Table of contents for January - February 2022 in Sound + Image

EDLINES It’s time for our annual festival of all things audio and AV, the Sound+Image Awards special issue; cue fireworks, dancing, hugging in the street, etc. Here we celebrate all the finest gear currently available to Australia in categories from teeny tiny earbuds up to unliftably-large amps and loudspeakers. We recognise also the best installations and home cinemas of the year. We announce the result of our poll for Retailer of the Year (p98), and present our annual Lifetime Achievement Award (p91). My congratulations to all the winners herein — 2022 winners, you’ll note, since this is our first issue of 2022, as well as our last of 2021. So I can also be among the first to welcome you to the new beginning of 2022, a year that we…

For 33 years now, since 1989 A.D., the Sound+Image Awards have celebrated the very best in audio and AV, recognising the products which have wowed us over the previous 12 months of our magazines Sound+Image, Australian Hi-Fi, Best Buys Audio & AV, and Audio Esoterica, and which represent our recommendations of the very best products available in Australia today in every audio and AV category — from teeny-tiny true wireless buds up to unliftably large amplification. Under normal circumstances we’d be inviting the great and the good of the Australian hi-fi industry to a glitzy Presentation Dinner like the one pictured above, where our Editor would hand out the healing crystal Awards trophies to those responsible for creating and distributing these wonders of our age. But alas, no shindigs quite…

With something of a 25-fold price leap between the previous turntable category and this one, you’ll realise that this deck from Harman’s Mark Levinson brand is something else entirely, reaching into regions where vinyl replay becomes a desirable combination of art and engineering. Harman worked in partnership with an established vinyl specialist, in this case one from Germany, but thoroughly customising the 5105 to match the rest of the 5000 series, including a one-inch thick blasted-black aluminum front panel, here on a plinth nearly two-inches thick and machined from a single billet of solid aluminium itself, with an integrated bubble to assist with levelling. The aluminium platter weighs upwards of 6kg, and is suspended on a hardened steel axle with an ultra-precise oil-free bearing. Up top, in a nice touch,…

When we reviewed the SC-2, we described it as “the vinyl accessory you never knew you needed”. The Sugarcube range hails from SweetVinyl in Mountain View, California, and this CS-2 is described as a ‘vinyl recording system with click removal’, and that’s what it does, controlled either from the front panel, from its app, or — most easily, we thought — via a Chrome browser on any computer connected to the same network. Then it does two main things. Firstly it can record your LPs to a digital file, with a good deal of built-in intelligence. Note that this model takes a line-level input, so you’ll need a phono stage to play your music into it from a turntable, or put it into the tape loop of your amplifier. So…

Such a small unit, the $1699 element i, at just 24cm wide and 45m high, yet with so much going on that it qualifies as a bit of a category buster. It calls itself a streamer, being able to stream from the high-res capable music services Tidal and Qobuz, plus internet radio, or to be addressed by Roon’s software. It can play from network storage via DNLA, or to be addressed directly via AirPlay, and it has its own ‘MA Remote’ app in addition to its phyiscal remote control. But it’s also a digital preamp, with inputs at the rear — one optical, one coaxial, two USB-A slots for sticks or drives (and providing up to 500mA of power), a USB-B connection for playing direct from computer, and an HDMI…

Designer Daniel Weiss has spent his life at the creative end of audio engineering, and this year won a Technical Grammy for Special Merit (Technical). Given this, and the $15,500 price, it’s perhaps no surprise that this DAC, described by Weiss as a ‘DSP D/A Converter and Network Renderer’, proved to be one of the very best we’ve ever heard — indeed we described it as having absolutely no influence at all on the sound of the music passing through it, as if the amplifier and loudspeakers were connected via a direct line to the recording studio. As a DAC it has a pair of 32-bit ESS Sabre ES9018K2M DACs, a fourth-generation Analog Devices SHARC DSP running Weiss’s own digital filter, and a Texas Instruments Arm Cortex-A8 microprocessor. The DACs…

It nudges the top of our price category at $9900, but there was no ignoring this magnificent valve amplifier from Copland in Copenhagen, Denmark. Copland’s founder and designer Ole Møller began his career working in cartridges and vinyl cutting heads with Ortofon, so perhaps it’s no coincidence that vinyl replay proved one of the highlights here. The CTA408 can handle either moving-magnet and moving-coil cartridges on its single phono input, with the phono input circuitry all housed out of sight and away from electromagnetic interference in a shielded case. There are in addition five line-level unbalanced line-level inputs, one of which is a ‘tape in’ with a matching ‘tape out’ loop. There are no digital inputs here at all. Meanwhile the 2 × 75W power section of the amplifier uses…

Why consider a pre-power combination rather than an integrated amplifier? It was long the default presentation of classic hi-fi — one box to switch and conduct delicate low-level signal operations, then a second box which increases the power in order to drive speakers. Isolation from both interference and heat benefits noise levels and more besides. But one of the most surprising things about this Bel Canto combination is their size — normal hi-fi width but so low at just 83mm each that you can guess immediately that in the $10,100 power amp Bel Canto is using Class-D amplification with a switch-mode power supply, because there’s no way you could cram the power supply required for a Class-AB design rated at 250W per channel into such a small chassis. Look inside…

March Audio is based in Albany, Western Australia, where it appeared on the scene a little more than three years ago and quickly carved a niche as a supplier of power amplifiers that use the latest Class-D technology from Hypex and more recently from Purifi. Other products followed — a DAC, a headphone amplifier, and a stereo preamplifier and a pair of large standmount speakers which incorporate drivers also from Purifi. The company is run by Alan March, and the P452 that wins here is the first March stereo amplifier to feature Purifi’s Eigentakt module, Bruno Putzeys’ latest and first post- Hypex Class-D advance, in collaboration with the Purifi team of director Claus Neesgaard and gaining particularly from Putzeys’ collaboration with Lars Risbo, another pioneer of switching PCM-PWM audio amplifiers.…

We admit to having a soft spot for Ruark’s particular breed of table-top music system, which in their wood finishes (as below) can look appealingly traditional, yet in their satin white (as above) appear thoroughly modernist. The $1299 R3 is a good size for a table-top audio system, some 42cm across and 17cm high, and it brings together CD replay with reception of DAB+, FM and internet radio, streaming via network and Bluetooth (with aptX), Spotify Connect, Tidal and other music services… pretty much everything, in short, that the modern music world has to offer. You can plug in additional sources — there’s one optical and one analogue input, also a minijack headphone output, and a ‘line out’ at full level, so you could run the whole gamut of sources…

Abig price jump to our next pair of standmount winners, Harbeth’s $7000 Compact 7ES-3 XD. Tall standmounts at 52cm high, they maintain Harbeth’s ‘BBC’ loudspeaker legacy in design terms, and their classic-style delivery stacks up very well against more modernist speakers. The tweeter on the 7ES-3 XD is ferrofluid- cooled with a 25mm dome that’s protected by a black metal mesh, while the 200mm diameter bass/midrange driver is injection- moulded and uses the second generation of a special ‘RADIAL 2’ formulation of polypropylene that Harbeth itself developed. The two instruments loudspeakers find most difficult to reproduce are the human voice and the piano, so we geve the Harbeths both at once, with Alicia Keys’ ‘VH1 Storytellers’ set, recorded at New York’s Metropolis Studios. It’s a great album with great sound…

Velodyne’s ‘Deep Blue’ series of subwoofers, of which this DB-12 model is a part, is the first new range of subwoofers from this famous company following its sale to German company Audio Reference a few years ago. It introduces a new industrial design for Velodyne, which sees the bass driver recessed into the front baffle and covered by a circular grille that is also recessed into the baffle, so it ends up sitting flush, which makes for a really classy look. As the name suggests, this model carries a 12-inch driver, here Velodyne’s famous double-vented high-excursion bass driver with its four-layer voice-coil and dual ferrite magnet. Despite this the DB-12’s cabinet is smaller than that of the Q Acoustics opposite at 35 x 37 x 38.8cm, and perhaps even more…

Yes, Yamaha is back on top of our AV receiver awards, in this uppermost category which the company has dominated since the first arrival of its Aventage premium receiver range a little over a decade ago. The new 10th anniversary Aventage range took a while to arrive, given the trials of the last couple of years. But with awards going to both its entry-level RX-A2A and to this top model, this $6299 Aventage RX-A8A, it’s clearly been worth the wait. What makes it a winner? It’s the ability to excel on every front, whether you’re considering physical inputs and outputs, versatility of operation, or the quality of its sonic circuits. We carried our full review only last issue, when the RX-A8A never put any of its five feet wrong with…

Here’s a sign of TV technology trends: we have no winning OLED TVs this year. Both of our winners are LCD models using Mini LED backlighting. And perhaps even more of a surprise — they are both 8K panels. While there remains almost no 8K material yet, and few promises beyond possible 8K console gaming, we’re now finding that if you want the best technologies a company can offer, you may be looking at an 8K set by default. That makes scaling important, and both our winners — South Korea’s Samsung opposite, and China’s TCL here — do the upscaling very well indeed. Mini LED, meanwhile, is proving utterly convincing. It breaks the usual LED backlight into thousands of tiny LEDs, grouped in hundreds of dimming zones — 160 zones…

So here we are moving up to proper table-top/ceiling projectors, and BenQ takes our first award here as well. This $2599 TK700Sti originally came to us for review as a projector with gaming credentials, for the new Xbox and PlayStation consoles in particular, enabling players to expand their gameplay to a big-screen experience. The main promoted lag time is 16.67 milliseconds, available in Game modes for 60 Hz content regardless of resolution. That’s very impressive for a projector: the same figure achieved by BenQ’s 1080-resolu- tion gaming projectors, yet here it’s available also with larger Ultra High Definition frames. The TK700STi can also accept 1080p at 120 Hz, which would then halve the lag to a surely imperceptible 8.3ms. Both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox One S or X can…

So if the lesser earspeakers opposite deliver incredible clarity and purity of sound, how to describe the delights of the latest Stax flagship electrostatics, the SR-9000X, priced at $9500? And all the more s as we enjoyed their merits with a loan of the Stax flagship driver, the $8000 SRM-T8000, with its two small-signal 6922 valves in the input stage (hidden away under the substantial casing), driving a Class-A solid-state output stage. The new earspeakers boast an upgraded metal-mesh electrode system, evolved into the now four-layer ‘MLER-3’, and this requires such intense manual skill to assemble that production is severely restricted in quantity. Their worth is accentuated by their beautiful storage box, as well as by their main enclosures of machined aluminium, inside which you can see the gold-plated sound…

During 2021 we heard many new true wireless buds which sounded good, and that improved their control systems and battery life to compete with Sony’s previous model, the WF-1000XM3. Unfortunately for all those contenders, Sony has since released the WF-1000XM4, and these new models raise the bar once again. Introducing an entirely new ANC (Active Noise Cancelling) processing chip, along with a redesigned earbud, the new model’s results are stunning, if somewhat pricey at $449.95. The new buds are 10% smaller than their predecessors, but their new shape makes them look and feel considerably more compact. The move from a bulbous elongated design to something more circular shifts the centre of gravity closer to the ear canal, providing many advantages -appearance among them, but also security and comfort. This is…

Yamaha has been on a roll for headphones this last year, with a number of new models we’ve enjoyed, and best of all these wireless noisecancellers at $499 (a price which the arrival of Apple’s model overleaf now redefines as mid-price for the genre!). The YH-E700A are substantial headphones, their earcups 90mm in diameter, fully circumaural and spaciously so, with leatherette-covered foam earpads 25mm thick sealing firmly yet lightly around the ears. They have the latest aptX adaptive codec on board, and an app available, but it’s not essential for operation, as there’s little of the smart functionality in vogue on some competitors, such as auto-pause when you lift an earcup, or large touch surfaces on the housing, or even EQ; nothing like that (if it’s feature overload you’re after,…

Our Sound+Image GOLD Awards are reserved for the best of the custom installations which we cover in Sound+Image, Australian Hi-Fi, Audio Esoterica and Best Buys Audio & AV magazines, whether home cinemas, mixed purpose media rooms, stereo hi-fi installations, or an entire smart home decked in tech from its foundations to its roof-mounted CCTV cameras. Len Wallis Audio is our first GOLD winner this year, and while the company’s experienced installation team has previously won for both home cinema and stereo projects, here the project is firmly in full smart-home territory. Their brief for this Sydney beachside three-bedroom home included lighting control, data networking, phones, intercoms and security, climate control, even pool monitoring, all to be integrated under a single automation system which, at the request of the client, would…

It’s a return to our GOLD Awards forWavetrain Cinemas, here for delivering this theatre in a new home extension — and in the process turning the client’s expectations on their head. “Initially I thought it was all about ‘coming as close as possible’ to the commercial cinema experience,” the owner told Sound+Image. “How wrong we were! This project flipped the tables — now the commercial cinema experience falls far short.” Wavetrain describes itself as ‘a complete turnkey cinema company’, able to follow any preference for any space, including both interior design and system specification. But it can also help ease the potentially overwhelming task of going from empty space to working home cinema by offering a number of pre-designed home cinema options which can be tailored to requirements. In this…

Smart new NADs Two new NAD amplifiers bring their streaming smarts in different ways. They’re all to the fore in the C 700 BluOS Streaming Amplifier (above), with its modern design and five-inch colour display that shows album artwork, track status, and system settings. It uses HybridDigital UcD Amplification to deliver 2 x 80W of continuous power, and thanks to the built-in BluOS platform it has everything needed to play music by just adding speakers, with the app’s interface accessing music from dozens of different streaming services, internet radio, or music stored on a drive connected to the C 700’s USB port. Along with AirPlay2, aptX HD Bluetooth, Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect, there are two analogue inputs, coaxial and optical digital and a handy HDMI ARC input. Price is…

Our very first winner, then, epitomises our search for value in all award categories low or high, although it is perhaps a surprise in being neither brand-new nor, really, pushing the limits of technology. It is the $399 entry-level vinyl-spinner from Music Hall, the long-established turntable brand under Roy Hall, which is no stranger to our awards. But whereas many of Mr Hall’s designs are tweaked and upgraded versions of Pro-Ject turntables, through his relationship with Heinz Lichtenegger, this entry-level US-1 is clearly not, and many readers will no doubt immediately recognise the heritage of the classic Technics SL1200 DJ deck here. But it is not a clone (it’s belt-drive, not direct drive, for a start), and as for its design similarities, well, Panasonic originally stopped making Technics turntables in…

Hot from its success as an EISA award-winner, the little Hegel V10 phono stage gains further recognition here, such are the level of its charms, performance, and versatility. The humble phono preamplifier is often a neglected area of speciality, yet when you consider how very tiny are the signals delivered from a cartridge, there is every reason to undertake their de-emphasis and initial amplification in a dedicated offboard box. A fine phono stage can transform the sound of a turntable. Hegel Audio Systems hails from Norway, where the vinyl playing nights can be long, and much thought has clearly gone into this rethinking of phono performance. The chassis is divided into two compartments, physically separating the low-level signal circuitry from the power supply, which provides two power leads which connect…

The compact disc market may be in decline when it comes to new releases, but there is no cheaper way of purchasing music to own than to head to your local thrift store and load up on CDs going for a mere buck or two. Indeed there are signs that the value of older discs is on the rise, and — assuming reasonable condition — the silver disc in combination with a good CD player remains a great path to high-quality music. At $699 Rotel’s CD11 Tribute is a well-priced and impressive performer, not to mention being something of a coup for the company. The ‘Tribute’ part of the name recognises the contribution of the late Ken Ishiwata, Marantz brand ambassador and sound guru until early 2019 when he was…

Naim Audio’s three levels of Uniti all-in-one player in a way brought together everything the company knows — the streaming, multiroom and control elements of the Mu-sos, and the solid hi-fi amplification developed over decades. This last year saw the arrival of the $4299 Uniti Atom HE, which takes the smallest of the existing Unitis and does something rather unexpected — it throws out the part that Naim arguably knows best, the amplification. Well, that’s not entirely true. There are no amplifiers for speakers, as on the other Uniti units (excepting only the Uniti Core, which adds networked hard-drive storage to the range). But as the ‘HE’ of the new unit suggests, it caters instead to headphones. On the front are headphone jacks of full-size quarter-inch (6.5mm in new money)…

It’s 60 years since the first Rotel audio products appeared, and five since the 14 Series was launched to significant acclaim. Now we have this MkII edition of the A14 amplifier, with no radical changes to the aesthetic, but revisiting output filters, key circuit elements and the design of the power supply, where the circuitry now resembles the topology used in Rotel’s ‘Tribute’ amplifiers. There’s also a change in DACs for the digital inputs, away from AKM (whose supply has been wrecked by a factory fire in Japan), and over to a Texas Instruments 32-bit/384kHz device. It’s well-provisioned with inputs, offering four line-level analogue, a moving-magnet phono input (set up for a typical moving-magnet cartridge), and seven digital inputs — two coaxial, two optical, USB-B for a computer, USB-A on…

As the extended product name suggests, the Electrocompaniet ECI 6 DX MkII has it all! It’s not only a hugely competent $11,945 integrated amplifier with a rated output of 125W continuous per channel into 8 ohms, it’s also a full-featured digital-to-analogue converter and an equally full-featured streamer. And that much power from such a relatively compact (and, it just has to be said, stunningly beautiful) chassis is an impressively high power output, especially as it extends to 200W per channel into 4 ohms and 370W into 2 ohms,. Very few integrated amplifiers can drive such low impedances at all; it means that the amplifier can not only provide ample voltage to your speakers, but ample current as well. In fact, Electrocompaniet claims a peak current ability of more than 100…

We were delighted to welcome the Canadian brand Classe back into our listening rooms, resurrected after Sound United’s purchase of former sister brand Bowers & Wilkins allowed the team to get back together and complete the project they already had under way — the Delta series. Thiese are being made in Japan at the famous Shirakawa Audio Works, where Sound United was already manufacturing the highest-end Denon and Marantz products. This pre-power combination represents two of the three models so far available from the revived brand, which are a preamplifier and a choice of stereo or mono power amps; we have reviewed the stereo version, the $19,990 Classé Delta Stereo power amplifier. This operates in Class-A up to a power output of 12.5W, while the Delta Pre also operates completely…

The Adcom GFA-585se looks like it just arrived on a time machine straight from the 1980s, so if you sometimes think ‘They don’t make ’em like they did in the old days’, well, Adcom does. The GFA-585se is a high-powered Class-A/B ‘muscle’ amplifier of the type that once shared shelf space in hi-fi emporiums with the likes of other famous ‘muscle’ amps of the day — Sumo, S.A.E., Crown, Great American Sound Company, Krell and others — and while Adcom is no longer manufactured in the USA (the new owners in Thailand manufacture this amp in Taiwan), it seems that all the original schematics have been followed to the letter. This is a vast stereo power amplifier: half a metre wide, and half a metre deep; so high you could…

Should you head out for the night into the cobbled streets of Dublin, you’ll be looking for craic agus ceol — music and diversion, with ‘ceol’, originally ceól, meaning ‘music’ or ‘musical instrument’. Should you be staying in, however, Denon’s complete system offers plenty of music too — so very much that it’s easier to describe what it doesn’t do. So... it doesn’t play vinyl. Or cassettes. Or AM radio. Everything else is pretty much covered, a great deal of it by the inclusion of the Denon/ Marantz wireless multiroom platform HEOS. This you’ll control via the HEOS app on your phone or tablet (though a useful phyiscal remote is included), able to access (in the app’s order of listing) Spotify, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Deezer, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Tidal, music on…

Triangle’s $900 Borea BR03 standmounts are 33cm high, a bass-reflex design with twin ports on the front, giving them useful versatility in positioning. They also use a new ‘EFS’ tweeter design from the French company, short for ‘Efficient Flow System’; Triangle has partially horn-loaded the tweeter’s 25mm silk dome, which improves its efficiency and reduces baffle/grille reflections, while also fitting a phase plug that corrects phase across the frequency range and improves dispersion, meaning a wider ‘sweet spot’ in the listening room, as well as a more accurate far-field frequency response. The mid/bass driver cone is made from the untreated cellulose paper that Triangle developed for its more expensive Esprit Ez series, and being untreated, Triangle’s warranty specifically excludes issues related to ‘high humidity’. On the plus side their Australian…

Freshly launched as part of Bowers & Wilkins new 800 Series D4, the 805 standmounts get some but not all of the new stuff, including for the first time the complete cabinet reversal that the floorstanding models in the range had enjoyed with the D3 series. Curving the front around to the solid aluminium rear spine reduces the front baffle profile while dramatically increasing the overall rigidity. The mid/bass drive unit pod is coupled directly through the wooden cabinet into an aluminium plate behind the baffle; this driver also gains a new voice coil and former. The diamond tweeter, itself unchanged from the D3 series, nestles now decoupled above an all-new rigid, cast-aluminium top section, which replaces the previous wooden version and has a smooth-finished ‘Leather by Connolly’ covering in…

The concept behind Wilson’s original Sabrina was to take what had been learned during the development of the company’s then top-of-the-line Alexandria XLF and bring it to a more affordable floorstander. And the SabrinaX maintains the design of that predecessor, with the two-step sloping baffle helping the speaker seem rather smaller than it otherwise might, though it is just over a metre high once on its spiked feet. It now brings some of Wilson’s highest levels of technology. The tweeter comes from the million-dollar WAMM Master Chronosonic. The 146mm doped-paper- pulp midrange is now vented via a slot following research Wilson was doing into the Chronosonic XVX. Bass frequencies are accommodated by a 203mm paper-pulp woofer with a rubber suspension borrowed from the Sasha DAW. Yet the pricing is more…

This category proved one of the hardest fought in our whole awards, with a number of brands in contention, and even another Yamaha, the RX-V6 at $1299, making the final decision one to mull over. But in the end it was the merits of Yamaha’s new Aventage 10 Series which won the day, twice over indeed (see overleaf), for both the bottom and top models in the range. Junior Aventage model the RX-A2A may be, but it’s a substantial receiver at more than 10kg, the usual full-width double-height chassis neatly redesigned in common with the V series to move the volume knob to a central priority, updating the display, and losing the big flap hiding front inputs and controls, largely redundant in this age of app control and on-screen menus.…

Two very different soundbar options on these two pages — and the pictures aren’t to scale, because while the bar from Samsung’s system opposite is a full 123cm wide, Yamaha SR-C20A has here gone the compact soundbar path, operating without even the support of a wireless subwoofer and attempting effective TV and movie sound from an unintrusive lozenge just 60cm wide — that’s 5cm less than a Sonos Beam. It certainly won’t dominate your TV benchtop, and you can even wall-mount it below a TV with the included template and screw set. But what chance does a bar so dinky have to deliver room-filling sound? It’s fascinating, after seeing on the last few pages what Yamaha can do with movie sound at its highest levels, to witness here how the…

Everything that’s true of the TCL 8K MiniLED TV opposite is doubly so with the $10,499 Samsung flagship 8K QLED Mini LED QN900. Its ‘Infinity One Design’ screen fronts a significantly thinner panel, yet it still blazes with brilliance when given a high-quality video-sourced HDR show — say the Netflix Formula 1 doco series, where the action races by as sharp as a pin, the wide shots as detailed as a test reel, as seemingly bright as a reference monitor (peak brightness is indeed reputed to be 4000 nits) and yet emblazoned across the full 75 inches of screen. The granular control of Mini LED backlighting and the Neo Quantum Processor 8K, which uses what Samsung calls ‘Deep Learning’ and multiple ‘Neural Networks’, achieves OLED-level blacks so that when showing…

When Sony’s projectors advertise 4K, they mean real 4K, both the capability of pro 4096 x 2160 resolution, and more importantly true native panel UHD, not created by pixel-shifting panels of lower resolution. That’s the first element in pushing prices higher: the VPL-VW590ES is listed at $11,999, the lower of two models which use traditional lamp technology. Last year one of our winners was the VW790ES, which uses Sony’s Z-Phosphor light engine with a laser diode to stimulate phosphor into producing white light. But going laser nearly doubles the price, so that this year we’re joining EISA in recognising Sony’s top lamp-based native-4K projector, this VW590ES, as a sweet spot in the Sony range — all the resolution, at a significantly lower price. The 280W high- pressure mercury lamp offers…

The headphone output circuitry fitted to a great many otherwise excellent hi-fi components often leaves a lot to be desired, so you should not necessarily rely on it to give you great sound. In some cases this is simply because of low output levels. In other situations it will be because of a high output impedance. The obvious solution is a device that has been specifically designed to drive headphones — a purpose-designed headphone amplifier. The problem with this obvious solution is that high-quality headphone amplifiers are expensive — at least most are. A few, like this $269 iFi Zen Can, are very reasonably priced. But very few are this reasonably priced and prove to deliver mighty impressive results both in listening and on the test bench. It’s even relatively…

Our winning headphones here are wireless (though they can also take a cable), but they don’t — like the two winners overleaf — have active noise cancellation available to silence your surroundings. That can be a good thing, as their engineers didn’t have to find a compromise between tuning them with and without cancellation, which can often sound significantly different, and sometimes the compromise leaves neither option quite as good as it could be. Perhaps even more remarkable, these Audio-Technicas manage to sound pretty much as solid and punchy via Bluetooth as the famous monitoring headphones from which they’ve evolved, the M50x, do using a cable. They’re blessed with the same oversized 45mm drivers, and when used with a cable they have mobile-friendly 38-ohm impedance and sensitivity of 99dB/W/m, with…

You might expect Apple to do something different with headphones, and with the AirPods Max it certainly has. There’s no cable option, no off switch. They come with the strangest carry-case which looks like a bra from one side and a butt from the other. They offer dynamic head tracking so that if you’re watching video and look away, the sound moves to stay with the device (something we don’t quite understand, since if you’re not looking, what does it matter?). But there’s simply no questioning the sound quality, nor the tech, nor the build. The spacious anodised-aluminium headshells, the rather radical yet utterly comfy stretched-fabric headband, the dual neodymium ring magnets for Apple’s own design of dynamic driver, the H1 chip in each headshell with multiple audio cores to…

Scott Rogan and his team at Rogue Home Cinema were contacted by the owners of this Western Australian home, who had come to realise that they never made use of their formal dining room. To achieve more use — and far more enjoyment — from the space, they were keen to clear away the cultery and dedicate the space to an audio-visual feast instead. This took some planning, because the room included some awkwardly-placed structural pillars, and walk-through access to an al fresco area beyond. So while the quality of AV performance was a main priority, the room design also had to have the right fit and flow to suit the rest of the house. The chosen room solution uses curtains to provide complete visual isolation with no distractions from…

The public vote for our second Hi-Fi Retailer of the Year award took place via our website at www.whathifi.com/au during October-November 2021. Our thanks to all who voted, and to Technical Audio Group for adding the encouragement of a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50xBT2 wireless headphones (below) for the voter who gave what the judges considered to be the best reason for their vote, regardless of who they voted for. See our website for the winner. THE PRIZE! Audio-Technica’s award-winning ATH-M50xBT2 wireless headphones: see page 87…

The P452 is March Audio’s first Purifi-based stereo amplifier. This elegant product is milled from solid aluminium with a tough anodized treatment. Exceptional fit, finish and build quality. Featuring the new Purifi 1ET400A technology and Bruno Putzeys’ development of his previous Hypex Ncore designs, the P452 delivers extraordinary low noise and distortion with further improved refinement in subjective audio quality. This class-leading technical performance delivers a neutral but captivating musical sound to suit the finest partnering equipment. Fully 2-ohm capable with ultra low output impedance, the P452 can deliver up to 450 watts and 25 amps, ensuring tremendous grip and drive even with the most challenging of speaker loads. The OPA1612 differential input buffer has been designed to extract the maximum performance from the 1ET400A module. Very low noise LT3045/94…

A new entry to the list of cost-effective and high-value turntables from Audio-Technica, the AT-LPW50BP offers a package which should equally satisfy audio lovers returning to the vinyl fold as well as those getting their first deck and wanting something swish-looking, yet easy to use. Priced at a very reasonable $699, it leverages the company’s cartridge expertise, coming with a preinstalled AT-VM95E moving-magnet cartridge on its straight-line carbon-fibre statically-balanced tonearm — this is a cartridge with an elliptical stylus released only a few years ago, but an evolution of (and replacement for) the AT-95E with newly-designed aluminium cantilevers and re-designed coils for higher output. The AT-LPW50BP has an in-built phono stage so will work with any amp, but otherwise focuses its funds firmly on sound quality, being a no-frills belt-driven…

You can, of course, always go a level above. There are many high-quality phono stages available, but most of them are difficult and inconvenient to use, or lack a full range of load, gain and filter options, so you have to choose a stage that adequately matches the cartridge you’re using. If you subsequently change cartridges, it might mean buying a whole new phono stage. Which makes Gold Note’s latest and greatest phono stage, the $17,000 PH-1000, an absolute breath of fresh air. It has every phono load and gain adjustment you will ever need to correctly match any cartridge ever developed — or will be developed in the future. Plus it has selectable — and adjustable! — LP equalisation curves, so you can correctly play back any LP ever…

A second appearance by Harman brand Mark Levinson in the sources categories of our awards, and from the same 5000 Series. At $9999, the № 5101 is clearly a serious CD player, also an SACD player thanks to its precision dual SACD/CD laser and combination transport, and also a DAC with various digital inputs including one coaxial, one optical, one USB-A, and a network connection via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. All this can be controlled via app, as well as from the front panel or remote control. You could use the № 5101 to play recordable and rewriteable CDs containing music recorded using FLAC, WAV, AIFF, OGG, MP3, AAC and WMA digital standards, but it’ll be more convenient to store these files on USB or NAS (or on your computer), then…

A product with a respected lineage of high performance back to Cambridge’s first DacMagic back in 1996, the 200M is an excellent DAC at the price, both measuring impressively in Australian Hi-Fi’s bench tests and delivering overall heart-lifting clarity far above its $899 asking price in our listening tests. It’s a compact unit at 21.5cm wide, so half standard hi-fi width, with just three press buttons on the front for power, source select and filter, though these are also re-used in combination to access ‘hidden’ menu functions, for example switching the normally fixed outputs to become variable, under control of the volume knob. And that turns the DacMagic 200M into a useful digital preamp, as well as being available for headphone playback. There are four digital inputs, with the first…

The UK’s Cambridge Audio has been on a roll with our amplifier awards: two years ago hitting high with its no-holds-barred Edge pre-power combination, then last year scoring an award for the solid trad hi-fi CXA81 priced rather lower. This year there was no ignoring the company’s two-pronged assault on the smart amplifier market, with the lower Evo 75 at $3299, and our winner here, the $4299 Evo 150, the extra dollars doubling the available power from the Hypex Ncore Class-D power modules within, while the higher model also adds facilities around the back — a phono stage where the Evo 75 has none, a USB-B computer connection too, a pair of balanced XLR inputs enabling connection of a better class of component, RS232 control, and two sets of speaker…

Daniel D’Agostino, founder of D’Agostino Master Audio Systems, formerly of Krell, continues to deliver some of the world’s highest-performing amplification. We reviewed this Progression integrated amplifier fully optioned at $47,985, while the base model is $34,995, with $8995 for the DAC Module and $3995 for the Phono Module. That modularity gives the flexibility to get what you want, or conversely to not pay for the bits you don’t. But also, those prices are notably nowhere near the heights of D’Agostino’s ranges. The greatest thing about this new amplifier is that it’s from the lower Progression range, yet delivers the performance you’d expect from, say, the equivalent model in D’Agostino’s Momentum series, at a fraction of the price. It still looks very much D’Agostino, though he has here softened the impact…

One of Gryphon’s integrated amplifiers was recently described to us by a dealer of 25+ years standing as “one of the best integrated amplifiers we’ve ever heard”. It’s a sign of the respect generated by this Danish brand and its recently-retired founder, Flemming E. Rasmussen. Although Flemming is still associated with Gryphon, the company is now owned by Valdemar Martin Børsting and Gryphon’s employees, which includes electronics designer Tom Møller, who has been the head of the design team at Gryphon for many years now. Gryphon is another company that uses modules to let you pay for only the bits you need. If you want to add a digital stage, or a phono stage to the $26,995 Preamplifier, you add an additional module. There’s only room for one, so if…

How many companies can offer the highest levels of hi-fi speakers, even a complete concert P.A. system if you so desire, yet also excel with portable audio playing via Bluetooth? Surely only JBL, the Harman brand (so ultimately owned by Samsung) which has taken out our awards for portable and small wireless speakers more times than we care to count. As its name suggests, our winner here is rather larger than the smallest of handheld speakers produced by the company. The $399.95 Xtreme 3 is a full foot long and some 14cm diameter across its ends, giving enough space for true stereo operation using twin 20mm dome tweeters and 70mm woofers all firing forward from the front, and in addition two passive bass drivers in the ends, which are so…

Active speakers can help create a fantastic system solution — the amplification is inside the speakers, so no external amp is required, just a source, or sources, potentially even just your phone, as the $1599 Klipsch ‘The Fives’ can receive via Bluetooth with the AAC codec to benefit iOS users, and aptX or aptX HD for Android users. But to hear their best, you can connect sources to their external inputs, which include optical digital, a USB-B computer connection (surprisingly rare on active speakers), and two analogue inputs — one on a minijack socket, the other on proper RCAs and switchable between line-level or phono level suitable for a turntable with a moving-magnet cartridge. There’s also a subwoofer output, should you wish to supplement their bass abilities. Most exciting of…

USA brand Polk has joined Sound United’s distribution in Australia, alongside Boston Acoustics, Bowers & Wilkins, and Definitive Technology. The Polk Reserve series sits just below the company’s top ‘Legend’ series and uses the same custom-made drivers, including the proprietary Pinnacle tweeter and ‘turbine cone’ midrange. The R200 is priced at $1099, and they are a substantial size — Polk calls them ‘bookshelf’ speakers, but at 36cm high and 35cm deep that’s a fair-sized bookshelf! Th distinctive pointed waveguide of the company’s high-res-capable Pinnacle ring radiator means no central dome to enter break-up modes, while external and internal waveguides control the dispersion to deliver a wider sweet spot across listening positions. The ‘turbine cone’ drivers are so called for the notable asymmetric bumps which the injection-moulding process has added to…

Itroduced originally to work with Q Acoustics’ 3000i surround packages, the Q B12 has talents that can stretch beyond its own kin to general purpose subwoofer work, given its performance and price ($1099 in satin and $1399 for gloss finishes), pretty reasonable by the standard of a quality subwoofer of this size. The 21.5kg Q B12 has 46cm depth and a 40cm frontage, big enough to include a big 12-inch driver in its sealed and braced MDF cabinet, powered by a 220W Texas Instruments TPA3255 Class D amplifier of unusually high performance characteristics. The driver cone itself is made from paper, but the dustcap, made from plastic, is so large that its surface area is almost one quarter of the total area. It’s a neat and clean design externally, with…

This $3199 MRX 540 is the junior of the company’s three latest AV receivers, its siblings rising to the MRX 1140 with 11 channels and processing for up to 15.2 channels. The MRX 540 here offers five channels of amplification, rated at 100W per channel with all channels driven, though again it can process more, up to seven channels. Its power is proper Class-AB; and while the Anthem receivers offer less than some rivals in in the way of built-in streaming services, this receiver is loaded with secret weaponry, so that we found both the style and substance on offer from this receiver to be particularly impressive. There are plenty of external inputs — seven HDMI inputs and two HDMI outputs, one of them with eARC, five sets of analogue…

Samsung has won in our soundbar awards several years running now, ever since its Californian ‘audio lab’ started building bars that redefined the genre — and changed our own opinions on what soundbars could achieve. This is another full system — a seemingly insane spec of 11.1.4 channels, but not faked from fewer drivers, as do a good many rivals. Every channel here has its own output — including physical wireless rear speakers which have three drivers and channels each for surround, rear surround, and upward- firing rear Atmos. With nine drivers in the bar, plus a wireless subwoofer, this is true 11.1.4 delivery, even though it is largely upscaled from the bar’s 7.1.4 processing. There are advantages to using Samsung’s multichannel soundbar with a Samsung TV (confidence in eARC…

BenQ has delivered ‘portable’ projection before, but nothing quite as neat or simple to use as the GV30. It has a ‘rolling’ design, the unit rotating in its little stand (two views shown above) so that you can point the lens anywhere from angling down to firing right up at the ceiling. As soon as you move the image, the projector’s automatic sensors identify both the focus and the required keystone adjustment to straighten the image, so things just pop straight into shape. Its portability comes from the fact that it is light, has a carry handle, and can operate on batteries for something like 2.5 hours, long enough to play a movie somewhere that mains power is unavailable. It’s even rugged, with BenQ claiming it to be drop-proof from…

We have a slam-dunk in our home headphones categories, with Stax taking both the upper and the lower price categories. There’s rarely been a year when Stax hasn’t been somewhere in the running here, given the company’s dominance and reputation in electrostatic designs of ‘earspeakers’, as Stax calls them. But this year we’ve seen both the flagship release opposite, and this rather more affordable SR-L500 MkII model, priced at $1200. Part of the Stax ‘Lambda’ series of earspeakers, these MkIIs continue the classic Stax design, with new aluminium yokes holding in place the black plastic headshells through which you can see the silvery stators that sandwich the biased mylar diaphragm to deliver the equally silver sound to your head, cosseted via foam-filled ear pads covered by what Stax says is…

This category has been in relative decline recently next to the huge growth in ‘true wireless’ earbuds that jettison the cable entirely. But don’t be so quick to take the wireless leap. Cabled headphones don’t need batteries to be recharged. They don’t depend on electronics that have to be made so small as to cram into an earpiece. Nor will you lose one down a drain if they slip out while jogging. In any number of circumstances, cabled in-ears can make more sense. If you see the logic there, then we’d recommend this model from headphone- meister Sennheiser, from the company’s consumer division which is currently in transition to new ownership under Sonova Holding AG, which specialises in hearing aids and cochlear implants. With the IE 300 currently priced at…

It is possible to find cheaper wireless noise-cancellers on the market, but those would be nasty cheap things unworthy of attention. Somehow (and economies of scale would be one obvious reason) JBL manages to hit here a price of $249.95 while delivering a fully-featured app-enhanced well-built pair of wireless headphones with active noise-cancelling (ANC) and Bluetooth v5.0 (though the only available codecs are SBC and AAC), and a potential 50 hours of wireless operation from a full charge, or 40 hours with the ANC engaged. The Bluetooth range of the Live660NC proved fantastic when connected to a current 12.9-inch iPad Pro, even when we had ‘audio mode’ selected rather than the connection-stabilising ‘Normal’ mode. The on/off slider is better than a button, and using JBL’s app you can also set…

When we asked all our previous winners (listed right) to suggest candidates for future Lifetime Achievement awards, one name was suggested more than any other: Philip Sawyer, Managing Director of Synergy Audio Visual in Melbourne. It shows the industry’s wide regard for a man who brings some of the world’s finest audio brands to Australia, who is a good friend to many, and who began his journey into sound at an early age… “As a teenager in suburban Melbourne, I saved all my pennies from part-time jobs to purchase my first music system: a cherished Sanyo C3 boombox, complete with — dah-dah-dah! — detachable speakers,” he tells us. “When joined by a much-loved Sharp Optonica Bi-Lateral turntable, I thought — ahhhhhh… true hi-fi to play Supertramp, Hall and Oates, and…

It’s one thing to design a home cinema for a movie enthusiast, but another when your client actually works in the movies. This client commissioned a dedicated theatre in a lower concrete shell of a new-build home after spending his working life in edit suites working on major blockbuster movies. So what he wanted was a professional director’s screening room — a “kick-arse” throwback to classic Hollywood picture theatres, but with state-of-the-art technology and a contemporary flair. Enter Signature Cinemas, a relatively new company delivering bespoke home cinemas, media rooms and smart homes, founded by the ever-ebullient Alberto Vangi to leverage his 20 years of experience in delivering projects for major Sydney industry names. Alberto specified a five-seat cinema for this 7.7- x 3.8-metre room, with two spacious lie-back loungers…

It’s appropriate that our installation product award falls opposite Wavetrain’s GOLD cinema, as it was there we first encountered the Elementi loudspeakers, before hearing them demonstrated at Wavetrain’s Sydney base. The ‘Fire’ range (individually specified below) is to be one of several in the new brand’s arsenal, with an ‘Earth’ range of subwoofers, an upcoming ‘Water’ range of Atmos speakers, and an ‘Air’ series sharing the Fire cabinets and mid-bass drivers but with pleated-diaphragm ‘tweeters’. Aside from the merits of each individual speaker design being built to satisfy a particular need, Elementi brings a significant shift in equipment layout to home cinema design, by moving the power amplification from the main equipment rack into shallow and modular units mounted vertically against the cinema walls, hidden behind fabric or in joinery.…