Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 7 - 2023 i Audio Esoterica

Welcome to audiovisual reverie. McIntosh Group has opened the doors to the House of Sound, a New York City ‘immersive’ townhouse showcasing the company’s AV brands in a suitably luxurious setting. Following in the footsteps of the group’s first iteration, the World of McIntosh Townhouse, the all-new House of Sound is an 11,000 square-feet, multi-story house located in the Chelsea neighbourhood on the West Side of Manhattan, and brings together some of the group’s best products — McIntosh amplifiers, Sonus faber speakers, Pro-Ject turntables and classic Rotel electronics. There’s even a Jeep Grand Wagoneer tricked out with McIntosh’s MX1375 entertainment system, owing to the two brand’s hi-fi/automotive partnership. The townhouse is split into different areas — you have a home cinema room, two intimate listening rooms and two open reference…

Michael Bladelius says he was only thirteen years old when he designed and built his first working amplifier, and it was this that put him on the path to his career as an audio equipment designer. Like all amplifier designers, Bladelius was aware of one of the world’s pre-eminent amplifier designers, Nelson Pass, and so it was that, whilst on a gap year before starting his university degree in Sweden, Bladelius happened to be in California, where Pass was at the time working for Threshold Corporation. Bladelius decided to seize the opportunity of a lifetime and contact Pass, who invited him to interview for a position at Threshold — a position he subsequently won, resulting in Mike Bladelius moving to the US. Following a change in Threshold’s ownership, Pass left…

The brand name rather gives it away, doesn’t it? Yes, as you’d expect, Advance Paris is a French company based in Paris, which is where it says all the design and development of its products takes place. However, as with most hi-fi equipment manufacturers these days, its products are not necessarily made in France, or indeed in Europe. The company says: “The final assembly of components is carried out in several worldwide plants, under the constant supervision of our engineers to guarantee the fairest possible retail price. This method of control enables us to be on offer and approved in the majority of countries worldwide.” The company actually started its life under the name Advance Acoustic in 1995, at which time it was based in Toulouse and had only loudspeakers…

Out of the 20-plus years of reviewing experience I have under my belt, I can safely say that around 97% of it has happened on land, either locked in a test room or wandering local streets and jumping on and off public transport while testing wireless headphones. There is also perhaps 2.9% that has happened on four wheels. When the chance arises, I take the odd in-car sound system for a spin and have been fortunate enough to have tested some of the best systems the market has to offer from the likes of Bentley, BMW and Porsche, to name but three. But I can safely say I have never experienced anything quite like the sound systems that greeted me on a recent press trip to Italy. They all feature…

Anyone launching a new loudspeaker brand these days faces a Herculean task of differentiation. With so many speakers in the world of every shape and size, using materials traditional and exotic, how can a newbie make a dent in such a densely populated market? Enter Revival Audio, from France, although very close to the German and Swiss borders in picturesque Mulhouse, Alsace. It may be an entirely new operation, but it’s one co-founded by industry stalwarts with significant experience — what they call “nearly four decades of ‘savoir-faire’ behind many wel-lknown flagship models among top tier brands”. Revival has now released its first two models, both fully designed, engineered and assembled in France using all ‘inhouse manufactured’ components, the company declaring firmly that “we DO NOT buy off the shelves!”.…

We don’t imagine many people would contradict us if we said that Halcro’s Eclipse power amplifier — in either its mono or stereo version — is the most immediately recognisable amplifier in the world. It is so recognisable that in a pitch-black room it can quickly and easily be identified by touch alone. The Halcro Eclipse is also — albeit this time arguably — the most beautiful amplifier in the world, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons it has featured on the front covers of so many hi-fi magazines around the world, including here in Australia. The story behind the amplifier’s design is also one of the most interesting and unusual in audio. The intellect behind Halcro’s creation, and indeed the brand’s name, was South African physicist and engineer…

Yamaha is better known for its musical instruments, machinery, motorcycles, outboard motors and electronic audio components than it is for its hi-fi loudspeakers, but the Japanese company has actually been building loudspeakers for longer than it has been building many of these other components. You see, Yamaha’s first electronic organ, the Electone D-1, released in 1959, featured the company’s own ‘Natural Sound’ loudspeakers. These speakers were subsequently developed into high-end hi-fi speakers bearing the NS-20 and NS-30 model names, released eight years after the electric organ and often claimed to be Yamaha’s first ‘Natural Sound’ speakers. Both were three-way designs, with the NS-30 using a bass driver that measured 890 x 630mm (!) and the NS-20 using one that measured 680 x 500mm (also !). The very large and odd-shaped…

The clean, friendly looking front panel of Denon’s AVC-A1H is all a front, because hiding behind that friendly looking facade is a true beast of an audio component. Sure, it’s an integrated network AV amplifier, but it’s one that has 15 (that’s fifteen!) channels of power onboard, with each of those channels rated with a power output of 150 watts. The AVC-A11 also has four independent subwoofer outputs, so you could use it to drive a Dolby Atmos home theatre system in a seven-channel layout with both side surround speakers and surround back speakers, plus an extra pair of wide speakers at the front, six overhead speakers, and four subwoofers — all without the need to add anything except for speakers. If you’re not quite up to installing the fifteen…

This was a good room in which to arrive a little early: excellent kit, and fine company. The one space held three legendary brands, and a group of almost equally legendary luminaries of the audio industry, with Peter McGrath over to one side, extolling to me the wonders of the new Wilson Audio Sasha V loudspeaker, while Bill McKeigan, President of Dan D’Agostino Master Audio Systems, fiddled with the cabling to a new Momentum M×V Integrated amplifier, preparing for the first demonstration of the day, next to Audio Research’s Dave Gordon, buffing up the transparent front of his company’s new Reference 160M MkII. Add to that Transparent Audio’s Bob McConnell sharing refreshingly wise words about cable design, and I had clearly chosen a good place to start my tour of…

Bowers & Wilkins has given its two most popular 800 D4 Series models the Signature treatment. The British brand doesn’t use the Signature label lightly, reserving it only for unusual or heavily upgraded versions of loudspeaker models that represent, in its own words, “no-holds-barred performance, unique, distinctive beauty and special-edition exclusivity”. In fact, only nine loudspeakers have carried the prestigious name since the brand was founded in 1966. THE SIGNATURE STORY The first Signature model was the Silver Signature released in 1991, the naming of which the keener mathematicians reading this will appreciate. For the less keen, the speakers arrived in the company’s 25th (‘silver’) anniversary year. It was an anniversary Bowers & Wilkins’ founder sadly did not see, for John Bowers succumbed to cancer four years earlier aged 65,…

If the words‘dCS’ and‘entry-level’ spark the thought of a truly affordable digital product that embodies the qualities that have made the brand so dominant at the top end of the market, you are in for a disappointment. While buying a new Lina Network DAC is indeed the cheapest way to own something new that incorporates the brand’s trademark Ring DAC digital conversion circuitry, this product certainly doesn’t fall into what most people would consider the‘accessible’ category. What your $22,000 does buy you, though, is a generous dose of dCS technology and a product that puts all but the very best of its rivals firmly in the shade when it comes to performance. The company calls this product a ‘Network DAC’, though something with its capabilities can also be referred to…

All six of the new North Collection products are designed and manufactured in-house in Moon’s home base of Montreal, Canada, just as every other Moon component has been for the last 40 years. Moon intends for this North Collection to both honour its Canadian heritage and act as a guiding star for the brand’s intentions going forward in the future of hi-fi. After decades of making hi-fi separates with a singular vision and purpose (its analogue-only 250i amplifier only recently added a phono stage, for example), the new range finally takes a step many manufacturers have already taken in combining the DAC, streaming and pre-amplifier stages into one box. The power amps stay separate, though a dedicated MoonLink connectivity feature gives users a level of integration between the products that…