Innholdsfortegnelse for September - October 2021 i Sound + Image

EDLINES So I now know for sure that this issue of Sound+Image will hit the streets during Sydney’s extended lockdown. As I write, South Australia has just opened up, while other States are trying to keep a lid on things with varying levels of success. We’re all heartily sick of it, and there’s absolutely no end in sight. Back when the lockdowns first locked down in 2020, I wrote that, given no choice but to hang at home, we might as well make the best use of our hi-fis, and a great many people seemed to have done just that. During 2020 home entertainment resurged in some style, with the highest sales the industry has seen in years for hi-fi, home cinema and electronics, not just in Australia but around…

SOUND+IMAGE PRESENTS WORLD-CLASS AUSTRALIAN HOME CINEMAS Does your home have a formal dining room? How often do you actually use it – even when you’re not in lockdown? The chances are that it’s only used a handful of times a year, which probably makes that room the most wasted space in your home. That’s exactly what the owners of this Western Australian home had come to realise. They decided to change things, and set about transforming things to achieve more use from the space – and far more enjoyment – by dedicating it instead to the wonders of home entertainment. “I really wanted to focus on the sound and the performance,” says homeowner Tony. “Angela, my wife, however, also wanted to make sure it looked good — like a cinema.”…

This TCL C825 television uses ‘Mini LED’ technology. The Mini LED concept groups thousands of tiny LEDs into 128 dimming zones on this 55-inch model (160 zones on the 65-inch), backing a Quantum Dot colour layer and an LCD panel. And in that respect it seems a conceptually simple enough advance on the fewer zones, fewer lights of the past. So the surprise comes when you see TCL’s analysis of the results of this change, and particularly its comparison with OLED, still regarded by many, ourselves included for the most part, as the TV technology du jour in areas such as contrast and HDR, if not in absolute brightness. OLED’s ability to display low-level detail at even 0.001 nits allows 19 ‘stops’ (iterative doublings of brightness) in dynamic range up…

It’s a rare JBL speaker which doesn’t impress us — and that goes for wireless speakers as much as the company’s full-on hi-fi fare. The JBL Link range of Google speakers have proven solid at every price-point and in every guise (and lest it’s still there by the time you read this, we’ve recently seen the Link Music as low as $99 in Australia Post and $65 in Harvey Norman, making it a slap-yer-face megabargain). JBL’s little portable speakers generally impress for their size, and many benefit from total waterproofing, in fresh water anyway. But if you’ve never seen the Xtreme before, its size comes as quite the surprise. This is the Xtreme 3, following on from the Xtreme 2; it’s only a centimetre longer, still around 14cm diameter across…

This is a new brand on us, called ‘ag’ — as in ‘pipe’, though inspired, we’re told, by the old Japanese word arigatakimono, which Google translates as ‘thank you’ but which the press release says can mean ‘one of a kind’. ‘ag’ is a sub-brand of Japanese headphone company Final Audio, whose rather higher-end D8000 Pro models are reviewed elsewhere in this issue. The connection is announced obliquely, as “sound tuning by Final”, rather than a direct connection, but it’s certainly a good opening recommendation for a pair of wireless noise-cancellers at what is a highly affordable price-point. At this level — they sell for just $149.95 — money has clearly been saved on materials for the AG-WHP01K. The earpads squeak as you compress them; things feel a bit tight…

“I wanted to do something that incorporated the two loves of my childhood: cartoon characters and noir mysteries,” reveals author Gary K Wolf. In 1981, he used this unusual combo as the inspiration for the book behind Robert Zemeckis’s groundbreaking 1988 hit Who Framed Roger Rabbit. While audiences nearly 40 years on revelled in Steven Spielberg’s pop-culture mash-up Ready Player One, it was back in Toon Town where the mega-director first flexed his unparalleled Hollywood sway to produce a film unlike anything seen before — a cartoon live-action hybrid that did the impossible and introduced Mickey Mouse to Bugs Bunny. “I was watching Saturday morning cartoons, purely for research,” smiles Wolf, recalling his route into the story, “and I became taken with the commercials. I saw Captain Crunch and Tony…

Denon & Marantz deliver a new ‘A’ team Sound United has released new ‘A’-tagged range-topping AV components for both Denon and Marantz, raising their predecessor models to HDMI 2.1 status along with support for the latest immersive audio formats. Neither of them is strictly quite an AV receiver, with Denon upgrading its tunerless AVC-X8500H to the “industry’s first 13.2 channel 8K AV amplifier” in the AVC-X8500HA, while the new Marantz component is the 13-channel AV8805A processor/preamplifier, upgrading the previous AV8805 that has been partner to the company’s MM range of separate power amplifiers since its introduction in 2018. On both models the addition of that extra ‘A’ brings a dedicated 8K input that supports 40Gbps transmission of 8K/60Hz and passthrough of 4K/120Hz, while all rear HDMI ports are HDCP 2.3-rated…

There’s a long history to Cambridge Audio’s DacMagic. The first of its line arrived back in the mid-1990s when ‘off-board’ DACs, as they were called, were still a new notion, the idea being to upgrade the CD players that were becoming increasingly popular. This was forward thinking by James Johnson-Flint and Julian Richer, who had only recently revived Cambridge Audio by harnessing some of the UK’s top hi-fi designers — Mike Creek was behind their first new product, the outstanding A1 budget amplifier in 1995, followed in 1996 by that original DacMagic. This was a design by John Westlake, who had started his days with legendary turntable company Pink Triangle, designing its surprising DaCapo DAC in 1991. Westlake was involved with the first three DacMagic designs, as well as being…

Not long after we published our review of the Record Doctor VI suction-based record cleaner, we were contacted by the Australian proprietor of the Vinyl Record Cleaning System, offering a package for review. This system uses an entirely different process to the suction of the RD VI, nor does it involve dunking your records in a cleaning solution then wiping them clean, in the manner of the Spin-Clean system. Instead it’s the vinyl equivalent of those sticky tabs that go across your nose and then peel off to remove blackheads. You use the supplied equipment to apply and brush a fluid called VRC Restore! across the record, then you store the discs while the liquid ‘cures’, and finally peel off the cured layer, lifting all the particles from your groove…

JBL is a company which stretches from the lowest to the highest echelons of audio, from real cinemas, studio monitors and high-end home cinema at the top, to the world’s most successful mono portable Bluetooth speakers at the bottom. It’s a size of operation which gives it an advantage in terms of economies of scale, in technology licensing — it probably doesn’t hurt, either, to be owned by Harman, with all its broad expertise across multiple audio brands, and beyond that by Samsung, with its extended technology strengths and massive marketing reach. In short, JBL invariably offers more than you might expect at a given price, and its latest soundbar, the JBL Bar 5.0 MultiBeam, proves no exception. Equipment The JBL bar is solidly built and nicely compact at 71cm…

SOUND+IMAGE PRESENTS WORLD-CLASS AUSTRALIAN HOME CINEMAS This custom home cinema from Wavetrain Cinemas replaced a previous home cinema in the same space. You might think that would simplify things considerably, compared with converting a basement room or starting from scratch with a concrete shell. But as Wavetrain’s David Moseley explains, that would depend on the quality of the original cinema design. “The cinema as it was had significant issues to overcome,” he tells Sound+Image, “and the space didn’t match the client’s inspiration for the new design, which was a previous ‘Art Nouveau’ cinema we had created. That had been a room with 3.2-metre ceilings, but here the ceiling height of the cinema was only 2.4 metres, and below that there were existing concrete beams and a 70mm drop in the…

Extraordinary headphones, once again, from Japan’s Final Audio. The last pair of their cans to cross our threshold were the giant golden Sonorous X design, which sold for $7399. These silvery (actually aluminium-magnesium alloy) D8000 Pro headphones are a mere $4999. But before you get hung up on their price, consider how much you could pay for a pair of speakers, or a high-end power amplifier. We do believe, very much, that there is no upper limit on hi-fi, nor on how it should be priced, provided there are sonic gains still to be wrung from the additional cost, and that the price reflects that cost, rather than being plucked from thin air as an enormous geffen mark-up sustained by exclusivity or desirability. Final is not, after all, one of…

WELCOME to the 1980s, and a little flashback for those who were there, a lesson in appreciation of the modern world for those who weren’t. As you ponder over which 4K Dolby Vision Dolby Atmos movie to stream next, just remember we’ve never had it so good. Here we step back some 40 years to a time when you had to walk to the shops to borrow a hardback-sized cassette of video tape. These were the first days when you could choose a movie to watch at home, even own a movie. So don’t let the cumbersome aesthetic fool you: video tape was a God in its day. It enjoyed a tantalising title position with ‘sex’ and ‘lies’ in a breakout indie movie hit. It formed a movie title with…

Sure, there were movie soundtracks before the dawn of the 1980s — who can forget the enduring image of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper roaring along on Harley choppers to the sound of Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild in Easy Rider, or young Benjamin Braddock about to be seduced by the wily Mrs Robinson to the dulcet tones of Messrs Simon & Garfunkel in The Graduate? But more often than not, the soundtrack to a film often seemed like something of an afterthought. In the 80s, however, everything changed. The movies got bigger, brasher and more bombastic. And so did their scores. It was a time for specially commissioned and written songs that fulfilled the remit of encapsulating the film in a three- or four-minute blast. Kenny Loggins seemed to…

All hail the modern soundbar, which has saved a million homes from the perils of trailing wires and speakers all round the room, as epitomised by the home theatre surround systems of the 1980s and 1990s. The all-conquering soundbar arrived, offering one neat long speaker enclosure beneath your TV to replace a whole room of equipment. It was neat. With the additional of a wireless subwoofer it could sound huge. What was not to like? But could the soundbar really do surround sound? In the early days, when replacing those multiple speakers, some daft claims were made, invariably involving the word ‘virtual’. As soundbars have developed further over the years, fierce competition among brands has led to more spurious claims for soundbars than perhaps any other line of product. ‘Virtual…

Classé is back, and we are very happy to celebrate its return. We’ve long used a Classé stereo AV amplifier amongst our reference products, a model from the period when Classé was the stablemate to and go-to amplifier brand for Bowers & Wilkins. By then production had already moved from Classé’s home in Montreal, Canada, over to China, but worse was to come when B&W was in turn purchased by EVA Automation in 2016. Classé was put into hibernation, and the brand seemed destined to disappear amid much mourning and wringing of hands. But in 2020 Bowers & Wilkins changed hands again, joining the increasingly extensive Sound United stable, and Classé was revived, with its former President reinstalled and tasked with finalising the previously terminated development of a new Delta…

The co-founder back in 1982 of Canadian brand Paradigm, Scott Bagby, took 100% ownership of Paradigm, Anthem and MartinLogan Loudspeakers in 2019, removing from the equation the private-equity involvement of America’s Shoreview Industries — although Bagby and his Paradigm co-founder Jerry VanderMarel had originally acquired the Anthem brand way back in 1998. The operational freedom thus gained seems not to have been in the least restrained by the Covid disruptions of the last 18 months. In December last year Anthem announced an entirely new suite of AV products — nine new models of processors, power amps and integrated AV receivers, rebuilt and redesigned to update the full Anthem range for all the latest technologies. This MRX 540 is the junior of the three new AV receivers, its siblings rising to…

Samsung has done it again with the Q950A soundbar — it’s a soundbar that doesn’t sound like a soundbar. It sounds rather more like an amp and speakers. Of course it’s $2099, so perhaps it should. But this isn’t a bar which pretends to present immersive audio; it actually does so. You want surround? There are actual wireless surround speakers in the box. You want bass? There a sizeable subwoofer. You want height? The bar and the rears all have upfiring drivers, delivering Atmos-enabled height information you can enjoy without actually pinning the speakers to your ceiling. So while some soundbars make outrageous claims for their channel count — we’ve seen bars claiming to deliver 5.1.2 when they’re basically just fizzed-up stereo — here Samsung claims an extraordinary 11.1.4 channels…

The digital active speakers used in this system are from Elementi Audio’s Air range, similar in size to the Fire models which featured in the Wavetrain installation featured last issue, but instead of the compression drivers they incorporate a pleated diaphragm ‘tweeter’ along the lines of Oskar Hail’s air motion transformer. These pleated diaphragm tweeters in Elementi’s Air speakers provide high sensitivity, a low crossover frequency and high power handling, while the sound in the horizontal plane is the opposite of a compression driver, extremely even through all frequencies, yet still capable of delivering big cinema sound. It’s an interesting alternative to the more traditional cinematic sound of the Elementi Fire range. “Compression drivers tend to be the default for high SPL and dynamics,” says Elementi. “But just because things…

There’s no doubting Sony’s modern pedigree with noise-cancelling headphones. Its WF-1000X over-ears and WH-1000X in-ear product lines have consistently dominated their classes. And with this WF-1000XM4 release, the latest of the true wireless in-ears, Sony has upped the ante once more, introducing an entirely new ANC (Active Noise Cancelling) processing chip, along with a redesigned earbud. The results are stunning, if somewhat pricey. Design As with past 1000X launches, the WF-1000XM4 is available either in black or ‘platinum silver’ — both classily understated with brassy, metallic trim that subtle counterpoints the uniform matte tone of the plastic. This trim is most prominent in the cylindrical microphone housing protruding from each earbud, and is seen again on the top of the buds (surrounding yet another microphone slot) and in the small…

The law of sod dictates you must wait ages for a decent werewolf flick to arrive, only for two to come along in the same year. That year was 1981, and the lycanthropic delicacies in question were Joe Dante’s The Howling (Dee Wallace, irreverent, bloody) and John Landis’ An American Werewolf In London (Jenny Agutter, irreverent, bloodier). But where Dante’s derisive romp served its humour with a generous helping of ham, Landis was adamant his dark beast would have bite. “My intention was not to make a comedy, and I still don’t consider it a comedy, not at all,” reflects the director. “It’s a horror flick; it’s not a happy story.” The idea for American Werewolf struck Landis in 1969. Working in Yugoslavia as production assistant on Kelly’s Heroes, the…

Woe to you, oh earth and sea, for the devil sends the beast with wrath... Has there ever been a more ominous introduction to a song than the spoken-word intonation that ushered in the title track of Iron Maiden’s classic 1982 album ‘The Number Of The Beast?’ Maiden had fired singer Paul Di’Anno in the summer of 1982. His replacement was ex-Samson frontman Bruce Dickinson, though he might have regretted his decision when it came to recording this Steve Harris-penned track, partly inspired by a nightmare the bassist had after watching horror movie ‘Damien: Omen II’. Producer Martin Birch insisted the singer perform take after take of the semi-whispered vocal intro until he got it right. “I got pissed off to the extent that I was trashing the room,” recalled…