Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 1 - 2017 i Audio Esoterica

OK, off the bat and purely subjectively: the M3s are among the most physically attractive speakers this writer has seen. Few would debate this, surely. They are visually commanding – yet with room-friendly stature – while being constructed to the highest levels with quite obvious obsessive attention to detail. I’ve visited the premises of Absolute Hi End (Magico’s Australian distributor) on a number of occasions, becoming familiar with the acoustics of the demonstration rooms. Each studio is minimalist in terms of furniture and equipment, and is acoustically treated. As always, Absolute Hi End’s proprietor, the affable Boris Granovsky, guided me through the system components and then left me to my own devices for an extended listening session. Playing familiar material, the M3 presents an outgoing personality that demands your listening…

REFERENCE MUSIC SERVER One of the couriers who delivers stuff to our place has been on our run for several years, so I’ve got to know him somewhat. Seems to be a bit of an athletic chap. But he was panting as he fi nished walking up my driveway carrying an unexceptional looking, black-plastic-wrapped carton, lamenting that he should have used his trolley. It turned out to contain the Aurender W20 Reference Music Server. Aurender says that it weighs 19 kilograms. I trust my scales more. They put it – the server alone, not including the packaging – at 21.95 kilograms. This is not an amp, remember, but a server. How?… EQUIPMENT So, aside from being very heavy, what is a music server? It’s a digital audio source device for…

Although companies such as Linn and Devialet (and others) have recently taken to adjusting the frequency response of their amplification products to extract the best performance from any loudspeakers connected to them, using systems called Exakt (Linn) and Speaker Active Matching or SAM (Devialet), Redgum beat both companies to the punch by many years, albeit on a more modest scale, because designer Ian Robinson has been doing the same thing for more than 22 years. Whereas those companies adjust the frequency response of their electronics right across the frequency range to compensate for errors in the frequency response of the speakers connected to them, Redgum adjusts only the extreme low frequencies by selective boosting, and does so only by a very modest amounts that differ with frequency. Robinson’s view is…

SUBWOOFER Let’s be clear: subwoofers are not for everyone. For one thing, your loudspeakers may already plumb the bass depths quite to your satisfaction. Or you may not consider the really deep elements of the signal to be all that musically important. However, for some listeners, and I include myself here, high fi delity involves at least trying to reproduce everything that has been captured in the recording. In the good old days, that was less of a challenge because the physics of grooves in vinyl precluded high levels of deep bass. With digital, not so much. If you do want that deep content, and your current speakers don’t quite do the job, then the JL Audio Fathom f112 v.2 subwoofer might be just what you need. Even more so…

MASCOT SYDNEY In a hub of cafés and shops near Sydney airport you’ll fi nd one of the city’s best high-end audio stores. Audio Solutions, owned and run by longtime audio enthusiasts and music lovers Nick Papas and Tony Stantzos, has become synonymous with outstanding product selection from entrypoint to luxury-level, and exemplary customer service. Papas and Stantzos’ mission was to provide a consumer experience that would provide customers with the very best in audio – choices that they themselves would make for their own systems. This is a double whammy for customers because, unlike stores that are associated with a sister company in distribution, Audio Solutions is purely a retail store. Which translates to more of an neutrally balanced to product bias, whereas retailers tied in with distributors have…

NETWORK MUSIC PLAYER If there is one level of component in the audio chain that has received the most technological attention over the last decade – revolutionised we could say – it’s the source. Linn’s Sondek LP12 turntable may have achieved classic status (and production still runs with varying levels of redesign over the years), but it’s Linn’s digital products that are now at the true cutting edge. And yes, the digital line-up still follows Linn’s GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) ethos. Linn’s Klimax DSM is almost an all-in-one digital source solution – a disc transport would complete it – but the purpose of this most advanced of sources is to stream your digital music, not spin it. While doing so from your networked storage source or service, it…

PREAMPLIFIER This writer recalls meeting the legendary, yet ever so modest, William Z. Johnson when he travelled to Australia in the mid-1990s to launch what were, at the time, Audio Research Corporation’s new fl agship monoblocs, the original and now legendary Reference 600s. I lusted after these monos, loved the retro design, and admired the construction and engineering within the enormous twin chassis. Then there were those gorgeous meters… Alas, at the time, while starting a new business, funds were channelled towards what was to be the means for putting bread on the table. But just to appease the unbearable desire to own even just a modest item, a humble piece, from this American audio icon, I sought out and acquired an aff ordable pre-loved SP9 MKII preamp, proudly…

LOUDSPEAKERS Pandion is, unusually, a genus with a single member — the osprey. System Audio chose the name for its uppermost speaker range because the osprey forages for fi sh over a wide area, and in the same way, says SA, the Pandion series was created with inspiration from many directions. TAKING FLIGHT Indeed the Danish company, founded in 1984, is quite forthright about the way it approaches loudspeaker design, describing itself as “a company with attitude”. In particular, it doesn’t want to get too technical with its customers. “We will not contribute to the confusion that loudspeakers are just about technology,” it says. “To SA it is clear that true quality comes from the sound and the loudspeakers’ ability to function as a piece of furniture. We do not…

SYSTEM FOCUS Who would have guessed a halfcomplete theatre room would be the sweet bonus when moving into a new home? This was the surprise for a Len Wallis Audio customer when discovering the existing theatre room, although bare of electronics, was equipped with a lighting control system, a star-light ceiling, equipment cabinetry and even modest acoustic treatment. Having this substantial incentive as the solid starting point from which to build a state-of-the-art theatre, the new home owner sought the expert guidance of Len Wallis Audio’s Senior Custom Consultant Jono Dorset, who took on the task of managing the project. Jono soon realised that the elements already in place provided an almost blank canvas for the new owner to build something exciting, to make a truly magical space. ACHIEVING BALANCE…

CD/SACD PLAYER & INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER In times past, both these new Marantz products would have been labelled ‘Ken Ishiwata Signature’ products, and carried the ‘KI Signature’ label on their front panels. That’s because both components have been ‘tweaked’ by Ishiwata. Some of these tweaks fall into the ‘classifi ed information’ category, but others are in the public domain, such as upgraded capacitors and, in the case of the amplifi er, copper plates to clamp the power transistors to the substantial internal heatsinks. Some of the tweaks are very obvious – massive aluminium top plates, high rigidity feet, specially damped chassis and superior front panel fi nishing. So why aren’t these ‘KI Signature’ products? Basically because Ishiwata is not putting his name on Marantz products any more, for reasons he explains…

We enjoyed a chat with Bricasti’s Brian Zolner at the recent Australian Hi-Fi & AV Show, his views on DSD particularly illuminating. We were pleased to continue the conversation. Audio Esoterica: We gather your background is in music? How was your interest in music and sound first sparked, and how did you get into the industry? Brian Zolner: I have been into music all my life and played many musical instruments — guitar in the 1960s and 70s, sax in a club band, bass in the 1980s and more recently violin. I studied music theory, so a somewhat trained musician. I had a recording studio in the 1970s and played in bands in that time period and was a live sound mixer too, so I learned about recording and electronics…

MCKINNON, VICTORIA S ound Gallery Australia is Melbourne’s newest hi-fi store, opening last October in McKinnon, south-east of Melbourne, usefully positioned on McKinnon Road between McKinnon Station and the McKinnon Hotel. There this new store showcases premium highfi delity systems under the auspices of John Ong. “It is always been my dream to have my own showroom, showcasing the products I love that reproduce music, and to share it with others,” he says. “This is not somewhere to just move boxes. Our goal is to put together a proper matching system to suit the customer’s taste, the way they want to use it, their lifestyle. And also their room – setting things up, with measurements if requested. We’re doing this properly.” John Ong is no stranger to such things; he…

LOUDSPEAKERS There’s a feedback loop within product design. As a brand expands its market reach, its profi le and cachet grow. And in parallel with such an advance, the natural progression of product design may take things to a point of re-evaluation. A good engineeringbased company will then analyse its position, reassess its technologies, and perhaps engage and energise the Research and Development department into a re-examinination of existing products and, with the required budgetary injection, further advance them with a view to reinventing the brand fl agship. With a new fl agship in place, that new tech can trickle down to new lower-rung models... and so the circle continues. Since its inception, Magico – headed by industrial designer and musician Alon Wolf with his committed team of engineers –…

CD PLAYER & CLOCK In these heady days of overwhelmingly-abundant music, is it enough for a music lover to have just a CD player? Especially now we can surpass CD quality with the growing accumulation of the world’s music catalogue available in high-resolution, or choose from a variety of streaming services in quite listenable mid-resolution and some at CD quality, should a passionate music lover not be seeking access to it all? “Affi rmative!” is our resounding reply. A digital component today should feature the latest technology for fi le playback, while also catering for legacy formats based on the silver disc. It should provide access to the vast music vaults of online streaming services while also communicating with personal networked drives that, with their increasing aff ordability and…

ACTIVE LOUDSPEAKERS Many of our readers will be acquainted with an album called Meeting By the River, which captures in thrilling fi delity a session by Ry Cooder with Indian musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, the latter playing the Mohan veena, an instrument of his own devising, with Cooder in top form on slide guitar. It is one of those rare recordings that combines a wonderful performance with superb recording quality, in this case engineered by (and winning a Grammy for) Kavi Alexander of Water Lily Acoustics, but certainly benefi tting from microphone valve electronics and a Studer two-track one-inch tape recorder extensively modifi ed by Tim de Paravicini. Mr de Paravicini has his own small company in the UK, Esoteric Audio Research, and over more than 30 years he…

 CONTACT SYDNEY HI-FI CASTLE HILL Shop 7/19 Victoria Ave Castle Hill NSW 2154 T: 02 9899 9079 castlehill@sydneyhifi.com.au www.sydneyhificastlehill.com.au CASTLE HILL What makes a high-end hi-fi store? In an age when online shopping has placed brick and mortar stores in the toughest of times, what challenges should a store take head on and subsequently surmount, in order not only to be commercially viable but to excel? Well, it would be obvious that one of the things no website can provide is demonstration of a desired product. So a good retailer should provide adequate auditioning facilities, stocked with ample product choice, in a comfortable, inviting and, ideally, acoustically treated environment. You can’t fully appreciate a product online, you can’t touch it. And you most certainly can’t have a face-to-face rapport,…

I was given free rein in Sydney Hi-Fi Castle Hill’s main high-end listening studio. Goran Sasic basically left me to my own devices with a comfy chair, a pile of CDs, a server-connected iPad and the neat Karan circular remote control. The studio is well treated with Vicoustics acoustic panels and bass traps while the only equipment in the room is, well… as it should be, the system itself. Having auditioned equipment in that room many times before, I am familiar (memory permitting) to its acoustic signature. The studio will not limit the system’s dynamic reach and lowend power. And indeed that’s what this particular system served up (see left). Auditioning a wide variety of music genres provided nothing but a positive impression, even with the relatively new monos. As…