Indholdsfortegnelse for 2015 i Audio Esoterica

Audio Esoterica discusses the various technical aspects of Kyron Audio’s unique speaker designs with company principals Leon Suter and Lee Gray. Audio Esoterica: Your speakers, both the Kronos and Gaia, are dipolar, in that the sound radiates from both the front and the rear of the speakers. Why did you choose this design? Leon Suter: Dipoles sort of chose us. We had done some reading on the idea and then started our own trials — we really liked what we heard straight away. It was later that we discovered that the reason it sounded so natural was much more than just having no box. AE: So what in particular was it you liked about the sound of dipoles, and can you give us some examples? Lee Gray: As a percussionist…

Take a good look at the Dynaudio Focus 600XDs, because they represent the future of reproduced sound in the home. While you’re looking and pondering that statement, you do need to take into account the fact that the Focus 600XDs are not ‘just’ loudspeakers — inside them you’ll find almost everything you need to reproduce audio in your listening room: all you need to provide is a music source. That music can be supplied in analogue or digital form via conventional wires, or it can be supplied digitally and wirelessly from your phone, your computer, a NAS drive, the internet… or, if you’re of a mind, from a CD or DVD player. So, yes, Dynaudio’s Focus 600XD is not ‘just’ a loudspeaker. Inside each one is a digital-to-analogue converter, an…

The Scandinavians have always had a flair for unpretentious elegance, drawing in the eye with a seemingly effortless aesthetic simplicity. At one end of the scale is is Sweden’s IKEA, the mass-market homewares global success story, with its multitude of strangely-named, unfussydesign products. At the other end you have that country’s jaw-dropping Koenigsegg Agera advanced supercar with its organically fluid lines, and devastating performance (0-100km/h in a mind-boggling 2.8 seconds!). Marten — not a Nordic denizen but the Swedish loudspeaker manufacturing company — carries its region’s tradition of understated beauty and solid engineering into its products too. Here we have the Duke 2 — the entry point of the mid-level Heritage range — an elegant mid-sized sharp-angled stand mount dressed in an oh-so classy gloss veneer. And design aside, these…

There is much said about home cinema and how a well-designed dedicated room can come close to the real thing. Indeed many is the installer or manufacturer that will admit the home environment to be inherently superior to the cavern of a commercial cinema, since you can control the room, analyse the seating positions, measure dynamics and ensure perfect response where you want it, delivering ‘just what the director intended’. The most variable element in a home cinema is the loudspeakers, so for a real ‘cinema sound’, you might consider using similar technology to what’s in the real venue, to get the experience as close as possible. But why compromise on ‘close’. Why not install a real cinema in your home? Of course to do that, you’d need a company…

A weird affliction from which many home theatre receivers suffer is that, while fitted with an astonishing number of inputs, they only have a limited number of actual input selections. That is, you might be able to plug a dozen unique pieces of equipment into the back of the receiver, but only use ten of them because you’ve simply run out of input buttons on the remote control or front panel. The Sigma SSP flips that. There are — get this — 18 input selections! That’s one for every single input (including Ethernet and USB). If that’s more than you need, you can disable as many of them as you like. But each input is totally assignable and each input selection is highly configurable. So, for example, nothing is normally…

Two households, both alike in dignity — but by no means an obvious love affair in the making. Focal, a French company built around the development of new materials for loudspeaker drivers (used initially under the brand JMlab), delivering the innovation of an inverted dome tweeter in 1981, and then its K2, Polyglass and ‘W’ sandwich cone constructions. Naim Audio, a fiercely individualistic English company renowned for its amplifiers, indeed being among the first to espouse the importance of hi-fi amplification at all, back when speakers were the all-important end of a system and amplifiers simply a means to that end. Naim changed hi-fi belief systems with its NAP 250 power amplifier in 1975, before evolving to both ends of the hi-fi chain, speakers and source components, in more recent…

Don’t be shy about asking for a product demonstration, says Len Wallis. It’ll be business as usual for your specialist hi-fi dealer, and you really should listen to equipment before you buy. AE: How important to your business is the ability to demonstrate systems to customers before they buy? Len Wallis: This is an interesting question. To me buying any audio component without hearing it first is like buying art without seeing it. It fascinates me that people can buy gear without an audition, yet we now see this on a regular basis. Over the years I have disagreed with the findings and opinions of many reviewers on various pieces of equipment. This does not make me right — but I am the one that would need to live with…

Three years of development, undertaken as a deliberate attempt to achieve the pinnacle of Naim engineering knowledge and artistry, led to the unveiling of Naim’s extraordinary Statement. It looks like a single structure but actually comprises one NAC S1 preamplifier and two NAP S1 power amplifiers — the preamp in the middle and the power amps on the outsides. It was one of the star attractions at last year’s Australian Audio & AV Show in Melbourne, and as we write, one of them is installed at Len Wallis Audio in Sydney. We spoke with Naim’s Electronic Design Director, Steve Sells, about the Statement project, on which he was the lead engineer. AUDIO ESOTERICA: You’ve said that the Statement “has been in your sketchbook for years” — in what form, and…

One aspect of the Devialet 200 amplifier which we didn’t detail in our review last issue is the extraordinary configurability of its inputs. You can choose what purpose you allocate to each of the six RCA phono sockets. So on the back panel, from left to right, there’s an SD card slot which allows for software updates and system configuration, and below that an Ethernet port. Next across is the USB-B socket to connect direct with your computer, and a TOSlink optical input. Then it gets complicated — six assignable RCA sockets. The first two can be an analogue stereo input, or an analogue stereo output, should you need that. Or you can have both as additional coaxial digital inputs, or one as a digital input and one as a…

“Over the 60-odd years since its inception... certain aspects of McIntosh’s circuit designs, its solid engineering principles and the retro-style aesthetics have remained a constant. McIntosh can be said to be an iconic American brand. The company was founded in 1949 when Frank H. McIntosh and Gordon Gow collaborated on its first product, the 50W1, a high powered, high bandwidth and low distortion (for the time) amplifier providing 50 watts. It featured what was to later become known as the ‘Unity Coupled’ circuit topology, a McIntosh signature trademark that was to establish the company as a highlyskilled engineering-led manufacturer. Naturally, as one of the oldest audio companies still in existence, McIntosh has had ownership changes and has adjusted to emerging technologies as they evolved in the 60-odd years since the…

Touraj Moghaddam made his name in hi-fi circles as one of the two founders of the UK’s Roksan Audio, which began making turntables just when LPs were facing decline following the arrival of CD in the mid-1980s. Yet Roksan achieved success with a series of turntables and related products named after historical Persian people and places — Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Artemiz — and also the Darius loudspeakers, notable for being the first to spring-isolate the tweeters from the bass unit. Roksan did, however, produce CD players and in recent years even digital amplifiers with Bluetooth functionality. But with Moghaddam’s dedication to the art of vinyl replay now vindicated by the revival of interest in the format, today he is with Vertere, which offers the Vertere SG-1 record player, SG-1 and Reference…

There is a lesson to be learned here for anyone who might think Greece a potentially unlikely source of high-end audio — especially in light of the country’s current economic situation. At least one company is proving that such an assumption would be entirely erroneous, by rising to make impressive inroads into the upper rungs of the high-end industry. That company is Ypsilon, author of a growing range of exquisite products based on strict adhesions to solid engineering philosophies, featuring the highest quality custom transformers in innovative designs using the best of valve and solid-state technologies working in unison for the greater good. For a sustainable presence and commercial success in what can be a very demanding industry, these ideologies of circuitry also need support from what might seem the…

When it comes to highend analogue stereo equipment, times for the discerning audiophile have never been better. But what to do if you are both audiophile and a lover of movies and their multichannel soundtracks? Or if you believe that each channel of the glorious modern surround sound music discs deserves the same exemplary treatment as stereo discs? Canadian firm Classé Audio has long been producing products for such enthusiasts. The company’s focus has been on quality sound since its beginnings in 1980. Now to its highly regarded range of stereo and surround pre and power amplifiers, it has added the relatively affordable Sigma range. We had the opportunity recently to spend a few weeks with Classé’s Sigma SSP, AMP5 and AMP2. SURROUND PROCESSING Combined — and speaking only conceptually…