Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2019 - January 2020 i Sound + Image

In my position, clearly you’d expect me to love technology. I spend my working life and much of my leisure time immersed in the latest and greatest audio and AV tech. I investigate the bits I don’t understand to see if it’s marketing rubbish or something genuinely new and exciting, and I love it when an innovation comes along which makes life easier, or more entertaining, or just plain fun. Mind you, sometimes I’m quite annoyed by technology, notably when it doesn’t work, or it’s Sunday and I’m on a deadline and Alexa won’t connect to this networked device (it’s usually Alexa), or something doesn’t appear on the network where it should. And it nearly always is networking which doesn’t work, or which is at least hardest to fix, because…

For years we’ve been tolerating soundbars as a second-rate solution offering convenience but neither the best value nor best quality of sound. The last few years have changed our minds. This year we have three soundbar winners, all of which impressed us by delivering not only better sound for TV and movies than built-in TV speakers can hope to deliver, but also the fulfillment of their promise to deliver music in the home as well. This is important, as you’re unlikely to have a second music-only system in your living room, so a soundbar really must deliver both. This lowest category gives manufacturers the least funds with which to achieve this, which makes Yamaha’s MusicCast BAR 400 all the more remarkable. Yamaha was, of course, one of the earliest and…

Projectors weren’t as fast out of the gate with 4K UHD resolution as were televisions, but with the release of BenQ’s W2700 they’ve well and truly caught up. This is a remarkable performer given its attractive $2599 price (it recently went up $100) for pixel-accurate UHD resolution, delivered here using Texas Instruments’ 0.47-inch DLP micromirror device which delivers four flashes of 1080 resolution per frame to create the full pixel count. But that’s just the start: the lens assembly is a ‘Precision 10-Element 8-Group All Glass 4K-optimised Lens Array’ — no cheap plastic there — while there are two rear-firing speakers at the back so for casual use you don’t need to connect a larger sound system. There are two HDMI inputs, both are rated at full UltraHD, supporting 2160p/60…

This award partly recognises some neat technology, but is also a lesson that the ceiling for projectors isn’t a $9999 projector or even an $18k native 4Ker. If you have the space and you want the quality and you’ve got the money, you can go above and investigate the very heights of projectordom, which is where you’ll find Barco. Barco has a 53% market share among the 90% of real commercial cinemas that now use digital DLP projection, with its projectors in 85,000 cinema screens worldwide. Their home designs leverage that commercial expertise. What initially impressed us here was this projector’s one-chip combination of auto-detection of aspect ratio and HDR, no user switching required. The Bragi has a motorised DCI/P3 filter for HDR performance, meaning that the projector will support…

At $5199, this Denon is just one rung down from the company’s flagship integrated AV receiver, lacking little other than the final two of the flagship’s 13 amplification channels. But with 11 included, the AVC-X6500H delivers a 7.1.4-channel movie system out of the box, so that’s four height channels in addition to seven ‘on the floor’. Yet it’s also highly configurable, so if your system has fewer channels you can reallocate the power for bi-amping and multizone-driving capabilities. It can run two secondary zones, with a dedicated HDMI output for one of them. Those 11 powered channels come with 140W each into eight ohms at less than 0.05% THD. It has eight HDMI inputs, and does an excellent job on both, especially deinterlacing. It also comes with Auro-3D included in…

This award is inside our home cinema categories, but we like to emphasise that subwoofers also have a place in music, certainly to support standmount speakers, but even with larger speakers, where a subwoofer can deliver a sense of size and reality — hi-fi, in other words — while allowing the main speakers to operate more effectively higher up. And Dynaudio’s Sub 6 is a little miracle in both regards. Surprisingly small, yet shockingly heavy, it is designed to be operated close to a wall, so that its two absolutely massively-constructed 240mm diameter bass drivers get acoustic assist not only from the floor, but also from the wall. The equally enormous 500W of inbuilt power is split between the opposed drivers. Those drivers were built specifically for subwoofer use by…

So turntable lovers, do you like it massive? Or do you like it stiff? If you’re a stiffie kinda person, you’ll love our top turntable winner for 2020, Rega’s Planar 8. It has a skeletal plinth which does all that its creator believes is required — to provide a platform to support the drive motor, the main platter bearing and the tonearm. So the first time you lift a Rega Planar 8 (without its triple laminate glass platter) you’ll likely be shocked by how little its sandwich of high-tech aerospace foam and high-pressure laminate weighs. It’s further lightened by Rega’s 24V a.c. Neo power supply being separate. Meanwhile Rega’s own RB880 arm gets an improved pre-loaded vertical bearing assembly constructed using aluminium and stainless-steel components. The result is superb vinyl…

Before dismissing CD players as ‘old hat’, examine the new breed, which combines silver disc playing with DAC inputs and additional streaming functions. Besides, CD players deliver CD-quality music (oddly enough) — better than Bluetooth, better than Spotify. So here the $1695 Arcam CDS50 can play not only digital music stored on CD, but also SACD (higher quality discs with DSD-format high-res audio), as well as digital music stored on CD-R and CD-RW in FLAC, WAV, AAC, AIFF, OGG, MP3 or WMA formats. And in case you wish to use an external converter, the CDS50 also provides S/PDIF and optical digital outputs. And it can play back music files you have stored on USB, on a hard drive, on your home computer network, or streamed through your network from the…

N aim is a company that has maintained its core values while reinventing itself as hi-fi has changed through the decades. Once a maverick analogue amplifier company, Naim was quick to spot not only the trend of streaming but its potential advantages over disc-based replay. When digital music was all about downloading files, Naim was perfecting hard-drive storage and the art of digital signal handling. Now so many people simply stream from online music services, they’ve created some of the planet’s highest-quality streamers. Top of the heap is the ND 555, $40k’s worth of streamer, heavier than most amplifiers, and with a separate offboard power supply. Here at $9750 we have the new NDX 2, termed a network player, but also handling a range of digital inputs. There are two…

A Krell integrated amplifier that doesn’t have a five-figure price tag attached? And with a five-year warranty? And it’s still made entirely in the USA? And it sounds just like a Krell should? Yes it’s true, and as you’d expect from the US high-end company from New Haven, Connecticut, the company’s ‘most affordable amplifier yet’ is powerful, rated at 300W per channel into 4 ohms and 150W into 8 ohms, and it comes with Krell’s famous iBias and XD circuitry. As a ‘standard’ integrated analogue-only amplifier at $9999 it has five analogue line-level inputs: two balanced (XLR) and three unbalanced (RCA). But there is an optional digital module, which adds $2000 whether at purchase or upgraded later, enabling the USB-A connector on the front panel (which otherwise doesn’t work at…

The FLS10 integrated amplifier from Italian high-end hi-fi manufacturer Audia Flight is a fine example of how the company offers a base model along with modules to complete the amplifier you need. As ‘standard’ (at $16,500) it has five analogue inputs, three unbalanced and two balanced, and also both balanced and unbalanced line-level outputs. Then there are four modules available: a MM/MC phono module ($1900); a Streamer module; two line-level modules that add either two unbalanced inputs or two balanced inputs, and a DAC module ($3500) that has an asynchronous USB input (up to 32-bit/768kHz PCM and up to DSD5.6) and five digital inputs (two coaxial, one optical, one AES/EBU, and one dedicated to the output from an Audia Flight SACD transport). All of which makes it nicely versatile, but…

Yamaha’s flagship 5000 Series has been released in reverse order, the iconic NS-5000 speakers first, followed by the C-5000 preamplifier and M-5000 power amplifier here at $12,999 each, and the final element just recently arriving, the GT-5000 turntable. It is, notably, a fully analogue system, with no digital source in the 5000 Series, and no DAC nor any digital inputs in the C-5000 pre-amplifier. This was a decision based on circuit design, not wishing to compromise the symmetrical ‘folding book’ design of both amplifiers, which mirror each channel precisely, a toroidal transformer dedicated to each of the stereo channels delivering optimal separation. But these are also amplifiers that can deliver results outside of the 5000 system. We came to appreciate their merits both with our usual sources and speakers and…

Krix is well known to Australian music lovers for the many fine loudspeakers for the home it has produced over its 45 years. And many would know that only a few years after opening, Krix started making speakers for cinemas. It still does both. And while clearly the Krix MX-5 modular speaker system is aimed at the home, in many ways it’s also a merging of those two lines of speakers — into something quite special. It follows on from the larger and highly successful MX-20 and MX-30 systems; these larger systems won a Sound+Image award for two years running. Now Krix has shrunk the concept down, so that the MX-5 is suitable for small to mid-size rooms, Krix specifying rooms of 15m2 to 25m2 with a minimum screen of…

This Melbourne home theatre delivered one of the most immersive presentations we’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing, and it’s a project which has evolved over a number of upgrades. The final result is very much the combination of powerful yet clean audio together with a huge and immersive screen presentation. The audio system was created by Studio Connections Australia, comprising Genelec monitor speakers with offboard amplification residing in separate ventilated cabinets accessible outside the cinema room. Meanwhile Visual Fidelity, distributors of Stewart Filmscreen here in Australia, collaborated in delivering the 212-inch Cinecurve Jumbo screen filled with the native 4K brilliance of a high-end Sony projector fitted with an automated Schneider Kreuznach anamorphic lens. In this room from the main seating positions the screen occupies a full 60 degrees of…

The LSX was launched by KEF as “hi-fi for the 95%” — by which it meant hi-fi which is easy to use, easy to connect, and yet which still delivers a high-quality level of sound. Its other slogan at launch was “Give your music the space it deserves,” referencing one of our pet peeves with wireless speakers, which is that so many are either actually mono or are effectively mono because a single box can only create a limited spread. The $1895 KEF LSX is a proper stereo pair of hi-fi speakers (this is a Wireless Speakers of the Year Award, plural). You get one ‘master’ speaker and one slave, each containing its own amplification and one of KEF’s point-source Uni-Q drivers, which here places a 19mm aluminium-dome tweeter within…

Last year Q Acoustics’ 3050i from this range took our award for 2019 Floorstanding Speaker of the Year under $2000. But this series also includes two ‘bookshelf’ models, the 3010i and the 3020i, which we heard separately this year, and the smaller of the two proved itself a particular bargain at $499. They stand 253mm tall and are available in four finishes: Graphite Grey, English Walnut, Carbon Black or Arctic White. The same finish is on the baffle and rear, although this frontage will commonly be hidden by magnetically-secured cloth grilles, along with the decoupled 22mm soft-dome unit and 100mm bass/midrange. The cabinets use Q Acoustics’ ‘P2P’ bracing to keep things solid and reduce resonances. If you’ve been interested in Q Acoustics speakers for a while, one of the changes…

This award was one of the last to be decided by the judges, and was decided in good old speaker comparator style, switching between the rivals — and these Charios walked it, outperforming in both tone and detail several more expensive speakers. If the brand is new to you, it’s not new to Italy, where Chario was founded in Milan back in 1975, and may be the only audio company in the world that has been operating for more than 40 years with the same audio engineer, Mario Murace, since the beginning. The $2599 Delphinus is part of the MkII Constellation series, which includes also the Constellation Lynx ($1999), Cygnus ($4499) and Pegasus ($5499) models, all of which are now available in Australia, as is the Aviator series which tops…

Our Judges’ Choice Award is not presented every year, being reserved for something special, or something unusual. Linn’s Selekt DSM qualifies on both counts, and besides, we couldn’t decide which other category it would most appropriately fit. That’s because you can buy it as just a streamer (well, not just a streamer, a very fine streamer), or you can choose to include amplifiers in it, which would create a sort of smart amplifier, and you can also upgrade the DACs, have it optimise your speakers, your room, your music... All this in one neat piece of hi-fi, from Scotland’s Linn, which originally rode to fame on the platter of the Linn Sondek turntable, with which Linn pretty much initiated the ‘source-first’ philosophy of hi-fi established in the 1970s (the now-obvious…

Welcome to our equivalent of a ‘Greatest Hits’ compilation — the products that have most impressed us during a full year of reviewing, not only in Sound+Image magazine but in Australian Hi-Fi, Audio Esoterica and Best Buys & AV — plus on AVHub.com.au and a rush of late arrivals as we approach the Awards cut-off date for judging. And we are celebrating our 30th year of Sound+Image Awards. They have been held every year since 1989, delivering the winners in this, our Special Awards Issue, with healing crystal trophies presented to the winners at a Gala Dinner, a formal but informal evening held this year at the Novotel Sydney Central, also to be the venue for our awards sponsor this year, the HIFI2020 Show taking place in Sydney from 3-5…

There may be a strong emphasis on movie streaming these days, but a 4K Blu-ray will guarantee you the best image quality (compared with streams that compress according to bandwidth), plus you have the joys of permanent ownership, and all that bonus content that rarely makes it online. What’s more, when UHD (4K) Blu-ray arrived a few years back it was a delight to find that the entry-level players were priced far cheaper than expected — not the $1000 of early Blu-ray and DVD players but down in the low hundreds. The first to market in most countries was Samsung, but it surprised us by abandoning the genre last year; thankfully its Korean rival LG can still deliver this fine $399 player, the LG UBK90. Physically it’s plain-looking, but in…

Samsung’s soundbars went through a transformation a few years back after the company’s investment in a Californian ‘audio lab’ set up by Allan Devantier, formerly of Harman, and a team including other former colleagues from Harman — ironically only a few years before Samsung decided to buy the whole of Harman for $8bn cash. By using these new world-class measuring facilities combined with some neat new tech, notably a form of software amplifier-distortion cancellation developed by the team’s Pascal Brunet, Samsung has delivered a series of remarkable soundbars, with the Q90R being the latest iteration of the top-level system of soundbar, subwoofer and wireless rear speakers. In one way, this expanded system is a contradiction. Soundbars became popular because they deliver TV audio without the multiple speakers of a 5.1…

Our Highly Commended awards recognise products that might not be for everyone, but may be perfect for some. We reckon that’s the case with Epson’s EF-100, a mini-sized projector that connects wirelessly to your network and has small speakers at the rear together with enough space to plug a media stick — Chromecast or Fire Stick etc. — into the rear HDMI input, with USB power for the device also provided. Then all it needs is mains power to deliver an image up to 150-inch diagonal. It uses Epson’s 3LCD projection technology and a long-life (20,000-hour) laser light source to deliver a quoted 2000 lumens output, bright enough to project even against a fair level of ambient light — the larger the image, the less bright it will be, but…

This lowest-priced AV receiver category has been won many times by one of Marantz’s slimline receivers. But the judges noted that this year we had reviewed this full-sized AV receiver from Marantz’s sister company Denon, and that at $1699 it offered a whole lot more in the way of power and versatility than the mild limiatations imposed on those smaller units. After some extended discussion the gong was awarded to the AVR-X2600H. This is a seven-channel model rated at a solid 95W from each channel into 8 ohms, full bandwidth, low distortion. It supports all the latest audio standards. It supports advanced network functionality with support for Apple AirPlay 2, DLNA, and the HEOS wireless multiroom platform, with all that HEOS provides in the way of streaming and sharing. It…

In a Gallic collaboration with StormAudio, speaker company Focal has diversified into amplification, releasing this all-in-one processor and multichannel amplifier delivering 16 channels. It thrilled us with both its power and finesse, delivering $32k’s worth of thrills. Note that it processes 16 signal channels, but has only 12 amplifier channels. The other four outputs are available as balanced XLR signals, so can be powered by separate amps or used with active speakers. Via a browser control interface, the options for audio configuration and control are almost limitless. Note also that the Focal Astral 16 is entirely an audio device — it does no video processing it has no on-screen display. All it does with video is pass it through from its seven HDMI inputs to the two HDMI outputs.All these…

In a tricky category, where we’d normally advise spending a little more to enjoy the improved reproduction of a pricer turntable, Sony’s LX301BT came along to make our judges’ lives easier. Sony returned to turntables a few years ago, bringing back some older engineers to reboot their revival of vinyl, but those decks were a little further up the price scale — the LX301BT has an RRP of just $299. But if you were thinking bare-bones simplicity, think again. It’s automatic, lifting the needle at the end of the side and returning the arm to its support cradle. It has a phono stage built in so you can choose whether to use an external phono stage or plug it straight into an amp. You could, however, plug it nowhere other…

This unassuming little box, just 12cm wide and 3cm high, can have a profound effect on your hi-fi sound. It’s an offboard phono stage, a little amplifier dedicated to the output of a turntable, raising the tiny signals generated by the stylus and cartridge up to the levels required for the line-level inputs of an amplifier. There’s a good argument for the quality of your phono amp being as important to the sound, even more important, than the turntable itself. As turntable manufacturer Pro-Ject’s ‘Best Buy’ phono stage, the little S2 looks exceedingly simple, with just one button on the front to power it up and down, while at the rear it has the input sockets for the turntable, including grounding screw, plus the output sockets to your amplifier. There…

The Marantz SA-KI Ruby SACD player builds on a long lineage of CD playback technology developed by Marantz, because this famous manufacturer (65 years in the audio business and counting!) built one of the very first CD players, the Marantz CD-63, way back in 1982. The person responsible for the CD-63 was none other than one of Marantz’s top design engineers, Ken Ishiwata, who spent 40 years at the company overseeing the production of Limited Edition and Special Edition models, and of course the Ken Ishiwata Signature models, of which this new SA-KI Ruby is the latest incarnation, and the last. We received the news of his passing while we were on press with this magazine, a shock compounding his departure from Marantz earlier in the year at the instigation…

It’s a DAC, it’s a headphone amp, it could be a preamplifier if it fits your system requirements. And however you look at it, we reckon it’s a bargain, Pro-Ject’s dinky little box is a high-performance unit, and versatile too. In fact, the Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital was designed by John Westlake, former designer of products for Cambridge Audio, Peachtree Audio and Audiolab. It seems that this was largely a labour of love for him, with Pro-Ject taking this device the rest of the way to production. There are three inputs: USB Type-B to connect to a computer for USB audio playback, plus coaxial and optical digital audio inputs. Analogue output is via standard RCA sockets. Via the optical or coaxial inputs, the unit supports PCM digital signals up…

S tax is famed for its electrostatic headphones designs, and for the gloriousness of their electrostatic sound. Though, of course, electrostatic designs do come with certain idiosyncrasies. First, they cannot be driven by conventional headphone amplifiers, which is why this winning $1279 SRS-3100 is supplied as a system — the SR-L300 ‘earspeakers’ (as Stax prefers to call its headphones) and the SRM-252S ‘driver unit’, which is effectively a partnering headphone amplifier. This delivers the high voltages required to drive electrostatic earspeakers, which operate differently to conventional dynamic designs. Here the driver consists of a very thin membrane diaphragm suspended between two grids, called stators. The fluctuating voltage of the audio signal is turned into high voltage charges applied to the stators, while the diaphram itself has a high bias voltage…

When the judges sat down to mull over the list for potential amplifiers of the year, smart amplifiers dominated the lower price categories. And our first two amp winners have even more in common, both coming from Lenbrook in Canada, owners of NAD and Bluesound. Overleaf you’ll find NAD’s M10, a $3999 ‘Masters’ series NAD amplifier which incorporates the BluOS wireless multiroom platform. Here, at $1549, we celebrate the Powernode 2i, Bluesound’s own smart amplifier — which incorporates NAD-derived amplification. Clearly the combination of high-quality amplification with the BluOS wireless streaming platform is a successful one! Bluesound’s ‘2i’ products take another step beyond the major redesign of version 2, re-engineered inside for improvements in DAC and audio quality (and take care with that ‘i’ when shopping, as the previous ‘2’…

Having chosen the SA-KI Ruby as our CD Player of the Year over $5000, it would seem churlish not to recognise the amplifier which is its natural pair, both bearing the ‘KI’ for Ken Ishiwata, and the ‘Ruby’ to celebrate his 40 years with Marantz, complete with faux ruby inlaid into the top bezels, alongside the laser-etched facsimile of Ishiwata’s signature, on what we now know, following the sad news of his passing, to be his swan song. The Marantz PM-KI Ruby integrated amplifier incorporates almost all the proprietary technologies that Marantz has been building into its most-recently designed amplifiers, with the very highest-spec version of the company’s HDAMs (Hyper Dynamic Amplifier Module), the HDAM3, but with the output amplifier stage using the Ncore modules designed by Class-D specialist Hypex,…

The joys of voice control are great when they work, but often they don’t, especially when you’re using a separate Amazon or Google device to send commands to your hi-fi. They are far better, however, at controlling themselves — ask an Amazon Echo Dot to play music and change volume, and it’ll do so quickly and easily. So the VAIL amp is a clever idea, putting the actual Echo Dot into a casing, connecting its minijack output to a small built-in amplifier, which then powers a pair of speakers. The VAIL Amp fits into the wall, so no cables are visible. A wall-plate is provided for plug-in power, an additional source input, and a subwoofer output, but at a minimum you could do without that, and just run the required…

In an age when many home cinemas are variations on a templated theme, here’s a project which is utterly unique, bespoke to a particular set of requirements, notably the incorporaton of both a high-end stereo system and a complete Atmos home cinema in the same space. Its designer, acoustic engineer Ian McGrath from Abacus Acoustic, describes it as “a high-wire act in design engineering terms, to have such a high-end stereo monitoring room and cinema in the one space. But I’ve worked in both those worlds: I’ve been delivering film preview and recording studios for some time now. So I know that to achieve that there are rules of the game — in the room acoustics, how the speakers fire, how accurate and natural the audio and video system, even…

Wavetrain Cinemas is no stranger to our installation awards, their room designs reliably delivering acoustic oases where low noise floors and carefully applied treatment allow dynamic reference levels of audio together with best-in-class image projection — and yet all of which, in the final event, just disappears behind the thrill of a full-blown home cinema experience. And in this case, the experience is even more moving than usual, because five of the seven seats are equipped with D-BOX motion systems, described by their Canadian manufacturer as “the best non-distracting cinematic motion available in the world”, thereby carefully distinguishing them from the stomach-churning rollercoaster ride delivered by some rival systems. D-BOX chairs are actuated by codes which play in precise synchronisation with the movies, aiming to create an extra dimension of…

Naim is flying high at present, with ear-smacking products at every level from its uberhigh-end Statement amplifiers through its latest separates (see the NDX 2 streamer on p48), its all-in-one Uniti streaming amplifiers, and here, at the populist end of the hi-fi scale, with a second generation of the hugely successful Mu-so wireless speaker. At first glance there’s not too much aesthetically revised: the aluminium casing has a refresh in burnished grey; the standard grille with its weird bulge remains black, but there are new replacement grille colour options of olive green, peacock blue, and a ‘terracotta’ kind of copper-orange (pictured). But inside, Naim claims that no fewer than 95% of the internal components are either entirely new for this launch or had already changed in production-run alterations since the…

Richter is a uniquely Australian company, and is in the process of rolling out Series 6 of its successful speaker range. The new Thor subwoofer arrived last year to scoop our Sound+Image Subwoofer award, followed this year by the Merlin stand-mounters and most recently the floorstanding Wizards. Richter’s owner, Brian Rodgers, wanted the Merlin 6 to be more relevant to Australian consumers, and so with award-winning designer Martin Gosnell Richter researched for two years finding out how to do just that. One example was discovering a surprising number of people shelf-mounting their speakers. Then identifying the bestselling shelving in Australia as being the Ikea Kallax, with its 33cm cube-shaped shelves, the Merlin S6 was made to measure 325 × 219 × 320mm. Guess where it will fit very neatly? They…

Dynaudio’s Evoke 50 speakers sound way bigger than they have any right to sound, given the relatively small size of the speaker enclosures, which hit the slimline aesthetic and the ‘quality furniture’ look that fits into a modern décor. But it’s not just that the $7499 Dynaudio Evoke 50s have a big sound… it’s that they sound fabulous, with super-extended, effortless bass, superb midrange and transparent highs, along with stereo imaging to die for. There are very, very few loudspeaker manufacturers in the world that make all the drivers used in their speakers, but Dynaudio is one of them, boasting also the largest and best-equipped anechoic speaker measurement chamber in the world. The Evoke 50 gains from developments for even higher levels of speakers — the ‘Hexis’ geometry developed specially…

In this category we’re looking for both quality and value in a television, and we certainly found it in this 4K Quantum Dot TV which has an Android TV smart interface and so Google Assistant too, plus a useful Onkyo-branded soundbar built-in — all at the perfect price. Should the name of TCL still be new to you, it’s most definitely time you became acquainted with the brand. It has ranked third or fourth in size for TV manufacturers worldwide for a number of years (above the likes of Panasonic and Sony), and recently beat out Samsung to become the biggest-selling brand in the US. Nor is it new, having been around nearly 40 years, with 20 manufacturing units and 35 R&D centres through which it is one of China’s…

This $1999 disc player takes over where Oppo left off, delivering what is termed a ‘universal’ player which we might have said delivers the highest possible quality were it not for Pioneer itself having an even higher $3999 model! But for us, the UDP-LX500 is a delight. The ‘universal’ tag indicates its ability to spin pretty much every 12cm silver disc ever available — Ultra-HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, DVD Audio/Video, Super Audio CD, audio CDs, writeable and re-writeable versions of CDs, DVDs and BDs (apart from DVD-RAM); it even played Video CDs, which aren’t listed in its manual as compatible. There’s also fairly universal digital media file support from disc, from USB plugged into one of the two USB sockets (one each on the front and back panels), or from the…

We’re not sure which surprised us more — a soundbar priced at $3999, or a soundbar coming from Sennheiser, which has never before released a consumer loudspeaker of any kind. It took a while to perfect (it was being demoed a year before its launch) but we must say that ‘perfect’ is pretty much the word — there has never been a soundbar that delivers close to this level of immersion and space. And the second miracle is that the AMBEO soundbar is just a bar — there is no separate subwoofer, no rear speakers. It finds walls to bounce sound off, and is big enough to deliver bass on its own. So it is quite large — 126.5cm wide and 13.5cm high. But it delivers the true promise of…

Projectors have become wildly more affordable in the last decade, and a sweet spot for quality has developed at $4999. This EH-TW9400W sits right on it, and Epson has again proven its long imaging experience with this projector that delivers truly cinematic images in the home, the colours gorgeous (100% of the DCI-P3 colour space, the standard for digital cinema), and the images wonderfully bright. The ‘W’ at the end of the model number indicates the inclusion of wireless HDMI, so you don’t need to run a long HDMI cable to it, instead playing high-definition content wirelessly without image deterioration, and UHD content with 12-bit, 4:2:2 colour in BT.2020 format, limited only for 60Hz material, which is, as yet, very rare. This wirelessness adds only $200 to the price over…

Marantz and Denon are sister companies under Sound United, both delivering a full range of AV receivers, nearly all of them equipped with the HEOS wireless streaming platform, and fairly similar sets of inputs and outputs. So what differentiates the two? There’s styling — Marantz has its little signature porthole window, compared with Denon’s wider but less classic display (though Marantz hides a larger one under its bottom flap). Then there’s amplification, for which Marantz has perhaps the more musical reputation, and here in the SR6014 makes use of its proprietary Hyper Dynamic Amplification Module (HDAM) circuitry to deliver nine channels of power rated at 110W at 0.08% THD. But it can process 11 channels, so with the addition of two channels of external amplification you could enjoy 7.1.4-channel Dolby…

The modern lounge may not be friendly to traditional speaker boxes for surround sound, but for those who can accommodate them, such speaker systems have the size and the versatility to deliver bigger more accurate surround sound than their architectural in-wall equivalents. And B&W’s 600 Series, its ‘entry level’ series of full-sized speakers now up to its sixth generation, does the job brilliantly. To be specific our test system comprised the three-way 603 floorstanding speakers for front left and right, with the 607 standmount speakers in rear positions (the smaller of two standmounts in the range, so you could upgrade), the HTM6 centre speaker, together with the ASW610XP subwoofer. That subwoofer is the top of three available models, and it consumes nearly 30% of the total cost of the system,…

Our winning turntable in this price break here takes almost entirely the opposite tack to the feature-laden Sony opposite. It does have a built-in phono stage, but otherwise minimises the additions in order to deliver a manual belt-drive turntable which is musical beyond its price — and a classic looker, while coming with an easily replaceable or upgradeable stylus, given audio-technica’s 60 years experience in cartridge manufacture. The other extras can be handy things if you want them, but they all take funds away from the truly important stuff, and some might even interfere with the audio quality. So if you can do without them, as here, and you’ll likely get a better cartridge, a power supply with speed control, or a higher level of plinth isolation — things that…

Not only a phono amp but one including valves in its processing, the Modwright PH 9.0 from US designer Dan Wright is something of a dream for analogue lovers. Modwright has a reference phono amp at three times this price (the PH 9.0 has an RRP of $4950), and while that reference has more facilities, this PH 9.0 delivers essentially the same sonic performance — making it quite the purchase for those with a turntable to justify its abilities. It comprises two units: the phono stage itself, and a separate power supply. Neither unit looks particularly special from the outside (the power supply particularly so), but pop the lid of the PH 9.0 and you’ll see one of the most beautiful and highest quality printed circuit boards you can imagine,…

Meridian’s 200 Series is something different in the world of wireless multiroom audio. Many companies have had a go at the market defined first by Sonos, delivering ecosystems of wireless speakers, soundbars and streaming electronics, and most follow a similar formula. Meridian, a company which operates at the highest levels of hi-fi, has done things rather differently. The new 210 Streamer joins a set of compact yet capable multiroom-equipped units that can deliver a whole house of audio, and are designed to do so while being hidden away, controlled via an app on your smart device. Yet it hasn’t left the emphasis on quality behind. This is real hi-fi, made smart, and made small. The Meridian 200 Series has shrunk your hi-fi. The 210 supports internet streaming services such as…

JBL built its reputation on large-scale professional and consumer speaker performance, but more recently it has conquered the world of smaller wireless speakers and, most recently of all, headphones. In a short time the company has taken 10% of the enormous world headphone market, and such economies of scale must be part of the reason it can offer a wireless noise-cancelling headphone like the LIVE 650BTNC for the price it does — $249.95 on the books, and we’ve seen them available for $200. Although half the price of many comparable designs, they deliver way more than half the performance. They come with the full gamut of abilities — Bluetooth, active noise-cancelling, an app which allows customisation, even a direct connection to the voice assistant of your choice (well, Alexa or…

To fully realised the quality available from the BluOS (Bluesound) streaming multiroom platform, NAD has delivered the $3999 M10, one of the most impressive products of the year in any of our categories. The smarts of BluOS are augmented by the Hypex Ncore version of NAD’s HybridDigital amplification platform, quoted as delivering 2 × 100W continuous into either eight or four ohms with THD distortion under 0.03%, so raising both quantity and quality of power over the Powernode 2i’s already enjoyable levels. It also ups the input count, including two RCA analogue pairs, one each of optical and coaxial digital inputs, a USB playback slot, and HDMI with ARC. Plus BluOS streaming sources, which include online services and proper library-based access to files on your network; all BluOS products are…

Hegel is a small company based in Norway that had been flying under the radar for more than 20 years until about five years ago it became a huge blip on the screens of audiophiles right around the world, and sales of its amplifiers went through the roof. This sudden discovery was no marketing exercise, but rather came from a genuine recognition of the company’s focus on sound quality over everything else. Its amps all look rather similar, and almost plain, though solid. Indeed when asked to describe Hegel’s corporate ethos, the company’s Anders Ertzeid had to think for a moment before saying: “All we have is good sound quality: There is nothing else.” Pushed to elaborate further on this minimalist mission statement, he added: “It’s a no-nonsense product. Everything…

This is the first time in many years that UK company Cambridge Audio has gone to the level of the Edge, its engineers given no budget limit, no restriction put on time, simply to design and deliver the ultimate no-compromise range of components that would “raise a few eyebrows and send a tingle down people’s spines” when listening. Those engineers have achieved that goal in the NQ preamp and particularly the masterfully pure W power amp, which set our listening room alight with every song it played, regardless of source. This power amp has just 14 components in its signal path, and no capacitors, these replaced by DC coupled technology which injects an equal and opposite amount of DC into the signal to cancel out any DC offset. The NQ…

Since we sat in on a technical briefing for these Lumagen video processors, we’ve seen them appearing in increasing numbers of professional installations where video quality is of the highest level. What are they used for? Firstly they are impeccable scalers, raising lowly SD and HD video up to full UHD 4K. Lumagen claims its ‘NoRing’ scaling avoids the common halos around edges caused by the ‘ringing’ in other scaling algorithms. One of its most cunning features is Non-Linear Stretch (NLS), for people who hate black bars down the sides of a 16:9 picture when projected onto a wider screen. NLS allows the user to customise the stretch, leaving the centre of the picture with the correct aspect ratio, for example, while stretching outer portions which the eye treats as…

Featured in our pages only last issue, this project delivered what was only later discovered to be the largest channel count of any Meridian home theatre system, using high-end hi-fi speakers for the front three channels behind the acoustically-transparent screen (see image), plus 10 other Meridian in-wall side and rear speakers, and six in-ceiling speaker, in a Reference 13.4.6 Atmos configuration using 23 speaker channels in all. A Trinnov Altitude processor was used to map the soundtracks to the expanded channel count, with signals running digitally to the Meridian active speakers. “This cinema is completely ‘digital active’ by using these Meridian loudspeakers,” says Jono Dorset who headed Len Wallis Audio’s installation team. “Every speaker driver in the system has a dedicated amplifier. Typically reference-level [105dB] systems use a professional-type speaker,…

The HEOS streaming multiroom platform was the first of the new wave which arrived to rival Sonos, and in many ways it’s been the most consistent of them ever since. Its ecosystem of wireless speakers, preamp, amps and soundbars has evolved to include new models and new generations, including the latest ‘HS2’ versions which include high-resolution audio support and integrated Bluetooth. But the physical designs have not been radically revamped, as some rivals have felt the need to do. And while the available music services have been extended, the app design remains as simple and solid as the day the range was launched. And we might note proudly that a significant part of HEOS development took place here in Australia. What has changed is the extended availability of the HEOS…

At $799, and 27cm high, the DALI Oberon 1 is one of the smallest speakers the Danish company has ever made, a two-way bass-reflex design with a 29mm soft-dome tweeter, a 133mm bass/ midrange driver and a rear-firing bass reflex port. The larger driver has a dished dust-cap, rather than a bulbous one, and is made from an attractive blend of paper pulp reinforced with longer wood fibres to give added stiffness. Four finishes are available: Black Ash, White Oak and Dark Walnut vinyl wood-grains, and one painted (white). The Oberon range includes all that is needed for a surround speaker package, so in that context the Oberon 1s might be used as rear speakers, but they’re also a great-sounding pair in stereo, bass response necessarily limited by the unavoidable…

The Revel F228Be is a true three-way design, except that the low frequencies are divided equally between two 203mm bass drivers, rather than being handled by a single driver. The beauty of all three-way designs is that the all-important midrange is being handled by just the one driver, so there’s no crossover anywhere near the crucial vocal range. The beauty of using two bass drivers is that you split the load, so the power-handling is higher and the excursion is minimised, so distortion drops away. It’s not very cost-effective, mind you, because it costs more to manufacture two small drivers than a single large driver, but in this price bracket not an overly large portion of the overall price. The two bass drivers are works of art in themselves, diameter…