Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2016 i Hi Fi News

AUDIO FILE Three-way reflex-loaded floorstanding loudspeaker Made by: B&W Group Ltd, West Sussex Supplied by: B&W Group Ltd Telephone: 0800 232 1513 Web: www.bowers-wilkins.co.uk Price: £12,500 ‘The 803 D3s have a bass with real weight and conviction’ The Bowers & Wilkins 800 Diamond Series is much more than just a revamp of the previous flagship line-up, as the company is at pains to stress: in fact, very little has been carried over beyond the diamond dome tweeter diaphragm, the terminals and a few other mechanical parts. But the 803 D3, at £12,500 a pair currently the second most expensive model (until the £22,500 800 D3 arrives later this year), is the most radically altered model in the new range. In developing this speaker, even more extensive rethinking was involved. Whereas…

AUDIO FILE Three-way floorstanding loudspeaker Made by: Sonus faber SpA (Fine Sounds Group), Italy Supplied by: Absolute Sounds Ltd Telephone: 0208 971 3909 Web: www.sonusfaber.com; www.absolutesounds.com Price: £4000-£4200 (black, white/wood finishes) Added to the top of an existing, well-received range, Sonus faber’s Venere Signature (or ‘S’ for short) faces great expectations. Exacerbating the challenge is looking like a baby version of its siblings in the company’s much dearer collections. But with prices ranging between £4000 and £4200 depending on your choice of black, white or walnut, this falls into the lower third of the Sonus faber catalogue. It joins the existing Venere 1.5 and models 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 [HFN Sep ’13, Mar ’14 and Jan ’14] – there are also wallmount and centre channel versions to complete a home…

AUDIO FILE Circumaural semi open-back dynamic headphone Made by: Beyerdynamic GmbH & Co. KG, Germany Supplied by: Polaraudio Ltd, UK Telephone: 01444 258258 Web: http://europe.beyerdynamic.com; www.polaraudio.co.uk Price: £855 ‘Beyerdynamic has opted for a more mainstream balance here’ I must have been having fun. When I heard from Polar Audio that there was new version of Beyerdynamic’s top T1 headphone I thought: ‘Already?’. But then I checked when we’d reviewed the original [HFN Aug ’13] and realised that time has been rushing by, and maybe now is an appropriate juncture for the T1 to be ‘breathed on’. Having said which, I liked it so much the first time around that I couldn’t readily imagine what could be done to improve it. What Beyerdynamic says it has done to the £855 T1…

Complete Concerto Recordings DG 479 4370 (five discs) This set has six Mozart piano concertos with Abbado and K466 with Brüggen; Chopin Nos 1 and 2 with COE/Krivine, RPO/Previn; and a fine Schumann, again with Abbado and the COE. The Complete Erato Recordings Erato 2564631065 (17 discs) This set from 1972-87 contains concertos and solo works by JS Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann, most but not all of it re-recorded for DG. Beethoven Sonatas Opp.27 and 109 DG 4534572 (44.1kHz/16-bit download only) As lovely an account of the ‘Moonlight’ as you will find, with its companion ‘quasi Fantasia’ E-flat sonata. The late Op.109 does not wholly convince (nor did Grimaud’s). The CD’s arty packaging was like a Chinese puzzle to open! Mozart Piano Sonatas (complete) DG E4775200 (44.1kHz/16-bit…

The recording of Low began at Studio Hérouville with Bowie drafting in producer Tony Visconti for a month and involving the other musicians on the understanding that this new experimental music might never be released. Guitarist Carlos Alomar, drummer Dennis Davis and bass player George Murray were retained from Station To Station. With his constant quest to effect change Eno had the brass neck to get these accomplished musicians to run through some of his ideas by making them play chords he randomly pointed to on a blackboard. More conventionally, Eno added synthesisers to ‘Art Decade’, thus salvaging a piano piece that Bowie had rejected. He treated instruments electronically – most audibly Ricky Gardiner’s lead guitar on ‘Always Crashing In The Same Car’ – and played most of the instruments…

ALBUM REVIEWS: VINYL DARYL HALL & JOHN OATES Private Eyes Mobile Fidelity MFSL 1-412 (180g vinyl) Although this was recorded in an era when over-engineering just about everything was the norm, the SACD still earned a worthy 89% last August. It was, after all, originally released two years before CD launched outside of Japan, back in 1981, so perhaps the process of mastering to LP 35 years ago ameliorated the inherent, ultra-crisp edginess: MoFi’s SACD certainly caused no listener fatigue. For fans of this duo, who took rock-infused, blue-eyed soul to new heights, this vinyl transfer offers even sweeter highs. But who cares? This contains ‘I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)’ and the title track, which were both No 1s, as well as ‘Did It In A Minute’,…

Journalist for top American audio-video publications 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 ‘If people aren’t reminded something is desirable, it will lose its appeal’ Say ‘audio engineer’ or ‘sound reinforcement’ to any decentlyeducated civilian, and he or she will probably have some idea what these terms mean. Say ‘highperformance audio’ to anyone not familiar with this journal, and you’re likely to draw a blank stare in response. The words sound like normal English, but the phrase makes no sense. The lack of public recognition that haunts our market niche is compounded by what sometimes feels to be an almost conspiratorial lack of acknowledgement by mainstream journalists – people…

I really look forward to the Vintage tests and features in each issue of Hi-fi News, but recently a thought struck me. Is it the look of this classic equipment – the wood and metal, the materials that are too costly to be used these days – that is the true appeal? Or is it the memories these components evoke? Or is it that they do indeed have a sound of their own? Adam Smith replies: This is a very valid question, Francis, as I think that people are often interested in vintage audio for the memories it evokes, as much as the sound quality. So many components appeal both to the head and the heart and I think it is wonderful to see classic items being saved and restored.…

All Devialet’s ADH amplifiers represent a unique twist on Quad’s ‘feedforward’ Class A/B Current Dumping technique, first applied in its 405 power amp over 40 years ago [Wireless World, Dec ’75]. In this new-age implementation, a very high quality analogue Class A (voltage) amplifier is directly coupled to the speaker while a digital Class D stage provides the current to maintain this voltage across the speaker load. Hence the term ‘ADH’ or ‘Analogue/Digital Hybrid’. In practice the Class A preamp is a transconductance stage that converts the current output of the amplifier’s PCM1792 DACs into a voltage. By keeping all its processing in the digital domain until the final output, Devialet has engineered an analogue stage with a minuscule signal path. It calls this its ‘Magic Wire’. It’s this Class…

The technology of the 803 D3 will be familiar from the larger 802 D3 model, [HFN Dec ’15], but the braced aluminium ‘Turbine’ head is of a unique design for this speaker, being smaller and lighter than the version used further up the range – though it still weighs 11kg! And fitting the reshaped head (which is made complete with bracing as a one-piece casting) to the new speakers wasn’t just a matter of fixing it in place like the old Marlan design. This head sits lower into the ‘shoulders’ of the main enclosure than it did on the old 802, so the first step in developing it was to take a chainsaw to one of the old cabinets, and start experimenting from there. The decision to go for a ‘headed’…

When launched in 1983, the original Audiolab 8000A received lukewarm reviews in the UK hi-fi press, on account of its rather sedentary sound. However, it was powerful (by the standards of the day), being able to push out 50W per side and drive 2ohm loads without going pop – something few rivals could claim! As a result, it was often bought to drive power-hungry ’80s speakers. Audiolab didn’t rest on its laurels and had a policy of continuous improvement. Indeed, designer Philip Swift remembers, ‘there were 256 parts in the amplifier, and only one single component was used right throughout the production run – the little round red MM/MC pushbutton selector at the back.’ By the early ’90s, the 8000A had been refined to deliver more power with better sound,…

The Oxygene range was first launched in 2013 and marked a stylistic departure for Roksan. While already known for high quality equipment, the company’s products had generally been quite traditionally styled, so the appearance of the new components came as a shock to many. With their minimalist design, beautifully machined aluminium cases and large displays, the Oxygene amplifier and CD player were real head-turners. A turntable was always intended to feature in the range but Roksan held off for another two years so that it would arrive in time to celebrate the company’s 30th birthday – hence the ‘Oxygene 30’ moniker. Under the skin, a great deal of technology dating back to the original Xerxes has been utilised (including the XPS-7 power supply, pictured above). On top, however, the 30…

Talking to Scott Berry, the founder and driving force behind CAD, it soon becomes clear that what you’re buying is a very personal project, developed by a small team – ‘there are just five and a half of us’ – fully aware they’re flying in the face of the digital audio industry. ‘Right now the market is flooded with DACs,’ Berry says, ‘with a lot of companies going for the big numbers when it comes to format compatibility, but not bothering to get the basics right.’ Berry’s belief is that the ‘arms race’ in ever higher DSD and PCM sampling rates is missing the point: he feels the ‘sweet spot’ for music is at CD-quality or perhaps up to 96kHz, but that music begins to sound less natural at higher…

When American Frank H McIntosh decided to develop an amplifier, he hired Canadian Gordon Gow MBE to help. Together they created the Unity Coupled transformer. Applications were filed for five basic patents, and granted in 1949. They started a company that year to produce the McIntosh 50W1 Amplifier, which punched out 50W per channel with less than 1% distortion from 20Hz to 20kHz. Sidney A Corderman took charge of engineering, and a litany of classic amps followed, including the MC30 and MC225. The MC2505 was the first transistor power amp, and it introduced the company’s now-familiar glass front panel and level meters – and the new Autoformer offering 4, 8 and 16ohm taps. In 1977 Gordon Gow became president when McIntosh retired. Later, the company was sold to Clarion for…

Is there a cult or backlash forming? Have speaker builders said enough was enough, and decided that small two-way boxes are for wimps? Clearly, the latter isn’t true, because the best-value speakers of recent years – MartinLogan’s Motion 15, the Quad S-1, KEF’s LS50 – are standmounts. But Sonus faber seems obsessed with floorstanders of late. Since the ‘The Sonus faber’ arrived, the company has delivered a steady flow of towers, and the Venere Signature is evidence that the brand is staying true to its promise to exercise trickle-down evolution. The Venere Signature, from its sloped top panel to its severely narrowed back, is clearly the baby sister to the Lilium, Aida, Il Cremonese and the aforementioned, eponymous flagship. If only Sonus faber was indulging in towers, I wouldn’t hint…

In any moving-coil driver, three parameters determine the force applied to the diaphragm: B, the flux density in the magnet gap; l, the effective length of voice coil wire immersed in the magnetic field; and i, the current passing through it. The product of the first parameters, Bl, gives us the ‘force factor’ – a measure of how well the motor converts current into force. But this is not what we examine when we measure a headphone’s voltage sensitivity. That determines the volume control setting needed to achieve a given output level, but not the efficacy of the motor design. To do that we have to convert to current sensitivity. If we put 5mA (RMS) of signal current through the T1 g2 at 1kHz, where it has an impedance of 580ohm, it…

At the heart of the Box Design range is the company’s Box Control app, available for both Android and iOS devices. A free download, it can control all the functions of the Stream Box DS, including Tidal and Spotify Connect, via the player’s network link, and can also connect to the MaiA DS via Bluetooth to allow control of the amplifier’s functions and those of other Box Design components. This latter ability is made possible by the inclusion of infrared remote control emitters, or blasters’ in the amplifier, which can then convey commands to the likes of the CD Box DS CD player. In those systems without the MaiA DS, a separate controller box can be bought to interface with the app: the Remote Box sells for £299, connects via…

BEHIND THE MUSIC WITH HI-FI NEWS & RECORD REVIEW 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... ‘Bowie took one look at him and had him kicked off the show’ I don’t know about you but, over the many years and usually over a few drinks, I’ve discovered myself occasionally involved in a debate as to whether it’s OK to appreciate great work done by bad people. Back in my intellectual college days, we’d be talking about the likes of, say, Albert Speer, the architect who…

ORIGINAL LP Low was released in January 1977 on RCA Victor with a number of different versions appearing in the UK. The sleeve of the original UK release bears the catalogue number PL 12030 while the labels have two catalogue numbers: PL 12030 and CPL1 2030. This pressing came with a 12in insert with credits, and a black and white booklet advertising the official David Bowie Fan Club and back catalogue. Most copies have a sticker with the tracks listed from 1 to 11 on the rear. Another UK version was released in 1977, the difference being that this was manufactured in the UK and came with black RCA labels rather than the yellow/orange ones. There is no mention of the CLP1 2030 catalogue number on either the sleeve or…

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 ‘Arresting LP cover art has defined moments in musical history’ As 2015 rolled into 2016 the music industry lost two of its epochal figures – Ian (Lemmy) Kilmister and David Bowie, the latter celebrated by way of our Vinyl Icon this month [p78]. While there may have been little crossover between the musical output of Lemmy’s Motörhead and Bowie’s glam rock and electronica – though a case could be made for Hawkwind’s rock psychedelia – both men defined not only their own genres but also an entire half century of music. Both also inspired countless acts and performers that followed…

Science Journalist 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 ‘I was told all those involved had retired and the relevant division sold off’ Decades ago I realised that knowledge of one particular hi-fi company – Armstrong Audio – was being forgotten. Since I’d worked for the firm, I decided to do something about it. The result was a set of webpages devoted to the company that I’ve been slowly adding to ever since. For a long time I had assumed that the disappearance of information concerning Armstrong had occurred because it had ceased manufacturing. However, it has become clear to me recently that companies that still make equipment can suffer…

Martin Phillips’ letter in January’s Sound Off pages on the subject of poor FM reception in his part of rural Sussex described a typical dilemma facing some audiophiles. And Andrew Everard’s reply was spot on. Where I live, FM reception isn’t a problem, but I still have a laptop permanently installed in my system which enables me to listen to a wide variety of radio stations that broadcast online. The only thing I would share with other readers is that I have also installed Apowersoft’s free Streaming Audio Recorder on the PC [www.apowersoft.com]. This will record audio as it streams from online radio stations. And don’t forget that most laptops can still play CDs too. Andrew Everard replies: I still have an FM tuner – an old but excellent Audiolab…

BEYOND YOUR KEN Win Kessler’s £3000 system in this free competition. THE HI-FI SHOW This year bigger than ever: we bring you a full report. THE MAN BEHIND BITSTREAM Interview with Sunil Nethisinghe of Philips Components, Japan. SME MODEL 30 Ken Kessler on what may be the last great turntable design. DENON DOES DAT Beating rivals to be the first in the UK, Denon offers the DTR-2000 DAT recorder, as Trevor Butler reports. MERIDIAN 206 BITSTREAM Christopher Breunig assesses the Meridian 206B CD player. THREE CD COST-CUTTERS We test three budget players: the Aiwa XC-777, Marantz CD40 and Yamaha CD-X730. CLASSIC KEF Steve Harris assesses the KEF C45 loudspeaker. JVC EDGES AHEAD JVC edges ahead with Pulse Edge Modulation in the low-cost JVC XL-V231 CD player. Report…

Siegfried Linkwitz came to the audio industry’s attention in 1976 when his paper ‘Active Crossover Networks for Noncoincident Drivers’ was published in the Jan/Feb edition of the Journal Of The Audio Engineering Society. What it described would become known as the Linkwitz-Riley crossover although, for reasons which will shortly become apparent, it’s also known as the double-Butterworth or Butterworth-squared alignment. When he wrote the paper, Linkwitz was working for Hewlett-Packard in Santa Rosa, California. Realising that microwaves have similar wavelengths to sound in air, he looked at speaker design with the eye of someone used to visualising microwave radiation patterns. And he realised that conventional crossover networks were less than ideal because no account was taken of the fact that the two drivers, between which the audio signal is shared,…

Key aspects of the Oxygene 30’s design – the decoupled plinth arrangement, long 11:1 main bearing, two-piece alloy platter with very deep label recess and the removable spindle cap – are evidently inspired by the bigger Xerxes 20 Plus [HFN Dec ’11]. The idea is to isolate the LP from as much of the bearing’s mechanical noise as possible, and here Roksan has been very successful with a through-groove rumble of just –69.4dB and a through-bearing rumble (measured via the detachable spindle cap) falling to just –72.3dB. The 24-pole synchronous motor is spring-tensioned in a similar fashion to earlier Roksan (and some current Pro-Ject) decks and performs well here, offering a 0.02% peak wow and 0.04% peak flutter [see Graph 1, below] – a result not dissimilar to the costlier…

Pro-Ject/Box Design founder Heinz Lichtenegger is a man on a mission: having founded the company almost 25 years ago with the intention of reviving interest in turntables, he’s now intent on winning back the iPhone generation to proper hi-fi . The Box Design range plays a major role here, delivering space-efficient audio components to appeal to these new buyers: ‘Products like MaiA help the next generation buy an affordable amplifier that fits into their home, offering “hi-fi ” quality. ‘Though we believe the trend back to high-quality audio in the home is increasing, the old philosophy of “traditional hi-fi rack” products isn’t what a lot of modern listeners want. They want something neat, and built to a high standard, which they don’t have to adjust their home to accommodate. This…

BEHIND THE MUSIC WITH HI-FI NEWS & RECORD REVIEW ‘“I don’t like to be alone on stage. For me, life is in a group – a team”’ If you missed the story: in a 1998 film by cinematographer Frank Scheffer we see the Portuguese soloist Maria João Pires seated in preparation for a Mozart piano concerto in an informal Amsterdam Concertgebouw concert conducted by Riccardo Chailly. As he starts the orchestral exposition to the D-minor Concerto, K466, we see Pires more and more disconcerted – holding her head in disbelief. ‘I cannot do this,’ she says. She had prepared for a different work, but Chailly goes blithely on. He says, afterwards, that she managed the whole performance without a single mistake! And somehow this became a viral hit in 2013…

Technology journalist 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 ‘There’s now a quality jungle online and it’s not just a question of data rate’ Some early CDs sounded rough because they had been mastered from heavily equalised LP masters. Pressure from the hi-fi press forced the music industry into using a logo system: ADD standing for Analogue recording, Digital mixing and Digital transfer to digital disc; DDD for all digital, and so on. This was better than nothing, of course, but only just. The third D is redundant because all CDs are digital, and there was no guidance on source provenance. STRONG ON CLAIMS There’s now…

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 ‘Sax often wore a T-shirt emblazoned with “Stop The Digital Madness”’ Looking back to the late 1970s [see ‘Investigation’, Jan and Feb] it does seem remarkable that the same brief period saw both the rise of the small labels that promoted direct-cut recording, and the rapid emergence of digital recording. Of course, the underlying factor was the strength of the record industry itself. Although the hi-fi business had shot itself in the foot with quadraphonic, and consumers were now being distracted by video recorders, record sales would hold up well until the great recession of 1981. Yet the intense activity of the 1970s…

I read Rainer Meise’s letter on cleaning vinyl [see HFN Jan ’16] with great interest. Vacuum-based cleaning machines are considered to be the ‘gold standard’ by many, so my own experience may be of interest. For many years I have used a ‘vertical bath’ in the form of Knosti’s disco-antistat. At one stage I seriously considered buying a vacuum-based machine, but before raiding my savings decided to try a local retailer offering a cleaning service that used a vacuum-based unit. I first listened to ten of my LPs that I had already cleaned using the Knosti and carefully rated each one for sound quality and surface noise on a scale of one to ten. I then had the same discs cleaned at the shop, and repeated the listening process without…

Having owned a pair of B&W 803 loudspeakers and being annoyed by the need to be seated in the sweet-spot to enjoy the sound fully, I visited a dealer and listened to a pair of B&W 802s. Yes, they were better than their smaller siblings but, to my ears, they had the same flaw. So I bought a pair of Marten Getz floorstanders, which had great dispersion. However, after a while I began to find their presentation too clinical. I then changed to the Marten Django XL and found less dispersion but an enjoyable sound. To me, listening to music is often a social activity, so a sweet-spot for one person is not optimal. Keith Howard replies: Wave Field Synthesis and higher-order Ambisonics are two recording/reproduction technologies capable of capturing…