Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2016 i Hi Fi News

By the time many of you are reading this, the festive season will have faded into memory and the New Year’s celebrations perhaps inspired a resolution or two. So while the diet food industry is winding its marketing engine up to full speed I thought Hi-Fi News might offer some life-affirming suggestions of our own. I was fortunate enough to spend the period with the new iteration of Clearaudio’s Statement turntable – all 400kg of it – and was motivated to dig out more than a few old LPs and compare them with rather more regularly-played ‘hi-res’ versions stored on the server. In almost every instance while the difference in presentation between LP and download was ‘technically’ obvious, my musical engagement with each and every album was undimmed. Good music…

With the Classic Stereo being a departure from the Momentum models, released in the same year as the Momentum Phono Stage, the still-young brand is expanding its catalogue vertically as well as laterally. Dan told HFN that, ‘We recently announced the Momentum M400 Monaural amplifier, which is a major update to the original Momentum amplifier. Power output has been increased to 400W, up from the original 300W. The backbone of the increase is a new ultra-quiet 1800VA transformer that’s 20% bigger than the original. ‘Coupled to this larger power source is a new complementary driver and an updated output stage. The new driver stage nearly doubles the current drive necessary to maximize the enhanced output stage that follows. This takes this increased drive and boosts the open loop gain by…

AUDIO FILE Two-way standmount loudspeaker Made by: Gauder Akustik, Germany Supplied by: FiAudio, Scotland Telephone: 01563 574185 Web: www.gauderakustik.com; www.fiaudio.co.uk Price: £7290 These are the best loudspeakers in the world’, boasts Gauder Akustik of its top-line Berlina models. That’s quite a crow when you consider the plethora of cost-no-object designs available around the globe. Still, the company’s 250kg ‘big daddy’ flagship, the £125,000 Berlina RC11, is revered by show-going audiophiles worldwide and Gauder Akustik’s high-end models regularly receive awards from hardened audio critics overseas. Chief designer and company owner Dr Roland Gauder must be doing something right! NO-COMPROMISE BUILD Gauder Akustik is a boutique speaker manufacturer based in Renningen, a few minutes’ drive west of Stuttgart [see boxout, p53]. From its entry-level Arcona 40 standmount (£1650) to that mammoth Berlina…

AUDIO FILE Closed-backed circumaural headphone Made by: Kennerton (Fischer Audio) Engineering, Russia Supplied by: NuNu Distribution, UK Telephone: 0203 5442338 Web: www.kennerton.com; www.fischeraudio.com Price: £695 Closed-back headphones with wooden capsule closures are two-a-penny, but here’s something novel: a headphone whose capsules are not made of, say, teak like those of the Audio-Technica ATHW1000Z [HFN Jan ’16], but of bog oak over 2000 years old. Like other bog woods, bog oak has been preserved in peat or, as here, at the bottom of lakes where the extremely low levels of oxygen protect it from decay while acidic conditions cause minerals to react with tannins in the wood, causing it to turn dark brown or even black in colour. Traditionally used for tobacco pipes and Scottish dirks, here it serves a dense,…

AUDIO FILE Two-way standmount/bookshelf loudspeaker Made by: Monitor Audio Ltd, Raleigh, Essex Supplied by: Monitor Audio Ltd Telephone: 01268 740580 Web: www.monitoraudio.co.uk Price: £280 The ability of British loudspeaker companies to make over-achieving little speakers with cut-throat pricing always used to be a thing of wonder among those overseas. They just didn’t get how the likes of Mission, Wharfedale, KEF, Tannoy and Mordaunt-Short managed to squeeze so much sound out of foot-high boxes many of which sold for around £100 a pair. OK, so we’ve moved on a bit from those glory days, and prices have inched up to the point where the Monitor Audio Bronze 2 speakers we have here are £280 per pair, in a market where sub-£200 is now the entry-level norm. What’s more, many of the…

‘Sibelius’s grim profile, it was feared, might deter purchasers’ Some of the Sibelius symphonies (not the more abstract Nos 4 and 6) suggest to me a kind of journey. None more so than No 5 – at journey’s end those mysterious six spaced ff chords, the last two introduced by the timpanist. Sibelius conducted the Helsinki premiere on his 50th birthday (1915) but wasn’t satisfied with the outcome. He introduced a revised version one year later (the material has not been found since) but then continued to work on the score – not only changing the structure from a four-to three-movement symphony but adding the opening horn-call and changing the ending, which at first had been more like that in his Symphony No 2. With its admirable commitment to this…

A little over a decade ago, the comic actor David Walliams was interviewing Liam Gallagher’s brother Noel for the now-defunct Observer Music Monthly and Noel told him this story about how the Gallagher bros happened to be at a Spinal Tap show taking place for charity at the famous Carnegie Hall in New York. According to Noel, before the mighty Tap appeared to render red hot rockin’ versions of ‘Break Like The Wind’, ‘Big Bottom’ and, of course, their prog epic ‘Stonehenge’, band members Michael McKern (aka David St Hubbins), Christopher Guest (aka Nigel Tufnel) and Harry Shearer (aka Derek Smalls) took to the stage in the guise of The Folksmen, the woolly-jumpered, finger-in-the-ear outfit they had portrayed in the movie A Mighty Wind. At which point Liam, a huge…

Barry Fox trained in electronics with the RAF and worked as a patent agent, but he gave that up to enter journalism. He is one of the world’s top technology writers Flying recently to New Zealand, with a full day in the sky each way, I kept thinking about Akio Morita, the charismatic founder and former head of Sony. In the 1970s, Morita was frequently flying round the world to promote the company. Long-haul flights then had some in-flight entertainment – projected movies and taped music and speech – but the content choice was very limited. The headphones, which plugged into holes in the seat armrests, were uncomfortable acoustic stethoscopes, distortion was high and fidelity was as low as a telephone. PLAYBACK ONLY Morita tried taking a Sony TC-D5 cassette…

Steve Harris edited Hi-Fi News between 1986 and 2005. He loves jazz, blues music, vinyl and vintage hi-fi and anything that makes good music come to life When the online revolution took hold, beginning guerilla-style with Napster and finally winning supremacy, respectability and the popular vote with iTunes, the traditional strongholds of the record business seemed to be falling one by one. Yet even as the once-wealthy record companies found themselves scrabbling for the revenue from ring-tones, it became an industry truism to say that more people were listening to more music than ever before. And the truism must be the truth, if only because there are more and more people in the connected world. So we still have CD, but for how long? It’s a sign of the times…

In his Opinion piece ‘Canned acoustics’ in the December issue I do think Barry Fox has been unfair about Yamaha’s DSP (Digital Soundfield Processing) system. Yes, of course, it’s not the proper conduct of an audiophile to superimpose the acoustics of one venue over the efforts of another recording team in another venue. But very judiciously applied, the effect can be very satisfying – particularly if the two venues are the same. It is important, though, that the four ‘effect’ speakers to the front and rear can be separately adjusted from the main stereo pair. And perhaps Barry’s choice of recordings do not lend themselves to the effects? I listen exclusively to classical music and some of the concert hall ‘effects’ can be very good if wisely chosen and adjusted.…

Could you please provide a deeper explanation of the interaction between the coil inductance and capacitance of cables and amplifier input [see HFN Oct ’15] and the best way to optimise this if my MM amp input is 47kohm? David Eguide, via email Jim Lesurf replies: In terms of the physics, the important point is that inductors and capacitors act as places to store electromagnetic energy. The current in an inductor creates a surrounding magnetic field holding energy. The potential (voltage) between the plates of a capacitor also creates an electric field between them that stores energy. The result is that when you try to change their voltages and currents you have to put energy into them or draw it out. As a result, both capacitors and inductors take time…

Central Europe’s largest consumer electronics exhibition was held in Budapest in mid-November where, besides premium local and globallyproduced high-end hi-fi , the products that took gongs in the 2015-2016 EISA Awards were also on show. This was the 16th year of what is an annual event and saw 30 exhibitors introduce the very latest audio and home theatre equipment to more than 2500 visitors over two days. Products from German company Heco have proved hugely popular in Hungary. This year the brand’s local importer Hi-Fi Station was excited to have Heco’s latest speaker on show – the Direkt. Seen here in a white finish these two-way bass reflex floorstanders feature an 11in woofer/midrange driver and 1.2in dome tweeter. www.heco-audio.de Dali is rightfully regarded as a premium brand by Hungarian audiophiles,…

D’AGOSTINO CLASSIC STEREO At the time of writing (Dec ’15) D’Agostino’s website has the power output of the Classic Stereo as 300W/600W/1.2kW into 8/4/2ohm while the downloadable owner’s manual specifies 300W/500W/1kW. The latter is the more accurate as the Classic Stereo achieved 2x354W/8ohm and 2x530W/4ohm with a substantial 390W, 705W, 1.05kW and 1.0kW available under dynamic conditions to 1% THD into 8, 4, 2 and 1ohm loads [see Graph 1, below]. So few speakers will faze this 50kg black brick even if its very consistent but moderately high 0.5ohm source impedance will introduce some system response variations in line with big swings in speaker impedance. Into a straight 8ohm load the response is flat from 1Hz-20kHz (–0.1dB) and out to 100kHz (–1.95dB) but gets ‘flatter’ into lower impedance loads until…

Fourteen years ago, Yoav Geva set up YG Acoustics in Arvada (near Denver), Colorado, ‘because it offers a business-friendly environment, and a highly skilled workforce, thanks to the multitude of audio manufacturers nearby. I found it also to be a wonderful environment for raising a family…’ Indeed, he is obviously a keen family man, naming his speakers after his wife Sonja, daughter Hailey and son Carmel. As you would expect, music is one of the man’s great passions, and if he were banished to desert island, he confides that he would stash away baroque and classical music – Bach a particular favourite, apparently. Given the vast purchase price of the Sonja 1.3, you might expect it to be active – but not so. Geva says that YG Acoustics used to…

Something of a T+A tradition, the MP 2000 R offers four custom filters. ‘FIR Long’ and ‘FIR Short’ are traditional linear-phase types while ‘Bezier/IIR’ and ‘Bezier’ are minimum-phase filters based on Bezier polynomials. FIR Long is the default filter, offering equal pre/post ringing and a brickwall roll-off (–0.2dB/20kHz, +0.2dB/45kHz and –6.1dB/90kHz with 48kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz media respectively). Phase distortion is low and rejection of aliasing images superb, but the ringing is not ideal. FIR Short trades less pre/post-ringing for poorer rejection of out-of-band images (just –8dB versus –102dB for FIR Long). The two Bezier filters offer the same (negligible) stopband suppression as FIR Short but with almost no pre-ringing in the time domain. While these filters modify the audioband with CD/48kHz media, they are ideal for 96kHz sample rates.…

Nobody could accuse Inspire of lacking ambition when it comes to its product range. The company builds no fewer than seven different models, featuring various belt, idler and direct-drive platter-spinning ‘engines’. The price range is also fairly impressive, starting as it does at £560 for the entry-level Black Magic [HFN Jul ’14], rising to around £4000 for the flagship direct-drive Monarch [HFN Oct ’12]. Not content with this, the company offers a Rega-based X100 mk2 arm in 9in and 12in versions, offers upgrade options for Linn, Technics, Rega, Thorens and Roksan turntables as well as a range of accessories suitable for several more models. Some of these upgrade options – the ‘X12’ option for the Linn LP12 in particular – are sufficiently comprehensive that the end product is more ‘Inspire’ than…

A hi-fi addict since his student days, Roland Gauder gained a PhD in physics at the University of Stuttgart where he developed mathematical models to describe the behaviour of loudspeakers. After graduating, he joined Stuttgart’s famous Isophon company: once Europe’s largest speaker manufacturer. Its business had become focused on automotive, supplying drive units to many German car makers, and in 1989 Roland was tasked with heading-up design in the company’s ‘niche hi-fi ’ department. Isophon subsequently sold its core business to Thompson and in 1997 Roland was able to split off the high-end hi-fi department and form his own company. Initially he continued to market products under the Isophon brand name and still used paper-coned Isophon drivers. But since 2004 he’s been developing designs using Accuton ceramic drivers, and in…

Founded by Nicolae Jitariu in Suceava, Romania, Audiobyte is the sister brand of Nicolae’s high-end Rockna Audio company. Established in 1996, Rockna first entered the hi-fi market in 2000 with its Heart monoblock Class A power amps. The range soon grew to include a matching Heart preamp the following year, alongside a MOSFET-based integrated variant in 2004. Rockna’s digital products began with the Heart CD player in 2002 which sported a tube output stage, followed by the RD-2 DAC. Next came Rockna’s Wavequest DAC and matching transport at the end of the decade, which paved the way for its cutting-edge Wavedream DAC featuring custom code running on FPGAs. This subsequently led to the launch of the Audiobyte line-up which benefited from plenty of trickle-down tech. All Audiobyte/Rockna products are designed…

Fischer Audio’s ‘Amphitheatre’ and ‘Helix’ capsules beg the question: how much can you influence resonance within the enclosed air space of a closedback headphone by artfully shaping the capsule’s interior surface? Unlike with loudspeakers, internal air resonance in headphones is a high frequency effect, which only becomes significant when the capsule’s interior dimensions are comparable to the wavelength in air. At bass frequencies, where wavelengths are longer than the largest internal dimension, the capsule simply acts as a pressure chamber. So if the biggest interior dimension is 10cm (not untypical), we can expect there to be no resonance below about 1.7kHz, where 10cm is a half-wavelength. Resonances associated with the spacing between the driver diaphragm and the rear of the capsule – a shorter distance – occur at still higher…

Monitor Audio’s proprietary C-CAM driver technology is used for both tweeter and woofer here, emphasising the fact that the company still makes its own drivers. At the heart of these Ceramic Coated Aluminium Magnesium drivers is an alloy core, chosen for lightness and stiffness, to which is applied the ceramic material to further enhance the rigidity without significant weight increases. The dome tweeter, though it looks just like the ones used as an MA hallmark for several decades, is a new design, its geometry and ‘motor’ claimed to improve accuracy and extension at the top of its range (~30kHz). Improved venting into the rear loading chamber is said to improve damping, reduce air compression effects and mechanical resonances. The design of the woofer is also all about rigidity, reducing cone…

BPO/Herbert von Karajan DG 478 2604 (two discs) Symphonies Nos 4-7, etc: the best Karajan Fifth? (His later Sibelius is on Warner Classics.) Lahti SO/Osmo Vänskä BIS BIS-CD-863 Vänskä went on to re-record the symphony at Minneapolis (96kHz/24-bit option) but musically I prefer this earlier reading, here recoupled with the 1919 original score. NYPO/Leonard Bernstein Sony Classical 88875026142 (seven discs) Bernstein’s Sibelius cycle remastered with extras. The Fifth Symphony was the highlight of the set, along with Pohjola’s Daughter. There’s also an unmissable DVD with the LSO (1966) on ICA Classics ICAD 5082 [see text]. LSO/Sir Colin Davis LSO Live LSO0537 This disc just couples Symphony No 6 while a complete cycle, including Kullervo, is on LSO0191 (four SACDs). Sir Colin’s 1975 Boston SO Fifth is remastered on a Pentatone…

Jailbreak was set to be recorded at The Who’s Ramport Studio in London’s Battersea. Scott Gorham’s brother-in-law, Supertramp drummer Bob Siebenberg, directed them towards John Alcock for production duties. Alcock was not a name producer – in fact he was relatively inexperienced – but he’d done uncredited work for The Who and for Alice Cooper, and had helped set up the Ramport studio. Alcock proved to be both an inspired choice and also something of a taskmaster. The group had demoed 13 songs of which they planned to record ten. He went to see them play live at Bracknell and to their rehearsal studios in Buckinghamshire, but begged to differ on the quality of the material that he heard. He actually put back the recording dates of Jailbreak by a…

ALBUM REVIEWS: VINYL MADELINE BELL Blessed With Your Love STS Records 6111144 (180g vinyl) Ms Bell is one of those amazing soul singers, like Darlene Love, who deserved but never achieved superstar status. Her CV is rich, backing everybody from Elton John to the Dave Clark Five to Giorgio Moroder, but her solo releases are like diamond mines. This one, for audiophile label STS, adds spectacular sound quality to stellar performances, the singer showing superb taste and eclecticism in her choice of material to cover, alongside some fine originals. Her Beach Boys medley includes a heart-stopping ‘God Only Knows’ and she revisits her past with a fresh take on Blue Mink’s ‘Good Morning Freedom’. The opener will dazzle creatures of habit: a stunning account of ‘The Look Of Love’. KK Sound Quality: 93%…

While his main interest is high-end audio, Barry Willis also writes about the culinary industry, visual art and theatre for a huge variety of US newspapers and magazines Before the Internet ruled, retail electronics shops thrived – large and small alike. Large cities could support a half-dozen high-end dealers and many more at the middle and lower ends of the shopping scale. A town of 150,000 people might have supported ten or 12 shops, all doing consistent business. In those days, retailers vied with each other to carry prestigious brands, popular brands, and brands with high profit margins. This put manufacturers in an enviable position and they could dictate terms to retailers. ‘You’ll have to buy ten model X and six model Y,’ the pitch might go, ‘and a dozen…

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 A DIGITAL RED HERRING LP AND CD ALBUM MASTERED IN ANALOGUE I read Steve Harris’ Opinion piece entitled ‘Into the groove’ in the October 2015 issue followed by his reply to a letter on the subject of vinyl pressing in the Sound Off pages of the same issue. This was just hours after I had made an interesting comparison. I recently purchased a copy of Ry Cooder’s Bop Till You Drop on CD, having somehow never bought it on vinyl when it first came out in 1979. I recall it being quite a favourite with…

I was interested to read Barry Willis’s Opinion piece in the December 2015 issue in which he wrote about the different approaches taken by manufacturers when it came to offering support and repair for expensive high-end equipment. As readers of HFN, we all have an interest in an area of hi-fi that is not understood by those of the MP3/earbud brigade, and if I had a pound for every time someone has said ‘but you can’t really tell the difference’, well, you know the rest. Aside from this, our passion can be an expensive pastime and most of us think long and hard before buying or upgrading components. And this often requires negotiation with family members. One thing that can swing it is that we won’t need to buy again…

HOW HI THE FI? Andy Giles on the implications of the word ‘fidelity’ and thoughts on the politics of reviewing. THE 1985 GOLDEN TURKEYS Ken Kessler and John Atkinson team up to examine hi-fi of the gallinaceous kind. POINTS & PLOUGHSHARES PT 2 Stanley Kelly looks at the evolution of the diamond stylus. POT POURRI 1 James Boyk on the Music of Sound, John Crabbe on Objectifying the Subjective, and Christopher Breunig on the diversity of critical opinion. STARTING POINT Martin Colloms advises on system matching within tight budgets from the £300 system to the £750 CD-based system. POT POURRI 2 A round-up of short reports from Martin Colloms and Ken Kessler: TEAC R-999X cassette deck, Denon PMA-737 amplifier, Harman/Kardon PM645 amplifier, Monster Interlink Reference interconnect, Monster Powerline 2 speaker…

D’AGOSTINO UPDATE In addition to introducing its ‘entrylevel’ Master Power range [see p32], D’Agostino has announced a major upgrade to the company’s flagship Momentum monaural amplifier. Dubbed the Momentum M400, this new version of the amplifier is rated at 400W instead of the original’s 300W. The backbone of the power increase is a new ultra-quiet 1800VA transformer – 20% up on the original – and a new output stage design that includes a number of major enhancements. Existing owners will be offered an upgrade path. www.dandagostino.com. SENNHEISER HD 800 S This is the month for updated highend headphones [see Beyerdynamic T1, adjacent] as Sennheiser joins the club with an enhanced ‘S’ version of its HD 800 flagship. With improvements to its 56mm ring radiator driver and a new ‘absorber technology’…

Reminded of Dan’s earlier classics, the original Krell KSA-100 and KSA-50, Editor Miller mused, ‘While the Classic Stereo’s internal design is quite different, do you think Dan is reliving his past?’ Dan was happy to explain both the links to the past and the breaks from it, such as its heavyweight build. ‘We wanted to develop an amp that would help more people experience our product line. The Classic Stereo incorporates my core beliefs in amplifier circuitry and required a certain size and scale for the best sound.’ He also felt that ‘a more streamlined aesthetic was appropriate for this application.’ Clearly recalling his work for 40 years is balanced circuitry, ‘Imperative for great sound. By only including an XLR option, we are reinforcing the importance. Low impedance drive is…

AUDIO FILE Three-way floorstanding loudspeaker Made by: YG Acoustics LLC, Colorado, USA Supplied by: Padood Ltd, Cambridge, UK Telephone: 01223 653199 Web: www.yg-acoustics.com; www.padood.com Price: £100,000 ‘“The greatest challenge for me is to redefine the edge-of-the-art”’ The best loudspeaker in the world’ is a much-touted phrase [see p56], bandied around by manufacturers and reviewers alike in far too louche a way to be meaningful. Yet still – although almost all audiophiles can’t afford such a thing – a great many of us still aspire to hearing it. There’s something uniquely evocative about an absolutely uncompromising statement speaker that intrigues us all. Bitter experience teaches us that, actually, there is no such thing as ‘the best’, but still you won’t find any shortage of grand looking, eyewateringly priced designs aspiring to…

INSPIRE HI-FI ELEVATION Vinyl watchers will be delighted to learn that Inspire’s first ‘big’ belt-drive deck is as technically robust as it is visually compelling. Absolute speed accuracy is excellent, our sample a mere –0.03% slow and incrementally adjustable via the Pro-Ject Speed Box DS Strobo supplied as part of the package. Start-up time rather depends on whether you care to give the platter a helping finger – unassisted, the AC motor requires some 9-10 seconds to bring the Elevation up to speed. Nevertheless, once there, the deck is very stable with a peak wow and flutter of just 0.05% (DIN-B weighted) and the lack of any very low-rate wow/drift auguring well for a very pitch-stable, foot-tapping bass. Rumble is low too, the through-groove figure of –69.2dB largely independent of…

STEVE SUTHERLAND Steve edited NME from 1992-2000, the Britpop years, launching NME.com and reviving the NME Awards. Previously he was Assistant Editor on Melody Maker. Among his many adventures he has been physically threatened by Axl Rose, hung out awhile with Jerry Garcia and had a drink or two with Keith Richards... ‘The tracks match anything Bowie achieved at his imaginative peak’ Ever heard of The Scene That Celebrates Itself? Well, way back in the late 1980s, some of us who were working for the music press scrabbled together an inordinate amount of purple prose promoting a bunch of UK bands who were blissfully happy turning their volume knobs up to 11, kicking in the flange and flailing away behind long, floppy fringes, reluctantly approaching the microphone upon occasion to…

ORIGINAL LP The initial LP version of Jailbreak was released on Vertigo in the UK and Ireland [9102 008] in a gatefold cover in black with silver metallic ink. The band – only three of whom are visible – are pictured through a monitor screen cut out of the sleeve which is held by a sinister-looking android figure. They band members are depicted in comic-book style as fugitives, fleeing from fire, explosions and general mayhem. Open up the sleeve and in Jim Fitzpatrick’s painting we see all four figures being targeted by towering War Of The Worldsstyle robots with telescopic legs, firing at them and laying waste to the entire neighbourhood. The artwork relates to Lynott’s idea of the Overmaster, a symbol of persecuting authority. Versions released in Scandinavia and…

Technician and writer on all things audio for some 30 years, Paul Miller took over the editor’s chair in 2006. He invented the QC Suite, used across the audio industry ‘Channelling social media is as important as playing a guitar’ Unless you are one of the industry’s big beasts – record company or mega band with a legacy to match – then the music biz is not what it was. So when The Beatles announced that their full back catalogue would finally become available on Xmas Eve 2015 via live-streaming services including Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon Prime and the hi-res capable Tidal, many music pundits sensed change in the air. Physical media and even file downloads look to be in the doldrums as streaming surges ahead. Unfortunately, for…

Jim Lesurf has spent a lifetime in audio, both as an engineer at UK hi-fi company Armstrong and reader in Physics and Electronics at St Andrew’s University We tend to take the humble volume knob for granted. Yet when you think about it, the volume control is a vital part of an audio system. Peter Walker of Quad used to say that the ideal for an amplifier was a ‘straight wire with gain’. On that basis, the ideal volume control should be a ‘straight wire with a controllable loss’. However, as is all too often the case in real-world engineering, there can be distinct differences between the ideal and the real. People are generally aware that transistors and integrated circuits have developed and improved over the decades. Modern silicon power…

In his column in the Yearbook 2015, Andrew Everard said that he was viewing with some delight the revival of the DSD format. I then realised that you do not cover DSD files in the music reviews section. Is there a reason for this? Today there are several high-res download sites that offer DSD files and I am beginning to try these through my Oppo HA-2 headphone amp/DAC. My interest comes from my previous experience with SACD, which I very much like the sound of, though ironically some of these recordings are PCM in origin. This is the case with the classical SACDs issued by DG. José Luis Pérez, Buenos Aires Paul Miller replies: José makes an interesting point when he says that much of the available DSD content was…

I’m sure that many readers have owned a particular component in the past that they remember as having brought them musical bliss. In my case it was a pair of Celestion SL6 speakers, which I bought to go with an Ariston RD80 turntable and Nytech 252 amplifier. I owned the Celestions for just six months only to wake up after a Saturday night house party to discover one of them missing. Presumably it had been ‘borrowed’ by one of the numerous gate-crashers in attendance once the music had been turned off and the more raucous visitors asked to leave. This leads me to wonder whether your reviewers have any firm favourites when it comes to older components, either because they later became classics or simply brought music to life in…

One product – two reviewers? Doesn’t this seem like journalistic overkill at best or selfindulgence at worst? The answer would be ‘Yes’, if the product in question were conventional, but from the moment I first heard the Apogee Scintilla, playing a John Diamond PCM-F1 Beethoven recording at the 1984 Chicago CES, I knew that not only was this loudspeaker unconventional in concept, it was also out of the ordinary regarding its sound quality. I had never heard such a breathtakingly natural reproduction of orchestral sound and image in the adverse circumstances of an hotel room in my life. I vowed then that the Scintilla would get the full review treatment, afforded in the past to a mere handful of products that have blazed new trails. Stanley Kelly, responsible for the…