Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2019 i Hi-Fi Choice

PRICE: £109-£149 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 01462 480000 WEB: SOUNDTECH.CO.UK DISTRIBUTED IN THE UK by Sound Technology Ltd., AKG Professional has announced three models sporting a three-axis, all-metal hinge that brings foldable practicality to its studio-quality cans for a life on the road. First up, the £109 K175 is an on-ear closed-back design with 40mm drivers that weighs 250g and claims a frequency range of 18Hz to 26kHz with sensitivity at 114dB/1V. The £129 K245 offers a similarly wide frequency range and sensitivity, but is an over-ear semi-open design with 50mm drivers and weighing in at 295g. The £149 K275 is a closed-back design with similar size drivers and weight, but offers a slightly extended frequency range. All three feature a self-adjusting headband with slow retention foam ear pads for a…

PRICE: FREE AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 01622 721444 WEB: CHORDELECTRONICS.CO.UK KENT-BASED CHORD ELECTRONICS has announced a firmware update to its portable Mojo headphone amp/DAC’s high-resolution networking module. The new firmware has been crowned ‘Poly 2’ in recognition of the considerable update and is said to include improvements to its Bluetooth, DLNA and wi-fi capabilities. It also adds Roon Ready certification as well as integration with popular streaming services, including Tidal and Qobuz, and Internet Radio support assessed via popular third-party DLNA apps. The update also enables several usage improvements, including switching between Hotspot and Network modes; access to Hotspot password reset; Bluetooth PIN code reset and factory reset functions – all by holding the Config button for 20 seconds and listening to the voice prompts to make your selection. The Poly…

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Hi-Fi Choice employs the most rigorous test and measurement regime in the business. Here’s how we do it… USB DACS GROUP TEST THE PROCESS OF reliably auditioning six USB digital-to-analogue converters isn’t quite as straightforward as doing a single standalone review. Each DAC is tried with three source components – a Lenovo Z50 laptop via its USB output, a FiiO X3 mk2 hi-res portable player with a coaxial connection and an Audiolab 6000CDT CD transport (HFC 447) via its optical Toslink output – and powered continuously to make sure it’s fully warmed up using the supplied power lead. This procedure ensures that all models have reasonable use before any listening begins, and they are all kept powered up throughout the comparative listening test process. The converters are then all connected…

DETAILS PRODUCT Musical Fidelity M6s DAC ORIGIN Austria/Taiwan TYPE 32-bit/384kHz PCM & DSD128-capable DAC/preamp WEIGHT 6.9kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 440 x 100 x 380mm FEATURES • Inputs: 1x USB-B micro; 3x coaxial; 3x optical • Outputs: stereo RCAs; stereo balanced XLRs DISTRIBUTOR Henley Audio Ltd. TELEPHONE 01235 511166 WEBSITE henleyaudio.co.uk This upmarket looking model looks a little out of place in this group of half-width and downright titchy DACs, most of which would fit under the shadow it casts. But does the competition live in its shadow sonically? Musical Fidelity seems to think so and posts some impressive technical stats to make its point: stereo separation better than 120dB; signal to noise better than 119dB; and linearity better than 110dB. Jitter is claimed to be immeasurably low, with noise and distortion…

Not knowing what will be coming in through the door or via email next is a constant thrill.” HFC is chewing the fat with busy Paul Fairweather, co-director of Omega Auctions along with his wife, Karen. We catch him during a business-as-usual hectic month for the company, based in Newton-Le-Willows, Merseyside: not only has a celebrity collection just gone under the hammer, but bidding is about to begin on lots of music memorabilia and vinyl records, and there’s the small matter of a Beatles auction coming up in just a couple of weeks. Paul manages the team of experts who work on the sorting, cataloguing and lot photography, and is also the chief auctioneer. Meanwhile Karen is head of client services, manages the office and administration team and ensures that…

It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter – as someone once said. Yet for me it had its compensations, not least my annual reconnection with the wonderful world of glass audio – or thermionic valves to you and me. Yes, I confess, I’m a bit of valve fan. But no, I do not drive a Morris Minor Traveller, drink beer as black and warm as the oil in its sump or smoke a pipe – since you’re asking. Now that we’ve got all the valve amp owner stereotypes out of the way, we can move on. I’m basically a seventies child when it comes to hi-fi. My formative years were spent reading hi-fi magazines towards the end of that distant decade, full of Japanese solid-state amplifiers with large power meters…

Leaving Neverland, the recent documentary about Michael Jackson’s relationship with young boys, has opened up a moral maze of questions that go far beyond our view of the self-styled ‘King of Pop’ and his music. The first-hand allegations in the film paint a picture of behaviour that is repugnant. Some diehard fans may continue to argue that the film is a fraud and that the claimants are liars. But, as The Times soberly concluded, that is “exceptionally unlikely”. So, unless we simply chose to ignore the revelations, how do we respond? Should we continue to listen to Jackson’s music or do we consign Thriller and Bad to the trash along with the records of the convicted paedophile Gary Glitter, currently serving time in HM Prison Albany? Dan Reed, who directed…

Getting the very best performance from your hi-fi remains the goal for all audiophiles, but what if you can’t afford to upgrade your amplifier, replace your speakers or invest in a new source for your system? The good news is that squeezing that extra last drop of quality from your setup needn’t involve spending vast amounts of cash. There are things you can do to get the best from what you already have, and sometimes a little effort and imagination can provide noticeable improvements. Take having a tidy up for example. Who’d have thought that simply re-organising your system could deliver results – believe it or not, it’s worth the effort. You might have started out with the best of intentions by routing your mains cables and interconnects neatly around…

A REVISED VERSION of Tangent’s original Ampster BT (HFC 409), the BT II’s outward appearance looks much the same but the Danish maker claims improved digital amps and cooling to deliver 2x 25W into 8ohm (2x 50W into 4ohm). There’s a good selection of analogue and digital inputs and as the name suggests, there’s Bluetooth. This is v4.0 implementation with aptX (although there’s no sign of AAC for iOS devices). This is joined by a pair of analogue inputs. One is a conventional RCA connection and the other a 3.5mm stereo input. There is then a single optical input that is 24-bit/96kHz-capable, giving the Tangent a surprisingly wide selection of supported connections to enable it to form a compact stacking music system when partnered with the matching CD II CD…

IT’S A GOOD time to think about sprucing up your hi-fi (see p106) and cleaning up your contacts can make a big difference to its sound. The official designation of DeoxIT Gold contact conditioner/enhancer is G100L-2C, which is handy to know as Caig makes so many variants. It comes in a tiny 2ml tube, meaning you need to use it very sparingly indeed; I employ a pipe cleaner to apply it to my RCA phono sockets, inside pins of my balanced XLRs and even the IEC mains socket pins of my hi-fi – disconnected from the mains to avoid risk of electric shock, of course. Clean up your act It is essentially a cleaning solution that’s said to improve conductivity and give long-lasting protection on gold, base metals and other…

PRICE: £4,000 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 01223 203200 WEB: JBLSYNTHESIS.COM REMEMBER THE EIGHTIES Maxell tape ad where a guy sat in a chair sipping a Martini is blown away be the sound quality of one of its cassette tapes? Well, the distinctivelooking loudspeaker that appeared in the ad, with its sculpted foam Quadrex grille, was JBL's original L100. As the US-based company's best-selling loudspeaker, the recently reimagined L100 Classic retains the look and feel of the original in a three-way configuration with a newly developed 25mm titanium dome tweeter mated to a waveguide with an acoustic lens for optimal integration with the 125mm pulp cone midrange driver. HF and MF attenuators are located on the upper left of the front baffle. The slightly offset bass driver below has a 300mm white…

DETAILS PRODUCT Auralic Vega G1 ORIGIN China TYPE Streaming DAC with preamp WEIGHT 7kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 340 x 80 x 320mm FEATURES • Supports sample rates up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM and DSD512 • Wired Ethernet networking • Digital inputs: 1x USB-B port; 1x coaxial; 1x optical • Streaming support: Spotify Connect; Tidal; Qobuz; internet radio • Roon compatible DISTRIBUTOR Auralic WEBSITE auralic.com It has been a busy 18 months for network streaming specialist Auralic and both its £3,899 Aries G2 and £1,899 Aries G1 streaming transports – reviewed in issues 431 and 441 respectively – received high praise with coveted Recommended and Editor’s Choice badges for their implementation of one of the most capable and easy to use platforms available to network audio fans. The recently introduced Aries series represents…

IT’S AMAZING TO think that the vital but seldom-celebrated chipsets hidden inside the first CD players have evolved into the heroes of hi-res digital audio – magic boxes that turn streams of zeros and ones into a believable reality that dispels the notion that digital could never rival the sonic supremacy of analogue. That assumption has been a factor in DAC development, though, as the invitingly warm tonality often cited as analogue’s great strength is something numerous DAC designers have sought to emulate by various manipulative means, including a choice of filters. Conversely, others maintain digital is the fundamentally superior medium that – with enough understanding of the technology and its implementation, teamed with adequate processing power – can be more faithful to the original recording. There are examples of…

DETAILS PRODUCT Heed Audio Abacus ORIGIN Hungary/China TYPE 32-bit/384kHz PCM & DSD128-capable DAC WEIGHT 4.5kg DIMENSIONS WxHxD) 220 x 87 x 325mm FEATURES • Inputs: 1x USB-B; 1x BNC coaxial; 1x RCA coaxial; 2x optical • Output: stereo RCAs DISTRIBUTOR Connected Distribution TELEPHONE 01242 511133 WEBSITE heedaudio.com By the standards of this group, the Abacus isn’t exactly jumping up and down and waving its arms in a bid to attract my attention. It’s simply a DAC – nicely put together, middling in size and weight, easy to use and an obvious partner for the matching Elixir integrated amp (HFC 405). Under the lid, however, things start to perk up considerably… Besting the Benchmark DAC3B, for example, PCM goes all the way up to 32-bit/384kHz. The Abacus also natively processes double-speed…

DETAILS PRODUCT Mytek Brooklyn DAC+ ORIGIN USA TYPE 32-bit/384kHz PCM & DSD256-capable DAC/preamp WEIGHT 2kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 218 x 44 x 206mm FEATURES • Inputs: 1x AES/EBU; 1x USB-B; 2x coaxial; 1x optical; 1x BNC clock; 1x analogue RCAs (switchable linelevel or MM/MC phono) • Outputs: stereo RCAs; stereo balanced XLRs DISTRIBUTOR MCRU TELEPHONE 01484 538438 WEBSITE mcru.co.uk; mytekdigital.com Incoming Tardis cliché alert! There really doesn’t seem to be a more appropriate way to describe what’s going on here: the Brooklyn DAC+ feels bigger on the inside. It may only be slightly larger than the pared-back Benchmark, but when you consider the sheer amount of pro-style trimmings on the inside, it seems that the kitchen sink had a lucky escape. Replacing the original Brooklyn DAC (HFC 416), the basic prodigious…

DETAILS PRODUCT Hegel H590 ORIGIN Norway TYPE Integrated amplifier and DAC WEIGHT 22kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 430 x 171 x 445mm FEATURES • Quoted power output: 2x 301W (8ohm) • 32-bit/384kHz PCM/DSD256 DAC with MQA support • Analogue inputs: 3x stereo RCAs; 2x stereo balanced XLRs • Digital inputs: 1x BNC; 1x coaxial; 3x optical; 1x USB-B; 1x Ethernet port • Outputs: 1x fixed stereo RCAs; 1x variable stereo RCAs; 1x digital BNC DISTRIBUTOR Hegel Music Systems TELEPHONE 00 47 22605660 WEBSITE hegel.com Just as I’d got accustomed to the idea of Hegel’s H190 or H360 being the ‘go-to’ powerhouse integrated amplifiers (reviewed HFC 394 and 401 respectively), along comes a beast of a big brother in the form of the H590. Rated at just over 300W per channel into 8ohm,…

DETAILS PRODUCT Métronome Technologie Le Player 2S ORIGIN France TYPE CD player/USB DAC WEIGHT 12kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 450 x 115 x 435mm FEATURES • 32-bit/384kHz PCM and DSD256-capable DAC • Inputs: 1x USB-B port • Outputs: 1x stereo RCAs; Balanced XLRs; S/PDIF coaxial digital DISTRIBUTOR Absolute Sounds TELEPHONE 0208 9713909 WEBSITE absolutesounds.com I first fell in love with Métronome Technologies’ Le Player 2 back in HFC 425, so when I heard that an upgraded version of the CD player was available, a rendezvous was speedily arranged. Despite its ‘S’ status, the latest model looks almost identical to its predecessor, and both sport the same chic, silvery grey casework, Delrin feet and solid aluminium front plate hosting a slim CD drawer, understated blue LED display and sleek metal buttons and switches.…

DETAILS PRODUCT Shure KSE1200 ORIGIN USA TYPE Electrostatic in-ear headphone WEIGHT 44g FEATURES • Single electrostatic driver • High voltage energiser/amp • Input: 1x 3.5mm jack socket • Carry case DISTRIBUTOR Shure Distribution UK TELEPHONE 01992 703058 WEBSITE shure.com These are exciting times to be an in-ear headphone manufacturer. Flagship models now routinely exceed £1,500 and the technology and materials being employed are every bit as advanced as anything in the loudspeaker world. Shure has been making high-end in-ear designs long before they became popular, and with its considerable experience and know-how has established some design parameters. Chief among these is the belief that fitting more than four balanced armature drivers to its in-ear models results in more problems than it solves. This presents Shure with a challenge to its…

Can a £39 insect make all your CD files sound better than Hi-Res? Yes and no: Using the same equipment and a quality DAC, a 24/96 file (for example) will always sound better than a CD 16/44.1 file … but, even a single JitterBug will often allow a CD file to be more musical and more emotionally stimulating than a Hi-Res file without the benefit of a JitterBug. Noise is the problem. Real noise—the kind you can’t hear directly. Most often, the word “noise” is used to describe tape hiss or a scratch on a record, but these sounds aren’t noise; they are properly reproduced sounds that we wish weren’t there. Problem noise is essentially random, resonant or parasitic energy, which has no meaning. It can’t be turned into discrete…

One of the best things about standards, so the saying goes, is that there are so many of them. Apple shook up the multi-room audio market last year with the release of its AirPlay 2 software, which broke the single-manufacturer stranglehold of companies like Sonos. In the past, Sonos and rivals such as Denon and Bluesound all offered competing multi-room speaker systems based on proprietary wireless streaming technologies. These were incompatible with each other, which meant you had to buy your entire system from the same manufacturer. However, Apple’s decision to license AirPlay 2 to the market means that it is now possible to mix and match multi-room speakers from several different manufacturers. This ‘interoperability’ has proved to be something of a breakthrough, and the last year has seen a…

There is a line of thought that truly game-changing products rarely appear from already established companies because to release such a thing is to admit that everything produced before it was somehow flawed. While I don’t completely agree with the thinking, the radical speaker system design you see here is from fairly new German-based manufacturer Kii Audio. Distributed in the UK by Sound Design Distribution, Kii Audio was founded by Bruno Putzeys – a man who has had a considerable input into the refinement of Class D amplification (see HFC 425) – and whose company exists solely to make active speakers. The THREE is not a traditional fusion of amplifier and transducer, being equipped with its own decoding and DSP control to form a complete system. Putzeys set out to…

It is hard to understate just how important Compact Cassette was in 1979. The LP was by now in the late autumn of its life – or so we thought – with more people buying prerecorded cassettes instead of vinyl. The quality of LP pressings seemed to be falling off a cliff at the time – with thin, recycled vinyl that warped easily the norm. Simultaneously, both tape hard and software were taking a turn for the better, and offered far superior performance to just five years earlier. Sony’s foray into high-end cassette begun in 1974 with the TC-177SD. A top loading, dual-capstan, three-head design, it was one of the most sophisticated machines around at the time – yet couldn’t hold a candle to Sony’s flagship of just half a…

PRICE: £13,996-£23,400 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 02477 220650 WEB: KOGAUDIO.COM German high-end specialist T+A has strengthened its flagship HV Series with the introduction of two reference-class digital-toanalogue converters with the £21,990 SD 3100 streaming DAC and £23,400 SDV 3100 streaming DAC/preamp (pictured), plus the PDT 3100 CD/SACD transport priced at £13,996. The PDT 3100 is billed as a reference CD/SACD player, equipped with a tray-loading disc mechanism and fitted with optical, coaxial, BNC and AES-EBU output connectivity, as well the company’s own hi-res IPA Link that enables it to interact seamlessly with the matching HV DACs’ hi-res playback capabilities. The all-new SD 3100 claims to be the company’s most powerful and innovative digital-toanalogue converter to date and capable of handling PCM files up to 32-bit/768kHz and DSD to DSD1,024. The network…

PRICE: £629 AVAILABLE: NOW CONTACT: 02890 279830 WEB: MARANTZ.CO.UK Marantz’ Melody series has been around for a number of years and we first saw its compact form with the Melody Stream network receiver back in 2014 (HFC 382). The newly introduced Melody X, priced at £629, is a total music system and mixes CD playback (including CD-R/RW), DAB tuner, network music streaming, voice control and HEOS multi-room capabilities in one. Rated at 2x 60W into 6ohm and using Class D amplification, it claims to be capable of driving two pairs of loudspeakers with independent volume control for each pair. Alternatively it can be configured to drive a single pair of speakers in bi-amping mode. HEOS multi-room facilitates integration with other HEOSequipped components around the home and streams music from Spotify,…

DETAILS PRODUCT Audiolab M-DAC+ ORIGIN UK/China TYPE 32-bit/384kHz PCM & DSD256-capable DAC/preamp WEIGHT 3.7kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 247 x 114 x 292mm FEATURES • Inputs: 1x AES/EBU; 1x USB-A; 1x USB-B; 2x coaxial; 2x optical • Outputs: stereo RCAs; stereo balanced XLRs DISTRIBUTOR IAG Ltd. TELEPHONE 01480 447700 WEBSITE audiolab.co.uk If the Audiolab M-DAC+ is half as good as it appears to be on paper, then the more expensive DACs in this group have some questions to answer. Based on the well-liked smaller original M-DAC, it continues to use the ES9018 Sabre Reference 32-bit DAC chipset, which is still generally considered to be one of the best off-the-shelf components out there. But, as any DAC designer will tell you, it’s all about the implementation – and Audiolab passes the test. Supporting…

DETAILS PRODUCT Leema Acoustics Elements DAC ORIGIN UK/China TYPE 24-bit/192kHz PCM-capable DAC/preamp WEIGHT 6kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 220 x 88 x 340mm FEATURES • Inputs: 1x USB-B; 3x coaxial; 3x optical • Outputs: stereo RCAs; stereo balanced XLRs DISTRIBUTOR MIAN Audio Distribution Ltd. TELEPHONE 01223 782474 WEBSITE leema-acoustics.com Some DAC manufacturers asset that analogue is the gold standard and getting as close as possible is the goal – and Leema Acoustics is one of them. Getting the temporal aspects right is the key, however: if time isn’t precisely regulated, it causes temporal distortion (jitter) in the digital signal and ultimately manifests itself as actual noise and distortion in the resulting musical signal. The Elements’ so-called ‘Quattro Infinity DAC topology’ was first seen in the company’s range-topping Antila IIS Eco CD player…

I WAS A little concerned before starting this group test about drawing meaningful conclusions about the comparative sound quality of six digital-to-analogue converters. As things turned out, it was easy enough to hear the differences – and they weren’t particularly small. Sonically, the group falls into two camps: Audiolab, Benchmark, Heed Audio and Lemma Acoustics target a warm, quasi-analogue type of sound; Musical Fidelity and Mytek deliver a less varnished version of digital to a very high standard. The rider here is that, despite the near £1,000 Price gap between the least and most costly, these are all top drawer DACs with sonic characteristics and features that warrant serious consideration. For me – and with the system outlined at the start – I’ll kick off the countdown with the Benchmark.…

DETAILS PRODUCT Polk Audio Signature S15e ORIGIN USA/China TYPE 2-way standmount loudspeaker WEIGHT 5.9kg DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 191 x 305 x 259mm FEATURES • 1x 25mm Terylene dome tweeter • 1x 133mm mica/polypropylene mid/bass driver • Quoted sensitivity: 88dB/1W/1m DISTRIBUTOR Sound United UK TELEPHONE 02890 279830 WEBSITE polkaudio.com Different countries having varying expectations when it comes to sound is not as bizarre a concept as you might first imagine. After all, variations in room size, partnering equipment, music being listened to and even different expectations of how it should sound all play their role in ensuring that what delivers the goods in one part of the world won’t necessarily be the same in another and has led to ‘tuning’ products for a particular market. Certain brands have been keen advocates of…

When we talk about network audio players, there’s often the assumption that the device in question consists of the network hardware, a control interface and decoding. Components like Auralic’s Aries G1 streaming transport (HFC 441) have altered this perception by removing the decoding, allowing you to choose your own. Now, South Korean company SOtM (Soul Of the Music), has upped the ante and removed built-in control software, making the sMS-200 Neo a network interface that will work with DNLA and UPnP protocols that uses a dedicated ARM processor board designed for streaming audio. It contains no audio signal decoding of its own and uses a USB Audio port to output to an add-on USB DAC. With no matching control app to navigate, connecting it to a network for the first…

After a decade of rapid technological change for hi-fi, I had imagined that we might be settling down to a period of relative calm. The move away from physical digital formats has been handled with reasonable aplomb and the market appears to be adapting to the idea that CD is winding down and streaming – both from existing libraries and on-demand services – is growing steadily. Although I don’t see this changing, I’m starting to wonder if we might have been lulled into the idea that the big shift has happened and all that’s left to sort are the details, but I’m not so sure… My change of opinion was prompted by the recent music playback software Group Test in last month’s issue. While I initially thought it would highlight…

With demand for vinyl at a 25-year high, we are seeing a new generation of pressing plants springing up. While this is great news for vinyl devotees, it also brings new challenges when it comes to maintaining the quality of the LPs themselves. Many will remember vinyl’s low point in the late seventies and early eighties when, in an effort to cut costs, pressing plants started using recycled vinyl, which resulted in an increase in background noise. LPs were so thin that they were nearly as flexible as the sleeves they were stored in. When the vinyl revival started just over 10 years ago, new record production focussed on the audiophile market and factories began producing high-quality 180g pressings on virgin vinyl, thinking that it would be a niche market.…

ALBUM OF THE MONTH The Waterboys Where The Action Is CD Cooking Vinyl THEY DON’T MAKE rock stars like Mike Scott any more. Perhaps they never did. As the lead singer, songwriter and main man with The Waterboys over 40 years, Scott, who has never had much time for the vapid trappings of celebrity, has regarded making music as a transcendental experience. He is what you might call an 'ecstatic' who uses his songs to express his dreams, aspirations and passions with a wildness and romantic grandeur that in lesser hands might reek of pretention, but in his case is honest and heartfelt. A seeker on an endless search, music is his vehicle on that journey and there’s nobody else quite like him, unless it’s Van Morrison. The advantage is that…