Innehållsförteckning för September - October 2020 från Sound + Image

Forty years ago; Leak was one of the most famous names in hi-fi. It even had a full manufacturing facility here in Australia. Founded in 1934 by Harold Leak it was sold to the Rank Organisation in 1969, which subsequently ceased using the brand name. Leak is now back, as a brand of IAG (which also owns Quad, Wharfedale, Mission, Audiolab and Castle Acoustics), and its first ‘new’ product under IAG ownership is the Leak Stereo 130, which looks uncannily similar to the Leak Stereo 30 released in 1963, which claimed to be the world’s first commercially available all-transistor amplifier. Of course the internals are all cutting-edge 21st century technology, with both analogue and digital inputs extending to one optical, one coaxial, USB -B plus Bluetooth with aptX, all backed…

Something new and different for Parasound, is how the company’s founder Richard Schram describes the Parasound ZoneMaster 2350, a new stereo Class-D power amplifier rated at 350W per channel into 8 ohms, available in Australia at $2695. “It has the high horsepower our industry has come to expect from good Class D,” he says, “and by marrying it with our industry-leading analogue input stage and unique connectivity options, we’ve created a remarkably rugged, maximum-fidelity amp that can play at the red-line all day.” With lower impedance speakers Parasound claims that it will deliver 600W per channel into 4-ohm loads and is also able to drive 2-ohm loads thanks to the 2350’s high-current design and extensive heat-sinking. Bass management and versatile installation features also help make the 2350 a practical choice…

We were enchanted the first time we used a turntable which can play wirelessly to Bluetooth headphones. Dropping the needle on a vinyl LP then wandering around on wireless headphones just felt so damned cool. All the better when the deck behind the transmission technology is audio-technica’s established AT-LP120 direct-drive turntable, now reinvented as the $749 AT-LP120xBTUSB, those last letters indicating that it retains the USB direct connection for a computer introduced with the LP120xUSB model last year. New-century stuff aside, this turntable is a fully-manual design with 33⅓, 45, and 78 rpm speeds available, and a high-accuracy quartz-controlled pitch lock and pitch change slider allowing for adjustments ranging from ±}8% or ±}16%. The stroboscopic platter’s little red light indicates the current speed. The S-shaped tonearm comes equipped with an…

SOUND+IMAGE PRESENTS WORLD-CLASS AUSTRALIAN HOME CINEMAS This impressive home cinema has been transformative in multiple ways. It was originally created as a birthday present from wife to husband — and this proved a gift that kept on giving, delivering eight years of after-work chilling and weekend screenings which proved so enjoyable that the couple decided to give the room a second transformation, expanding the available space to allow a professionally-installed movie experience. That’s when they contacted Scott Rogan, from Rogue Home Cinemas. “The original ‘Birthday’ cinema had been entirely DIY,” says Scott, “but they loved it so much that they were happy to invest in a bigger grander room. And it was obvious from the get-go that they were keen to build a truly remarkable room.” A new vision With…

Canton is only a couple of years off its 50th anniversary, having begun in the early 1970s when four German hi-fi enthusiasts set themselves up in a former village school with the bold goal of producing the best loudspeaker for every taste and every budget. Back in the 1970s, that plan might have envisioned ranges of stereo speakers from entry-level up to a reference range. But as time passed, along came surround sound, architectural speakers, wireless and multiroom products, and of course soundbars. Canton has adapted to and sometimes led each new development with solidly-engineered solutions for every possibility. Canton has long made both soundbars and soundbases, currently offering a range of ‘sound decks’ and three soundbars — one dumb and two smart, topping out with this Smart Soundbar 10.…

Pluggery resides in two bays at the rear of the bar, with one bay for the power cable, the second (right) hosting an optical digital audio input and two HDMI sockets. One of these is an input for connecting an external source, and the other outward to your TV. This outward HDMI connection may, however, provide a key inward source of audio, since it supports both the Audio Return Channel of HDMI ARC and the enhanced Audio Return Channel, eARC. If your TV is so equipped, you can play from streaming channels such as Netflix and Disney+ which provide Atmos soundtracks, and these can travel to the soundbar down the HDMI cable, no other pluggery required. If your TV lacks even the original ARC, you can use an optical cable…

Last issue we conducted a frighteningly huge survey of wireless multiroom systems, including Bose. And while we had reviewed all of the company’s original SoundTouch products, we hadn’t heard the more recent ‘Smart Home’ family, which combines wireless multiroom abilities with built-in Alexa voice control. Keen to plug the gap in our knowledge, we requested a review unit to assess, and here it is, the attractively buckety Bose Portable Smart Speaker. Equipment The Portable Smart Speaker delivers something that the SoundTouch family never did — a genuinely portable unit. While the SoundTouch 10 is an easily compact size to shift around the home, and has Bluetooth to play music if you step outside the home network, it is still tethered by a mains cable wherever you go. Not so the…

Nura NuraLoop hearing-adaptive noise-cancelling earbuds Melbourne-based audio company Nura has set loose their second product on the world, carrying forward the torch first lit by the over-ear ‘Nuraphone’ in 2017, and greeted with praise in our main headphone round-up last year. And that was unusual, since Nura was one of several companies which sprang up almost simultanously to offer hearing-adaptive features — they give you a hearing test, and then adjust the headphones accordingly to deliver what you didn’t know you were missing. Few of these have we rated as more than glorified EQ. Nura’s original nuraphone seemed an exception. Promising many of the same features as its larger sibling, the new NuraLoop offers up personalised audio in a more compact, rugged, portable and affordable package, while making barely any…

Rated PG Slightly arbitrary comp of film songs. Peter Gabriel is singing to a pig. Sure in his younger days he’d perform wearing a fox’s head, but there’s still an adjustment required. Yet here he is, crooning That’ll Do in ‘Babe 2: Pig In The City’. What a curious gathering of songs this album is, his short-form contributions to diverse films (as opposed to more specialist soundtrack composition work). So there’s a half-enjoyable, half-infuriating randomness to the collection, which leaps from serious songcraft to throwaway quick fixes. There is both great music and so-so stuff here, but the fact that something was leased out to Natural Born Killers, The Reluctant Fundamentalist or Wall-E seems like a sticking-tails-on-donkeys way of compiling a Gabriel set. In Your Eyes did lend ‘Say Anything’…

Ammonia Avenue - Limited Box Set Despite the title, it doesn’t stink. By 1984 The Alan Parsons Project were flushed with success following ‘Eye In The Sky’. Although it wouldn’t achieve the platinum success of its predecessor, ‘Ammonia Avenue’ reached gold status and gave them another hit with Don’t Answer Me, its blend of lavish Phil Spector sonics, resonant acoustic guitars and fast-acting melodies prefiguring the Traveling Wilburys. The propulsive Talking Heads-style beat of You Don’t Believe and the dramatic movie soundtrack ambience of Pipeline enliven the flow of the album, setting the scene for the concluding title track, which builds from sparse piano to brash riffs and opulent strings, overlaid with a high, angelic melody from Eric Woolfson. This expansive box set serves as an absorbing time capsule of…

CLASSIC TRACK: The Beach Boys — Good Vibrations The three-minute symphony which changed the course of popular music. In pursuit of his ultimate ‘teenage symphony to God’, Brian Wilson spent an awful lot of time and money. Obviously, focusing on the financial in the face of such great art is inappropriately grubby and sordid, but $75,000 is $75,000. Even more so when you consider that back then you could buy a three-bedroom house and a Ford Cortina for less than the price of today’s iMac Pro. That said, Brian was a genius, and genius could be indulged as such. Rather than just imagine what a cello and Electro-Theremin might sound like when in tandem with LA’s most sought-after session players The Wrecking Crew, he’d make it happen, and hang the…

While we’re not recommending that everyone rushes to upgrade to 8K TVs just yet, it makes sense for any AV receiver purchase to be future-proofed, and Denon has now made the leap with its first 8K-ready models in its X-Series AVRs. The Denon AVC-X6700H (pictured), the EISA-winning AVC-X4700H (see p25), AVC-X3700H, and AVR-X2700H will each carry 8K HDMI silicon on one dedicated 8K HDMI input, enabling 8K/60Hz and 4K/120Hz video pass-through. The two top models support all key immersive audio formats including Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, IMAX Enhanced and Auro-3D out-of-box. The top AVC-X6700H will also support DTS:X Pro for up to 13 channels of DTS:X decoding with speaker configurations such as 7.2.6 or 9.2.4. Listeners can also enjoy the latest in IMAX Enhanced films in 7.2.6 or 9.2.4 speaker configurations…

We were unable to get one of JBL’s new soundbars in time for our round-up this issue, but the top model certainly looks intriguing, raising the bar to an Atmos configuration including removable battery-powered rear speakers. The JBL Bar 9.1 aims to deliver 5.1.4-channel sound from Atmos soundtracks, with the permanent section of the soundbar having three tweeters and four oval midrange drivers plus a pair of up-firing full-range drivers. But added to this are the removable end sections, which each add a further 20mm tweeter for surround effects and another up-firing full-range driver. So this is a genuine 5.1.4 driver complement, rounded out by the 10-inch wireless subwoofer on bass duties. The Bar 9.1 has a single 4K-compatible HDMI input plus an HDMI output to your TV which includes…

Ruark Audio is based in south England, where it has evolved from a traditional hi-fi speaker company into one which focuses on a particular quality of all-in-one music systems — its R1 design was described by one UK newspaper as “the Aston Martin of DAB radios”. Ruark’s latest R3 Music System exudes space-age style in its Soft Grey version (above), or warm tradition in its Rich Walnut (right), which looks just the thing around which to gather with friends and sing about Ovaltine. But of course the R3 is bristling with technology within. It has Wi-Fi streaming with Spotify Connect & support for Tidal, Deezer & Amazon Music. It has Bluetooth, with aptX. As befits what some might call a radiogram, there are both FM and digital radio tuners inside,…

Care and due diligence must be taken when purchasing from the internet or when buying bargain goods. But we note the recent return of outlet Hi Fi Disposals, created back in 1991 during “the recession we had to have”, and which has returned during other times of crisis to assist retailers, distributors and manufacturers in disposing of superseded, overstocked or otherwise unsaleable stock at below-RRP prices. The site also carries returned items, repaired items returned under warranty, show and display stock, stock affected by fire or water events, or with damaged packaging. Importantly these are all clearly graded as to their history and their condition, and Hi Fi Disposals also has a six-month guarantee as standard. It operates under the respected ownership of Audio Dynamics, so has the further advantage…

BenQ GS2 portable AV projector Acouple of years ago we spent some time with the BenQ GS1 projector. It was a nifty little Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled portable unit with built-in battery. It was very cool, great for a few hours of group entertainment wherever you may be — camping, perhaps, projecting onto the tent. Now BenQ has the GS2 available, and we have to say it’s even cooler than the original. “If you’re after the ultimate bigscreen experience at home, of course seek out a dedicated projector. What the BenQ GS2 offers is a fun, versatile, smart display experience in a portable form.” Equipment The GS1 was like a traditional projector in miniature, flat in shape and finished in white, although it did come with a bright orange protective skin.…

Well, it’s game on now in soundbar world. We have been reviewing LG soundbars since they started making them and, to be frank, we’ve never much rated them. Some could handle movie sound OK, but music, eek, not so much. Last year we didn’t even call one in, preferring not to subject ourselves to another ordeal. But things have clearly changed. From the moment the SN9YG and its subwoofer powered up, it was clear the sound had moved a notch above. During its early days in residence, we were casually throwing tunes (via AirPlay from an iPad Pro) to our reference hi-fi system with its $4000 German standmount speakers, greatly enjoying them and thinking ‘see, that’s what our real hi-fi can do with music’. Then we noticed that our chunky…

Samsung has three ranges of soundbars in its 2020 range. There’s an entry-level T series up to $500 — slim bars with wireless subwoofers but no smart networking. There’s a single lifestyle model at $599 in the S series, a rather different sloping Kvadrat fabric-wrapped bar without a subwoofer. And there’s the continuation of the Q series which has performed so well in recent years, capturing Sound+Image awards for their performance, and topping out this year at the Q950T, a full 9.1.4 system with drivers for each channel, not merely processing, and with wireless Atmos-equipped rears as well as a wireless sub in the not insubstantial package. We’ve been asked to quote RRPs, but Samsung’s website lists lower prices: $1949 for that top Q950T, down from the $2099 RRP announced…

So to the product which has redefined the soundbar and what it can do — Sennheiser’s AMBEO soundbar. It is a truly remarkable product, with some specific divergences in philosophy, notably the early decision that it had to work without a subwoofer. To achieve that Sennheiser abandoned the goal of a small bar that won’t block the bottom of your TV — the AMBEO bar is 14cm high, pretty much guaranteeing that you won’t be able to pop it in front of your TV. Nor can you have it in a cabinet under the TV either, because of the upfiring speakers. So you’ll need your TV raised or wall-mounted, with the AMBEO bar benched below. There are no wireless rear speakers you can add for rear surround — the whole…

It’s one of those busy years for Sonos, a company which only periodically updates the products that comprises its wireless multiroom system, compared with the more traditional hi-fi approach of releasing new models each year. Sonos often instead updates software to confer new abilities on products old and new. But it had a glitch in that regard recently, when it announced that the new S2 operating system, which debuts along with the Arc, will not support some older Sonos products. To be fair, it’s only the very earliest Sonos products that are excluded, and after a backlash from its users, Sonos has released a two-tier software solution where you can isolate the oldies in a retirement zone of their own Meanwhile the Arc arrives, and has to justify costing almost…

As we’ve seen in these reviews, most soundbars offer some way to stream music as well as watch movies — if a soundbar is to be the audio centrepiece of the modern lounge, then it should be able to do both. Yamaha’s bar here not only proves music-friendly, it includes the company’s wireless multiroom platform MusicCast, which allows it to become part of an extended musical home. Equipment What a bemusing collection of logos adorn the modern soundbar! So many technologies. But let’s deal with the physicalities first. Yamaha’s Bar 400 comprises the main soundbar to sit in front of or below your TV, together with a wireless subwoofer to place wherever is convenient. The main bar is 98cm wide, but the more important dimension is its height, just 6cm,…

BlueAnt Burleigh portable Bluetooth speaker In times gone by, young gentlemen didn’t go the gym; they developed their biceps (and often back-strain) by carrying ridiculously-heavy semi-portable sound systems around on their shoulders, audibly assaulting the neighbourhood with the blasting forth of their carefully-curated mix-tapes. Today we have Bluetooth speakers and Spotify for that purpose, but most of the many popular portable speakers today are so small you could put them in a pocket, subject to unsightly bulging. No shoulder-hefted bragging rights there. Australian company BlueAnt is bringing back the bulk with this Burleigh (burly, geddit??) speaker, which puts the usual black grilled and rubbery design of a Bluetooth speaker on steroids. It is not quite as large as the image below implies, but nevertheless a significant load at 2.1kg from…

DALI iO-6 wireless noise-cancelling headphones Around a decade back, the headphone market exploded. The size of the market mushroomed, driven by the youth-orientation of then-Monster’s Dr Dre-cum-beats headphones and boosted by Bluetooth freedom; dozens of new brands were introduced to grab their share, and every hi-fi brand on the planet rushed to create their own headphones. In this last category you might imagine that established loudspeaker brands would have an advantage — headphones are, after all, merely loudspeakers writ small and stuck on your noggin. Yet DALI never did so. Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries, which had been founded in 1983 by Peter Lyngdorf, watched from the sidelines, unwilling to jump on the headphone bandwagon. So when DALI’s first-ever headphones got their premier public outing at IFA 2019 in Berlin, DALI’s…

I n the era before bluescreen and greenscreen photography, actors were often transplanted into exotic locations courtesy of simple rear-screen projection. The set-up for this was relatively straightforward: the actor stood in front of a screen, and behind it was a projector displaying previously-filmed images, of which the actor would pretend to be a part. It was an effects methodology that often worked well because it existed in a controlled environment where sound, lighting and timing could be managed, and with a final ‘in-camera’ VFX shot captured, requiring no further effects work. Front projection became a variant of this technique, especially where only part of the frame required replacement. Rear and front projection fell out of general favour once chromakey techniques (bluescreen and greenscreen extraction and compositing) were mastered. But…

Victor Wainwright & The Train Memphis Loud Victor Wainwright’s second album plays like 12 postcards thrown from the cabin of a hijacked Old West locomotive. A larger-than-life character, with his fingers on the ley lines of American roots, the hirsute piano man hammers the old black-and whites with a joyous propulsion matched by his virtuoso band. Listen to openers Mississippi and Walk The Walk and you can’t help but fall in step with the push/pull soul groove, while the easy-come, ad-libbed chemistry suggests they’d have let the studio janitor honk a saxophone. This coast-to-coast journey has its moments of hardship. Sing turfs us out in New Orleans for a spooky gang-chant in a haunted jazz cellar; the wistful America wonders where Wainwright’s musical motherland took a wrong turn. Thankfully, whenever…

We don’t know what they’re smoking up at Grado HQ, but the Brooklyn NY company is releasing a new headphone which is made, at least partially, out of hemp. The ‘hemphone’, as it’s been labelled internally, uses hemp fibre “fine rolled” and then highly compressed to form a shell material. “What?”, asks Jonathan Grado. “Oh right, the Hemp Headphones. This is some of the most fun we’ve ever had with a limited edition. We had no clue how they’d turn out, but they ended up sounding pretty amazing. It also reminded us to stock up on more snacks at the office.” In context, it’s not such a whacked-out idea; Grado is always experimenting with different woods and materials, and when the opportunity to build with hemp came about, they took…

We often suggest active standmount speakers as an equally neat and potentially more hi-fi solution for TV audio than a soundbar, and Klipsch’s latest release in its award-winning series of Heritage Wireless speakers makes a good example for this alternate solution. The Fives are Klipsch’s first powered monitors to feature an HDMI ARC connection, making their use for TV audio a breeze, and because of their built-in custom amplifiers, these active speakers form a complete audio system all on their own. You can add music playback — there are digital optical and analogue RCA inputs, a turntable phono input so any turntable can plug straight in, also a USB-B socket for computer playback. Bluetooth offers a direct streaming solution and there’s a free Klipsch Connect App. The speakers use a…

Marantz has updated its slimline receivers with the arrival of the NR1711 — it gains 8K compatibility in the same way as the new Denon receivers (see p9), having one dedicated 8K HDMI input that will pass through signals up to 8K/60. All its six HDMI sockets support 4K with Dolby Vision, HLG, Dynamic HDR, HDR10+, 4:4:4 Pure Color and QMS, as well as the latest HDMI features for gamers, including VRR, QFT, ALLM. The HDMI output to your TV is eARC compatible, so can receive multichannel audio from the TV. Power is provided by high-current discrete power amplifiers on all seven channels, rated at 90W each, with low-impedance driver capability. As with most modern AV receivers, the NR1711 also works as a source itself. It has the HEOS wireless…

Sound+Image and Australian Hi-Fi are EISA’s representatives for Home Theatre and Hi-Fi here in Australia, part of the global Expert Imaging & Sound Association which each year pools the editorial review experience of 61 special interest magazines across 29 countries to agree on a final list of EISA Award Winners. This is usually followed by quite a shindig of a ceremony (pictured left), held in Berlin each September, at which our Australian timelag allows us, once over the woozy afternoon hump, to party into the small hours with whomsoever else can last the distance. Alas, no party this year. Instead the judges for each Expert Group have been Zooming in group to arrive at this year’s winners. And this being a global group of winners, occasionally our outlying region gets…

CANTON SMART SOUNDBAR 10 ♦ LG SN9YG ♦ LG SN7CY ♦ SAMSUNG HW-Q800T ♦ SONOS ARC SONY HT-G700 ♦ YAMAHA MUSICCAST 40 Soundbars have changed their stripes in the last few years. They began as a convenience and a compromise, back when 5.1-channel surround sound was messing up lounges everywhere with rear speakers balanced on couches and cables tucked under carpets. The soundbar came along, offering a way to scale up TV sound without installing a large system that would compromise the ever cleaner décors which were sweeping through the world’s living spaces. To that end, most early soundbars touted pseudo-surround — presenting themselves as a direct replacement for a surround sound system, but requiring just a neat bar at the front. A subwoofer was generally required because a neat…

We couldn’t test this feature, because Samsung didn’t supply a TV with the soundbar, but if you connect the Q800T to one of Samsung’s QLED TVs, ‘Q-Symphony’ activates and plays surround sound from both the TV and soundbar. This feature can currently operate with five soundbars: the HW-Q60T, Q70T, Q800T, Q900T and Q950T. When interviewing Samsung’s VP of audio R&D Allan Devantier (see overleaf) we indicated surprise that he’d want to incorporate the sound from a flat-panel TV as part of his sonic capabilities! “So, you know, for you and me, we would certainly use all the transducers in a Q950T soundbar, right?”, he replied. “But that feature Q-Symphony is available for all the soundbars, and some of them don’t have height enhancement, maybe some of the lower-end ones don’t…

The HT-G700 leads its features on delivering “cinematic surround sound” from a 3.1-channel Dolby Atmos/DTS:X soundbar and wireless subwoofer. Physically those three channels face forward, and have nothing to do with either surround or the height effects usually associated with the audio formats of Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. Instead of adding extra drivers for those channels, the Sony bar aims to deliver both traditional and vertical surround via the magic of audio processing. This is a rarely successful strategy. But if anyone can, perhaps Sony can. Equipment Sony’s soundbar is quietly stylish, being 98cm long with a matte grey top surface and a front metal front grille which is punched through with a host of holes (our back-of-beermat estimate: 52,684 of them). Soundbars should be visually unobtrusive, while audibly obtrusive:…

For true wireless noise-cancelling models, the ATH-ANC300TW earbuds manage to be impressively compact, sporting little more than the audio-technica logo and embossed circles in the way of markings, their moderate size and rounded interior helping them sit comfortably and securely in the ear. Four sizes of silicon tips and a pair of Comply Foam eartips assist further in achieving comfort, as does the positioning of buttons on each bud on their top (when in the ear) so you won’t be pressing the units further into your canals when trying to activate any commands. More customisation of the buttons, would, however, be useful. By default, the right button handles playback transport controls while the left manages noise-cancelling and volume — flipping this orientation is the only variable option at the time…

Despite its title, and Australian as director Justin Kurzel and screenwriter Shaun Grant may be, ‘True History Of The Kelly Gang’ warns early on that “nothing you are about to see is true”, setting the agenda for a forthright shake-up of historical tradition. Kruzel pins himself to that promise with punk-literate purpose in his fierce fractured take on Australian outlaw legend. Rediscovering the psychopathological clout of ‘Snowtown’ and ‘Macbeth’ after ‘Assassin’s Creed’, Kurzel tackles the Kelly story with the energy of a director confident to punch his weight, pummelling an oft-told tale into new shapes. Previous treatments were not so bold. While ‘Story Of The Kelly Gang’ (1906) made cinema history, a 1970 star vehicle muffled Mick Jagger’s charisma. In 2003’s retelling, Heath Ledger’s punk-clown potential quickly vanished amid blandly…

Sell You Everything 1991-2004 Eight-CD compilation of a second wave. Having initially split in 1981, the Buzzcocks reconvened in 1989 when the wheel of relevancy had turned back in their favour to a further period of success on the coattails of bands they had anticipated and inspired — Nirvana, Green Day, even Blur. ‘Sell You Everything’ is the definitive, copious compendium of that period, in which the partnership between Shelley and Steve Diggle became more equal. ‘Trade Test Transmissions’ (1993) saw them reconnect with their own twisted pop/pump energy flow on tracks like the wank homage ‘Palm Of Your Hand’, while ‘All Set’ (’96) showed up some of Britpop’s lesser luminaries. ‘Modern’, as the title implies, saw them re-embrace electronica, krautrock — but even then they didn’t stray too far…

If Suzi Quatro hadn’t existed, we’d be inhabiting a very different musical landscape. Until the diminutive leather-clad Detroit fireball emerged out of the exclusively male preserve of the 1970s glam scene, the role of female rock and pop performers was limited largely to simpering subserviently in unattractive pinafore dresses. Suzi Quatro changed all that. With an undeniable charisma, a refusal to accept recognised boundaries and a positively feral approach to the delivery of visceral rock’n’roll, Suzi Q inspired (both directly and indirectly) generations of aspiring female artists. She ascended rapidly to household-name status following her debut ‘Top Of The Pops’ performance with Can The Can in the summer of ’73. Grappling with a bass of almost equal height and fronting a band of surly brawlers, she was a fiery, fashionably…