aerial, remote control handset and 24V power supply. The only minor niggle is that a UK ‘figure-of-eight’ mains cable is not bundled in the box. Chip off the old block It supports up to 32-bit/96kHz through its USB input and 24-bit/192kHz via its optical or coaxial inputs, thanks to Texas Instruments PCM5120A DAC chip with integrated high-performance audio PLL designed to reduce the system’s…