Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2023 i Hi Fi News

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is getting its hooks into everything from medical research to self-driving cars and, of course, the music biz. I’ve reported previously about fraudsters using generative AI, trained on real artists’ intellectual property, to create ‘new’ music from which they profit. In extreme cases ‘streaming farms’ will then inflate audience numbers for tracks that are simply noise. So how gratifying it was to finally hear ‘the last new’ Beatles song ‘Now And Then’ released on November 1st – demonstrating a very positive use of machine-learning technology. This new track, featuring every member of the Fab Four was not an AI construct, but a very ‘human’ endeavour. It has a string section composed by Giles Martin, plus Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr also playing ‘live’, mixed with a contribution…

Hot on the heels of the AW 800 M ‘Reference Monoblock’ amplifier [HFN Sep ’23] comes a new mono design from Norway’s Electrocompaniet. The AW 300 M (£12,100) is a genuine mono amplifier rather than a bridgeable stereo chassis. Power output is rated at 300W/8ohm, delivered by Electrocompaniet’s familiar direct-coupled, high slew-rate, wide open-loop bandwidth topology, with the promise of a ‘stiff output’ regardless of the connected load. Under the hood, the amp features internal heatsinking and a PSU featuring an 800VA toroidal transformer and ‘over’ 110,000μF of reservoir capacitance. Electrocompaniet says the AW 300 M’s AC mains input is ‘meticulously filtered’ for DC and noise interference, while the amp stage offers over-current protection. The distinctive black/gold ‘Classic Line’ aesthetic is retained, as is the ‘ground up’ chassis redesign of…

09-12 JAN International CES 2024, Las Vegas, USA; www.ces.tech 23-25 FEB Bristol Hi-Fi Show, Marriott City Centre Hotel, Bristol; www.bristolshow.co.uk 03 MAR Spring Audio Jumble 2024, The Angel Leisure Centre, Tonbridge, Kent; www.audiojumble.co.uk 22-23 JUN North West Audio Show, Cranage Hall (De Vere Cranage Estate), Cheshire; http://audioshow.co.uk 21-22 SEP The UK Hi-Fi Show Live, Ascot Racecourse Grandstand, Ascot Berkshire SL5 7JX; www.hifishowlive.com…

Never accuse Berlin-based Burmester of timidity… In an interview published to mark the launch of its 216 and 218 power amplifiers, its Team Leader for Quality Management, Thomas Schneider, says, ‘We have thought in exactly the right direction’. The 216 amplifier is part of what the company calls its Top Line, and while the 218 may look similar it’s actually in the upper tier Reference Line, one step below the Signature Line that features the flagship 159 monoblocks and near-2m-tall BC350 speakers, yours for £233,000 a pair. Still with me? Well, the 218 is a stereo power amplifier, rated at 165W/8ohm [see PM’s Lab Report, p45] while standing almost 22cm tall and weighing 42kg. Hand built to the company’s usual standards of solidity and finish, it sells for £34,600 (the…

‘The Musical Fidelity M1 is a head-turner’ [HFN Mar ’04], and the new M8xTT certainly has no less stop-you-in-your-tracks appeal. But while that inaugural deck established the industrial design that would be copied some 20 years later, there are fundamental differences in their respective engineering. Most obviously the M1 featured a two-piece acrylic platter, each ‘disc’ some 30mm-thick, sandwiching eight cylindrical spacer weights that brought the total rotating mass to 5.7kg. The ~70mm deep platter allowed the use of a long, inverted bearing shaft measuring 60x13mm with a spiral ‘keeper’ groove machined into its surface. However, while the platter was about half the weight of today’s all-alloy solution, start-up time was a lethargic 25 seconds thanks, in part, to the low-torque DC motor (with ±3% fine speed control). And the…

As far-fetched as this may seem, given that most post-Millennials have yet to embrace hi-fi, we are living in another audio ‘Golden Age’. This isn’t the place to rattle off a list of gems that have crossed my path just since the Covid moratorium ended, but the Western Electric WE-91B [HFN Feb ’23], a trio of DeVore speakers [HFN Apr ’21, Mar & Aug ’23], and family of DS Audio optical cartridges [HFN Oct ’21 & Oct ’23] are among the many that beg my repeating of the homily, ‘You’ve never had it so good’. Trafomatic’s Rhapsody (M2-15 Anniversary stereo PSE 300B tube) integrated amplifier joins them, and emphatically so. Even the £19,998 price surprises: I really thought it would be more. Its physical presence, a brace of 300Bs per…

Few loudspeaker brands come racing from the gate, but Perlisten, from Wisconsin, US, has gone from unheard of to a serious challenger in very short order. First up, in 2022, was the EISA Award-winning S7t floorstander [HFN Apr ’22], which introduced the company as a high-end marque, and this was quickly followed by its second-tier R series [HFN Aug ’22]. Now we get the S5t, essentially a slimmed down version of the S7t, with all the appeal that this entails. As Perlisten will have it, requests for a version of the S7t more suited to smaller rooms had become ‘too numerous to ignore’, so the S5t was born. Selling for £13,600 in its standard black and white gloss finishes, or £15,800 for the Ebony option shown here, it really does…

A well-known name in the audio industry, Peter Madnick’s career now spans over 40 years, beginning in retail where he started working in the stockroom of a local hi-fi store, aged 15, before ‘graduating’ to the sales team a year later. Following college, Madnick and two colleagues established a new hi-fi store in Massachusetts in 1977, which remains in business today. In 1979, Madnick joined Francis G Dennesen at Dennesen Electronics, also in Massachusetts, where he developed the famous Geometric Soundtracktor cartridge alignment tool, but he was on the move again six years later to California where he worked for a period as a consultant, before co-founding Audio Alchemy in 1989. AA produced a wide range of audiophile DACs, jitter suppressors, headphone amps, preamps, power amps and phono stages, and…

Our review of the Denon PMA-1700NE amplifier [HFN May ’23] included the observation that the Japanese brand was missing a standalone streamer. A glaring oversight, it seemed at the time, as Denon in all other respects is a believer in offering similarly dressed separates for a neat hi-fi stack. So while you could pair the PMA-1700NE (or another PMA series amp) with a DCD series CD player or a Denon turntable, if you wanted to listen to your Tidal playlists you had to look elsewhere. The introduction of the £1399 DNP-2000NE closes the loop. Manufactured at Denon’s Shirakawa factory, and sporting the sturdy chassis and metal faceplate to complement other Denon components, this streaming DAC isn’t only meant to be a companion for the PMA-1700NE. As the different model number…

State Academic SO of Russia/Jurowski Pentatone PTC5186761 (2CDs) Pick of the bunch on CD: expansive engineering holds the old-school Russian grandeur of the playing in perfect focus. Russian National Orchestra/Pletnev Ondine ODE1180-2D (2CDs) A quirky alternative: Pletnev never drives the tempi too hard and opens up the score’s countless felicities and novelties. LSO/Previn (released 2016) EMI/Warner 5419734650/9029592391 (CD/LP) An analogue classic, with the ’70s LSO brass and EMI’s Abbey Road engineering sounding even finer on the new LP remastering. New York City Ballet/Otranto C major 738704/738608 (Blu-ray/DVD) Balanchine’s hit version for NYCB transfers to the screen as a Christmas treat for all the family, beautifully filmed and played. Royal Ballet/Gruzin Opus Arte OABD7229D/OA1252D (Blu-ray/DVD) The best of several modern Royal Ballet versions. Lauren Cuthbertson’s immaculate Sugar-Plum Fairy plus exciting pit…

1973 Alvin Lee collaborates with George Harrison to record the ex-Beatle’s ‘So Sad (No Love Of His Own)’ 1983 Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut is their first without band co-founder Richard Wright and the last with Roger Waters 1988 Deep Purple’s Nobody’s Perfect is released with a live jam recorded at Hook End Manor in February 1988 1994 Morrissey books time in the summer of 1993 to make Vauxhall And I. It hits No 1 on release the following year 2003 It’s another No 1 for Stereophonics who record parts of You Gotta Go There To Come Back at Hook End 2006 The Charlatans are rewarded with a Top 10 hit after spending mid-to-late 2005 recording the album Simpatico…

A.R.C. Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Barry Altschul (96kHz/24-bit, WAV) www.ecmrecords.com; ECM 1009 A note to those behind the 50th anniversary Vince Guaraldi Peanuts album also reviewed this month: this is how you do it! This 96kHz/24-bit digital release of A.R.C., also available on LP, marks half a century since this ECM debut by Chick Corea first saw the light of day, and is also sourced from the original analogue tapes, PM’s lab notes below giving an overview of the process involved. It was worth all the effort as Corea’s piano, Dave Holland’s powerful bass and Barry Altschul’s meticulous but punchy drumming really burst out of this set, which originated back in 1971 in the Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg, Germany. Both Corea and Holland contribute tunes, there’s thoughtful improvisation, and the trio’s version…

PIERRE-LAURANT AIMARD, SFS/SALONEN Bartók: Piano Concertos Nos 1-3 Pentatone PTC5187029 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit resolution) A Hungarian passport isn’t essential to pass ‘Go’ in this music on CD, but top-notch engineering is: we’re almost under the lid of Aimard’s piano, and a decent system will get the San Francisco Symphony’s timpanist pounding beneath your feet. Yet the effect is never aggressive, even in the Allegro barbaro of No 1, because Aimard and Salonen make such natural and musical sense of pieces often treated as an excuse to rough up an audience. I love the lopsided night-watch marchers at the heart of No 1 as much as the sensuous nocturne in No 2 and the Mozartian simplicity of No 3’s Adagio religioso. Schiff and Anda have never won me over to these…

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 Back in the October 2023 issue I outlined how I find it more convenient to store my digital music files on solid-state drives (SSDs) and move these from room to room and between systems on foot rather than use a NAS. This led me to think a bit more about my approach given that it differs from what most people do. Over the last decade or so, many people have moved beyond having a NAS running one or more traditional spinning hard drives in their home and now use their mobile devices to stream music from the cloud. In effect, they store much…

BARRY FOX Investigative journalist supreme, Barry is the first with news of the latest developments in hi-fi and music technologies PETER QUANTRILL Peter Quantrill has been writing about music for magazines and record labels for 30 years. He is HFN’s master of the classics KEN KESSLER is a long-serving contributor, luxury goods writer and champion for the renaissance in valves and reel-to-reel tape MARK CRAVEN Editor of our sister title Home Cinema Choice, Mark’s passion for music extends from stereo to multichannel and Dolby Atmos TIM JARMAN Co-author of a major hardback on historic B&O equipment, Tim continues to research, repair and write about vintage hi-fi for HFN ANDREW EVERARD has reviewed hi-fi for over 30 years and is still effortlessly enthusiastic about new technology, kit and discovering new music…

QUIET PLEASE! Reborn in 2020 with a pair of data switches, Chord Company brand English Electric has now announced the EE1 ‘network noise isolator’. This passive Ethernet adapter uses galvanic and common-mode noise reduction technologies to improve signal purity, with suggested uses including between a network switch and audio streamer. Priced £250, the EE1 will come supplied with a 0.75m C-Stream streaming cable ‘for a limited time’. www.englishelectric.uk PREMIUM WIRELESS The Melos active speaker from high-end Swiss manufacturer Goldmund marries soft dome tweeters and 7in bass/mid drivers with onboard 2x175W ‘Telos’ amp stages incorporating digital filtering and time correction. Its standmount cabinets, finished in silver-grey, are vented for a claimed 40Hz (–6dB) bass extension, while connectivity comprises coaxial in/out, and wireless. Pricing is £36,000 per pair. www.goldmund.com…

As a company so rooted in the vision of one man, founder Dieter Burmester, it’s pleasing to see the brand still flourishing after his sudden passing in 2015, at the age of just 69. But then the company’s origin story is a familiar one, albeit with a solid musical twist: by the age of 15, Burmester was playing electric bass in bands, a passion he would follow for his entire life, and working on ways of improving the valve amp he’d built for his instrument. Scroll forward 15 years, and Burmester, by now a qualified radio and TV technician, with a degree in electrical engineering, founded the company that bore his name, moving on from valve amps to solid-state designs. Just 20 examples of his first amplifier were produced, carrying…

While the list of ‘legacy products’ on Matrix Audio’s website begins with the DA-100 Plus DAC, which debuted in 2006, the Chinese brand insists it only really began life in 2013 when it was registered as Matrix Electronic Technology Co. ‘Before that, Matrix Audio existed in the form of a studio’, says marketing manager Yang Tao. This explains why the literature for the new Element X2 Pure network DAC (and the sticker that graces the top of the unit) proclaims it a celebratory model, launched to mark the company’s 10th anniversary. Okay, ten years might not seem as impressive as some of the milestones celebrated by other audio brands recently, including NAD [50 years; HFN Apr ’23], SME [60 years; HFN Jul ’22] and Thorens (140 years!), but it helps…

Bowers & Wilkins might be one of the largest loudspeaker manufacturers around, but surprisingly it doesn’t have a very broad offering, fielding considerably fewer models than, say, KEF or Focal. Leaving CI products aside (and the iconic but no longer revolutionary Nautilus), there are only three main loudspeaker families coming out of Worthing, and as the 800 D4 series [HFN Nov ’21, Feb ’22, May & Sep ’23] and 700 S3 series [HFN Mar ’23] represent the most recent major updates, it was inevitable that the nearly 30-year-old 600 series would follow suit. The current refresh also brings the 600 series to S3 status, but is in fact the seventh or eighth generation, depending on whether you consider the 603 S2 Anniversary Edition [HFN Jan ’21] to be a full-blown…

LOL TOLHURST X BUDGIE X JACKNIFE LEE Los Angeles Play It Again Sam PIASR1440CD; LP: PIASR1440LP This fascinating album is the brainchild of two drummers – Tolhurst, ex of The Cure and Budgie from Siouxsie And The Banshees – who teamed up in 2019 with producer and musician Lee to record instrumentals. The Kraftwerk-inspired ‘Train With No Station’, featuring U2 guitarist The Edge, remains in that form, but the album has expanded stylistically. Over a base of polyrhythmic drums, synths and electronics, each song is shaped by guest performances. On ‘Ghosted At Home’ Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie sings a yearning melody over heavy funk grooves; Arrow De Wilde glams it up insouciantly on ‘Uh Oh’; and on ‘Bodies’, artist and activist Lonnie Holley’s rap and Mary Lattimore’s harp combine brilliantly.…

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 You don’t get much more analogue than a church organ. A conglomeration of moving parts, air pumps, pipes and stops, controlled by mechanical keys and valves. I recently went to a recital in Hereford Cathedral. The organ was built by the go-to designer Henry ‘Father’ Willis in 1892, but some of the pipework is from an earlier design by Gilbert Scott. It’s been repaired and modified many times over the years, notably in the 1930s when the keyboard was moved across the church from the puffing pipe mechanics and connected by electric cables, recently modernised because they were a…

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 Alate summer trip to southern Sweden took me to Birgit Nilsson country: the Bjäre peninsula, where the soprano grew up as a farmer’s daughter. If only the legacy of other celebrated musicians was curated and managed with the loving care of the Birgit Nilsson Museum, run by her cousin’s daughter, Gitte Lindström Harmark. The contrast with Maria Callas, for example, was unavoidable. Only this summer, 46 years after her death in Paris, has a museum opened in Athens, and it inevitably preserves just a fraction of her effects, which were snaffled up and sold by any number of dubious hangerson,…

Bang & Olufsen’s first move into the world of serious hi-fi came in 1967 with the introduction of the Beolab 5000 amplifier and Beomaster 5000 tuner [HFN Dec ’12]. These defined the European state of the art at the time and were as successful as their high prices allowed. The company then distilled these two units into the Beomaster 3000, which offered similar qualities at a more accessible price. It lacked the sheer power and versatility of the Beolab 5000 but sold strongly throughout a long production run. These products created a new sector in the company’s range – ‘high fidelity’. The models were aimed at the serious listener and offered high power output, advanced facilities and what the designers considered to be the best possible sound. WIDE RANGING This…

THE SOUND OF DCC A report from Martin Colloms on Digital Compact Cassette. MAPLENOLL ARIADNE Ken Kessler hears a turntable that’s new to British shores. CD TECHNOLOGY Paul Miller previews Pioneer’s new curve-fitting DSP tech. WILSON WATT 3/PUPPY 2 US brand’s latest loudspeaker system reviewed by Ken Kessler. NAKAMICHI 1000MB/1000P Alvin Gold takes a listen to the two-box Music Bank CD player. ACCORDION FROM MARS Ken Kessler is bowled over by the MBL 101 loudspeaker. WITH KNOBS ON Magnum Dynalab FT11 and Onix BWD-1 tuners by Trevor Butler. TUBE VERSUS FET PREAMPS Martin Colloms takes time out with the Michaelson Da Vinci and Conrad Johnson PF1L. A SMOOTHER DAT Trevor Butler tries the Pioneer D-500 recorder for size. FRENCH CORRECTION Ken Kessler auditions the YBE Intégré integrated amplifier.…

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…

There can be no doubt that retro is ‘in’. From cars to kitchen appliances to hi-fi, many manufacturers are taking inspiration from the past and bringing famous and fondly remembered designs into the 21st century. The acquisition of the Musical Fidelity brand back in 2018 by Heinz Lichtenegger’s Audio Tuning Vertriebs GmbH has given the company a very extensive and highly capable back-catalogue to mine. As a result, Audio Tuning (parent of the ubiquitous Pro-Ject marque), has taken the opportunity to boost its portfolio with a spot of retro fever. In addition to the obvious choice of a re-birth of the classic A1 amplifier [first full technical review next month] and the ‘left-field’ development of BBC-style LS3/5A and LS5/9 loudspeakers, Lichtenegger has wisely chosen to focus on the top-end of…

Trafomatic’s founder, Saša Čokić, looks like he was in a Balkan heavy metal band in the 1980s, and not just because of the Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt and the shades. There’s a cool genotype in Eastern Europe – in this case, Serbia – which suggests a hardy nature, as if they had to smuggle LPs from the West to hear rock music. All this reinforces my belief that hi-fi designers’ personalities are often reflected in their equipment. So the Rhapsody rocks, unlike your typical 300B-powered SET. Čokić explained that while Trafomatic was established in 1997, the manufacture of Trafomatic electronics did not start until 2007, under the name Trafomatic Audio. He says, ‘I didn’t work for other [audio] companies, but Trafomatic made output and power transformers for other hi-fi brands.…

MoFi Electronics has gone from strength to strength in the last few years, helped by the roster of designers drafted in to create its products. Spiral Groove’s Allen Perkins worked on its UltraGold MC cartridge [HFN Jan ’22] and MasterDeck turntable, while ex-TAD/ELAC Andrew Jones is responsible for its SourcePoint loudspeakers [HFN Apr & Aug ’23]. Now comes the £5999 MasterPhono, a flagship phono stage from the pen of Peter Madnick, a designer best known for the iconic Audio Alchemy brand and his work as part of the Constellation Audio team [see boxout, p67]. This phono stage, the result of a two-year project, is effectively a twin-chassis product held between shared wooden sleeves that hold the power supply and amplification circuitry apart. MoFi wanted a single unit that would allow…

TRONDHEIM SO BAROQUE ENSEMBLE The Trondheim Concertos 2L 2L-172-SABD (Blu-ray + SACD) If J. Geils, below, inspired you to sample surround but you prefer the unplugged, this recording in a church of a nine-piece ensemble offers such a remarkable sense of space that you’ll be rendered agoraphobic. As is 2L practice, the SACD offers stereo and 5.1 DSD and PCM MQA CD, while the Blu-ray provides seven options up to 7.1.4 Auro-3D at 96kHz. And the music? The Trondheim Concertos refer to 18th/19th century manuscripts preserved in the city, spirited and lush-sounding performances of compositions from Johan Henrich Berlin and Joseph Meck, the anonymous ‘Sigr Opfermand’ Violin Concerto, and Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in A. KK Sound Quality: 90% THE FRATERNAL ORDER OF THE ALL Greetings From Planet Love Esoteric Recordings…

GEORGE FREEMAN The Good Life High Note HCD 7352 It’s astonishing to hear recordings made only last year by the veteran guitarist whose band (including saxist brother Von) once backed Charlie Parker at Chicago’s Pershing Hotel in 1950. Freeman had just turned 95 when he recorded four numbers, including the title tune, with Christian McBride and Carl Allen. On a second session Freeman, who’d worked with Richard ‘Groove’ Holmes in the 1960s and Jimmy McGriff in the ’70s, teamed happily with the greatest Hammond player of modern times, Joey DeFrancesco, along with drummer Lewis Nash. Sadly, DeFrancesco was to pass away just a couple of months later, making this a poignant piece of jazz history. SH Sound Quality: 80% HIROMI Sonicwonderland Telarc TEL00170; LP: TEL00171 (two discs) After two acoustic…

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 Purveyors of memorabilia say that people have an irrational fondness for the things of their youth: small bicycles with high-rise handlebars, Barbie dolls, ragged denim pants with voluminous bell-bottoms. Almost everything looks ridiculous in hindsight, and almost everything with nostalgic appeal bears an insane price tag. Foremost among them is the pre-recorded cassette tape – the music industry’s hugely profitable product that dominated the market for at least a decade, maybe even two. MAKING TRACKS The pre-recorded cassette tape began where the eight-track cartridge left off. Were it not for the fact that the eight-track enjoyed a mercifully brief popularity, it would…

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 In 1976, The Who played ‘the loudest concert ever’ at The Valley football ground with a level of 126dBA at 30m from the stage. Rather horrifyingly, other bands have since smashed The Who’s record and destroyed the hearing of many fans in the process. An Ottawa concert by Kiss in 2009 is said to have reached a reading of 136dB. By then, though, the Guinness Book Of World Records had discontinued its ‘loudest band’ category rather than encourage further hearing damage, and The Who’s Pete Townshend had funded the US non-profit HEAR [Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers]. EAR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW Among…

American specialists, like their UK counterparts, continue to develop new variations on the available digital technology to produce DACs with audiophile appeal. This review covers two of the more intriguing examples, using some of the most advanced devices available to designers. The Enlightened Audio Designs DSP7000 is based on the 20-bit Analog Devices chip, while PS Audio has chosen an Ultra Analog dual 20-bit converter. What bearing the two choices of technology will have on sound quality remains to be seen! EAD DSP7000 Beginning in the audio business as an upgrader of Rotel and other CD players, Enlightened Audio Designs (EAD), based in Iowa, rapidly gained expertise in the field of digital audio technology. It now produces its own equipment, and the first unit to appear is the DSP7000 DAC.…