Innehållsförteckning för Autumn 2024 från Best Buys – Audio & AV

Welcome to Leica’s ‘Cinema TV’, an ultra-short-throw projector with TV tuners, smart streaming, and a built-in sound system — as the name suggests, it is intended as a complete TV replacement. You can plug in external sources, but the Cine 1 could provide everything you need in one neat and quite gorgeous package. It’s a stunner. A home theatre projector might seem rather the side-step for Leica Camera AG, global manufacturer of high-end cameras and lenses. But perhaps not so much, if we step back a little in time. Photography has always been a form of home entertainment in itself, and in many 1960s and 1970s homes the biggest available imaging system would have been a projector and a large square screen for showing carousels of 35mm transparencies mounted in…

Despite vinyl’s ability to seemingly never die, the fact remains that we are most definitely in a streaming era. With quite literally millions of songs at our fingertips, accessible from the cloud, potentially in resolutions higher than those of CD, it’s understandable. That instantaneous connection to our favourite songs is something now that many people will likely never be able to live without. Yet there is still a strong demand for compact discs, and rightly so: we recently spoke of our continued love for the format in an opinion piece in our sister publication Australian Hi-Fi (issue 534, p52). Prices for new CD releases have never been lower, while stocks in charity shops have never been higher, so they’re easy to come by, easy (relatively) to store and, unlike vinyl,…

Advance Paris is quite likely a new name to most of our readers; it is indeed a fresh face here in Australia. But it’s far from a newcomer. With a 25-year history in its domestic market and Europe as Advance Acoustics, the company was making loudspeakers as far back in 1995, before expanding into electronics with its first amplifier in 2003. It went global via IFA 2005 in Berlin and now distributes in over 40 countries, from its headquarters in Brie-Comte-Robert, outside Paris. Recent changes include its name — now Advance Paris — and its leadership, with a new team led by CEO Dimitri Peucelle, formerly of Citroen, and of Dyson in France, Italy, and Spain. The Advance Paris product catalogue is comprehensive, with a greater emphasis now on electronics…

Complete the following sequence: 5000, 3000, 2000… ? Got your answer? Congratulations if you said 1000, and bonus points if you realised from the context that these are the descending series of stereo hi-fi components available from Yamaha’s music division. Up at the top in the audiophile 5000 Series, the pre-power amplification alone will set you back $26k. The 3000 Series maintains full analogue hi-fi sensibilities at a lower component level: the integrated amp is $9999. Then in a relatively recent addition to the lower 2000 Series, the $4999 R-N2000A added a full streaming section on top of (or more accurately below) the analogue amplification. The ‘N’ in Yamaha’s product numbers indicate networking and smarts. So here we have the new R-N1000A. Yamaha labels it a network ‘receiver’, but don’t…

MartinLogan has come a long way in the 40-odd years it has been building loudspeakers, an undeniably long history that includes one enormous change in direction: when the company started making loudspeakers using conventional dynamic drivers. You see, MartinLogan was created specifically to build loudspeakers that used electrostatic drivers to deliver the midrange and high frequencies — not the dynamic drivers that almost every other major speaker manufacturer was using at the time (with the notable exception of then-British Quad, already renowned for its ESLs). MartinLogan’s first electrostatic prototype was shown prior to the company’s founding at the 1982 US Consumer Electronics Show, its reception convincing Gayle Martin Sanders and Ron Logan Sutherland that they had a winner on their hands. They combined their middle names and returned to 1983’s…

BenQ’s projector variations continue to proliferate, especially in the field of plonk-and-play all-in-one projectors which have streaming smarts and speakers built-in. Some of BenQ’s projectors look like traditional projectors, but then there are circular ‘GV’ projectors which roll around in curved bases beaming light at the ceiling, and roughly cubic ‘X’ projectors like this one, a friendly box you can put down pretty much anywhere, ready to create big-screen entertainment from its projected images, and relatively small-box sound into the bargain from its own internal speakers. By our count there are currently three of these near-cubic projection offerings from BenQ, and you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart from the outside without lining them up, or at least noting their dimensions in the specifications. The other two are both…

When you look back at the history of projection, whether it be film, video or photographic, they all involve setting up a projector in front (or behind) the screen to display the projected image. The positioning of the projector would be determined by the requisite image size and the throw distance of the lens. Over time came newly-developed projection-screen technologies that were able to complement particular projector technologies in ways that achieved the best image performance possible. Early silver screens were developed to optimise image brightness from low-output projectors; later higher-gain white screens were developed for the same reasons. It is fair to say that screen manufacturers respond to the projection technology of the day (see panel overleaf), rather than developing a new screen technology and expecting projector manufacturers to…

We like hi-fi. You might have gathered that. What that really means is that we love music and we want it to sound as good as it possibly can. That’s why we like hi-fi, because good hi-fi does that. A hi-fi system is a music machine. But what is a hi-fi system these days? Stereo speakers, an amplifier and a CD player or turntable were once the ingredients for every music system. Now you can do it all (and more) with a single wireless speaker. The best examples of portable Bluetooth speakers can make some nice sounds, and have the merit of being affordable. But larger ‘all-in-one’ streaming music systems for the home, some of them from established stars in the hi-fi firmament, have risen to prices which compete directly…

Did we notice a few eyebrows raised during one of the reviews earlier in this issue, when we talked about a $3000 amplifier being ‘midrange’? For some, that might seem a little high for midrange. But such categories are a matter of perspective, and we already had this amplifier, the $23,000+ Bladelius Ask, warming through on the test bench. So let’s see what such extra funds bring, and hear the music it delivers. It’s unlikely you will have heard of Michael (Mike) Bladelius, and yet he is one of the most renowned of audio equipment designers. For most of the time he has been designing equipment for other brands such as Threshold, Classé Audio and Mark Levinson. His name only entered the spotlight in 1997 when he and his son…

The earth was made so various, that the mind of desultory man, studious of change, and pleased with novelty, might be indulged. So said William Cowper in the 17th century, and though it is unlikely he had loudspeakers in mind, there is undoubtedly more variety and novelty in the speaker market than for any other link in the hi-fi chain. Different types, different styles, various sizes, and of course widely-differing prices: there are high-value mass-market speakers and handcrafted artisan-made speakers. There are square speakers, round speakers, triangular speakers, and one famous pair shaped like elegant snail shells. It might seem overwhelming. How on earth do you start narrowing it down? By thinking through the main issues, and asking some key questions. For example, are you squeezed into a tiny bedsit…

You know that a particular loudspeaker design has achieved iconic status when audiophiles who are discussing it don’t mention the name of the manufacturer, just the model name (or number) of the speaker itself. Richter’s ‘Wizard’ speakers are certainly one such design, almost always referred to simply as ‘the Wizards’. One reason for that status is because Richter’s ‘Wizard’ design has been on the market for close to 40 years in one incarnation or another. Another reason might well be the number of awards the design has garnered over that time. Yet another might be that, according to its manufacturer at least, more ‘Wizards’ have been sold in Australia than any other loudspeaker designed in this country. But the main reason is that throughout their long ‘career’, as the awards…

Epson is the world no.1 for projection, across all categories from the home to the classroom, from sporting events to conferences. And within our particular focal point of consumer AV projection, there’s hardly a niche in which this Japanese company doesn’t have at least one offering, and usually a range. It’s also a company which has a back story of which potential purchasers might be proud, given the path chosen during the company’s last 30 years with regard to sustainable practices. This builds on the origin story of its founding as ‘Daiwa Kogyo’ in 1942 by local clock-shop owner Hisao Yamazaki in Suwa, Nagano (still home to Epson’s HQ today), so that as it stands today, Seiko Epson Corporation is not only one of the world’s largest manufacturers of printers…

Three new ‘Authentics’ wireless loudspeakers have arrived from JBL, rising from the smallest Authentics 200 at $500, next to the Authentics 300 at $600 (a small price lift given its larger size and bonus battery operation), and lastly the Authentics 500 reviewed here, the largest at 47cm wide, mains power only, and priced at $999.95. The Authentics 500 came to us with a turntable, the JBL Spinner BT, perhaps to point to the potential for a package, as that turntable can send its groovy tunes via Bluetooth, the Authentics speaker receiving them wirelessly, along with its own app-based music streaming and fairly minimal provision for external inputs. “There is a very good JBL app for your phone or tablet, plus another way to get what you want — just ask.…

Denon has been making direct-drive turntables for a long time. Its very first was the DN-302F made for use in Japanese radio stations, released in 1970 — co-incidentally (or not) the same year that Matsushita released the world’s first direct-drive turntable, the SP-10, after having claimed to have invented the direct-drive motor system used in it two years prior (though see below*). Up until 1970, all turntables were driven by either a belt or an idler-wheel. Radio stations didn’t like belt-drive turntables because they required continual maintenance and were slow to reach playing speed. They also didn’t like idler-wheel turntables, because they too required continual maintenance, and also had higher levels of wow and flutter than belt-drive turntables. So for radio stations, the direct-drive design was the answer to all…

Given the current ‘retro’ hi-fi revival, the re-release of a Musical Fidelity amplifier plucked from the 1980s might be viewed as a cynical marketing exercise, especially as the company recently announced retro BBC-style speakers as well. Are they just pulling out an old amplifier design to fill a new retro range? The answer to that seems to be a resounding ‘no’. Heinz Lichtenegger of Pro-Ject fame purchased Musical Fidelity in 2018 after close involvement with the brand for decades — and apparently bringing back the company’s A1 was one of his longheld hi-fi dreams. Back in the day it had impacted his life both as a product and as one of his first major successes as a budding distributor in Austria. “It is hard to have anything but admiration for…

Signature loudspeaker designs were once exactly that… loudspeakers that bore the actual signature of the person responsible for designing them. That’s still true in some cases, but in many other situations, it’s now used more in the spirit of a top chef’s ‘signature’ dish. Certainly in this case an actual signature would not, sadly, be feasible, the design’s originator John Bowers having died in 1987, and his founding partner Roy Wilkins, after leaving the company many years earlier, also long since departed. So when it comes to the ‘Signature’ used on the newest 805 D4 Signature model, Bowers & Wilkins says the epithet here indicates that the speaker “features fully optimised technologies, including that all-important diamond dome tweeter and solid body tweeter-on-top.” But those two technologies are also fitted to…

For almost a decade, we have been able to associate Sennheiser’s Momentum wireless over-ear headphones range with not only a top level of sound quality at their price point but also classy sleek style: their grainy leather headband, pearlescent or matte-finished oval ear cups and distinct metal slider carrying over from one generation to another in an admirable refusal to look ordinary next to the competition. But that particular baton has been dropped by the Momentum 4 Wireless, which arrived with a plainer — one might say ‘safe’ — design language. Indeed it’s more akin to their immediate rivals in the wireless noise-cancelling market, which is a bit like a wonderfully eccentric kid at school deciding to dial things down to fit in with their classmates. Sennheiser was market leader…