Tabla de contenidos para May - June 2019 en Australian HiFi

Shut up and take my money! That’s what I was thinking the moment I saw the promotional video of the Mag-Lev Audio ML1 turntable. Why? Because its platter was spinning in midair, levitated several centimetres above the plinth, looking for all the world like an alien spacecraft coming in to land… except that it wasn’t landing, it was hovering in midair, with an ethereal orange glow emanating beneath it. Wow! The promotional copy accompanying the video made it clear that this was no YouTube trick. Mag-Lev Audio, a company I’d never previously heard of, based in Slovenia—a country about whose exact location I was somewhat vague—had managed to build a turntable with a platter that rotates in midair, so there’s no bearing, no drive motor, no rubber belt… none of…

Brian Zolner is the ‘Bri’ in Bricasti Design, a company founded by two former employees of Lexicon, joined subsequently by engineers from Madrigal Laboratories. Here, he talks to Jez Ford about the Bricasti M5 reviewed on page 50 of this issue… Jez Ford: So tell us about your Bricasti M5 Network Player... Brian Zolner: So we have the M5 which we announced a year ago, but we also launched before that the M12. And the idea of the M12 was what I call a source controller; it has analogue in, digital ins, so it’s a nice front-end for somebody, a preamp/DAC. And we developed the network rendering streaming interface for that product, and designed that card—the physical shape of it, how it mounts—so it could be retrofitted into any M1.…

AUDIO RESEARCH REFERENCE CD9SE Audio Research has released its Reference CD9SE CD Player/DAC which, as with all ARC’s reference products, uses valves… in this case in its analogue output stages as well as in its power supply. The output stage of the Audio Research Reference CD9SE uses four 6H30 dual-triodes, while a 6550WE and a 6H30 are used in the power supply. The digital section features quad 24-bit DACs running in mono mode, with dual master oscillators; one for 44.1/88.2/176.4 sample rates, and the other for 48/96/192kHz sample rates. Sample rate conversion is selectable for all inputs (USB 2.0HS, AES/EBU, RCA, and Toslink), and also for disc playback, allowing conversion to be either at native resolution or upsampled. Users can also choose their preferred filter type: fast roll-off or slow…

My heart sank when the editor rang to ask if I could stay home on Friday to take delivery of a pair of Revel speakers for review. ‘Are they floor-standers?’ I asked. ‘Yep’ was the stern reply. ‘What series?’ was my next question. ‘Performa F228Be’, he answered. It was not the answer I had not wanted to hear. It’s not that I don’t love Revel speakers… I do… plus I am also a great fan of Kevin Voecks who’s still the man in charge at Revel, ably assisted by his right hand man (who’s actually Revel’s principal engineer) Mark Glazer… and no less a persona than Dr Sean Olive rounds out the design team… talk about heavy-hitters in the speaker design fraternity! No, I really do love Revel speakers… it’s…

ARP (his childhood nickname) was, literally, a rocket scientist. After serving briefly in the US Army and then graduating from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, he started his career in electronics working for NASA, where he was involved in designing and building instrumentation amplifiers for the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. He left NASA to co-found (with Roger Noble) Philbrick Researchers and then later founded Nexus Research Laboratory, whose primary business was designing and building solid-state operational amplifiers. Both companies were sold to Teledyne in 1966, which created Teledyne Philbrick Nexus. Three years later, after hearing Bob Moog’s synthesiser, Pearlman and David Friend established ARP Instruments to manufacture synthesisers of their own design. This switch to musical instrument production wasn’t such a stretch for a rocket scientist, because Pearlman was…

Many famous hi-fi brands were established in the post-war period in the United States, almost all of which were named after their various founders. Six or so decades later, most of the famous names are owned by conglomerates, and are not at all connected with their original founder in any way other than name. Most no longer even manufacture their products in the USA. But there is one exception: Grado. This famous brand—and company—is still in the hands of the Grado family some two-thirds of a century after it was first established in Brooklyn, New York. And, what’s more, Grado is still hand-building its products in Brooklyn. The Grado GH3 Heritage Series headphones are one of this company’s lowest-priced offerings. They’re very light in weight (156 grams) and, as you…

Many audiophiles are ‘rusted on’ followers of Arcam, having been fans of this British brand since its humble beginnings back in 1976, when it started life in Cambridgeshire, England, as ‘Amplification & Recording Cambridge’ a name that was soon after sensibly abbreviated to Arcam. However, following Samsung’s purchase of Arcam (adding to a high-end hi-fi portfolio that now includes JBL, Lexicon, Revel and Mark Levinson) I suspect that many of those rusted-on followers were waiting with bated breath to see what the first new range to be released under new ownership looked like. As you can see, it’s basically ‘same same’—as in that nothing has really changed. All three components in Arcam’s new HDA (High Definition Audio) line are typically ‘Arcam’ in terms of appearance, finish and build quality, those…

Picture this scenario: You’re very happy with the carefully curated hi-fi system you’ve spent years putting together. You’re in love with your loudspeakers, you’re proud of the pre/power combo that’s driving them, and you’re delighted with your DAC. But you have this problem. You’ve been inveigled by the internet, with its promise of streamed music, downloadable music, all with the cherry-topped inducement of high resolution. Have you seen the problem yet? Yes, the problem is how do you interface your beloved system with the IOT? Indeed, how do you even interface it with your computer and the music files stored there-in…or somewhere thereabouts (and here I’m thinking servers and NAS drives). The solution to this scenario is the Bricasti Design M5 Network Player… except that it’s not really a ‘player’…

I came into hi-fi in the early 1970s, right at the peak of quadraphonic sound. Vinyl was the only way to listen to music recordings with quality (except for those lucky few with access to a reel-to-reel tape machine). But it was often a depressing scene. A new record, straight from the shop, often suffered from surface noise. Sometimes noise just seemed to appear magically on a record despite one’s greatest care. This was at a time when I’d earn a little over six dollars a week for eight hours work, and an LP cost around six dollars. As I said, depressing. When digital rolled around a decade later, I was one of the first to roll up with $1,200 1984 dollars in hand to buy a Sony CDP-101. Say…