Innholdsfortegnelse for October - November 2024 i Sound + Image

news Electrocompaniet has two new players in the market: the Rena S2 streamer and the just-add-speakers Rena SA2 streamer-plus-amplifier — both ready to fill a room with music, or to join up your whole home with synchronised tunes. The Norwegian hi-fi company of renown has 50 years under its belt making world-class hi-fi products, and with particular skills in amplifier design. Inside the shining little Rena SA2 is Class-D power of 2 × 75W, and while that's not going to blow away a massive power amplifier circuit from the company's Classic Line, you can be sure that the Norwegians aren't going to embarrass themselves with a half-hearted amp section just because this SA2 resides within the company's ‘EC Living’ range. They bring convenience, certainly, but not compromise. Invariably such streaming…

With Compact Discs in decline, it's perhaps a surprise that the latest high-end Michi product to emerge from Rotel is a “Transport DAC”, essentially a CD spinner that sports digital inputs and outputs to also play high-resolution audio, including DSD and MQA formats. The $9499 Michi Q5 joins the X3 and X5 Series 2 integrated amplifiers launched last year, plus a preamp (P5 Series 2), stereo power amp (S5) and monobloc power amp (M8). We saw this also at the UK Show (see p26), but the actual top-loading CD mechanism was at that point still in doubt, we were told. The DAC, however, is an eight-channel ESS ES9028PRO DAC, its channels split equally between the left and right audio signal paths, followed by fully balanced circuitry and dual toroidal transformers…

show report Dan D'Agostino's Bill McKiegan was in the Absolute Sounds suite to present the Momentum C2 Preamplifier (below), a new release ($84,495 here in Australia), alongside the Momentum M400 MxV mono amplifiers, in a showcase including a dCS front-end and Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy speakers, as well as Audio Research amplifiers that were offering an alternate system. The D'Agostino preamplifier continues the company's use of differential FET circuits (since the arrival of P-channels on FETs), here extended to what it calls a complementary four-circuit topology. This “is really what has changed sort of the character, what you guys have been hearing from us over the last handful of years,” said McKiegan. “It was a revolutionary thing for us. And then the thought was, where else can we use this?” Our…

home cinema custom installation Wavetrain's Signature Series concept is made up of six different standard designs. Wavetrain's David Moseley describes them as engineering starting points. “For each of the Signature Series, we have predesigned three standard room sizes,” he explains (20m2, 32m2 & 45m2). “We can still fully customise the interior design with the client — discussing the materials, the carpet and paint, chairs, the lamps and so on. “Then for each room design and size, there are three different equipment specification levels, plus various options.” So there's plenty of scope for cinema individualisation: these are not cookie-cutter solutions, as shown by all the additional preparation and design undertaken in the case of the ‘Horizon’-type cinema in our main story. But the Signature Series process allows a more straightforward process…

hi-fi all-in-one systems Revo has long been defined by its radios, but, as elsewhere, these ‘radios’ have evolved first to include both analogue broadcasts and digital DAB+ radio, and then into models like this SuperConnect Stereo, which bring Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to deliver a complete streaming solution far beyond mere (though never to be underestimated) radio. Meanwhile the classic ‘radio’-style design kinda sneaks into the home without disturbing things in the way a full hi-fi system might — we all grew up with radios around the home; they just fit in. Revo was born as a Scottish company 20 years ago, a decade after digital radio's launch in the United Kingdom. Four years ago it was taken over by a German group, but it has recently moved to be part…

music & movies classic film BY ALL RIGHTS, ‘ALIEN’ SHOULD not have turned out nearly as well as it did. Greenlit in the wake of Star Wars, when every studio executive in Hollywood was desperately searching for sci-fi scripts, it was a derivative idea which owed its inspirations to schlocky low-budget B-movies with titles like Planet Of The Vampires and Night Of The Blood Beast. It was originated by two largely unproven screenwriters, Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, with a first draft titled ‘Star Beast’. But under the guidance of producers Walter Hill and David Giler, with direction from a visionary filmmaker and some other incredibly fortuitous developments, Alien became a classic. All involved delivered superb contributions which made Alien not only a great movie in its own right, but…

music & movies the big picture “One of the most mysterious and beautiful haunting sights in all of cinema,” is how the late, great critic Roger Ebert described it. And even those who have never watched Orson Welles’ monumental masterpiece about the rise and fall of the titular newspaper tycoon will be familiar with the shot: an ageing, broken Charles Foster Kane (Welles) reflected by parallel mirrors, into infinity. It arrives deep into the film, after Kane's mistress-turned-second-wife Susan (Dorothy Comingore) has left him. For years she was just another trinket gathering dust in Xanadu, Kane's Gothic castle strewn with artefacts from all around the world: “Forty-nine thousand acres of nothing but scenery and statues. I'm lonesome,” she said, stirring the pieces of a jigsaw in front of a hearth…

1 LOVE Alone Again Or from ‘Forever Changes’ (ELEKTRA, 1967) Sweeping in on its unsettling folk-meetsflamenco wind, this song is a mood-setting overture for the anti-musical to follow. No boymeets-girl. No comic relief. Just hazy storylines without resolution. And like all great openers, it almost forces us to play the album again. Alone Again Or … what, we wonder? 2 BLACK SABBATH Black Sabbath from ‘Black Sabbath’ (VERTIGO, 1970) The hiss of rain, the scent of darkness. With the first track anyone heard from Sabbath on record, they encapsulated everything about metal. The whole future of a genre that never previously existed was here. What made it even more potent was staring at that gloomy sleeve while wrapped in its foreboding rhythms. 3 WINGS Band On The Run from ‘Band…

Sydney-based Richter has updated the company's classic Merlin bookshelf design, taking them from Series 6 to ‘S6plus’ status. The updated twoway bookshelf has both a different tweeter and a different bass/midrange driver: the new 25mm-diameter neodymium-powered soft-dome tweeter also having a shiny edge trim around its mounting plate, but more significantly, says designer Dr Martin Gosnell, “improved sensitivity, a lower resonance frequency and double the power-handling ability, resulting in a new level of clarity and engagement.” This is, in fact, the tweeter used in the larger Wizard S6plus design. The bass/midrange driver is also almost exactly the same as the one in the Wizard (just with a 4-ohm voice coil), its cone using a unique pulp mix of paper, hemp, kapok, wool and engineered chemical fibre that's made extremely stiff…

audiovisual 4K AV projector Sony VPL-XW6100ES 4K AV projector Back in the 1980s, when this reviewer was studying electronics, our university professors set what were known as ‘black-box challenges’. We students were given literal black boxes, with inputs and outputs, and we had to work out what was inside, by testing it. This review, unusually, was rather similar. The Sony VPL-XW6100ES was sent to us several weeks prior to its official release, for a strict stay of one week only, about a third of the time we'd averagely spend with a product. Furthermore, there was no literature in the box, and no information until the official release date — after we had to return it. So during our review we knew precisely nothing about the XW6100ES other than its model…

hi-fi all-in-one systems The ink had barely dried on our group test of all-in-one systems for the last issue of Sound+Image when more of them arrived at the office, notable among them Meridian's new remarkably-priced Ellipse, which may possibly herald a new era of uber-high-end luxury all-in-ones (see also the Marantz Horizons in News this issue) at equally high-end prices. That's nice if you have the cash to splash (the Meridian certainly sounds fantastic), but there are also contenders at more affordable echelons of audio performance. Witness the latest iterations of Ruark's classic digital radio (now networked) and JBL's beach-booming Xtreme 4 portable, which proves itself capable of far more than just a party performance. Revo — once Scottish, now from the Netherlands — has new representation in Australia, giving…

hi-fi all-in-one systems Audio Pro is another European brand with a refreshed presence in Australia, this time thanks to distributor Westan bringing in the Swedish brand, for which this Audio Pro C20 wireless speaker is pretty much an archetype. Simple looks, clean lines, very Scandi: this is the flagship speaker of Audio Pro's popular C-Series. It's priced at a competitive $999. So what does it bring to the all-in-one party? Build & facilities Our review unit came in the ‘soft satin white’ finish, but the wooden cabinet also comes in ‘stylish grey’ (shown above) and ‘classic black’. The top control panel varies accordingly: silver on our white sample, but gold on the grey unit shown above, and a dark gun-metal on the black. A fabric grille can cover the whole…

hi-fi headphones Zildjian Alchem-E headphones Hardly anyone can confidently pronounce it, but there can be very few music lovers who do not know the name and the logo of Zildjian, just as there are very few brands which are as synonymous with a single type of product as is Zildjian. This recognition is born both from quality and from longevity: while a good few hi-fi companies have recently been celebrating 40th or 50th anniversaries, last year Zildjian was out there celebrating the 400th anniversary of its founding in Turkey. Four hundred! Almost inconceivably, after four centuries and a move to the USA, it is still run by Zildjian family members. The secret cymbal “formula” had been passed from each head of the Turkish Zildjian foundry to the next male heir……

music & movies Robbie Robertson On July 1, 1968, the arrival of the debut album from a curious new group hit the music community with a resounding impact, its waves of influence felt almost immediately. ‘Music From Big Pink’ was an enigma, sounding rawer and more rustic than the lysergically-layered overblown rock of the day, and feeling entirely out of step with the current fashion. Its exotic blend of country, gospel and R&B would prove explosively consequential. An enamoured Eric Clapton broke up the virtuosic power trio Cream to pursue similarly down-home ambitions. George Harrison, evangelical with his love for the authenticity of the songs, steered The Beatles back to live studio performances. The Rolling Stones ditched their psychedelic posturing to re-embrace their blues roots. The Who considered its authors…

1 THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE Bold As Love from ‘Axis: Bold As Love’ (TRACK, 1967) Ideally, closing tracks should sum up the preceding ones and point the way to the next album. Bold As Love considers emotions as different colours and hues, in a soulful Curtis Mayfield way, then modulates up into a savage flanged solo that hints at the sonic experiments to come on ‘Electric Ladyland’. 2 GRATEFUL DEAD Truckin’ from ‘American Beauty’ (WARNER BROS, 1970) The band called this a “catchy shuffle”. Influenced by Robert Crumb's Keep On Truckin’ drawing, first published in Zap comic, what it did was combine blues with folk. What a brilliant way to end an album steeped in bluegrass and rock'n'roll. 3 THE BEACH BOYS Surf's Up from ‘Surf's Up’ (STATESIDE, 1971) Still…

music & movies classic track CLASSIC TRACK 1969 It was a monumental year for Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1969. The band had already scored two platinumselling albums and a trio of massive hits — Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising and Green River — by the time Fortunate Son was released in September. However, unlike most of their repertoire, which tended to fetishise the rural American South, Fortunate Son was a burning commentary on class and elitism, delivered against the sulphurous backdrop of the Vietnam War. “I was mad at the spectre of the ordinary kid who had to serve in an army in a war that he was very much against,” explained CCR songwriter and frontman, John Fogerty. “Yet the sons of the well-to-do and powerful didn't have to worry about…

news Among JBL's profusion of headphone models, there's no mistaking the latest new Tour Pro 3 TWS: “our latest and greatest TWS headphone to date!”, says JBL: true wireless in-ear buds priced at $499. Their status is heralded by the impressive ‘Second Generation Smart Charging Case’, which impresses with its (now larger) screen on the front, able to show caller ID and media file information. The case also has a useful hidden ability: built-in audio re-transmission. So you can plug it into a USB or analogue source, and the case itself broadcasts Bluetooth to your earbuds. There are many uses for this, but it especially enables inflight entertainment, normally closed to wireless earphones (planes with Bluetooth are still rare). Inflight rumble can also be cancelled by True ANC 2.0, JBL's…

news While Marantz is blinging up beautiful objects for the home with the Horizon duo (see p11), it is nevertheless reasserting its hi-fi status with a new range of “reference quality” products, its new 10 Series. The new range consists of three products: the Model 10 stereo amplifier (right, above), the SACD 10 SACD/CD player, and the Link 10n network audio player. The Model 10 arrives first, with the other two to follow. Marantz isn't messing around with the Model 10: this is, it claims, “the most powerful one-box amplifier Marantz has ever made.” The amplifier boasts a new dual-mono layout, with a copper-plated, triple-layered chassis featuring separate compartments for different amp functions, and strategically placed shielding to stop any internal interference. The Model 10's aluminium side panels are a…

news Ohio-based SVS is bolding claiming its new 17-Ultra R|Evolution subwoofer series as “a complete reimagining of subwoofer design”, with innovations that make them “one of the most powerful, sophisticated, and userfriendly subwoofer series ever introduced to the consumer market”. There are two variants of these large (roughly 50cm wide) subwoofers: one has a sealed cabinet, the SB17-Ultra R|Evolution at $5999, and the other a ported cabinet, PB17Ultra R|Evolution at $7199. The two share a new high-excursion 17-inch driver with glassfibre composite cone, long-throw catenary SBR rubber surround, and a 25kg toroidal ferrite-magnet motor along with what SVS claims as the first ever eight-inch dual voice coil in copper-clad aluminium, promising “effortless output with exacting control”, the 17-inch driver “capable of generating massive sound pressure levels far below the threshold…

show report Ricardo Franassovici (above left) of UK distributorship Absolute Sounds joined the team from dCS to launch the Cambridge company's most ambitious yet stack of boxes — the Varèse (pronounced ‘varess’). This comprises a network Core at the bottom, topped by two individual mono DACs, a master clock unit, and the top ‘User Interface’ with full-colour touch screen; this works in tandem with a Verèse remote control and dCS's control app. It also has a new ‘ACTUS’ interface between the units, allowing a single cable from each unit to the Core, simplifying set-up yet achieving high performance levels. dCS's James Cook (no relation) was on hand to explain some of the technologies. “So the mono DACs, the two in the middle here, these really form the core of the…

home cinema custom installation Wavetrain's Signature Series How do you build and specify a truly reference-quality home cinema? At this level of the market (the cinema room pictured here has just won a CEDIA Award for its excellence), you work with experts — the people who know that home cinema is not simply about putting a load of kit in a room: it is initially about the room itself. That's where the true cinema designers begin. So when Wavetrain Cinemas started working up this cinema concept, to be installed in a heritage-listed terrace-style property, the early design process included working with the site's architects and builder on some fundamentals. The planned doorway into the cinema would cause multiple problems. Still more drastically, the floor level needed to be almost half…

hi-fi all-in-one systems Meridian Ellipse all-in-one system Meridian's all-new Ellipse is announced as the company's first wireless speaker system — although we still remember the Meridian F80 back in 2006, in its variety of bright Ferrari colours which led to Stereophile‘s memorable description that “it resembles half of a very large M&M”. But the F80 wasn't wireless, other than receiving radio; instead it played DVDs, in addition to CDs, and rather shocked people by being a compact sound system priced around $5000, back in the days when that seemed ridiculous. By a non-inflationary-adjusted coincidence, the new Ellipse is also arriving around $5000, although it lands today in a market where high-end all-in-one systems are not such a rarity; the price of such luxury continues to nudge upwards, with notably Marantz…

hi-fi all-in-one systems Last issue we enjoyed the $2599 Ruark R410, part of a new series that has model numbers in the hundreds. But Ruark Audio's modern reputation was built on a smaller radio, the R1, the original of which in 2006 was hailed as “the Aston Martin of DAB radios” by the UK's Sunday Telegraph. The R1 is currently at Mk4, retaining the form factor, the intuitive RotoDial controller on top, and offering FM and DAB+ tuners in addition to Bluetooth streaming. But not networking, the R1 Mk4, perhaps because of its relative portability; it can take an optional rear battery pack for travelling beyond the home, and there may be no Wi-Fi available there. But this new R1S can also take the battery pack (which sells at $159…

hi-fi turntable Audio-Technica AT-LP70x turntable Audio-Technica makes some extremely high-end headphones, sculpted in unique timber types and given drive units that are handmade by a chosen few artisan craftspeople: a pair of the company's ATH-W2022 headphones will set you back $15,999. But the Japanese company also turns its hands to headphones which are remarkably well-priced: its studio-derived M50x and M20x have formed the basis for multiple wired and wireless award-winning headphones priced as low as $99. Similarly Audio-Technica will be happy to sell you some stratospherically-priced phono cartridges for turntables, such as the AT-MC2022 cartridge we reviewed last year for our sister publication Audio Esoterica — it was another $15,999 product. But again, the company also makes some of the world's best-value phono cartridges: indeed the company's founder Hideo Matsushita…

music & movies cult classic “I was terrified, but at the same time, tremendously confident,” says HannaBarbera megafan Brian Levant on getting the dream opportunity to direct 1994's live-action The Flintstones. Released a year after Steven Spielrock's – erm, we mean Spielberg's – Jurassic Park, this long-in-development adaptation of animation's modern Stone Age family caught audiences at the height of their dino obsessions. At the helm was Beethoven filmmaker Levant, a die-hard Flintstones obsessive who knew exactly how he wanted to bring Bedrock to life. “I wasn't trying to reinvent the Stone Age,” he says. xs“I wanted to be true to that original vision.” True he was. In retrospect, Levant's film is a marvel of practical effects, smart sitcom-y gags, and a clear love of the source material. But getting…

When vinyl was king (before iPods and streaming invented the shuffle function), an album's opening track was everything. Even more than the 45rpm single which might have preceded an album's release, it was those first seconds as the needle hit the groove that set the scene for the experience to come. A great opener got you a long way towards having a great album. Almost as important, and often far more substantial, was an album's final track. A work of substance, often, would close a classic album, an anthem to leave you singing, or a meisterwerk to leave you reeling. Or they might just stick in a daft ender, like The Beatles’ Her Majesty on ‘Abbey Road’. So who best nailed the opener? Who has left us emotionally exhausted as…