Indholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2023 i Australian HiFi

By the time this issue lands in your letterbox, and hopefully by the time it lands in your lap, Record Store Day will be just days away. The annual celebration of the independent record store and everyone involved in it — the staff, the customers, the artists — takes place globally on Saturday 22nd April and, keeping with tradition, will see hundreds of special release vinyl (over 400, in fact) become available to purchase in stores on that day (and in some cases, online in the following days). If this comes as news, or indeed an unexpected reminder), to you, and you consider yourself a passionate spinner of the good wax stuff, I'd recommend putting aside half an hour to visit www.recordstoreday.com.au before that fourth Saturday in April to peruse…

It's been quite some time since the industry saw a hi-res music player from as big a brand as Sony cost so little, to the point where I wondered whether the final nail had been hammered into the coffin of the budget music player market. So imagine my surprise when news of the $499 Sony NW-A306 landed in my inbox. At first glance, the NW-A306 looks like a stripped-down version of the company's higher-end NW-WM1ZM2 and NW-WM1AM2 players. It features a rectangular, milled aluminium design with rounded sides, large physical buttons and a 3.6-inch touchscreen. The only significant aesthetic difference seems to be that it has lost the large semi-circular pro-trusions on the other models’ tops. It's further good news when you look down the spec sheet to see features…

Sennheiser has designed its fair share of classic over-ear headphones over the years starting with the number ‘6’. The iconic HD 600 and HD 650 both fall into this category, but will the brand's new HD 660S2 be a pair to look back on in a few years with a similar sense of fondness? As part of the design process for these latest open-back headphones) Sennheiser says it took on board feedback from owners of the previous HD 660S model to help it shape the sound quality of the HD 660S2. And the result, according to the German brand, has been an upping of the ante in terms of detail, dynamics and bass. It has implemented a number of design tweaks, one of which is aimed at improving the airflow…

On Test Marantz AV 10 & AMP 10 • Fantastically featured • Superb stereo and multi-channel sound • Nothing of note $12,800 (AV 10)$12,800 (AMP 10) Wow! When you partner Marantz's new reference 15.4-channel pre-amplifier/ processor, the AV10 — which has Dolby Atmos, DTS:X Pro, Auro 3D, 8K, IMAX Enhanced and HEOS streaming — with its new flagship power amplifier, the AMP 10 — which has 16 channels (sixteen!), with each of those channels rated at 200 watts into eight ohms (/400 watts into four ohms!) — you've opened the door wide to audio/video nirvana. Marantz has poured everything it has learned about audio and video over the 70 years it's been building electronic components into this handsome pair, cutting no corners. The result is audible, visible, and plainly evidenced…

On Test esoterica OAD Ultrafidelity Vajra Power Amplifier • Splendid sound • High power output • Very low noise • Soft clipping not switchable • No standby option • Wobbly meter button $14,999 Although the Australian-made OAD Ultrafidelity brand is new to the country, its founder, owner and designer, Jon De Sensi, is an old hand in the high-end hi-fi business, having been designing and building high-end audio equipment for several decades, most recently under the MusicLabs Australia brand name. He is also well-known for his willingness to help out other Australian audio designers, such as Redgum's Ian Robinson, for whom he designed the digital-to-analogue stages for the Redgum RGCD2 CD Player. De Sensi is also well-known for “thinking outside the box”, which may very well be why he is…

Truth Decay UNDERDOG/AWAL You Me At Six have been ringing the changes since the lukewarm reception to 2017's Night People brought them up short and they realised they didn't like it much either. They started asking questions about themselves, and while Suckapunch at the start of 2021 found them battling through the pandemic, there was no guarantee they'd make another album. But it's too late to stop now, and they've decided to grow up and carry on, shedding the “toxic masculinity” they believe was holding them back. This doesn't mean there's any loss of musical vitriol on Truth Decay, but there is a different direction about the band now. The single Mixed Emotions (I Didn't Know How To Tell You What I Was Going Through) is the album's manifesto, the…

Taken By Force ATO Like many of their contemporaries, Melbourne quintet Civic's rise was stalled somewhat by global events, but the delay in releasing last year's debut album Future Forecast made its potent blast of old-school punk energy even more refreshing to receive. The immediate follow-up, Taken By Force, is no less fiery, with the buzz-saw guitars of Fly Song satisfyingly sharp, and the snotty, 90mph riposte Time Girl demanding to be greeted by a pogoing moshpit. Civic's mode of attack is hardly one-dimensional, though. Trick Of The Light resembles something The Stooges might have done had they lasted a couple more albums after splitting in the 70s — dark, nihilistic talk of self-laceration and bad trips scowl over wah-wah-soaked guitar twang and are punctuated by pounding riffs. But when…

Your Future Is Your Past A Thirty-two years on from BJM's debut single She Made Me, Anton Newcombe's one-man mission to convert the world to the joys of lysergic shoegaze shows no sign of letting up. Written and recorded in Berlin during The Great Pause, their twentieth studio album continues where 2022's excellent Fire Doesn't Grow On Trees left off, its anthemic feel a creative response to news feeds mainlining war and crisis. ‘Give it all you've got, it's the only way to live,’ he advises in Do Rainbows Have Ends, a moving missive to his son Wolfgang. The Light Is About To Change is a pile-driving ode to self-assertion in which he growls: ‘Everybody's lost their minds’. Throw in blasts of shimmering Madchester-era power-pop (Your Mind Is My Cafe),…

Music Reviews Reissues BBC Broadcasts UMR/EMI During a touching 1972 rendition of The Musical Box, the song in which a girl decapitates a boy with a croquet mallet, only for him to be resurrected for a short time during which he begs for sexual intercourse until his nurse kills him (again), Genesis, moving fluidly from restraint to explosions, play with the confidence of a veteran band, although they had only just entered their twenties. What's gratifying about this sumptuous set, a heartening addition to the group's legacy, is how it honours those early years as they sought identity, tangled up in vaguely kinky fables and fairytales, and laid slabs of different genres side by side. While late-career anthologies (and farewell tours) have tended to favour their subsequent stadium-appeasing music, BBC…

The Singles Volume 1 LEGACY RECORDINGS The initial run of singles from New York's down-at-heel brat pack is arguably among the greatest since The Beatles’, and in its own sphere had just as huge an impact. Landing in an over-produced and lacklustre 2000s alternative scene virtually indistinguishable from the mainstream, no-fi jives like The Modern Age and Last Nite sounded like hookline dirty bombs bursting from an East Village basement, levelling the landscape. Within months, a new generation of 21st-century alt-rock culture was formed in their sharp image and at their compulsive pace. This box set of the 10 seven-inch singles released from their first three albums is as much historical document as a clutch of magnificent pop moments, and also testament to the way success inevitably lures bands from…

We covered JBL Synthesis theatre systems in our last newsletter, and now we are pleased to report that the first of our dedicated Synthesis rooms is fully operational. (Eventually, we will have three operating JBL Synthesis systems in our showroom, with the current one being the smallest.) The demo room is based around the SCL-6 and SCL-7 in-wall speakers and represents a theatre system in the $40k — $75K price bracket. Currently, we are featuring both the Sony VLP-VW5000 and VLP-VW7000 projectors in this room, along with both Anthem and JBL Synthesis electronics. One of the best things to come out of the new room was the realization that a good-quality, cinema-grade theatre need not cost a king's ransom. For example, we currently have an Anthem MRX-1140 AV receiver driving…

NAP 250 Power Amplifier $13,500 This revamped classic features trickle-down technology from Naim's Statement amplifier. Now rated at 100 watts per channel, and with tons of current to boot (+/- 28 amps peak), this amplifier will drive all but the most difficult of loudspeaker loads. NSC 222 Streaming Pre-amplifier $13,500 13,500This well-equipped unit offers multiple streaming platforms, including Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz and Apple Music, plus a very large number of online radio stations, and handles bitrates up to 32-bit/284kHz. It also features a phono input and a high-performance headphone amplifier. One of Naim's strong points is its dedicated Naim App. Many very fine networked-enabled pieces have failed because they have been cumbersome to control via their app, but Naim's companion app is one of the best around. So not only…

To celebrate over 35 years of producing some of Australia's most awarded loudspeakers, Richer has released the Special Edition Black Series speakers, which are now on demonstration in our showroom. This is not simply a facelift of existing models; this is a complete overhaul. Both models are finished in a new high-quality Gloss Black. They utilise a new, more efficient 25mm soft dome tweeter which is complemented by high-powered 6.5-inch drivers that are unique to these models and feature larger voice coils housed in a rigid basket with dual magnets. An entirely new crossover design caps off the hardware upgrades. This new SE Series comprises two models. Firstly, after an absence of 25 years, we see the re-introduction of the Excalibur, an impressive five-driver, four-way floorstanding speaker utilising a D'Appolitoinspired…

Five years after its last refresh, the KEF R Series speaker range has been updated to include the company's performance-enhancing MAT (Metamaterial Absorption Technology), among other improvements. The seven-strong hi-fi- and AV-friendly range sits in the middle of KEF's enviable lineup, between its Q Series and The Reference series. The latter was given the MAT treatment just over a year ago alongside the Blade, following the debut of the technology in the LS50 Meta and LS50 Wireless II in 2020, so it was somewhat inevitable that a refreshed R Series would also feature it. Essentially, MAT is a circular, maze-like plastic structure that sits behind the tweeter and absorbs “99%” of the unwanted distorting sound radiating from the cone's rear into the cabinet. Clever. As far as I know, this…

Newport Test Labs measured the power output of the Vajra using an eight-ohm non-inductive laboratory test load as 180 watts per channel at all three frequencies tested — 20Hz, 1kHz and 20kHz, which matched OAD's specification exactly. When using a four-ohm non-inductive laboratory test load, Newport Test Labs measured power output at exactly 360 watts per channel at 20Hz, 1kHz and 20kHz. These results are tabulated below and shown graphically as a 3D bar chart on the next page. When the lab switched from single-channel testing to driving both channels simultaneously, the lab measured output at 162 watts per channel into eight ohms for all three frequencies tested, and 272 watts per channel into four ohms for all three frequencies tested. These results are also tabulated below and shown graphically…

Smalltown Stardust SUB POP Part of Witch (who also feature J Mascis) and Ty Segall's backing band, Kyle Thomas has been King Tuff for the best part of two decades, refining a sound that began with meandering garage and has now evolved into something more harmonically complex These days he's based in Los Angeles, but this album oozes nostalgia — there's even A Meditation, a home recording of the eight-year-old Thomas attempting meditation — for a smalltown upbringing. In Thomas's case, Brattleboro, Vermont. So from the moment Love Letters To Plants kicks in like a 1940s big band, to the closing The Wheel, which evokes the lush minimalism of late-period John Lennon, there's an intricate tenderness that Sufjan Stevens would surely approve of. He duets with himself on the roadsong…

Rock Rippers Music Reviews Fauna CENTURY MEDIA RECORDS The only problem with successfully scaling an epic peak is deciding what the next challenge should be. That's the dilemma Haken faced after delivering the ambitious, expansive and breathlessly complex onetwo of 2018's Vector album and its 2020 sequel Virus. However, as singer Ross Jennings observes during The Alphabet Of Me, one of the standout tracks on the British band's seventh album, ‘ft's time to wake up and die or regenerate’. And regenerate is what Haken have done. Which isn't to say that Fauna is a complete overhaul of who Haken are. Rather, it marshals many of the elements that make them so eminent among their peers while simultaneously reaching for even greater stylistic diversity and sound combinations. Add to this the…

Head Above Water EARMUSIC With Head Above Water, Anglo-French former YouTube star has delivered an album of bracing trad-rock. From the opening, title track (with its rather awkward mixed metaphor of running away while keeping your head above water), it's clear that Laura Cox is a guitarist who's seeking to push the rock envelope into the 21st century. The unpolished but proficient rock dynamic of, say, One Big Mess would have been in its element 50 years ago, while Set Me Free's bottleneck stylings are reminiscent of Led Zeppelin's When The Levee Breaks. Time was when this mode of playing was suffocatingly dominant, but not so today; as Cox says, her style of rock isn't so popular in France these days, and getting a hearing hasn't been easy. But it's…

Reissues EARMUSIC Darker than Depeche Mode, twitchier than Trent Reznor, Gary Numan's 2000 album Pure polarised reviewers with its menacing, often whispered vocals, sinister strings and uncompromising, shrill blasts of industrialmetal guitar. To ice the cake, his lyrics railed at religious dogma and made no bones about discussing rape, murder, miscarriage and IVF. Twenty-three years on, the abrasive angst of this collaboration with the Sulphur production duo may translate to a broader audience than the diehard Numanoids who were, at that time, the only people listening. The best track, A Prayer For The Unborn, remains a mood-establishing live favourite. Scarred — Live At Brixton Academy shows those live chops limbering up through a propulsive 2002 Brixton show. Cars and Are “Friends” Electric? are there, of course, but the confidence on…

Complete Recordings MERGE When Jeff Mangum mysteriously dropped off the radar for 12 years after the indie success of 1998's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, his second album as mainman with Neutral Milk Hotel, he left behind arguably alt-rock's greatest mystery cult. Whether he'd had a breakdown, gone hot-air ballooning across the Atlantic or wound up an incognito latenight DJ in NYC, he'd left fans with a rich and kaleidoscopic catalogue of music to scour for clues. Self-released by Mangum in 2011 and now receiving a vinyl reissue on Merge, this completist box runs to 54 of the most transportive and consuming songs in the history of underground rock. Through swarms of tape fuzz, bowed saw, sousaphone and experimental sound collage, Mangum bellows his timeless, impassioned folk tunes on…

B&W Px8 Headphones B&W has been aggressively pursuing the head-fi market, and its range is consistently improving. The British brand's latest offering, the Px8 wireless noise-cancelling over-ears, bares testament to this. These are, by B&W's own admission, the best headphones it has ever made. New driver technology partnered with high-resolution 24-bit DSP technology achieves outstanding resolution. They can play for 30 hours between charges, and the combination of aluminium arms and Nappa leather makes them one of the more comfortable models on the market. At $1,199, the B&W Px8 are not the cheapest headphones going, but we believe they offer great value. New 700 S3 speaker series now on the floor B&W's 700 S3 speakers have been on the market for some months now, having been released just as our…

◄ Era 100 This marks a significant improvement on the Sonos One, with the introduction of an additional tweeter and a larger subwoofer. The processing speed is also significantly faster, and importantly you can now stream to the Era 100 via Bluetooth There is also a USB-C input for connecting external devices. $399 ▲ Era 300 This has all the features of the Era 100, except that it has four tweeters (one upward firing) and two woofers. The end goal here is that it delivers ‘spatial’ and more immersive audio, and this includes using two of the Era 300s alongside a Sonos Arc for a 7.1.4 surround set-up. Just don't expect it to sound like the JBL system on page 9! $749…

Sound Faber LEN WALLIS AUDIO There are many companies that make great-sounding speakers, and there are some companies that make goodlooking speakers. Few manage to do both, but one company that has nailed it is Italian manufacturer Sonus faber. Firstly, its speakers are some of the most ‘listenable’ on the market. It is difficult to pinpoint what it is that makes them so enjoyable, but you invariably find yourself drawn into the music as opposed to evaluating the speaker, and that should be what it music reproduction is all about. Secondly, these speakers are obviously the work of artisans. The design and finish is first-class; they are real pieces of art. Sonus faber's penultimate range is their Homage series, and in the middle of last year we were informed that it…

Triangle LEN WALLIS AUDIO It has taken a while, but we are finally seeing the 40th-anniversary models from Triangle reach our shores, albeit in very small numbers. The most striking thing about this limited range of speakers is the finish — it is meticulous. Secondly, and importantly, they are sonically much superior to the models they are based on. Triangle has not simply taken existing models and given them a new veneer and a commemorative badge; they have been completely transformed. And it shows. Triangle believes that the Antal and Comete speakers from its Esprit range represent the emblematic models of the brand, and so has chosen these, along with three models from its Magellan series, to be released to celebrate its 40th anniversary. We have the Esprit series on the…

What do you get when you upgrade one of the world's best-sounding digital sources with an overhauled Ring DAC circuit that, in a sibling product, has already proven to be capable of transparency of the highest order? By name, the dCS Bartók Apex; by talent, perhaps a class leader in its field… The dCS Bartók Apex represents the next generation of the Bartók network streaming DAC, following on from the 2018-released model that has been very well received by the industry. While the Bartók received a ‘Bartók 2.0’ software update last year, which upgraded the mapping algorithm that controlled its dCS Ring DAC technology and introduced new digital filters and improvements to its DSD upsampling, the Bartók Apex evolves the model further with more advanced hardware and software. Primarily, the…

Soundbites MQA, PSB Speakers and hearables start-up company Sonical have partnered to produce “high-resolution audio headphones” that combine hi-res wireless transmission with a computer-in-your-ear operating platform. Indeed, these yet-to-be-named headphones — due to go on sale under the PSB brand early next year — sound ‘next-gen’ in more ways than one. The high-quality wireless connection comes courtesy of MQA's latest technology, SCL6, a codec that has been designed to facilitate truly hi-res audio streaming for the first time in such products. It's essentially a way of packaging an audio file for trans-mission (in much the same way as aptX or LDAC, say) and works for broadcast and streaming across Bluetooth, UWB (Ultra Wide Band) and Wi-Fi, with any file type and regardless of whether the connection is wireless or not.…

Sporting the same vintage style that made newcomer Revival Audio's debut, high-end Atalante speaker range so alluring when it arrived Down Under last year, its new Sprint series sees the French company seeking to forge a name for itself in the market's mid-tier price point. Designed and assembled in France, the Sprint 2 are two-way bookshelf loudspeakers, while the Sprint 4 are their 2.5-way fl oorstand-ing counterparts. Both boast what Revival calls an “innovative Elytron Acoustic Baffle design”, which is essentially a lightweight, high-strength construction crafted asymmetrically to help optimally guide soundwaves as they leave the speaker, and thus reduce cabinet diffraction. Daniel Emonts, Revival Audio's CTO and co-founder, clearly believes in his vision. “I'm immensely proud of what we've been able to achieve with the Elytron baffle on the…

Soundbites Like TikTokking to TCL's Waterfalls, Sonus faber's four-strong Homage loudspeaker range is a contemporary take on a 90s classic. The range originally launched in 1993, and has now been updated with plenty of modern technological advances to see another day. The models in the range are the Guarneri G5 two-way standmounters (fifth generation), Serafino G2 and Amati G5 3.5-way floorstanders (second gen and fifth gen, respectively) and three-way Vox G3 centre channel (third gen). Each takes inspiration from a musical instrument in order to honour its makers and the lute-making tradition that has its roots in Cremona, the Italian brand's homeland. And all models come in three colourways — red, wenge (an African hardwood) and graphite. Naturally, they feature improved cabinet construction over the 90s originals, with a better…

On Test HIFI ROSE RS520 Network Streamer • Extremely versatile • Quality sound • Easy to use • Volume control issues when used as USB audio device • Only one analogue input $6,299 Let's face it, many of our readers, and indeed many of us here at Australian Hi-Fi, including myself, remain confirmed analogue audio equipment fans. We love our hefty Class A/B or Class A power amplifi ers, our classy analogue interconnects, and all of our separates components, each lovingly chosen to do one thing — or a small number of things — extremely well. But could I come to love a device that goes against all of that in just about every particular? After spending a month with the HIFI ROSE RS520, I have to say that I…

Music Reviews Top Picks The Other One COOKING VINYL Babymetal are hilarious, wonderful and downright endearing delirium. Heavy music meets J-pop: a bug-eyed happy-slap rending the biggest cultural divide since Crazy Frog. Nine years and three records on from their debut, the Japanese troupe having long shaken off the ‘novelty’ tag. But does their shtick still work? The synchronised dance moves, the fever-dream concepts about an imaginary Fox God, the audible rustlings of caution hurled into the wind? Obviously, it still works. If Babymetal's fourth release were a movie, the tagline would read: ‘They ain't babies no more.’ Vocalists Su-metal and Moametal are 25- and 23-years-old respectively, guiding you through 10 songs plucked from their bespoke, all-caps METALVERSE, each pedaling a specific theme. Immediately, Metal Kingdom establishes a stately, grown…

This Stupid World MATADOR Almost 40 years after they formed, Yo La Tengo have only intensified rather than showed signs of abating with their latest album. The title summarises aptly the existential predicament facing all of us, and there are sombre allusions to mortality (‘Prepare to die while there's still time’ on Until It Happens). But there is, about Ira Kaplan's guitars particularly, a raging and unearthly defiance: filthy, dirty, churning and avalanching on Sinatra Drive Breakdown, ploughing breakneck on Brain Capers, or with throbbing, concussive, My Bloody Valentine-style molten-ness on the title track. Counterpointing, underpinning this is the rhythm section of Georgia Hubley and James McNew, lending a Neu!-like sense of motorik purpose to these tracks, ticking over purposefully stoically as Kaplin rages and scratches and tears a new…

Turn The Car Around HOT FRUIT/VIRGIN In the five years since his last solo album World's Strongest Man, Gaz Coombes has revived Supergrass, suggesting that Britpop's finest 90s trio might be unfinished business. But new material wasn't part of the agenda, the band content to enjoy a run of live shows that culminated in last September's Taylor Hawkins tribute at Wembley. Their erstwhile leader was instead keeping his powder dry for Turn The Car Around, which continues his maturation into a thoughtful and eloquent singersongwriter. There's less zing and immediacy to Coombes's songs nowadays, replaced by textural layers that crest into shimmery art-rock and faintly psychedelic pop. He Can still set the heart pumping, though, particularly on This Love, with a muted bass riff that feels like a cousin of…

Oisolün ORIGNAL MUSIC RECORDS Oiapok's composer Pierre Wawrzyniak was once part of oddball psych-rockers Camembert, but here he's united with vocalist Melanie Gerber and a collective of musicians playing trombones, charp, xylophones and vibraphones. Together, they imbue clever tunes with proggy Canterbury sounds, modern jazz elements and breezy chanson stylings. While Gerber's vocals draw on retro, chansonniére textures on the title track, the moody Summer 19 also shows her Björk-y, avant-pop side. And she's just one part of a larger tapestry here. The parpy trombones and tight, bright xylophone/vibes parts inevitably evoke Zappa (the busy, dazzling Les Grands Equipages), but Matthieu Lenormand's snappy drum work and Wawrzyniak's exuberantly clever bass grooves give Oisolün less a passe feel and a more contemporary, jazzy one. Gerber's tones, the exotic instrumentation, the beautifully…

Bad Magic: Seriously Bad Magic SILVER LINING Forty years after Lemmy formed Motörhead, the final line-up with Phil Campbell and Mikkey Dee released Bad Magic, their twenty-third and final studio album before their leader passed away four months later. Thankfully, producer Cameron Webb captured the trio on top form, recording tracks live in the studio before lathering them in overdubs. Bad Magic returns with its buffed-up maelstrom expanded by bellsand-whistles accoutrements, including three outtakes, a bonus disc of 2015's rambunctious set at Mt. Fuji Rocks, a Lemmy audio interview, and even a somewhat dubious ouija board for braver fans! Roaring out of the starting blocks with late-period classic Victory Or Die instantly establishes the ferocious energy afoot, before surging through roadhouse-razing belters including Thunder And Lightning, Electricity, Teach Them How…

Stax LEN WALLIS AUDIO The Stax Reference SR-X9000 have been on the market for a considerable time, but only now has production been able to catch up to demand — and we finally have a pair for demonstration. Stax arguably represents the pinnacle of headphone design, and the SR-X9000 are the finest headphones (or indeed ‘earspeakers’, as Stax prefers to call them) the company has ever produced. If you want to hear what superlative headphone listening is, drop in for an audition. CAUTION: Many Stax headphones owners listened to their first pair out of curiosity and, followed by the inevitable, they cannot be unheard!…

The GAIA speaker isolation devices from IsoAcoustics will improve the performance of any loudspeaker or subwoofer. They replace the existing feet or spikes, isolating the speaker from the surface it is sitting on as much as possible. There are three models… GAIA 1 Designed for speakers or subwoofers weighing up to 100kg. $1,099/pack 4 GAIA 2 For speakers or subwoofers up to 55kg. $499/pack 4 GAIA 3 For speakers or subwoofers up to 32kg. $349/pack 4 Iso Tek power cables Most power cables that come with hi-fi components are inadequate. They are not built to maintain the electrical integrity to the standard required, and most act as an aerial to EMI/RFI. We recognise that this part of our industry is controversial, with many dismissing it as snake oil. For that…