Indholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2019 i Australian HiFi

Sick of having to pick and choose? Want product A because it has this feature, but you’d also like that feature which is only in product B? But product B doesn’t have the first feature. Well, the iFi Pro iDSD is, I think a device which eliminates that problem. I don’t think that there is a feature that it doesn’t have. And its feature set includes support for audio formats that either don’t even exist yet, or are so rare you’ll have a lot of trouble finding them. THE EQUIPMENT The iFi Pro iDSD is a combined DAC, headphone amplifier and network audio streamer. Let’s look at each of those three functions. As a DAC, it supports pretty much everything, now and into the future. Specifically, it supports PCM at…

The High End show in Munich is beginning to dominate the audio calendar, its scale and the ability to attract visitors from across the globe mean it is the place to be if you want to make a mark in the hi-fi business today. The sheer quantity of excessive kit can be snow blinding, and there are all those people in the industry to talk to, but if you take your time it’s possible to find new components that really do push the state of the art rather than the art of marketing. Here are some of the more interesting new products I found at Bavaria’s finest audio jamboree. Aries Cerat builds price-no-object valve electronics and horn loudspeakers in Cyprus and sees no need for restraint when it comes to…

PARASOUND XRM PHONO PREAMPLIFIER Parasound’s new $1,199 Zphono XRM phono preamplifier bridges the price gap between its entry-level Zphono ($399) and its award-winning Halo JC 3 Jr, which retails for $2,995. The new Zphono XRM includes balanced XLR outputs, a switchable rumble filter, a mono/stereo switch, plus a continuously variable load adjustment for moving-coil cartridges that allows adjustment between 50 and 1050 . Separate input jacks and independent circuits for MC and MM cartridges mean that you can use dual turntables, each fitted with a different cartridge. ‘Our current Zphono is the ideal product for entry-level vinyl lovers,’ said Richard Schram, of Parasound. ‘We’ve noticed the fast-growing popularity of more expensive turntables and increasingly high-performance MM and MC cartridges. With the Zphono XRM’s adjustable load impedance knob (rather than DIP…

You can blame my Nana for this review. She’s 89 but she’s still as sharp as a tack. She’s lost grandpa, but she hasn’t lost her hearing… or her enjoyment of music. But she hasn’t been listening to much music lately, because her CD player carked it and she figured that her grandson, the hi-fi reviewer, was the obvious person to advise her about getting a new one. I started off by suggesting that technology had moved on a bit, and there were better, more convenient ways she could listen to music. She cut me off at the pass before I could get too far down that track. ‘My CDs have sentimental value for me,’ she said. ‘They remind me of the concerts Dan and I went to when he…

If you think that designing, engineering and building a turntable might be a fairly straight-forward task, I totally recommend you invest in a unique and exceedingly interesting book titled ‘A Vibration Measuring Machine’ that is self-published by Rega*. It’s actually three books in one. The first part of the book is a history of the company itself, which is extremely interesting. The third part is about the people who work there, which is less so. The second book is a complete explanation of the ‘black art’ of turntable construction, with separate sections for the plinth, the motor, the drive system, the platter, the bearing, the tonearm, the cartridge, and this part of the book is absolutely outstanding: It really should be required reading for anyone who intends to acquire what…

Italian high-end hi-fi manufacturer Audia Flight has in recent years worked very hard to not only increase the number of products in its range, but also increase the diversity of its range, this last a project that is enhanced because most of the company’s products are able to be customised by adding modules so that audiophiles can option in only those features and facilities they want included, and don’t have pay for added-cost features they didn’t really want in the first place. The Audia Flight FLS10 is a perfect case in point, because although in its most basic form (which is hardly ‘basic’, by the way!) it has five analogue inputs (three of which are unbalanced and two of which are balanced) and also both balanced and unbalanced line-level outputs,…

Chances are that you, as a reader of Australian Hi-Fi Magazine, are interested in the black art of acoustics. And it’s pretty certain that you know more about acoustics than the average Joe of 1789. There’s probably a big chance, also, that you wouldn’t care if you never heard about another politician again. Have I got a story for you. On May 12, 1789 a 30-year-old British politician named William Wilberforce (1759–1833) gave one of the most famous speeches ever delivered to the British parliament. It was such a powerful denouncement of slavery that it started the abolitionist movement. But it suffered an unrecorded shortcoming… one that was all about acoustics. For a start the House of Commons you’ve seen on telly didn’t exist in 1789. The lower house of…

Great news! Dynaudio has trickled down one of the technologies it uses in its high-end loudspeakers to a totally affordable model. The ‘Hexis’ geometry Dynaudio developed specially for its Esotar3 tweeter—as used on the company’s Confidence range—is now fitted to the latest Dynaudio Evoke 50. THE EQUIPMENT It isn’t the exact same tweeter, of course, but the most important design element is the same, which is that the 28mm fabric dome sits just on top of a hidden ‘inner dome’ in a geometry that Dynaudio calls a ‘Hexis’— and if you look carefully at the fabric dome, you can just see the dimpled surface of the sub-dome underneath. According to the Alex Newman, one of the acoustic designers responsible for the Evoke series, the second dome enables better control of…

The measured frequency response of the Yamaha CD-S300 was extraordinarily flat, as you can see from the tenth graph accompanying this report. The first thing to note when looking at Graph 10 is that each horizontal line represents a difference in level of just 0.2dB, meaning that the total range of the graph, from top to bottom, is only one single decibel (1dB). So, although the Yamaha CD-S300’s frequency response appears to get a bit ‘squiggly’ and roll off above 10kHz, that roll-off is from the 0dB reference line down to just –0.14dB at 20kHz. This puts the Yamaha CD-S300’s measured ‘normalised’ frequency response at 20Hz to 20kHz ±0.08dB. Note also that the player’s low-frequency response extends down to 2Hz… this just isn’t shown on the graph, whose lowest display…

Newport Test Labs measured the wow and flutter of the Rega Planar 8 at both speeds and it was identical for both speeds: 0.07% CCIR weighted and 0.018% DIN weighted. These are excellent results. Speed accuracy was perfect… again the lab tested it at both speeds and the Rega Planar 8 delivered a perfect result at both speeds. The Planar 8’s overall signal-to-noise ratio (rumble) was more than 70dB down, also excellent. Newport Test Labs measured the Rega Apheta 2 cartridge using a pink noise test signal, which is a particularly difficult test, as the cartridge is required to produce all frequencies within the audio band simultaneously, whereas the measurements manufacturers use to derive their specifications are made by measuring only a single frequency at a time, and then ‘joining…

Newport Test Labs measured the power output of the Audia Flight FLS10 at 225-watts continuous, both channels driven into 8 , just barely (+0.5dB) above Audia Flight’s specification of 200-watts at 20Hz and 1kHz. At 20kHz, the FLS10 delivered 215-watts for only a few seconds, after which protection circuitry cut in and put the amplifier into stand-by mode, with the front panel read-out showing the word ‘Over-voltage’. This happened every time the lab tried to make measurements at 20kHz. (When reproducing music, no amplifier—no matter how powerful— would ever be required to deliver 200-watts at 20kHz, and there’s no tweeter—or high-frequency compression driver—that could take this level of power anyway.) When the amplifier was driving 4 loads with both channels driven, the amplifier delivered a continuous rating of 400-watts per…