Innehållsförteckning för October - November 2015 från Sound + Image

A second generation of the Bluesound wireless multiroom system will expand its abilities and introduce two fresh speaker unit models at lower price points than the original Pulse. Updates include a Node 2 (digital and line-level outputs into an existing audio system), a Power Node 2 (just add speakers), and a Vault 2 with its internal CD ripper and a doubled 2TB hard drive plus add the usual Bluesound streaming abilities. All these now have new designs (by designer David Farrage of DF-ID) with less of the crazy angles in evidence, and will use upgraded DACs delivering 32-bit/192kHz performance, and also built-in Bluetooth including aptX. These will be joined by a trio of new wireless speaker units – the expected Pulse Mini, also a Pulse 2 to replace the current…

Two new TV boxes are arriving, one very well publicised, one less so yet. First is the new Apple TV. Aside from more integrated services and a snazzier remote (though we thought the original remote was a miracle of simplicity), the advantages of the new model have yet to reveal themselves — the lack of 4K is not unexpected, but the removal of the optical digital output is not friendly to hi-fi fans. But with roughly the grunt of a PlayStation3 inside, and games developers seemingly entranced by the development kit, the new Apple TV seems to have a destiny as a major new console in the games market — the Nintendo Wii for the next generation? More info: www.apple.com.au Meanwhile Telstra has announced the end of its T-Box series,…

Epson used IFA in Berlin to promote its remarkable new EcoTank printers (with well-priced longlasting ink replacement, hoorah), while also showing its LS10000 projector (reviewed in our June-July issue) and introducing an intriguing new EH-TW5000 series with some potentially highly affordable full-HD home projectors. The EH-TW5300 is one that is due to launch in Australia in October, price to be advised, but given a €699 price and US$799 (pre-tax) in the US for the equivalent Home Cinema 2040, we might hope to see it in Australia around the thousand-dollar mark, highly impressive for the quoted specs. Watch AVHub.com.au for news or www.epson.com.au…

First off, let’s dispel a misconception — that subwoofers are just for movie systems. For sure, the wizards of sound design behind blockbuster soundtracks use the lowest of frequencies to superb effect, heightening reality, inserting ominence, humming your tum-tum with a thrilling bass swoop as the articulated truck flies over the Ninja Turtle, or whatever. But bass is not just for the movies. If you’ve had the chance to sit in front of a truly great (and large) pair of stereo speakers, perhaps at an audio show, you’ll know how much the lowest of frequencies can complete the experience of musical realism, whether you’re down in the thirties of hertz for a crunchy Neil Young guitar piece, or right down for that 16Hz fundamental pipe organ note from Bach’s Passacaglia…

SUMMARY Yamaha NS-SW1000 subwoofer Price: $2999 + Fine musical performance + Extremely powerful above 25 hertz + Solid LFE performance - No effective output at 20 hertz Measurements The ‘Movie’ setting (blue trace) gave a significantly smoother frequency response than the ‘Music’ setting (orange). With respect to ‘Movie’, ‘Music’ was a couple of decibels higher at around 75Hz, and a couple of decibels lower at around 30Hz. With the ‘Movie’ setting, 30 and 75Hz were within a couple of decibels of each other. In either case, it was clear that even bass extension went out to 27Hz and then fell away rapidly below that point (with 20Hz at -18dB in the best case). The final ±6dB measurement was 25 to 175Hz. It certainly seems that AST II did do something…

SCREEN 1: The Android ‘Audio Tool RTA’ app in SPL mode, measuring a 100Hz warble tone from Stereophile Test CD2. You can see from the blue ‘soft’ keys that the averaging is set to ‘Off’, the mode is ‘SPL’, Meter Response is set to ‘Medium’ and that weighting is set to ‘Flat’. The two small tabs visible between the tabs that show ‘SPL’ and ‘Medium’ are for Peak Hold (On/Off) and Valley (On/Off). SCREEN 2: The app showing frequency response after calibration extending from 25Hz - 200Hz ±3dB. Some extra tweaking could have reduced the slightly ‘high’ result for the three third-octave bands above 63Hz, but I preferred the sound of the slight forwardness in this region, and also wanted to show that you don’t need to achieve absolute flatness.…

SUMMARY LG Electronics 65UF950T UHD TV Price: $6499 + Excellent picture quality + Flat not curved + Fast and usable interactive capabilities + Generally good network functions - EPG information not retained when TV put in standby The Tweakers’ Guide As is so often the case, some tweaks were required from the default settings of this TV to achieve ideal picture performance. Based on the ‘Standard’ picture mode, I’d suggest turning ‘Sharpness’ to ‘0’ to get rid of an irritating edginess and an emphasis of picture grain. (When I started watching ‘The Last Ship’ on Blu-ray, it looked like the filmmakers had used the grainiest possible film, until I realised that I still had the sharpness on the default.) Also, the ‘Contrast’ control can do with being bumped up from…

SUMMARY AudioQuest NightHawk headphones Price: $895 + Gob-smacking sound + Stunning looks + Rich, large, deep bass - Over-extravagant at times - For the home, not away Skylar Gray, the impressively monikered designer/engineer of the NightHawk headphones, says that “The act of listening to music through headphones should be a singularly intimate and transcendent experience.” So it’s a surprise he came up with a semi-open design, then, because intimate they’re not. Don’t get us wrong, we love listening to open headphones, but the missus banishes us to another room if we’re at home, and (being born English) we’re simply too considerate to use them at work, or on public transport. The trend in recent years is towards closed designs that keep your sonic intimacy within the headphones. But AudioQuest is…

At the IFA technology show in Berlin, Panasonic previewed the new TX-65CZ950, a 65-inch 4K OLED screen, to be released this month in Europe. The CZ950 combines its OLED panel with Panasonic’s 4K Studio Master Processor, “advanced professional-level processing power”. Panasonic’s IFA presentation made far more of the 4K Pro picture engine than the OLED panel itself, which likely indicates that the panel itself is coming from LG.Display. While LG Electronics currently holds a large-screen OLED monopoly in Australia, LG.Display is a separate company and has already been supplying its OLED panels to other TV brands — the first was launched by China’s Skyworth in 2014. The question now is how well Panasonic has managed to apply its own processing expertise, some of it passed down from Pioneer’s Kuro engineers…

One thing that IFA Berlin didn’t deliver was the expected Ultra HD Blu-ray announcements. We had our suspicions that the Blu-ray Disc Association’s finalisation of a 4K standard had simply come too late for manufacturers or studios to get product in the shops for Christmas, and so it has proved. No promises for launch came from any of the major brands at the IFA exhibition in Berlin, which was the expected launchpad for any end-of-2015 4K Blu-ray release. Panasonic, which had a prototype 4K player on show back at CES in January, seemed in pole position to have a working production player to announce, but made no mention of it at all, concentrating attention instead on its announcement of a 4K OLED television (opposite). Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba…

SUMMARY Dynaudio SUB 250 II  subwoofer Price: $1399 + Wonderfully compact + Good musical performance even when very loud + Respectable LFE performance - Fairly high 3rd harmonic distortion - No effective output at 20Hz Measurements Several of the subwoofers in this collection seemed incapable of reaching their specified bottom end in my room. This subwoofer sniffed at the challenge and reached the claimed 29Hz easily. Within my measurement envelope of ±6dB, the Dynaudio SUB 250 II actually reached an impressive 27Hz. But in a somewhat different style. It stretched out to a touch under 40Hz evenly, and then fell away at a shallower slope than many of the others, a feature of a sealed enclosure. Even though the subwoofer was still producing a useful output at around 27Hz, the…

SUMMARY Velodyne SPL-1200 Ultra subwoofer Price: $2899 + Enormous levels available + Very low distortion + Very good bass extension - No, nothing negative here Measurements Measured up close, the bass output of this Velodyne proved to measure impressively smoothly, essentially being flat within ±3dB from 21.3 to 144Hz, and rolling off reasonably gently below that range. At 20Hz it was down by only a bit over two decibels from the average of the useful output range. The overall ±6dB range was 18.5 to 167Hz. You won’t find many subwoofers offering a wider range than that. The distortion levels for this unit were reasonably low, too, running at 1.5% for the second harmonic, 0.35% for the third, and much lower for the fourth and beyond. In summary it measured as…

SUMMARY Dynaudio SUB 600  subwoofer Price: $3299 + Excellent bass extension + Very high levels available + Compact enclosure - No, nothing bad to report Measurements By the time I reached this Dynaudio, I had been through a series of subwoofers, measuring them as I went, and they all seemed to exhibit a limitation of their bass extending down only to the mid-20s. I had done a check before I started with my own subwoofer by way of check my setup, and it recorded a 15.5 hertz extension. But after such a series of measurements my confidence was wavering and I was wondering if something in my measuring set-up had changed. But then I measured the Dynaudio SUB 600 and confidence was restored. For within the ±6dB measurement envelope, this…

SUMMARY Beyonwiz T2 personal video recorder Price: $399 (500GB) Also: $299 (no HDD), $449 (1TB), $599 (250GB SSD), $699 (500GB SSD) + Excellent recording of up to eight programmes at once + Good value for money + Very fancy WizOS app - Can’t delete TV channels without upsetting numbering - No frame step on playback Beyonwiz has added a third model to its ‘T’ series of personal video recorders. So far we have seen the three-tuner T3, and the T4 with four. So this new T2, of course, has two tuners. But don’t feel short-changed, for it comes with an additional USB tuner. Equipment As with the other models, you can buy the T2 with a range of hard-disk sizes (see panel, left), with two new options here using SSD…

SUMMARY JBL Synchros 700 headphones Price: $399.95 + Powerful sound + Active LiveStage mode sounds fabulous + Cool carrycase - Passive sound not so impressive Hear the truth’, it says on the outer packaging. Then inside, large letters declaring — “The sound of what comes next.” So the future, and the truth. Them’s pretty big promises, mister. Inside the second layer is the carrycase (top, opposite), an object of worship in itself — sleek and soft, it could be a Star Trek-era man bag; we adore it. You hunt for the zip, tucked away inside its whale lips, and then unzip the case to remove the Synchros headphones. They look a little industrial with their spoked shell enclosures (a little reminiscent of Sennheiser HD424s), and they appear semi-open but of…

We’ve been impressed with Focal’s forays into over-ear headphones, enough so to pause our general moratorium on in-ear reviews and shove the new Sphears down our delicate ears. It is the company’s first design to be inserted in this way, and to assist fit and comfort the Sphears come with the usual selection of three silicone tips and three of memory foam to adapt to the wide variability of ear canals. They’re pretty things, and the construction is solid, with 10.8mm Mylar diaphragms (the smallest transducer Focal has ever manufacturered, it notes) in a bass reflex enclusure which ports to the outside through a stainless steel grille and ring at the outside. This therefore leaves the ’phones a little open rather than utterly sealed, good for releasing pressure down in…

Yamaha has used an old name for a new product — MusicCast is the new wireless multiroom platform with which it will take on the likes of Sonos, HEOS, Bluesound and the rest. While it has taken its time getting the system to market, it has strong differentiators to give it an edge, not the least of them the enormous range of device options on offer that will integrate with the app-control MusicCast — 25 different AV receivers, two hi-fi amplifiers, two audio systems, two wireless speaker systems and three soundbars… and that’s just what’s available during the initial launch roll-out. The other big news is that MusicCast can send music to any Bluetooth speaker/device you already own, irrespective of make or model. This may leave competitors somewhat agog —…

TCL had its usual spectacular mix of current and future screen technologies on show at IFA Berlin, including a 110-inch curved 4K/UHD TV China Star with backlit LED-LCD display, entitled ‘China Star’. The diagonal of this monster is almost 2.8m, and at three metres it fills a 55-degree field of view — that’s a cinema level of immersion. The pole mounting looks neat, bearing in mind this TV’s specs say it weighs 425kg. Yowsa. TCL also continued its championing of quantum dots for delivery of extended colour gamuts, working with its subsidiary CSOT and US-based QD Vision to demonstrate the H9700 series, “the First Commercially-Branded Television to Present Over 90% of ITU Rec. 2020 Color Gamut”, a color gamut almost twice the size of today’s industry standard. Also on show…

One of the biggest instant buzzes from IFA 2015 came with Panasonic’s announcement that it has reversed its decision to end Technics turntable production — at least long enough for this prototype to emerge. There have been online petitions for the company to bring back a version of the classic DJ SL-1200 which was in production for 35 years from 1972 up to the last version, 2007’s SL-1200MK6. Those sites and Facebook pages are now celebrating the announcement — while also wondering what exactly they’re likely to be getting. The new incarnation of Technics has, after all, been pitched at a mid-to-high-end hi-fi audience. Panasonic relaunched the brand at IFA last year with some relatively high-end kit, and this year has added a new Grand Class Series consisting of the…

It was all change at the CEDIA Awards this year — entries for the finest custom installation projects in Australia, New Zealand and the wider Asia-Pacific region were all submitted through the U.S. head office of CEDIA, where they were judged by a committee of U.S. luminaries before the winners were announced at a local CEDIA event in Melbourne, held to coincide with the Integrate Expo there in late August. Regular readers may recognise some of the winners here as entries that were also made in the previous 2014 Awards — some projects had been updated, but others were allowed a second ‘go’ following the decision to change the whole submission process for 2015. The category list is curtailed for 2015, with only two categories of Integrated Home (above and…

SUMMARY Sunfire XTEQ10  subwoofer Price: $2999 + Very high levels available + Excellent auto-calibration system + Extremely compact - Not effective at 20Hz - 2nd harmonic distortion a bit high Measurements As mentioned in the main article, the subwoofer was quite different with EQ switched off, and with the EQ automatically calibrated. In the former condition (orange line), the bass was flat and even between 27Hz and 50Hz, and then rose to a new plateau some 9dB higher commencing at 60Hz. No wonder the deep bass sounded weak. The auto EQ, though, changed that completely. When it was done (blue line), there was just one plateau, from just under 27Hz to 95Hz (±2dB). This subwoofer produces virtually nothing in the way of infrasonics. Indeed, it looks like the DSP imposes…

SUMMARY Denon DNP-730AE network audio player Price: $849 + Excellent sound quality + DLNA and AirPlay streaming + Good file compatibility, including DSD - No external inputs to operate as a DAC Measurements With 16-bit/44.1kHz (i.e. CD standard) music the frequency response was treated to a relatively gentle roll-off — at a bit above 20kHz the response was down by 0.4dB from its peak. Noise was around the theoretical minimum for 16 bits at -97.1, dBA rated. With 24-bit/96kHz signals the same relatively slow filter was employed, albeit without the brick wall slightly above 20,000 hertz. The response was down around 1.5dB at 40kHz. The noise floor was at -110.3dBA. Moving up to 24-bit/192kHz, the same response curve was maintained, except without the quickening as it nears 48kHz. The -3dB…

A small metal plaque inside the luxurious packaging of the even more luxurious VK-1s announces that they were “assembled in Brittany, France”, lest you were thinking there was a Norse or German company involved through the Valkyrian reference. Mais non, these come from a Paris-based audio start-up company “specialized in the design and manufacturing of high-end nomadic audio products”. They certainly approached this, their first product, with lofty ideals, individually numbering each unit on that metal plaque, and using custom-made transducers that have titanium diaphragms and neodymium magnets, housed in a headshell of aircraft-grade aluminium, with handstitched lambskin leather headband and earpads. Even the carrybag is quilted and magnetically sealed. Coo. People on the bus just stare at them. The opening page of the instructions book is a bit alarming,…