Indholdsfortegnelse for October - November 2017 i Sound + Image

Is hi-fi and AV getting better all the time? Or do companies largely reinvent the wheel in order to deliver “this year’s model”? And is technology pushing us ever more into convenience and away from quality? How come lovers of classic designs like the first-ever Marantz preamp (see restoration article on p86) can claim something so early was one of the best preamps ever? Haven’t we, er, moved on? It’s true that with some categories and in some years, it can seem like things are only iteratively improving. That’s the usual way of things — we can’t expect everything to be reinvented all the time. But new standards and new technologies do regularly shift things significantly. Not always quite as expected, of course. The quality hike from 1080p to UHD…

Vivitek’s extensive projection range is now getting a boost in presence here in Australia thanks to a new distribution arrangment with Melbourne’s Synergy Audio Visual. It comes at a perfect time — Vivitek is just releasing its first consumer-level Ultra High Definition projector in the HK2288 (review under way), while at this year’s ISE in Amsterdam the company came away with four ‘Best of ISE’ awards covering a wide gamut all the way from a neat portable projector to a win for ‘Best High-End Fixed Install Project’. Vivitek is a brand of Delta Electronics, headquartered in Taiwan, where R&D is conducted, and with global sales and marketing operations through North America, Europe and Asia. Besides the sheer range of product, a notable aspect of Vivitek’s product development is a firm…

Following a launch event for dealers held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Sydney, journalists were invited the following morning to see and briefly listen to the company’s new 700 Series loudspeakers, which are pitched to replace the successful CM series which has now run for more than a decade. The new 700 Series all carry an ‘S2’ appendix to their model numbers, to distinguish them from an original 700 Series which was discontinued in 2008. These are interesting times for Bowers & Wilkins, bought 18 months ago by Silicon Valley company EVA Automation, which now has under development a ‘B&W Lab’ in Redwood City, California; under the Jobs section of EVA’s website it is currently advertising for key positions from senior hardware and software engineers to web developers and,…

The A1’s smart functionality is run from the traditional remote control. There are dedicated buttons for Netflix and Google play, while the poorly-positioned Home button (surely it should be top centre) brings up the Android TV interface. We’re becoming increasingly enamoured of Android TV — for one thing, it provides operational familiarity across the brands that use it. Once populated and settled in, it was as intuitive as Android TV always is (it was a bit slow during its first hours), with rows of content and apps, all the usual suspects plus some Sony specials. You can rename inputs to your preference. We used Play store to download Spotify and VLC. We streamed from our 20,000 songs on Google play music, and we signed in to Stan to watch the…

Hisense keeps its model numbers from year to year, updating the central letter. As I was examining the various specifications for Hisense’s new premium model 55N7 TV, I couldn’t help but notice that the size and weight dimensions were identical in every way to the 55M7 I reviewed last year, except for the depth of the stand, which was just a touch deeper this year. So what exactly, I wonder, has changed? Equipment Given that last year’s model was a handsome TV, this year’s 55N7 remains a handsome TV! The bezel of the TV is brushed aluminium, to which I am particularly partial, and which I think is far too rarely used. The distance between the picture and the TV edge on the sides and the top is only 13mm,…

We have a soft spot for Pioneer AV receivers, after one of its high horsepower LX range occupied the central position in a reference system for several years. The Pioneer VSX-932 is from the more conventional end of the range, using normal A-B power amplifiers — seven of them — and a set of features pared down to its price, and chosen well. Equipment Indeed it presents just the features I think I’d choose if I had been in charge of the exercise, except for one thing — I’d ask for specifications that allow comparison with other brands of equipment. A headline figure of 130 watts seems impressive, but it’s quoted into six ohms rather than eight, with only one channel running, at only one frequency, and allowing 1% THD!…

So, let’s remain calm. We should keep perspective on what is, after all, a soundbar. Just a soundbar. There’s not even a wireless subwoofer with it. Just a bar. Just a soundbar. Equipment OK. So. Regular readers may have gathered certain signals from many previous reviews indicating that we don’t generally recommend soundbars, particularly soundbars under $1000. We dislike many of them, especially for playing music, and instead recommend perhaps considering a nice neat pair of active speakers either side of the TV instead. Soundbars without subwoofers fare even worse, and Samsung’s MS650 doesn’t come with one, just the bar — 128cm wide, offering three channels of audio, no pretence at surround, though we note there is an optional wireless rears ‘kit’ available ($249). Despite those past soundbar experiences, we…

The original Cyrus One was released 33 years ago in 1984, in golden days when this electronics brand partnered Mission loudspeakers in the UK and shared their rise at the centre of the veritable Britpop world invasion of high-quality mid-price UK-based hi-fi in the subsequent 10 years. Most of those names have since been through two decades of changing hands, qualities and countries, but Cyrus remains in private hands, its HQ still in the UK’s Cambridgeshire, where it not only designs and prototypes but also still manufactures its distinctive ‘half-width’ hi-fi. That’s half-width, but not exactly half-size, the Cyrus approach being more like putting the fascia on the short end of the chassis, making things often unusually deep — here 35cm, and more like 45cm including the two spectacular front…

Previously we’ve looked at how well various smartphones go as music players. And typically they go from somewhere between adequate to really rather nice. But there are several advantages still to having a separate portable music player. They’re entirely optimised for music. Extended musical enjoyment won’t leave you with a dead phone battery, nor will music fill up your phone’s memory to the exclusion of other joys. And the best portable players can double as a music source in the home, where it might be inconvenient to plumb your phone into the hi-fi. Since those are just the kind of things we worry about, we dig here into three dedicated music players, covering quite a price range. Two are from Fiio, a Chinese brand which aims to deliver high-res audio…

Focal’s Grande Utopia loudspeakers weigh 260kg each and sell for upwards of quarter of a million dollars, so it’s very thoughtful of the company to bring their philosophy of acoustic sound purity to something rather smaller and cheaper. Though perhaps ‘cheaper’ is the wrong word for a pair of headphones that still set a new level in pricing, at $5499 a pair. But then they do offer something genuinely unique, with Focal saying it approached the design as a pair of compact, ultra-nearfield speakers as much as headphones. They manage to look stunning, of course, from the carbon-fibre yokes to their lamb-leather headband, the shape of which is described as “a constant bend” which aims to spread their 490g weight evenly and comfortably over any shape or size of head.…

THERE IS A LOT HAPPENING AT LEN WALLIS AUDIO AT THE MOMENT! NEWSLETTER No.234 The return of Meridian We have always been big fans of Meridian, but due to distribution problems in Australia for the last few years the product disappeared from our shelves. Well it is back, albeit with a limited range currently on display. While the DSP7200SE Digital Active speakers ($49,900) hold pride of place it is the new(ish) M6 speakers that are generating a lot of interest. Like all Meridian speakers these are still digital active (the digital-to-analogue converters and amplifiers are built into the speakers). All you need to feed them is a digital signal. These are compact, attractive and above all great performers, perfect for anyone looking for a system that will not dominate a…

IFA Berlin 2017: Europe’s premier electronics show had more than its fair share of television product launches this year, with OLED TVs again firmly in the self-emissive spotlight. Panasonic launched its largest ever OLED, the 77-incher for its EZ1000 range (we reviewed the 65-incher last issue), while LG brought its now-legendary OLED tunnel to wow the crowds, while demonstrating its LG Signature OLED TV ‘W’, and also a new ‘Technicolor Expert Mode’ for its 2017 OLEDs, with colours “optimised by Technicolor’s colour scientists who work on the majority of Hollywood’s premium content”. Technicolor Expert Mode will come via firmware update to the picture settings menu of all LG’s 2017 OLED TVs starting around now, and possibly later for LED-LCD models as well. It should work with both standard and HDR…

TCL is most definitely one to watch in the TV market. Despite perhaps a relatively low profile after more than 10 years in Australia, it is no underdog — TCL has held the number three position in global TV market share since 2013, keeping Sony and more recently Hisense in fourth place, with only Samsung and LG outselling it. Examples of TCL’s large-scale investment in the future of TV include its co-ownership (with Samsung Display) of CSOT (Shenzhen China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co.) which is making a massive investment of almost US$8bn in a new 11th-gen display manufacturing line, and on the software side a fascinating TCL R&D project to bring artificial intelligence to TVs with ‘AIxperience’, aiming to give TVs deep learning abilities through a TV-based neuro-network. TCL is…

Well, that’s quite the change. The last two BenQ projectors we’ve reviewed have been massive Ultra HD home cinema designs. The BenQ GS1? It’s barely larger than my hand, and so portable it even has its own rechargeable battery. Outdoor fun as the summer approaches? Let’s do it. Equipment First, this is a 720p projector — its resolution is 1280 by 720 pixels. It uses an Osram Q8 LED as the light source, and DLP technology to generate the picture. And it has a fixed focal length, with no zoom, and a maximum brightness of 300 ANSI lumens. I include that last spec because it has an impact on picture size. BenQ talks about a 60-inch picture size from a range of one metre, which is probably about right, although…

Yamaha’s top-of-the-range one-box AV receivers have an almost embarrassing record of winning Sound+Image Awards — indeed, each 30x0 model of the Aventage range has been gonged in this way. So here’s the latest RX-A3070, from Aventage Series 8, if you’re counting. Does it still rule the roost? Equipment The basics first. There are nine amplifiers in the RX-A3070, each with 150W, with preouts available to support a full 7.2.4 Dolby Atmos speaker arrangement if you’re prepared to supply a further two power amplifier channels. Also there are eight HDMI inputs, and all of them support HDCP 2.2 so that you could, I guess, plug in eight Ultra HD Blu-ray players. As further down the range there are composite and component video inputs, but their respective outputs have been dropped. This…

Allan Devantier is Vice President of Digital Media Solutions, Audio Team, Samsung Research America — an extended title which puts him in charge of developing Samsung’s California Audio Lab, which is now involved at some level in the development of all Samsung audio products. As we’ve seen with the preceding soundbar review, it seems to be working. We talked to Mr Devantier about the Lab and the debt which it, he, and all of us owe to Dr Floyd Toole, who was at Harman for 16 years following 26 years at Canada’s National Research Council, where his speaker analysis and hydraulic A-B auditioning facilities were legendary. JEZ FORD: So at the California Audio Lab, you’ve developed tables which revolve for quick A-B and C comparison of different speakers — it…

We first encountered the Riva Festival at the Australian Hi-Fi & AV Show, where it was playing in one of the dramatic 21st floor rooms of the Intercontinental Sydney. It was something new and, for a hi-fi show, pleasingly affordable. Brave, too, for this is a multiroomcapable streaming audio speaker, which puts it in a market dominated not only by Sonos, but by many other platforms developed by some of the most experienced audio companies on the planet. Who is taking them on? Riva Audio, which is a brand created by Audio Design Experts, Inc. (ADX) in California, an organisation which started out by creating some high-profile solutions for other companies including Vizio, before launching its own Riva brand at CES 2014. Behind the Riva design, in audio terms, are…

Sony didn’t ‘invent’ Blu-ray, but it was the primary creator of its key fundamentals, and drove the early market by including a Blu-ray player inside the huge-selling PlayStation 3. Enter UHD Blu-ray, and Sony chose not to put a UHD Blu-ray in the PS4, and has let others lead the standalone market too. But now it delivers this quite economical unit, the UBP-X800, and despite sub-$500 pricing, there seems only one noticeable omission on this player. Equipment What’s missing from our traditional understanding of the DVD player/Blu-rayplayer/Ultra HD Blu-ray player is a front panel display. Neither are there any analogue connections — at all — though things have been heading that way for a while, and there’s really no point in buying an Ultra HD Blu-ray player if you don’t…

S MATE is a new Australian company launching into the online electronics space. With TVs and soundbars as well as headphones, it is enthusiastically growing a community of engaged users through offers and discounts such that, while we quote a full RRP below, we suspect you won’t have to search too far to save a good few points on the price quoted here. We ‘re spending time with the company’s SMPSHPNC1 executive-style Bluetooth noise-cancelling headphones, which have 40mm neodymium-magneted drivers and nice pleather earpads. And they boast, when in active mode, “world famous” Bongiovi DPS (Digital Power Station) technology, for which a great many claims are made as “the ultimate audio processing solution”, but which at heart seems to be a system that reduces dynamic peaks “so that important sounds…

Golly, how many movies are there named Life? I stopped counting the list on IMDB at 50, and there were many more to go. One in 2016 was listed as Life (X), where X meant ‘ten’, as in the tenth production by that name in that year alone. This one was made in 2017, and the ‘Life’ of the title is Martian. The movie is set on the International Space Station, pretty much today — or certainly prior to getting any people to Mars as yet. However, a probe has been sent to Mars and is returning with a sample of Martian soil which is suspected to contain some Martian microbes (not Earth ones left by Matt Damon). After a little bit of irrelevant excitement at the start as they…

The Digital Picture “An incredible installation for the price,” said CEDIA’s judges of this compact Queensland project which evolved from TV-based media room into this true dedicated cinema with separate rack and storage room. Electronic Living Another space challenge — this was previously a spare bedroom — but Electronic Living delivered a seven-seat home cinema with 7.1 surround (and pre-cabled for an Atmos expansion). From spare room to sonic boom!…

As several Sound+Image awards attest, we’ve maintained a high regard for what Marantz calls its “slimline” series of AV receivers, though really they’re short, rather than slim, but we guess the “short-arse” series wouldn’t sound so marketable. The latest models aim to maintain the excellent performance of previous models, but bring a number of impressive additions — HEOS multiroom integration, and Dolby Vision HDR compatibility (in addition to full 4K/UHD abilities) in both new models. The $1299 NR1608 is just 10.5cm tall, yet includes seven 90W channels of amplification, has decoders for both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X surround sound, and an impressive eight HDMI inputs compatible with 4K up to 60Hz with HDR10, Dolby Vision and Hybrid Log Gamma (this last via future firmware update). The seven channels can be…

Talk about back-compatibility — the new premium turntable announced by Panasonic under the Technics brand at IFA in Berlin is described as “interchangeable with systems using the SP10MK2 (released in 1975) and the SP-10MK3 (1981) — the two predecessors which have been highly evaluated by professional broadcasting stations and are still very much admired and used by many So if you’re running a 42-year-old SP10Mk2, the new SP-10R will slot right in with your existing arm and cartridge, though when it is finally released (it’s expected mid-2018) it will be supplied as a complete system with tonearm and cartridge. Described as the company’s “most premium turntable ever” it revives the model number used for the first ever direct-drive turntable, and claims S/N ratio of 92dB and wow/flutter of 0.015%, the…

Android TV is an increasingly attractive option as a smart TV interface, not only easy and clear, but bringing your TV into the rapidly expanding Chromecast ecosystem. You can throw video or audio from Android devices easily, from Chromecastenabled apps on iOS devices, from a Chrome browser on computer, or as mentioned, using a Google Home. As with the Sony TV in this issue, TCL has pre-populated the home screen with obvious candidates such as Netflix, YouTube, Spotify and Yupp TV, which offers primarily Indian subcontinent programming. while the Google Play store offers endless others; we downloaded Stan (above) and a few media players to try — VLC, Archos and Plex. Twin Peaks from Stan looked absolutely stunning streaming direct to the TCL, though the information key doesn’t work in…

Sometimes you want more. More than even the best AV receivers can provide. That ‘more’ might be more power, or more refined power. Or sometimes it might even be no additional power at all. In all these cases, the high-end stereo systems of the past show the way — you separate the preamplifier from the power amplifier. Then you can choose each of those individually to better fit your needs. Equipment The Marantz AV7703 is the AV equivalent of that hi-fi preamplifier. And being for home theatre it has not two, but lots of channels — 11 main channels, and two subwoofer ones. And this being 2017, it does a great deal more than a traditional preamp. It is itself a source device, delivering all manner of digital media in…

One of our usual arguments against soundbars is that, despite being created as the ‘neat’ alternative to surround sound, they’re not really very neat at all. They sit out in front of your TV with wires tumbling from their cramped rear connection bays, and usually with a subwoofer to fit somewhere nearby to get in the way of the vacuum cleaner. Sony has an interesting variation here — a very compact bar, and a compact subwoofer too, indeed the whole package is small enough that it comes in a box with a plastic handle on top. A takeaway TV audio upgrade? Or too tiny to make a solid sonic impact? Let’s see. Equipment Well it certainly is a small bar, just 50cm wide where most go over a metre; some…

Dolby Atmos is the latest thing in movie soundtracks, and similarly the latest ‘must-have’ in any AV audio system. The Atmos signature bonus is its ability to add height to surround sound, but in fact Atmos is designed to scale the soundtrack information up or down to whatever your system can handle, even down to mono, even in headphones. So the question arises, what do you really need to enjoy Dolby Atmos? Equipment LG’s answer is this soundbar — this and others, in fact, given that the company’s highest level of OLED televisions currently come with their own Dolby Atmos soundbar built in. But here is the standalone solution, the SJ9, which stands at the top of LG’s soundbar range by some distance. It comes with a wireless subwoofer, and…

This was the first box of speakers we received for a round-up we did of compact speakers a few issues ago. It was only when we received them that we saw that they came with a subwoofer, which didn’t fit that grouping of speaker pairs only. So now you get a standalone review of this very unusual 2.1 speaker system, the Jamo DS7. Equipment Apart from anything else, it’s visually unusual. The two smallish speakers — they stand just over 300mm tall — are modelled after Jamo’s enormous R909 speakers which are famous for their lack of having anything resembling an enclosure. None of that closed box, acoustic suspension, or even tuned bass reflex port. They have a heavy baffle and bracing, but nothing else at the sides and back.…

So after several weeks listening to the new Bowers & Wilkins PX wireless and noise-cancelling headphones, we’d say the company is on track to take over the mantle of executive headgear, such a delightful combination of style, sound and user-friendliness does the new PX design provide. The PX is the speaker brand’s first noise-cancelling wireless headphones. We don’t know if these have benefited from the software prowess of EVA Automation, the Silcon Valley company which purchased B&W in 2016, but if so then it bodes well, because the PX combines excellent sound quality with a number of cunning innovations, or at least ideas which others may have tried before, but which are delivered far more successfully by this new design. NC presets Take, for example, the app control of noise…

In our last issue we brought you a whole series of hi-fi history articles, as part of our 30th anniversary issue. These were great fun to put together, working from solid sources in some cases, and in others getting on the blower to elicit personal memories from companies that were... well, rather less organised in their archiving. Inevitably, the hardest hunt was for pictures of early models. Even with a company as established as Marantz, the only pictures we could find of the earliest models delivered by Saul B. Marantz and Sidney Smith in the 1950s were tiny, poor quality, and black-and-white. Until we happened upon the images you can see here, of a gleaming golden Consolette Model One preamplifier looking for all the world as if Saul himself had…

Ghost in the Shell is a live action re-imagining of the 1980s Japanese Manga. There are a number of stories in the Manga. One version hit the big screen as Japanese anime in 1995. Another story appeared as Innocence: Ghost in the Shell nine years later, and the original version was revised with improved graphics in 2008. The central character is a lifelike cyborg with a human brain. In this version, the origins are sketched in the opening minute or two. The brain was from a woman, apparently injured beyond saving. She awakes disorientated. Then we jump forward a year and she — Scarlett Johansson — is now the lead agent of Section 9, fighting terrorism. In this case, the terrorism is being conducted by someone called the Puppet Master…