Indice dei contenuti per March - April 2023 in Sound + Image

news Naim Classics ◆ Audio-Technica Sound Burger Naim is celebrating 50 years since it began as a ‘rogue' amplifier company in 1973 under the legendary Julian Vereker, growing into respectability under the subsequent management of Paul Stephenson and Dr Trevor Wilson, until the 2011 merger with Focal, under which it has since been owned by French company VerVent Audio, alongside its sister speaker company. VerVent itself is currently owned by Alpha Private Equity Funds Pan-European private equity firm headquartered in Luxembourg. But it's 100% clear that Naim's products remain designed and engineered in Salisbury. Take the freshly unveiled first fruits for the anniversary, revealed at CES in Las Vegas: the new NSC 222 streaming preamplifier (pictured above), a new iteration of the iconic NAP 250 power amplifier, and the NPX 300…

Open not closed, cabled not wireless — Sennheiser's HD 660S2 is the latest iteration of models built on the company's audiophile HD 600 platform. The new $949 headphone brings revised 300-ohm transducers with a surround that drops the resonant frequency from 110Hz on the original HD 660S down to 70Hz, “for hefty kick drums that move with ease”, says the company, now referred to as ‘Sennheiser Hearing’, (see also p24, while the HD 660S2 appears to come from a subdivision called Sennheiser Audiophile). We've called them in and will have a review for you in an upcoming issue. More info: www.sennheiser-hearing.com…

news Apple The launch of HomePods 2 marks another step in Apple's championing of Spatial Audio, and extends it to a potentially easy delivery of TV and movie sound in spatial stereo. If you plonk two HomePod 2s either side of your TV, as shown above, and add an AppleTV 4K media player, you can use Apple's Home app to combine the system into a stereo AV system. With the latest AppleTV 4K having HDMI eARC, the HomePods will also play TV audio coming back down the HDMI cable. Needless to say, the new speakers are also loaded with Apple innovation. There are four microphones in each speaker which work with the processing of an Apple S7 chip to perform automatic room sensing (which can't be turned off), tuning the output…

news McIntosh • Ambeo McIntosh makes a good point in its literature for the new MHT300 home ‘theater' (they're American) receiver. “Don't be fooled by high watts per channel specs listed by many other AV receivers on the market,” the Binghamton NY company says. “Many times the fine print will show that those power ratings only apply to just two channels driven.” That's absolutely true, and of course the quoted grunt may decline significantly if the available power is then spread across seven or more busy channels of sound. McIntosh, then, quotes power ratings measured with all seven channels of the MHT300 being driven, so you can be sure an eight-ohm speaker will get 120W, or a four-ohms one 150W. The seven channels can be used for 7.2 (the two subwoofer…

No custom home cinema is complete without the comfy chairs, and Audio Active has a new style of seating landing in Australia from the Michegan-based brand Row One. The new Kingsley Series brings luxury in its quality of premium leather, ‘Lux Coil' spring seating and padded footrests; there's in-arm storage under the padded arm rests and a tray table so you can keep those movie snacks tidy. This is electronic furniture, so your desire to recline is met by three individual motors governing your head, leg and now lumbar support, with an easy one-touch function sending the seat back to its original position. There are new touch-light refrigerated cup-holders, and switches for under-chair blue LED lighting and dual USB chargers. Both single and multiple seat options are available, and prices…

audiovisual networked AV receivef How do you pick an AV receiver? It seems the hardest job in the world of AV shopping. So much can these complex components do that you surely won't need it all, but you must make sure that the one you choose has everything you need. Chances are that'll leave you with a shortlist of similar receivers from different manufacturers sharing similar fundamental specs, and you'll be very hard pressed to separate them, except by price, or reputation, or reviews. Ideally, of course, you should separate them by listening. And if you get the chance to do so, at some friendly well-equipped dealer, make sure you listen not only to the movie mayhem they can throw around a full speaker system; listen also to their performance…

The first time we enjoyed a visit from the Technics SL-1500C, it arrived from Panasonic Australia as a bonus source for a review of a shiny Technics Ottava wireless speaker. It was not an obvious match for the system — a $2k turntable plugged into a $1k wireless speaker. This Technics turntable is qualified to feed full hi-fi systems of at least its own component level, if not above. We soon whisked it away to the music room, there to be plugged into our main system so we could discover what a solid product is the SL-1500C — capable of far more than a wireless speaker would ever reveal. Build & features When Technics first revived its turntables, they were slightly alarmingly ‘Grand Class' silver and gold bling things. Here…

As chances would have it, we were interviewing Clearaudio's Robert Suchy while working on this turntable group; he is one of the three siblings who took over the company from their father 18 years ago, overseeing the German brand through what must have been, to a firm so firmly analogue-orientated, the thrilling revival of vinyl. Our discussion was mainly about the company's 45th anniversary and the new Reference Jubilee turntable, a limited edition which takes the company's first ever 1993 ‘Reference' turntable as its inspiration. What came through loud and clear in our conversation was the dual focus on music as well as excellence in manufacturing: this is one of those companies which makes its own precision components, even its own test machines if it can't find one accurate enough.…

Turn The Car Around Fourth time around for ex-Supergrass leader. In the five years since his last solo album ‘World's Strongest Man’, Gaz Coombes has revived Supergrass, suggesting that Britpop's finest 90s trio might be unfinished business. But it transpired that new material clearly wasn't part of the agenda, and the band were content to enjoy a run of live shows that culminated in their appearance at last September's Taylor Hawkins tribute at Wembley. Their erstwhile leader was instead keeping his powder dry for ‘Turn The Car Around’, which continues his maturation into a thoughtful and eloquent singer-songwriter. There's less zing and immediacy to Coombes's songs these days, replaced by textural layers that crest into shimmery art-rock and faintly psychedelic pop. He can still set the heart pumping, though, particularly…

Intrigue – Steven Wilson Presents: Progressive Sounds In UK Alternative Music 1979-89 Parameters redefined on sublime four-CD/seven-LP/two-LP selection. Rarely has so much bunkum been spouted as in the (somehow, in some quarters) ongoing punk-versusprog wars. It was never a zero-sum game. Steven Wilson intelligently re-frames the adjective ‘progressive' here, demonstrating that the post-punk era informed the ‘80s with a wash of intelligent, exploratory sounds and styles. Even in the brave new iconoclastic world, it wasn't obligatory to yell “Oi!” over three chords to be ‘good’. His extraordinarily detailed sleeve-notes illuminate this, although the music he's chosen really does the talking. The thenteenage Wilson was clearly an avid music-press fan, as we glide through cuts from Wire and Magazine, PiL and The Associates, Joy Division and New Order; some 4AD/neo-goth. (Almost…

music & movies classic track It was a song good enough to have been on AC/DC's all-conquering ‘Back In Black’, and it's on the last of the studio albums recorded by the ‘Back In Black' line-up. Rock N Roll Train also has the distinction of being one of only two songs recorded after 1981's ‘For Those About To Rock' to remain in AC/DC's live set after a first touring cycle, the other being the mighty Thunderstruck. And in a long-running tradition of great AC/DC songs with ‘rock'n'roll' in the title, albeit spelled in slightly different ways, Rock N Roll Train is right up there with the best of them, alongside Rock And Roll Ain't Noise Pollution from ‘Back In Black’, and others, such as Rock ‘N' Roll Damnation and It's…

Last issue we reviewed the 2022 Sound Burger from Audio-Technica, but had to deliver the disappointing news that the Limited Edition had sold out before we'd even published our review. “Make more SoundBurgers!”, we pleaded. We suspect our cries were not alone, and the company has responded with news that more of the new Bluetooth-equipped Sound Burgers will indeed be made available during 2023. And Limited Edition owners will maintain their cachet, as the new run will not feature 60th-anniversary numbered badges, will be a different colour, and have standardised packaging. But it will be more widely available, the company promises, admitting that “We heard loud and clear the frustration of those who hoped to buy one.”…

news LG Zero Connect technology It's one big OLED TV, a 97-incher with LG's One Wall Design that lets it sit flush against the wall with no visible gap, or easel-mounted as shown here. But the headline for LG's 97-inch Signature OLED M (model M3) is that it is first to arrive with a new wireless transmission technology called ‘Zero Connect’. We've long thought Samsung has held a significant advantage with its One Connect box, putting all the inputs into a separate box and having just a single slim cable connecting to the TV. (We just wish they'd use this system on more TVs than the flagship/s.) But LG is going one better here by having no cables at all for the signal connection, using a separate connections box which…

news Revival Audio We recently gave pretty much an all-out rave review to Revival Audio's Atalante 3 standmount speaker. It was big and bold, and the larger Atalante 5 even more so. We were delighted, we said, that this new French company had not followed the masses in making slim tower designs. At the same time Tim Wallis of Audio Marketing told us that part of the brand's attraction was that it didn't have endless models and colour skews. So how to react to the news that the second pair of releases from Revival appear to be a conventional tower floorstander, the Sprint 4, and a standmount, the Sprint 3, each available in three finishes: Blonde Oak, Walnut and Matte Black? Well, doubtless they will succeed in getting the French company's…

audiovisual soundbar Sennheiser Ambeo Plus soundbar Sennheiser Sub wireless subwoofer SUMMARY Sennheiser Ambeo Plus soundbar & Ambeo Sub Price: $2399.95 / $1119.95 Baralonedelivers a wide and weighty sound Subwooferaddsconfidence and power -CombinedpriceexceedsAmbeo Max's street price Sennheiser has only ever made one soundbar before — it was originally called just AMBEO, now it's the AMBEO Max, while this new model is the AMBEO Plus, a naming scheme which points inexorably to an AMBEO ‘standard' model yet to come (otherwise to what is the ‘plus' relative?). The Max is a bigger bar than the Plus, but the Plus has the option of a wireless subwoofer. That combination blurs the price boundaries between the two products, since the Ambeo Plus retails at 5¢ under $2400, and the Ambeo Sub at $1120. The combo,…

It's easy to think of Rotel as a manufacturer of high-value affordable hi-fi. Because that's partly what it is, and long has been. Many is the young hi-fi buyer who set up their first student system using a cost-effective Rotel integrated amplifier at its heart, and possibly a budget Rotel CD player alongside. But in fact, this still-family-owned Japanese company has racked up some pretty powerful beasts during its 62-year history (66 years if you count founder Tomoki Tachikawa's pre-Rotel build-up). Yet back in 1993 the company decided to introduce what amounted to a separate high-end ‘Michi' sub-brand, rather like Volkswagen has Audi. (And Bentley.) (Oh, and Porsche.) The first Michi line in 1993 was a surprise, and an extremely pleasant one at that, considering the exquisite build quality and…

SUMMARY Cambridge Audio Alva ST Price: $1699 Greatperformance aptXHDBluetooth Onboardphonostage Wires perform better than Bluetooth for main connection Some six months ago, for our biannual reviewfest of Best Buys Audio & AV, we spent time with the Cambridge Audio Alva TT V2; it was then a $3699 turntable, but it justified its price not only through excellent performance boosted by the inclusion of a moving-coil cartridge, but because it was unusual in laying on a good many ‘convenience' features which are often excluded from decks at such a price level — a built-in phono stage, for one, and the ability to output via aptX-encoded Bluetooth for another. But Cambridge Audio released two turntables that year, and this is the other one, the Alva ST. This deck has a moving-magnet cartridge…

We met Pro-Ject earlier in this group with the Debut Pro. As we said then, Pro-Ject has more turntable models than any other manufacturer has ever had at any single point in its history. So it's no surprise to have them reappearing in our turntable group, here with the recently-released X2 B turntable. It's based on the original X2 model that was released several years as the big brother to the X1, and the B suffix indicates the most significant difference it brings. The X2 had only standard RCA outputs and cables. But the X2 B has also a special five-pin XLR connectors: a balanced stereo output. The X2 B turntable In a standard turntable output, the left and right channels have one ‘positive' wire and one ‘negative' wire, with…

music & movies doubling down on vinyl CLASSIC ALBUMS 2LP SETS Bob Dylan Blonde On Blonde 1966 Rock's first studio double, and still a masterpiece of sequencing, with each flip feeling like a fresh start and Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands sprawled across the entire fourth side. A half-century later, ‘Blonde On Blonde' remains inextricably bound to vinyl's uncontested golden age. Even owning it on CD feels plain wrong… The Mothers Of Invention Freak Out! 1966 A key text in the emergence of the West Coast counterculture and the second-ever double, after Dylan's. ‘Freak Out!' was extraordinary, combining psychedelia and avant-rock with tart parodies of doo-wop and bubblegum, culminating in side-long epic The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet. Cream Wheels Of Fire 1968 Two sides each of…

The Future Is Your Past Psychedelic overlords' Berlin-period purple patch continues.. Thirty-two years on from BJM's debut single She Made Me, Anton Newcombe's one-man mission to convert the world to the joys of lysergic shoegaze shows no sign of letting up. Written and recorded in Berlin during the Great Pause, their 20th studio album continues where 2022's excellent ‘Fire Doesn't Grow On Trees' left off, its anthemic feel a creative response to news feeds mainlining war and crisis. “Give it all you've got, it's the only way to live,” he advises in Do Rainbows Have Ends, a moving missive to his son Wolfgang. The Light Is About To Change is a pile-driving ode to self-assertion in which he growls: “Everybody's lost their minds”. Throw in blasts of shimmering Madchester-era powerpop…

What A Groovy Day: The British Sunshine Pop Sound 1967-1972 Shiny happy people. Given that the British songwriting tradition prides itself on melancholy, it may surprise some to discover that dozens of examples of ‘sunshine pop' were written under our rain-grey skies. Influenced by the Beach Boys and California, this tranche of grooviness emerged before the storm clouds of heavy psychedelia and prog gathered. Songwriters and studio wizards Tony Rivers and John Carter wrote countless pop hits of the era, and figure largely here. As well as founding the Ivy League, Carter led a group that briefly included a young Jimmy Page and Viv Prince, and created the Flower Pot Men (Let's Go To San Francisco). Petula Clark gets the sitar treatment, and there are respectable showings from The Tremeloes…

Music & movies classic movie scenes With Mad Max: Fury Road, Aussie filmmaker George Miller swerved CGI wherever possible and instead raised the bar for in-camera set-pieces. He then pole-vaulted clean over that bar by introducing the kamikaze inhabitants of Gas Town — think Cirque du Soleil performers, only with a leather fetish and doing their stunts from the top of a tanker travelling at 80km/h. The pole-cats spring into action in the climactic chase sequences, when the War Rig races back towards the Citadel carrying Max, Furiosa and members of the Vuvalini. A fleet of souped-up vehicles pulls alongside and the tanker is boarded by death-defying nutters swinging atop 40-foot poles. The high-altitude brain behind this sequence was action unit director Guy Norris, who first worked with Miller 34…

news MartinLogan ◆ Sennheiser In what it has described as “an ambitious ground-up development process”, MartinLogan has released not one but two series of new speakers — a ‘Motion' series, and a premium ‘Motion XT’. These are the fourth generation of the original 2010 Motion series, which brought to MartinLogan a more conventional room-friendly alternative to the company's legendary but large electrostatic speakers. The Motion name comes from the use of ‘Folded Motion' tweeters (FMT), a variant of the type originally patented by pioneer Oskar Heil as an ‘air motion transformer' or ‘AMT’. These use a low-mass thin film diaphragm folded into an accordion shape and placed in a constant symmetrical magnetic field; the alternating music signal then causes the diaphragm to fold in and out to deliver its sound. This ‘squeezing…

Not a whole lot, seems the answer to this question. These TVs were thin on the ground at CES, even from those who have previously pronounced 8K as a viable future. Sharp, TCL, Hisense — no new 8K offerings announced from any of them, though Hisense did tease an 8K short-throw projector, aka Laser TV. No new 8K from Panasonic, either, which may have withdrawn its TVs from Australia but continues to be a quality leader elsewhere, including 8K. We wrote last month in News about new power requirements for TVs in the EU, coming into effect from 1 March 2023. The 8K Association has warned that that the new limits on energy efficiency are so badly written that essentially no 8K TV will pass, and 8K TVs in the…

news Devialet Devialet has unveiled its first-ever portable speaker, looking just as you might expect, though it doesn't get full ‘Phantom' status — instead the French company describes the new Devialet ‘Mania' portable as “an ode to the Phantom”. The 2.3kg Mania is fronted by a spherical polished ring surrounded by water-repellent woven fabric which allows it a degree of splash-proofing (IPX4), while it packs a condensed version of the firm's proprietary audio technologies, here four fullrange aluminium drivers working with two woofers in a ‘push' configuration, all within the compact 19×18×14cm (give or take a stylish curve) enclosure. The amplification within is quoted at an unspecified 38W Class-D for each of the two woofers, and 25W Class-D for each full-range speaker. If that seems low by Devialet standards, that's because…

The largest AV systems integration show in the world is Integrated Systems Europe, or ISE, an annual four-day event which now takes place in Barcelona, Spain. The 2023 event saw South Australia's Krix collaborating with Trinnov, Sony and Officina Acustica on a 13.16.6-channel home cinema built within the Fira de Barcelona exhibition centre. And yes, you read that right — 13.16. 6, the most remarkable number there being the 16, indicating 16 subwoofers. The system had Krix's MX-40 LCR modules behind the screen alongside eight Cyclonix 18-inch subwoofers, with an additional eight of these subs on the rear wall. Sixteen Krix Hyperphonix 45 speakers were used in surround and overhead positions. This monster bass complement enabled demonstration of Trinnov's latest innovations in bass management and steering,which includes using fewer but…

When global president and CEO of CEDIA Daryl Friedman asked CEDIA members around the world what they considered to be the most important thing CEDIA could do for them, the number one answer is to bring new workers into the industry. So the global association has responded with the launch of the ‘CEDIA NextGen: Smart Home Career Toolkit’. This collection of free resources for CEDIA members is designed to help integrators forge connections with local talent pipelines, with presentations, video, sheets and jobfinder brochures that can be used in presentations to colleges, trade schools, government, community centres and more. As part of the NextGen initiative, CEDIA is also currently waiving the fee for job postings in its Career Centre, which can be accessed via the website below — we just…

So who really designed the new Ambeo Plus? The long development of the original (now the Max) took place under a dedicated Ambeo department within Sennheiser, with voicing input from key staff at Neumann. This new product is labelled “Designed in Germany, built in China”, and the packaging says it is made by “Sennheiser Consumer Hearing Gmbh”, with an address which is inside Sennheiser's German building. The soundbar is branded to Sennheiser, or rather the revised ‘Sennheiser Hearing' under which Sennheiser consumer products are being marketed since those consumer divisions were sold last year to Sonova, a Swiss group of companies that specialises in hearing care. So this new Ambeo Plus soundbar is really from Sonova, branded as Sennheiser Hearing, formerly the consumer division of the German Sennheiser. We've been…

Musical Fidelity MX-DAC upsampling DAC Two boxes, side by side, together filling the full width of a traditional hi-fi component. Both are from Musical Fidelity, the classic British marque renowned for some serious amplification (it has just announced a set of pre-power amps at $123,000 the set), but also in the history books for one of the very first examples of a standalone DAC (digital-to-analogue converter). Back in 1987 the standalone Digilog DAC had only one use, as an upgrade for the earliest CD players. Today, nearly all of our home entertainment arrives digitally, and it can all benefit from the abilities of a high-quality DAC applied to the audio stream. So that's the first box here, shown on the left above, the MX-DAC, turning digital inputs into an analogue…

Forget your Caliburns, your Clearaudio Statements, even your Linn Sondeks — if you're talking iconic turntables, the list is surely topped by the Rega Planar 3. Introduced in the 1970s, it was radical in its time and has retained certain ‘rebel' philosophies through its various revisions, which included the 1980s arrival of the almost equally legendary RB300 tonearm. It has never been out of production, even as Rega hedged against the vinyl decline with its ranges of CD players and electronics, and now that vinyl is triumphant once more, the Rega Planar 3 sits smack on a sweet-spot for those looking for a quality dose of the black stuff — though it is not, of course, without significant competitors. Build & facilities Rega is British, located on the south coast…

FREE STROBE CARD! IMPORTANT NOTES The centre hole has been optimised for RIAA-standard 7.26mm spindle sizes. Should your spindle deviate from this common but by no means universal sizing, adjust your hole accordingly inwards or outwards, by whatever method seems convenient, effective and pleasurable. Audiophiles argue, mostly among themselves, long and hard into the night, as to the best method by which the circle in the centre can be most reliably cut before placing the strobe card upon the spindle of your turntable. Piercing the centre and gradually enlarging the hole with a pen6 is the method adopted widely across Australia. In Europe some advocate a brief stab of a knife7 and then a snipping with scissors, but in Sweden they mount the strobe card on a strip of pine…

Key W = Sound+Image Award Product of the Year HC = Sound+Image Award Highly Commended E = EISA Award winner WELCOME Our buying guide is based on the Sound+Image Awards presented each year. We list the latest winners from our 2022 Awards, along with the best from previous awards, and also, as an EISA member, recent EISA winners. Standby also for next issue's full update in our 2023 Awards Special Issue! Streamers / projectors Streaming music players A difficult category to define, since streaming now appears in all manner of product from amps and receivers to DACs and headphone amps. Here we've included three award-winners that didn't slot in anywhere else! They're not just for Spotify; these streamers handle high resolution files from the internet or your network for the highest…

australian hifi SOHW SYDNEY 2023 WELCOME The Australian Hi-Fi Show 2023 in Sydney is just around the corner, set to offer audiophiles and hi-fi enthusiasts alike a golden opportunity to experience kit from their favourite brands (and discover new ones!) for a whole weekend. Brought to you by Australian Hi-Fi and Sound+Image magazines and What Hi-Fi? online, the brand-new show is a three-day celebration of the hi-fiand AV industries, with over 35 exhibitors poised to display and demo delectable speakers and electronics from over 100 reputable brands. And when — or indeed if — your ears and chequebooks are exhausted, the dedicated teams behind the three publications that bring you the latest equipment reviews, news and features all year round will be on-hand to answer any questions you may have. The…