Innholdsfortegnelse for Mar-18 i Hi-Fi Choice

www.hifichoice.co.uk Issue No. 434 March 2018 According to recent figures from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), music streaming services like Spotify, Tidal and Qobuz account for more than 50 percent of music consumption in the UK. On the face of it, music file streaming in one form or another appears to be the way many of today’s music fans choose to listen, but despite a statistical decline in physical sales, I wouldn’t mind betting that CD remains the music format of choice for the majority of hi-fi owners. Our own online survey (see results on p69) clearly shows that there are plenty of us still listening to music via the 12cm silver disc that prematurely promised “perfect sound forever”. Even if the rate we purchase new albums on the format…

PRICE: £160-£550 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 01268 740580 WEB: MONITORAUDIO.COM MONITOR AUDIO HAS unveiled its new Monitor Series with orange driver cones and the C-CAM dome tweeter that’s derived from its Bronze Series. The range consists of two standmounts, two floorstanders and a sub and centre for home cinema. The compact Monitor 50 bookshelf has a 25mm C-CAM tweeter, 140mm MMP II driver and costs £160. The larger £200 Monitor 100 (pictured) increases the size of the MMP II driver to 165mm and has two sets of binding posts. The £400 Monitor 200 is the smaller of the 2.5-way floorstanders and has a 25mm C-CAM tweeter, 140mm MMP II mid driver and 140mm bass driver. The £550 Monitor 300 increases the mid driver to 165mm and has two 165mm bass drivers.…

THE INTEGRATED SYSTEMS Europe (ISE) event took place in February at the Amsterdam RAI exhibition and convention centre. It’s the largest annual AV systems integration show in the world and takes in so much more besides, including hi-fi– albeit in bite-sized chunks. Since the inaugural, modest ISE back in 2004, the trade event has grown year on year and continues to break its own attendance records. As we went to press, detailed numbers weren’t available, but it’s been rumoured that more than 80,000 people attended, which amounts to a 10 percent increase on last year’s record. With well over 3,000m2 of exhibition space across 15 halls and an incredible 1,200+ exhibitors, ISE is certainly the place to be for residential and pro AV integrators and sound and vision professionals. But…

DV: With wi-fistreaming so popular, why is it absent here? JE: The Solus was conceived as a dual-level product to allow customers to choose the version that suits them best. Not everybody wants or needs app-controlled wi-fi network streaming, so we’ve developed one version that delivers this regular functionality with aptX Bluetooth for simple wireless connectivity and a second premium version that adds wi-fistreaming. This way consumers pay only for the facilities they want and have the ability to upgrade later. When will this be available and can you give us an idea of price? The wi-fistreaming board is still under development. We want to deliver the class-leading network streaming performance that Quad owners deserve, incorporating technologies that will be supported for years to come. It’ll be available this autumn,…

The Audio-Technica weighs 8g, which is towards the upper end of the group spread, but it shouldn’t prove difficult for most tonearms to handle. The cartridge’s overall dimensions are relatively small as well, which helps a little with fitting, although the brand’s ongoing enthusiasm for using unthreaded bodies is less appealing. The VM750SH has to be secured using separate nuts and bolts, which is fiddly on a one-piece arm even for experienced hands, especially as the guard is a fairly minimalist ‘roll bar’ type arrangement. It is easy enough to remove the stylus, however, which makes cartridge installation considerably less nerve wracking. A replacement stylus, the VMN50SH, is available for £272 and there is also the option to fit the flagship £522 VMN60SLC stylus as a further upgrade.…

The MP-200 has an unthreaded body which makes it trickier than others to fit, but the flat sides and decent stylus guard make the job reasonably straightforward, further helped by the usefully long bolts supplied. Adding to this simplicity are the sensible dimensions of the body and the overall weight of 6.5g. A nonmagnetic screwdriver is supplied. The replacement stylus for the MP-200 is the JN-P200. It’s the most affordable in the test and can be found for under £200 – which makes the Nagaoka very cost effective to run. The line contact stylus of the MP-500 can also be fitted as an upgrade. The only slight note of caution is that at just 200 hours, the Nagaoka claims the shortest stylus life of any of the cartridges on test…

Celebrating 30 years in the business, Acoustic Energy has undergone something of a transformation of late, with a recent change of ownership and a relaunch. Effectively now an independent company after a management buyout, it’s now in the process of introducing a raft of new products that includes the self-powered AE1 Active (HFC 421). Regular readers will also have recently seen the AE100 standmount (HFC 430) and AE109 floorstander (HFC 425) from the company’s entry-level 100 series, but now it’s the turn of the mid-priced 300 series. The new range includes the AE309 floorstander (£999) and the AE300 standmount that you see here. It just slips into any rhythm it can find and sidles its way through The AE300 series is said to be a heavily upgraded and reworked version…

In 2017, Danish loudspeaker brand Dynaudio hit the big four-O. The clue’s in the name, of course: Special Forty. Cue the special one – the Jose Mourhino of two-way, standmounts. A speaker that’s unconcerned with the strictures of convention and conformity, maybe. How about a rule-bending maverick winging it on a surfeit of chutzpa and charisma? We’ll start at the top. Dynaudio places great store by its 28mm Esotar2-coated soft-dome tweeter, as used in the more expensive Contour range and the very much more expensive Confidence C1. For the Special Forty it has undergone further refinement. The even more powerful Neodymium magnet assembly, for instance, has a new pressure conduit – a specially shaped vent that allows a more spacious rear chamber and controls how the air moves from the…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH Jack White Boarding House Reach Vinyl Third Man Records WITH THE WHITE Stripes, Jack White released six studio albums in eight years, but his solo career has proceeded at a much more leisurely pace. The four years that have elapsed since his 2014 Grammy winning solo album Lazaretto represent his longest silence to date – although it would be unfair to suggest that he’s been idle in that time. Now a big shot mogul with his own Third Man label and studio in Nashville, in the last year alone he’s produced Beyoncé, A Tribe Called Quest, Lillie Mae, and The American Epic Sessions featuring Alabama Shakes, Elton John, Beck and Willie Nelson, among others. Boarding House Reach returns him to what he does best – making his…

THE INCREASING ALLURE of the internet of things (as it’s become known) has seen everything from light bulbs, home security systems and refrigerators becoming smart and interactive, and unsurprisingly loudspeakers have followed suit. Like Amazon’s Echo range that plays music on demand by simply using your voice (see our review of the Dot in HFC 421), Google has its own take, the Home Mini. Available with a choice of different coloured material finishes, its 98mm diameter and 42mm height mean that its dimensions have more in common with an air freshener and, quite frankly, that’s what it looks like. It comes equipped with wi-fi and Bluetooth connectivity for streaming music, but unlike its Amazon rival doesn’t have any physical inputs. However, where Amazon’s Echo Dot has a rather tiny 15mm…

• Built specifically to partner the Class D topology of its half-width ONE amplifier (HFC 417), Cyrus has unveiled the £350 ONElinear; a compact bookshelf loudspeaker that managing director Simon Freethy says: “ ...is designed to showcase the amplifier’s true ability.” With its 25mm soft dome treble driver and 125mm woven Kevlar cone, the ONElinear is rear ported and designed to be positioned between 10 and 30cm from the rear wall. Sensitivity is quoted as being 86dB at 8ohm, while its crossover employs electrolytic capacitors for a smooth phase response through the transition from bass driver to tweeter. CYRUSAUDIO.COM…

Tape that and party In an effort to explore the growing popularity of the humble compact cassette, Radio Four’s The World At One got a selection of DJs, journalists and record label owners to explain what it is that they still find so enduring about tape: bbc.in/2G1Ixl0 Messing around in boats It’s difficult enough putting together a well-matched system in your home let alone trying to do it on the high seas, but that’s precisely what Naim Audio did when it teamed up with Princess Yachts. Read about the challenges the two manufacturers faced in this feature: bit.ly/2F5cxLv Name that tune What does a manufacturer mean when they talk about tuning a loudspeaker and how do they go about it? Dynaudio Acoustic Engineer Kristoffer Jørgensen explains the process involved from…

The UltraTracker is a large cartridge. The dimensions are significant and only the Goldring matches it for size. This means that with tonearms without VTA, you may find installation tricky and there isn’t much room to attach the cable tags. More significant is the weight. At a whisker under 10g, this is the heaviest design in the group and indeed one of the heaviest cartridges we have ever tested, which may prove rather challenging for some low-mass tonearm designs. There’s no replaceable stylus for the UltraTracker. Instead, any worn out cartridge can be traded in for a reduction of the cost of a new one. This can be organised through the UK distributor Select Audio, but it does mean the old cartridge will need to be unmounted and a new…

The Soundsmith tips the scales at a fraction under 7g, which puts it towards the middle of the group. This, combined with fairly sensible dimensions and only a slightly long forward overhang, means that the Otello is easy to fit to most tonearms. The only mild oddities are the use of Philips screw heads for mounting and the light recommended tracking force of between 1.3 and 1.6g.xk The fixed-coil design prevents it from having an interchangeable stylus, but in the brand’s home USA market Soundsmith claims that any rebuild cost will be around 20 percent of the purchase price. Even if this price goes up a little for its UK customers, this could still prove to be the most cost-effective cartridge in the group to run over the long term,…

CW: Who do you see as the typical AAcento customer? GB: This amplifier is for customers looking for an attractive, high-quality, compact amplifier with many interesting features and a great sound performance for a reasonable cost. While rated at 100W into 8ohm it can reach around 300W into 2ohm. This ability to drive difficult loads is not common for amps at this price. Furthermore, the AAcento is a very versatile product, having a very high-quality MM/MC phono stage and pure Class A headphone output section. It also has a bypass function should you wish to use it as a power amplifier and integrate it into a home theatre system. Is integrating many separate quality stages a significant technical challenge? The AAcento is a clever mix of modern technology and a…

DP: Who designed the AE300? JL: Chief engineer Mat Spandl and myself, with Mat primarily focusing on acoustics and me on physical design. The process is always collaborative and involves much back and forth between listening, measuring and adjusting. As the design nears completion more staff are involved in the listening and finally development ends with select dealer listening in various rooms and systems to ensure real-world compatibility. Why did you decide to use aluminium cones and domes? Acoustic Energy has used these in our premium models since the very first AE1 in 1987, the main benefit being the incredible stiffness which allows the drive unit to behave as a pure piston, even at very high volumes. The result is more accurate reproduction of the musical signal than softer materials,…

The closest rival to the Onkyo in terms of pricing and features is Cambridge Audio’s Topaz SR10 that we looked at in HFC 409, although it does serve to emphasise the fact that the feature count of the TX-8220 is considerably in advance of anything else near the price. The Topaz SR10 offers FM and AM radio and a moving-magnet phono stage (one that is superior to the Onkyo’s) alongside RCA line inputs, but has no DAB tuner or digital input and no wireless connectivity. The TX-8220 has far greater scope to work with a broad selection of sources and despite the greater power on offer from the Topaz SR10, is still a real bargain buy.…

DV: How have you set such a high sonic standard for the money? RH: In Dynaudio’s history there have been many outstanding monitor speakers, always using the very best Dynaudio woofers and tweeters in a compact cabinet. When we started the Special Forty project, we wanted to repeat that strong sonic statement and demonstrate how good a standmount could be if you were to put all your know-how and experience into the drive units. So that’s what we did. As you can’t stop engineers from coming up with good ideas, we may have even gone a bit too far considering the price. But then we thought: “It’s a birthday, the cake deserves to be sumptuous!” Why gently tapered (non-parallel) cabinet sides rather than curved panels or even a boat-back design?…

We want to reinvent home music,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook, with typical modesty, when he unveiled the HomePod last summer. And, to be fair, it is an impressive little speaker – even if it is a late arrival to the ‘smart speaker’ party, and considerably more expensive than rivals such as the Amazon Echo and Sonos One. The compact cylindrical unit stands just 172mm high and 142mm in diameter, but finds room for seven tweeters, arranged in a circle around the base, while the upper section is occupied by a 20mm, upward-firing woofer. The middle section houses six microphones, which listen for your voice commands, but are also used to analyse the acoustics of the room and adjust the sound accordingly. The design might be impressive but, in some…

KEF makes use of three listening rooms as well as its anechoic chamber and test spaces. There is a room specifically for testing the company’s extensive range of in-wall and in-ceiling products. The second is an AV test space that can be used to test multi-channel audio with both box speakers and in-wall models. It is the latter configuration that’s on test during the day. Eschewing the standard explosion fest that usually constitutes a surround demo, we are instead given a deeply impressive rendition of Kraftwerk’s 3-D Blu-ray, which uses Dolby Atmos height channels to increase the sense of space and immersion. What is most notable is that for all the technical wizardry on display, the effect is extremely musical and entertaining as a performance, and not because material is whizzing around…

I used to love music awards. As a teenager in the late sixties and early seventies I voted assiduously in the annual Melody Maker poll and would rush to the newsagent to buy the issue in which the results were published to see if Jimmy Page had dislodged Eric Clapton as best guitarist and whether David Bowie or Rod Stewart had won male solo artist of the year. Even the poll of the world’s best bass players seemed incredibly important at the time. Much later when I had transitioned from consumer to critic, I enjoyed sitting on the judging panel for the Mercury Music Prize and served in the academy of industry professionals that votes on the BRIT awards. Yet I stopped going to such events more than a decade…

Calexico The Black Light “Takes Howe Gelb’s brand of desert Americana, makes it catchy, and adds a Mexican mariachi band. What more could you want?” Doo Rag Chuncked & Muddled “Fronted by the only man who can play breakneck guitar with a pilot’s helmet on and a girl on each knee.” River Roses Each And All “A gentle, naive mix of rock, punk, and country without sounding like any of these genres. Tucson’s Belle and Sebastian.” Rainer & Das Combo The Texas Tapes “This album perfectly highlights Rainer Ptacek‘s unique slide, fingerpicked, electronic mutant blues.” Supersuckers The Songs All Sound The Same Sound The Same “Raw and honest heavy rock with catchy choruses and some of the best smart-ass lyrics around.” Sidewinders Auntie Ramos’ Pool Hall “The Sidewinders made solid…

AAC Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a lossy audio codec designed as the successor to MP3, claiming better sound quality at similar bit-rates. AIFF Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) was developed by Apple in 1988 and uses uncompressed pulse-code modulation (PCM). There’s also a compressed variant of AIFF known as AIFF-C or AIFC, which can sometimes be recognised by an .aifc file extension, although these can also appear with the standard .aiffor aif extension, so check for higher bit-rates to know you’re playing uncompressed files. Being uncompressed means AIFF files will demand more space than lossy and lossless equivalents. ALAC Apple Lossless Audio Codec data is stored within an MP4 container, but it employs different encoding in a lossless (not lossy) format that uses a linear prediction method, similar to…

NORTHERN IRELAND-BASED TITAN Audio impressed us with the performance and solidity of its Helios and Tycho cables back in HFC 410. The company has recently moved into the mains block business aimed at the affordable end of the market, and with some aplomb... The Styx (£150) is a six-way block that comes in UK, EU and US versions and, unusually at the price, it is hard wired internally rather than relying on bus bars. The outer chassis has been designed with a view to resisting vibration and interference and includes acrylic outriggers for added stability. The matching Styx mains cable (£50) looks similar to its other designs, but uses a smaller number of conductors and so is thinner. Connecting the block is easy and the mains input is on the…

On 29 August 1997, artificial intelligence gained consciousness and, fearing that humanity was going to shut it down decided to wage war on all of mankind. Computer-controlled missiles were launched from Russia and the few humans that survived judgement day were imprisoned and hunted down by killer cyborgs. At least that's what the plot of Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1984 movie The Terminator would have us believe. Jump forward 34 years, and though we have music systems that can access pretty much any song the user fancies listening to and speakers that will play music on demand when you ask them (see p61), it would seem that James Cameron's sci-fi horror film is still far from reality. Or is it? Friday 12 January saw the release of album Hello World by French…

NAIM AUDIO @NAIMAUDIO Join us on a guided tour of the all-new @_PrincessYachts S78 featuring Naim Uniti all-in-one players: https://www.facebook.com/NaimAudio/videos/10159890092695300/ THE CHORD COMPANY @CHORDCABLES ChordMusic our flagship and a distillation of over 30 years of designing cables. With ChordMusic we have produced something which can only be described as a whole new landscape in listening to music. CAMBRIDGE AUDIO @CAMBRIDGEAUDIO Week 3 of our 50th Anniversary playlist countdown and we’re taking our first step into the 1970s. ABSOLUTE SOUNDS @ABSOLUTE_SOUNDS The Absolute Sound online magazine awards the WAMM Master Chronosonic Speaker with Product of the Year 2017 award. https://fb.me/9diiaEnrC THE VINYL FACTORY @THEVINYLFACTORY Five remastered David Bowie albums reissued on vinyl https://thevinylfactory.com/news/five-david-bowie-albums-reissued-vinyl/ PRO-JECT @PRO_JECT1 We can’t wait to share with you what we have been working on down here in…

The hi-fi firmament isn’t exactly short of just-add-speakers and just-add-source do-it-all systems right now. To such notables as Musical Fidelity, KEF, Arcam, T+A, Naim and Simaudio Moon, we can now add Quad and – to be honest – if design, build, sound quality and value for money are high on your list of priorities, the Artera Solus knocks it straight out of the park. I thought it would be a long time before anything of a similar price sounded more couth, immersive and engaging than KEF’s brilliant active LS50 Wireless system (HFC 433), but the Solus/Audiovector combo is – how does Bruno put it? – simply dripping in finesse.…

Unlike the older 1000 Series of moving-magnet cartridges that Goldring produces, the newer 2000 Series all have threaded bodies. This means that fitting the 2500 is fairly painless and further helped by the provision of good-quality fixing bolts and an Allen key. Not everything about the installation is quite so straightforward, though. At 7.4g (sans fixing screws), the weight of the 2500 is unlikely to be a problem for most tonearms, but the size of its body may prove tricky. The Goldring is relatively long, which can make attaching the wire tags hard while the cartridge’s overall height might not suit arms without any VTA. Changing the stylus is more straightforward, however, and a replacement costs £360. As the flagship of the range, there are no stylus upgrade options.…

The flagship of the 2M line has clearly been designed to be as versatile as possible. The weight of 7.2g is easy to manage and the length and height of the body should work in a variety of tonearms without any difficulties. The only slightly unusual aspect of this is that instead of using Allen bolts or nuts and bolts to mount the cartridge to the headshell, the 2M Black opts for conventional slot-head screws. These work well enough, but are slightly more prone to cross threading than normal bolts. As well as the usual tools, the 2M is the only cartridge to be supplied with a stylus force gauge – albeit a rather crude one. The replacement stylus is available from UK distributor Henley Audio for £370, and fitting…

The AAcento reminds me of the £2,200 Belles Aria (HFC 412), which also seeks to deliver maximum musicality via line-level, phono and headphone stages in a well-engineered package. The Aria also gets the big picture right along with a compelling power and sweetness that is highly addictive. Arguably, the AAcento’s strongest competitor is Audio Analogue’s own Puccini Anniversary also around £3,000. This will be especially true for those that already own a phono stage and don’t seek a headphone amp, as the Puccini’s budget is more single-minded deployed into ever more refined core components to maximise the quality of line-level sources.…

Listened to in isolation the AE300 seems hard to beat, but competition is very tough at this price. Monitor Audio’s Silver 100 (£650) is good enough to give the Acoustic Energy sleepless nights; not least because its super finish is clearly better, especially the detailing around the tweeter. Sonically it has a bigger bass – thanks to the 200mm mid/bass driver – and packs a big punch. Treble is more spacious too. However, the AE300 sounds more fun – it’s a got a bigger heart and soul, despite its smaller dimensions. It loves rhythms, while the Monitor Audio sounds slightly more staid.…

If you want a physical manifestation of the upward pricing trend of the in-ear headphone market, then the set you see here is a pretty good fit. Founded in 1945, Sennheiser has long been seen as a big gun in the headphone sector, but doesn’t typically exploit niches or indulge flights of fancy – the designs it makes are because it feels there is a market for them. When it launched the original £600 IE 800 flagship (HFC 385) around four years ago, it was because it believed there was a real demand for such a thing. Clearly, the German specialist feels there’s an ongoing desire for upmarket in-ear designs as it’s recently been replaced by the IE 800 S and priced at an even more eye-popping £870, which at…

Unlike its larger and more expensive stable mate, the Contour 20 (HFC 421), the Special Forty is a much more easy-going proposition and less fussy about positioning, if just as demanding of the front-end electronics, thanks to its stunning transparency. If it can’t quite muster the scale and bass power of the Contour 20, it’s comfortably its equal, and possibly even better when it comes to midrange resolution, treble quality and core musicality. And it’s these qualities that give the Special Forty’s price peers such a hard time, though for studio fresh clarity, dynamic reach and tonal accuracy, ATC’s £2,150 SCM19 (HFC 390) still takes a lot of beating.…

Sponsored by: THIS MONTH NEVILLE ROBERTS EXPERTISE: ENGINEERNeville has an eclectic taste for classical baroque. His wife was forced to marry his transmission line speakers in the eighties and he collects BBC test card music. JASON KENNEDY EXPERTISE: REVIEWER Editor of HFC from 1998 to 2001, Jason’s first turntable was Rega’s Planar 3 and Elvis’ 40 Greatest Hits was his first vinyl, so don’t go stepping on his blue suede shoes. ED SELLEY EXPERTISE: REVIEWER Active in the industry since 1999, Ed’s first record was Boss Drum by The Shamen. He splits his time between reviewing and protecting hi-fi kit from toddler son Will. CHRIS WARD EXPERTISE: REVIEWER Like his first kiss, Chris will never forget the sound of his first amp – an Aura Evolution VA-100. War Of The…

1976 TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS Classic rock and roll with a cutting edge and as perfect a debut as you could wish for. Songs such as Rockin’ Around, Breakdown, Anything That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll and American Girl remain career landmarks. 1978 YOU’RE GONNA GET IT! A denser 12-string guitar sound, but essentially in the same vein as his debut album. There’s a faint sense that he’d used up his best songs on the first long player, but Listen To Her Heart and I Need To Know are the standouts. 1979 DAMN THE TORPEDOES With producer Jimmy Iovine punching up the sound and pushing Petty’s vocals to the fore, Refugee, Don’t Do Me Like That and Here Comes My Girl stand to this day among his most vital and inventive songs. A masterpiece. 1981 HARD PROMISES It was always going to be tough to…

HELP & ADVICE If you decide to rip your entire CD library yourself be sure that you use a good ripping program. Many audiophiles rate dBpoweramp (dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper.htm). It will let you rip music to high-quality FLAC files, and add album art and metadata – automatically or manually. Another option is a special ripping box like Zoneripper or VortexBox, which will automatically rip your discs and then store them on its internal hard drive. These really come into their own if you are planning on continuing to buy a large number of discs. If you own thousands of CDs, your easiest option might be to have a professional organisation do the work for you. Prices vary as do some of the options available in terms of formats, tagging and storage. If…

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