Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2015 i Hi Fi News

Is the music business, or at least our consumption of it, turning ever more ‘virtual’? Compact disc sales, the principal indicator of physical media, have been in decline for many years. The vinyl diehards among us have been tempted to suggest the analogue LP revival has been crushing CD underfoot, but the plain truth is that music downloads and streaming services are sounding the silver disc’s death knell. But is this new musical age any less volatile? The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) has reported significant year-on-year growth in subscription services such as Spotify which are gaining ground on the file download market. As audio enthusiasts, we are principally interested in high-res downloads, not compressed formats, but the drive to streaming is still fundamentally changing the way a…

EXTRA EXPOSURE Promising more ‘bang for its buck’ the fourth generation of Exposure’s renowned 3010 integrated amp now comes with a £325 DAC option in addition to £240 MM and MC phono stages. The plug-in DAC card includes USB and BNC digital inputs, supporting 192kHz/24-bit LPCM and DSD64 music files. The basic price of the 110W/8ohm 3010S2-D amplifier is £1700 in silver or black. www.exposurehifi.com VENUS BY ISOTEK New to the Isotek Discovery range and priced at £325, the EVO3 Venus AV power centre is a five-outlet mains conditioner designed to enhance and protect a complete audio or AV system. Each outlet is independently filtered of common and differential mode noise and equipped to offer a claimed 13,500A of ‘instantaneous’ surge protection. The rated maximum continuous loading is 10A/2.3kW. www.isoteksystems.com…

International CES 2015 was – unsurprisingly – bursting at the seams with new product. As ever, it overwhelms. We saw the mock-up of the still-gestating Wilson WAMM speaker, Audeze launched a headphone at half the price of the LCD-X, Clearaudio showed a cool ultrasonic LP cleaner and one of the world’s costliest MCs was unveiled by Air Tight. Meanwhile, the Aspiro Group’s Tidal has been embraced as streaming’s salvation, the place was awash with tubes and vinyl, I finally met SAE’s Morris Kessler [see p19] and I was more than a little disappointed at the Nakamichi brand’s new direction. And I’m still reeling from the mind-boggling 3D sound demo by Professor Edgar Choueiri [see PM’s report, HFN Mar ’15]. Verity’s Lohengrin IIS features all-proprietary drivers, and the speaker complement is…

While Harman’s nearlegendary design facility in Northridge, CA, continues focus on speaker design, electronics such as its prestigious Mark Levinson components are now developed in Shelton, CT. Head of the new Shelton development team is Todd Eichenbaum, who joined Harman in Feb ’13 after spending a lifetime designing components for Krell industries. In his youth he studied electronics engineering and after gaining his degrees he worked as a designer at Krell until 1995, leaving to work on a series on upmarket incar audio components for specialists Precision Power Inc. Three years later he returned to Krell as the company's senior analogue engineer and was promoted to become Krell's VP of product development in 2008. Says Todd: ‘As a student I remember having what I would call a life-changing moment when…

As general manager of the strategic planning team at Astell&Kern’s parent company since 2001, James Jeong has been closely involved with the development of the AK500N. Asked why A&K had expanded into ‘home’ audio, he replied that ‘our medium and long-term goals were always to build a strong brand position in high-end home hi-fi while continuing to develop and progress our award-winning portable line. We want to provide our customers with more options.’ That unusual styling, he says, was ‘inspired by images in nature. The core design features multiple facets coming together in a single point, symbolising the greatness of Switzerland’s Matterhorn, everchanging with time and the amount of light.’ Talking about two of the major elements of the design, he told me the decision to offer DSD upconversion was…

Well-known in the industry and with a prominent role in the AES, Jan Abildgaard Pedersen joined Dynaudio as development director in 2014, after some years with B&O. Earlier he’d headed room correction development at Lyngdorf Audio. His experience in interfacing loudspeakers and rooms led to the Focus XD’s Speaker Position switch. As he says, ‘This EQ in the Focus XD is much more than just a bass adjustment. It actually takes the acoustical effects of boundaries into consideration so that these are compensated correctly. This allows the user to effectively remove most of the room influence on the bass response of the loudspeaker.’ In the Focus XD, all signals are processed digitally right up to the output of the amplifier. ‘In practice, this means that regardless which input signal you…

JADIS I-50 Judging by the I-50’s power output, our sample looks to have been configured with its 4ohm tap option. Ordinarily I test all tube amps via their 8ohm tap into 8ohm and 4ohm tap into 4ohm (where applicable) but the I-50 cannot be so easily adapted without disassembly. As supplied then, the I-50 mustered 2x35W/8ohm up to 3% THD and 2x39W/8ohm with a 5% limit and with 2x50W and 2x58W meeting Jadis’s specification into 4ohm at 3% and 5% THD respectively. There’s little or no headroom under dynamic conditions [see Graph 1, below] although the 75W/2ohm and 38W/1ohm (or 6.2A) is respectable enough for a 50W Class A tube amp even if we know far more is possible from pairs of KT150s [HFN Mar ’14]. Distortion climbs steadily with…

If you’ve yet to hear a pair of headphones using balanced wiring, don’t worry as you’re in the majority. Almost all headphones still use the standard (unbalanced) ¼in stereo jack connector, with an adapter to fit the mini-jack socket on most computer and portable devices. But since the US specialist company Headroom launched its Blockhead balanced headphone amplifier back in 2001, other specialists have followed suit, also offering to rewire existing ’phones with two three-pin XLR connectors. But despite their enthusiasm, there are few commercially-available headphones using this connection format. You can buy a balanced headphone amplifier and headphones from Oppo, for example, but this uses the simpler option of a single 4-pin Neutrik connector to give the necessary separated conductors for the left and right channels. Sennheiser also went…

For a company with a huge – and still growing – range of headphones, Denon/Marantz parent company the D+M Group [see www.dmglobal.com] was a relatively late boarder of the headphone amp bandwagon. That’s not to say the company’s brands have historically neglected headphone users: Marantz designers have paid particular attention to the quality of the headphone outputs they include in its amplifiers, just as the company persisted with decent phono stages even when it seemed the rest of the affordable audio world was going line-only. However, the past year or so has seen a rapid deployment of a range of headphone options across the two brands: as well as this Marantz DAC/amp, aimed not to break the bank, sister company Denon has launched both a desktop device, the DA-300USB [HFN…

Symphonies 1 and 8; Grosse Fuge (arr.) Testament SBT 1405 The BBC recorded Klemperer’s Philharmonia Beethoven cycles in mono only (alas). This disc adds a live account of the Grosse Fuge transcription from 1966 – the Philharmonia then renamed the NPO. Missa Solemnis; Symphonies 5 and 6 Classics Online MP3 (from Vox CDX2-5527) Klemperer’s very fine 1952 Missa Solemnis (later recut on a single LP) was digitally remastered in pseudo-stereo – a complete mess and with a gap in the Credo at the LP turnover point! Characterful VSO winds in the two symphonies. (The EMI Missa Solemnis is on 5675462 and it’s also in a Warner box set.) Symphonies, overtures, etc EMI 4042752 (ten discs) The Philharmonia stereo cycle 1-9 and the earlier Nos 3, 5, 7 (the last two…

The studio in which The Doors recorded L.A. Woman was unusually basic, essentially just a rehearsal space. It was located in their office building, The Doors Workshop (on the corner of La Cienega and Santa Monica Boulevards), where a clubhouse atmosphere prevailed and there was a pinball machine. ‘It was a place where they could come and go with zero pressure,’ observed their manager Bill Siddons. The room was not large – about 20ft by 12ft – but it had to accommodate six musicians, a large drum kit, two guitars, a piano, a Hammond B3 organ, a Fender Rhodes, a Wurlitzer, a Farfisa, various amps, an eight-track tape machine (borrowed from Sunset Sound studios) and, of course, that pinball table. ‘It was tight,’ noted producer Bruce Botnick. ‘It was like…

EMMA LOUISE Vs Head Vs Heart Emma Louise Records HENCASDGA1 You may know singer-songwriter Emma Louise best from the Wankelnut remix ‘My Head Is A Jungle’ which recently did well in the charts, or from her original version of the same track, entitled ‘Jungle’, which appeared in a recent Black Opium perfume ad on the telly. Either way, you should have noticed that this 23-yearold Australian who learned her craft busking in the streets of Brisbane, and honed it making tunes on her bedroom computer, is remarkably talented. Check her use of found vocal samples on ‘Atlas Eyes’, or her minimalist synth-lines on ‘17 Hours’, and it’s impossible not to conclude that anyone who ever loved St Etienne or Everything But The Girl or Lights will soon fall under her…

Editor Before we had the opportunity to lab test and review the first of Dynaudio’s new Focus XD series loudspeakers [p40], I sat down with Claus P Rasmussen, Sales Director, and Wilfried Ehrenholz, CEO, to discover a little more about this ‘quantum leap’ in design and performance. It wasn’t long, however, before talk of a new age of highly integrated and connected technologies had me thinking of previous ‘new dawns’. So what, if anything, will ensure the system-in-a-speaker will prove a game-changer in 2015? The idea of incorporating a DAC, active crossover and amplification (latterly a crossover in DSP with Class D amps) inside the loudspeaker cabinet is not especially new. As Steve discusses in our review this month, it’s a route to market already navigated by Meridian, in particular,…

Science Journalist Do you use the BBC iPlayer? Do you use a free, but ‘unofficial’, method such as get_iplayer to search, index and stream content? Millions of people enjoy iPlayer on a daily basis. In engineering terms it’s a spectacular success, and when you consider its enormous cultural significance it’s arguably one of the BBC’s greatest achievements. However, at the end of October last year the corporation abruptly ceased providing internet data ‘feeds’, which could be used to catalogue what was available. Use a web-browser and the chances are you would be unaware of this. But if you use an open-source project like get_iplayer or XBMC then the effect was that their normal operation was stopped in its tracks. As I understand it, various models of ‘smart’ TVs and set-top…

Send in your views to: Sound Off, Hi-Fi News, AVTech Media Ltd, Enterprise House, Enterprise Way, Edenbridge, Kent TN8 6HF or email your views to: letters@hifinews.com – please use ‘Sound Off’ in your subject field was reading your review of the Sony TA-1120A recently. It was in the September 2013 issue, but I work for a US embassy in Africa and only pick up my magazines when in the States about once a year, so I am always rather behind! I noticed the ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ speaker selection choices on the front panel. I have seen these before on other vintage amplifiers and have been wondering what exactly they do. I enjoy watching old Hong Kong VCDs, and to offer both Cantonese and Mandarin soundtracks on this somewhat limited medium,…

Recently I bought a pair of Pioneer S-71 floorstanding loudspeakers on eBay. This is the younger sibling of the Pioneer S-81 you tested and recommended in the August 2009 issue. It differs from the S-81 in that it does not have ribbon supertweeters. The bass driver complement is the same, but vents to the floor. It sounds wonderful and a simple frequency response measurement showed that it has no ‘Allison dip’, named after Roy Allison who first described this upper bass cancellation effect. This is the first box speaker I have owned in over 20 years that has addressed this easily measured and audible effect. I am surprised that even far more expensive speakers fail to address this issue. Perhaps you can shed some light on this matter and discuss…

I was surprised to read Ken Kessler’s positive words of Stacey Kent’s album The Changing Lights [see HFN Jan ’15]. To my mind the music on this album has little in the way of emotion, soul and conviction. The recording may be audiophile in quality, but the music has little appeal. Listen to Ida Sand’s Meet Me Around Midnight and you will hear a jazz album that convinces. Or early Diana Krall records or even Demi Evans’ Why Do You Run. Good sound doesn’t make good music. Remi Balestie, via email Ken Kessler replies: Hmmm... not the reaction I had at all. In fact, I found it more involving than most of Ms Krall’s work, for example, so I guess personal taste will have to be the arbiter. Conversely, I…

Although Compact Disc is due to be launched on March the 1st 1983, and is being heralded as the digital audio disc (DAD) system for the next several decades, it is perhaps anachronistic in that it still uses a revolving disc. I remember vaguely a mention in one of the English hi-fi or studio magazines that Soundstream, the digital recording company, had developed a digital playback system where the software was in the form of a non-moving card. As my business required me recently to visit, not just the USA, but the state of Utah, where Soundstream is based, I took the opportunity to visit the company. Dr Tom Stockham founded Soundstream and developed the first PCM recorder to be used on commercial recording sessions. Over 180 releases – on…

FROM DIRECT-CUT TO DIGITAL John Atkinson talks to Jack Renner, engineer and partowner of American record company Telarc. THE RULES OF THE GAME A difference is always a difference, but when is it an improvement? James Boyk guides the unwary through the subjective minefield. A EUROPEAN CASSETTE DECK The Revox B710 Mkll auditioned by Angus McKenzie. NEW LOOK AT HORNS Adrian Orlowski looks at both historical and present day developments of the horn-loaded loudspeaker and concludes that there is still life in the old beast yet. ALVIN GOLD ON... ...pick-up cartridges with a subjective look at the B&O MMC1 & 2, Accuphase AC2, and Koetsu Black. THREE BUDGET LOUDSPEAKERS The Mordaunt Short MS20, Celestion Ditton 110 and Mission 700S reviewed by Trevor Attewell. TWO NOT-SO-BUDGET LOUDSPEAKERS Alvin Gold hears the…

MARK LEVINSON NO585 Levinson’s 0-80 volume control (scaled in steps of 0.1 but not precisely ±0.1dB) is accurate to ±0.5dB over the top 60dB of its dynamic range. The No585 is also very powerful, obliterating its 200W specification with a 2x285W/8ohm and 2x455W/4ohm performance, increasing to 355W, 635W, 988W and 1211W (~35A at <1% THD) into 8, 4, 2 and 1ohm loads under dynamic conditions [see Graph 1, below]. Distortion increases gently from 0.007%/1W to 0.02%/100W and 0.03% at the rated 200W (all at 1kHz) but also at very low frequencies – 0.05% at 20Hz and 2.5%/5Hz (10W/8ohm). The response is somewhat load-sensitive, extending down to –0.04dB/20Hz but varying at 20kHz from –0.1dB, –0.25dB, –0.5dB and –1dB into 8, 4, 2 and 1ohm. The S/N ratio is healthy at 89.4dB…

ASTELL&KERN AK500N Although A&K employs a pair of CS4398 DACs this chip is still only a 192kHz device, but its compatibility with DSD2.8 and DSD5.6 streams allows the AK500N to service higher rate LPCM/DXD files by conversion to DSD without downsampling. Nevertheless, while our sample was lab tested before any firmware updates were received, the results suggested that 48kHz inputs via S/PDIF and USB were also being converted to DSD while 96kHz and 192kHz inputs remained as LPCM... The rise THD+N at high frequencies was marked – 0.05% for 48kHz/24-bit versus 0.00085% for 96kHz/24-bit (20kHz/–10dBFs signal). All else was consistent with sample rate, including the wide 112dB A-wtd S/N ratio, excellent ±0.1dB resolution over a 100dB range, the 3V maximum balanced output (fixed XLR) and fabulously low 3ohm source impedance.…

Since the company’s inception in 1996, Acoustic Signature has always recommended high quality arm designs by other manufacturers, including SME and Rega. However, the launch of its own arm was prompted by the increasing scarcity of more affordable options that would match its turntables. The TA-1000 fills this role admirably but, at the Munich High End Show in 2014, Acoustic Signature also unveiled the prototype of an arm called the TA-9000. This will be manufactured using ‘Stereolithographic Laser Sintering’, providing two tubes separated by a complex internal structure, with movement courtesy of top quality ceramic bearings. The aim is to offer one of the most technologically advanced arms on the market, albeit at a price! It is rumoured the 9in version of the TA-9000 will cost around £14,000 when finally…

Crystal Cable’s Arabesque speakers’ curves give its enclosures a distinctive cross-section like an apostrophe. In the company’s own words, ‘The innovative cabinet shape with its non-parallel surfaces and critical venting eliminated the intermodulation distortion and reflected internal energy that muddled and smeared the musical performance of conventional designs.’ Non-parallel surfaces are nothing new; Crystal Cable’s take on it is simply another spin, but a successful one. From see-through, all-glass enclosures in the original floorstanding Arabesques, Glass Master and Absolute, to the smaller Mini with cabinet construction formed of milled aluminium plates, the Minissimo is a direct descendant with the same drivers used in the Mini. It enjoys the same asymmetrical form, and the same user’s choice of whether to use the apostrophe’s ‘hook’ on the inside or the outside. What…

There have been around 160 versions of this classic album over the years. Bear with me while I try to boil them down to a precious few of the most interesting, essential and covetable ones. ORIGINAL VINYL LP (1971) The initial US and UK vinyl editions [EKS-75011/K 42090] were issued in a burgundy sleeve with rounded corners and embossed text. The front featured a cut-out window made with clear acetate on which the band photo was printed in black half-tone. The disc itself came in a yellow rounded-corner liner bearing an image of Morrison crucified on a telegraph pole. When inserted, this provided background colour to the sleeve window image. Most later sleeves attempted, none too successfully, to emulate this effect, with no cut-out window and squared-off corners. Pressed at…

JERSEY BOYS Jersey Boys Motion Picture Warner Bros 5000189760 (Blu-ray) Ordinarily, feature films don’t figure here, but this retelling of The Four Seasons’ story, closely following the Broadway smash, is one of the most enjoyable biopics I’ve seen. It doesn’t hurt that the music is interwoven in pop history, the group producing a phenomenal number of hits including ‘Rag Doll’, ‘Dawn’, ‘Walk Like A Man’, ‘Sherry’ and too many others to list. Clint Eastwood – a dab hand at this, having directed music biopics before – captures the full flavour of the stage show, adding a frisson of drama in keeping with the music biz’s gangster element. A total joy if you love harmonies to-die-for and know all the words to ‘Oh, What A Night’. KK Sound Quality: 89% LOVE…

THE TUBBY HAYES BIG BAND Rumpus Savage Solveig SS-003 (mono) A third release from the label that’s devoted to unissued recordings of the late British jazz great, culled from Hayes’ own personal tape archive and superbly documented by Simon Spillett. The first two covered quartet and quintet dates from 1967 and 1964 respectively but this time it’s Hayes’s 1969 big band, live and in full flight with breathtaking ensemble playing. As for solos, along with the leader’s tenor there’s the slippery alto sax of Peter King, the trumpets of Kenny Wheeler and Ian Hamer and the guitar of Louis Stewart, all propelled by dynamic drummer Spike Wells. Mono sound is better than you’d expect and the music makes this an exciting disc. SH Sound Quality: 80% VERNERI POHJOLA Bullhorn Edition…

Technology journalist The world is as it is, not how we might like it to be. It’s going to go on getting harder to buy music on physical media, until – perhaps – CD, DVD, SACD and BD become the next vinyl and production ramps up again. Until then we have downloading and streaming, and the pitfalls that come bundled. Some readers will be on capped broadband, for instance from BT. Exceed the monthly limit and there are severe cost penalties: £5.30 for every extra 5GB, or part thereof. Streaming low quality internet radio is unlikely to push you over the limit, but HD downloads with a fibre connection make excess a real risk. BT recommends that subscribers use the online Usage Monitor to check how close they are to…

Electronics Engineer Twenty years ago one had to wonder where the future of hi-fi lay. The latest generation of 18-bit upsampling CD players were capable of such outstanding and consistent measured performance that further improvements seemed like merely gilding the lily. When it came to amps, DC-coupled solid-state designs were able to produce more than sufficient power for any sensible domestic set-up while boasting a flatness of response and distortion levels which, mathematically at least, could not be improved upon usefully. Then, as now, loudspeakers were the least perfect part of the chain. Yet with dome tweeter and midrange units in a variety of sizes mixed with traditional cone drivers made from exotic materials, it was possible to cover the whole audio band with a high degree of competence. And…

The headline ‘HFN rekindles reader’s interest in hi-fi ’ in the Oct ’14 Sound Off pages truly hit the spot for me. You mentioned the Yamaha NS-1000 speakers. I have a pair, but sadly have not used them for about seven years because the sound from one channel of my power amp cuts out. There are also smaller problems with the amp, which I expect can be easily fixed. My system consists of a Yamaha C50 control amp and C50 power amp, Yamaha T-70 AM/FM stereo tuner, Yamaha CDC-715 carousel CD player plus a Thorens 165 Mk II turntable with Ortofon cartridge. Where can I repair the system to as near as possible to its original perfect performance? Is is worth repairing or would you rather recommend I go for…

As with the brand’s existing preamps – and the long defunct No383 integrated which this No585 replaces – there are myriad settings one can configure via the set-up menu. The analogue and digital input levels can be trimmed to evenout level differences between sources, inputs can be named as well (a most desirable feature never to be overlooked) and minimum/maximum output levels determined – including the muting level. The No585’s line outputs can be configured to be fixed level (for recording) or variable (to facilitate a ‘preamp output’), and if set to the latter and used to drive powered subwoofers there’s the option of switching in a 80Hz high pass filter. And any one of the amp’s four analogue inputs can be chosen to act as a pass-thru’ for integration…

Apart from the quirky looks, what sets the AK500N apart is the flip-up touchscreen for set-up and control, looking for all the world like an add-on tablet computer. This can be used to drive the system for playback (although forthcoming apps may prove more convenient), but a touch of the standard ‘cog’ symbol takes you into the settings menu. You can go as deep as you like – moving and copying files between folders on the SSD storage, or accessing USB devices connected to it – and these menus also let you select gapless playback (though it’s not infallible), or decide whether or not the AK500N will convert all your files to DSD before they hit the DAC. It’s possible to decide the format you want when ripping discs inserted…

Meridian introduced the first active speaker that could accept a digital input, back in the early years of CD. A prototype was demonstrated at a 1985 show and by 1988 Meridian had gone into production with the groundbreaking D600. This was an active speaker, using linear (analogue) amplification, with a D-to-A converter at its input. For CD listening, you simply connected your CD transport via a digital cable. With the D600 came the ability to control the system by pointing a remote at the speakers, which could become the only system components that needed to be visible. After this Meridian went on to develop its well-known and sophisticated DSP speakers. More recently, Linn, with its own long history of active speakers, introduced its Exakt concept with the slogan ‘The source…

Like Devialet, Jadis is a ‘boutique’-type French audio brand. And its story is a familiar one in audio circles: an audio enthusiast building his own prototypes in an attempt to get closer to his favourite musical performances. Buoyed by acclaim for his designs, he goes into business to make and market the products. Here, that enthusiast was André Calmettes, and the company was founded in 1983, initially making products from his own plans, then building the expertise to develop ideas. A major part of the design here, as in any valve amplifier, is the output transformer, and Jadis makes its own at its factory in Villedubert, handwinding and coating with its own formulation of resin. It’s all part of the hand-assembly and extensive testing involved in the assembly of Jadis…

The M22 power amp doesn’t use the company’s DirectDigital technology [HFN Jun ’10]. Instead, Bjørn Erik Edvardsen, the company’s Director of Advanced Development, was sufficiently impressed by the Hypex UcD Class D technology employed in its D 3020 integrated [HFN Aug ’14] that he turned to the latest Ncore generation for the M22 (confusing referred to as ‘nCore’ by NAD). Ten years ago, Hypex’s original UcD amplifier overcame many of the technical issues that hamstrung traditional Class D designs of the day. Its compact single-ended architecture offered reduced levels of interference, lower midband distortion and – importantly – a frequency response that was largely independent of speaker load (many of today’s Class Ds still have a response optimised for ~6ohm but ‘brighten’ into higher impedances or droop into lower loads).…

CRYSTAL ARABESQUE MINISSIMO Crystal Cable’s product literature carries limited specs for the Minissimo, but this does include a 7ohm minimum impedance, <0.3% THD and a sensitivity of 86dB. The latter is a trifle overoptimistic: our pink noise measurement recorded a figure fully 5dB lower at 81.0dB, which is much more in keeping with a cabinet this diminutive. Crystal Cable could have extracted more by lowering the impedance but our recorded minimum of 7.2ohm is on the high side for a modern design, ensuring that the Minissimo is unusually easy to drive. Impedance phase angles are high but the EPDR (equivalent peak dissipation resistance) still never falls below a high 3.6ohm, about double that typical of the ubiquitous floorstanding competition. Forward frequency response [Graph 1, below], measured on the axis of…

When the Royal Festival Hall was opened in 1951, as part of the Festival of Britain, the first two concerts given there by the Philharmonia Orchestra were conducted by Otto Klemperer. He wasn’t the management’s first choice and there was much criticism when he rejected the Enigma Variations (which he had conducted in New York in 1935) in favour of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony. His first appearance with the orchestra, in 1948 – Bach, Beethoven and Stravinsky – had received poor notices although their Eroica attracted the attention of both EMI and the BBC. In fact, Klemperer did not record for the British company until the end of 1954. This was partly because he had a postwar recording contract with Vox, working with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (this yielded an exceptional…

LUX Voces8 (96kHz/24-bit; FLAC) www.highresaudio.com Decca Classics 478 8053 With Oliafur Eliasson’s 2003 installation from Tate Modern as cover (and texts white on orange – hard to read!) this vocal collection of arrangements covers a wide time-span, like their Signum album Choral Tapestry. Their second Decca programme, on the theme of a comforting warmth that music can bring, introduces one or two instrumental ‘guests’ – cello, saxophone, water-tuned glasses – and spans from Tallis and Allegri (Miserere Mei) to contemporary writers in the pop field: ‘Teardrop’ from Massive Attack’s Mezzanine and Ben Folds’ ‘The Luckiest’ from a Richard Curtis film soundtrack – an item I found intrusive. Voces8 (two sopranos, counter-tenors and tenors, baritone and bass) were recorded in helpful acoustics at Dore Abbey, in Herefordshire, and more intimately, a…

DEBUSSY Images 1 and 2; Préludes Book 2 Marc-André Hamelin Hyperion CDA CKD450 (downloads up to 96kHz/24-bit resolution) The opening ‘Reflets dans l’eau’ sets the tone for some remarkably fluent piano-playing (it’s well worth paying extra for the 96kHz/24-bit option of these 2011-12 Henry Wood Hall recordings). But it’s the thoughtfulness of Hamelin’s Debussy which impresses more – the technique comes as no surprise. In the second book of Préludes I particularly enjoyed ‘General Lavine – eccentric’ and ‘La Puerto del Vino’. Even so, I think there’s greater depth (and no lesser pianistic control) in Arrau’s Images and Préludes [Philips] – the way in which he integrated the middle section of ‘Mouvement’, for instance. And the aloof Michelangeli [DG] remains altogether peerless in this music. CB Sound Quality: 85% JS…

Journalist for top American audio-video publications Imagine a global automotive show with an emphasis on big engines – huge-displacement V8, V10 and V12 behemoths that drink petrol as if oil reserves can never be depleted, whose relative efficiency declines in direct proportion to their size. Major automakers compete with concept vehicles at this show, each with a more massive power plant than the year before. Automotive journalists fall over each other to be first with the news, gushing about ‘soulful engineering’ in paeans to a legendary Golden Age. FLOODLIT MONSTERS On the fringes of this hypothetical event are new companies with amazingly compact high-performance engines that, by comparison with the floodlit monsters at centre stage, weigh very little, consume little energy, and convert nearly 90% of the energy they do…

Contributing Editor In 1958, when stereo hit the UK market, many people had only just changed over from 78s to LPs. There were still thousands of record players that couldn’t play stereo records without damaging them. Retailers had to have a double inventory of stereo and mono records, which was commercially disastrous for them. But in the early 1960s The Beatles came along, and the pop music business exploded. At that time LPs were made in stereo and mono, but 7in 45rpm singles were still strictly mono. As the 1960s gave way to the 1970s and singles gave way to albums, ‘hi-fi ’ and ‘stereo’ become synonyms. There followed a period when self-respecting hi-fi enthusiasts would have no truck with old mono records. GREAT HERITAGE Eventually the tide turned, because…

A while back I purchased a Naim NDX streamer. Aside from the LAN connection on the rear of the unit there is one digital input with optional selection of the interface type. These are: optical (Toslink), coaxial (BNC), or coaxial (RCA phono). I opted to set this to the RCA phono S/PDIF because my AVA Zara CD ripping unit has such a matching output. However, I soon realised that I had two further units – a Blu-ray disc player and a digital recorder, which also have RCA-type digital outputs. It occurred to me that it might be useful to have a switch unit that could be used to select which of these units should feed the Naim’s digital input. Then I recalled that there are many switches commercially available that…

I was interested in Michael Merry’s comments about the Denon DL-304 cartridge lacking bass [see HFN Jan ’15], particularly as in his case the cartridge is used in an SME V arm. I use the same arm and cartridge set-up but on a Garrard 401 turntable and there is certainly no shortage of bass. I suppose you could say the 401 is a contributory factor here. Having said that, a friend of mine uses a DL-304 with a different deck and arm and there is no shortage of bass with his turntable and arm combination, either. Two points to consider. The first is that Michael might want to experiment with using a heavier tracking weight than 1.2g. I use 1.3-1.4g and this helps the security of the bass. Secondly, I…

KOLSTER-BRANDES PHC 20/PHA 30 Very few specifications survive for the PHC 20/PHA 30 pre/power but the 12W maximum power output originally cited in 1959/60 was achieved in practice in 2015 into both 8ohm (8ohm tap) and 4ohm (3ohm tap). There’s some small headroom under dynamic conditions with the output improving to 14.5W into 8ohm (8ohm tap) and 12W, 13.7W and 10W into 4, 2 and 1ohm loads (3ohm tap). Nevertheless, should you chance upon a set of these amplifiers, sensitive loudspeakers are a must [see Graph 1, below]. Distortion was necessarily high at 5% to meet these outputs, the figure rising with power from 0.35%/1W to 1%/5W and 2.3%/10W through midrange frequencies into 8ohm. Distortion also rises markedly with frequency, exceeding 3% at 6kHz, 5% at 8.5kHz, 10% at 13kHz…