Innehållsförteckning för July - August 2023 från Australian HiFi

Since the last issue of Australian Hi-Fi magazine, a great deal more hi-fi products have been introduced into the wild. That’s because the 40th High End Munich show took place last month, giving high-end audio manufacturers a world stage on which to launch their latest and greatest creations. Many of them took advantage of that this time round, too, as you'll see in this issue's Soundbites news section, which exclusively covers launches from the Europe show. In fact, some of my colleagues on What Hi-Fi? who were in attendance said they struggled to think of a previous Munich show where there were as many launches in all of the core hi-fi areas — perhaps not surprising as many would consider this the first 'big return' event after the Covid years.…

Soundbites Five years pretty much to the day after Audio Solutions launched its Figaro loudspeakers, we now have their successors. The Figaro MK2 is a revised iteration of the Lithuanian company's most successful speaker series in its 12-year history — more modern both inside and out. The biggest update has been in the cabinet structure, which has moved from a Self-Looking design (first introduced in its Overture MK2 speakers some eight years ago) to what it calls a Cabinet-In-a-Cabinet (CIC) system, as found on the company's flagship Virtuoso loudspeakers it released in 2019. Speaking of the cabinet change, Audio Solution says: This system proved to have such a huge potential that we decided to stop developing a Self-Locking cabinet any further and sink ourselves into developing a Cabinet-ln-a-Cabinet system. Figaro…

Soundbites What does a typical 40th birthday celebration involve? A cake crammed with candles? Jokes about being middle-aged? A tipple or two? If you're Dali, you forego all of the above and launch a new floorstanding speaker instead. The Danish company has found another name that is both fit for a high-end speaker and, seemingly important to the brand, has a 'c' that can be replaced with a 'k'… Epikore. The new Epikore 11 towers, which made their debut in Munich, share some of the same technologies found in the flagship Kore model Dali released last year. The key technology inside the speaker is SMC Gen-2, which debuted on Kore and is the next generation of the brand's magnet material technology, found in the bass and midrange drivers as well…

Soundbites This year was always going to be a big one for Naim, and I certainly haven't been disappointed by the British brand's celebratory efforts so far. To mark the middle-aged milestone, Naim kicked off 2023 by unveiling a new Classic 200 Series accommodating both streamers and record spinners alike at January's Consumer Electronics Show, and now it has revealed even more stablemates for its Classic catalogue with the all-new 300 Series. The range comprises the NSS 333 music streamer, NAC 332 preamplifier, NAP 350 monoblook power amplifier, NVC TT phono stage and the NPX TT power supply, and sits directly above the 200 Series. So let's have a look at those new additions to the Naim family in more detail… First up is the NSS 333, which features pretty…

On Test Airpulse A100 Active Speaker System • Superb build • Great small-speaker sound • Decent connectivity • No grille • Only foam stands • Remote has button battery $1,299 The Airpulse A100 active speaker system is interesting for many reasons, some of which have no relation to its sound quality (which is — spoiler alert — excellent). The first of these interesting things is that the Airpulse A100 is sold under seemingly different brand names depending on where you are in the world. The second is that the ownership of the company that manufactures them seems shrouded in mystery. The third is that the Airpulse A100’s designer is none other than Phil Jones, the founder of the famous UK loudspeaker manufacturer Acoustic Energy. The fourth is that the speakers…

On Test esoterica OAD Padma Preamplifier • Superb imaging • Clever dual mode operation • Australian innovation • Lengthy power-up • Remote source selector • Odd ‘Mute’ logic $9,999 If you read the review in the last issue (Issue 530, March/April 2023) of the OAD Vajra stereo power amplifier that would be the ideal companion for this Padma preamplifier, you will already know something of how the all-Australian company Open Audio Designs not only designs its components in Australia but also builds them in Australia as well. Intact, they are built by hand. You will also know that the company’s lead designer (and owner) is none other than Jon De Sensi, who has been designing and building high-end audio equipment for several decades, most of which were sold bearing the…

On Test Wilson Benesch A.C.T. 3Zero Loudspeakers • As transparent, natural and insightful as any box speaker • Wonderfully expressive dynamics • Excellent build and finish • Fussy-looking plinth arrangement $68,000 As a global team we listen to hundreds of products every year. Some are bad, some are mediocre, many are good and the odd few are truly excellent. But then, once or twice in a decade if we are lucky, we come across something truly sublime. And Wilson Benesch’s A.C.T. 3Zero loudspeakers are one of those very rare somethings. Now, we are no strangers to Wilson Benesch speakers. I myself own a pair of Square One, and collectively we have fallen for a number of its models over the years, right back to the British company's first speakers, the…

Countdown To Ecstasy GEFFEN/UME Although Steely Dan are routinely hailed as one of the last century's most subversively brilliant bands, when their second album 'Countdown To Ecstasy' was released 50 years ago the UK remained largely unmoved by its virtuoso complexity, hyper-intelligent broadsides and luminous confessionals. It took years to be recognised as the evocative crystalisation of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker's idiosyncratic visions of jazz-charged contemporary rock. With singer David Palmer replaced by Fagen's distinctive vocals and guitarist Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter on dazzling form, the songs gestated on the touring road, throwing US rock a subtly insidious curve with skilled studio precision as they hotwired lyrics (Hollywood on Showbiz Kids), esoteric blues (Bodhisvatta) and melodic drama (The Boston Rag). Supernaturally contagious melodies deal the irresistible sting, and its seductive…

Music Reviews Top Picks But Here We Are ROSWELL/COLUMBIA Drummer Taylor Hawkins' sudden death last year was a truly tragic moment in Foo Fighters! 28-year history. For the second time, Dave Grohl was left to mourn a largerthan-life bandmate, and in this case a best friend too. Hawkins’ positive personality shone a huge ray of sunshine over the band and delivered some of their finest moments, whether that was fronting Queen’s Tie Your Mother Down with Brian May and Roger Taylor at London’s Hyde Park in 2006, or singing Led Zep’s Rock And Roll with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones at Wembley in 2008. So when he was cruelly taken away in Bogota, Colombia in March 2022, Foo Fighters were well within their rights to call it a day…

Re-Set BMG Now hurtling towards his 80th birthday, singer Shakin’ Stevens—who, lest we forget, regularly played Communist Party benefits in his early days — is undergoing a remarkable renaissance in the winter of his career. 'Echoes Of Our Times’ from 2016 was a distinctly British take on Americana. On new album 'Re-Set' he is more sparse still. Guitars twang (May, a tribute to his mother, glides like the Twin Peaks theme)- George is done with just voice and piano- Tick Tock grapples with climate change', Dirty Water channels Tom Petty. Perhaps best of all, the angry, hoarse-voiced Beyond The Illusion links the forced emigration of 18th-century Cornish miners with contemporary refugee displacement. It wouldn't be out of place on a Levellers album. It's a mystery why he's waited so long…

Prism COOKING VINYL Calling an album 'Prism' and echoing 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' artwork in its 50th anniversary year is surely no coincidence: it's a statement of ambition and maybe even a wink to The Orb's sometime collaborator David Gilmour. As often, much of the band's approach references their Floyd heroes without sounding too much like them: a certain spaciness; a tranquil-but- tense immenseness and a fondness for enigmatic, half-heard dialogue. Indeed, fragments of vintage broadcasts, seemingly heard after bouncing off some distant moon, are shot through 'Prism' like ghostly images in a haunted stick of rock — both musical and confectionery varieties. Like all The Orb albums, it is best taken as a whole, but a few specifics stand out. Beginning Of The End harks back to…

“It is never easy for a designer to re-envision an original launch,” admitted Sonus faber's chief of design Livio Cucuzza. So when it came to redesigning Stradivari, he said the task was “challenging but also exhilarating”. The Italian brand used High End to launch this reimagined and enhanced sequel of the original speaker from the early 2000s. This stylish (and pretty sizeable) successor benefits from the "most advanced and cutting-edge sound technology” the company has developed over the past two decades, naturally presented in the high standard of wooden craftsmanship Sonus faber is renowned for. “We wanted to ensure that the new Stradivari represented all the advancements Sonus faber has made in sound technology to date, while still keeping the brand's classic external look and feel,” said Cucuzza. To that…

The A100 active speaker system reviewed here is variously advertised under the names Edifier Airpulse A100, Edifier A100, Airpulse A100 and Platinum Audio A100. Irrespective of how it’s advertised, it’s the, same loudspeaker. But it’s complicated… The trademark ‘Airpulse’ is owned by the Platinum Audio Systems Company, which was founded in 2004 and whose website says that this was “with investment from Editier Group (Editier Technology Co., Ltd)”. But there’s a related entity called Dongguan Platinum Audio Systems Co. Ltd. which is headquartered in the Songshan Lake National High-Tech Industrial Development Zone located in Dongguan, China. According to this company’s website, it “specialises in the design and development of home audio, professional audio and music instrument amplification products. Using the most advanced state-of-the-art R&D and testing equipment, our team of…

Group Test Portable Music Players "It’s déjá vu all over again”, one of the famous malapropisms by late Yankees legend Yogi Berra, was my initial reaction to unboxing the Astell & Kern A&norma SR35.1 got the overwhelming sense that I had been here before. And again before that. It’s understandable really, as the new SR35 is the fourth iteration of this portable music player I have reviewed in as many years, and the model’s appearance has varied little more than Mickey Mouse’s over their respective careers. Either the South Korean portable audio specialist is needlessly determined to compete with the annual smartphone launch cycle, or it keeps finding ways to improve upon its ‘budget’ player and cannot resist sharing it with the world. Let’s go with the latter… FEATURES The…

Graph 1 shows the THD of the OAD Padma when it’s delivering one volt out (at its balanced outputs). Asyoucan see for yourself, all distortion components except for the third harmonic, which is sitting at -99dB (0.0011%), are more than 100dB down (0.001%). Indeed, the second harmonic is at —111dB (0.0002%), the fourth harmonic is at —115dB (0.00017%), and all other harmonic distortion components are more than 120dB down (0.0001%). The other ‘spikes’ (signals) you can see on the graph are not related to the test signal and appear to be sub-bands from a signal outside of the audio band — you can see the pattern repetition most obviously in the way groups of three equally spaced signals appear on the graph between 4kHz and 6kHz, then again between 6kHz…

Reissues Music Reviews Whatever Happened To The Teenage Dream? DEMON The title poses a pertinent question. After a stellar year in 1972, during which T. Rex enjoyed two No.1 singles (Telegram Sam and Metal Guru), played sell-out shows at Wembley's Empire Pool (now Arena), released a Ringo Starr-directed concert film of the aforementioned (Born To Boogie), and had a top-five album with 'The Slider', the magic of main man Marc Bolan began, slowly but inexorably, to fade. The photos included in this four-CD/five-LP boxset — shot by Keith Morris, many of them previously unpublished —teil part of the tale. Bolan has cropped his corkscrew hair and lost his elfin looks. He's cheerful and buoyant, but his cheekbones have gone and he's put on the pounds. Compare and contrast these images with the…

To Our Children's Children's Children UNIVERSAL In 1969, as Neil Armstrong took one small step on the Moon, the Moody Blues celebrated the giant leap with a concept LP dedicated to space travel. By this point the group had reinvented themselves from a seconddivision R&B act to psychedelic rock pioneers. 'To Our Children’s Children’s Children’, their second album in that year, once again made heavy use of Mellotron, a discovery of keyboard player Mike Pinder, whose commanding voice is heard on the 'rocket launch' opener Higher And Higher. Each of the five members contributed to the album's vision. Lead singer Justin Hayward's Gypsy is the strongest of the bunch, and one of the only tracks that could be played live due to the level of studio sound techniques involved in…

The Hypnogogue EASY ACTION 'The Hypnogogue' is the twenty-sixth album from Sydney goths The Church, still bestknown for either The Unguarded Moment back in 1981 or their near-hit Under The Milky Way eight years later. Along the way, leader and sole constant Steve Kilbey has tussled with heroin, written poetry and painted, in addition to running The Church and having a solo career. This latest album finds him close to the top of his game. As ever, his vocals are way back in the mix, but beyond the noodly Succulent his tendency to embrace meandering murkiness has been cast aside in favour of hypnotic throb on the standout Thorn, or a covert near-pop pulse on atmospheric opener Ascendence, while Aerodrome is unusually gentle and none the worse for it. The…

Pieces Of Treasure BMG MODERN Rickie Lee Jones's voice is smooth, expressive and shot through with experience and emotion, able to invest well-worn classics from the Great American Songbook such as Just In Time (the first single from 'Pieces of Treasure'), September Song (the second single), Nature Boy (the third) and They Can't Take That Away from Me with fresh layers of meaning, with just a walking bass, sparse piano and vibraphone for back-up. It sounds wonderfully effortless and natural, in a way that Chet Baker or Frank Sinatra once did — and it probably is. After all, you can't fake this. “The Duchess of Coolsville”, brags the cover of her fifteenth studio album (which was produced by Russ Titelman, who also produced Jones' first two albums), and quite frankly…

Newport Test Labs tested the Airpulse A100 in its acoustic test laboratory using both in-room and anechoictest methods. Graph 1 is a composite graph where the lab has used post-processing to splice two graphs together to produce a complete picture of the Airpulse A100’s frequency response when the bass and treble controls are both set to OdB. The lower part of the graph (below 1kHz) is the in-room response measured by the lab, and the upper part of the response (above 1kHz) is the anechoic response it measured. You can see from Graph 1 that the Airpulse A100’s frequency response is totally enclosed within a 6dB window from 48 Hz out to 27kHz, so the normalised response that can be derived from this is 48Hz-27kHz ±3dB. This is selfevidently an…

Sound Travels esoterica It’s Kota Bharu in the remote Malaysian state of Kelantan. The day is hot and sticky and a young John Ong anxiously opens an envelope with his School report. It would be a passport out of the traditions of a developing country he loved but wanted to escape. The siren call of the masjid had little relevance to the bright young man whose love of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin lured him away from it like Orpheus. Australia was the land of his Golden Fleece. Its nomenclature was audio. It seemed unattainable and couldn’t be possessed. “Education was the key to my new life and career,” he says. Ong eventually secured a spot at Queensland University and graduated in mechanical engineering, with the aim of somehow working…

Shadow Kingdom COLUMBIA/LEGACY One might wonder why Bob Dylan, who has just turned 82, would still want to be Singing Forever Young, the lullaby he wrote for his eldest son Jesse that appeared on 1974's 'Planet Waves'. But intimations of mortality can provide a lease of life. Out of the blue in 2021, Dylan filmed a club gig in Santa Monica that was directed by Alma Har'el in a mythical bordello setting, an imaginary dive in Marseilles called Bon Bon Club where indifferent cowboy punters loom like ghosts from an Americannoir nightmare. That film is soon to be available on Apple TV, and two years later comes the inevitable soundtrack, an intriguing collection of familiar classics from 1965 onwards. Lyrics are updated, arrangements played fast and loose. The mid-tempo Watching…

Tubular Bells UMR When Kevin Ayers sang, 'It begins with a blessing/And it ends with a curse1 on Why Are We Sleeping as his band, The Whole World, played London's Hyde Park in 1970, his words could almost be describing the future awaiting his then 17-year-old bassist after composing and releasing 'Tubular Bells'. Inspired by Keith Tippett and Terry Riley's long-form experimental works, Mike Oldfield obsessively distilled his avant-garde influences into an uncannily accessible formula, whose ensuing popularity and cultural cache were impossible to predict. The reverberations throughout his career have come to be seen by him as a both blessing and a curse. In this 50th-anniversary package, Faultline producer David Kosten’s new Atmos and stereo mixes are the main attraction. There’s the impressively awful "swingular bells” arrangement from the…