The Remton 383 Mk 2 Phonostage is made in Prague, uses a trio of ECC83s valves and costs a smidgen over £1000, Janine Elliot tries it in her system for Hifi Pig.

There are an assortment of different phono stages entering the market at the circa-£1000 price point, in all shapes and sizes. Lots offer specifications and looks that would have cost much more some years ago, with many coming now from East European countries. Remton Audio, a company owned by Alexander Remmer, is a product of the Czech Republic and based in Prague, and whilst might well be a new name to many (indeed their first exhibit was only in 2013) they have already created a portfolio of phono stages that would put some established companies to shame.

Alexander has an obvious yearning for creating the best reproduction from your records. With a motto of “Real Vinyl Sound” and using proven traditional concepts and components Remton Audio are already creating products of good build and sonic clarity, and without a hefty price tag to match. Alexander favours moving magnet designs and only adds moving coil in “Mk2” versions as an “extra” facility using Sowter step-up transformers. The Mk1 version of the 383 reviewed here comes in at £550 and in two boxes; one for the power supply and one for the ECC83s/12AX7 tube based design. The Mk2 is now all in a single traditional black or silver fronted design of box, and with separate divided compartments to stop influences from the toroidal power supply, nothing exotic or wood, and even the valves are hidden inside rather than sticking through the top as in the Mk 1 incarnation. This model also has added Sowter step-up transformers for the MC cartridges, common to all Mk2 versions, and dip switches to allow you to fine tune to your cartridge of choice. With input impedance from 36 Ohm to 100k Ohm, and input capacitance choice of 0, 47 pF, 100 pF, 147 pF, 220 pF, 267 pF, and 367 pF, depending on permutation of the dip switches I could tailor my Kontrapunkt b to the optimum setting of 80Ohm load impedance via the 47k and 100K ohm switches and with the ‘MC-low’ switch, and 100pF capacitance. Their higher priced models use LCR RIAA design, whereas this £1050 offering, whilst having a similar appearance, uses a passive RIAA equalisation, zero negative feedback and excellent low noise output.

It is labelled as the ‘383’ because of the three matched JJ Electronic ECC83s tubes. Their cheaper 8382 model therefore has matched JJ ECC83S and JJ ECC82S tubes.My initial awareness was of a surprisingly efficient output and quiet noise level allowing the music to come through both loud and clear and all with a great depth; Saint-Saens Piano Concerto’s (EMI Aldo Ciccolini) had full power and weight with superb midrange, a propensity that ECC83’s in output stages give so well. It reminded me of the sound from my ECC83/EL84 Leak Stereo 20.  A high level of three-dimensionality of sound was also observed, particularly in the depth of sound front-to-back. Everything was smooth, relaxed, unfettered. At no time did I find this phono-stage needy nor was it limited. Saint-Saens Organ Symphony (EMI London Philharmonic Orchestra, Serge Baudo) had bite in the bass that filled my listening room with music, showing how well the bass-to-low midrange frequencies were looked after by this phono-stage. Patricia Barber ‘Live in Paris’ had an amazingly energetic and forward bass line, and ride cymbals with a clarity that made for an involved listening session. David Gilmour ‘Rattle that Lock’ first track is called 5am, and the quietness of the amp during this relaxing start wouldn’t wake up anyone. Once David himself woke up I was compelled to listen and felt very close to the music and hence the spirit of what this latest album was all about. As a contrast Tangerine Dream ‘Rubicon’ gave me a chance to match the ECC83’s with VCO’s, VCF’s and VCA’s of the 1970’s. This was fun. A sound of delicacy and depth matched only by my treacle pudding that I heated up for tea. Unlike my pudding I never got sick of listening to the 383. No, this product had immense character. Only when reconnecting my choice $8,000 Manley did I notice the speed – particularly at the start of bass sounds – wasn’t quite as crisp and resolute, though there was more of it. Indeed, it was the bass/mid that got me engrossed in this design. The Tangerine Dream 180g album was less inviting through my own phono-stage, making me wonder whether the whole point of listening to music is technicality or to get involved inside the notes. The 383 certainly captured my mind with curiosity and intrigue, placing me closely involved in the music that at points during my review made me wonder if I should actually buy one for my own listening room. This was a product very much worth trying out, and if you should actually want a MM-only version, then of course one is available at a cheaper price. Their LCR RIAA phono stages at £2750 and £3250 would however be my next point of call.

CONCLUSION

There are many phono-stages at this price point, but very few have the musicality, richness and warmth that this design brings to bear. This product is well worth an audition and it got me hooked right from the start, and whilst detail in delivery is not quite on par with top-end and top priced amplifiers, at £1050 it was extremely good fun to listen to.

Sound Quality: 8.45/10

Build Quality: 8.3/10

Value for Money: 8.6/10

Overall: 8.45/10

Price at time of Review £1050

For:

Excellent retrieval of detail for the price
Warmth of sound

Cons:

The speed of sound not quite as good as some
Slight upper bass – lower mid emphasis
Basic looks

Janine Elliot

The £995 TR-5 S2 loudspeaker has already been extensively reviewed by other hifi magazines over the years since its introduction, so why is Hifi Pig reviewing them now I hear you ask?  Dominic Marsh will explain.

Roksan recently threw open their product catalogue for Hifi Pig to choose any component we wanted to review and other Pig reviewers plumped for their latest products, but I jumped at the chance of hearing these speakers and I did that as at one point a few years ago I was contemplating buying a pair (which didn’t even get as far as an audition) because I am a great fan of ribbon tweeters which drew my attention back then to these particular speakers.

However, I found myself with some spare time on my hands before they arrived, so I did something which otherwise I would never do and that is to read some of the online reviews of this particular speaker.  They all praised the tweeter’s capabilities, but then comments about being a touch light in the bass registers, plus an “uneven frequency response” were noted.  One reviewer’s snapshot opinion is one thing of course, but when more than one are saying roughly the same thing then that is beyond coincidence.  Has the TR-5 speaker been unfairly blighted by the reviewers?  Let’s see shall we.

CONSTRUCTION

Retailing at circa £995 it is very unusual to find a ribbon tweeter included in this price bracket… and at considerably higher prices too I might add.

However, a ribbon tweeter also presents problems in selecting a suitable bass driver to pair with it, as the crossover point is usually at a higher frequency than using a conventional domed/coned tweeter which can reach lower frequencies.  Roksan have overcome this by keeping the bass driver (relatively) small at 130mm with a 100mm cone made from doped paper to keep it light in weight for it to be agile enough to reach further up the frequency range and the crossover designed accordingly.

Cabinet dimensions are 370 x 190 x 280 (HxWxD in MM) and is reflex ported, the port itself is rear facing.  Connections are via good quality binding posts which will accept bare wire, 4mm banana plugs or spades and configured for biwire or biamping, with jumper plates fitted for single wire operation.  Cabinet construction details have not been provided by Roksan.  The review pair submitted were finished in piano gloss white and fitted with white protective grilles attached by secreted magnets in the cabinet carcass.

Frequency response is quoted at 39Hz to 20 kHz for in room response.  Rated at 88db sensitivity, 8 ohms nominal impedance.

SOUND QUALITY

When I first connected them up to my resident system, I was somewhat taken aback by the amount of bass these speakers produced. They were anything but “bass light”, in fact they were positively prodigious in the bass registers – a bit too much so.   I would say it was a comfortable 200 hours before I did any critical listening at all and to my perception the prodigious bass had settled down to a more evenly balanced sound. I dashed off an email to Roksan asking if the pair they had sent me had any running hours on them or were they hot off the production line?  They confirmed that they were a factory fresh pair and would need some time for running in. I also mentioned that the reviews I had read stated that the bass wasn’t as full as some and he said to be truthful he didn’t read reviews, but intimated that the pair I had been given for review had been upgraded with some trickle down benefits from the Darius speaker design for the crossover components and they had also re-calculated the amount of wadding that went in to the cabinets to improve the overall sound of the TR-5 S2’s. Dan Worth has already reviewed the Roksan Darius speakers for Hifi Pig and a gather he was rather enamoured with them, so some transfer of that design into the TR-5 S2 model can be no bad thing. Now that says to me that I was not dealing with the exact same speaker that had been reviewed before over the years and buyers should be made aware of that, so wouldn’t it be wise therefore to differentiate the latest production version from the earlier ones?  Tufan, owner of roksan, readily agreed and hence we now have the “Series Two” designation for the latest production models.

Back to the sound then and I commenced a decent running in period before making any notes about the listening sessions. As an aside, when as a reviewer you have four sets of factory fresh speakers delivered to you to evaluate at the same time (give or take a week) and each of them need around 200 – 400 hours of running time to bed them in before the listening sessions begin, then spinning a dozen plates is a somewhat less daunting task, trust me.  Interspersed with the speakers were also two amplifiers and a DAC as well, that all needed running in times of equal measure. Sheesh!

The real star of this show is without doubt the ribbon tweeter that Roksan have incorporated into the design and sets it well above the herd.  Ribbon tweeters are not cheap and I would imagine specifying these for a sub-£1,000 speaker was not a decision taken lightly by Roksan, nor was having a piano gloss finish as standard either, but that is not within the remit of my review to ponder over and I set to task myself how it sounded as a package.  As you would expect then, the treble registers were very well extended and clean sounding with just a mere touch of silkiness to keep any harshness at bay from poorer quality  recordings, which to me is very welcome.  It’s all well and good aiming to achieve the highest fidelity levels of sound, but recently I’ve had some components in for review where the design brief was exactly that (aiming for the highest fidelity possible) resulting in products that were so relentless in presenting exactly what is in the recording it became very fatiguing within a very short space of time, so this reviewer is not in the least averse to a touch of beneficial colouration for a more musical and less fatiguing presentation and if we were to be brutally honest about this, then so too are the majority of audiophiles in the same camp and it then becomes my prime job to express where those colorations lie and which kind of audience it may appeal to the most.

Where was I?  Oh yes, the sound quality.  First job then was to place them on suitable stands, as I would certainly not class the TR-5s as a bookshelf speaker.  I have a pair of Partington Dreadnought 60cm stands and they were pressed into service for the speakers to sit on.  Being rear ported, they benefit from accurate positioning away from the side and rear walls and I found 25 – 30cm in each plane to be about the right balance for bass output.  Sticking with the subject of bass balance, there is some real heft and weight in the bass registers, kick drum in particular having a real pounding clout behind it.  The leading edge is a tad rounded off however, but not too much so by any means because my benchmark is set very high in this respect. Moving up the frequency range to the upper bass/lower mids, there was a cloaking type of warmth to the sound which will find many admirers no doubt, especially the loyal Roksan fans with K2 amplification which have their own set of unique sonic parameters and presumably this is what the TR-5’s have been voiced to pair with, even so they should sound fine with other systems.

OK then, what if you don’t own Roksan amplification, what suits the TR-5 S2’s?  In for evaluation at this time was an Aaron “Chrome One” integrated amplifier (Also reviewed for Hifi Pig) which I admire greatly for its superb sound attributes, but the TR-5 S2’s didn’t sound at their best with this particular amplifier, nor with my resident amplifier for that matter either. Being the opportunist that I am and pressing all available resources into action, I connected up the Roksan’s to a Fezz Audio EL34 valve amplifier rated at 35 watts per channel which was also in for review.  Now the TR-5 S2s sounded at home and more in harmony with this amplifier, producing a more fluid sound that was more pleasurable to listen to and remained there for the entire evaluation. The upper bass warmth was diminished by a small amount but still perceived by me and intruding into my listening pleasure which did perturb me somewhat.  A glance round the back of the speakers and there they were, my nemesis – jumper plates on the speaker terminals.  Plated brass do not make an audiophile connector so off they came, replaced by pure silver jumper wires I keep especially for dealing with this particular fiend.  The midrange fog vanished, the treble seemed extend even further up the range now and the bass acquired a tauter more reassuring firmness, with that leading edge sharpened up a good tad too. Talk about a ha’porth of tar spoiling the ship as the old saying goes and why manufacturers spend inordinate amounts of time and money developing their products to sound at their best and then fit this cheap trash is beyond my understanding.  Rant over, back to the subject matter in progress.

In to the CD drawer goes my reference recording which is Fink’s “Wheels Beneath My Feet” live album.  Track one called “Biscuits For Breakfast” begins with the drummer gently striking the Ride cymbal as the intro, which has to portray the metal ringing in the cymbal to be accepted as real and any masking here shows up instantly and readily. As expected, the ribbon tweeter fitted to the TR-5 S2’s gave a faithful and accurate representation of those cymbal strikes and the venue ambience too. Bass kick drum had real impact and almost dominated proceedings, so any prior accusations of being “bass light” by others were disregarded by me from then on. Fink’s voice had a real throaty rasp to it and for a short while I wasn’t sure if this was an inaccurate representation given by other speakers without this trait, or the TR-5 S2’s were coloured in this area, as my resident system does not show it up at all.  Bit of both I would imagine. Imaging and soundstaging was excellent with plenty of width and depth to the sound. Not quite up to a holographic ‘walk around’ level, but very good nonetheless. Anyway good people, I played this album from stem to stern and the TR-5 S2’s met all my listening benchmarks without issue.

As a contrast to that, I followed on with some electronic music in the shape of Tripswitch’s excellent album “Geometry”. There is some superb layering in this album and it takes a sure footed pair of speakers to unfold and pull back all the layers so each strand is separated out and clearly defined in every respect. The bass lines really are deep on this album, rather subtle in places too and can easily be muddled by the music around it. The TR-5 S2’s didn’t quite have full command and control of this album as my resident speakers are able, especially around the bass which tended to collide with other instruments and once or twice got recessed into the rest of the music. Top end detail was well defined and concise, that silkiness from the ribbon tweeter clawed back the losses arising from the bass and outdid my resident speakers with cone treble drivers so the score ended as a balanced draw.

I also played some classical music to round off the evaluation and I have several “Best Of” kind of CD’s as this genre of music doesn’t really thrill me to be truthful and as for enduring a full concerto my blood runs cold at the very thought, but readers like to know how components fare with this type of music and here then is how the TR-5 S2’s conveyed orchestral music. As reflected in the paragraphs above, the bass was similarly fulsome and weighty, string instruments came across as powerful and solid, bass and cello in particular had a rich sonorous quality that was rather pleasing and violins had a distinct absence of squeal or shriek. The woodwind section was similarly blessed and brass had a mellow sheen rather than a coarse attack as some speakers can demonstrate. Grand piano sounded like a Grand Piano, so what more could one wish for from a pair of speakers?  Big pat on the back Dominic, you survived that well.

CONCLUSION

To sum up the Roksan TR-5 S2 speakers then, the sound overall was warm and mellow rather than clinical, fast and sharp, bass was full, powerful and rounded, while the midrange still showed signs of colouration despite swapping out the jumper bars, which furthers adds to that perception of warmth. The upper registers were a delight, with that ribbon tweeter certainly releasing top end detail with clarity and a light touch of silkiness.

The real conundrum with the TR-5 S2’s is whether or not they would fit in well with your own system. If you are already in the Roksan fan club then they should I would hazard a guess pair rather well with Roksan amplification, if you have a bright or bass light system they could fit in well there too. I got excellent results from the Fezz Audio EL34 tube amp, so don’t rule out a pairing with a valve amp either.

The best attribute about them is that price tag.

Build Quality: 8.3/10
Sound Quality: 8.5/10
Value For Money: 8.7/10
Overall: 8.5/10

Price at time of review: £995

Pros:

A ribbon tweeter in a sub £1k speaker is a rarity and elevates this speaker above the herd.  

Cons:

Midband coloration leans the sound towards the warm and mellow, so makes system synergy matching a little harder but rewarding when finally achieved.  

Spend a few extra Pounds, Dollars, Euros or whatever to buy good quality jumper links for sonic benefits.

Dominic Marsh

The £995 TR-5 S2 loudspeaker has already been extensively reviewed by other hifi magazines over the years since its introduction, so why is Hifi Pig reviewing them now I hear you ask?  Dominic Marsh will explain.

“The real star of this show is without doubt the ribbon tweeter that Roksan have incorporated into the design and sets it well above the herd.  Ribbon tweeters are not cheap and I would imagine specifying these for a sub-£1,000 speaker was not a decision taken lightly by Roksan, nor was having a piano gloss finish as standard either, but that is not within the remit of my review to ponder over and I set to task myself how it sounded as a package.”

Read the full review of the Roksan TR-5 S2 Loudspeaker

With its parallel tracking arm and LED lit platter, the £4700 Pre Audio GL-1102N Turntable hailing from Poland certainly looks a little out of the ordinary. Will it prove to be just that or something extraordinary? Janine Elliot finds out for Hifi Pig. 

There are not many times in my work as a reviewer that I get excited. There are so many wannabees out there with claims to be the best at everything. I have heard it all before from manufacturers claiming that their new components or technologies make everything in the past to be…well, history.

To be sent a 60kg granite turntable whose 65mm resin platter lights up in multiple colours was not going to be a good start for me, but boy was I surprised. At £4700 including Audio Technica AT33sa MC cartridge, the Polish Pre Audio GL-1102N, distributed in the UK by GPoint Audio, is one of 6 turntables in a range starting at just over £1k to the ATM-1401 with AT ART 9 cartridge at £7900, that all but one feature parallel tracking arms. The turntable up for review here is second from top in the list of players from Daniel Prendecki, a master craftsman from Nysa, Poland in his early 30’s who has only been manufacturing turntables since 2009. He was quick to realise that unless you have a parallel tracking arm like The CartridgeMan or Rabco SL-8E, turntables such as Harman Kardon  ST7, Revox B795 or the gorgeous B&O Beogram 4000 , or indeed the very first Edison, you will always get lateral tracking error, and hence some distortion. Therefore all his machines are designed this way to get an ideal geometry, and provide a more accurate reading of the record and consequently more detail.

The early versions of parallel tracking arms relied on lights or mechanics or a very noisy air pump to allow the cartridge to move slowly across the groove without rubbing against the groove as it forced its way to the centre. If you were to read my recent Retrobyte column about distortion in vinyl you would understand my sheer joy at hearing a turntable play records just the way they were recorded from the Neumann VMS-70 or 80 cutting lathe. Only the Nackamichi TX1000 self-centring turntable with a parallel tracking arm would remove all distortion and speed fluctuation caused by non-centred record pressings, but having a conventional turntable with parallel tracking arm would at least be the nearest best thing to playing a record as it was supposed to be heard. 

Air is probably the best solution removing any friction on the rail carrying the arm/cartridge, and the arm itself needs to be as light as possible to make this happen even more smoothly. On the hand-made-to-order Pre Audio GL-1102N this is certainly the case, with the 95mm arm being a very thin hollow carbon fibre. The cable is lightweight Litz and the thin diameter air cable means no hindrance in its move across the record. The rod that the arm assembly moves across is supported at both ends, unlike the cheaper models in the range, so this does make it look a little more functional than beautiful, but does make it very sturdy. The arm is lifted up and down via a rod pulling own on the rear of the arm pivot point. All very simple, but very effective. There is no damping of the cueing of the arm, so a little care is needed to do it gently, though the big size of the cueing lever on the right means this will be done slowly anyway.

This turntable and arm system ushered quality in terms of materials and design. Only trying to find a suitable stand that could take the weight of this behemoth was the problem. The granite plinth is available in varying finishes, though the grey/black version up for review has the smaller and tighter “particles” and gives the best sound. The AC motor is floating, and surprisingly just relies on a steady power supply rather than some fancy speed stabilising technology. The supplied AC/DC adaptor is for the three LEDs that light up this beast, allowing you to choose the mood of lighting to suit that of the music, whether one of the 8 colours or discotheque-style fading between them, all operated via the supplied remote control.

The outer-platter belt drive turntable was very quiet in operation and got up to speed in good time. The only noise was a very quiet and well damped pump, in its own box complete with a pressure gauge, to show how much air it is putting out. The long cabling and tubing means it can be placed in another room if required, being operated via a rocker switch on the rear of the turntable itself. The turntable comes with a heavy record clamp with a spirit level built in to the centre (though I relied on my own more accurate spirit level when setting up).

I was quite sceptical about the simplicity of the motor system but the lack of any audible wow from my perfect-pitch sensitivity (the turntable rated at 0.01%, and +/-0.2% speed variance) made my old ‘Classics for Pleasure’ Rachmaninov Piano concerto No.2 (Martino Tirimo, Philharmonica Orchestra Yoel Levi) highly emotional and exact. I always prefer strong motors and outer-belt driven platters, and this one is a heavy triple-layer platter and ensured stable revolving of the turntable. The amount of space in this recording, both left and right and front to back was quite startling. This was just as the record had been etched onto the master.  Consequently there was no distortion from the cymbals bashing away in the middle of the 3^rd movement, and on side two with his Variations Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini the pianist’s deep breaths were highly audible. I was there in the audience, and these being two of my favourite works I was crying. Really!! 

Turning to the excellent Queen Collection, via Krell/MFA/Manley and Graham Audio LS5/9s, it was like sitting in the studio in front of Freddie. “Jazz” has a wealth of international flavour, not least because it was their first album recorded outside of the UK, and that the cover design was inspired by a painting on the Berlin Wall, but also in the variety of different styles of music and instrumentation, whether Indian Sitar or American Blues. Fat Bottom Girl had smoothness but accuracy that made it like a Rodgers and Hammerstein full music score, if perhaps a little sedate. The long decay from piano and guitar at the end of ‘Jealousy’ was longer than I remembered it, and Bicycle Race – inspired by seeing the Tour de France whilst in Montreux – had a beautifully realistic piano showing no lack of composure. This turntable was so accurate that in a way the music became too easy. Pink Floyd “The Division Bell” had clarity and depth that made me relax and want to breath in all the notes. The AT33sa with its Shibata stylus and boron cantilever is a dark sounding cartridge with an excellent delivery of the deepest bass, and a few times I did feel I needed better control from the arm to carry it through successfully. Many will know my love of the Townshend Rock with its trough/paddle system to control those deepest lows. But that said, this cartridge/turntable duo made the music speak with control I have only heard in top end turntables. The soft bass drum after the first minute of the first track of side two was tight and powerful, and quite simply beautiful.

Dire Strait’s Mark Knoffler “You Can’t Beat the House” (Get Lucky) had an enlarged atmosphere with vocals, drums, honky-tonk piano and ride cymbals clearly placed in 3D in front of me. The cymbals were particularly clear. There was no worry about cartridge distortion due to badly set up bias compensation or wrong angle of the elliptical cartridge to the groove. Cartridge set up was as easy as pi (sic).  “Cleaning my Gun” had power but immense clarity amid the powerful drumming, but nothing was rushed. No, this turntable was careful with all that it played.

Saint-Saen’s Organ Symphony No3 (Serge Baudo London Philharmonic Orchestra) is a detailed and complicated work with strings up against brass and woodwind, and the Pre Audio gave a polished performance, with the deep pedal organ in the third movement taking off with a control only my Wilson Benesch Torus subsonic generators could pull off perfectly. This might not be a polished performance by the orchestra, but I enjoyed listening more than with any other turntable I have put it up against. This was the orchestra in my living room, and every nuance from the orchestra was picked up with control. The second movement is filled with violins conversing with cellos and violas and the organ quietly muttering in the background. This was good. Scratches in the record just didn’t matter, indeed they seemed quieter.

Now you might think that I have nothing negative to say about this turntable, but this is not true. I love the idea of solid plinths (my early marble Trio and Garrard 301 homemade solid platter gave an amazingly good bass end) but what it does mean is that any noise getting past the rubber feet will make their way to the cartridge (albeit in this case not a worrying amount, since the air bearing dampens most of it), and it does mean that a sensible and strong stand is a necessity, which could mean almost another £1000 on the price. Also, the three translucent platters making up the tower are held together with inbuilt magnets and ball bearings, meaning you need to be careful when cleaning the record prior to playing so that you don’t get too carried away as the 3-layered plinth might come apart. Also, when removing the record, the cork top platter can come off with the record if there is static on the record. Perhaps the cork should be glued to the top platter, though of course it does mean I can use an alternative, such as the Statmap. The cork platter has a line marking across it from the spindle making that cartridge alignment even easier. The spindle for the record is only affixed to the top ‘layer’ of platter, reducing noise from the bearing, which only connects with the first, lowest platter. This turntable is therefore very quiet.

CONCLUSION

I have heard many turntables in my life, indeed I already own 13, all with their plus and minus points, but this turntable, complete with the capable AT 33Sa cartridge gave me more fun than I have had since unpacking my very first Fidelity record player at the age of 9 years. Just like me, Daniel Prendecki could see there were imperfections in all of them which led him to start making his own products.

This turntable was not only a pleasure to play but it was also entertaining for all those who came to visit, having never seen an unusual looking turntable that lights up as well.

For the price this is a quite stunning offering, and being so impressed this will now be my turntable number 14.

Build Quality: 8.6/10

Sound Quality: 9.2/10

Value for Money: 8.8/10

Overall: 8.87/10

Price at Time of Review £4700

Pros:

Sonic supremacy

Parallel arm

Competitive pricing

Very easy set up

Looks
Lights up

Cons:

At 60kg requires a strong table

The top platter can become separated from below if you are not careful

Janine Elliot

The EAT C Sharp turntable certainly looks the part for £2500 including tonearm, how does it sound? Janine Elliot spins some vinyl. 

It isn’t often that female entrepreneurs produce products for the mostly male hifi customer. EAT (European Audio Team) is, I’m pleased to say, one such company run by Jozefina Lichtenegger, the lady married to Heinz Lichtenegger, who many will know is the CEO of Pro-Ject. Whilst there are certainly links in the design from both; the use of carbon fibre and MDF for example, this is a completely different company and the products look to my eyes much more endearing. This is a Lexus, rather than a Datsun. The raked aluminium edged platter, carbon-fibre arm and the cute power unit which is separate from the turntable, were particularly good features for the price. 

For my review I connected it to my Manley phono-stage, also a company run by a woman despite its manly name. This marriage was even more music to my ears when I connected Koetsu’s Black MC cartridge. The C# is a recent offering from EAT, coming in at £2500 including the C-Note tonearm carbon fibre/aluminium unipivot arm. As a child I kept getting cards saying “Don’t B sharp, don’t B flat, just B natural” and I couldn’t quite understand it because in my eyes (and ears) B sharp was actually a C. There is a cheaper and simplified “C major” (or should that be B Sharp) just out with the same arm at an amazing £1750, but the model for review here is still very good value for such a lovely looking turntable, particularly when you consider the arm and a platter comprising carbon fibre and something called Thermoplastic Elastomer.

Many will know that EAT actually started out as a maker of high-quality audio valves and accessories. A few years back the company produced its first turntable, the Forte, which still remains today their flagship deck at £13500 with the E-Go 12” tonearm. Since then, the company has steadily introduced further models, each one interestingly more affordable than the last. The Carbon fibre in the construction means it can be an extremely low table by virtue of its strength; indeed it is quite anorexic in height and quite different from the intimidating Forte. This low profile base chassis is actually made out of highest density MDF.  On this base the motor is mounted as well as 10 damping feet made from energy absorbing (and therefore damping) TPE (Thermoplastic Elastomers). All the rumble of the platter or bearing is therefore directed in the TPE columns where it is absorbed so that it doesn’t get as far as the arm and cartridge. The cone-shape TPE columns carry the Carbon Fibre suspended plinth. Whilst motor noise didn’t end up at the cartridge, the chassis was noisy if I tapped the table or plinth, so it is important to place it on a good foundation. 

Unlike most turntables the bearing is actually an oversized and inverted bearing shaft with a ceramic ball atop on which is placed the sub-platter, and with the main heavy platter being placed on top of that. There is a 700 gram mass point at this bearing and, according to Lichtenegger, all the energy is sucked up and converted to heat.  Whilst the platter certainly didn’t change temperature, it was free to move with no resistance, though was disconcertingly close to the carbon plinth. The motor is attached to the lower chassis so that no vibrations make their way to the platter bearing and to the arm. As this top platter has angled edges it is not easy to hold, so the record clamp is screwed into it and this is used as a handle to lower carefully on to the sub-platter. This is after, of course, you have affixed the belt to the motor and the sub-platter. The circular belt itself is made from a length of special anti-static rubber that has been glued and then polished, just as from many small turntable manufacturers. Whilst I could see the join, it was all smooth, unlike a few, I hasten to say, I have seen from manufacturers over the years. Many turntables seem to charge extra for record clamps, but this one comes gratis, and as mentioned just now, is a necessity. EAT recommend you don’t screw the clamp down when playing records, but rather that it just sits on the record, and the screwing action is only required when moving the aluminium platter itself.

I did love the ease at setting up the unit, and this included affixing cartridge to the arm. The tonearm itself includes a combination of cardan and uni-pivot bearings, immersed in special damping fluid designed to damp the tonearm and cartridge resonances by more than 50%. As a fan of the Townshend trough and paddle system I can understand the benefits of damping, though I feel it is more effective at the cartridge-end. The cardan or universal joint was coined by Gerolamo Cardano, an Italian, and this tonearm, by combining both friction-free pivot simplicity and cardan flexibility makes it very steady and robust, unlike the Hadcock Unipivot arm which put me off for many years until Roksan and others convinced me otherwise. This arm is actually quite complex in design, with cardan joint for the horizontal and two ball race ABEC7 bearings for vertical and unipivot damping pin to complete the setup. The whole isn’t perhaps as beautiful as some tonearms, but it is very practical and a doddle to set up; Only the clever bias compensation caused me a few moments brain searching whilst I assembled the anti-skate weight to the sliding mechanism. A plastic cable is affixed under the tonearm base along a groove and down to the weight, a little fiddly for my old fingers. After which within a few minutes of adjusting arm height to get correct VTA I was ready to start listening.

For the review I was lucky to have a Koetsu Black K, the Japanese company’s entry-level cartridge which retails for £1788. Koetsu’s cartridges go all the way up to £7400 with bodies in the Platinum range fashioned from semi-precious stones such as Burma Jade, Blue Onyx and Blood Stone. The Black might not be quite so beautiful, but to the many followers world-wide it is equally as desirable. Handmade by Fumihiko Sugano, the son of Koetsu’s founder the late Yoshiaki Sugano who named the company after his ancestor and role model, the 16th-century artisan Honami Koetsu, you could see the passion for quality from this master craftsman from the moment you open up the wooden box it came in. This particular cartridge has seen many years of faithful playing, being their first ever cartridge, and is still hard to beat, even at its not so entry-level price of £1788. With samarium cobalt magnet, a solid boron rod cantilever and hyper-elliptical diamond this is a well thought out cartridge. The end result of the engineering is a cartridge with a smooth and classy sound. This is for those who will listen with a glass of Chateaux Mouton Rothschild Pauillac rather than a litre of Tesco Cider. Music was what this cartridge was all about, and combined with the C#, at a collective price of £4288, the duo worked together like newlyweds. Whether the detailed contra-rhythms in Bowie Blackstar or the minimalist simplicity in my aged EMI Debussy  L’Après-midi d’un Faune (CBSO, Louis Fremaux), everything was there, and all with a very musical ‘ease’. The Queen Collection album “The Miracle” track 1 ‘The Party’ is a powerful foray of Freddie vocal harmonisation made so simple by the cartridge’s lower-mid frequency excellence. The combination makes the music sound so in control, quite forgiving but not lethargic. The electric guitar keeps you on your toes.  ‘Khashoggi’s Ship’ was as rigid in control as the arm is made, with plenty of decay on cymbals when appropriate.  Not bad for £2500 including arm.  

Speed selection and control is via a tasty looking black box connected to the rear of the turntable, which flashes the speed you have selected until it has reached stable velocity. Sitting next to the turntable, the combination exudes class. Whilst the turntable might not have the twin-turbo power of the twin-motor Forte, it still gets up to speed quite quickly and with ±0.01% wow and speed accuracy of 0.08% is all very good. Only the motor noise at -40dB is disappointing, though being kept away from the cartridge meant little interruption in my enjoyment of the music at the important end at -70dB. The Koetsu Black is not a clinical cartridge. If you want something open and neutral then look somewhere else.  These cartridges have a personality of their own. In some way their name fits the sound; albeit grey rather than black. These are not bright sounding cartridges, but neither are they dull. Mike Valentine’s Vivaldi Four Season’s had rich and strong strings but equally lively harpsichord provided by Paolo Cognolato. The sound pairing works well, and I could see why Absolute Sounds, who supplied the combination for review, put them together. The more I played the more I liked. The sound, whilst not the most detailed presentation from vinyl was quite addictive.

CONCLUSION

This is a really good pairing, both in terms of audio and looks. In contrast to the butch looking Forte, this is an item of jewellery and something you will either love or hate aesthetically. And you can choose between fluorescent blue, pink or red covers to hide it all under when not in use, if you so wish.

At £2500 plus cartridge this turntable/arm will be music to the ears of most that listen, but do consider carefully the best cartridge for your set up. For those shy of spending money on the Koetsu Black, then the Ortofon Quintet Black might be an option at a third of the cost. Both have good midrange frequencies working well with the arm. But rest assured that even a £2000 cartridge is not beyond this deck.

Pros:

Competitive pricing

Easy set up

Looks
Arm can handle top cartridges such as the Koetsu Black

Complete with record clamp 

Cons:

Not quite so quiet as some turntables

You might not like the aerodynamic look

Price at time of review £2500 without cartridge and £4288 with Koetsu Black Cartridge

Janine Elliot

As audiophiles now demand high quality audio wherever they may be the portable audio market is a growing sector. Janine Elliot takes the Questyle QP1r digital audio player out and about for Hifi Pig.

I have always been fascinated by personal stereo, right from my early (and still working) Sony Walkman. Travelling on trains daily necessitated some means of entertainment. Things have gone a long way since cassettes. Whilst mp3 is still very much unfortunately the ‘hifi’ for the majority, a few of us are lucky to realise just how bad that all is and 24/96 and 24/192 are just the starting points for decent sound quality.

In the last few years we have had a steady introduction of hi-end players from Sony, iBasso, Cowon, Fiio and Astell & Kern, to name but five, but recently new comers and old hifi favourites such as AR and Pioneer have joined in the party. Questyle is the latest, with two stunning looking personal players, beautifully carved from aluminium playing FLAC, ALAP and DSD as well as older favourites. You will want to show off these beauties, rather than hiding them inside a leather or rubber case.  This company is not a new name, making a series of DACs and headphone amplifiers.

There are two models in the range, the silver QP1 and the gold QP1r, which uses higher quality components, as well as a more critical approach to the audio circuit.  This produces lower distortion and superior sound quality. The QP1r also employs a different PCBA, larger internal storage chip (32GB) and a different software version. The QP1 is actually not being released outside of the Eastern market, so you won’t see this one in the UK.

The QP1 and the QP1r, which is reviewed here, use “Current Mode Amplification”. What led to these form an interesting story. Wang Fengshuo (Jason Wang), founder and CEO of Questyle Audio, was studying sound and not happy with what he heard, finding that use of the old tried and tested technique of negative feedback amplification brought transient intermodulation distortion (TIMD). Companies such as Gryphon, PASS and MOON, have been aware of this problem for years and have adopted the approach of little negative feedback or no negative feedback at all to avoid TIMD. In the spring of 2004, whilst at University, during the summer holidays Wang and three friends discovered that current mode circuits produced little TIMD. Krell, of course, had for a while been using CAST (Current Audio Signal Transmission) technology for audio transmission, and non-negative feedback design. To cut a long story short Wang and his fellow students designed their own current based amps which were at first unsuccessful, but later the results were high-performance with a massive bandwidth (1MHz) and a level of distortion only just measurable.

After graduating at University, Wang worked for a United States’ IC design company. At this time he wasn’t satisfied with headphone amplifiers for his Sennheiser HD800 so started working on building current based headphone amps, which led in 2007 to the CMA800, the world’s first Current Mode headphone amplifier. By 2012 it was clear that he needed to develop his ideas professionally so he left his comfortable working environment, and started up Questyle Audio. The QP1 DAPs finally arrived after nearly 100 pre-production versions to get the components just right. Both versions of the DAP on review are highly spec’d both visually and component wise. Both are aluminium with Gorilla glass front and rear, Nichicon F95 professional Audio tantalum capacitors, power inductors from German company Würth, and Alps pots. With a 3300Mah battery life of 10 hours, this all reads and sounds good, working well for ALAC, APE, FLAC, AIFF, WAV, WMA Lossless up to 24bit/192kHz and high-Res audio files such as DSD128 and DSD64.  The low distortion levels mean that the QP1r produces a THD of 0.0006%, with the QP1 not much worse at 0.0015%.

First listening to the QP1r showed just how precise the sound was, and how much information can be coloured or lost in many DACs and players that I have played with over the last few years.  Both models in the range use the 3x clock design in their CAS192D, ensuring stable and precise operation and with Cirrus Logic CS4398 DAC chips, and with the Current Mode Amplification technology makes it able to drive any of my headphones with great ease; and with 0.19ohm output impedance means it can drive  low or high impedance headphones. Indeed there are settings for low gain mode and high gain mode for low and high impedance cans, respectively. The QP1r is the professional version.

Both are pure class A and using discrete transistors and components, and employ an iPod style wheel, with four touch sensitive buttons around this, two above and two below. The wheel takes some getting used to. This was certainly not Apple, and even more confusing than my Fiio X5 (which scrolls down the screen when you rotate anti-clockwise; opposite to what I would expect.) The scroll wheel on the QP1r needs to be pressed quite strongly for you to scroll up or down. Indeed you need to move it at some speed as well to navigate up or down to select a track and the bottom two touch sensitive buttons were my favoured method of navigating up and down in the end. What I did like, however, was the pin sharp resolution of the screen and speed of navigation of your music files; as soon as you put audio onto the internal 32Gbyte drive or the two microSD cards (128Gb max each), the files appeared in the menu, without the need to ask the device to add them to the library. Whilst the screen has a good definition, with a classy black and white screen around 43mm x 39mm which turns to colour if you have the cover design of your albums, some of the track information, such as the album is rather small and visible only in the right-bottom of the screen; I would prefer bigger writing for my old eyes.

Only at the start of my listening did the unit seem to glitch when playing Mp3 and wav-files, and walking on one occasion it stopped playing, necessitating me to pull it out of my pocket and press play again. I thought perhaps the battery was running out, but I managed more than the quoted 10 hours of playing hi-def files between charges. But, and I really need to stress this, after a week in use it was as reliable as the British rain. One reason why I like to spend a large amount of time with each review is to iron out first impressions.

SOUND QUALITY

Whether I fed it classical, jazz or pop it played with total authority and ease. The headphone amplifier is taken directly from their flagship headphone amp, the CMA800R, and the sound quality shows. Only when I used my Fiio X5 through the Slee Voyager headphone amp did I start to enjoy the sound as much as from the QP1r. The QP1r’s headphone amp is good! While it was clear and extended, the Slee/Fiio had a better bass end, with a more valve-like musicality. But, in terms detail there was no comparison, and every time I returned to the QP1r.  “Battle Royal” (“First Time: The Count Meets the Duke” Duke Ellington and Count Basie) had detail I couldn’t imagine from the 1961 reel-to-reel to 24/192 copy. However, and this is the important bit, listening on the class-A Slee, I felt more involved in the music because I was less aware of the detail, if that makes sense. A bit like why many people preferred Plasma tv’s over LCD rivals.  The clarity wasn’t so good, but the whole picture was better. My 24/92 rendition of Bax Tintagel Symphonic Poem wasn’t quite so emotional for me in the Questyle.  Christos Anesti ‘Agnes de Venice’ with its mélange of road noises, pink noise and electronics and ancient instruments, Greek orthodox vocal touches, record-scratches and much, much more, was clearer and with a wider soundstage in the QP1r, listening through my Audio Technica W1000X or Sennheiser HD650 headphones. This clarity did, however, seem to make the sound a tad clinical. Sting’s Englishman in New York had an inspiring soundstage, though the tom-tom wasn’t quite as authoritative as I know.  The 24/96 Drums Duet (LessLoss-Drums duet 5-24 bit-96 kHz-LL) was surprisingly open and the noise floor was exceptional. The sound was chillingly sparse and exposed allowing me to hear every nuance of sound with a clarity my Fiio just can’t do. I could hear a pin drop. Again, though, it just lacked some of the musicality of the Slee and Schiit headphone amplifiers.

At £699 it is still good value for money and is priced midpoint between the Pioneer XDP-100r and Acoustic Research M2 equivalents, but at this price point faces tough competition with other manufacturers vying for a place in the audiophiles’ front pocket.

CONCLUSION

When QueStyle first envisaged making a hi-res portable player they set themselves the target of making something as good as a complete hifi set up but in portable form, and they have managed almost like magic to squeeze into a mobile phone-sized pint pot something quite spectacular.

For a new comer to this scene this Chinese product is exceptionally good. After my initial disappointment at reliability it became extremely reliable and extremely fun to use. It also has sufficient output to drive my Sennheiser HD 650’s without any trouble. After all, what is the point of a mobile device if you have to pair it with a separate headphone amp. I just wish it was slightly more musical, though.

Pros:

Definition
Soundstage
Looks
Solid build

Cons:

Slight lack of musicality
The wheel!
I would prefer bigger screen

Price at time of review £699

Janine Elliot

The Fostex PM0.5d Active Loudspeakers costing around £250 a pair are intended for small studio, nearfield monitoring, but Stuart Smith has had them on his desk as his daily desktop listen for a few months now…what does he think of these for home use?

I do a lot of my day to day listening sat at my desk with the laptop as the source running JRiver and using a little Schiit DAC. It’s not massively high-end of course but then I’m not listening critically at all. Basically what I require in a desktop system is something that sounds good enough not to offend and to be mostly out of the way as my desk is in a corner of the open plan living daytime living area. The only bit of kit that is actually on show at any point is the speakers with all the electronics and wires being hidden (mostly) by the desks cable management system (read a small shelf underneath the desk hidden by a drawer). Previously I’d been using a pair of KEF X300A which were very good and had an inbuilt DAC, but a move around to accommodate the newly appointed listening space, racks and speakers has meant that the desk has had to be downsized (and accordingly the speakers) with Linette commandeering the KEFs for her own daily use in her work space elsewhere in the house. So, I needed a new pair of desktops that would allow me to listen to tunes whilst I worked and through which to review promos and the like.

Enter the Fostex PM0.5d loudspeakers from SCV Distribution. The speakers are clearly aimed at desktop users and are really meant to be studio monitors aimed at those with smaller project studios. They are available in white or black (I went for black to match the desk) and cost just shy of £125 each…so £250 a pair. Round the back you’ve got TS phone and RCA input, a volume control, the power switch and the figure of eight power inlet. There’s also a small oval port. The speakers are Chinese made but feel solid and well made, weighing in at 4.5kg each.

Importantly for me they are 181w x 280h x 260d (mm) which fit pretty much perfectly where I need them to. OK, for an audiophile audience this may not seem a huge consideration and many will make room for bigger speakers, but this is not an option on this occasion I’m afraid. The speakers I have on my desk need to fit the space and sound good…end of!

So what do you get for your dosh? You get a two way bass-reflex arrangement with a 20mm soft domed tweeter and a 130mm “Aromatic Polyamide” bass unit. The online bumph tells me that the cone uses a mixture of cut and milled fibres that are made from aromatic polyamide that is then impregnated with resins for damping and rigidity. On top of this the driver also has an “olefin” film thermally adhered to the surface which is there to control frequency response. The tweeter uses Fostex’s UFLC technology (Poly Urethane Film Laminated Cloth). Driving the bass is a 35W class D amp whilst the tweeter uses a 23W amp with quoted frequency response being 55Hz – 30kHz. The amps are magnetically shielded should this be of importance to you. 

The speakers are good looking little things with a rounded off baffle, no visible screws or fixings on the front, a Fostex logo and a blue LED to indicate they are switched on and receiving the source, they switch off and the LED turns red when they aren’t receiving a signal which is a useful feature. Set up is as simple as plugging them into the mains with the supplied leads, attaching your source (I used RCAs) and putting them on the desktop…all very easy and a matter of a couple of minutes effort.

SOUND

I’ve bought these for desktop use and I imagine domestic users who buy them are likely to be doing likewise. For nearfield listening they go plenty loud enough and only start to break up and distort at levels that would be uncomfortable for long periods. As you’d expect for a speaker that is primarily aimed at the home studio market the speaker is pretty flat with nothing jumping out of the frequency range to leap forward and take over. Bass can get a teeny bit woolly at higher volumes but that’s to be expected really given their positioning and rear port, but what I really did enjoy about these speakers was the soundstage they present; everything is separated very nicely in the mix and whilst position dictates the tweeters aren’t at ear level, you get the impression of looking down on the stage with everything well positioned…given that I spend a lot of time typing with my head down I found this sensation rather pleasing (sort of being like at the front of the balcony at a concert). SCV sell a product called the IsoAperta which I have here at the moment that will raise the speakers to a more normal height and damp them but more on these at a later date. Mids are nice with female vocals being really well produced for a speaker at this price point and on jazz (Miles Davies “Kind Of Blue”) you get to hear good detail in the instruments. Techno is relatively tight and full of detail with no complaints at all from this technohead. 

CONCLUSION

I don’t think there’s a great deal of need to go into a load of detail and bang on about these speakers at great length as there’s little to whine about at the pricepoint. The little Fostex’s are not fussy about your source material and play everything I throw at them perfectly well. Of course they are not perfect with my main minor gripe being the bass at high volume being a bit rounded off or woolly at the edges, but then at close quarters you’re not going to want to push them I’d suggest. They don’t plumb the absolute depths with regards bass but what desktop speaker system is going to?

In a big room they are going to get a bit lost to be fair, but that’s not what these are designed for. They are nearfield monitors and so the desktop environment is ideal for them. You would get away with using them in a smaller room such as bedroom for non-critical listening too i’d guess and I am tempted to get a second pair just for this purpose.

For the asking price and used as I am using them, they are well made and represent really good value for money. They look good on the desktop and pop them on the end of a decent little DAC like the Schiit Modi and you’ll have very little to moan about for an every day, desktop listen that is packed with detail and with great soundstaging and imaging.

Pros:

Good price given you don’t need external amps

Compact and attractive

Communicative and detailed 

Cons:

Bass overhang at loud volumes

Stuart Smith

O2A are a speaker manufacturer from Liechtenstein headed up by Anna Robathin. Here Dominic Marsh tries out the company’s €1760 (2.5m pair) O2A Quintessence SUBLIM Speaker Cables. 

It’s surprising sometimes where the products originate from for review by Hifi Pig. In this instance it is Liechtenstein, and it’s a first for me.  Also another first is these products are designed and hand built by a lady called Anna Robathin who originates from Russia and I mean that as no sexist remark, rather than a shining light that hifi manufacturers should not always be male orientated and a big welcome for design talent of female persuasion. In 2000 Anna graduated with distinction Vilnius High Technical school as an engineer of telecommunication (transmission audio, video and high frequencies signals and has good command of 5 languages (English, French, German, Lithuanian, Polish) and Russian as well. In addition she has got solid musical education. That provides the possibility to expertise the quality of Hi-End products and audio quality. In 2008 she created the first line of acoustic cables under her own brand name O2A and at the same time acoustic speakers and amplifiers were created in cooperation with French engineers.

O2A also produce a comprehensive range of both analogue and digital cables.

CONSTRUCTION

The first thing that struck me when I opened the packaging for these SUBLIM speaker cables was how well built they are.  The attention to detail is incredible even though the outward appearance is fairly basic and minimal.  By attention to detail I mean the connectors are very good quality being made from copper. The heat shrink is cut and applied perfectly and the black outer mesh covering really is fitted tightly and evenly too.  The outer diameter of the main cable is 12mm and reasonably flexible, which then splits into two tails at each end – one each for the positive and negative connections respectively.

The actual construction details elude me despite searching on the internet and the O2A website isn’t all that forthcoming with details either, but I am given to understand the conductors feature copper and silver.  I could have asked O2A to give me a detailed reply to a query, but my job is to convey to you what the product sounds like and in the cold light of day that is what counts in relation to money outlay for sound quality achieved, which to me is always the bottom line to consider.

Price at time of testing is 1760 Euros (GB£1366.00, US$1992.00) for a standard 2.5 metre pair with the choice of either 4mm banana plugs or spade terminals.  Other lengths and outer sheath colour choices are available to order.

SOUND QUALITY

Overall balance is very neutral with no emphasis in any area of the audible frequencies.  Bass is solid and articulate, in correct balance and proportion to the other frequencies so it was very easy to listen to.  Treble is sweet and ever so slightly rolled off at the very top end so less than perfect recordings don’t have a sting to them and this makes for long fatigue-free listening… a joy in that respect.  What this cable is particularly good at is scouring out the micro dynamics in recordings, with more than one “not heard that before” kind of comments from me during the listening sessions. 

For example, while listening to the opening track London Grammar’s excellent ‘If You Wait’ album there is a wealth of synthesized reverberation effects and a deep penetrating bass line to the music, underpinning the female vocals.  The SUBLIM cable portrayed this track with both the delicacy and power necessary to make it an enjoyable and satisfying listen.  Track two from the same album contains some very obvious and deliberate fret fingering on steel strings from the guitarist and that comes across as crisp, defined and uncannily real sounding.  The whole album is infused with artificial ambience and the SUBLIM cable rendered this perfectly.

Ginger Baker’s epic drum solo on ‘Wheels of Fire’ by Cream has the drum kit close mic’d during the performance which is ideal for testing transient ability.  Snare drum and tom toms sounded taut and dynamic the way they should be and the cymbals had a polished refinement with no splashiness or tizz.  Kick drum too has a solid “whump” that feels like it’s hitting you in the pit of the stomach as much as you hear it with your ears.

Moving on to Derrin Nauendorf’s ‘Live at the Boardwalk’ which is a live acoustic recording with Derrin  playing solo acoustic guitar and accompanied only by a basic set of drums, the tonality of the guitar’s sound was conveyed realistically and full of natural resonances and timbre.  Every pluck on the strings was heard in great clarity and detail, although I cannot say that Derrin is the best of vocalists, but an enjoyable listen nonetheless.

Treble then is clean and clear, and I was able to pick out minute detail and finer points, even when the music got hectic.  Bass has depth and power, without overhang or delay and is able to react to fast transients in a clear delineated fashion.  Female vocals were up there with the best of the competition.  Play a simple acoustic recording in a live venue and all the reverberation effects and ambience in a venue are delivered with solidity and competence.   This was plainly evident when I played Fink’s ‘Wheels Beneath My Feet’ live album and noted that the venue ambiences for each track actually sounded all different because they were each recorded at different locations during one of Fink’s many European tours and in this respect the SUBLIM cable didn’t disappoint at all.  In the track called ‘Sort of Revolution’ we can hear the drummer driving down hard with his Floor Tom strikes which does reverberate powerfully around my listening room and really does show up any loose or flabby bass immediately when it occurs, but again the SUBLIM cables renders this very well.

The acid test for me personally is whether or not I play entire albums or just my favourite tracks off albums and secondly, how long do my listening sessions last for, so each album played from start to finish and very late bed times without realising what the time actually is, is a huge endorsement.

CONCLUSION

How can I sum up these cables then?  From appearance alone they are rather nondescript and I have seen a plethora of handsomely clothed cable confections over the years which had issues during the listening sessions.  The O2A Quintessence SUBLIM cables on the other hand are no catwalk candidates as far as appearance goes, but had no issues sonically as best as I can tell, so priced at 1760 Euros for a 2.5 metre pair the majority of build cost appears to have been spent on the inside rather than the outside and that does impress me.

Neutrality is the keyword here and the entire frequency spectrum is in correct balance from top to bottom, so it isn’t a cable designed to impress with its attention grabbing fireworks.  It is all too easy to play track after track, album after album through these cables and you feel well sated at the end of your listening sessions.  Has to be a recommendation from me then and well worth searching out for to audition in your own system.

Pros: 

Neutral sounding with equal balance throughout the range from top to bottom.

Ranks highly in sound terms amongst its peers in the marketplace

Cons: 

External appearance doesn’t convey high quality commensurate with cost.

Dominic Marsh

Studio Connections are a cable company building their cables in the UK and headed up by Michael Whiteside. Here Dan Worth takes a listen to their Platinum digital cables costing £1350 for 1m, terminated lengths.

Studio Connections takes a radically new approach to making cables by centring the design process on how the brain perceives spatial and positional information with sound. They first delved into the biology of how sensory receptors deduce position, distance and depth.

In developing the products, designer Michael Whiteside draws from a BSc in Electronics and over 30 years of recording music, manufacturing cables and building studios that have included recording and mix studios such as the BBC, EMI Abbey Road and King’s College, Cambridge.

“The technical result for our cables is that they have very accurate timing across the broad, high frequency spectrum, that is essential for our ability to interpret spatial awareness. The musical result is that the cables deliver faithfully, allowing us to hear incredibly natural sound and stereo with realistic dimensions.” says Michael.

Platinum Digital cable is designed to provide excellent balance and ground path on both the balanced and unbalanced versions and to prevent stray currents and interaction between earth and signal carriers, even at radio frequency.

Like all Studio Connections cables, the conductors are formed in a high nitrogen content insulator to provide fast interconnectivity.

PLATINUM DIGITAL CABLE – Measured Technical Data and Specifications:

Conductor material: Ultra High Purity Scandinavian Copper

Primary dielectric layer: Olefinic/nitrogen foamed primary

Second dielectric layer: Solid polyethylene secondary skin

Lay: Parallel

Overall jacket PVC with Polyethylene (PET) Braid

Overall diameter 19.0mm x 7mm oval/ 0.747 inch x 0.275

Single Ended (Unbalanced)

Drain wire: 196/0.1 high purity copper

Capacitance (min) 11pF/m, 3.38pF/ft

Resistance 0.012 ohms/m, 0.0036ohms/ft

Conductor: 196/0.1 ultra high purity copper

Connectors: Studio Connections Custom RCA Gold Plated

Balanced

Conductors: 2x 196/0.1 ultra high purity copper

Capacitance (min) 11pF/m, 3.38pF/ft

Resistance 0.012 ohms/m, 0.0036ohms/ft

Drain wire: 7/0.2 tinned copper centre woven

Connectors: Studio Connections Custom XLR Gold Plated

AT FIRST GLANCE

Each cable from Studio Connections (SC) comes in a nice presentation box, not overly elaborate by any means. Often with cables one is left wishing the product cost was less and the wooden box with gold inscriptions was just a Jiffy bag. With Studio Connections it is a nice satin cardboard box, sufficient for task and is graphically pleasing.

Inside you find an oval shaped cable. I was greeted by a XLR AES/EBU and an RCA SPDIF digital cable. On inspection the cables seem incredibly well made and have an understated yet high-end feel to them, I especially liked the plugs at each end. Their grip and strain relief on the cables was tight with no gaps and very strongly adhered. I rang Michael Whiteside and asked him about the plug bodies, he told me that they are actually made in house and the bodies are formed on a 3D printer – very snazzy. The printer itself was also built in-house with custom heads and configurations for speed and accuracy.

Installing them into my system was a breeze, there is great flexibility and although for the RCA version the plug casing looks large I didn’t have any issues with varying equipment when connecting in close proximity of other cables.

I’ve been a long term user of Studio Connections cables and the former company name Abbey Road Cables, owning cables from each of their ranges over the past several years. I’ve always obtained a great balance of sound from their products and considered their ranges to be very well priced and extremely effective in application over many items of kit in various systems. My last experience with SC was about 18 months ago as I like to try new products from different companies, so when approached for a review of the Platinum Digital Cables, which I had not investigated until this time I was more than happy to accommodate the company.

THE SOUND 

With the cables already being thoughtfully burned in were ready to go out of the box.

As my DiDiT DAC212 doesn’t accommodate AES/EBU I used an Audiobyte Black Dragon as my test DAC. Owning the Hydra X+ from the same company allowed me to connect both SPDIF and AES/EBU cables simultaneously and simply flick between inputs to compare with each and of course assess direct comparisons with other cables.

Similarities 

This section of similarities needed to be the first and foremost piece of dialogue. Both cables have  sonic differences from their respective implementation and the AES has a slightly darker or deader background, but most notably when listening to either cable I was drawn most definitely to the landscape of the image. The soundstage produced by both cables was very well locked in, allowing for a non bloated centre focus and deep, intricate details to hold areas of the soundstage that was already accompanied by other artefacts in a way that you began to believe that there really was increased layering and positional awareness of large instruments and smaller inflections of vocals and room acoustics.

For example: Joss Stone’s ‘sticky mouth’ could be heard so well that you want to offer her a glass of wine – or three. Nils Lofgren’s guitar strings sat clearly in front of the body of the instrument with clear definition on his palm heel on the wooden casket, whilst crowd applause was crowd applause rather than a Sunday morning fry up sizzling away in the pan.

The construction of each cable is effectively what SC see as being the optimal configuration of chosen materials for each of the respective applications. A true 75Ohm SPDIF and a true 110Ohm AES/EBU, the latter being more effective on longer runs, yet in most domestic environments either should suffice.

RCA SPDIF  

When looking for an RCA SPDIF cable most of us settle on versions which are not true 75Ohm but rather 50Ohm. Most manufacturers believe this is sufficient, it does work and sound will travel from point A to point B, but impedance mismatches will inevitably create errors in timing, increased jitter and result in a poor or less stable image. On various pieces of equipment over time, which I knew would remain in my system for sustained periods, I would also have the RCA digital inputs reconfigured to the BNC type and always found great benefits in having the cable I was using at the time reterminated to comply. Using a Platinum digital RCA rescued me from the annoyance of pondering over this factor.

So, I began listening intently, firstly to some very bare acoustic music and gradually busied things up. During my initial listing tests I couldn’t hear any hash in the background, notes decayed ever so well and tone was really natural with expressive timbre. As things got busier, introducing more instruments and a vocalist, I could clearly ascertain  each’s position within the soundstage accurately, with no blurring or smearing of the vocals. Even drum strikes would sit separately defined to string decays and reverbs. With the busiest of orchestras or dance music at volume I had a new found extra stability to my stereo imaging.

The cable doesn’t really have a sonic signature, it’s very truthful and transparent and will allow the listener to hear a cohesive and balanced rendition of a recording and will help also in ascertaining system synergy. If the sound replayed after installing one of the digital cables mentioned in this review doesn’t suit, then I would stress that there are clocking or software issues at play, or that the listener simply prefers a coloured representation of the sound, which of course is fine. If the system components are really well matched then the SC digital cables will simply just express this without bottleneck.

The Platinum digital being from a brand named Studio Connections should also not put the willies up you, there’s no analytical portrayal of the music, no hardness, grain or unwanted nasties being reflected from one point to another, just a faithful, musical and pure sound that for me, doesn’t leave me thinking about cables anymore.

Balanced  

I’ve always championed the 110Ohm XLR variant and its ability to sustain longer runs without affected noise pollution, better noise rejection and of course the stability and low mass of the plugs’ conductors themselves.

In any balanced situation an 110Ohm cable will win over an RCA cable… this will be debated by tube lovers and the single ended circuit design of course. However, my latest preamp is a single ended design with unbalanced XLR outputs allowing for an XLR cable construction to be used. Many other cables can boast superior noise rejection properties in their most complex forms over XLR in its most basic, but I am purely commenting on the basic structures and standard implementation.

Using the Platinum digital AES/EBU over the SPDIF variant allowed for what seemed to be an increase of just a few percent in leading edge clarity and decay prominence. I believe that in this test, within my room and system that the AES was a superior implementation and companion to the digital front end I had in play from Audiobyte.

Transient response seemed faster also and if you could say that the RCA was a little softer then the AES was a little sharper, not in tonality but in the rendering of edges and decays. The SPDIF version could be said to be a little more musical and the AES a little more detailed, but this really would be system dependant and the differences are minor. The XLR based digital Platinum cable gave a little more clarity also to a male vocalists’ lower tones and the RCA a little more roundness to a females’ top end.

Most notably during all of my listening sessions with this cable was just how unforced and musical the sound was, ever so less digital and the imaging was just so much tighter, giving a feel of more accurate timing with realistic reverbs and decays. Everything I was hearing made more sense over all the other high-end digital cables I’ve heard to date and I fealt the review item was really just ‘fit and forget’. Nothing stands out but everything is better – if that makes sense?  

CONCLUSIONS  

It’s clear to understand how Michael Whiteside has spent so much time in the professional arena and how his skills are referred to as ‘absolutely crucial’. It’s so easy to put wire into plugs and make a connection, but really understanding the true physics of each application of cable is absolutely paramount.

I appreciate the way Michael talks about cables and the analogies he has in describing design attributes to the less knowledgeable of us and when you hear how he explains topics to even the least savvy of us one can readily relate to what he is conveying and all information passed on from him to the industry and customers alike is all researchable and verifiable. There’s no BS (apart from the industry standard) involved, it’s just good honest dedication, experience and a commitment to his chosen sector of the industry and I guess this is why he is somewhat indispensable in his area.

Moving from one area of audio into another doesn’t always transfer well, but a cable is a cable right? Wrong, each cable needs a pragmatic and experienced approach to determine it suitable for its chosen application. Then there is the tweaking of the standards to produce a superior version, I guess having a physics background can help with the relationships of electrons to dielectrics and material interaction on a tribo-electric level. Somehow I don’t think most of us care really.

What we do care about is a cable which is honestly made by an individual who can clearly prove his credentials and review processes such as these which independently broadcasts opinions on the cables in question. I have had a lot of cabling from all over the world and I can stand on my oath and state that Studio Connections Platinum Digital Cables are some of the very best and the fact they are built here in England makes me smile even more.

Pros:

Well constructed

Neutral and highly transparent

Impeccable timing and soundstaging

Cons:

Same with all high-end cables, they do cost a pretty penny.

Price at time of review – £1350 1m

Dan Worth

David Robson takes these relatively budget-minded cables from Scottish manufacturer Atlas out for a drive both individually and as a full loom set up. 

Atlas EOS Modular 4 Way Power Distribution Block (unfiltered) £295rrp and Atlas EOS Power Cord. 13A 2sq mm (£160)

The Atlas EOS 4 Way out the box looks and feels like a good quality and well-made piece of equipment. It has no switches or unnecessary lights added to it, just a simple steel encased functional box. Although reading the specifications on the Atlas website this is no simple box. Each outlet has star wiring and the box is shielded from Rf / EMI via a welded steel chassis. It has a maximum 2.3kw capacity.

The EOS power cords likewise are well made with solid looking plugs and shrouded in black nylon style webbing. Slipping the 13A plug into its socket with so much ease it was virtually sucked into position, this brings to the fore how well this bit of kit has been made. All the components inside the sockets have been designed to give as great a contact area as possible and use materials that aid in the process to get the electricity as “quickly and as cleanly” as it can to your equipment.

I was unsure of what to expect from fitting the EOS to my main system as I was lucky enough to have a dedicated mains electric spur added to my listening room on a rebuild a couple of years ago. I have also always used a cheaper filter block on all the electronics in my home routinely also.

There is always a lot of “debate” with regards to power supplies and mains filters (among all the other debates) on social media groups with some people just discounting it as Hogwarts Snake Oil, others vehemently needing to vent their disagreement and then those who will sit back and smile knowing that their money has been well spent. My own take is that I’d always add some sort of filtering, as long as it doesn’t detract from the sound quality. If you hear sonic benefits then Boomshanka Baby! Enjoy.

Back to the Atlas EOS. Playing the much overused Dire Straits “Brothers In Arms” CD there is a change to the music. It’s not a complete night and day, it isn’t even massively different in tonality. Then again, it doesn’t have to be, but different it is though! The change is more about a sonic perspective, maybe a little brighter. It feels like instruments have either grown or reduced slightly in size. Not in an unnatural way, just reorganised their relation to one another. This is only a very slight re-marshalling of priorities. Drums, guitars and vocals are as prominent as ever, but some of the associated percussion has moved a little in intensity, giving space to the music around it and offering up a bit more “realism” and believability to what I’m listening to. “Money For Nothing” bangs out with good timing and rhythm, Mr Knopffler’s vocals not getting congested in any way, drums and bass guitar striking the beat for the song and the growling lead guitar sits clearly behind the singer… but very clearly defined and in its own space. “Why Worry” has a similar presentation, the music feels quite airy and has taken on a delicate edge, the width and height of the soundstage seems to have grown too. Not with instruments but with space.  During the track there is an echoing glockenspiel type sound from what seems to be the drum kit, towards the upper right of the sound picture. It arrives very much in a defined targeted position. Rock solid every time. Bass response throughout the album seems to dig a bit deeper, with a little added power and extension.

Throwing a bit of female lead vocal into the mix I pop in a bit of Joan Armatrading, from her “Love and Affection” album. The well-known “Drop The Pilot” trips out with nice timing and rhythm, although the music seems to have lost a little in excitement. Her voice has lost a little sparkle somehow, and yet the sound overall feels a little brighter. Onto “Show Some Emotion”, the bass boogies out funktastically and the acoustic guitar strings come across detailed and have a nice hard metallic edge and feeling, cymbals have a crispness that isn’t too hard either. Her vocals yet again just not hitting the spot for me. A change of artist and recording is required.

Eddi Reader’s Fairground Attraction has been with me from my teens, an amazing singer whose CD single of “Clare” has accompanied me to every audition. I’ve recently expanded my single CD and bought into several more Eddi and Fairground Attraction albums. I’m glad to say any reservations about the earlier Armatrading vocals with the Atlas EOS attached has been unfounded as Eddi’s musicality is rich and warm on tracks like “Walking After Midnight” and “Jock O’Hazeldean”. Details from the instruments in the Parisian-esque presentation of “Clare” are all clear and present. The track can get complicated and sibilant towards the end, but it never becomes a painful experience. Just a pleasant assemblage of sounds.

CONCLUSION

It’s in no doubt in my mind that the Atlas Eos and its associated power cables have an impact upon the sound by adding it to your system. I think if you have never used mains blocks/filters/conditioners before then bringing this to the table will bring pleasing results. It’s an open airy sound. It brightens up the sound a tad and adds a little hardening to the mids and treble, not in a clinical or acidic way but it takes a bit of the roundedness and a little warmth away from the sound.

I think the benefits need to be weighed up by the listener, as changes to a warm rounded sound if that’s your bag may not be to everyone’s taste. A home demo is recommended. If I was starting out again on my Hi-Fi journey I would definitely add a Mains block from the begining, then build with confidence knowing you have a good launchpad from the off.

Atlas Element Digital Optical Cable 1m (£30)

The Atlas Element cable is a bright white flexible cable using a PVC outer and incorporates a single strand of Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) at its core, this is sometimes known as Acrylic Glass. This inner light conducting fibre is coated with a thermal protective shielding reducing warping risk and then the white outer protective PVC covering giving a final protection layer from impact or other damage.

On examination of the metal die cast plugs there are 2 recessed rubber bands on each connector to aid to gripping the plugs, these are easily dislodged and can come off. Either they need to be replaced with a tougher band or done away with altogether. Apart from that the Digital Optical cable is fitted with quality moulded ABS Toslink connectors. Using a good quality Toslink is essential as unfortunately I have inadvertently damaged and broken off the optical doors with inferior connectors on cheap cables.

Using my last used CD for the previous EOS review (Fairground Attraction “The Very Best Of”) for comparison purposes, it’s immediately obvious that this cable loses nothing much in the way of anything from the original sound within the CD player itself. Eddi Readers voice has its beautiful liquid quality left securely in place on “The Moon Is Mine” and “The Wind Knows My Name”. The deep bass notes reaching down low, not getting flabby or loose,  her voice sailing from low to shimmering high without losing any composure. The brush on the snare drum, sweeping and detailed so you can feel the pressure of the bristles on the skin. I’m finding it difficult to find a negative to say really. If really pushed there may be a slight rise within the bass of vocals giving an ever so slight wooden feeling to some deeper vocal moments, this on only some tracks and has to be hunted out as its on very few.

A track this is sometimes apparent on is my copy of The Eagles “Hotel California” (remastered) title track. Nay nonny nay, it’s not there, there is a slight rise in bass though, a slight warmth to it. It’s not an unlikable sound at all! It remains tuneful and allows you to follow the bass guitar closely. Guitars range out well at the commencement of “Life In The Fast Lane” followed soon after by the well defined kick of the bass drum. Vocals are accurately placed and hold enough detail to feel its gravelly nature. The dynamics of the track are all held in place too. There is plenty of weight in the lower registers, although possibly a softening to it. Soundstage on “Wasted Time” is wide and well spread, that warmth keeping the vocals a little back in the musical picture, but it’s perfectly acceptable given the price of the Atlas Element Cable and the performance as a whole is very good.

Just to round things off with a bit of head-banging rock (before my other half gets home!) Guns and Roses get to go for a spin. Appetite For Destruction can sound a little harsh on my system at times. “Sweet Child O’ Mine” comes across with true outdoor concert like credentials. Axle Rose’s voice hanging correctly out front of the speakers and electric guitars sitting in the background giving a good depth to the performance. “It’s So Easys” guitar intro is rock solid in its composure, the accompanying cacophony of drums and cymbals come crashing out, but still being able to follow the vocals is a good sign that the detail isn’t being lost within the music.

CONCLUSION

This is a good budget Optical interconnect from Atlas. The Element portrays a faithful way to transport your digital signal from the player to the DAC. It loses very little if anything from the original recording. My own thoughts are that optical cable can add a little warmth or rounded sounds to music per-se. That is more about the equipment involved rather than the cable itself.

Atlas Equator Integra Mk3 RCA 1M (£75)

First look at the Equator cable brings about a definite quality look and feel. The pearlescent off white outer is terminated with clear plastic type RCA connections. The cable feels weighty in its construction, and is nicely finished. The Equator Integra cable doesn’t seem to be marked as directional. If a cable isn’t marked as directional my rule of thumb is that I match the writing on the cable to the same orientation and let the signal flow to the direction of the writing. This may seem a little picky, but it gives every unit tested and reviewed the same equal treatment. This Equator cable is fitted with Atlas’s Integra RCA plugs. A non-magnetic two piece internal that is solder free and cold welded. Further details are found on the Atlas website. Just to add, Atlas has supplied a Burn-In style CD with the cables. This is a really nice touch from the Scottish company. It’s also accompanied with an information booklet too that has a lot of information about this and other products. A welcome addition to your purchase.

After a few days burn in time I start my listening session with a bit of Steely Dan’s “Gaucho” album. And WOW! I’m immediately impressed with what I hear. A Beautifully succulent smooth sound, “Glamour Profession” bounces along with great verve and rhythm. There is a great deal of detail being pulled out of the recording, a very natural presentation. Bass guitar easily followed along with the vocals which can sound a little distorted with some cables, but with the detail brought out by the Equator this is not the case here. “Time Out Of Mind” starts with the Bass drum kicking away and a weighty piano intro. It’s deep and it’s taut and musically correct to my ears. The same can be said about the piano, it has a good presence and is not too forward or hard. The width and depth of the soundstage is just perfect. I have heard few set-ups, never mind cables alone, that can match what I’m hearing here. “My Rival” the slow melodic drum arrives with great timing and pace. The sound effects coming from far and wide within my listening room, the different cymbal strikes are easily differentiated between. If I have to be pushed to say a negative, it would be that the cymbals could sound a tiny bit crisper and the timbre could do with just decaying a millisecond longer. That is being super picky though.

From the funkiness of Steely Dan, to the chilled out tunes of Ben Howard’s “Every Kingdom” CD. A great album, not only for its content but its presentation too. The Detail in the track “Everything” gets brought to your ears. There is a bit of background shuffling and guitar string tuning and touching all heard clearly. The plucking of guitar strings and the touch of flesh on the metallic wires is all apparent, even the faked crackles and pops of vinyl (pet hate) is all there. Ben’s vocal is honed into the very middle of the soundstage. The inflections in his voice give an “in the room” presence and hangs a foot or more forward of the rest of the music. “The Fear” Guitar and vocal in isolated space, together and yet separate, the beat arrives and in great stereo “magicality” I have lost my speakers. They have ceased to exist in the room. Completely gone, just music left. With the lights off and my eyes shut there is just black void and sounds.

In honour of the recently sadly departed Thin White Duke I play “Best of Bowie”. “Ashes to Ashes” rips out, taking me back to my youth, Bowie’s vocals clear and individualistic, even in the multi-layered presentation, never getting lost within the track. “Lets dance”, “China Girl” and “Modern Love”. Probably not the best loved songs for the Bowie aficionados, but all have me foot tapping and wanting me to find my sharpest tailored suits and shirts, and to find a local 80’s discotheque to handbag dance in (none of which now fit or even exist)!! The varying qualities and sound of recordings across this “Best Of” CD show that the Atlas Equator Integra is unfussy of what it’s presented with. It seems to take everything in its stride.

CONCLUSION

I have to commend Atlas for this great cable. It stands up to cables costing five times or more the price. It wipes the floor with any budget cables. It’s neutral, rhythmical, detailed and balanced. The soundstage has to be heard to be believed. The only downsides I can hear is that it could do with a bit more top end sparkle. My system is quite a warm sounding affair anyhow and this may not be the case with other set-ups. As is always the case you should audition your intended purchases at home where possible. This will be my recommended cable to all who enquire.

Atlas Equator Mk2 Bi-Wire (2 into 4) Speaker Cable 2m (£120 terminated)

Having just reviewed the Equator Integra RCA cables I was looking forward to the Equator speaker cable. Both sets of wires have a very similar look of a pearlescent off white outer PVC style casing. The banana plugs fitted to my sample are my preferred gold plated Z style. I find these fit well into the 4mm holes and offer good contact. The banana plugs have grey shrouds which are not shrink-wrapped onto the cable leaving a gap from the shroud to the cable. I’m quite sure that all is very secure and well put together, but I’d like to see it fit a bit better with a more secure feel. Apart from that little niggle the rest of the cable is nice and flexible. My set for review is 2 banana plugs at the amp end to 4 at the speaker end allowing for Bi-Wiring. Where the cable splits to form the 4 wires there is an extra shrink-wrapped cover and it’s very secure and well finished.

After letting these cables burn in for a few days (Atlas offer a burn in service too) I load in the much used Eagles “Hotel California” into the CD. Rather apt after the sad departing of Glen Frey. We all know how this one starts with a nicely picked guitar. Strings come across well defined and frosty crisp, the percussion, cymbals and shakers all come through audibly clean, and appear out wide of the soundstage. The first thump thump of the bass drum kicks out with good power, but it’s a little less defined as the other instruments. This is the same for the other drum sounds, there is a slight softening to the stick strikes, making the drums sound a little soft. It’s not massively obvious and neither does it upset the song as a whole. Other details though are good. Nice smooth vocals, guitars are sweet sounding without becoming hair raising and the bass although a little softened goes deep.

Popping in “Crime Of The Century” a Supertramp staple for my listening tests and reviews, the story is the same. There’s bags of detail on offer from recordings. Playing “School” which has a lot of different sounding parts to the record, there is a good depth to the sound, punchy and rounded. With just that slight softening to the basslines – this softening takes a little excitement out of the male vocals, luckily the Atlas Equator show good timing and rhythm helped no doubt by their weighty kick. “Hide In Your Shell”, the introductory Male vocals lose a little feeling and emotion to them as the bass tones within the low registers in the voice makes the words a little indistinct. It is by no means a muddy or distorted sound, as when the rest of the music picks up tempo it’s all good in your face fun. As much as I may seem to be picking holes in the Equator its positives far, far outweigh any negatives. To prove a point to myself I go for some modern pop. Jess Glynne’s “I Cry When I Laugh”. Now I’m not about to get my old disco dancing attire out of retirement and tell you I’m up with the young guns. This is about as modern as I get. “Hold My Hand” is initiated by single piano key strikes and Jess’s smooth, sweet vocals hanging out to the front of the speakers. (After having to turn the volume down 2 notches from my standard listening level, lordy!). This is followed by the big bass sounds of the club scene, it just bounces along with good head nodding, foot swinging tunefulness. “Take Me Home” shows how beautiful Miss Glynne vocal ability is. It’s just a pity the music makers don’t see how her voice should be accompanied by a full spectrum of sound from the piano ( like on Songbird, McVie/Fleetwood Mac ) not the compressed variant on this track. This is the recording and nothing to do with our review cables, as the Atlas Equator do everything in their power to make this song an emotional cracker. The deep bass banging out, the artists vocals not affected by the ka-thump of the rhythms. Putting the pop/disco driven “Don’t Be Hard On Yourself” up to silly levels to see how the Atlas Equator coped, I can truly say there is something that takes me back to my youth with this pop music! Turning on the disco lights to add to the ambiance, the cable didn’t distort this electronically assembled music; neither did it harden up the female vocals, keeping everything quite separate and distinctly apart. Towards the end of the track there are some very deep sound effects which were all handled without any fuss, and the drivers where held within a tight grip and not getting into a flap (unlike my disco trousers!).

CONCLUSION

The Atlas Equator Bi-Wire is the real deal, it has its qualities evenly spread across its abilities. It doesn’t fail on any level. It gives a good amount of detail in the upper registers and it excels in timing, rhythm and its powerful presentation. The upper mids and treble are all well produced, nothing gets harsh or sibilant. The slight loss and fuzz of fine detail within the mid to low bass isn’t glaring and is only bettered by cables several times its cost.

Atlas Loom. 5.  EOS Modular/Equator Integra RCA/Element Digital Optical/Equator Bi-Wire.

Having tested and reviewed the supplied Atlas cable Loom as individual items, I have now assembled them all together for a bit of a listening session. I personally wouldn’t have gone for a single manufacturer of cables to use in my system at one time (read 1980’s-90’s), as I don’t think back then that any one manufacturer had a full set worthy of using. Today though, the choices seem to be greater than in the past and quality seems to be higher than ever. I would say though, that once you venture beyond the budget end of cabling, that trying to have an audition or borrowing cables from your dealer is the way to go. Some will give you cables to try at home, some will let you buy cables with the understanding that if they are unsuitable you can return them and swap them for another. Be cheeky and ask. If your dealer won’t do this then I’d suggest going elsewhere, as profit not service or your musical pleasure is first and foremost in his ethics.

Anyhow, onto a bit of listening. I’m not going to go to specific albums etc, just a general overview on the Atlas loom. Across the board all these cables The Element Digital, Equator RCA and Bi-Wire Speaker cable and EOS Modular block/cable have given a good account of themselves. To my ears there is nothing that stands out in a negative way. Together these cables form a great combination. They win big time on drive and rhythm, I get a slightly warm presentation when I use the Optical cable in the system, but I’m convinced that is the way with optical in every cable. There is an abundance of detail and information producing a good presentation of the music in every genre.

The Equator speaker / Integra RCA are great soul mates, they seem to be cut from the same audio block and suit each other. There is a slight loss of detail from the lower end of the musical spectrum from the speaker cables, but add this to the soundstage and clarity of the Integra RCA it’s only a very minor gripe. The Equator Integra is my outstanding product in this group test. I’m blown away by the way it paints the sonic picture. It just makes me smile listening to it. It also makes me want to go out and buy one just to listen to every CD I own again with it in place! You may better it with other cables but you will pay a very heavy premium in cost to do that. I would also like to give a big Hurrah for Atlas supplying a Test CD with some of its products. It’s a nice gesture and quite invaluable when breaking in new RCA/Speaker/Coax cables. That little attention to detail goes a long way.

The EOS modular electrical block and its associated cables are well made and offer a slightly different presentation to the music. This quality product would, in my opinion need to be tried and auditioned with a current system. Although if I was building from scratch I wouldn’t hesitate to incorporate it from the start. Knowing that you’re getting the best electrical feed and using it as trusted piece of lifetime kit.

David Robson

The Roksan TR-5 S2 loudspeakers that Hifi Pig reviewed sometime ago are now available for £995 in the UK. 

The design innovations focus around a new crossover and an improved internal layout to produce a more controlled, faster sound. The crossover uses improved and modified electrical components and large low-impedance air core voice-coils on a meticulously-designed double- sided PCB. Meanwhile, the cabinet internals have been re-designed and feature a high-absorption internal damping material to eliminate unwanted resonances or standing waves. The end-result is a sound-stage that’s wide, deep and articulate while maintaining its musical core.

The TR-5 S2 retains the same drivers from its predecessor. The custom-designed bass driver ensures an extended and accurate bass response from such a compact speaker, while the sound remains tight thanks to its rigid cast chassis. Similarly, the high-tolerance ribbon tweeter provides an open, responsive and clear high-frequency spectrum. In combination with the new crossover, these drive units create a relatively small but attractive speaker that provides room-filling musical enjoyment.

The back-panel is neatly finished with bi-wirable gold-plated speaker sockets, allowing  for integration into a number of systems. The TR-5 S2 will be launched to the market in a premium gloss black finish, with alternative options to appear in the future.

The TR-5 S2 loudspeakers do make a perfect partner for Roksan electronics; their price and sound performance make them an ideal choice for the  K3 integrated amplifier. However, more so than ever, the TR-5 S2 is a “worthy consideration for anyone who takes their musical enjoyment seriously”.

Ian Ringstead takes a listen to the interesting looking Ferguson Hill FH007 loudspeaker and their matching FH008 sub priced at £695.00 and £325.00.

Ferguson Hill may not be a well known name to many readers or the general public, but I remember their launch of the original FH001 at a London Hifi show and being gob smacked by its unique design of a parabolic horn and its price of about £17,000. Radical looking designs require bravery and confidence in the designers mind to commit to this approach because although horn loaded speakers have been around since the 1930’s and their principles are well understood, they have tended to take a back seat to the conventional box designs with dynamic drivers and complex crossovers we see as commonplace now.

BACKGROUND

A horn loudspeaker is a loudspeaker (or loudspeaker element) which uses an acoustic horn to increase the overall efficiency of the driving element(s). A common form consists of a compression driver which produces sound waves with a small metal diaphragm vibrated by an electromagnet, attached to a horn, a flaring duct to conduct the sound waves to the open air. Another type is a woofer driver mounted in a loudspeaker enclosure which is divided by internal partitions to form a zigzag flaring duct which functions as a horn; this type is called a folded horn speaker. The horn serves to improve the coupling efficiency between the speaker driver and the air. The horn can be thought of as an “acoustic transformer” that provides impedance matching between the relatively dense diaphragm material and the less-dense air. The result is greater acoustic output power from a given driver.

The main advantage of horn loudspeakers is they are more efficient; they can typically produce 10 times (10dB) more sound power than a cone speaker from a given amplifier output. Therefore horns are widely used in public address and megaphones, and sound systems for large venues like theatres, auditoriums, and sports stadiums. Their disadvantage is that their frequency response is more uneven because of resonance peaks, and horns have a cut-off frequency below which their response drops off. To achieve adequate response at bass frequencies horn speakers must be very large and cumbersome, so they are more often used for midrange and high frequencies. The first practical loudspeakers, introduced around the turn of the 20th century, were horn speakers. Due to the development in recent decades of more efficient cone loudspeakers, which have a flatter frequency response, use of horn speakers in high fidelity audio systems has declined.

Having given you a background to horn speaker design you can see they offer great advantages, but there are many drawbacks that require innovative and very clever thinking to overcome the problems. Stuart and his wife Linette love horn speakers (owning a pair of Avantgarde Duo’s) but I have been less convinced in my past experiences.

I spoke to Tim Hill the designer of the FH007 on review here to get a feel for his philosophy and reasons behind this unusual looking design. Essentially the FH007 is a scaled down version of his flagship design the FH001 which has had great acclaim over the last few years. Tim told me his first customer was Steve Jobs the owner of Apple Macintosh who emailed him one day enquiring how he could obtain a pair when he saw them for the first time. How cool is that!! Tim gave me some details about the FH007.

“I usually recommend a running in period of about a week with the system playing, say the radio all day. It’s the moving mechanical parts / drive units etc and also all the electronics, components, cables etc that need to run in.”

TECHNICALS

The amplifier has the crossover in the pre amp stage and sends the signal above 450Hz to the horn amps and below 450Hz to the bass amps.

There are 2 stereo class A/B power amps inside, so all four drive units are individually driven by their own power amp and have no crossover components between the power amps and the drive units. 4 x 16watts / total 64 watts.

Tim’s overall objective in designing the system was to shrink down their large FH001 speaker system whilst still keeping the features that give a good sound quality.

Therefore he thought it important to have the semi-full range drive unit covering a large proportion of the frequency range in a front loaded dipole horn, complemented by the infinite baffle spherical bass speakers for below the crossover frequency.

They did a lot of research at Loughborough University to design the horn profile so it gives a uniform expansion rate of the sound waves from the drive unit, using their massive optical bench and techniques such as speckle pattern holographic laser interferometry etc.

The horn speaker design is basically the FH001 shrunk down to desktop size and the overall system is about 1/50th the cost of the high end FH001 system.

Finally the Bluetooth receiver V4.0 was added as many customers enjoy the convenience of wirelessly streaming their music from a smart phone or tablet, however he believes the system is certainly revealing enough to show the benefit of using a high quality source such as high resolution music with a really good DAC, or a good turntable with a good phono stage.

Tim and his team have used a front end of an Avid Acutus deck, SME arm and valve phono stage built by David Wright to great effect he says!

“I know that some of our customers purchase the system without a demo on the looks alone, and then are pleasantly surprised by the sound, but the system was designed with the sound quality as totally the first priority and the looks are secondary” says Tim.

I think what Tim has said pretty well sums up the FH007 design. It comes packed in an attaché style box very similar to an iMac computer for those who have one, which makes for very convenient unpacking and creates a first class impression of the product. If the designer takes this much care over the box alone then they obviously care about the product and are proud of its capabilities.

Tim also sent me the matching sub woofer, the FH008 to compliment the FH007. This was finished in a very classy looking piano black but white is available too.

Subwoofer dimensions

Height 32 cm Width 30 cm Depth 30 cm

Specification

• Amplifier 100W per channel class A/B
• Infinite Baffle enclosure
• Drive unit 20cm dia/8 Ohm
• Frequency response 45 to 150 Hz
• This product conforms to EMC Directive and Low Voltage Directive
• Colours, gloss black or gloss white.

As Tim pointed out in his design philosophy earlier, the FH007 is definitively not a case of style over function. They look fabulous, but that is a bonus.

THE SOUND

The sound was pretty amazing once I had run them in as advised by Tim. Most speakers require this so don’t think it is unique to this design alone. I always felt that horns were highly coloured in sound when I listened to them at shows many years ago and even today some have a distinct character that takes some getting used to. It’s a bit like Marmite, love it or hate it. (I don’t like Marmite, but my wife does!)

I’m glad to say they sounded fabulous. I used them both in my living room and upstairs in my office/work room to get a true feel for their applications. In my office they were used on a desk without the sub whilst I was doing some electronics work ( I love to dabble) and they easily outperformed any desk top speaker system I have used in the past, and there have been a few.

Downstairs in my living room and used with the FH008 I was truly amazed what they could do for such a compact design. They produce a very clear open soundstage with a full frequency response. Top end was very good with high frequency detailing being precise and with great placement in the soundstage. Vocals can be coloured on horn designs I’ve heard in the past, but they were very well portrayed with the likes of Tracy Chapman, Eva Cassidy and Alison Krause all sounding very lifelike and enjoyable. Rock, jazz and classical were handled equally well with the same clarity and openness. My wife even said they sound nice and she is fussy! Friends who saw the speakers were intrigued by their looks and this split opinion, but generally it was a thumbs up.

The FH008 is well matched to the rest of the system and I wholeheartedly recommend its use if you are seriously considering using the FH007 as a main system. That lower octave or so adds the icing on the cake to fill the sound out even more. Set up is very straight forward and once you have dialled in the correct values to taste and room response you can sit back and enjoy. The FH007 set up is a doddle. Even though there are four speakers (top horns and bass/mid spheres) the wiring is fixed and only requires the user to put the colour coded mini jack plugs into the back of the amp. The amp is a beautifully made compact cube with just a volume control and bright white led to indicate power. On the back are the four jack sockets for the top and bass/mid units, two per channel, and the optional active sub. Inputs are catered for on a set of RCA phonos and a 3.5mm jack socket. All the relevant cables are supplied and are of generous length with good quality gold plated connectors. Also supplied is a plug in blue tooth transmitter so you can connect your mobile wirelessly and stream your favourite mp3’s.

CONCLUSION

I applaud Tim and his design team for being brave enough to run with this design and carry on the obvious success of the FH001 in a truly affordable scaled down version for the masses.

Like the recent Munich High End show I attended, flagship designs from innovative companies can be breathtaking in design and sound, but also out of the financial reach of the masses. The FH007 is a great way to own a slice of the FH001 dream and can easily be accommodated in most homes. (It makes a great second system in a conservatory or study)

Pros

Value for money

Superb design that is stylish and compact

Active design really works well

Excellent desk top or main system use

Easy to set up and use

Great sound especially with the FH008 sub

Cons

None really apart from the fact the looks wont suit everyone’s tastes

The number of inputs makes connectivity limited, but the intention is for simplicity and users of this system probably won’t find this an issue.

Price   £695.00           FH007

           £325.00           FH008

Ian Ringstead

John Scott takes a listen to the Audio GE Sincerus 80 loudspeakers from Lithuania which cost 1300 euros  with eco leather finish and with natural wood veneer 1200 euros

Audio GE is a fairly new speaker manufacturer from Lithuania.  Managing Director and designer Gediminas Racevicius grew up surrounded by music; his father Rimvydas was a composer and pianist as well as chief sound engineer for Lithuania’s national television and radio network.  As a child, Gediminas would spend many happy hours sitting on the floor of the recording studio in front of orchestras and big bands, providing him with an unique perspective of the sounds they produced. Gediminas’ love and appreciation of music was further nurtured by weekly visits with his father to to opera or ballet.  After studying engineering and electronics at university, Gediminas began to build speakers for friends as a hobby, finally expanding this into a business with the aim of producing speakers that could faithfully reproduce the quality of sound that he heard in the studio during his childhood. 

Technology can be both a blessing and a curse.  When Gediminas emailed me to let me know that a pair of his Sincerus 80 floor standing speakers were on their way to me from Lithuania, he included a link to an online tracking service so that I could monitor their progress.  It was a great pleasure to watch them wend their way inexorably westwards through Lithuania, across the width of Poland, into Germany then Belgium and France.  Finally they traversed the Channel and slowly inched up the length of England before crossing the border into Scotland and arriving at my doorstep.  The curse here of course was that I felt compelled to check on their progress around every 90 seconds or so – hands up if you would have done any different.  No, I don’t believe you.  I hovered over the on screen map with fascination  as the courier pulled in to a service station to refuel and tutted with increasing frustration as he deviated from the motorway presumably to make another pick up or drop off.  I knew, of course, that no matter how many times I checked up on their progress, I wasn’t going to make the speakers turn up any more quickly but I was hooked.  This was like some new drug and not even my wife’s increasingly fraught exhortations to “put down that bloody iPad” could stop me.

UNBOXING AND APPEARANCE

Their arrival brightened up a mundane Sunday teatime and I immediately set-to, unboxing them and getting them into position. The thick cardboard boxes and internal foam protection ensured that the speakers had arrived safely and as the bases were pre-spiked, there was nothing for me to do apart from manhandle them into position and cable them up.  I did get one slight surprise though.  On the basis of a couple of photographs I had seen on Audio GE’s Facebook page, I had been expecting the speakers to be veneered in wood.  This particular pair were wrapped in black “Eco leather” (leatherette).  She Who Is Correct In All Things described them as being quite masculine looking.  At risk of undermining my own masculinity, I thought I would probably prefer the veneer versions, but their rugged elegance  did grow on me during the time that I lived with them.  I think my chest may have got slightly hairier as well.

The Sincerus 80s are floorstanding loudspeakers with a tuned quarter wave design.  The speakers are front ported with treble and mid/bass drivers. The tweeter is a 2.5 soft dome unit and the mid/bass driver features an 18cm aluminium chassis with a glass fibre cone.  Both drivers are manufactured by Scanspeak.  To aid smooth internal airflow, which Gediminas feels is key to the success of the quarter wave design, the crossover, designed personally by Gediminas and using high quality components by Jantzen and Mundorf, has been removed from the internal cabinet and mounted in the loudspeaker plinth. The crossover is originally designed and the components used in the crossover are audiophile quality, manufactured by Jantzen and Mundorf.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Dimensions (HxWxD) : 940mm x 220mm x 260mm

Dimensions with spikes (HxWxD) : 956mm x 220mm x 260mm

Weight : 15 kg each

Sensitivity : 89 dB

Power handling : 100 W rms

Nominal impedance: 8 ohm

Front ported

Crossover 2nd-Order

Crossover frequency : 3300 Hz

Frequency response (in-room environment) : 37-25000 Hz ± 3 dB

Recommended amp.: 20-200 W

Drivers : Scan Speak 2,5cm silk dome tweeter, Scan Speak 18cm aluminium chassis fibre glass cone midwoofer

Main finishes: eco leather (black, white and bordeaux)

Optional finishes: natural wood veneers (sapelle and walnut)

SOUND

I connected them to a Naim Superuniti that I have here for review and my initial impression was one of…disappointment.  John Martyn’s Solid Air album is one that I know like the back of my hand.  When I play the title track I am accustomed to hearing the music hang between the speakers like a smokey haze.  On this occasion the music seemed closed in like it was struggling to escape the confines of the boxes.  I tried a range of tracks from folk to classical, rock to reggae and I was left feeling dissatisfied.  It then occurred to me that if I had spent three days in the back of a van trundling across Europe in near to frozen temperatures I probably wouldn’t be at my best either so I decided to give then a couple of days to acclimatise.  An exchange of emails with Gediminas also revealed that he had recently put new drivers into this particular pair of speakers and that they had not had the usual amount of running in that he would normally have given them prior to dispatch. 

I decided to suspend any critical listening for at least a week while I let them run in.  It was clear from casual listening however that things were improving.  Revisiting Solid Air, the soundstage was greatly enhanced and following Gediminas’ recommendation to extend the distance between the speakers, further improvements were achieved. My usual listening position favours the left speaker slightly and some gentle toeing in and a very tiny adjustment to The Superuniti’s balance control helped to address any imbalance.

And so to some serious listening.  My initial instinct – I was unaware of Gediminas’ background at this point – was that these would be speakers that were suited primarily to acoustic and classical music, although that wasn’t going to stop me from throwing a bunch of other stuff in their direction.  I started off fairly gently with Richard Thompson’s Acoustic Classics album. This is an excellent recording and the Sincerus 80s showed it off really well. On I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, the attack of Thompson’s pick on the strings was tangible and it was easy to appreciate the contribution that the body of the guitar was making to the sound.

Time for a bit of classical and one of my favourite orchestral pieces, Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition. I have a few versions of this and this time I chose Herbert von Karajan’s recording with the Berlin Philharmonic.  This piece makes really good use of all the instruments of the orchestra in various combinations and the ‘80s allowed me to envisage the position of each set of instruments from trombones to triangle.  In the brassy fanfares of the Great Gates of Kiev I’ve sometimes found that the supporting instruments get lost behind the wall of horns, trombones and trumpets but this time each instrument held its own.

Changing the mood completely with Smoke On The Water from Deep Purple’s classic Made In Japan live album I was impressed by the sense of the hall’s acoustic but slightly disappointed at the entrance of Roger Glover’s bass.  There was plenty of detail there in the texture of the notes but it lacked a certain grunt in the really bottom end. I was, however, impressed by the way that the 80’s allowed me to follow his playing all the way through the performance along with all the other instruments. Ian Paice’s ride cymbal rang out clearly and I could hear each thump of the bass drum regardless of how busy Blackmore or Lord got on their respective instruments.

As I spent more time with these speakers, I found that their roll off at the bottom end was my only cause for concern but one that I became more comfortable with, the more time I spent with them.  Top, midrange and upper bass were all highly detailed and it was only when I wanted that feeling of moving air, that thud in the chest, that I was left feeling disappointed.  Having said that, the Tidal stream of Sorry from Beyoncé’s new album Lemonade still grooved like a joiner’s chisel and had the floorboards rumbling, and my go-to bass monster track, Why So Serious from The Dark Knight soundtrack, still had plenty to offer.

CONCLUSIONS

All in all, the Sincerus 80’s are well-built, insightful (as I write this I’ve just noticed a xylophone detail in St Alphonso’s Pancake Breakfast from Frank Zappa’s Apostrophe album  that has previously eluded me), detailed and musical.  If you are a fan of heavy rock, dub reggae or dance music then you may find them to be just a little refined for your tastes.  Otherwise, they offer excellent value and I’ll certainly be sorry to see them leave.

Pros:

Natural, detailed sound
Work well across a broad range of musical styles

Cons – Not bass monsters. If this is a priority, you may have to look elsewhere.

Price with eco leather finish 1300 euros

Price with natural wood veneer 1200 euros 

John Scott

Dan Worth gets to grip with a little 50watts a side integrated amp from Serbia that costs just £600 in the UK. 

It’s always interesting when I receive a product for review from British distributor Iain Borthwick of LW Audio. Iain has a long standing relationship with products that provide a truly musical and value for money stance in the marketplace.

Iain was responsible for introducing the well regarded Clones Audio brand to our fair land and they followed suit with his mantra. Also coming up soon will be a preampifier from Audio Music – again another truly musically engrossing product that belies its price. We talked about this new brand on the scene I was very receptive in appraising it on the merits that Iain pursues when taking on brands for distribution in the UK.

The Menuetto is a shoe box sized integrated amplifier with four line level inputs and an output power of 2 X 50wpc into 8ohm and 2 X 70wpc into 4ohms. The unit is of a sleek classical design with two knobs, one for volume and one for source selection and a power button – it includes a remote control. The product feels well made and has a good weight to it and a nice sturdy feeling chassis. Standard 5 way binding posts adorn the rear that are bare gold plated and not encased in plastic which is something I do not like for obvious reasons, but apart from that I can’t convey any other physical grumbles with the fit and finish for a £600 amplifier.

On looking into the Dayens brand and conversing with Iain they have a few amplifier options and some interesting looking fairly priced small form factor standmount/bookshelves and floorstanding speakers which I’m sure we will investigate a little further at Hifi Pig in the future, but for now let’s focus on the Menuetto.

Specifications:

Power (Watt):                                 2×50 / 8 Ohm, 2×70 / 4 Ohm

Inputs:                                             4

Frequency response (Hz):               4Hz – 200kHz

SNR (dB):                                      >92

Dimensions (mm):                           230x105x350

The Sound

From experience amp,ifier a at the £600 or so price point can be a tricky price point to fulfil competently, there have been many hits and misses in this price bracket even from some of the big boys, it toys with what is possible from a unit in the over £1000 category and can also be set upon from offerings from the likes of mainstream companies such as Cambridge Audio and Rega for example.

Connecting up the Menuetto was a breeze as it can really be accommodated anywhere due to its size, so my ever bloated rack which was currently burning in some other products didn’t suffer and nor did my back in having to make room for the modestly sized amp.

First impressions of the sound given by the Menuetto was a terrifically tuneful bass and dynamics that were instantly surprising. Throughout Jeff Beck and Joss Stone’s rendition of ‘I Put A Spell On You’ basslines were convincing, especially in the parameters previously mentioned and Joss’ vocal was silky sounding and never forward which can be a bone of contention even with some high end kit I have listened to recently. This is a good track to ascertain vocal positioning within the soundstage and the Menuetto was bang on the money!

Intricacies from various acoustic music was clear to hear, they may not be as playful as items in my normal rig costing considerably more, but the Menuetto really outperforms many integrated amps I’ve heard in the £1000-£1500 bracket, giving great perception of depth and scale to minimal performances.

I really like the fact that if the Menuetto lacks ultimate finesse and presence that a high end item can offer. It’s not shy in giving the listener every impression of the big boy sound. I don’t sit here listening to this little amp from Dayens with the feeling that I’m being cheated in any way or that I’m missing out on any explanations of the musical picture through lack of detail or weighted scale, it’s a real joy and a great find by Iain Borthwick, continuing his ever stubborn position iof ‘I will not support any brand which cannot offer true musical satisfaction.

Longer listening to the Menuetto got me really engrossed in its sound, it’s warm with vibrancy and surprisingly detailed and transparent, with a terrific soundstage and immediately had me searching their website to see what other interesting products they have to offer. I would only investigate further when a brand which is new to us here in the UK really impresses me and the Menuetto surely does.

Playing Felix Laband’s ‘Red Handed’ vintage Electronica had me sat up in my seat instantly with the Menuetto conveying unforeseen power in the bass and fleshed out treble that gave the top end great density. I find the amp to not necessarily to have a sound colour to it, but it has great character and is as cohesive as I would want an amp to sound if I were a designer The amp sounds more energetic and dynamic than its rated power, and dynamics do not fall short even at much higher volumes.

Now if I haven’t praised this amp enough I will leave this review with one more opinion from listening to Nils Lofgren – if the Electronica wasn’t proof enough for me Nils’ speedy guitar work again was just so reflective from the Menuette, PRaT was just so well conveyed and fond memories of super solid British made amplifiers come racing to the forefront of my mind but with a sprinkle more pizzazz than the colouration of the older take on the famous British sound signature.

Conclusion 

The Dayens Menuetto is a modestly sized amp with modest power and an equally modest price of £600 here in the UK. It comes packed with great PRaT, an informative balance of tone and detail and is dynamically capable of conveying drama and expression that will shock any Hifi aficionado.

Dayens for me is following the trend that has been adopted in the past few years from smaller and larger companies alike that high end sound doesn’t and shouldn’t cost the earth. Would I swap this for my main amps?  Never, their price is far greater and equally so is their performance, so we need to remain realistic here of course, but in this price range and a couple of bands higher, the Menuetto is going to upset some of the more mainstream brands with its confident attitude and remarkable performance.

Pros:

Balanced, powerful, dynamics

Strong PRaT

More detail than expected

Midrange that sits just right

Price

Cons:

The binding posts metal is exposed and should be plastic encased.

Price at time of review: £600

Dan Worth

The Wadia Dl122 Digital Audio Decoder will decode files at 24-bit/192kHz has a USB input that accepts up to 32-bit signals and support for DSD64, DSD128, DXD 352.8kHz and DXD 384kHz. It has an onboard headphone amp, a host of outputs and costs a pound under £1500. Dan Worth takes a listen for Hifi Pig. 

Wadia have been a big name in digital front end equipment for many years now and for me have always provided products with great styling, flexibility, feature rich options and solid sound performance. So when Absolute Sounds who distribute the world renowned brand here in the UK suggested a review of the new DI122 DAC – predecessor to the 121 which I know very well, I was happy to oblige.

The unit arrived extremely well packaged with medium density foam completely encasing the unit, with sufficient space for the included power supply and remote control. It’s always nice to open a package that immediately states ‘thoughtfulness’.

The DI122 has an external switch mode power supply of 5v to connect with the unit, so my immediate thought was great, I can try one of my Paul Hynes linear PSUs with the unit and having the PSU outboard of a sensitive digital circuit of course is always a big plus point for me.

Also included is a remote control for the DI122. This remote control is one of the nicest I’ve had the pleasure of using, it’s ergonomic and just so stylish, many manufacturers include these solid billet aluminium remotes with high end gear, but in my experience they are sometimes more style over substance. Often they are too heavy for comfortable use and can have sharp edges as well as being table top scratchers. The Wadia remote though is slim, comfortable, lightweight, well thought out and just so sleek looking.

The main unit of the DI122 package is equally as beautiful; a small form factor, aluminium surrounded, smoked glass lidded and very well made. It sports inputs for coax x2, optical X2 and USB, along with RCA unbalanced outputs and XLR balanced. Triggers in and out to connect to supported units are also featured along with a headphone amp and digital volume control to boot. The Wadia boasts a great platform for multiple system integrations and could be deemed at the heart of any digital setup with all of its features.

The Sound 

Due to the typical Wadia rich feature list I was able to really utilise the unit to its full potential. In an alcove in my listening room I have a large wall to wall worktop as a desk and underneath lies a 150cm rack. The racked equipment feeds my main passive speakers as well as active Focals for the desk and is all connected via a highly modified Mac. I also have on the desk a nice stand with my headphones and another workflow Mac, so implementing the Wadia as the heart of this system was simple and obvious.

Firstly I listened to the active Focals with tracks from Tidal. I felt the combination being connected via the balanced outputs of the DI122 was a very good match sonically, a robust and detail rich sound presentation – highs which were never splashy or with peaks to produce strong air and spatial awareness. I particularly enjoyed the tonality given to acoustic guitar with a top end that had strong fleshed out details. Although the Wadia isn’t tremendously dynamic it’s very musical and conveys a strong portrayal of natural tones and dynamics with good depth and insight into the mix, matched with the Focal’s more extended and revealing top end I felt I had struck a balance which I soon became very fond of.

Vocals were again nice and natural and far from any forwardness, when near-field listening any added forwardness doesn’t sit well with me at all and the combination of the Focal/Wadia setup allowed for me to enjoy even the most exuberant of performances with relaxed ease.

Bass performance was a little more rounded than my usual DiDiT 212DAC, but blended coherently with the rest of the presentation. I generally use this area of my home for any day time video viewing as I have a 32″ led monitor in situ on the desk and having the DI122 as the heart of 2 channel video/audio was also a great pleasure. The strong balanced sound accompanies good imaging very well.

Before I move d to the main system I played a few tracks with my Audio Technica ATH D2000X headphones, again a detailed and punchy sound like the Focals which favours the Wadia’s more natural and slightly laid back presentation. I loved what I was hearing vocally and bass performance was punchier through the headamp into my headphones than the main unit’s analogue outputs, but then this of course is designated by the headphones to a great degree. Top end was also nicely laid out with good dynamics and the ability to keep the treble reined in to a suitable and pleasing standard, making long listening sessions at good volumes an easy task.

Moving on to the main system and with no need for any wiring as the unit was already setup to accommodate all my equipment at once, I can report that the Wadia DI122 does a sterling job of portraying a convincing natural performance again. Of course the quality of the accompanying components being used was greater and allowed the Wadia to really shine.

Musicality was at the forefront of the performance with strong decay being a notable characteristic of acoustic performances. Details in the top end were rendered extremely well with absolutely no harshness at all. All transducers used throughout this review are noted for being clean, from the Focal house sound, to the Audio Technica then on to my all Accuton ceramic based Ayon loudspeakers. With the Wadia being of a slightly smoother character, the matches I found myself with were a fantastic balance and allowed for music to flow effortlessly, with liquidity, great soundstaging and also real insight into the performances. Vocals were extremely strong and had a favourable and flattering position with great focus and air.

Also at the time of review I had a nice little standmount pair of Dayens loudspeakers, which have a great ring radial tweeter. Utilising the DI122 again with the Dayens (which are not of a typically clean nature such as the other transducers previous) I could see a stunning little system in my mind. Wadia have produced matching components to compliment the DI122 – a streamer M330 and a couple of complimentary amplifiers A102, A315 and A340, along with the little Dayens would make for a gorgeous small footprint system, even the Martin Logan Motion 15’s previously provided for review by Absolute Sounds would make a terrific system for all of ones digital requirements.

The bouncy and fun sound produced with the smaller standmounts in situ added to the fun factor of the system and it spurred me on to play some more upbeat, poppy music and Electronica. The flexibility of the DI122 continued to put a smile on my face as I really hoped it would as style over function is not something that sits well with me, I’m the type of person who is absolutely cool in a crisis, but get infuriated at small little problems, so if a product from a reputable company comes to me for review and quietly boasts to me on first inspection that it will be able to accommodate all my listening parameters into one easy to use unit and then functional and sonically falls short of the mark I would be compelled to make a fuss about it, I would find that unacceptable.

My final task was to unite the DI122 with an improved power supply of the linear variety. I own many Paul Hynes power supplies and I have a 5v SR5 version which I could easily lend to the Wadia. A quick change over and yes! I’m so glad I had one to hand, the image now produced had more air and space to it, along with more accurate timing. Tonally I find the unit to retain its essence, but there was a development in character, the sound was more assured and a little more commanding in the bass, top-end details filled out a little and also had more perceivable space around them allowing primarily for more definition and attention to decays which were already strong, but now had better presence and a cleaner integration with a layered next note. Vocalists also spread their wings a little and pushed the rest of the band a little further away to allow for that portion of the stage to be more their own. Significantly different, ummm I’d probably say no, worthwhile, yes and the best thing was I knew I was still listening to the DI122. 

Conclusion 

With two coaxial and two optical inputs that accept up to 24-bit/192kHz signals; a USB input that  accepts up to 32-bit signals and support for DSD64, DSD128, DXD 352.8kHz and DXD 384kHz. This vast array of inputs and supported formats allows music from an abundance of digital sources to be reproduced with the precision and elegance Wadia are famous for, with the option of two sets of outputs via RCA and XLR, like myself during this review the Wadia DI122 can be utilised for active and passive systems simultaneously and controlled via the stunning remote control and systems digital volume.

With a complimentary headphone amplifier, great style and a detail rich, natural and fluid sound, I can’t see what there’s not to like about the Wadia DI122 Digital Audio Decoder.

Pros:

Excellent flexibility

Great array of inputs and outputs

Great styling

Terrific remote

Highly musical

Cons:

Could be a little more dynamic

Price at time of review: £1499

Dan Worth

Dominic Marsh and Ian Ringstead take the very well specced £699 Pro-Ject MaiA DS integrated amplifier for a ride and rather enjoy it. 

How do you make a great amplifier even better?   That was the task facing Pro-Ject when updating their excellent little MaiA amplifier that Hifi Pig gave an Outstanding Product Award to back in March 2015’s issue.

The next logical step we can presume then would be to increase the power output, in this case from 25 watts per channel from the original MaiA, up to 50 watts per channel for the DS variant and it doesn’t stop there either, with an extra cost option of the Power Box MaiA DS taking it up to no less than 80 watts per channel. Pro-Ject say the amplifier will cope with speaker loads down to 2 Ohms.  Impressive!

We don’t hand out Outstanding Product Awards lightly and the original MaiA amplifier won that by having no less than 9 inputs packed into a diminutive package and the DS version has that same number still, but some important changes have been made with those it seems in the DS variant.  The phono section has been enhanced for better cartridge matching with the addition of a moving coil input, the DAC section can now also handle DSD data input, plus a new facility included whereby remote controls can be handled via a downloadable app to a phone, tablet or PC.

Construction

I make no apologies for repeating what I wrote to describe the original MaiA’s layout as they are essentially the same, which saves me a lot of typing but worth reading anyway as there are notable differences between the MaiA and the MaiA DS version.

The DS variant is still a diminutive amplifier by anyone’s standards and I can easily see it fitting unobtrusively into countless domestic situations.  Measuring some 206mm(W) x 72mm(H) x 220mm (230mm including speaker sockets) deep and has a slightly larger footprint in depth than the MaiA.  Incidentally, these measurements were taken by me which seems to be at variance with the dimensions given on the Pro-ject website. The separate power supply provides 24 volts of DC at 5 amps and is fitted with a dual pole plug that connects it with the power inlet socket on the rear of the amplifier, with the power input to the power supply unit is via a standard figure of eight IEC socket (Suitable mains lead supplied). Other plugs and voltage matching power supplies are available for non-UK consumers.  The casework is of steel construction with the choice of either a black or silver finish faceplate. Fit and finish of the casework is exemplary and the sample supplied for review was in a silver finish.

When it comes to source inputs, there is an absolute plethora available, with an impressive NINE separate digital and analogue inputs to choose from.  Rarely seen these days although we are seeing a huge revival of vinyl playback, is an RCA phono input that caters for both moving magnet or moving coil cartridges, followed by 3 line level analogue inputs labeled 1, 2 and 3 accordingly, then on to the digital inputs which comprises 2x TOSLINK sockets, an RCA co-axial digital input, a USB input and a Bluetooth connection to APT-X standard, with a supplied external aerial which screws on to a dedicated socket on the rear panel.

There is only provision for a single pair of speakers to be connected.  The group of four 4mm connectors are grouped tightly together at the far right of the rear panel (although not as tightly grouped as the original MaiA) and not insulated from each other either, plus the holes to insert bare wired cables are aligned vertically so extreme care is needed so the wire isn’t pushed right through the connector body to touch the adjacent terminal above or beneath.  A good tip would be to measure exactly how much bare wire is exposed on the cable to be inserted that is less than the connector’s diameter, so none of the bare wire is exposed external to the connector to negate the risk of shorting.  I would not advocate or even contemplate using spade connectors for the speaker connections because of the close proximity of the naked terminals.

On the front panel reading from left to right, we have a power button with a tiny blue LED above.  A real surprise was to see the amplifier perform a soft start operation with the LED blinking while it is being carried out, so no switch on or power down thumps through the speakers from this amplifier, which is rather refreshing to see.  Next we have the remote control window which is a small unobtrusive plastic dome, followed by a 6.3mm headphone socket, which mutes the speaker output when a headphone jack plug is inserted.  We then have a rotary volume control knob to adjust the volume by hand, although the control itself is also motorized for adjustment via the remote control handset.  The control itself is quite stiff to turn by hand, although in all probability this stiffness will ease over time with usage.  The remote control handset provides the basic functions of source selection, volume adjustment, muting and power on/off.   Next on the front panel of the amp we find a source selector button which changes the source in upwards increments, with a bank of blue LEDs to indicate which source has been selected and screen printed in black lettering beneath those LEDs is the source names themselves, then finally another source selector button to change the source in downwards increments.  Incidentally, the front panel LEDs are very small yet still bright, but don’t actually provide much glare as blue LEDs are prone to do.  You can tell the power is applied and which source has been selected without constantly drawing your attention to them – a nice touch.

SPECIFICATIONS

The original MaiA was priced at circa £399.00 and naturally the DS has a price premium of around £300.00 more at £699.00, so let’s see what that extra cash outlay gives you.

Sound Quality

Unlike a standard run-of-the-mill integrated amplifier review, I had my work cut out with this one as it wasn’t just a case of bunging a CD player into it and any old pair of speakers and cables for the output either. If the inputs were there, they all had to be tested which proved to be quite a lengthy and protracted process. Not only that, I had to fit the amplifier into various systems ranging from high end to budget, including ancillaries so hopefully you the reader can get a handle on it’s performance envelope.

Firstly, I paired the MaiA DS with my HTC mobile phone using the Bluetooth facility and this was straightforward and easy to do when following the instructions given in the user manual.  Select the “BT” source on the front panel, and then set the phone to detect any nearby devices and when the BT LED on the MaiA flashes, momentarily press the power button on the MaiA and job done with no need for passwords.  I only have a small selection of MP3 tracks on my phone, but the sound quality was perfectly acceptable nonetheless given the limitations of the MP3 format.  I have Spotify on my tablet PC and the sound was again perfectly acceptable from that source.

With a more accurate signal being fed into the amplifier from my resident CD player, I was stunned at just how good this little amplifier sounded.   Delicious treble performance which was clean and vibrant, the sound of struck cymbals were as realistic as anyone could wish for, with a defined metallic “ting” and the following decay all clearly rendered.  Mid tones were slightly on the lean side giving a slightly cool balance to the sound.   When it came to the bottom octaves, the extra power of DS version certainly added weight and body in the bass regions, which is where the MaiA’s weakness lay, although the MaiA and the DS variant obviously share the same DNA, the DS version sounds like it has a lot more headroom with power in reserve to cope with heavy bass and fast transients.

I found it a very entertaining listen and happy to say that I was never affronted by what I was hearing, or never once thinking to myself “Wish there was more bass, better mids, clearer treble, etc” because it simply wasn’t the case.  Fink’s “Sort of Revolution” CD sounded palpable and full of detail, the propulsive bass line being recreated very well indeed  and the treble especially so, that “ting” from the Ride cymbals in all the tracks never being overwhelmed by the rest of the music so it stood as an individual clear entity.  This album is threaded throughout with close mic’d acoustic guitar recorded so the body of the instrument needs to be captured and the squealing of the finger work on the frets is integral to the performance, adding not detracting from the charm of the album.

As I did with the original MaiA amplifier, I installed the DS into the wife’s TEAC component system and it outclassed the TEAC amplifier in every respect.  No surprise there to be honest.

Time now to really put the MaiA DS through it’s paces with my resident system CD player, speakers and cabling. Now I found that the amplifier wasn’t seriously outclassed at all with every component costing many times more than it did.  The sound moved on into yet another dimension that was snapping at the heels of my resident amplifier which cost some 10 times more than the MaiA DS and the MaiA.  Yes it didn’t have the raw grunt and outright power at higher volumes, but even so it says more about these amplifier’s capabilities and what can be achieved with good design that enabled that.

Back into the CD drawer went Fink’s “Sort of Revolution” and here we are talking about differences between the two amplifiers in the finite range, they were that small.  Bass was 90% of what my resident amplifier gave me, treble was even closer and it was much easier now to pick up the ambience cues in the recording , but it was the mid band was where I heard the greatest difference and the MaiA provided a slightly “leaner” sound, but even that I could probably have lived with on a daily basis without real criticism in the long term, because that is a better compromise than a flabby or chesty sounding midrange which wreaks havoc with the music’s undertones.

Imaging and soundstage were certainly well up to standard with good height and depth, the sound extending well out beyond the speaker boundaries.

The MaiA DS like it’s smaller sibling didn’t quite have the same “punch in the guts” bass power and dynamics that my resident amplifier has and frankly didn’t expect it to be, but I don’t see that as a weakness on behalf of the MaiA DS as my own amplifier has 150 watts per channel on tap.  Incidentally, the casework didn’t even get the slightest bit warm during these high power runs.  A highly commendable performance.

Last, but by no means least, I turned to the digital input capabilities of the MaiA DS.  Both co-axial and optical inputs routed from my CD player in to the DAC section were more than satisfactory with no noise or mush detected.   It was nigh on impossible to tell if the resulting sound via the DAC was any better or different to the DAC within my resident CD player because they sounded so similar.  Signal lock was instantaneous although there is no indicator to show that it was.  USB connection from my laptop PC was of a similar performance so no quibbles there either.   As my television and satellite receiver are in another room unfortunately, I was unable to test how the MaiA DS interfaced with that equipment although I forsee no issues there either.

Conclusion

Whereas the original MaiA amplifier was fine for smaller rooms like a study or a bedroom, the extra power available from the DS version means it will provide more than sufficient output to fill a medium sized room from a good solid 50 watts per channel of clean sound, three line level analogue inputs, a switchable moving magnet or moving coil phono input, remote control, a headphone output too, no less than three digital inputs, the unique remote control facility and a Bluetooth connection as well, adds up to a versatile and highly flexible heart to any hifi music reproduction, computer, or two channel  A/V system.  With a genuine level of swiss army knife versatility that these Pro-ject MaiA amplifiers possess, the savings from not buying separate DACs and high sensitivity phono stages alone makes them a total steal at their asking prices.

The MaiA DS will happily integrate into budget systems, middle ranking systems and not entirely out of place or embarrassed when rubbing shoulders with the esoteric either, so I will say nothing more other than a wholehearted endorsement from me.

PROS:  The closest I could find to a Swiss Army knife in terms of connectivity and functionality.  Sound is considerably better than you would expect from a diminutive little box.  Price.

CONS:  Beware the spacing on the speaker binding posts.

Dominic Marsh

Dominic rated the MaiA DS so highly it was sent to Hifi Pig reviewer Ian Ringstead for a second opinion. 

Given that Dominic rated the MaiA DS so highly I was asked if I could do a follow up to his review on the and took no persuading being a great fan of Pro-ject. The MaiA DS is basically a MaiA on steroids built to higher standards in a very nicely made case and with a solid aluminium front panel. I have owned a Pro-ject RS phono stage which was excellent, so I knew what to expect build wise; could the sound be as good?

The DS is bigger than the standard MaiA with a larger separate power supply to allow for the greater power output it produces. Like the MaiA, the DS is incredibly versatile and is a veritable Swiss army knife as Dominic said himself  in his review. For such a compact unit it packs one hell of a punch with it numerous analogue and digital inputs. I particularly like the fact the very good phono stage has both moving magnet and moving coil switching. I used both to good effect and as a reviewing tool it would be a handy amp to have. The headphone stage is useful as well, and unless you are a purist does a fine job.

The credit card sized remote is neat but could easily be lost down a cushion so make sure you don’t misplace it! I tried my mobile phone with the DS streaming my music and found it a very straight forward process to achieve. The sound was good even though it was only mp3 and a convenient way of playing background music through your system for a party or meal with friends. Although the power output is only 55 watts, it was plenty with my resident Triangle speakers.

MaiA DS can be upgraded with a separate linear power supply that will almost double the dynamic per-formance power and improves the sound significantly in terms of punch and clarity. Power Box MaiA DS additionally offers convenient power wiring for customers who decide to have multiple Pro-Ject components in a system. Up to five products from the Pro-Ject family, including a turntable (DC-only products) can be connected simultaneously.

Dominic has covered all the facilities and features in his review so I’ll just say I loved it as well. If space is a major issue and let’s face it modern homes are smaller than they used to be or you live in a small flat or bed-sit, then the MaiA DS is a real boon without compromising on the quality front. In my room and system the DS was excellent, so I urge anyone who is interested in trying one out to ask a dealer if they will loan you one on a trial basis. As a second system amp it would be superb if you can justify the extra cost. I used it with my Pro-ject Extension 9 and Ortofon Quintet Black moving coil and had no issues with the built in phono stage and the separate phono stage I am currently trying out costs more than the DS, and although better ,wasn’t vastly superior, so well done to the design team.

Pros 

Fantastic little amp that is very well built and specified 

Remote control 

Great range of inputs and outputs 

Power supply can be upgraded 

Cons 

The speaker terminals are closely packed together, so be careful with your connections, using good 4mm plugs.

Ian Ringstead

Janine Elliot takes a listen to the Soundsmith Carmen Moving Iron Cartridge that is made in the US and costs £759.00.

My own collection of Cartridges has morphed from Ceramic to Magnetic, to MM, MI and MC. Then along came Soundmith, one of those companies you wish you had always known. When I first heard their SG-200 I saw the light, not least because of the two LED’s glowing to show power was getting to the cartridge. The Strain Gauge cartridge is like no other cartridge.  Instead of inducing a signal voltage by motion by coils or magnets, the Strain Gauge cantilever movement deflects two minute silicon strain gauge elements. The blue lights are there to tell you that all is OK, and they are not electrostatic cartridges aka Stax of old, that some may have thought. And where the Strain Gauge’s much reduced effective moving mass means a quicker and tireless response, the ‘Carmen’ up for review here uses their Moving Iron topology which means no heavy coil or magnet having to move about. Instead, a tiny ultra-low mass high-purity moving iron element wiggles about between an area of fixed coils and permanent magnets. This means an effective tip mass of only 0.35g, and me setting my Rega 301 arm to 1.4g on my Townshend Rock 7. Whilst the design has a fixed permanent stylus assembly similar to that on a moving coil cartridge, it actually needs to be fed to the Moving Magnet input of your phono-stage, if you have a choice.

The relatively high output is due to the fact that the stationary magnet/coil structure can be made large, and therefore also allow for a lower vertical tracking force of between 1.2 and 1.4g.  All in all this lack of mass improves the cartridge’s transient response and its agile ‘trackability’. All is assembled in an ebony enclosure to “enhance the performance” with a distinctive green body to distinguish it from all the others in the range. Whilst most of engineer and designer Peter Ledermann’s cartridges require hefty cheque books, the Carmen, the replacement for their esteemed SMMC3, is a song at £759.00, being one of the cheapest in the range, from a company set up in 1972 and based in Peekskill, about an hour away from New York.

Where Panasonic produced Strain Gauge cartridges long before Soundsmith did, so too B&O made Moving Iron cartridges, and it was Ledermann’s interest in those and his request to the Scandinavian company to use their technology long after they had chucked out their own tooling that paved the way to making Soundmith products. The company even offers re-tipping or replacing of B&O cartridges. The similarity between the two companies then becomes apparent if the SMMC3 acronym hadn’t already given it away; the indented shape of the front of the cartridge body that when looked at from above shows the stylus tip was something that I liked about the original B&O MMC 1- 5. Finding your way to the start of a groove is a doddle, rather than the guesswork from most cartridges with the stylus hidden somewhere underneath the body. Bang and Olufsen’s cartridges used a cross-shaped piece of ultra-low-mass high purity iron (MMC stands for Moving Micro Cross), and the Soundsmith MI designs use stationary coils and magnets and a small piece of “moving iron”.

With over 60 cartridges to his name, Ledermann is no slouch. In his career he has been a design engineer at RAM Audio Systems, working with Richard Majestic on the designs of everything from high-power, minimal-feedback power amplifiers and preamplifiers to phono stages. He was also a senior research engineer at IBM with 11 patents to his name. As a result of his diverse experience in audio design his talents at Soundsmith extend to the CDT-4 automated audio tester, phono preamplifiers, a zero feedback MOSFET power amp and speakers.  He even services major brands such as Revox, Bang & Olufsen, Nakamichi, and Tandberg.

Sound

The Carmen MI cartridge was a doddle to set up on my arm and matching the 47K Ohm and 100pF load gave a smooth, velvety, if slightly prominent midrange, but covering the entire frequency range with good bass and clean top end, and a pace and rhythm that made for detail and beauty.  All was there, and I did feel that some of the crackles from worn discs paled into insignificance as the music came out, which was a pleasant outcome.  My Love Song “Feel the Love” live album has a beautifully engineered drum kit and audience sound, and the Soundsmith kept the gig alive, with each instrument clearly placed on the stage, and vocal warmth that made the music quite relaxed but not slow nor losing detail, and well, very pleasant. Even the applause sounded like applause rather than rain on the caravan roof. Everything sounded exact, but for me just a little too tame. My Yes “Live from House of Blues” 180g three-LP set is one of those albums that can cause headaches on even the best set ups. Whilst I love Jon Anderson’s velvety voice I really do need to be in the right mood to listen to anything other than ‘The Messenger’ or ‘Nous Sommes Soleil’, but putting it with the Carmen was like ‘strawberries and cream’ (or in my case ‘cheese and marmite’). This just jelled so well that I had to play the whole set. The Carmen has a velvety property of its own, making music of all kinds just so sweet. It wasn’t slow; that lightweight frame puts that out of the question, as it allows the music to flow with nothing getting in the way. My ancient RCA Camden Classics Shostakovich Symphony No.5, conducted by Howard Mitchell, gave all instruments their own place in the soundstage, though it sounded somewhat slower than I was used to. Dmitri Shostakovich called this symphony a “Soviet Artist’s reply to just criticism”, complaining that his music could still be popular to the mass audience. The Soundsmith could justly be considered as a US engineer’s reply to those who think cartridges only work with certain types of music. This beauty just made everything sound good, with only a slight mid frequency emphasis that spoilt my listening at times. Vocals should of course work well with any cartridge named after an opera, just as the Aida, Boheme, Otello, or any of the other opera or vocal inspired names from this company should also do. That mid-lift through my Wilson Benesch/Krell setup was minimal, but through my original 1970’s Chartwell LS3/5a and Slee setup this was a more pronounced, even compared with my choice Kontrapunkt b.  However, the idea of a low mass, low playing weight cartridge was for me very appealing. At 6.8g it is 2/3 the weight of my Ortofon, and plays at half the tracking force. All this means an agility and control that made me favour those high compliance cartridges back in the 80’s. Whilst this cartridge can be classed as medium-compliance, when I connected to my aged SME3/Transcriptors Hydraulic reference system, suddenly the sound opened up in a way that felt more relaxed and open.  Whilst most UK and US magazines esteemed the SME 3 back in the 1980’s it has unfortunately been culled as the pink elephant of the SME brand over the years, mainly because it was only designed for high-compliance, low tracking weight MM cartridges, but also largely because of magazine politics. The SME 3 always gave a smooth and musical, almost reel-to-reel sound, and my Shure V15iv cartridge works wonders on it. I didn’t think I would be able to better this, but with the Carmen this was done quite significantly. Had I still got my SME Series 2 arm I would have tried that too, as I am sure that would have worked even better, being medium compliance. But, to play at 1.2g on my SME3, Transcriptors, Slee and Chartwell LS3/5a set up was a breath of fresh air and I didn’t want to remove the cartridge and return it. Funny world.

Back to the 21^st Century, the Carmen has a nude elliptical 6 x 17 μm stylus on an aluminium alloy cantilever with reasonable 26dB channel separation at 1kHz and a MM/MI class’ output voltage of 2.12mV. When a (very) young child I assumed that cartridges might go up in value as they have diamonds, and as cartridges go, whilst they might not be as collectable or look as much a jewel on the crown as the Koetsu’s of the world, the complete set from Soundsmith certainly look better than most of the cartridges out there, with their distinctive colours and precious stone colour effects. Whilst the colour includes to some extent their sound, I did not find this a hindrance but actually to add to my enjoyment of the music, and in a way wasn’t a million miles from that from a Koetsu.

Conclusion

For those wanting a £4000 Sussurro but don’t have the money, the Carmen gets pretty close for considerably less.  With its ultra-low moving mass, reasonably high output and low vertical tracking force, this is a cartridge you should have a listen to.

For those who want a sensual, intuitive and detailed sound this cartridge should be just what you are asking for.

Pros:

Agility, control and musicality

Velvety flavour to the sound

Lightweight

High output for MM phonostage

Can be rebuilt over and over for 20% of retail price, even if not the original owner

Price 

Cons:

The warm velvety sound might to too coloured for some

Slightly enhanced mid-band might not suit everyone.

Price £759

Janine Elliot

Scansonic are Danish and share the same parent company as Raidho, indeed they share the same designer. The M-5 loudspeakers are a small standmount costing £399 without stand and unusually at this price point sport a ribbon tweeter. Ian Ringstead puts them through their paces. 

Scansonic is a newish brand to me that I have heard of, but had no experience of before now. Dantax A/S was founded in 1971 with the aim of building high quality hifi loudspeakers the are the parent company of Raidho and the Scansonics are designed by Michael Børresen, creator of the Raidho range. Many things have changed since the start in the early 70’s – and today Dantax A/S has evolved into a competitive international company, offering a wide range of own “in-house”, Danish designed and developed hifi and home cinema loudspeakers, tabletop radios and hifi products under the Scansonic brand that matches consumers’ preferences with regard to modern functional design, quality and attractive pricing. If you look at their website you’ll see how big they are.

The M-5 speaker is a compact, two-way, stand-mount mini-monitor. The speaker is designed around an ultra light ribbon planar tweeter and a paper-polypropylene compound bass-midrange driver membrane. The speaker is crossed over at 3.5 KHz with a second order filter. They come finished in either piano black or piano white, I received the white finish with the floor stands in order to audition them properly.

The finish is very smart and attractive and several friends commented on their appearance and neat size. Being a small stand-mount/bookshelf speaker they fit easily into any environment and look very stylish on the matching curved floor stands which are designed to angle the speakers back slightly to provide the best sound presentation. The stands are flat packed so require building, and although not complicated they were a bit fiddly due to the nature of the design and brief instruction sheet. If you have built Ikea furniture before like myself (and plenty of it) then it is not difficult, just awkward. Once built the stands are very stylish and finished in the same piano black paint. The speakers sit on top of the stands held in place by a bolt that screws into their base. Because all the fixings are hidden (to aid the stylish appearance) this is where the fiddly assembly comes in. The stands aren’t spiked but come with screw on feet to complete the neat appearance and allow for practical placement on floors. Scansonic also supply wall mounting brackets if you wish to hang them on a wall, but obviously they perform at their best stand-mounted in free space.

Technical information

• Size: (WxHxD) 151 x 265 x 151 mm
• Weight: 3,4 kg
• Freq. response: 55 Hz – 30 kHz
• Impedance: > 6 ohm
• Crossover: 3.5 KHz 2. order acoustic slope
• Enclosure: Heavily braced, ventilated box design with front loaded port
• Drive units: 1 sealed ribbon tweeter with kapton/aluminum sandwich membrane
• 1 paper-polypropylene coned 4,5” bass/mid driver with underhung magnet system
• Finish: Black-piano or White-piano
• Amplification: We recommend high quality amplifiers >50W

Sound

The M-5 are single wired so no messing about with bi wire cables and I hooked them up with my Van Damme and also the superb Way Silver 2 cables to really see what they could produce. For such a compact speaker, once run in, I felt they were pretty amazing. They are front ported with a slot running along the bottom edge of the cabinet to aid bass output and efficiency. The bass they produced, although limited, was fantastic given their constraints and I marvel at how modern speaker design and materials now contribute to some astounding smaller speakers. I have reviewed quite a few compact designs in the last year and all have impressed me. Harking back to the eighties when I started in retailing, compact speakers had definite limitations that modern designs just shrug off now.

Not only was the bass performance pretty amazing, it was the treble that I felt was the pinnacle of this speaker’s prowess. The ultra light weight ribbon tweeter design is amazing for the modest cost of this speaker (£399). Ribbons have traditionally been expensive to manufacture due to their complex design and usually have only been incorporated in more expensive models where the cost constraints allow. Well miraculously Scansonic have obviously cracked the cost issue in order to use it in the M-5 and boy does it show. I generally like soft dome silk tweeter designs as I feel they give a smoother treble that metal dome tweeters don’t to my ear, but here this ribbon tweeter proves that a light weight foil design can conquer. The detail in all the recordings I played, whether vinyl or CD, was fabulous. Percussion, bells, cymbals, you name it soared and the detailing was so lifelike that I had no problem hearing everything with crystal clarity. Live recordings from Capercaille were stunning because the complex rhythms of the band’s instruments were beautifully reproduced and Karen Matheson’s angelic voice was superb and clearly portrayed.

Scansonic recommend high quality amps of 50 watts or more and I can concur this. My Meridian 556 rated at 170 watts loved these speakers and drove them to high levels with no distortion issues at all. They can certainly rock, but they also liked all forms of music and classical was reproduced equally well, with the sound stage being really open and detailed. Now I am not saying these speakers are perfect, nothing is, but for the money I think they are superb. Compared to electrostatic designs like Quad and Martin Logan which are considerably more expensive, I feel the M-5 gives an insight into that type of sound with its lovely open presentation. Scansonic do floor standing versions higher up the range which I heard briefly at one of last year’s shows and they sounded very good there as well. They have the obvious bass extension the M-5 can’t reproduce but that’s for another time if I get the chance to audition them.

Conclusion

As a large successful manufacturer Scansonic’s expertise and economies of scale allow them to produce a really great value for money product range. The M-5 is the baby in the HD series and having seen and heard the results it can only get better.

Pros:

Great sound from a compact speaker

That ribbon tweeter

Stylish modern design

Excellent value for money

Cons:

Stands are fiddly to build if you choose to buy them, but compliment the speakers well.

Modern design look may not be to everybody’s taste

Price M-5 £399 with single pillar stands £499

Ian Ringstead

Paradox Audio hail from Oslo in Norway and headed by Tore Magnus Wilhelmsen, founded early in the year 2010.  They produce a range of cables aimed squarely at the high end of the market and the company’s tagline is “Probably the world’s most honest cables”. Dominic Marsh plumbs them into his system.

The philosophy behind that is Paradox Audio says that only the finest materials go into their cables, which directly affects the music coming out.  Bold words, so let’s see if that claim is substantiated.

Three cables were submitted for review, in the shape of the Soundwave single ended RCA interconnect of 1.5 metres in length priced at US$ 1619 (£1,062), then a 1.5 metre Velocity power cable with Schuko inlet connector priced at  US$ 2349 (£1,541) and lastly a 2.5 metre pair of Singularity speaker cables fitted with 4mm banana plugs priced at US$ 1549 (£1,016).  All of the cables are handmade.

They appear to be second up from the bottom of the Paradox Audio range.

Construction

Sadly no construction details are given on the Paradox website for the Soundwave interconnects but I can tell you they are a flat ribbon design and fitted with the Neutrik Reen RCA plugs.  Conductor material is said to be of very high purity copper with a choice of having a shield or not fitted.  Being a flat ribbon design means you have to be careful when handling the cable as it is all too easy for the cable to loop over itself and kink and once kinked, an impression of the kink could be left permanently.   This cable is also available in XLR balanced configuration.

The Velocity power cable has an outer diameter of 13.4mm and is fairly flexible.  Conductor material is high purity oxygen free copper with 3 conductors of 11 AWG (3 x 4mm) each with 3 layers of copper and aluminium shielding.  Insulation is by way of PE and PVC layers.  Connectors fitted to the review sample were an alloy bodied Schuko inlet connector and a large plastic bodied IEC connector.  Power handling is said to be 89 Amps maximum, although the connectors are rated at considerably less than that figure.  The outer covering is an expandable mesh sleeving, with a choice of colours available.  Mains inlet plugs available for USA, Australia, UK and Schuko connections, as are high current IEC connectors.

Lastly, the Singularity speaker cable is again a flat ribbon design with an outside diameter of 11.9mm.  Conductor material is said to be high purity copper and arranged in “modules”.  Each one of these modules has what appears to be a range of conductors in descending order of gauge to make up 12 AWG in total. Additional modules can be added according to application.

The review sample was fitted with 4mm “Z” plugs and spade connections are also available to order.

Sound

The first cable I inserted into my resident system was the power cable and immediately I could tell this was a cable that was not shy of delivering high current. Bass became fuller and more taut, with a complete lack of boom or overhang – the benchmark of a good power cord.  I particularly liked the look and feel of the alloy Schuko connector, although connection quality was no better or worse than other boutique connectors as it could be wiggled in the socket although actual connection was never lost. Next in went the interconnects, which added a small level of additional fine details over my resident cables, with the remainder of the frequencies on an equal par.  Finally, the speaker cables were connected up so I now had the full ‘loom’ of Paradox cables installed.  The speaker cables added a small level of refinement and better top end clarity. The collective result was very good performing; the added piquancy in the upper treble was very welcome to hear.

Time for some music to be played through the cables and into the CD drawer went my trusty test disc in the shape of Fink’s “Wheels Beneath My Feet” live album.  Track one called “Biscuits For Breakfast” begins with the drummer gently striking the Ride cymbal as the intro, which has to portray the metal ringing in the cymbal to be accepted as real and any masking here shows up instantly and readily.  The Paradox loom gave a good account of themselves with this test and I could find no criticisms to level at these cables.  Kick drum was portrayed with good weight and solidity, a good solid rhythmic pounding of the drum with impeccable timing, bang on cue with each beat, so no cause for concerns there.   Moving on to track 12 “Sort Of Revolution” we should be able to hear a clear distinctions in the change of venue ambience as each of the tracks on the album were laid down at different locations throughout one of Fink’s many European tours.  This track contains a large element of audience participation, with rhythmic hand clapping that shouldn’t sound like bacon frying in a pan, catcalls and cheering from the audience should also be very clear and concise too and the Paradox cables passed this test with flying colours.

As a contrast to that and considerably more technically challenging too, I followed on with some electronic music in the shape of Tripswitch’s excellent album “Geometry”.  There is some superb layering in this album and it takes a very competent set of cables to unfold and pull back all the layers so each strand is separated out and clearly defined in every respect.  The bass lines really are deep on this album, rather subtle in places too and can easily be muddled by the music around it.  The Paradox loom handled this task rather well, especially around the bass which has to be deep and not collide with other instruments in the mix, but once or twice did momentarily get recessed into the rest of the music, although there is no real cause for concern here as other cables in a similar class demonstrate the same trait.

Conclusion

These cables occupy an already crowded and very competitive market sector, so it is extraordinarily difficult to place them in any order of ranking amongst their contemporaries.  To their credit, Paradox Audio make no claims about their cable’s performance, so in that respect they are indeed “honest cables” and so presumably they allow their target audience to discover for themselves if that is the case.

My favourite cable of the three was the power cord, in it’s ability to transfer plenty of current when needed and being overhang and boom-free in the bass registers.  Speaker cables too were impressive for their fine balanced and detailed sound.  For the asking price however, I felt that the interconnects deserved better quality plugs than the Neutriks fitted by Paradox and I was left wondering if better quality plugs would have made a difference in sound quality.  Of course, I have made my views known to Paradox Audio.

We are talking about a high end price tag here and do the cables give a high end performance to match?  Well yes they did in my resident system, but whether they perform the same in your system is an unanswered question, naturally and hand built cables are never cheap to begin with.  They are fine cables nonetheless and if their price doesn’t faze you, then do put them on your audition list.

Pros: 

Sublime detailed sound with plenty of refinement.  The power cord did impress.

Cons: 

Not for those audiophiles with shallow pockets.  I would expect RCA plugs better than Neutriks fitted at this price level.

Dominic Marsh

A quality loudspeaker for just € 390? Lionel Payne, in his first review for Hifi Pig, takes a listen to the Triangle Elara LN01 Loudspeakers 

The Elara LN 01’s are the smallest in a new four strong range of loudspeakers brought out by the French company, Triangle, a company that first started producing their wares way back in 1980. They measure 291mm x 165mm x 291mm and weigh in at 4.5kilos. They are accompanied in the range by a centre channel speaker (LN 02) and two floorstanders (LN03 and LN04) and all four models are available in two finishes – piano gloss black or piano gloss white. My review pair are black and I was immediately struck by their beautiful finish. If only all loudspeakers were this gorgeous ! They are a rear-ported bass reflex two way model with a 28mm silk dome tweeter and 135mm concave mid/bass driver. An interesting point about the Triangle designed silk dome tweeter used in these models is that it is the first ever silk dome tweeter that Triangle have used since their inception. They explain that using this type of tweeter has allowed for a less complicated crossover design as simplicity and good looks were the initial design brief for this range. The front baffle is 21mm thick with all other sides being 18mm. The tweeter has a specially designed front plate collar which helps to reduce reflections. The supplied grilles are attached via invisible magnets and there is not a screw fastening to be seen anywhere. I should point out at this point that I was so happy with their appearance the grills were never tested sonically. However, it would have been remiss of me to not check the fit and finish of them and I’m pleased to report that not only are they also very attractive but they fit with good accuracy and the magnets have a strong pull to them.

Triangle recommends that they are kept at least 40cm from the rear wall (obviously for the rear port) and at least 2metres apart. I found that as long as these two criteria were met they weren’t too fussy about placement. For the major part of my listening I had them on 600mm spiked Atacama stands and in free space as their bass content was admirable without the need for reinforcement. This positioning also helped to get a better soundstage which was fairly impressive. Also, because of their relatively small size I tested them in nearfield conditions as a desktop pair. They worked reasonably well in this situation as long as the volume wasn’t turned up too high because my desk is up against a wall and the rear port came in to play as the volume increased.

Sound 

When I initially hooked up the LN 01’s I immediately felt that the treble output was a little reticent as well as having a slight hardness to it. This can often be the case with new, out of the box, loudspeakers so a period of run-in ensued before any serious listening would take place.  I should also explain that due to my current circumstances I couldn’t leave the speakers running all day and night to run-in but rather I had to be in my “mancave” almost all the time they were playing. This was mainly due to my wife’s superb hearing and not being able to sleep if she can hear the slightest unnatural sound.  Therefore a period of listening to these loudspeakers on a daily basis followed and I gradually heard the significant improvements to their sound, virtually on a daily basis. The treble did sweeten up immeasurably although I have to say the overall balance of sound left me wanting just a little more high frequency content. It’s not that there was any information lacking but just that, again, I felt the treble output a little reticent. I did speak to my contact at Triangle and he offered a perfectly good explanation for this – namely that I was driving these loudspeakers with quite a high-end amplifier (Musical Fidelity Tri Vista 300) and they were were far more likely to be driven by more budget type equipment, a lot of which may have a bright balance to their sound, particularly low-cost Class D amplifiers. Pretty sound thinking if you ask me ! What did strike me through this period and beyond was how good the bass was. Not to say it reached herculean depths as we all know that is nigh on impossible from such a diminutive size but the low frequencies on offer were both informative and enjoyable. They certainly know how to boogie. I have to say that despite them not having the midband clarity of a Harbeth or my own Impulse H2’s I could happily live with these as my main speakers for a time. Listening to London Grammar’s debut album If You Wait highlighted how good these little speakers could be. In the opening track Hey Now they convincingly portrayed the atmosphere of the song and Hannah Reid’s vocals shone through with tremendous clarity and presence. Just as it should be really.

One track I enjoy using as a review tool is Nitin Sawnhey’s Tides from his Beyond Skin album which mainly is the interaction between a pianist and drummer where the drummer almost exclusively is using cymbals and high-hats. I use this track to highlight the quality of treble reproduction but, strangely in this case, I was drawn more to the power of the accompanying piano. Another track I use, as do both Dominic and Dan of these pages, is Biscuits For Breakfast from Fink’s excellent live album Wheels Turn Beneath My Feet. This track is also a good indicator for how the top end is conveyed and the Elaras do a lovely job with a sweet and informative treble replicating the cymbal strikes throughout the track. The penultimate track of this well recorded album is called Sort Of Revolution and the Elaras really showed their abilities conveying Fin’s laid-back vocals with real credibility as well as producing  a sweet top end and the driving bass lines with the odd thwack of the kick drum coming through with good depth despite their diminutive size.

Conclusion

I have to be honest and say that I really enjoyed my time with the Elara LN 01’s. They are to my eyes aimed firmly at the lifestyle end of the market and the range including a centre channel version shows they are also aimed towards home theatre use. My guess is that many of them will end up as rear speakers in an all Elara home theatre set-up and I’m positive that they will be more than suitable for that purpose. However, for the asking price of 400 Euros they represent good value as an out and out stereo pair, particularly where room is at a premium. The driving bass rhythms these produced made them a real joy to listen to and, for me, their looks are sheer dynamite ! 

Pros:

One of the best looking loudspeakers, if not the best, for anything like this kind of money.

Wonderful rhythm and bass really creates the boogie factor.

Cons:

Slightly reticent treble output but nothing else at this price point.

Price 390 Euros

Lionel Payne