Indholdsfortegnelse for April - May 2017 i Sound + Image

The NAD 3020 – released in 1978 – was the largest selling amplifier in history. The reason was simple – it was an exceptional performer at a budget price. We are predicting that their recently released C338 amplifier will prove to be a similar hit. Rated at 50 watts RMS/channel and selling for $999, this is first and foremost a very good sounding amplifier. However its feature set is just as impressive. The C338 includes a phono stage, both analogue and digital inputs, and a subwoofer output. There is a high quality headphone amplifier, plus it has Bluetooth and is Wi-Fi enabled, providing access to Spotify Connect, internet radio etc. It is also the first amplifier to have Chromecast on-board. It has a dedicated TV input, and a learning remote…

The Australian Hi-Fi & AV Show 2017 takes place in the gorgeous Hotel InterContinental near Circular Quay from Friday 28th to Sunday 30th July, and next issue Sound+Image, a media partner, will include the full Show Guide so you can make your plans before heading to hear the latest, smartest and in many cases simply the best hi-fi and AV available today. The organisers have special offers on online tickets in advance — full details and tickets from www.australianhifiavshow.com.au…

With the new X12000 AV projector (right), BenQ has taken the Ultra High Definition technology used in its lamp-based W11000 projector and has switched the lamp for the wide-gamut high-brightness output of Philips ColorSpark HLD LEDs — promising 20,000-hour long maintenance-free life. As we discovered in our review of the W11000, BenQ has delivered UHD projection at a price below the incumbent Sony by using a Digital Micromirror Device (DMD, the Texas Instruments display technology) with 2716 × 1528 pixels, a total of 4.15 million. Then an optical actuator shifts each of those pixels diagonally by certain amount, while also changing the pixel information — this (and the higher resolution) is the big difference between the DMD method and other faux-4K ‘pixel shifting’ tech on the market. With the W11000…

SUMMARY Aurender A10 music server + streamer Price: $7999 + Superb sound quality + 4TB storage with SSD buffer + Excellent iPad app + MQA certified for HDD/Tidal - iPad-only app, absolutely essential for use So, what next then? If the CD becomes, as seems overwhelmingly likely, our last physical format for digital audio, and if it declines slowly away without being arrested in its downfall by a last-minute reprieve of affection as has vinyl, then what to follow? For a while it seemed that the iTunes download model would follow, that we would simply buy files instead of CDs. But already file-based music sales are declining too, in favour of subscription music services. And while hi-fi lovers tend to favour ownership, what to do when iTunes continues to sell…

It seemed like a simple task — assemble a collection of active hi-fi loudspeakers. Specifically stand-mount/bookshelf size — indeed one of our thoughts was to emphasise how a pair of speakers like these either side of your TV may be a much better solution than most soundbars. But also they’d be good for listening to music from various other sources — and in nearly all cases direct from your smart device of choice. Indeed if your preferred music is now all available to your smart device, either stored on it or as a streaming service, then some of these active speakers may be enough to form your entire hi-fi system, all on their own. We decided not to aim at a particular price point, but more broadly to give a…

If you tend to think of extravagant moustaches and inappropriately melted clocks when you see the word Dali, think again. In the audio world, it stands for Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries (and so can for once be correctly capitalised as DALI). And here, off the container just in time for deadline, we present the new DALI Zensor 1 AX active speakers. Equipment These are exactly what we were seeking when we first began gathering this group — a stereo pair of bookshelf-style speakers, active with internal amplifiers, and with wireless abilities. There’s no networking involved — no Wi-Fi or Ethernet — just amplified speakers to use with external inputs or with Bluetooth. We reckon the Dali Zensor 1 AX speakers are a sensibly basic system. Those inputs are analogue audio…

Many ‘rugged’ Bluetooth speakers have passed through our portals in the past, but we recall only one other, a much smaller unit, that actively encouraged us to drop it into water and see how it floated. Most are merely “splashproof”, implying that anything much above a light drizzle might cause irreparable konkage. Even this unit comes with a warranty card which specifies coverage only “UNDER NORMAL USAGE” (their capitals)... but since they’ve called it the ‘Jacket H20’, and the snazzy packaging shouts “Waterproof”, “Floats in water”, “Sandproof” and “Everything proof” (this last clearly an exaggeration, though the PR company did tempt us by mailing a nice mallet with the review unit), we assume ‘NORMAL USAGE’ includes those specified environments. The online product page adds “snowproof” and “shockproof” to the list…

If you like to crank the TV while others sleep, listening on headphones is a good solution. Except for the cable. Most viewing positions will be too far away for even a three-metre cable to reach the TV, and besides, many TVs these days have ditched the analogue headphone socket, so there’s nowhere to plug a headphone cable anyway. One obvious solution is to use wireless headphones. And some TVs can send via Bluetooth direct to Bluetooth headphones. The problem there may be latency — the delay inherent in Bluetooth transmission can be enough to throw the audio out of sync with the picture, especially if there’s codec conversion or analogue-to-digital sampling in the process, or if you’re sensitive to such delays (as are we). One of the best solutions…

Most readers will be familiar with Dolby Atmos, and perhaps also DTS-X. Both expand the tradition of movie surround sound to include a new level of height, using either actual or virtualised speakers positioned on the ceiling. And both also use a different type of sound design for the movie-makers — ‘object-based audio’, where instead of creating a final mix with a fixed number of audio channels, individual sounds get described as objects, with their positions in the soundfield defined by metadata. The final mix of channels is not generated until it reaches the end user, whose equipment defines the number of channels in their system, and outputs a final mix accordingly. Which all sounds very clever, and allows sound designers to grab a joystick and make things whizz around…

Sydney’s Len Wallis Audio recently held a ‘meet the designers’ music night at the Lane Cove store to showcase new designs from Australian speaker manufacturing outfits Brigadiers Audio and OneAudio (both branded under the Brigadiers Audio umbrella). The three Brigadiers-in-Chief, as it were, are respected designer Brad Serhan (second left, next to Len Wallis) and industry stalwarts David Allen and Morris Swift (right). On show were two systems highlighting OneAudio’s new Mu.1 standmount speaker (pictured below) using top-shelf ScanSpeak Revelator drivers in a small high gloss enclosure. Supported on the night by Yamaha and Musical Fidelity equipment, they sounded far bigger both in terms of dynamic expression and bass power than mere stature would imply. Moving further up in the high-end scale, the Brigadiers Audio Group BA-2 (above) were backed…

SUMMARY Audio-Technica AT-LP3 turntable Price: $469 + Sound well beyond entry-level + Fully automatic + Line-level as well as phono + Love the white’n’red finish - No complaints at this price Only last issue we played with Audio-Technica’s AT-LP60BT, which is notable for its ability to send its vinyl tunes by Bluetooth, as well as its price of $299, darned impressive given a fairly solid performance and its ability to output at line level as well as phono and Bluetooth. If there was a negative at the price, it was only the turntable’s relatively plastic look and feel, to the plinth in particular. But hey, $299. As we organised its return (in fact a neighbour ended up buying it), Audio-Technica’s distributor TAG told us the new AT-LP3 was just in…

Once there were but two network audio systems. Then Yamaha MusicCast (which tends to be forgotten as an early entrant) went away for many years, licking its wounds, only to return again in the past few years. While it was gone, that left Sonos alone, dominating the field. Here we have, from somewhere in the middle of the Sonos range, a pair of Sonos PLAY:3 speakers. Equipment Sonos isn’t one to release annual updates of its hardware — the PLAY:3 was released in 2011, and physically it hasn’t changed at all since. But Sonos does regularly update software, which can have dramatic effect. For example the PLAY:3s can these days be paired with the Sonos SUB — there is no subwoofer output, you simply select that configuration in the Sonos…

Given that Bluesound was pretty much built up around the concept of network audio, it’s not surprising that the focus of the Bluesound Pulse Flex speakers is indeed on network audio. But rather than a third-party platform such as the DTS Play-Fi used elsewhere in this group, this is very much Bluesound’s own ecosystem at play. Equipment These are very compact speakers, only 183mm tall, 125mm wide and 100mm deep. Potential wall mounting (pictured overleaf) is aided by the quarter-inch threaded holes at the rear. Each contains a 25mm tweeter and 89mm bass driver, and each driver scores 20W of power. Bluesound specifies the frequency response of each unit as 45 to 20,000 Hz. In addition to network functionality, they support Bluetooth (with the Android-friendly aptX codec for higher quality…

They’re back — our current award-winning headphones over $2000 have been revamped in a ‘version 2’, with the delightful side-effect of arriving rather lower in price. We had initially been told the changes were primarily aesthetic, but in fact they’re also ergonomical, with a more versatile headband for fit, thicker earpads with a much more pronounced angle front to back, a switch to polyester from velour (still with pleather) for the part which touches your head, and entirely new cables — where these were previously braided, the new cables seem almost medical in their translucent white (see pics top right), so that you half expect a stethoscope to be on the end, instead of the 2.5mm microjack plugs that connect into each headshell. The first cable is 1.5m long and…

A couple of weeks ago I had the immense pleasure of spending some time on the South Island of New Zealand. As it happens, that turns out to be nowhere near the filming locations listed on IMDB for the delightful film New Zealand film Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Which was strange, because the landscape of the movie looked so similar. Don’t bother with documentaries; you can see this movie to witness the beauty of New Zealand’s landscape. The Wilderpeople of the title — this is no real spoiler — are what the two main characters name themselves, after the wildebeest of Africa. A troubled lad is forced by the authorities to live with an isolated older couple. The woman, played by Rima Te Wiata, is absolutely hilarious, but also forms…

In a sense, Creed is really ‘Rocky VII’. The original Rocky gave us many things. The first famous Steadicam scene, for example, which started a revolution in cinematography. Sylvester Stallone, who showed us that a muscle man could write a movie, star in it and even, later, successfully direct some. He also showed us that by artful choice of camera angles and co-stars, it’s possible to make a guy of only average height (5 foot 9½ says IMDB) look imposingly large. And, of course, its sequels became (along with Jaws sequels) a running joke as never ending. Spaceballs references ‘Rocky Five Thousand’. Creed, though, has Rocky as the crusty old guy reluctantly taking a young new guy under his wing. Michael B Jordan plays the now grown son of Apollo…

The battle for TV market in 2017 has shifted to colour portrayal, with Hisense, LG and Samsung all touting their tech as delivering wider gamuts or better High Dynamic Range. Hisense used the Melbourne Grand Prix to show its wares (above is an artwork of eight Series 7 Hisense TVs assembled by Melbourne artist Jake Stollery). The new ULED 9 Series, coming in July, will be using quantum dot technology, which Hisense attributed to MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), light from the backlight generated at precisely controlled wavelengths so that, when mixed, the final colours are more exact. Both the 9 and the new 8 Series will run what Hisense has called ‘HDR Supreme’, which marks the inclusion of wide colour gamut and the ability to deliver a peak…

The HEOS multiroom platform has expanded once more, gaining a new larger soundbar, a subwoofer, plus something genuinely different — an AV receiver. The new HEOS AVR is in many ways an entire rethinking of the breed, from its clean lines and nearly nob-free fascia to its use of the HEOS wireless multiroom system by Denon to deliver whatever kind of music and movie system best fits your home. You can choose to use any of the HEOS wireless speaker range as surrounds, but conventional surround speakers can also be used, since the AVR has its own Class-D amplification behind speaker sockets for the full five speakers, with power rated at 5 x 100W into four ohms (1 kHz, THD 0.7%) or 5 x 50W into eight ohms (20Hz-20kHz, THD…

Pioneer has leapt into the multiroom arena with the announcement of its Fayola systems — and it uses a platform you may not have heard of — FireConnect by Blackfire. We have been excited about the possibilities of FireConnect for some time (see our tech brief at avhub.com.au/fireconnect), having first encountered it in Harman Kardon’s Omni system, and noting its inclusion in first Pioneer then Onkyo AV receivers. Pioneer recently rolled out the technology as firmware updates across many of its stereo and AV components, in addition to the new ‘Fayola’ range. FireConnect is both high-res and multichannel-capable, it allows input forwarding, grouping and control. Chromecast is due to be added by firmware update, and fascinatingly even video is part of the roadmap (though not quite yet). But Pioneer is…

“The C 338 doesn’t do networking in the usual way… but it does have Bluetooth, and Chromecast built in, which connects to your home network via Wi-Fi...” SUMMARY NAD C 338 integrated amplifier Price: $999 + A great mid-level amplifier for our time + Solid HybridDigital power + Good range of inputs, plus Chromecast - No USB-B for computer input - No Ethernet networking - No ‘record out’ When it comes to reasonably-priced amplifiers, few companies have a higher profile than NAD. The company’s 3020 has been a classic of the genre in updated variations since the original in 1978, and most recently in a very different compact form factor enabled by the use of Class-D amplification, rather than the more traditional Class-AB used previously. Indeed NAD has made quite…

SUMMARY BenQ W1090 AV projector Price: $1149 + Good black levels and colour + Good picture processing + Very economical to run - Some picture judder on poorly shot material BenQ has more than a bit of form for offering good quality, low-cost, full HD projectors, many of which we’ve examined in the past. The latest from this lineage is the BenQ W1090, and within weeks of its arrival on the Australian market, it had already secured our Sound+Image award for Projector of the Year under $2000. Let’s find out why, with our full review. Equipment This is certainly a small unit, and quite light in weight. Yet that doesn’t seem to take away from performance. Full HD, DLP (with a Dark Chip 3 no less, the favourite of the…

AktiMate has been making highly regarded active speakers of Australian design for this past decade, and there’s barely a model among them that hasn’t won one of our awards — indeed after charming the Australian market with what was, back then, a pretty much new concept in active stereo speakers, they went on to success in Europe too. For this group we have renewed our acquaintance with the latest incarnation of its original model, the AktiMate Mini, now called the AktiMate Mini+ B, with Bluetooth added to its selection of wired inputs. Equipment These are decent-sized but not excessively large bookshelf models. They stand 300mm tall and 185mm wide, and weigh on one side four-and-half kilograms, and on the other, six-and-a-half kilograms. The left-hand unit weighs two kilograms more than…

Tiny. Conventional, but tiny. Yes, some of the other speakers in our group are small, but the System Audio Saxo 1 Active speakers are the smallest that look like conventional speakers. But they turn out to be able produce a remarkable amount of quality sound from their diminutive confines. Equipment Each box stands just 260mm tall and only 130mm wide and 200mm deep. Should you be of the declining breed of audio lover who likes their speakers to be visually imposing, forget about it. (Acoustically imposing? Now that’s a different matter.) They are standard rectangular boxes with a 25mm soft-dome tweeter at the top, a 104mm woofer at the bottom, a bass reflex port at the back and a removable black grille, just like a big speaker. Our review pair…

When the HEOS line of speakers first arrived a few years ago, it was a well-developed multiroom system, but lacked support for high-resolution audio. With the updated HS2 range, HEOS has completely killed that defect. Here we’re looking at the HEOS 5 standalone speaker unit, midway up the range, and as with some other wireless units in this group, we’re doubling them up as a stereo pair. Equipment Each HEOS 5 HS2 is essentially stereo on its own, with two tweeters and two bass/ midrange drivers, plus a passive radiator, though we could not find information on how exactly the drivers are positioned, nor any quoted power specifications, just that the amps are Class D. So the HEOS 5s can be independent, grouped, or connected over the network as stereo…

Definitive Technology is a company that very frequently goes its own way with loudspeaker design. And we have no problem with that approach, because its idiosyncracies produce some very interesting results. So while most of the speakers in this collection feature one or perhaps two tweeters per box, the Definitive Technology W7 has four! Equipment The W7 is part of the ecosystem for Definitive Technology’s wireless multi-room range. So it can form part of a whole home of networked and streaming audio. They’re normally sold singly, and each W7 is stereo in itself. But they can, as with many such wireless speakers, handily pair up to do a wider spread of stereo work, and can even be pressed into service as rear speakers in a surround system. The Definitive Technology…

There is a particular breed of music centre, a single unit that combines multiple sources into something far above the basic mini system — more of a ‘style’ solution. What are the goals, then? Simplicity of use — choosing different sources, controlling them, adjusting them. Elegance of looks — some companies specialise in retro looks, other go firmly modernist, but they shouldn’t be busy or hectic or covered with knobs; they need to sit cleanly in a modern home, the kind of superior prop used in home magazines. And last, great sound. Why pay for a piece of audio furniture that doesn’t fulfill its raison d’etre, to bring beautiful music to the home? Performance The SonoroSTEREO (capitalised for effect rather than acronymity) certainly ticks the ‘superior’ box. As you delve…

There was a Peanuts cartoon many years ago where Snoopy is berated for wearing a fur coat on a warm day. “Some of us,” he replies sniffily, “prefer to sacrifice comfort for style.” Is there an element of this with the Pryma 01? They’re extraordinary headphones, the first product from a new brand under the auspices of the McIntosh Group, carrying the handcrafting heritage of Sonus faber, no less, the design HQ for the group. The earshells are branded ‘Pryma 0|1’ on the outside, but under the ‘belt’, an inscription reads “fatto a mano* da Sonus faber”. A strong effort has been made to do something different in design terms. There’s no sliding headband here, no pivoting earshells; instead the imaginative Italians have used what looks like a belt, but…

What is it with this DC/ Marvel thing? I’m not and never was a comic-book guy (at that age, science-fiction was my thing), so I only loosely know which characters belong in which comic book universe. As movies, they’ve gone in different directions. DC is definitely darker, both in lighting and tone. This seems especially appropriate in the case of Suicide Squad — definitely dark, but with some fine dark humour along the way. Essentially we have The Dirty Dozen transplanted into a fantasy universe with super-villains as the criminals coerced into performing a mission, from which they seem unlikely to return alive. As one of the featurettes makes clear, their comic-book creator fully intended that they wouldn’t. At least some of them. Which means secondary heroes: Deadshot (Will Smith)…