Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2023 i Hi Fi News

‘ECREE’, if I may borrow from the late, great Carl Sagan, is a standard demanding that ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’. And that’s just what we have gracing our front cover this month – not the Halcro Eclipse amplifier itself, which clearly exists, but the claims made by its antipodean engineers for such vanishingly low levels of distortion that it leaves its ‘typical best competitors’ trailing in the numbers game. Similar claims were made for the original incarnation of the Halcro power amp over 20 years ago [HFN Apr ’02 and ‘From The Vault’, Dec ’22] but no-one at the time quite validated these figures and neither, to the best of my knowledge, has anyone since. Halcro offers a mind-boggling specification for its Eclipse amplifier on its website – THD…

A FAMILY AFFAIR The Goldy cartridge from VPI (named after CEO Mat Weisfeld’s daughter) has entered production and will arrive in the UK soon via distributor Renaissance. Developed in the US in partnership with Audio-Technica, it adopts design and engineering principles from VPI’s Shyla moving-coil sibling, and is voiced to have a ‘similar sound signature’. Price is TBC. www.vpiindustries.com CONNECT AND SERVE Japan’s Furutech brand has launched two range-topping XLR connectors, for use with interconnect cables up to 10mm in diameter. Both the CF-601M NCF (£128) and CF-602F NCF (£144) feature a proprietary Nano Crystal Formula ‘ultimate damping’ material in their multi-layered housings. Rhodium-plated, one-piece copper conductors and signal connectors are employed inside. The pricier ’602F XLRs gain a chrome-plated inner housing and stainless steel release button. www.furutech.com…

AUDIO FILE Stereo power amplifier. Rated at 180W/8ohm Made by: Halcro (Longwood Audio), Adelaide, Australia Supplied by: Sound Design Distribution Ltd, Cardiff Telephone: 0800 0096213 Web: https://halcro.com; www.sounddesigndistribution.co.uk Price: £40,000 (£46,000 Premium finish) Working out the brand behind the Eclipse Stereo power amplifier isn’t hard: not only is the design a modern take on the iconic Australian Halcro amps of the past [see ‘From the Vault’, HFN Dec ’22], but the product itself, with the power supply and amplifier suspended between two solid uprights, forms the letter ‘H’ – not a trick we’ve seen other manufacturers attempting! Selling for £46,000 in the Premium finish of the review unit, or £6000 less for the only slightly plainer Standard version, this latest iteration of a design that started with the original Halcro…

AUDIO FILE SACD player and amplifier. Rated at 2x70W/8ohm Made by: Masimo Consumer, Irvine, CA, USA Supplied by: Masimo Consumer Europe, The Netherlands Telephone: 02890 279830 Web: www.denon.com; www.masimo.co.uk/consumer-audio Prices: £1299/£1699 (SACD/amp) The Denon duo in the limelight here are an obvious refresh of the previous generation DCD-1600NE disc player and PMA-1600NE amp, introduced in 2017, rather than entirely new designs. Partly that’s because both the £1299 DCD-1700NE and £1699 PMA-1700NE look very similar, if not identical, to their predecessors. The solid construction, metal front fascia that curves to ensure the Denon logo catches the light, the weighty volume knob in the middle of the amp, the old-school tone controls… it’s all very par for the course, as is the choice between black or silver colourways. But such conservatism is…

AUDIO FILE USB DAC/preamplifier Made by: SPL electronics GmbH, Niederkruechten, Germany Supplied by: SCV Electronics Ltd, Herts Telephone: 03301 222500 Web: www.spl.audio/en; www.scvdistribution.co.uk Price: £2499 Given that most of today’s digital components seem to be multifunctional – streamer DACs, DAC/headphone amps and the like – it’s unusual to find a product as simple in its operation as its design. Yet that describes the latest arrival from German manufacturer SPL, the £2499 Diamond DAC, available in silver, black or red like all the company’s products. A back-to-basics DAC? Well, almost… You see, the Diamond may be both slender and simple in its core functionality, but it has a trick up its sleeve, revealed by the presence of a volume control alongside the input selector and simple-but-effective red-on-black dot-matrix display. Of course,…

BEHIND THE MUSIC WITH HI-FI NEWS & RECORD REVIEW Chances are you won’t be familiar with Marshall Chapman, but she’s an American singer/songwriter and one of the unsung heroes of our story. On the 10th of January 1978, she was working on Jaded Virgin, her second LP, when a fire broke out in the studio next door. Chapman downed tools and helped other musicians and engineers who were in the vicinity to carry priceless master recordings to safety outside the building. Later, in her autobiography Goodbye, Little Rock And Roller, she wrote: ‘We might as well have been rescuing Rembrandts from the Louvre… I remember seeing “Hotel California” marked on one, and “John Lennon” on another. I nearly fainted when I saw I was holding a box containing the master…

While his main interest is high-end audio, for Barry Willis also, writes about the culinary industry, visual art and. theatre for a huge variety of US newspaper and magazines Early this past winter, I went on a mission of mercy for a friend I’ll call Jackson. Recently married and happily ensconced in a new home, Jackson had bought a near-mint pair of electrostatic loudspeakers, a more recent integrated amplifier, and a 1980s-era Sonographe SG-3 turntable. A suspended-subchassis, belt-driven design with AC motor, the SG-3 deck was available with a wide choice of tonearms. Novel materials, for the time, included a polymer platter and motor pulley, and PTFE-impregnated ‘Turcite’ bearing cup. CALL TO ARMS Jackson had set up his speakers and amp properly, but having come of age in the digital…

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 As the vinyl boom continues, the big problem for labels, distributors and artists is the gap between supply and demand, causing ever-longer lead times. And it’s harder than ever for labels or artists to have their vinyl out when they want it. Here’s one example. Redefining Element 78, from pianist, composer and bandleader Rebecca Nash [HFN Mar ’23] was released on CD and digitally in early January by Whirlwind Recordings [WR4796]. But when I spoke to Rebecca soon after, she still didn’t have a release date for the double-LP vinyl version, and was simply hoping it would be out in time to tie…

Hi-Fi News Nov 2000 Each month HFN will bring you an article from our vast archive of features and reviews from yesteryear Goodness me! Two Quad scoops in one season! OK, so it’s not like waking up with Kim Basinger, but I am fully aware of the privilege. When I kicked off the Quad 989 loudspeaker review [HFN Jul ’00] I said that no other product launch since the Quad ESL-63 carried as much baggage as a new Quad speaker. But I almost forgot that for many enthusiasts, it’s the Quad amplifiers rather than the company’s speakers which matter most. Even if you agree that the original ESL was/is the Greatest Hi-Fi Component Of All Time there are those who can convincingly argue that the original Quad 22/II pre/power package…

The ‘Concept 50’ loudspeaker revealed in prototype form by Monitor Audio at the 2022 Munich High End Show has entered production. Now named Hyphn in honour of its unusual design, the floorstander launches with a price tag of £70,000 and features cabinets formed by separate ‘pillars’ linked by a central cluster of mid/treble drivers. Offered in a choice of Pure Satin White, Matte Black and Matte Heritage Green ‘luxury finishes’, the Hyphn’s pillars house opposing pairs of 200mm RDT III bass drivers, firing inwards in a force-cancelling configuration. Meanwhile, the speaker’s front-facing ‘M-Array’ positions six 50mm RDT III midrange drivers around a bespoke implementation of MA’s third-generation Micro Pleated Diaphragm (MPD) HF transducer, previously debuted on its Platinum Series 3G models. The Hyphn’s three-way (350Hz, 3.7kHz) crossover is built onto…

AUDIO FILE Three-way horn-loaded loudspeaker Made by: Klipsch Group, Inc., Indianapolis, USA Supplied by: Henley Audio, Oxfordshire, UK Telephone: 01235 511 166 Web: www.klipsch.com; www.henleyaudio.co.uk Price: £21,999 Viewed from a modern perspective, there’s more than an element of ‘forget everything you know’ about the latest incarnation of the Klipsch Klipschorn AK6, a classic now heading for its 80th birthday. It was designed in 1946 from earlier prototypes by company founder Paul W Klipsch – officially described by the US brand as ‘genius, madman and maverick’ – in an Arkansas tin shed, and it’s been continuously made and refined ever since. It is genuinely massive, standing 1.3m tall and 80cm wide as a two-part assembly coming in at 100kg a speaker. Then you have to ignore all you thought you understood…

AUDIO FILE Two-way standmount loudspeaker Made by: Totem Acoustic, Montreal, Quebec, Canada Supplied by: Redline Scotland Ltd, Essex, UK Telephone: 01268 858222 Web: http://totemacoustic.com; www.red-line.co.uk Price: £2495 Canada’s Totem Acoustic is fond of a pun or two, promising a ‘prairie-like’, wide-open soundstage from its newest Bison loudspeaker range. You can’t help feel, however, that while the name might fit the lineup’s Bison Tower and Bison Twin Tower floorstanders, it’s a bit of a mismatch for the Bison Monitor. Priced £2495, and available in White Oak, Satin White and Black Ash colourways, this two-way standmount/bookshelf model hardly possesses a muscular, bovine build. On the contrary, it’s practically petite. Naturally, Totem Acoustic suggests the Bison Monitor provides the sort of performance ‘rarely associated with such a small enclosure’, and we really are…

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: £18,000 It’s all good and well lusting after a flagship like the B&W 801 D4 [HFN Nov ’21], but not everyone has the means or opportunity. Cue the 803 D4, which is a modestly downsized version costing (nearly) half the price. Intriguingly, it also utilises the same technology and similarly designed drivers as the 801 D4, including the trademark turbine head. Of course, suggesting the 803 D4 is in any way a miniature speaker is rather ridiculous. These are still hefty 62kg, 1.16m-tall enclosures, proudly sitting in the middle of the new 800 D4 range. The collective sigh of relief by dealers and reviewers alike…

AUDIOPHILE: VINYL VINCE GUARALDI TRIO A Charlie Brown Christmas Craft/Fantasy 8431 (coloured vinyl); SACD; BD Audio There is a point to reviewing a Christmas LP in May. Yes, this is a soundtrack to an animated film, but the music transcends the holiday itself as well as the feature it accompanies, because, irrespective of its mix of incidental music and seasonal classics such as ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ and ‘O Tannenbaum’, it’s simply a gorgeous-sounding, gentle jazz set that has been pushing audiophile buttons since 1972. This re-release is offered in black, ‘snowstorm’, or a handful of other coloured vinyl choices (some exclusive to US or online retailers), a Super Deluxe 4CD/Blu-ray Audio box set, an 80-track digital collection and 2LP or 2CD editions. I’m happy with this single-LP version,…

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 Over the years I’ve chatted with various people at the BBC about aspects of the corporation’s audio output and systems. They’ve always been very helpful and knowledgeable, and have happily passed me on to others when unable to answer questions. Furthermore, the sound quality via routes such as BBC Sounds 320kbps stream for, say, Radio 3 concerts, remains very high, avoiding the ‘pumped up’ effect that seems to affect many commercial stations. BBC Radio 3 FM applies level adjustments with care, and overall BBC Sounds offers great sound. However more recently I’ve noticed two worrying BBC trends. RADIO GA-GA The first is that…

14-16 APR Axpona 2023, Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel & Convention Center, Illinois, USA; www.axpona.com 18-21 MAY High End, Munich, Germany; www.highendsociety.de 17-18 JUN North West Audio Show, Cranage Hall (De Vere Cranage Estate), Cheshire; http://audioshow.co.uk 29-01 SEP/OCT The UK Hi-Fi Show Live, Ascot Racecourse Grandstand, Ascot Berkshire SL5 7JX; www.hifishowlive.com 27-29 OCT Audio Video Show Warsaw 2023, Radisson Blu/Sobieski Hotel, Warsaw, Poland; www.audioshow.pl…

You hold in your hands the world’s oldest and most respected hi-fi magazine – Hi-Fi News – where heavyweight audio engineering is our stock in trade. All our review products are typically subject to a one-month test process from shipping, unpacking, installation, photography, lab work, extended listening, disassembly/packing and collection. This practice was maintained right through the pandemic period, with full Covid biosecurity adding to the logistical complexity of our four-week issue schedule. But we did it… never missing one issue of the magazine or compromising the ‘Hi-Fi News Pledge’: 1. Our hardware reviews are never brief ‘hands on’ experiences of a product from a press conference, brand-led demo or distributor’s back room spun up into a four or five page article. 2. Products reviewed in Hi-Fi News already have…

AUDIO FILE Tube phono preamplifier Made by: PrimaLuna, The Netherlands Supplied by: Absolute Sounds Ltd Telephone: 0208 971 3909 Web: www.primaluna-usa.com; www.absolutesounds.com Price: £3398 With vinyl sales now surpassing CD [see p103], the revival is back with such force that the flood of phono stages and decks will surely continue unabated. More than that, it’s enough for PrimaLuna to show its confidence in analogue to bring out its first EVO phono amp, the EVO 100 Tube Phono Preamplifier at £3398. It’s clear this unit is aimed at seasoned vinyl users, smack in the price range of ‘second or third upgrade’ where one expects a full complement of features and facilities, even from a genuinely ‘all-tube’ design hosting no fewer than ten valves. Around the back are just two sets of…

AUDIO FILE Moving-coil cartridge Made by: Audio-Technica Corporation, Tokyo, Japan Supplied by: Audio-Technica Ltd (UK), Leeds, UK Telephone: 0113 277 1441 Web: www.audio-technica.com Price: £2749 Celebrations have come thick and fast over the last couple of years, and to SME’s 60th [HFN Jul ’22], Clearaudio’s 40th [HFN Nov ’22] and Nagra’s 70th [HFN Aug ’22] we can add Audio-Technica’s ‘Diamond’. Naturally, the company has not missed the opportunity to mark the occasion by releasing a celebratory cartridge or two. There’s the new £8900 flagship AT-MC2022 [see p22] and the slightly more affordable AT-ART20 at £2749 that we have here. This cartridge takes some cues from the £1350 AT-ART9XI, albeit with improvements in materials, while leveraging other design features from the previous top-end AT-ART1000 moving-coil. Incidentally, the ‘ART’ designation in the…

ORIGINAL LP Ocean Rain was released in May 1984 on the Korova label in the UK and Europe [Kode 8, 240388-1], in a single sleeve with a lilac-coloured record bag with personnel and recording detail, and a photo of the string section from the Paris sessions. In the US the LP arrived on Sire with a black inner sleeve [25084-1]. The Japanese edition was released on WEA/Korova [P-11480] with a silver-grey obi strip, and a six-page insert of liner notes and lyrics in both English and Japanese. CASSETTE The UK and European cassette came out on chrome dioxide tape and had grey shells with white paper labels [Korova CODE 8, 240 388-4]. In the US the Dolby HXPro cassette was released on Sire, with embossed shells [25084-4]. FIRST CD RELEASE…

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 The Guardian newspaper made its own news at the end of last year with an eye-catching story headlined ‘UK Vinyl Sales Past CDs For The First Time In 35 Years’. The story was picked up and quoted as yet more evidence that clinically cold CD is dead and warm analogue vinyl is the future – with, of course, no reminder that new LPs are cut from digital masters and often sent around the house as a digital stream or bit-ripped to a smartphone. All with the added bonus of inner groove distortion. Whatever turns you on. Personally I find…

Peter Quantrill has been writing about music for magazines and record labels for 30 years. When not hunched over a CD player, he’ll be at a concert, or the cricket We love to catalogue, and we love to compare. In the world of classical music, writers like me would soon be out of a job without readers who themselves want to accumulate recordings, stack them up and then rate them against each other. That the very nature of musical creation and performance resists classification in this way becomes irrelevant. Composers and musicians are always seeking to raise their previous standards – and the element of novelty often spurs them to go one better than their rivals – but the solitary nature of composing music, and the collective nature of making…

The first time I saw a JVC UX-1 it was pictured on the side of a bus. The image was part of an ad that carried the simple message ‘All features, Great, and Small’. And this turned out to be true, for the UX-1 micro system had every function imaginable, sounded like ‘proper’ hi-fi and was tiny. The miniaturisation of hi-fi equipment has been covered in these pages before, models such as the Sony TA-88 and ST-88 [HFN Apr ’12], Aurex Micro System 15 [HFN Apr ’16], Technics SL-10 [HFN Apr ’19] and Sony D-88 [HFN Jul ’16] all demonstrating that diminutive equipment could still deliver decent sound quality. The UX-1 probably represented the limit of what was possible, its dimensions dictated as much by the formats it played as…