Table of contents for July - August 2023 in Sound + Image

COMMENT I have a very wide room. In fact, in acoustic terms it might be considered infinitely wide, because each side is ultimately open, to the garden on one side, and on the other to a balcony which hangs over the edge of a rock drop-off. Both ends of the house remain wide open by day, and at night are closed off by insect screens, but nothing that will much constrain air flow. There is a lovely cool flow through this room, from right side to left side — of air, I would say, though our home's previous owner, a yoga teacher, called it chi. So I am loth ever to pull across the brutishly heavy glass sliding doors and so sever that chi. It flows even during ‘Antarctic blasts’…

TCL these days is out to extend its provision of home entertainment into white goods, recently announcing TVs, a soundbar, air-con systems, fridges and washing machines in one big Asia-Pacific showcase of multi-category innovation. Vital as we consider fresh air and clean clothes to be, well focus on the A V side. This includes the latest C845 generation of Mini LED TVs with quantum dot enhancement, claiming peak HDR brightness right up to 2000 nits. We review the $1999 55-inch C845 this issue (see p42), and this range rises to 65-inch ($2999), 75-inch ($3999) and 85-inch ($4999) models. There are two lower TV series as well. The C745 series combines QLED with Full Array Local Dimming technology (peaks of 1000 nits) in the same sizes, with prices from $1395 to…

news 2L • TAGA Harmony ♦ Hi-Fi Show TAGA Harmony is a new brand to Australia, but has a history back to the early 1990s, when its two founders — from Poland and Germany — formed the brand to deliver the high-end sound that they weren't enjoying from products available to them. The brand today has an extensive product portfolio, including hi-fi and home theatre speakers, in-wall/in-ceiling and outdoor speakers, multimedia speakers, hi-fi electronics, audio cables and accessories, with its main European office in Warsaw, along with ‘TAGA Audio Technology Company Limited’ offices in Shenzen, China. ‘TAGA’ is said to stand for the company tagline: ‘To Achieve Glorious Acoustics’. Pictured above is one of the company's intriguing range of hybrid amplifiers, the $845 HTA-600B, which uses a pair of 6H3 valves…

streaming 4 ways The rise of music streaming has led to a far wider variety of solutions than just the ecosystems of the various streaming ‘families’. So what's the right streaming solution for you today? Streaming took the music world a little by surprise. Vinyl had given way to CD, but CD gave way not initially to streaming, rather to file sharing. In the early days there wasn't the bandwidth for real-time music playback over the internet – you downloaded the file and played it back locally. Those were the days of Napster and Limewire, with vast collections of low-res MP3s torrenting their way from peer to peer, from user to user to user. Record companies entered panic mode – this was illegal sharing! Lawsuits were issued against sharing sites,…

streamers reviews A rcam made its reputation in solid and dependable separates hi-fi, and was always a company which stretched beyond the aspirations of many others, for example by designing video disc players back in the days when usually only the big multinationals were able to afford such investment. Streaming requires either a similar investment or collaboration with others — here the company's standalone ST60 streamer uses a streaming platform and MusicLife app which leverage technology from Airable for services such as Tidal, Qobuz and Deezer (note the focus on services of quality), as well as internet radio, podcasts, and playback of files over the network by UPnP. It fully decodes MQA, and is Roon Ready. But there's no limit to what other apps you can use and throw from…

We're divided on the aesthetics of Naim's New Classics — some say sleek, some think asymmetrically fugly — but there's no doubting the quality to which Naim has taken streaming, partly because it was conceptually converted far before many other companies. The New Classic range takes the best ideas from the company's Uniti range of smart amplifiers and puts them into true hi-fi separates. There's a standalone NSC 333 streamer, which could be combined with the NAC 332 preamp and either NAP 250 or NAP 350 power amps. But there's also an intriguing two-box smart amplifier solution, pictured above. This uses Naim's new NSC 222 streaming pre-amplifier (left above) as a gateway to streaming services including Tidal, Spotify, Apple Music and Qobuz, as well as internet radio and networked music,…

While our affections were this year captured by Sonus faber's Omnia take on the high-end all-in-one streamer (see opposite), it would be churlish not to mention Naim's pair of Mu-so systems also in this category. As we've seen, Naim was early into streaming, and has mastered the art of delivering it both robustly and at high quality. Yet the original arrival of the Mu-so was a surprise — being not the usual sort of thing from Naim — and a delight: we remember getting quite carried away with the magnificent knob on top. Were there an award for knobs, this one would get the gold. Each unit is in its second generation, the larger main Mu-so currently $2900, the smaller Qb $1700, though grille colour variations can set you back…

T KLIPSCH THE FIVES Klipsch nailed these streaming active speakers, leveraging the company heritage for some lovely retro looks along with profoundly solid sound whether from TV [very useful HDMI ARC in], computer, Bluetooth or vinyl. We loved them lots; they won a 2022 Sound+lmage Award. $1749 Inputs: phono/line in, minijack in, HDMI, USB-B, optical, Bluetooth Drivers: 25mm horn-loaded tweeter, 11.5cm woofer Contact: klipsch.com.au U KEF LSX II Not pocket money for such dinky speakers, perhaps, but you get the amps, the streaming, the HDMI input – they could be year entire system for movies end music. And they sound great, mech improved on the original despite being little changed physically. And five colour options too. $2300 Inputs: KEF Connect app [Spotify, Tidnl, Qobuz, Amazon, UPnP], minijack in, optical, HDMI,…

X JBL FLIP 6 The dinky little JBL Flip 6 is o greet little Bluetooth speaker for the money, ond it con poir up with another Flip 6 – or any JBL unit equipped with PartyBoost – to sound even better. Indeed you can link up to 100 of them, but if it's stereo performance you're after, two will do… 2 x $170 Inputs: Bluetooth in Drivers: 16mm tweeter, 45 x 80mm woofer Features: Battery, IP67 Contact: jbl.com.au Y APPLE HOMEPOD 2 The new HomePod wos designed to stream Spatial Audio and it sounds pretty good solo – but two of them paired in stereo is really whot you need for the full Spatial experience. Or pair them both with on AppleTV 4K for Dolby Atmos playback from your TV…

audiovisual Mini LED TV Once you've turned the TV on, Google TV and the Google Home app take over the set-up process, which is convenient in many ways, if not all. You gain the most benefit if you already have a Google Home, i.e. if you use the Google Home app (right) with various Googlable devices within it. The TV then appears as a device to be set up: you allocate the Home and the Room, and can then share your current Wi-Fi with the TV without all that tedious typing in of passwords. Once joined, you can use Google Home for basic controls, including a virtual remote control. Here we did experience a downside to handing set-up over to Google Home: it rarely works perfectly. When it got to…

hi-fi streaming zone player Let's get the definition of this clear first, with streamers and multiroom boxes coming in so many guises, as we've seen already this issue in our streaming feature. Firstly, then, this product is part of the Bluesound range, all of which shares the BluOS streaming and multiroom platform, together with its app. So it can stream wirelessly or via Ethernet from the internet, or from your device, or from files stored around your home. Secondly it is an amplifier, so it directly drives (via speaker cables) a pair of speakers. In Bluesoundspeak, that makes it a Powernode, in an ecosystem where the Node is simply a streamer, while the Powernode is a streamer plus amplifier. But there is already a Bluesound Powernode available, priced at $1649.…

Sam Encel is the brains behind ‘Brains’, a sleek new amplifier from Melbourne company Encel, adding to the brand's other “friendly audio products for music-loving Australians”: the ‘Gelati’ bookshelf speakers and a ‘Harald’ Bluetooth streamer. “I wanted Encel's offering to be so nice that you'd learn about it and even start dreaming of it ahead of speakers or a turntable,” he says. “Brains’ sound and features are really special for the price, but it's also something that seeks to be beautiful, timeless: a vital part of your home.” The custom steel chassis is fronted by an aluminium fascia finished with a fine sand-blast, available in black or white, featuring classic bass and treble controls, a minijack headphone output and, pleasingly, direct selection of all the inputs (also available via its…

Australian company Nura made such impressive in-roads into personalised hearing, including a Sound+lmage Award for its Nura Loop, that it's sad to find its website now mothballed since the takeover by Masimo, current owner of Sound United and custodian of its many audio brands, including Denon, Marantz, and Bowers & Wilkins. “Nura has joined forces with Denon”, says Nura's former CEO and co-founder Luke Campbell, noting that all ‘NuraNow’ subscription products and the Nura app will continue to be supported through this transition, including customer support and warranty support. It looks like the name will vanish, however. Masimo's first products have been announced, the Denon PerL and PerL Pro true wireless earbuds, and they feature not Nura but ‘Masimo AAT (Adaptive Acoustic Technology)’. They're due in August, price to be…

D SONOS PORT The latest version of the original Sonos product, built to bring streaming to an existing hi-fi system. It's more powerful and future-proofed than the Connect it replaces, though it lost its opticol output, and its analogue sound isn't price competitive at this level. S699 Inputs: Sonos opp, AirPloy 2, RCA analogue Outputs: RCA out, coaxial digital, spare Ethernet Contact: sonos.com/en-au E HEOS LINK The HEOS Link do es the same thing as the Sonos Port, but sounds better, has Bluetooth and native high-res support. The HEOS app is comprehensive and easy to use, allowing multiroom as well between HEOS units. This is where your overall choice of ‘family’ is crucial. $699 Inputs: HEOS, AirPlay 2, BT, 2 x analogue, optical in, USB-A Outputs: analogue preout, optical digital,…

G DENON PMA-900HNE Denon and Marantz share the excellent HEOS streaming and multiroom platform, yet amazingly this is the first integrated amp from Denon's hi-fi division to integrate it fully. The result is an excellent and versatile traditional hi-fi amp updated with top-notch streaming/multiroom.. $1799 Inputs: HEOS [Spotify, Tidal], phono, 3 each line & opticol, coaxial, USB-A, BT, AirPloy 2, Outputs: sub, speakers, rec, h/p Contact: synergyaudio.com H NAD C 700 Where the Denon end Yamaha amps hide their streaming smarts behind a traditional exterior, NAD'S C 700 puts them on show with a large front colour touchscreen display. The interface and streaming use the same BluOS platform as Bluesound; the power here is HybridDigital UcD from Hypex. $2699 Inputs: BluOS (Spotify, Tidal, radio], coaxial, optical, HDMI ARC, 2 x…

J SONOS AMP The current just-add-speakers ‘zone player’ from Sonos beefs up the power output and adds a useful HDMI input (so that two of these amps can even operate in 4.1). It benefits from the robust and versatile Sonos ecosystem, even if it's not the last word in sound quality. $1099 Inputs: Sonos app, AirPlay 2, RCA analogue in, HDMI ARC in Outputs: speakers out, wir eless subwoofer, 2 Amps for 4.0 Contact: sonos.com/en-au K BLUESOUND POWERNODE One of the best-regarded just-add-speakers players thanks to its BluOS streaming and multiroom platform complemented by a decent dose of NAD-sourced amplification. But it has o new competitor: a newer junior version. So see also our Powernode Edge review p57. $1699 Inputs: BluOS app, AirPlay 2, minijack/minioptical, HDMI ARC, Bluetooth Outputs: speakers…

M JBL XTREME 3* It's o big battery-powered Bluetooth speaker, and with a bottle opener on its strap, the outdoor party nature of the Xtreme 3 is assured. But it's not doof-doof: we were impressed by well-proportioned stereo sound. Or for something smaller, JBL's little Flips ore excellent value. $300 Inputs: minijack analogue, Bluetooth (*2022 winner) Drivers: 4 + 2 radiators Battery: yes Contact: jbl.com.au N RUARK R2 MK4 Yes it looks like o lovely radio, but behind its ash-wood grille is o full modern streaming system with opp control. We loved it both as a design and for the easy ways it brigs access to music – with streaming plus radio it's a powerful alternative to less attractive wireless speakers $899 Inputs: line input, Bluetooth, Octiv app (net radio,…

Q BLUESOUND PULSE SOUNDBAR+ The Soundbox+'S Dolby Atmos delivery is impressively detailed, solid end satisfying, and it effectively combines spaciousness and clarity when playing nonAtmos soundtracks, too. But as with most soundbars, it's not guite as impressive when playing music. $1999 Inputs: BluOS app, HDMI eARC, minijack analogue, optical, USB-A, Bluetooth, AirPlay 2, RCA analogue in, HDMI ARC in Contact: ambertech.com.au R JBL BAR 1300 Fully reviewed in this issue [see page 48], the Bar 1300 is pretty good with stereo music and great with Atmos music. There are many ways to stream to it, and you can even use each detachable wireless rear as a standalone Bluetooth speaker: three music systems in one. $2000 Inputs: 3 X HDMI, 1 x HDMf eARC, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, AirPlay, Alexa Cast, Chromecnst, Bluetooth…

streaming speakers review It seems appropriate to end this issue's round-up of the many ways to stream with a listen to the latest version of a model which set the whole tone of the market for wireless streaming at a real hi-fi level. The original LS50 Wireless launched in 2016. It took as its starting point the UK company's successful LS50 standmount speaker (today in its latest ‘Meta’ edition), then added amplifiers and streaming. Presto — all you need is the speakers, and a phone. And they are also such clean speakers visually, their tangerine-waveguided tweeters and ribbed mid/bass cones combined into one of KEF's long-running coincident Uni-Q assemblies. Successful as the originals were, leading the way can have its limitations. They came with some control app hiccups, and you…

If you search back into those racks of Sound+Image back issues all neatly hindered up in your shed, you'll find plenty of reviews of JBL soundbars — but no awards for them. We have judged them solid and competent, but hitherto not exceptional in what is, after all, an extremely crowded market. That changed this year, with the arrival of JBL's Bar 1300, at the head of a new set of soundbar designs from the brand. The Bar 1300 is the company's largest soundbar and subwoofer combo to date, and also its most ambitious. Its very particular trick is that each end of the soundbar can be removed and resituated at the back of the room, where they instantly become a batterypowered wireless rear speaker, so delivering genuine rather than…

So while the bigger-brother Bluesound Powernode uses HybridDigital power, the new Powernode Edge uses DirectDigital. These labels both refer to amplification as provided by Bluesound's sister company NAD, which gets its quid pro quo on the deal by using BluOS streaming in increasing numbers of its own smart amplifiers. So when considering a Bluesound system, remember you can consider not only Bluesound's own products, but also NAD BluOS products, as well as the few from other brands (PSB Speakers’ Alpha iQ streaming speakers, for example, and some options from DALI). They will all interconnect and work together under the BluOS app. NAD has been a pioneer in non-Class-AB amplification; we hesitate to say ‘digital’ amplification because HybridDigital, for example, is not ‘digital’; it harnesses Dutch company Hypex's innovative UcD (Universal…

music & movies top Atmos scenH55 BELFAST (2021) The opening scene. Belfast's sound team isn't always literal with the soundscape here, giving subtle hints that we are hearing through a child's ears. Voices of authority figures are pitched down to appear scarier, and unrealistic effects that 10-year-old Buddy would have heard only in films are sometimes used, such as the Western-style train in the opening scene. The lack of a traditional score opens space for sound effects and dialogue, weaving a rich, hyper-real tapestry that bubbles around Buddy. As he heads home, he clocks the familiar sound of a train. Something is amiss though, and as the camera tracks around a bewildered Buddy the noise of the train evolves into swirling, slow-motion noises of rioters, melding with an expansive undulating…

Musical Fidelity has announced the M3x DAC, expected to arrive late in August with a price point around $2700. It represents a little brother that harnesses the abilities of the successful M6x DAC (at $4200), but instead of that DAC's dual-differential ESS ES9038Q2M chips it uses an upsampled TI PCM1795 DAC, playing at 24-bit/192kHz, accepting up to 32-bit/192kHz PCM and DSD 256. It retains the excellent and useful frontpanel indicators showing exactly what signal is being received, while inputs include two optical, two coaxial and USB-B. Outputs are available as both unbalanced RCA and balanced XLR, and it features the company's Super Silent Power Transformer. More info from: www.audiomarketing.com.au…

A CAMBRIDGE AUDIO MXN10 The smallest and by a long chalk the most affordable of our 2023 award-winning streamers is the half-width MXN10, which us es Cambridge's excellent StreamMagic app as your interface, along with Spotify Connect, TIDAL & Qobuz built in, and Roon Ready too. It's excellent value. $899 Inputs: StreamMagic (Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz), USB-A, Bluet ooth, Airplay 2, Chromecast Outputs: digital, line-level RCA Contact: synergyaudio.com B MERGING +NADAC +POWER The electronics from Switzerland's Merging Technologies ore rightly considered to be among the best in the world; the company was making stodio ADCs and DACs before it made consomer gear. The price here inclodes both the NADAC streamer and POWER supply, bat not the CLOCK $34,285 Inputs: AES, optical, network (Roon Core/Ready) Outputs: analogue line or balanced, headphone Contact:…

streamers reviews We've already seen two of our awardwinning streamers demonstrating that there are few upper limits on either quality or price when it comes to streamers. And indeed Aurender here began in South Korea with the specific goal of making the best possible streaming and serving products, beginning in 2011 with the acclaimed S10. Note the importance of ‘serving’. This unit is significantly different to the other streamers in this section. For one thing it has only digital outputs; there is no DAC inside, so you'll need an amplifier with digital inputs. But ost importantly, in addition to its network and USB connections, and the ‘Conductor’ app which provides access to Tidal and Qobuz, the ACS 10 has a CD tray to rip discs — and a huge amount…

streaming amps incoming products You love your streaming but you also love retro hi-fi? How to get both together? Well, NAD's C 3050LE Stereophonic Amplifier, to use its full name, might be just the thing. Its external design is based on a 1974 NAD 3030, but of course inside it's all modern engineering, which includes a full suite of network streaming features courtesy of the BluOS platform and support for AirPlay 2, as well as two-way aptX HD Bluetooth and Dirac room correction. Also onboard are HDMI eARC, line-level and phono inputs and a headphone amplifier, while the power circuits use the latest version of NAD's HybridDigital amplification. Indeed there's much here which duplicates the more modern-looking NAD C 700 (see opposite), but with more connectivity and classic VU meters…

streaming amps reviews Technics was revived as a brand in 2014; Panasonic had short-sightedly dropped even its DJ turntables (and the licences for their design) just before cottoning on to the return of vinyl. Rather than go back only to DJs, it relaunched with a bling-filled designer range of quite high-end consumer stuff in silver and gold. But more recently it has found its feet with some solid and talented performers, such as the SA-C600. It is what we'd call a smart amplifier, though it's so comprehensively equipped that some might call it a receiver, since it has both DAB+ and FM radio tuners onboard. For our streaming focus this issue there's an excellent app which oversees network streaming capabilities up to 32-bit/384kHz, along with support for Spotify Connect, Tidal,…

all-in-one streaming The Danes consider the A5 their “ultimate portable speaker”: 12 hours of battery life, Bluetooth when you're away, Wi-Fi when you're home, enabling Spotify, AirPlay 2 and Chromecast streaming. It uses the company's Mozart platform, which not only allows software updates but also modular hardware updates should standards change significantly in the future. As always with Bang & Olufsen, design is to the fore, but technology too. The A5 is mono at the front: a 20mm tweeter and 13cm woofer, but a pair of 5cm drivers fire diagonally backwards using elements of the stereo signal to create a spacious sound. Meanwhile you can choose from the natural aluminium with Nordic Weave priced at $1650, or the anthracite aluminium with Dark Oak at $1800. The design is in collaboration…

audiovisual Mini LED TV This impressive TV with a shiny Google TV interface brings the newest and latest tech from TCL, and in particular the 2023 iteration of its Mini LED backlight technology. In this, the titular diodes are grouped into zones behind an LCD panel enhanced by quantum dots (QD), a combination which does a very good job of challenging OLED performance in many areas, and beating it in several key areas, notably brightness, notwithstanding the increasing fightback in that lumen department both from standard WRGB OLED and from QD-OLED (the latter currently delivering effectively one-third RGB OLED light and two-thirds QD light). In a briefing TCL gave to EISA editors recently on this TV and others, the European team indicated an even greater technology in the wings, perhaps…

hi-fi integrated amplifier Rotterdam, 1973: the 44th Audio Engineering Society Convention. Svein Erik Borja, a Norwegian broadcaster and record producer, is watching a Finnish researcher from Philips in Eindhoven, Matti Otala, presenting a paper entitled ‘An audio power amplifier for ultimate requirements’. This was a rather more exuberant title than Otala's presentation made three years earlier – “Transient distortion in transistorized audio amplifiers” – but the focus was the same. Otala had described a distortion that he termed Transient Intermodulation (TIM), now more commonly termed Transient Intermodulation Distortion (TID). This was, he claimed, the reason that amplifiers didn't sound as good as their THD might claim. In the time between the two papers, Otala had set out to prove his theory practically, so that the 1973 convention featured an audio…

music & movies classic movie scenes Steve McQueen's ‘Cooler King’ makes a last bid for freedom in John Sturges’ 1963 WWII POW drama, The Great Escape – and boy, did his attempt live up to the title. Trapped on the German border, astride a stolen German motorbike, American pilot Virgil Hilts defies incoming Nazis by revving his engine, racing for the barbed-wire fences and hoping for a leap to freedom. Standing in the saddle and pushing the bike down a grassy hollow, the action man guns his ride over the first fence in a breathtaking stunt jump that many believed McQueen, an accomplished biker IRL, did himself. Though McQueen had performed all of his other stunts in the movie (including playing both himself and the pursuing Nazis during the preceding…

news show report The first hi-fi show in Sydney since the pandemic stopped the planned HIFI2020, the Australian Hi-Fi Show 2023 opened its doors on Friday 28th April, running through to the Sunday afternoon, with exhibits across four floors of the Novotel Sydney Central just a stroll down the tramway from Central Station. Delivering any hi-fi show is a challenge, and hotel rooms can be variable in their ability to deliver hi-fi at its best. So what impressed us the most was the quality of sound to be heard. At most shows we leave thinking of the four or five rooms that were sounding superb. At this show we could barely point to two or three that weren't sounding superb, so our congrats to the exhibitors for terrific work in getting those…