Indholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2022 i Australian HiFi

I have often railed about the miserly amount of money musicians are paid by streaming services, and have always encouraged readers to try to buy direct from those musicians from their own websites either as downloads or as physical media, or by using platforms such as Bandcamp*. My constant frustration is that so few users of streaming services realise how the money they pay for their subscription is distributed. First, let’s say that you’re paying $144 a year for your subscription. The sad truth is that only around $18 of that goes to musicians. Even sadder, most of that measly $18 doesn’t go to the musicians whose music you’re actually listening to, but to the musicians whose music the streaming services’ algorithms say are the most popular on the service.…

Readers interested in a full technical appraisal of the performance of the Paradigm Founder 40B Loudspeakers should continue on and read the LABORATORY REPORT published on the following pages. Readers should note that the results mentioned in the report, tabulated in performance charts and/or displayed using graphs and/or photographs should be construed as applying only to the specific sample tested. Newport Test Labs first tested the in-room frequency response of the Paradigm Founder 40B speakers, using a pink noise test signal, the result of which is shown in Graph 1. You can immediately see that the frequency response returned by the Paradigm Founder 40B was incredibly flat and linear and also well-extended at both ends of the audio spectrum. Across the region from 200Hz to 10kHz, which includes everything from…

Graph 1: Frequency response. Trace below 1kHz is the averaged result of nine individual frequency sweeps measured at three metres, with the central grid point on-axis with the tweeter using pink noise test stimulus with capture unsmoothed. This has been manually spliced to the gated high-frequency response, an expanded view of which is shown in Graph 2. Graph 2: High-frequency response, expanded view. Test stimulus gated sine. Microphone placed at three metres on-axis with dome tweeter. Lower measurement limit 1kHz. Graph 3: Low frequency response of bass reflex port (red trace), lower woofer (green trace), upper woofer (black trace) and midrange driver (blue trace). Port/ woofer levels not compensated for differences in radiating areas. Graph 4: Impedance modulus of system (red trace) and phase (blue trace) speakers plus low-pass section…

Before I started reading The Art of Sound (and there is a great deal of text to read, despite the subtitle) I flicked quickly through to get a feel for what was there, and it wasn’t long before my flicking slowed, and I began to minutely examine page after page. Terry Burrows’ book was absolutely full of images I had never, ever seen before, despite being in the business of ‘sound’ since I started out in audio as a teenager. Where did all these photographs come from… and when I say that, you need to consider that there are more than 850 of them scattered through the book’s 352 pages. Once I eventually got around to doing what you’re supposed to do with books, that is, start reading at the…

ROBERT PLANT & ALISON KRAUSS Raise The Roof [Warner] Plant’s restrained country blues vocals and Krauss’s honeyed bluegrass tones sounded like a blissful marriage, and wowed the world on Grammy award-winning covers album, ‘Raising Sand’, back in 2007. On this sequel, the formula is unmodified, the plot unchanged. Producer T Bone Burnett chose 12 country, pop and blues songs for the pair to rework. Drenched in exotic percussion, liquor-blurred guitar, thick southern steam and outbursts of ragged junk blues, it’s a record to follow deep into the bayou. Whether originally jaunty (the Everly Brothers’ The Price Of Love), groove-laden (Betty Harris’s Trouble With My Lover) or fragile (Go Your Way), each song is drawn skilfully into the duo’s dusky landscape. Geeshie Wiley’s Last Kind Words rolls in like a Mississippi…

The Audio Visual industry is one of the most vibrant, exciting and satisfying industries around. It is fantastic to work in an industry that creates enjoyment through music and entertainment — there is no downside to what we do. It is also an industry driven by buzzwords and acronyms. There is always that exciting next great thing or the latest format over the horizon. However, I suspect that, on occasion, the next great thing has more to do with the marketing department than it does with the engineering department. Despite the significant advances over the decades, we also have a long history of creating demands for products that are at best no better than what came before, or at worst not as good as the ones they superseded. The most…

The original Zeppelin was a smash-hit for 56-year-old British company Bowers and Wilkins, despite their chutzpah in naming it after a German airship that is now best-known for its role in the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, rather than the fact that before the fire, the airship had been commercially successful for 30 years. B&W’s original Zeppelin, back in 2007, was just an iPod dock. Since then, we’ve had two more models designed to bring the Zeppelin into the modern age, first the Zeppelin Air and then the Zeppelin Wireless. This newest B&W Zeppelin has been built firmly with today’s streaming age in mind. It is, says Bowers & Wilkins, the “smartest and most flexible Zeppelin to date” and we here at LWA would have to agree! It is also the…

Bowers & Wilkins’ new state- of-the-art soundbar, the Panorama 3, is the first B&W soundbar to feature true Dolby Atmos upwards-firing drive units, driven by a sophisticated Dolby Atmos decoder and processor to deliver great sound from the spatial audio soundtracks on TV, film, game and music streams. The decoder will also handle Dolby Digital and Dolby TrueHD audio streams. The Panorama 3 builds on the heritage of its two forebears — the original Panorama from 2013 and also from the newer Panorama 2, which added HDMI and improved speaker technologies. Despite its size (65mm high, 140mm deep and 1210mm wide) the Panorama 3 has 13 individual drive units arranged in a 3.1.2 configuration, resulting in a rich and powerful sound no one-box rival can match that delivers powerful, room-filling…

Cables are essential in all Hi-fi systems, but choosing the correct cable for your particular application can be tricky in a world where there are thousands of manufacturers, most of whom seem to build almost identical products using almost identical materials. So when you find a German company whose cable designs are entirely unlike those of any other cable manufacturer and whose cables are clearly highly engineered for their purpose, it’s time to take note. Inakustik has been making cables since 1977 and uses ‘air technology’ insulation in its cables to deliver a unique take on cable dielectrics. The approach — and the resulting cable performance — has certainly convinced us here at Len Wallis Audio. “A cable should not offer anything additional to your system, nor change anything. It…

There is no doubt that online streaming continues to change the way we consume music, how we interact with the devices that serve our needs, AND how those devices harmonise into our living spaces. However, some audio companies have recognised that today’s demands are different from those of years passed and are leading a change accordingly. Consequently, we are noticing the expansion of high-performance electronics that incorporate everything you need for a quality Hi-Fi system contained within a single discrete chassis. We are talking about powerful single box, just-add-speakers- solutions that offer the same level of performance as more traditional multicomponent alternatives. They are more discrete in design and therefore far simpler to integrate into modern environments. Driven by the advent of high-performance (CD quality or better) streaming services, the…

Denmark has long been recognised as a leader in design, whether it’s architectural design, furniture design or technological design. In Factory 5 in Struer, Denmark, you’ll find Denmark’s leading technology company, the legendary Bang & Olufsen, whose most recent triumph is its ‘all-in-one’ Beovision Contour. Although the new Contour looks like a television, and indeed it has an advanced 120cm (48-inch) OLED screen, it is also a multi-room enabled high-quality standalone music system in its own right, incorporating integrated audio streaming technologies including Chromecast, Apple Airplay 2, Bluetooth, DLNA, HDMI, Ethernet 10/100Mb, and Spotify Connect plus built-in TuneIn and Deezer music services to enable easy access to your favourite streaming services. Ultimate sound quality is delivered by no fewer than eleven loudspeakers each one powered by its own amplifier, with…

Everyone here at LWA loves the sound of vinyl. We’re huge fans! What we don’t love is the sound of a dirt and dust in the grooves, or the blurred sound caused by a dirty stylus. We have a lot of products that can help you keep your LPs clean, from a low cost but highly effective Inakustik CarbonFibre brush ($25), through a manual record-washer (Spin-Clean Record Washer Mk2 at $149), to a mains-powered recordwasher (Pro-Ject VC-E at $699) right up to an exotic Kirmuss KA-RC-1 Ultrasonic Record Restoration System ($2,200). What we have not had available - until now - is a high-quality, high- performance stylus cleaner that is safe, effective and simple to use. In the past we have sold stylus brushes, but these have all been highly…

THE BUOYS Unsolicited Advice For Your DIY Disaster [Spunk] Lacquering their youthful, sunkissed power-pop jams with lyrical barbs that shoot straight for the heart, The Buoys’ sophomore EP would feel just as much at home roaring from the PAs at next year’s Splendour In The Grass (if there is one, what with Covid and Russia/Ukraine) as it would through a pair of AirPods during a casual quarter-life crisis. Zoe Catterall and Hilary Geddes’ yin-and-yang fretwork sears with a frisky, jangly grunt, contrasted wonderfully by Courtney Cunningham’s rounded and propulsive basslines. Teeming with energy even at their lowest point, the band often veer scarily close to the edge of overkill — you know what they say: if you ain’t redlining, you ain’t headlining — but they always know just when to…

One obvious shift in our industry over the last two decades has been the recognition that not only must an audio system sound good, but it must also fit into a modern décor-which is more streamlined and uncluttered than days gone by. Many manufacturers recognise this and are producing products that are more aesthetically pleasing, without compromising on sound. A recent example of this is B&W’s latest release — the new ‘Blue’ 700 Signature range. Specifically there are two new versions of its 705 Signature standmount and 702 Signature floor-standing loudspeakers. Available in Midnight Blue Metallic paint, the 705 Signature and 702 Signature models feature the same drive unit design and crossover componentry as the existing Datuk Gloss-finished 700 Series Signature models. Both Midnight Blue Metallic loudspeakers feature bypass capacitors…

One reason movies don’t sound as good in your own home as when you are watching in the local cinema (can you remember when you last went?) is that cinemas are specifically designed by acousticians to deliver great sound. But you can now get the same experience at home by using modern electronics to overcome your room’s acoustic short-comings. NAD’s M17 V2 is a multi-channel surround sound processor that has the world’s most sophisticated digital room acoustics correction circuit built in. Its powerful Dirac Live® room correction software and calibrated measurement microphone enable you to convert your room into the perfect listening environment by correcting for timing errors and colourations caused by your room, enabling you to create the same sound quality you hear in a cinema, so that you…

Sonus faber’s new Omnia premium wireless speaker is coming to Len Wallis Audio and will be available (in walnut) from late March with the graphite finish becoming available in early May this year. The Omnia wireless system offers a suite of features allowing listeners to connect a variety of media with Sonus faber’s signature natural sound. The system is equipped with two new trademarked technologies from Sonos faber called SENSO and CRESCENDO. The touch sensitive SENSO interface permits listeners to directly control Omnia and easily connect to any digital or analog source, including their television, turntable, or mobile device. The illuminated lines on the top SENSO panel further indicate the speakers’ mode, input, and volume settings. The new CRESCENDO technology is an advanced signal processing system resulting in a greater…

Chord Electronics claims credit for creating the high-end portable DAC genre due to its release of the now-famous Mojo portable DAC almost a decade ago. The company’s long-standing digital design consultant, Rob Watts, has now revisited, re-imagined and re-engineered that award-winning original with groundbreaking, world-first technology to create the Chord Mojo 2. The new Mojo 2 benefits from several new features, chief of which is a revolutionary lossless DSP, the first of its kind in the world. The innovative new ‘UHD DSP’ is fully transparent, enabling comprehensive tone adjustments across the entire frequency range without any degradation in sound quality. This new technology gives the Chord Mojo 2 unrivalled compatibility with today’s wide-ranging choice of headphones, irrespective of type and sonic signature, plus flexibility with different source components and digital…

The Australian climate lends itself to outdoor living, and outdoor living in turn lends itself to outdoor speakers. We have just added two speakers from Sonance to our range. Sonance is one of the world’s leading architectural speaker manufacturers. The two new speakers we are carrying are from their re-designed Mariner series, with new sleeker cabinets and improved mounting brackets. The tweeter, woofer and crossover have all been re-engineered, which has resulted in greatly improved performance over the previous models. Both models are available in black and white. Mariner 54: $699 per pair • Tweeter: 1” (25mm) powder-coated aluminium dome, Ferrofluid cooled, with an acoustic back chamber • Woofer: 5.25” (130mm) Kevlar/Nomex laminated cone with a Santoprene surround • Frequency Response: 60Hz – 20kHz ±3dB • Impedance: 8Ω (nominal); 6Ω…

Ask any audiophile to name the best recording of music they’ve ever heard and it’ll be odds-on that it was recorded by Telarc. Launched in 1977 as a pure classical label, Telarc was founded by musicians Jack Renner and Robert Woods who quickly became known for their high quality recordings and signature Telarc sound. So far the company has amassed more than 50 Grammy Awards for music on its LPs and CDs. Being musicians themselves, Renner and Woods formed long and lasting relationships with other musicians, such as Erich Kunzel (often called ‘The Prince of Pops’) and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, and Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and with Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. German music label Inakustik has partnered with Telarc’s new owner, Concord…

Never before was a speaker series so appropriately named! Paradigm’s Founder series is so-named because it’s the first completely new speaker series that has been built after Scott Bagby, the company’s original founder, re-established sole control over the Paradigm by buying out the shares held by private equity firm Shoreview Industries, which had acquired a controlling interest in the company in 2005 following the departure of Jerry van der Marel who with his brother Bill and Bagby, had all founded the company back in 1982. Actually, Bagby did pretty well out of the deal, because he got Paradigm as part of a job lot that means he also now owns the famous Canadian high-end brands Martin-Logan and Anthem. He also gets to work with his son John, who was —…

Bowers &Wilkins, or B&W if you prefer, is likely the world’s most venerated loudspeaker manufacturer, because it has pushed the boundaries of performance, sound quality and aesthetics ever since it was established in Britain in 1966 by John Bowers and Roy Wilkins. During the more than half-century B&W has been building loudspeakers, it has delivered us some decidedly weird-looking designs (Google an image of B&W’s flagship Nautilus speakers if you’d like proof of this!) and even the company’s more conventional 800 Series Diamond flagship designs are too ‘out there’ (or maybe just too large!) to suit many buyers. This B&W 804 D4 is the company’s entry-level floor-standing loudspeaker in the 800 Series Diamond and includes all the technology developed for this series but presents them in a more traditional enclosure…

JOE BONAMASSA Time Clocks [Provogue/Mascot] Joe Bonamassa is contemplating mortality. On the raw, muscular opening Notches this is hinted at by the lyric about ‘the notches on my walking cane’ as Bonamassa’s guitar sends out a series of flares from the powerful blues boogie that propels the song. On the slow, surging The Heart That Never Waits that follows, it’s the lyric ‘Time is the healer that rescued me’. On the album’s title track with its cataclysmic opening and gentle build-up to the big chorus, the song just keeps expanding like an exploding galaxy and Bonamassa thrashes around as if he’s overwhelmed by the whole concept of time. It’s not until the album’s mid point on Mind’s Eye that Bonamassa takes a moment to reflect, backed by a haunting guitar…

In exciting news, NAD has for the very first time incorporated the unique Hypex HybridDigital nCore amplifier circuitry it developed for its top-of-the-line Masters Series amplifiers into a ‘Classic Series’ amplifier. The NAD C399 amplifier takes NAD’s commitment to lasting value and sonic excellence to a whole new level not only because of this HybridDigital nCore circuitry, but also because it is the first NAD amplifier to incorporate the latest generation of NAD’s Modular Design Construction (MDC) technology (MDC2). Modular Design Construction is a unique topology that allows you to dynamically upgrade the C399 by plugging in optional modules if you want specific features, such as BluOS multi-room music streaming, Dirac Live room correction, HDMI switching or DSD USB DAC. This plug ‘n play system means you can add these…

Technics originally designed its iconic SL-1200 as an audiophile turntable, but it had so many features that were useful to professionals that it became the turntable of choice for radio stations and DJs right around the world. Its success made it the most copied design on the planet. Arguably there are also now more different versions of the SL-1200 than any other turntable in the world. Some, such as the SL-1200 Mk7, ensure the design’s continued success with professionals while others, such as the new Technics SL-1210G, ensure the design’s continued success with audiophiles. The earliest incarnations of the SL-1200 used iron-cored direct-drive motors that exhibited a problem called ‘cogging’ which adversely affected sound quality. The direct-drive motor in the ‘Grand Class’ SL-1210G is a newer core-less type that is…

Almost everyone in the high–fidelity business agrees that for the finest fidelity, the best way to turn electrical waves into sound waves is electrostatically and this opinion is given no matter whether you ask about loudspeakers or about headphones. Yet despite this almost-universal agreement, almost all loudspeakers and headphones turn electrical waves into sound waves using magnetic, rather than electrostatic forces. The reasons are many but mostly they revolve around cost, complexity and regulations. It is not only expensive to build electrostatic products, but also very difficult (complex). It also involves many regulations, because electrostatic products operate at very high voltages, so governments put many hurdles in the way to ensure the safety of their citizens. Stax is one of the very few headphone manufacturers that is not only happy…

As avid music lovers, their brief to our Senior Systems Integrator, Christian Lambros was to build a room that sounded like a dedicated home theatre but did not look like a conventional theatre — which they described as “typically dark and somewhat formal.” Instead, they wanted the room to be bright and casual... essentially a high-end media room that could also work for everyday use. The room selected featured several large windows, a day bed and a fireplace, none of which could be moved. Although this was aesthetically pleasing and a unique space to work in, it did create some acoustic challenges — such as sound reflections — as well as the challenge of ensuring the audiovisual equipment did not alter the overall aesthetics of the room in ordinary day-to-day…

Due to popular demand we have decided to restock the Triangle Elara LN01A loudspeakers in both Black and White finishes. For those who are not familiar with this model, the LN01A is equipped with a built-in two-channel 50-Watt Class-D amplifier. There are bass and treble controls for sound optimization while on the rear of one of the speakers there’s an input panel with a surprising number of connectivity options: turntable phono inputs, analogue RCA inputs, digital optical and coaxial inputs plus there’s also a wireless Bluetooth 4.0 aptX (equivalent to CD Quality) capability and an output for a powered subwoofer! Based on the passive LN01 bookshelf model, the LN01A benefits from Triangle’s historical acoustic know-how. The speaker features a 25mm fabric dome tweeter and a 13cm concave mid-woofer providing a…

The current extraordinary interest in everything vinyl continues to produce some very high quality and interesting new products, but few of them are as interesting and intriguing as the new Holbo Mk11 Air-Bearing turntable system. The concept of a frictionless turntable mechanism is the holy grail of turntable manufacturers, and Holbo are not the first to produce a contactless motor mechanism. However, to the best of our knowledge they are the first to manufacture an air-bearing platter and combine it with an air-bearing tangential tonearm. This is a very impressive turntable, and well worth the $12,000 asking price. In fact, when renowned reviewer Ken Kessler reviewed the Holbo (and it was the earlier Mk1 version he reviewed) he made much of the price, calling it ‘almost inexplicable’. His closing comments…

As a proudly Australian enterprise, this year celebrating 44 years as a family-owned business, Len Wallis Audio has always been a keen supporter of high-quality Australian products from brands such as SGR, Serhan+Swift, Les Davis Audio, Du Plesis Audio, Richter Acoustics and Ben Burton, to name but a few. The latest addition to our stable is the complete range of equipment racks and speaker stands from Queensland manufacturer StereoTech. Designed by Andrew Harrison, and based on his decades of experience in the Australian audio industry, StereoTech’s equipment racks and speaker stands are superbly constructed, extremely attractively designed, and are packed with features that will improve the sound quality and useability of the electronics and speakers they support. StereoTech’s ‘Alumina’ equipment racks are able to support even the heaviest hi- fi…