Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2024 i Hi Fi News

Our resident cartoonist, James Whitworth, reminds us on p112 that the New Year is typically a time for reflection which, judging by the slew of retro-looking kit that burst onto the hi-fi scene in 2023, is exactly what many brands have already been doing. We’ve occupied a few Opinion pages discussing the merits of these ‘marketing opportunities’ but it’s certainly worth highlighting again the contrast between models that are broadly faithful to the technical and industrial design of the original, and those that hide unrelated new technology in circa-1970s clothing. Musical Fidelity’s reimagined A1 amplifier [HFN Jan ’24] belongs in the former camp, but such examples are the exception rather than the rule. Of course, we’re quite partial to looking back ourselves, and so are you if the popularity of…

Balanced Audio Technology’s Chief Designer, Victor Khomenko, is responsible for 95% of the brand’s design effort. He is one of two founders who met while employed at Hewlett-Packard, then developing instrumentation for analytical chemistry. Victor was already a committed audiophile, ‘though we didn’t have that word back then’, he says, ‘we were just as obsessive’. Growing up in Russia, his first system was entirely home built, but after moving to the USA in 1979 Victor bought a Linn LP12 deck, SAE electronics and KEF speakers. ‘But I have always had a passion for reel-to-reel’, he admits, ‘and I now have about 50 heavy-duty machines’. Victor jointly started BAT in 1993 before launching the VK5 preamp and VK60 power amp – both tube designs – in 1995 at CES in Las…

The Aries G2.2 (together with the Vega G2.2 and forthcoming G3 models) are soon to be Dirac Live-enabled. This is unusual for a source component, especially a digital transport, as the Swedish-built ‘room correction’ software is generally found in devices situated further down the playback chain – mainly AV receivers and stereo integrated amplifiers. These include the EISA Award-winning Arcam SA30 [HFN Jul ’20], NAD’s M33 [HFN Aug ’20] and the active loudspeakers from Dynaudio’s Focus range. It makes sense, though, to incorporate Dirac Live, which applies digital filters to correct both frequency and impulse response, in a processing-rich device such as the Aries G2.2. Using Dirac will involve running the licensed software on a laptop or a mobile device, the latter being more user-friendly but offering fewer possibilities in…

The idea of stacked speakers is nothing new: SME founder Alastair Robertson-Aikman was famed for using double-decker Quad ELS57 electrostatics [HFN Sep ’77 & Dec ’01] and the idea was even endorsed by the speaker company which provided instructions to achieve the same thing, with the upper speaker mounted in a frame upside down above the lower. Even the late brand ambassador, Ken Ishiwata, was for a while demonstrating his Marantz electronics with stacked pairs of Mordaunt-Short Performance 6 speakers mounted in frames he’d spec’d and had custom-made. The same thinking informs these £16,836-a-pair Grand Studio II floorstanders from Ontario-based Gershman Acoustics, a company founded by designer Eli Gershman 30 years ago, that birthday recently being marked with the sculptural 30th Anniversary Grand Avant Garde speaker. DOUBLE DECKER The ‘II’…

Launched some six years ago when Musical Fidelity was still in the hands of its original owner, the inaugural Nu-Vista Vinyl phono preamp [HFN Mar ’18] also combined a solid-state RIAA stage with just one pair of nuvistors feeding each output. This was a less sophisticated model offering single MM and MC settings with a +6dB gain option, amounting to +41.5dB/+47.5dB and +58dB/+64dB steps, respectively. This model had no interactive display [see inset picture] so relied instead on a long row of tiny blue LEDs to indicate gain, loading, subsonic filtering and choice of input, of which there were a full five separate pairs of gold-plated RCAs on the rear panel. The line outputs were on RCAs and balanced XLRs, but only the Vinyl 2 has balanced inputs to service…

Only two years after launching the D4 generation of its flagship 800 series [HFN Nov ’21], Bowers & Wilkins has announced Signature editions of both the range-topping 801 D4 floorstander [HFN Sep ’23] and its partnering 805 D4 standmount. At £10,000 a pair the 805 D4 Signature increases the stakes for this compact model, as the ‘standard’ 805 D4 [HFN Feb ’22] retails for a full £3000 less. While this signals a move into more rarefied territory for the brand, the 805 D4 Signature does raise a conundrum. It’s obvious to compare the performance of the regular and Signature versions, but the latter is also priced very close to B&W’s £11,000 804 D4 floorstander. In fact, the £1000 difference evaporates when you take into account the recommended FS-805 D4 stands,…

Jim Lesurf 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 Confession: I like wood! By that I mean I like the look and feel of wooden objects and surfaces. Given how many high-quality loudspeakers either use wood in their construction or have some form of ‘wood finish’ it seems many other people share my liking. Not only can it look beautiful, it can feel smooth and warm to the touch in a way that is far more pleasing than cold metal surfaces or slippery plastics. VANISHING ACT Considering this, it’s no surprise that the use of wood is one of the reasons I love the old Armstrong 626 receivers,…

SPLENDID ISOLATION BATTLING NOISE WITH RINGS AND ADAPTERS I recently purchased an EE1 network noise isolator from Chord Company brand English Electric and it certainly seems to work. My modest system comprises an Innuos ZENith Mk3 music server connected to an ‘original’ NaimUniti, upgraded to handle files at 192kHz/24-bit. PMC twenty.21 loudspeakers [HFN Apr ’12] and a subwoofer from BK Electronics complete the array. Over the years I have tried to reduce noise in my system using ferrite rings on potentially noise-inducing dimmer connections and switched-mode power supplies. My system also has a dedicated mains connection at the fuse box, with a 1.5kW balanced mains transformer. I have 5m of AudioQuest Cinnamon Ethernet cable, routed under the floor from the study, via the hall to the lounge where it is…

Arch rivals ACCORDO GOLDBERG BEEFS UP SPEC OF FRANCO SERBLIN STANDMOUNT Franco Serblin’s Accordo Goldberg takes its name from Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’ while building on the design of the brand’s earlier Accordo standmount [HFN Jan ’18]. Retained is the distinctive arch-shaped cabinet design, hewn from solid walnut and rear-ported, yet this new model expands the form factor to allow for an update in driver complement. For the tweeter, the manufacturer continues to use a 29mm silk dome from regular collaborator Ragnar Lian, yet the bass/mid unit is now a new 180mm ‘microsphere’ cone with aluminium dustcap, rather than the 150mm driver of its baby brother. Both tweeter and bass/mid are protected by Franco Serblin’s traditional, chrome-framed ‘string’ grille. Hand-made at the company’s facility in Vicenza in Italy, the…

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 is a coterie of Japanese brands whose products never fail to delight. Along with Air Tight, Denon, SAEC, Stax and a smattering of other high-end producers, Luxman has provided gem after gem, from valve amps of undeniable desirability to great turntables. Luxman’s latest flagship deck, the PD-191A, honours the brand’s traditional mix of beguiling sound, superior build quality and stunning looks. At £11,000, it should be just that: beguiling. In the UK, that price includes the dust cover, an optional extra elsewhere. I don’t know how much more they charge, say, the French, but as a UK spokesperson told me, ‘UK customers expect a lid’. If you wish to complete the ensemble with Luxman’s £2000 LMC-5 MC cartridge then there’s a further £500 saving to be had. Our deck…

Speaker stacking is, at best, an art of compromise. If the two speakers are wired in parallel then the designer gains 3dB in sensitivity albeit also halving the load impedance and doubling the current required of the attached amplifier. So no free lunch here! Interestingly, Gershman quotes a difference of just 1dB between single and stacked Grand Studio speakers (87dB vs. 88dB, respectively). Otherwise, the principal engineering obstacles are acoustical rather than electrical. Flipping one enclosure atop another creates an ‘MTTM’ rather than ‘MTM’ D’Appolito array because there are not one but two tweeters, the distance between their respective acoustic centres determining the frequencies at which nulls (cancellations) and lobes (reinforcements) will inevitably occur. Measured precisely on-axis between the two 25mm tweeters, our forward response [see Lab Report, p59] showed…

When dCS was founded in 1987, the idea that hi-fi hardware could be comprehensively upgraded without the need to lug it back to the shop might have seemed the stuff of science-fiction. Skip forward some 40 years, however, and firmware updates – delivered over-the-air for networked products – have become the norm. They’re often used to squash ‘bugs’ and tweak minor settings, but what the Cambridge-based company has done with its Lina Network DAC is more noteworthy. This unit debuted in 2022 alongside two other Lina components: the Headphone Amplifier and the Master Clock [HFN Nov ’22]. All similarly styled and of the same desktop-ready size, the Lina system was aimed at head-fi enthusiasts. Since then, however, dCS has returned to the Network DAC and done what it perhaps should…

While B&W’s Midnight Blue Metallic finish is certainly an eyecatcher (and also available for the Nautilus), it’s the California Burl option pictured here that really pushes out the boat of craftsmanship. With cabinet production taking nine days from start to finish, this Signature edition is significantly more labour intensive than, say, the regular 805 D4 in Satin Walnut where cabinets are prepared in ‘only’ two days. The raw cabinets undergo a treatment of sanding, curing, and polishing, both by machine and by hand while the Californian Burl veneer, once applied, receives a whopping 14 coats of lacquer! The California Burl wood veneer is provided by Italian specialist Alpi, a long-time partner of B&W. Alpi has provided veneers for earlier Signature editions, including the Bird’s Eye/Tiger’s Eye version of the Silver…

Cryogenic treatment is key to almost every Furutech cable and connector, as is the promise of exceptional build and finish quality [HFN Mar ’18]. With cables, of course, the material engineering can easily be quantified, but with the Japanese brand’s ‘noise busting’ NCF Clear Line plugs – supplied with RCA and XLR terminations for insertion into unused audio inputs – the science can easily lose some clarity. Prices are £205 for each RCA-equipped plug and £260 for the bigger male and female XLR derivatives. KEEPING ITS COOL NCF stands for Nano Crystal2 Formula, an antistatic damping material that is injected into the signal pin and also used in the multi-layer carbon/non-magnetic stainless steel body of the plugs. Furutech’s website states that NCF ‘features a special crystalline material that has two…

In 1985, Scritti Politti had enjoyed chart success with their second album, Cupid & Psyche 85, and had achieved hit singles both in the UK and the US. And with his dreamy demeanour, honeyed vocals and dyed blonde mullet, lead singer and occasional guitarist/keyboard player Green Gartside had become a bona fide pop star. In the late ’70s, however, the band had been a fixture of the speed-fuelled, post-punk Camden squat scene, with scratchy guitars, rickety rhythms and songs that were only on nodding terms with melody. Green had labelled their style as ‘Messthetics’ and had he asked for directions towards pop stardom back in those days, he would surely have been met with the old joke, ‘You can’t get there from here’. DEEP THINKING The last years of the…

Barry Fox 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 The time for debate on the pros and cons of streaming has passed. For better or worse we are stuck with online audio and video until something more convenient comes along to gratify a public now accustomed to entertainment on tap. Unless the Internet is shut down it’s hard to see what that something can be. Much as happened with VCRs, a few big electronics companies make hardware and operating system software that is then badged by different vendors. Readers will probably have heard of Roku, the Californian company that makes boxes and dongles. Lesser-known…

Peter Quantrill Music Journalist 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 Readers of this magazine hardly need any homilies from me on the joy of analogue and the wisdom of holding on to an LP collection – even enlarging it – despite more practical and space-saving alternatives. Even so, the purported advantages of LPs tend to focus on sound quality: the indefinable warmth and presence of true analogue sound. A recent visit to Trondheim in Norway reminded me how that’s less than half the story. I was there to attend the annual chamber music festival, and very fine it was too, but the Norwegians organise their culture…

Early CD players from Philips and Sony are considered by some collectors to be the most covetable vintage models because they came from the very companies that created the format. You can add to this list machines from Denon, whose Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) system underpinned the way analogue signals were transformed into digital data, recorded, played back and finally turned back into music again. PCM was first demonstrated by Denon as far back as 1970, so its use preceded the introduction of the CD by over a decade. To begin with, the only machines with the capacity to capture the high-speed data generated by the PCM system were industrial video recorders, but a lot was learned from how these machines were used in professional environments. CD DREAM TEAM The…

Here’s a fun game to play: look through the product catalogue of US manufacturer Balanced Audio Technology and try to spot the odd one out. It should only take you a matter of seconds because all of its current models, bar one, employ tubes in either their power or preamp stages. And if you still haven’t realised I’m talking about the new REX 500 power amplifier, it’s the one that’s roughly twice as big as all the others. A two-channel model rated at 500W a side, but with the option to be specified at purchase as a 1kW mono design, the REX 500 is described as BAT’s ‘flagship solid state’ amplifier, but at £22,500 also counts as its flagship amp, full stop. Below it is the £14,995 tube-toting VK-90t. This…

At Munich’s High End show in May 2023, a rare appearance by Auralic founder Xuanqian Wang heralded the launch of G3 versions of its Aries streaming transport and Vega streaming DAC, destined to extend the company’s reach into the high-end when they arrive later this year. Yet at the same event the digital audio specialist introduced new G2.2 iterations of the Aries (tested here) and Vega [HFN Nov ’23], both now available priced £5299 and £6899, respectively. Somewhat confusingly, all four models – regardless of their generation number – use the same G3 version of Auralic’s Tesla streaming platform. Marrying an ARM-based chipset with bespoke software, ‘Tesla’ is the company’s secret sauce. For G3, Auralic has moved to a 64-bit architecture and increased its onboard memory to 4GB. The boosted…

You can count on two hands the hi-fi brands that can mark a century, and Luxman’s 100th anniversary takes place in 2025. Founded as the Lux Corporation in June 1925 by T. Hayakawa and his brother, it began as the radio department of Kinsuido Picture Frame Store in Osaka. The brothers had the foresight to import radios in time for Japan’s first broadcast later that year in what was a frenetic period – NHK (Japan’s answer to the BBC) was only established in November 1924. Wishing to avoid a dependency on importing hardware from the USA and Europe, Lux swiftly moved into manufacturing, selling under the Luxman name and gaining a reputation for superior transformers and switches – both hallmarks of every Luxman product to this day. Luxman became one…

While the Lina Network DAC 2.0’s display imparts plenty of information and gives access to its user settings, the best way to operate the unit by far is with dSC’s Mosaic Control app, free for iOS and Android devices. Also used for control of dCS’s other networked products, this has a clear interface that makes it fine for smartphone as well as tablet use, and is generally intuitive. Once installed, the app will ‘find’ connected dCS hardware on your home network. As well as a button to choose your music source – streaming service integration includes Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer and Spotify [see screenshots, right] – the home screen presents four menus. ‘System Test’ instigates a channel check and ‘Display’ lets you to dim the brightness of the Lina DAC’s front…

Barry Willis 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 Last summer I rehabilitated an old Technics SL-B202 turntable for a friend who’s a stage actor/director and an engaging radio personality. One might assume from his professional acumen that his musical interests are more varied than they are, but he’s very much locked into the period of his youth. Both his hi-fi system and record collection are a private museum dedicated to the music of the 1980s. The spare bedroom that serves this purpose is off-limits to almost everyone. It’s my friend’s residential time capsule where nothing ever changes. TASTER SESSIONS Back when he…

Steve Harris Contributor 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 We’re getting used to having recordings of the past easily available, all of the time, even on vinyl. And possibly the greatest catalogue music vinyl splurge of 2023 has come from Concord’s Craft Recordings. Apart from Craft Latino, a whole ’nother story, the programme draws on the trove of old masters accumulated by Fantasy Records – once the largest independent jazz label and eventually the owner of many others. It was acquired by Concord in 2004. Fantasy began almost by chance. In 1949, Jack Sheedy’s San Francisco-based Coronet label cut the first recordings of a young pianist by the name…

Hi-Fi News Mar 2000 Each month HFN will bring you an article from our vast archive of features and reviews from yesteryear As an increasing number of digital source components come equipped with variable output level one might think that line controllers – preamps without a phono cartridge input facility – are an endangered species. This will make sense to those embarking on an all-digital system, mixing a variety of digital sources and prepared to convert from the analogue disc domain to digital via an A/D converter function. Indeed, some digital control units are digital-only and cannot handle analogue signals at all. RACK ’N’ ROLL Despite all this, a solid demand for analogue remains, for signal sources and signal control too. Our highly capable, favoured and effective analogue power amps must…