Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2021 i Australian HiFi

Newport Test Labs measured the power output of the Gryphon Essence Stereo power amplifier at exactly 51-watts per channel into 8Ω at all audio frequencies and irrespective of how many channels were driven: one or both. When driven into 4Ω loads, the Gryphon Essence’s power output doubled, which is exactly what a ‘perfect’ amplifier should do, but so few actually really do when tested. Again, the output was exactly 102-watts per channel at all audio frequencies irrespective of how many channels were driven, as you can see from both the accompanying bar graphs and the tabulated chart. The Gryphon Essence very nearly pulled off the same trick again when Newport Test Labs dropped the load resistance to just 2Ω, but instead of delivering the theoretical ideal of 204-watts, the amplifier’s…

Graph 1 shows the in-room frequency response of the Harbeth Compact 7ES-3 XD loudspeakers when measured using a pink noise test stimulus. It’s the averaged result of nine individual measurements, taken in a grid pattern with the tweeter at the centre of the grid. You can see that it’s extraordinarily flat-monitor-standard flat in fact-not only across the midrange, but also in the upper bass and the lower and upper treble regions. Across the area between 2kHz and 8kHz, the response is so linear that it essentially tracks the graphing grid, so it’s essentially ±0.1dB. Between 140Hz and 2kHz, the frequency response is better than ±0.6dB! Rarely do I see such a linear response in any loudspeaker that does not have the benefit of an inbuilt amplifier that uses digital signal…

Newport Test Labs measured the output of the Pilium Elektra at a shade higher than 3.7-volts RMS via the XLR outputs for a 0dBFS digital test signal. This is fairly standard. The output at the RCA terminals (not measured) would be half this, or around 1.8-volts RMS. You can see from the tabulated results that the voltage was slightly different for the left and right channels, but the difference (i.e., channel balance) of 0.55dB, although somewhat higher than I might have expected, is not audibly significant. Separation between the left and right channels was outstandingly good at all three frequencies tested, with a best result of 14ldB at 16Hz. The 100dB of separation measured by Newport Test Labs at 20kHz was exemplary: there are few DACs that are able to…

Q Acoustics’ newest powered subwoofer, the QB 12, is the first to use a 305mm diameter bass driver, and was specifically designed to integrate with Q Acoustics’ 3000i series speakers, but its design and performance are such that you’ll be able to use it in partnership with speakers from any other manufacturer... and to great advantage. THE EQUIPMENT When I first unpacked the Q Acoustics QB 12, I’d done so by upending the carton on a soft rug, so that when I removed the cloth that protects the finish (four finishes are available, about which more later) I was more than a little taken aback to see that there was a fairly rough-cut hole in the bottom of the cabinet around the size of a 20-cent piece. I could not…

If you’ve visited any hi-fi show in Australia and gone into the Bryston room, you will most likely have met the President of Bryston, although you probably didn’t know it, because Brian Russell rarely identified himself as one of the owners of this famous Canadian manufacturer, much less the President of it. He also didn’t talk much about the products he demonstrated — he preferred to let the music he played speak for him. So if you can now recall a very large man in a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt wearing sandals who almost always remained seated, selecting songs manually on his laptop for replay through Bryston electronics and, most recently, Bryston loudspeakers, well that was none other than Brian Russell. Sadly, Brian passed away on September 28th last year, aged…

The Silent Angel Rhein Z1 V2 is called a music server. But it perhaps is better thought of as an interface to digital music within-and with out-your system. THE EQUIPMENT To understand the Silent Angel Rhein Z1 V2, it’s probably best that I simply describe what it does and how you use it. First, you connect it to your home network via Ethernet. None of that Wi-Fi stuff here. The Ethernet is gigabit speed. Take it from me: there is no audio format that will come anywhere close to challenging the speed of a gigabit connection. Inside it is a 250GB system solid-state drive. This is primarily for holding the VitOS operating system. VitOS itself is a customised Linux based operating system designed for music players, so this combination is…

Readers interested in a full technical appraisal of the performance of the Richter Harlequin S6 Loudspeakers should continue on and read the LABORATORY REPORT published on the following pages. Readers should note that the results mentioned in the report, tabulated in performance charts and/or displayed using graphsand/orphotographsshouldbeconstrued as applying only to the specific sample tested. Newport Test Labs measured the in-room averaged frequency response of the Richter Harlequin S6 speakers using pink noise as this is the test method that most closely simulates the response that would be perceived by the human ear. The result, shown in Graph 1, is obviously excellent, with very good low- and high-frequency extension. The low-frequency response is 3dB down at 38Hz, which means that it’s probably exactly what Richter would have measured, except that…

In order to acquire the frequency responses shown in Graph 1, Newport Test Labs used a near-held microphone measurement technique that effectively returns the same response one would expect when measuring the QB 12 in an anechoic chamber. The top (black) trace shows the Q Acoustics QB 12 subwoofer’s response with the crossover control in the AV position and you don’t need me to tell you that it’s hat. Indeed it’s so hat that I’m sure that it’s the hattest response that Newport Test Labs has ever measured from any subwoofer. So flat, indeed, that I would not be at all surprised to hnd that Q Acoustics was using DSP to help the bass driver deliver it. As you can see from the scale at the left of the graph,…

The Gryphon Essence stereo power amplifier is a very, very unusual audio amplifier. Which, if you know anything at all about this proudly Danish high-end audio specialist or its recently-retired founder, Flemming E. Rasmussen, should not come as a surprise. Although Flemming is still associated with Gryphon, the company is now owned by Valdemar Martin BØrsting and Gryphon’s employees, which includes electronics designer Tom Moller, who has been the head of the design team at Gryphon for many years now. The power amplifier is so unusual that it needs an unusual pre-amplifier to drive it, so for this review it is partnered with Gryphon’s Essence Preamplifier. (In point of fact, the Essence power amplifier can be used with any preamplifier at all, but only Gryphon’s preamplifier can take full advantage…

A fascinating story. If you look at the rear of the Pilium Elektra DAC – Divine Line, you’ll find a label that says ‘Made in Greece’ and the founder and owner of Pilium Audio, Konstantinos Pilios, is certainly as Greek as Greek can be. But Pilios lists his company’s address as Tsar Boris III No 6, Petrich, 2850, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. This I found a fascinating fact, because Greece and Bulgaria may share a border, but they’re two different countries. Very different countries! It turns out that when Pilios established Pilium Audio he had the bad luck to do it in 2012, which was the time of the huge economic crisis in Greece, during which many countries were trying to get Greece kicked out of the European Union. Pillos wanted to…

Silent Angel products are built in China by the Chinese-owned Thunder Data Co. Ltd, founded in 2014 by Dr Eric Jian Huang, a former technical director at EMC China. The audio products it builds are something of a sideline for the company, whose main business is building products for 5G mobile networks and 8K video signal transmission. The company’s website says its mission is “to improve signals quality of computing, networking, and storage.” In addition to its two audio brands, Silent Angel and Thunder Data, the company also builds LAN switches which it sells under the Bonn brand and also builds for other manufacturers to sell under their own brand names, one such being English Electric (owned by Chord Company). The company also makes its the operating system (VitOS) it…

But what’s a podcast? According to that modern font of knowledge, Wikipedia: “A podcast is an episodic series of spoken word digital audio files that a user can download to a personal device for easy listening. Streaming applications and podcasting services provide a convenient and integrated way to manage a personal consumption queue across many podcast sources and playback devices.” Wikepedia then expands further on the topic: “A podcast series usually features one or more recurring hosts engaged in a discussion about a particular topic or current event. Discussion and content within a podcast can range from carefully scripted to completely improvised. Podcasts combine elaborate and artistic sound production with thematic concerns ranging from scientific research to slice-of-life journalism.” But what would Wikipedia know? I rather prefer the explanation on…

There’s a new amplification technology in town, which purports to take Class-D concepts to a new level, with negligible distortion, extraordinarily low noise, load-invariant response, exceptionally clean clipping, low losses and high efficiency, while delivering 400-watts of power without even getting hot. It comes from Purifi, in Denmark, which has named the technology ‘Eigentakt’, which is German for ‘self-clocking’. We’d exercise our usual caution with such remarkable claims, but what makes us more inclined towards credence in this case is NAD’s rush to adopt it, and also the team that’s behind it. The three listed co-founders of Purifi Audio are Bruno Putzeys, Lars Risbo and Peter Lyngdorf — a pretty illustrioustrio. MEET THE TEAM Bruno Putzeys is a Belgian engineer who spent a decade at Philips working on switching amplifier…