Innehållsförteckning för June - July 2019 från Sound + Image

We had our neighbours round recently, and one of them came up to the music room to admire the glowing VU needles of the power amp from Yamaha’s impressive 5000 Series which was warming through for an upcoming review. He was suitably impressed, and he asked me, of course, how much it costs, and then after a pause — “And what does it do, exactly?” This is a problem with amplifiers these days. While the Yamaha pre-power pair look, to my eyes and I’d guess to anyone who has hung around hi-fi for a good few years, decidedly sexy, amplification as a breed is not only unsexy, it’s no longer even clear to most people why they even need it. In his home my neighbour plays his music through his…

Panasonic has announced its 2019-2020 AV line-up, including three new OLED TV models and a handy entry-level UHD Blu-ray player, among much more. The three OLED TVs are the GZ2000, to be available in 65-inch only from September priced $8299, the GZ1500, available in July again in 65-inch only for $6199, plus two sizes of the GZ1000, also in July, at $5799 for the 65-inch and $3599 for the 55-inch. The flagship TH-65GZ2000U includes a new “custom Professional Edition 4K OLED panel”, along with a Technics-tuned soundbar that is augmented with what are claimed as world’s first built-in upward-firing speakers to support Dolby Atmos. While Sound+Image readers may be more likely to attach a larger sound system to a TV of this level, be aware that in contrast to last…

Ortofon is celebrating the survival of vinyl with new cartridges at opposite ends of its range. The new $129 Super OM 5E (centre above) is now the pinnacle of the entry-level OM 5 Series, its elliptical stylus offering a broader frequency range and better channel separation, in addition to being “compatible with just about any tonearm”, making it an easy upgrade for many turntable users. Below that in the range the OM 5S (right) offers a new cartridge at just $59, its spherical stylus promising “easy alignment and robust playback”. Meanwhile at Munich’s HIGH END 2019 show, Ortofon launched a new flagship phono cartridge, the MC Anna Diamond, which is similar to the previous Anna MC flagship (the name honours Russian soprano Anna Yuryevna Netrebkoof, and we can see why…

Remember Metz, the premium television brand? Well it’s back (actually, in Germany it never went away), and the brand is currently in the throes of going global with a new affordable premium brand, ‘Metz blue’. ‘Metz blue’ is to be “powered by German engineering”, but it also has the monumental market power of China’s Skyworth behind it. Skyworth is “one of the brands who are no. 1 in China” as Metz CEO Dr Norbert Kotzbauer put it tactfully at the IFA press conference (where TCL and Hisense were both also presenting). Skyworth is huge — it expects to sell a million Android TVs globally in 2019, operating out of Shenzen with 40,000 employees, a corporate value of US$19bn, US$6.2bn revenue in 2018, global capacity to produce for 18m TVs a…

Whether you’re after better music control in the car or just reliable voice-based hands-free control, Google is aiming to assist as it overhauls the Android experience behind the wheel. Unveiled at the recent Google I/O 2019 developer conference in Mountain View, California, the overhaul is building driving-friendly features directly into the talkative Google Assistant, rather than relying on the standalone Android Auto smartphone app. At the same time, the tech giant is extending Android Auto compatibility to more car infotainment systems via both wired and wireless smartphone connections, as well as ramping up its Android Automotive OS program which runs a full version of Google’s mobile operating system on the car itself. Launching back in 2015, the Android Auto app has offered driving-friendly access to in-car navigation, along with music…

In recent issues we have been enjoying a series of samples from Bluesound’s ecosystem — first the hard-drive-equipped Vault, last issue the Pulse Mini wireless speaker, and here in this group of smart amplifiers, the Bluesound Powernode. As with the others this is now in its ‘2i’ version, which takes another step beyond the major redesign of version 2, adding updates to pretty much every corner of the range. So the Powernode is a streaming amplifier, with USB-A, optical and analogue minijack inputs, plus Bluetooth, and access to “all the world’s music”, as Bluesound puts it, through the Wi-Fi and Ethernet networking options. The 2i version has been re-engineered inside for improvements in DAC and audio quality, and in addition to all the streaming services from online and your own…

This is not an exhaustive review of the $1199 RX-V685 AV receiver, although we spent much time enjoying its stereo performance as well as 5.1-channel performance during the MusicCast Surround experiment. In terms of facilities it offers seven channels of power which Yamaha rates at 90W per channel into 8 ohms (20Hz-20kHz, 0.06% THD, two channels driven), while there are five HDMI inputs and two outputs, with the receiver able to decode Dolby Atmos and DTS-X in addition to every common surround format, remembering that it doesn’t support the use of height speakers. It can, however, handle Yamaha’s system of having higher presence speaker positions, while two of the channels can be repurposed for speakers in a second zone, or to biamp front speakers which support biamp connections. And of…

amsung is pulling out of the Blu-ray S player market. Various reasons have been given, including the apparent victory of Dolby Vision over the Samsung-backed HDR10+ in the battle for an enhancedmetadata version of HDR. I personally found the news quite shocking. And it points to something important: most consumer entertainment products operate in a high-competition, low-margin space. A company can only make money on a device if it can make a respectable per-unit profit margin, or have an enormous sales volume. Continued development costs money. If enough money can’t be made to continue development, sales will just get worse. And if you’re a company like Samsung with a reputation for quality, you can’t afford to have your brand name tainted by one or two product lines which are sub-standard.…

I’ve recently written in our sister magazine Australian Hi-Fi about the output impedance of headphone amplifiers — about how this can affect the frequency performance of headphones, and how difficult it is to even find out what the figure might be. Well, the Audio-Technica AT-HA5050H Hybrid Headphone Amplifier and DAC hides nothing on that front. Indeed, I’d have to say that you’ll probably be unable to find a set of headphones for which this unit isn’t an ideal fit. Equipment The first hint about that are the eight 6.5mm headphone sockets in a slightly recessed section of the front panel. These are grouped into four pairs. Each pair is labelled with its output impedance: 120 ohms, 82 ohms, 33 ohms and 0.1 ohms. Audio-Technica says of this: “All headphones are…

Here we go again’ is how I commenced the review of The Fifth Element because that was yet another new format of the same movie. But ‘here we go again’ is appropriate for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse for a very different reason. This time because, smack-bang between the first and second instalments of the ‘third’ Spider-Man movie series since 2002, we have not the fourth new Spider-man, but the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth new Spider-people. ‘People’, because a couple of them are female and one is, well, something else entirely. And despite Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse being animated, the wisdom of the crowd — an average of 8.5/10 from 210,000 voters on IMDB — judges this one to be the best of the lot. I gave it…

Sony has released a second turntable to follow the 2017 Sound+Image award-winning HX500, and this new one adds an aptX-capable Bluetooth transmitter. That means those who lack a traditional hi-fi system can listen to their vinyl on any wireless speaker, Bluetooth-equipped soundbar, or indeed direct to wireless headphones. But it does, we should add, also offer both phono-level and line-level output, in addition to a USB-B computer connection which allows you to digitally record your black discs. It’s a good-looking deck, with straight aluminium arm and what appears to be a basic audio-technica cartridge, though the headshell is unremovable, so upgrade options will be limited. But then despite all the connectivity, Sony has managed to price the PS-LX310BT at a remarkable $299. We’ll have a review of this turntable next…

Sennheiser’s AMBEO soundbar is now available in Australia, remarkable in a number of ways, being the company’s first ever consumer loudspeaker product, and quite the product at that. Australia joins only Germany, the UK and the US in having the earliest official launch date, with other markets to follow. We have heard the AMBEO bar three times now — at IFA 2018 in Berlin; at the recent IFA Global Press Conference where Dr Andreas Sennheiser (pictured) announced Sennheiser’s global audio partnership with IFA; and we currently have a final unit under review for next issue. What we can tell you already is that this is one remarkable soundbar, achieving a deep and spacious soundfield from its front-only position — no satellite rears, no subwoofer, just the bar. At the IFA…

We were among the first to review Warwick Acoustics’ initial product, the Model One, a pair of headphones which introduced an innovative new electrostatic driver using only a back grid of stainless steel mesh instead of the usual pair, and with a diaphragm tightened across a series of large open cells, like individual drums. Called the Sonoma Model 1, this clever design and its revelatory performance in particular saw our Sound+Image 2019 Headphone Innovation Award heading to the company’s HQ in Nuneaton, UK. Now Warwick Acoustics has used HIGH END 2019 in Munich to launch a new flagship integrated headphone system, the ‘Aperio’ (from the Latin, meaning ‘to reveal’). Combining a new driver unit with the headphones, the Aperio is described as a reference studio monitor headphone system for high-resolution…

HIGH END 2019 ran in Munich from May 9th to 12th, the 38th consecutive staging of this German show which has become an essential part of the hi-fi calendar, and which again delivered everything from the small and handy to the gigantic and horny. Let’s start small with Astell&Kern (below), which launched the new SP2000 in its A&ultima range of high-res portables, the first using new flagship Asahi Kasei DACs (the AKM AK4499EQ). It’s capable of 32-bit/768kHz bit-to-bit playback of high resolution PCM audio and native playback of DSD512; the SP2000 is promised to Australia in July at $4999. Also interesting is the $1199 SP1000 AMP, which docks with the SP1000 player to deliver high gain balanced 10V rms and unbalanced 6.2V able to drive power-hungry headphones. French speaker folk…

Cambridge Audio, which is part of Audio Partnership, has grown from its position in the 1990s when it was redefined as an entry-level hi-fi brand — solid yet affordable, a little like NAD, and re-established (by then in its third incarnation) as a house brand for the UK’s Richer Sounds hi-fi stores, with which Audio Partnership had, well, an audio partnership. But in Australia, Cambridge Audio has instead held its own (and rather higher than entry-level) reputation. And as time has passed that rep has risen everywhere with the lifting levels of models and performance. Yet this is the first time in many years that the company has gone to the level of the Edge. Indeed some might think this a first ever tilt at the upper echelons of hi-fi…

This is Amazon’s smart amplifier, pushing its Echo range of Alexa devices into a more hi-fi space. The ‘Link’ describes the delivery of streaming music, and the ‘Amp’ differentiates it from the simple Echo Link, which is designed to plug into an existing amplifier. With the Echo Link Amp you just plug in speakers, creating an Alexa-friendly zone of streaming audio. Note we say Alexa-friendly, but not immediately Alexa-ready. For reasons unknown, Amazon hasn’t put a microphone into the Echo Link Amp (or the Echo Link), so that for Alexa voice control you will also need a further compatible Echo device in the room, such as an Echo Dot, currently $79. This could be anywhere in the home since it will ‘talk’ to your Amp over the home network, but…

It may seem a little strange devoting a review to an accessory. That, after all, is what the Questyle Super Hub SHB 2 is. It’s a docking station, as we used to say, for Questyle’s high-quality and high-res-capable QP2R portable audio player. But it’s well worth looking at, as together they form what Questyle calls a ‘Super Source System’. Equipment We reviewed Questyle’s fine $1999 QP2R portable player last year, and you can ponder at leisure our full review by visiting avhub. com.au/qp2r. But to recap briefly, the QP2R operates much like an upmarket version of the iPod classic. There’s a display, but it isn’t touch-sensitive. Instead, you spin your finger around a touch-sensitive ring on the front panel to select music. The music resides on the unit’s 64GB of…

Yamaha’s MusicCast platform has proven one of the most successful at connecting together multiple devices in different rooms for multiroom music playback. And Yamaha has given it a wide ecosystem, putting MusicCast not only in to the usual selection of wireless speakers and soundbars, but also into its amplifiers and receivers, into an ever-widening selection of lifestyle products, even across divisions into a piano, augmenting the technical tour de force which is the Yamaha Disklavier Enspire. MusicCast has long been a bonus feature in the company’s soundbars and AV receivers, but in its original version this was focused on bringing music to these systems and linking them with other rooms. The introduction of ‘MusicCast Surround’ last year aims to change that, extending the system to movies and surround sound, connecting…

T the other big Korean may be exiting the Blu-ray player market (see the intro article), but LG is still here. Currently the brand sells two regular Blu-ray players and two UHD ones. The LG UBK90 is the premium model, selling for $399. The main differences compared to the $299 UBK80 are the inclusion of Dolby Vision support, plus Wi-Fi, access to Netflix and YouTube, and a second HDMI output socket. Equipment Physically, the LG UBK90 is plain-looking. But I thought it plain in just the right way — all black and almost featureless. The tray is marked with the UHD Blu-ray logo and there are four small push buttons on the front, along with a USB port and one small LED. The black finish is matte (the monolith from…

Sometimes we know the price of equipment coming in for review, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we check it before we start, so we can judge the product in its context, but occasionally we do much of our listening in the dark as to pricing, which gives us the fun of guessing. With Pioneer’s SE-MS9BN wireless noise-cancelling headphones (S9 for short, though not to be confused with the company’s popular DJM-S9 mixer) we’d used them for several days before we checked the price, and were surprised to find they are $279.95, significantly below the sweet-spot for wireless noise-cancellers, which has settled around $399-$499 (and, of course, up) — and that was where we had guessed the S9 would be priced. So a potential bargain then. But where has Pioneer saved the…

Here we go again! The Fifth Element is a movie I first caught — partially — on broadcast TV. Analogue TV, that is. And only partially because, being a science fiction nerd, I couldn’t cope on that particular evening with Chris Tucker’s OTT performance. But in 1999 it came out on DVD, with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and a video bit-rate of 4.6Mbps. Four years later it received the Sony premium treatment, coming out as a ‘Superbit’ version with a video bit-rate of 7.6Mbps and DTS 5.1 sound. Then in 2006 I got my hands on the region-free Blu-ray release. That was produced by Sony in the US. It bumped the bit-rate up to 17.6Mbps, but used only MPEG2 format and LPCM 5.1 sound, as was common with the…

8K TV resolution is all about larger screen sizes, so we’ve been unusually unexcited over Samsung’s release of 55-inch, even 65-inch 8K TVs, given you’d need to be sitting with your nose on the screen to get much of the benefit of the increased resolution over 4K. But now really monster-sized TVs are arriving, in sizes that can not only leverage 8K’s resolution but rival projection systems with resolution and brightness beyond anything the canvas screen can yet deliver. Samsung officially launched its 98-inch QLED 8K TV on June 7 in Australia. The Series 9 Q900R has hitherto been available in 65-inch, 75-inch and 82-inch models at $9999, $12,999 and $17,499. We expected the 98-inch (actually 97.5 inches of screen on the diagonal) to be pricey, and it is —$99,999!…

We’re fans of the ‘Heritage’ styling adopted by klipsch for its range of wireless speakers and also headphones, especially as it emphasises the history of the company back to 1946 when acoustics pioneer Paul W. Klipsch set up in Hope, Arizona, from whence the company became known as “the great American speaker company”. ‘The Three’ is a wireless tabletop stereo system which takes its Heritage cues from its use of real wood veneer and spun-copper switches and knobs, while delivering a rich and sizeable sound from its 35cm-wide cabinet. This much we knew from the original ‘The Three’, but now Klipsch has brought the very latest tech to this classic design by adding built-in Google Assistant, which not only allows you to ask it how long to cook your eggs,…

The BenQ W2700 AV projector is the company’s third generation of projectors with Ultra-HD (4K in its domestic context) resolution. The first generation was the BenQ W11000 and X12000, BenQ’s original projectors to sport Ultra HD, using an 0.66-inch 4.15-megapixel Digital Micromirror Device with XPR pixel shifting to create something like 3840 × 2160 on-screen pixels. Then came the BenQ W1700 model at a much more affordable $2499. This used an 0.47-inch DMD of 1920 × 1080 resolution but with four-times XPR pixel-shifting to create Ultra-HD output. And this W2700 is clearly intended to be a successor to the W1700. Equipment It is also a physical successor to BenQ’s earlier full-HD projectors, the W1070 and W1070+ (and others). These were successful models from six years ago in the case of…

The concept isn’t new — indeed one of the very first releases from Sonos back in 2006 was a smart zone amplifier designed as a just-add-speakers solution. Every wireless multiroom ecosystem launched since then has had its own version of this easiest of system solutions, the smart amplifier. The three reviews that follow rise in price order from Amazon’s new smart amplifier to the latest version of the Sonos zone player, and on up to Bluesound’s ‘2i’ edition of its Powernode smart amp, which retails at three times the price of Amazon’s product. Each of these units connects to your network and the internet to play streaming music. They have internal amplification to drive any pair of speakers. They have additional inputs on the back so you can add other…

One of the things we like about Sonos is that it doesn’t release iteratively updated new products every year; it uses firmware updates to add new abilities regularly to existing models, and then introduces generational hardware changes when it’s time for something new. And Sonos seems to be having a burst of such creativity at present, having recently announced a musical lamp and musical bookshelf in a cunning collaboration with IKEA (see our last issue), and while Australia waits for those to arrive, there is a new range of architectural speakers (in-wall, in-ceiling and outdoor designs) produced in collaboration with Sonance. And there is this new Sonos Amp. In many regards the Amp is the most traditional of the new products; the first Sonos product back in 2005 was the…

You can connect the Super Hub SHB 2 directly to your main audio system for playback, and with the supplied remote control you can navigate the player without having to get up and press its actual control dial. But how about keeping the whole Super Hub near your listening location for local control, and sending the music wirelessly to your main system? That’s possible thanks to the Super Hub’s inclusion of a 5GHz wireless transmitter, and the existence of the $2299 CMA Twelve receiver unit pictured above. This is a DAC, preamp and headphone amplifier — indeed it is Questyle’s flagship DAC/headphone amp, and its name celebrates the 12 years since the invention of the Current Mode Amplification with which it, previous flagships, and the preamplifier of the SuperHub have…

The MusicCast Surround concept allows MusicCast 20 or MusicCast 50 wireless speakers to be used as rears in a 5.1-channel set-up as and when required. The front, centre and subwoofer channels can be provided either by a MusicCast Surround soundbar, or by a Yamaha MusicCast AV receiver which can deliver the rear channels wirelessly. Currently compatible models include: Soundbars: MusicCast BAR 40 (no subwoofer); MusicCast BAR 400 (with wireless sub) AV receivers: RX-V3085, RXV2085, RX-V1085, RX-V685, RX-V585, RX-V485, RX-D485, RX-S602; Aventage CX-A5200, RX-A3080, RX-A2080, RX-A1080, RX-A880, RX-A780, RX-A680 Subwoofer: MusicCast SUB 100.…

Is your house wired for voice control? If it is, you probably have either Google Home or Amazon Alexa devices. Or, maybe, Apple Home. Each has their pros and cons, but one good reason to go for Alexa is the rather strong third-party eco-system that has grown up around it. Which brings us to the Vanguard Dynamics VAIL (‘Voice Artificial Intelligence Link’) Amp. This device simultaneously , physically manages an Amazon Echo Dot and turns it into a much higher-performance music source. Equipment Amazon Alexa was the first in the voice control field in the US, and while now being challenged by Google globally (see p43), it remains very strong. Most importantly, some Alexa devices have a modest feature which the equivalent Google devices lack: a 3.5mm analogue stereo output.…

In Australia we often don’t see the full product range from the consumer electronics giants. Sometimes they make audiophile and videophile products... but then market them only in their home market, or perhaps North America. The Panasonic DP-UB9000 UHD Blu-ray player gives us a taste of what we so often miss out on, for it is an unabashedly high-end product. And, happily, this is one that is available here. Equipment While I might have seemed down in the intro to these two reviews regarding the future of Blu-ray, I should note that Panasonic seems up. The DP-UB9000 is just one of four Ultra-HD models it has available. The others range in price from $279 to $659. So, thank you Panasonic! This award-winning model packs in nearly every feature that you…

The simplest definition for augmented reality goes like this one, from the online dictionary dot com: “a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view”. So you might think of augmented reality (or AR for short) as something that happens inside a set of goggles, or glasses, or perhaps when watching images overlaid across live camera images on your phone’s screen. And mostly, you’d be right. The majority of AR applications are primarily a visual experience. But why shouldn’t augmented reality also apply to the other senses — touch, smell and hearing? Speaker and headphone manufacturer Bose has gone in a new direction. Released in the US, and in Australia just as we go to press, it has introduced…

To complete our all-science-fiction collection in this issue, we finish with the classic 1979 film Alien. Yes, it’s also a horror film, but if science-fiction is about exploring ideas in technology, space or science, this does that aplenty too. The alien creature might be out to eat all the humans, but how does it’s life-cycle work? This movie thinks about these things, and is faithful to the science... mostly. If there was any mention of the artificial gravity in the Nostromo, it escaped me. And as a horror film, it’s immaculate. The horror consists in both the building of tension, and its fruition. It becomes apparent that Ripley — Signourney Weaver — is the main protagonist. Will she survive? In one of the two commentary tracks on this disc, one…