Balanced Mains Units are used extensively in professional studios and are starting to make their mark in domestic audio situations. Janine Elliot gets her life in balance and plugs in the Russ Andrews BMU 3000 costing £3599.

Reviewing cables, mains conditioners and balanced mains units is bound to irk some hifi addicts, particularly engineers.  I, like most reviewers, have suffered the displeasure of the few who believe all wire sounds the same and that travelling past your local Homebase for mains taming devices is quite simply a waste of money and petrol. Luckily my ears, like I’m sure yours, can perceive the finite differences in sounds between cabling to see that there is more to creating a good audio set up than tons of flashy lights and chrome knobs. So, to be asked to review the Russ Andrews Balanced Mains Unit coming in at 100 pennies short of £3600 is probably going to cause a few swear words from a few non-believers.

Russ Andrews (and me, too) has had his name bounded about internet forum sites enough over the years to take it all in his stride, as he  – like I – can hear for himself just how effective products like these are in controlling and ultimately upgrading your hifi. And that is it; these heavyweight (23.4kg) boxes don’t profess to do anything other than feed you pure mains. Yes, the mains supply travels numerous miles to get to your house, so why should the last few feet matter at all? Well, quite simply the last few feet make the most difference because of interference from your freezer and hair drier, and God forbid, those of you pushing audio, wi-fi or HDMI around their 13A mains sockets. Whilst you can use mains conditioner to remove RFI’s and EMIs, they are really like Paracetamol; they make something painful a little bit more manageable, but only when you are able to actually replace that defective liver or kidney, will all things be totally well again. And that’s what the Balanced Mains Unit does. For this reason, professional recording studios around the world use balanced power supplies to ensure the purest starting point for their music, speech or video.

In its simplest form, normal mains is single ended, with around 230V at the live terminal and 0V at the neutral. By changing to a balanced unit you can split the 230V mains signal into two halves, putting +115V on the live and -115V in the neutral. These add up to 230V, but any noise or distortion in the mains will have appeared in both legs and will be cancelled out when joined together, similar to the process used in noise cancelling headphones.

The BMU3000 is like the BMU1000 I reviewed a while ago, which I hinted then that whilst being an effective upgrade for your hifi, was limited in only having two 13A sockets. Daisy chaining extension leads will only undo any good you have done. This unit therefore has five, which should furnish all your hifi needs.  With two separate 1500V ‘SuperSilent’ transformers; one for two and the other for three UK or Euro (Schuko) UltraSockets giving a total of 3KVA of power across the five sockets, this should be more than enough for most people.  Each transformer is individually wound on a silicon steel core and all is wired internally with Kimber Kable, obviously.

This heavyweight is actually very good looking and looks petit considering what is inside, and it even comes in a plastic suitcase to protect it all in transit, which you can then use when you go to off to Menorca. It does require a 16A IEC socket to use it, as opposed to a conventional 13A ‘kettle lead’, and so a PowerKord 300 was kindly packaged for my review.  

This unit is in many ways identical to the BMU1000. You can adjust the unit to your incoming voltage without the need for meters, simply by listening to any “hum” caused by mismatching of input to output voltage. The unit comes as standard at 225V but this can be adjusted in small increments with TAP connections inside the unit.  The brown live cable is connected to a grey/white cable, and can be reconnected to purple, black or yellow tappings on the secondary for 240V, 250 or 260V respectively.  At the default 225V setting I found it was too noisy, though this reduced when I set up as 240V. The process for doing this is fairly simple though does mean undoing 12 Phillips screws and pulling out the right-hand ABS plastic top panel. The unit comes supplied with the live brown connector connected to the white/grey cables, so, with the unit switched off and unplugged I swapped the white/grey leads for the purple. This didn’t totally reduce the humming but brought it to an acceptable level, especially when I placed a heavy rubber mat on top of the unit. Whilst I love the ease of access to the top by removing the ABS panel – and they are held fairly tightly in place – they still do vibrate and so it will be a good idea to put something on the top to catch that sympathetic vibration.  ABS is chosen by Russ not to keep the weight down, but due to him and his team finding that it gave a better sound quality than metal boxes. I have always been confused about whether there should be any form of metal Faraday cage to prevent further EMIs in a balanced MU, or indeed whether there was any point, it being self-cancelling. Russ agrees, and the team having done extensive testing on this. The “SuperSilent” transformers are particularly well made with very few stray fields. It actually sounds better without any cage or foil, which is why there’s isn’t one.

“We’ve long been fans of the use of non-metallic boxes for equipment – in terms of sound quality, subjectively the sound becomes more open and spacious, and metal casework sounds rather ‘closed-in’ in comparison.”

Russ therefore chose ABS and I measured no EMIs. After setting the unit voltage correctly there were still quiet hum noises, but these are due to several reasons. Firstly, any object with wire, metal, current and magnetic field is going to act like a speaker. Also, I mentioned in the BMU1000 review that some hum is caused by the fact that the core laminations in the transformer are extending and contracting as they are magnetised, called Magnetostriction, and that this will happen twice in each 50Hz UK current cycle giving a gentle 100Hz hum.  Getting the correct voltage reduces this, though there is still a minute amount of residual hum, but importantly it was considerably reduced further with damping of the cabinet. Placing the unit on a solid base or rack, preferably not of glass, and also placing the unit on more generous rubber feet will absorb any of the vibration from the rack and other audio equipment. Plus, if your hifi has good power supply stages, it almost totally disappears. The unit will look great in the lowest part of a rack with the mains leads from hifi equipment being fed neatly into it from above and this, too, will aid in reducing induction between cables and more important to audio cables close by. But, if the unit is on the rack it is therefore essential that you spend all the time to set it up correctly. For example, the 8 rubber feet on the BMU3000 are less deep than the lower lip of the front Aluminium faceplate, so if you sit the unit faceplate within the shelf, you need to use bigger feet.  In my case I used four 30kg strength rubber semi-circular pods. Also it would perhaps have been better, bearing in mind the anorexic feet, that the 13A IEC sockets were designed fitted upside down, since they would be fed from your components above. Having them with the earth ‘pin’ at the top means the cable exiting the inserted mains plugs is bent around tightly and can touch the shelf, and can therefore act as  a carrier of vibration from the BMU. In an ideal world you should in any case place the unit away from your rack and hifi, though looking as good as it does you might be tempted not to. 

Once I set up the review sample on my own pods all was good and I had no worries about the noise, nor did I need to add my own mains conditioners. Indeed, should you really, really feel the need to add a RA or other mains conditioner – Russ recommends you don’t use any, even though he makes a number of them – then you should only use them before the BMU3000.  Also, the unit is fitted with an internal and resettable thermal breaker on each of the transformers. If the unit trips, then you need to unplug everything, get out a Phillips or Pozidrive screwdriver and unscrew 12 screws from the back panel to get inside the unit and reset it. I still wish a thermal breaker unit could be fitted to the rear of the box.

With its twin 15000VA transformers, totalling the 3kVA for the five sockets, I had no fears in winding up my power thirsty Krell power amp and connecting the multi power supply equipped KPS20i CD player. Wow, I always thought the KSP20i was one of the best ever CD players, and still very analogue and musical playback, particularly in the bass, but connected to the BMU3000 showed me why I needed to have a balanced life. The extra detail, speed and most important, the extra bandwidth of sound particularly at the top end was quite extraordinary.  The difference between this and the 1000VA version was really evident in my power-thirsty American kit. Where a lower specified unit could cause the audio to sound a bit compressed or even to add mechanical noise, this was like an over-specified engine in a car; there was always something in reserve when you needed it. Playing vinyl the result hinted at better speed accuracy and an increased excitement and improved timing. Everything was tight, controlled, and exact. Interestingly, whilst the sound was more clinical and flatter, the lowest-frequency pedal organ notes when playing Saint-Saens Organ Symphony (Jane Parker-Smith, LPO, Serge Baudo) through my Wilson Benesch Torus subsonic generator as indicated by 2 blue flashing lights was greater through the BMU than solely through my own designed mains conditioner which showed just one blue light, but which appeared to have the greater lower bass. The BMU quite simply made the sound clearer and more accurate. And then, connecting up my old Quad 303/33 wired up to my aged iconic Chartwell LS3/5a’s for use in reviewing the new Graham Audio Chartwell LS3/5 I couldn’t believe just how deep that bass could get.

Conclusion

So, would I recommend the BMU3000? Well, it’s a bit like choosing between Sainsbury’s Basics custard or Birds. Whilst both will work well with mum’s apple pie, the latter taste better and has more goodness.  But it is more expensive. Ouch.  So it is too with the BMU3000. Yes, some engineers and non-believers will suggest going to the local DIY or electrical store, and yes, you will get a knockdown price and it’ll be okay. Most likely the internal engineering won’t be so exact, the amount of effort put into its design and suitability for audio/visual probably won’t have been in the forefront of its build, and – for me very important – it won’t look so drop dead beautiful in its rack-friendly 10mm thick anodised aluminium front panelled box. Perhaps their 13Amp sockets won’t be as classy as the five SuperSilent’s, but most importantly the cabling and cores probably won’t be as good, and there is an awful lot of wiring in these toroidals. Each of the two transformers within the unit use 77m of wire on the primary and a total of 80m of wire on the secondary. That all adds up to a total of 314 metres, meaning the BMU3000 costs just over £11 per metre, which in context actually isn’t an awful lot. As Russ explained to me;

“The wire is carefully chosen for its performance – the primary wire, for example, is of a type that allows 11% increased density than conventional wire, leading to better performance and a quieter operation. The secondary wire consists of two trifilar wires (ie six in total), again chosen specifically for its performance”

I liked the BMU3000 more than I thought I would. The amount of extra information, precision, depth of sound and frequency extension at the extremes that I got from my kit was audible, and should be considered as a very cost effective upgrade for all your kit. If you are spending a lot on your hifi, that probably means your cables as well, so it should also include your mains taming. But, if you still are sceptical, buy one from Uncle Russ and if you still aren’t impressed he gives a money-back guarantee.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality: High quality build throughout but would have preferred better and more substantial feet

Sound Quality: A significant improvement with more detail, speed and bandwidth in evidence

Value For Money: Not cheap but then not cheap to build

Pros:

Speed and detail of sound

Lower noise floor and a cleaner sound

Excellent components including mains sockets and wiring

The best looking mains adapter

Cons:

Expensive

Some will still need converting to the benefits

Price: £3599

Janine Elliot

Class D is gaining a good deal of momentum in the audio world. Lionel Payne listens to the the Nord One UP NC500 DMST stereo power amplifier costing £1409.

The Nord One UP power amplifier is the brainchild of Cheltenham based designer Colin North and designed around the Hypex nCore NC500 modules. Built within a three-quarter width all aluminium case, this Class D power amplifier is a true dual mono design. The 10mm front panel is available in standard black or silver, or for a relatively small cost premium, numerous exotic veneered finishes are available. Mine arrived with a very attractive American Black veneer which I felt easily warranted the small surcharge.  There is a solitary on/off button to the front fascia which is surrounded by a blue LED light and to each side of this are three parallel grooves. Above the power button lies the Nord logo badge. Around the back are solid brass gold-plated quality binding posts for 4mm banana plugs, spades or bare wire (up to 8mm) as well as an IEC socket, an on/off switch and XLR sockets (note : no RCA inputs here). The Nord One UP can deliver up to 400watts per channel at 8ohms resistance, 700watts at 4ohms and 550watts at 2ohms and despite the Class D generation of amplifiers being renowned for their efficiency and low running costs this power amplifier does run a little warmer than one would expect. However, the casework is well designed and allows airflow through vents on the bottom as well as the top panel. New casework has been announced.

Sound

When I first received the Nord One UP it was in Revision B form and came to me with Burson V5 and Sparkos Labs SS3602 as alternative op-amps. These op-amps are interchangeable internally through an eight pin DIP socket and it takes literally a few minutes maximum to change over. I found the Burson op-amp very similar to my old feelings of Class D amplifiers; all being rather cold and clinical affairs , albeit with a fabulous tonality. I’m pleased to say that none of the old feelings arose when listening through the Sparkos op-amps as I now found the music took on an all new feeling of tremendous organic quality. A sound I have to say that really impressed me, particularly given the asking price.

A short time after receiving the amp I happened to bump into Colin North at a hifi show in the Midlands, and we had a good discussion about his product. He explained to me that the product’s design was still evolving and he had discovered an even better op-amp but unfortunately it was adding unwanted noise to the circuit. He explained that he felt the voltage regulation board was at fault and was working on improvements to make the circuit silent with this new op-amp. I suggested, if possible, that I would love to hear this new version of the product when he had cured its teething problems. A short time later the Nord was sent back to Cheltenham and returned to me in Revision C form with an upgraded (and, I’m told, more costly) voltage regulator with the new Sonic Imagery 994 op-amps installed. Colin had promised a similar sound but with more air around instruments and a much better soundstage with the trade-off being a slightly less fulsome bass response that the Sparkos  op-amps could provide. 

On being re-acquainted with the Nord One UP I immediately found that the soundstage had, indeed, improved with Revision C and the Sonic Imagery  994 op-amps (pictured above). Playing Sting’s “Live In Berlin” disc through the Acoustic Precision Eikos  CD player resulted in startling imagery as well as superb tonality and timing. I went on to play quite a few of my favourite and most well-known CD’s back to back. I loved the air around instruments and the 3D soundstage which was so much better than I remembered but something kept tugging at my consciousness to tell me something was missing, and try as I might, I didn’t immediately recognise the missing element. The amplifier appeared to be playing music with the same qualities it had shown before – namely, a superb tonality with great dynamics and a wonderful ability to shift scale and weight with tremendous athleticism. Crescendos are replayed with fabulous enthusiasm with the Nord. Listening to Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” caught me out one time as it followed a quietish acoustic track on my playlist and the opening bell on the track had me jumping out of my skin !

Unfortunately, when the amplifier was returned to me, the inclusion of the Sparkos Labs op-amps had been over-looked and I was left to ponder whether the missing element was linked to the Sonic Imagery op-amps. I contacted Colin for the Sparkos to be sent over and within a few tracks after swapping the op-amps I finally recognised the difference. To my ears, and your opinion may vary from mine, the difference was almost completely visceral. The Sonic Imagery op-amps are very good and I’m sure some will find that they prefer them in their system. However, I found the Sparkos op-amps to be more organic in quality and they would draw me far deeper into the emotion of the music.  There is a little more fullness to the lower regions with the Sparkos but it’s far from a chalk and cheese situation. In fact I found the Sonic Imagery to be perfectly acceptable in all areas of the sound spectrum, but emotionally I was drawn in by the Sparkos. This may be a result in my favoured genres of music that I prefer to listen to, as I prefer a good amount of acoustic material mixed mainly with Indie and rock music, although my overall collection is extremely eclectic.

I have to admit that this review has been quite a prolonged one, and that is partly due to how much I have enjoyed the Nord One UP within my system. It also proved to be a godsend as my own trusty Musical Fidelity Tri Vista 300 integrated amplifier blew a channel during the review period. This required an extensive repair (my grateful thanks to John Sampson of jsaudiorepairs.co.uk for a fantastic job) but while I had the Nord One UP I was never left wanting for more. In fact, as it is a very even-handed, neutral sounding amplifier it proved an invaluable asset during it’s time as my substitute reference.

Conclusion

Having this power amplifier within my system for so long has certainly allowed me plenty of time to analyse its strengths and weaknesses. I have also used it to drive a fair few pairs of loudspeakers, not all of them an easy drive, and I have to say it has proven to have the grip of an Olympic shot-putter on steroids ! It drove Shahanian Obelisks with ease and also, when partnered with PMC FB1+’s delivered a soundscape better than any other amplifier I had ever tried with them.

However, having superb grip and drive is not the only strength of  this power amplifier. When subtle is required, the Nord delivers with equal control and finesse. As previously stated it also has a wonderful control of differing dynamics within a mix and delivers crescendos with superb precision. I used even-handed as a description earlier in this review and that is exactly what you get with the Nord. To reveal any weaknesses is a difficult proposition as I feel it has none at all, and at this price point must resemble extremely good value for money. Another selling point is the opportunity to try different op-amps which can tailor the sound to your tastes. It is even an economical amplifier in use, using far less electricity than most other amplifiers with this quality.

What’s not to like? If you are looking for a new power amplifier in this area of expense, get this one on your audition list!

AT A GLANCE

Pros

Wonderful soundstage

Even-handed with all types of music

Sound can be tailored with differing op-amps

Powerful with frugal running costs

Fantastic grip for even difficult loads

Cons

Nothing at all at this price 

Build Quality:

Good with well laid out internals

Sound Quality:

Can sound a little clinical in some systems but the op-amps will help

Wonderful even-handed presentation in the right system

Value For Money:

An astonishing price of £1409 this power amplifier represents a true bargain buy

Price: £1409

Lionel Payne 

Specifications:

• Two Hypex NCore NC500 Module
• Two Hypex SMPS1200A700 Power Supply
• Two Nord One UP Input Buffer Board Choice of Sparkos SS3602 or Sonic Imagery 994 Op Amps
• True Dual Mono Design
• Distortion: THD+N – – 0.001 % 20Hz
• Frequency Response: 0 – 50k Hz +0/-3dB
• Low Distortion: THD+N – – 0.001 % 20Hz
• High Input Impedance 51K
• 26 dB Gain
• Ultra High Damping Factor
• High Current 28A Output capable of driving 2ohm

550W 2ohm

700W 4ohm

400W 8ohm

• Frequency Response: 0 – 50k Hz +0/-3dB
• Case W 340mm D 280mm H 90mm

With Feet and Binding Posts W340mm D340mm H95mm

Weight  5Kg

Idle power 36W

Trafomatic is a relatively recent addition to the high-end hifi fraternity and perhaps best known for the £100,000 Elysium monoblocs. This is a Serbian company that exudes quality, detail and perfection.  The Belus power amplifier up for review here might not be as expensive as the Elysium, but at a more attainable £3250 this is no less a product says Janine Elliot.

“First impressions on listening were of class. This was a smooth operator with guts and reserve. Music sounded very real and that valve really fed an honest sound, but perhaps it was just too honest”

Read the full review of the Trafomatic Belus Power Amp 

Dominic Marsh takes a listen to Roksan’s £1250 K3 Digital to Analogue Converter. 

The more I do this reviewing job, the more I am convinced that there is no such thing as the “perfect” hifi component.  It cannot be, because everyone has different hearing acuity and personal preferences for the sound that pleases them, so if any hifi manufacturer lays claim to producing that “perfect” component, we should be wary of accepting that notion.  So where do we go from that starting point then?   We end up with the current sets of “different flavours” of sound, wrapped in a set of compromises which will please some or many but not others, which I see remaining for the foreseeable future and I have no personal issues with that.  That is why I believe reviewers are a necessity, to give you the consumer an indicator of what particular “flavour” of sound any component is imbued with when set before us to evaluate, then you the consumer has a foretaste of what to expect sonically from any given component.

When you have listened to as many DACs as I have over the years then you may have come to the realisation that there isn’t in truth a massive amount of sound differences between them all until you reach stratospheric price tags and some of those have been hard to listen to, because relentless details and dynamics to me are so wearisome and often fatiguing.  The cheap ones in particular powered by puny wall wart power supplies are very disappointing with their anaemic bass and shrill treble.  Between those two extremes the sound differences to me are in the low percentages rather than any quantum leaps.  What I do tend to get excited over then is any DAC that possesses that magical “X Factor” ingredient that sets it apart from the herd.

“What is Dominic softening us up for?” I hear you ask.  The key word to this review will be “compromises” which can either be a blessing or a curse, depending on what your point of view is.

Enter then the Roksan K3 Digital to Analogue Convertor as the subject of this review and it is good example of how a set of compromises ends up as a positive entity bigger than the sum of its components.  Intrigued?  Read on.

Construction

No surprise here that the K3 DACs case visually matches it’s other K3 series stable mates  in a choice of Anthracite, Charcoal and Opium colour finishes.  You might think otherwise of course, but I don’t personally think that these colours clash too much in the rack if the rest of your system is finished in the traditional black or alloy because tonally the Roksan K3 colours range from light to dark, so adding any K3 component to a non-Roksan system shouldn’t cause much concern on the aesthetics front either.

There isn’t much to keep the knob twiddlers amused with this component, with just two bright silver coloured push buttons on the front panel  to increment up or down the source selection.    To the left hand side of the front panel there is a USB socket and that’s just about it.  Around the back however, we find no less than two pairs of single ended RCA outputs, a pair of balanced XLR output connections, then an XLR AES/EBU connector, an RCA socketed SPDIF digital input, a TOSLINK digital input and yet another USB input for good measure.  But, where be the on/off power switch?  Not on the front panel, not on the rear panel either (one of my pet hates) but concealed from view underneath the chassis behind the front panel  on the left hand side.  It is mounted east/west too so when the K3 is sat on a flat surface a finger easily slips under the edge of the front panel to locate the switch, but if you stack your components and the item beneath has a front panel that that extends higher than it’s lid even by a few millimetres the switch becomes less accessible.  I would much prefer a north/south orientation of the switch parallel with the chassis side.  Gripe aside, it makes it much harder for curious little fingers to go venturing into how much noise your hifi components can go while adults are absent.

The K3 DAC also has a wireless transmission system to connect to your home computer in addition to Bluetooth connection.  Supplied with the DAC is a USB dongle and some software that has to be downloaded from the Roksan website.  I download the software, plugged the dongle into a USB socket on my PC and pairing is achieved by pressing and holding one of the input selector buttons and pressing a button located on the dongle.  I spent a comfortable 20 minutes scooting back and forth from rack to computer and “pairing”  wasn’t what was happening  between the two devices.  I tried pressing dongle first, DAC first, it was having none of it, so thinking there was too much delay between button presses I asked my wife to press the dongle button while I held the input selector button and between much hand waving and some bellowed commands pairing was finally achieved.  Despite that, it was a joy to finally have a good solid wireless connection betwixt DAC and PC without too much fussing, given that some other wireless systems I have experienced require passwords, IP addresses and other complex technical procedures entered into to get them functional.

Sound 

There was no area of the Roksan K3 DACs sonic characteristics that offended or annoyed, indeed I could listen for hour after hour and not become fatigued or left wanting which I do become vigilant towards when I initially find something just a bit too smooth and relaxing.  The entire sound palette was defined and refined, be that bass, treble or midrange, it just produced effortless music with no grating or grinding and some of my listening sessions went way past my normal bed time let me add, because the music was so pleasurable to listen to.  I fed it some complex tortuous music to try and wrong foot it, but it just shrugged it all off and was left unfazed.  Treble was always precise and crisp, not competing with the best DACs out there in terms of resolution and details of course and for its asking price I wouldn’t expect it to anyway, but it was in perfect equilibrium with bass and midrange, likewise with bass that was fulsome and rich, yet fleet footed, lithe and engaging at the same time.  Sat between those two ends of the spectrum  the midrange was very clean and free of congestion, female voice in particular being rendered naturally.  The noise floor was commendably low too, never intruding even when very quiet passages of music were being played and especially so in allowing full width, depth and height to the soundstage to be portrayed.  Imaging and instrument placement were rock solid and real, again attributable to a highly controlled noise floor.  But yet, none of those attributes reached the extremes, each being just that little small soupcon off top notch performance.

Of course I played my reference recording of Fink’s “Wheels Beneath My Feet” live album during my extensive listening sessions to see if it could meet my benchmark sound quality expectations.   The drummer’s cymbal strikes in the intro to “Biscuits” was satisfying and without complaint rather than exceptional, which in reality is commendable.  Bass kick drum was propulsive and solid, the timing being spot on.  The acid test for me is listening out for the drummer’s rim shots on the snare drum.  Very difficult to put into words that you dear readers can relate to easily, so the closest I can get is to say that they have to sound “real” as if you are sat next to the actual instrument being played.  The strikes must not sound at all thin, you can note the different energy put into each strike and you should be able to hear the shell of the drum for sure and if you cannot, then something is amiss.  Given these are live recordings the venue’s ambience should also capture these snare drum rim shots.  Most hifi components struggle with recreating the sounds an audience makes during a performance and it usually gets conveyed sounding like frying pan cooking bacon, with sizzling and sloshing sounds that really annoys me.  The Roksan K3 DAC allowed me to hear the clapping, whistling and cat-calling very clearly as if I was sat in amongst the audience.  The resolution wasn’t fine enough to hear the annoying idiot behind me crunching on his popcorn though (This is a jokette as it’s not in the recording, but you get the picture I’m sure), but I have heard other more expensive DACs claw more details from the audience in this particular album.

Still with me?  Hope so, because the Roksan K3 DAC passed all the standard benchmark tests for me.

Conclusion

There seems to have been a sort of revolution going on at Roksan, because evidently much more attention is being paid to how a product actually SOUNDS before it leaves the factory and the new products I’ve reviewed lately for Hifi Pig have shown that there is someone with a very critical ear paying close attention to the final sound being produced and that is no bad thing.

I began this review by saying nothing is perfect in the world of hifi and the K3 DAC is far removed from that, so let me make that clear.  But, and this is the big but, it has a superb balance of ‘imperfections’ that complement each other and the final blended result left me speechless with its beguiling addictive sound. Within a very short period of time I had completely erased from my mind where the shortcomings were and settled back to enjoy what I was hearing, unable to pinpoint where I could level any serious criticism at and that both surprised and pleased me.  The evidence for that is not wanting to switch the system off and go to bed at a sensible hour, but glancing at the clock soon brought me back to reality and if this DAC didn’t possess that “X Factor” those situations simply don’t occur.  The burning question then is would I buy one for my own use?  Yes I would, because at the price I don’t think another DAC could get me to be so entirely immersed and absorbed into the music as much as the Roksan K3 DAC did and I will admit I sorely missed it when it was returned to Roksan, so it would be rather churlish then not to give it my unreserved recommendation.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  Perfect match for other K3 series components and the Roksan colour choices would clash too much with the standard silver or black in a rack.  I wish though Roksan would move the ON/OFF switch to the side of the chassis instead of the front where it is currently located.

Sound Quality: Not ‘perfect’ but it has a well thought out set of compromises, providing a detailed refined sound that you can listen to for hours and yet still be fully engaged with the music. 

Value For Money: Offers a balanced sound to pound ratio that few rivals can match.

Pros: 

Solid build quality, very good sound quality and value.

Cons:

If my only real gripe is the power switch.

Price:

£1250

Dominic Marsh

At £2500 the AVID Hifi Pellere Phono-stage borrows a lot of its make up from its more expensive sibling costing £4300, but does it cut the right kind of groove? Janine Elliot finds out. 

AVID Hifi might be best known for their excellent turntables, but this company has over the last 6 years been vastly extending their expertise into other areas such as loudspeakers, preamps, power-amps, cables, alignment equipment, racks, and particularly phono-stages. Indeed, their first foray into electronics was the original Pulsare phono-stage in 2010. I remember this model receiving universal praise in the press, with its high level of adjustment of input, gain, plus capacitance and resistance loads, as well as an exceptionally good sound. Four large 1950’s style knobs allowing a degree of fine-tuning to your input and output that put most other mid and high-end photo-stages to shame. So to be delivered a Pellere in 2016 with no buttons on the front of either box was quite a shock. All that tweakery in this, the second-from-the top-of the-line machine from AVID, needs to be done via a forest of colour-coded micro-switches underneath one of the two boxes.

That box, the gubbins behind this phonostage, now just visibly sports a red light switch and a front panel etched deeply with a large “A” to show that AVID is also a major force when it comes to the art of metalwork. The Pellere and Pulsare II both use a 300VA supply dedicated to each channel in a matching box connected by umbilical cord.  The all-important button is the on/off rocker-switch which sits under the front of this unit. Like most discerning manufacturers the power-supply is becoming a major part of the whole “package” and usually sensibly in its separate box, something AVID has always taken seriously with their turntables. I remember Cyrus and Naim, back in the 90’s, really pushing the idea of upgrading the on-board power supply with an external box to improve the performance. Not surprising this is now a major part of any hifi that is worth its price tag. Without a decent mains, little is possible, whether a power amplifier or turntable or phono-stage. Bearing in mind the high amount of amplification needed in a MC phono-stage it is important that the electronics are quiet, and because in simplistic terms the  signal is simply modulated on the mains supply to make it louder it means that this mains supply needs to be as perfect as possible to get the most faithful audio.  The four phono-stages in the range all have Latin names beginning with the letter ‘P’ and use words to do with music, such as “pulse” and “drive”; though these could equally apply to the mains supply.

So far so good. But would I then be disappointed that the standard multi-switch knobs in the new Pulsare II – which operate relays meaning that there is no outside interference to inhibit the audio signal –  would were removed in favour of micro-switches hidden under the phono unit, just as in the cheaper Pellar and Pulsus? Those knobs and relays do put up the price considerably, so removing them is vital in making this phono-stage accessible to more people. Just as the first Morris Minor didn’t have synchromesh on first gear to save 2/11d, Conrad Mas, CEO of AVID, has needed to make these changes to keep that price point down. The Pellere does have the same circuit board just that the Pulsare has some higher grade components and a double-regulated power supply having greater storage capacity, though they are both rated at 300VA. Other modifications to keep that all-important price point down include missing out a few ‘Deluxe Model’ extras such as the subsonic filter, mono switch and even a custom facility to match cartridge load resistance precisely, should you have required that. Little sacrifice, because this phono-stage is by no means the economy edition. This is a serious piece of kit. Only that it is £1800 cheaper. By starting with the best and adapting it to the price point this is a Bentley, and not an Austin Allegro.

Even with these changes the Pellere is an exceptionally quiet phono-stage with an equally good specification, comprising a fully balanced architecture meaning that whether using balanced XLR or unbalanced RCA inputs, the internal circuitry is balanced at all times, and with a switchable floating or grounded earth facility in case there are hum problems; something turntables and arms can often suffer with. And should your arm cable, like most, be unbalanced then AVID are happy to rewire it so that the XLR input can be used. There are excellent balanced phono-stages from companies such as Boulder and Ayre who also see the definite advantages of true balanced wiring in the tonearm, and most arms can be adapted to balanced if not already done. Selection of balanced or unbalanced input is done by the DIP switches, one set for each leg. The other DIP switches alter input gain depending on whether you are using MM, MC  low, med or high (40dB – 50dB – 60dB – 70dB) , and a high degree of fine-tuning of capacitance and resistance loading to match your cartridge. Output is balanced or unbalanced. For my Kontrapunkt b cartridge I selected medium gain, 100pf and 100Ω.

Sound

Once I got accustomed to the new looks and lack of easy access to the controls I could sit back and admire the simplicity of looks. The Pellere might be cheaper than the Pulsare, but considerable effort has been put into match it in terms of sound quality, design and components. £2500 is a very competitive price, but there are plenty of other manufacturers at this price competing for business. I needed a product that not only allowed good tailoring to my other components but also offered a musical rendition of all types of music I played. My initial observations were of a tight and very flat response, via the passive RIAA Neumann HF correction, as used in all their phono-stages.

Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell starts with seagulls, extremities of bowed double-bass and bass guitar going all the way to the bottom and ride cymbal repetition, both effortlessly played with no sign of harshness, and a speed allowing perfect timing of the rhythms. All instruments played with a clear-cut clarity that in track three ‘Poles Apart’ allowed the solo voice and vocal backing to work together in close harmony, but still with a good degree separation allowing both – competing with different notes and words – to be easily distinct and ordered.

Mike Valentine’s new Clare Teal/Syd Lawrence tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, who would have been celebrating her 100^th birthday next year had she stayed around, gave a smoothness of Clare’s voice in clear contrast to the speed and power of the ‘blasts’ from the trumpets and trombones. ‘I’ve Got You Under my Skin’ was toe tapping time for me; something I try not to do. The distinctive melancholy Glen Miller harmonies from the woodwind section in ‘Begin the Beguine’ were clearly separated from the less relaxed trumpet and trombone blasts. Hearing page turns between tracks just helped this direct cut disc to sound even more real; How Clare could get through four tracks on each side of the disc without a cough, splutter or hitting a wrong note just showed how professional she was, as were all the musicians in this excellent album. ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’ starts with powerful blasts from the very start, showing the music is very much alive. This was a particularly well performed track. The split notes from the top (concert) D from the trumpets showed a clear control of extremities of dynamics in this piece.  All performed with a clarity that showed this phono-stage wasn’t vexed at anything I threw at it, nor did it add anything to the sound, as many phono-stages will do. This phono amplifier was not harsh in its playing, rather giving a neutral balance of sound at all times.

For that reason I thought I would play an album that really does cry out for a phono-stage with its own audio signature to improve a bad recording. Putting on my 70’s short skirt I began to listen to mine – and Conrad’s – least favourite band Steely Dan and “Do it again” (‘Greatest Hits’ album); a track that combines a highly compressed and excessive reverb and double tracking in the vocals competing with strong rhythms and guitar solo, a double-tracking mono synthesiser melody plus even a bell-tree making an appearance at the end of a few phrases which sounds as if it belongs to a different piece of music.   This album has tracks from 1972-78 hits combining lots of instruments and mixing styles that, I have to say, was never particularly recorded with hi-fidelity listening in mind, but the Pellere was as honest and as clear as I could have ever wished any phono-stage to be. If you want a machine to make awful recordings to sound good, look elsewhere. This one is about honesty and accuracy.

Moving into the 80’s, “Sky 3” ‘Moonroof’ has powerful drum stabs that compete with gentler acoustic and electric guitar tunes that some phono-stages can’t play without me gritting my teeth and heading for the volume control. The speed of these combined with the ease of performing kept me intent on playing through the entire side of this album. John Williams’s guitar playing is clear and precise. ‘Sister Rose’ with its Premier drum-kit playing with passion one minute and then with gusto the next was powerful but controlled and musical when it needed it. “Hello” is one of my favourite tracks from the Sky repertoire, with long vibrato’s from the acoustic guitar melody and piano accompaniment, only to be interrupted with powerful drum and electric guitar riffs as they get emotionally engrossed. The drum kit really is ‘in your face’ in this album – but the Pellere just kept everything in its correct place and time, with a high degree of space and positioning and allowing all notes to sustain and release fully.  This phono-stage really does work. Only the lowest notes weren’t quite as gutsy as I would perhaps have liked.

As a complete contrast Ravi Shankar ‘Tana Mana’ is an excellent mix of Indian Sitar, synthesizers and early digital sampling that is very ethereal and ambient, full of detailed rhythms and high pitched phrases that some phono-stages would make sound harsh and top-heavy. In contrast, the Pellere kept it controlled and clear, opening up all the instruments with clarity and passion that made me realise why this phono-stage wouldn’t feel out of place attached to their top Acutus Reference turntable. Each instrument appeared in its own ambient space, both ‘front and back’ as well as ‘left and right’. This album has many quiet sections as well as thumping tabla drum finger-work, and all hand-hitting was allowed to decay perfectly, something a valve phono-stage might be less controlled in doing.  Despite all signals travelling through the DIP switches, the unit was exceptionally quiet in operation being able to give a big blast from vocals and instruments in the Tala’s and Raga’s when required.

Conclusion 

This might not be the top model in AVID Hifi’s line-up, but this is no less a model, following very closely the design architecture of its bigger brother. Not a shade of harshness from the solid state circuitry and with a passion and musicality I expect in valve. The fiddly DIP switches were soon forgotten as soon as I started to get engrossed in the music I was playing. Once you have selected the right settings for your cartridge you never need to perform any settings other than switching the Pellere on and off. If you cannot make the move to buy the Pulsare II, then this model should perhaps be your next move. The fact that the phono-stage works in balanced mode means it will be ready should you ever decide to go balanced in the future. With an extremely transparent and neutral presentation of music with extremely low distortion, and an extended and flat frequency response, I found nothing that I could criticise. Perhaps it is just a little too ‘safe’ in its portrayal of the music, and not quite as engrossing as my phono-stage of choice, though that particular one is 3 times the price. This is a very revealing cartridge, and perhaps for that reason it could be too perfect for some.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  Bomb proof construction typical of AVID.  Available in black or silver.

Sound Quality:  Precise, accurate and captivating sound.  Flat frequency response, and very quiet in operation

Value For Money:  With design closely taken from the top £4300 Pulsare II but is only 60% of the cost. Now that’s a bargain!

Pros:

Based on the Pulsare II gives it a calibre
Balanced in and out
Neutral portrayal of the music
Flat frequency response
Extremely quiet
Good amount of control in matching cartridge load

Cons:

Could be a little too revealing and neutral for some
Fiddly DIP switches

Price: £2500

Janine Elliot

Specification

READ MORE HIFI PIG HIFI REVIEWS

The £2800 Simaudio Moon Neo ACE is a versatile, all-in-one solution that you need only add speakers to…there’s even an on-board moving magnet phonostage. John Scott finds out just how ACE it really is. 

Having reviewed Naim’s Superuniti all-in-one streamer/DAC/amp/tuner last summer, when I was offered the opportunity to spend some time with Simaudio’s own single box offering I naturally grasped it with both hands.  Like the Naim Superuniti, the Moon Neo ACE combines a streamer, DAC and amplifier in one box so that all the user has to do is connect it to a network, either via Ethernet or wirelessly and add speakers.  The ACE will then stream music stored on the user’s home network, eg on a PC or NAS.  Internet streaming from services such as Tidal and Internet radio is also available. In addition, the ACE also has a moving magnet phono stage, something missing from the Superuniti.

Canadian manufacturer Simaudio have been producing audio equipment since 1980, originally as Sima Acoustics .  The company became known as Simaudio in 1990, first launching the Celeste range and then, in 1997, the Moon series of products.  Over the years the company have developed and released a range of products under the Moon banner for both 2-channel audio and multi-channel home theatre use.  The ACE (which stands for A Complete Experience) falls into the Moon Neo “affordable luxury” range and provides a one box option from that range’s amplification and streaming DAC products; a true “just add speakers” solution to anyone short of space or not looking to build a system out of individual components.

Unboxing, Setup and Appearance 

The ACE arrived in a standard cardboard shipping box, albeit Moon branded, and was internally well protected.  A user manual and set of quick start guides provide all the help you need to get the ACE up and running.  If you have previously used a streamer connected by Ethernet then this really involves nothing more than connecting the Ethernet cable, attaching your speakers and plugging it in.  If you also want to connect a turntable, then a moving magnet phono stage is also provided.  Wireless setup is achieved via the display screen, a couple of buttons and a rotary dial on the front of the unit, which also doubles as a volume control.  The process of entering your network password with the dial and buttons is very intuitive compared to some other streamers I have tried and I had the unit up and running in a matter of minutes.

The ACE’s compact dimensions meant that it was equally at home on my television unit as it was on my hifi rack.  The ACE comes in either all black or black and silver options.  The ACE II was supplied with was all black and I think this would be my choice.  The aluminium case has an attractively curved front plate.  The black front plate is accented by seven silver buttons, a silver logo and a monochrome OLED display panel.  The whole thing whispers understated elegance (it would scream understated elegance but it is far too refined to do anything so vulgar).  The five buttons on the left hand of the display control power stand by, volume mute, display brightness – with an option to turn the display off completely and the final two buttons toggle backwards or forwards through the inputs.  The two buttons on the right side of the display provide navigation through the set up options.  The front panel also has a headphone output and an input for a mobile media player.

The rear panel contains a wealth of inputs and outputs of a variety and sufficiency to put the ACE at the heart of your audio setup.  Round the back we have the moving magnet phono input plus an USB input, 2 SPDIF inputs, an Ethernet port and 2 optical inputs.  The ACE also accepts  Bluetooth connection along with wifi. So, whether you want to play vinyl, stream from a NAS or a USB drive, connect to your phone or tablet by Bluetooth or hook up the audio from your TV, sat alive box or blue ray player you are covered.

Control of the ACE is either by the front panel buttons – apart from using these for the initial setup I had no need to use them again but I guess they are a handy option to have; by the attractive supplied remote or by MIND, Simaudio’s control app for android and iOS devices.

The remote provides comprehensive control of the ACE and its slimline styling complements the unit well.  My only criticism would be that I found the flat-profiled buttons a little difficult to read but it wasn’t a major issue.  I have said in previous reviews that a streamer is only as good as its app and I still firmly believe that to be the case. MIND is one of the best apps I have so far encountered.  It is intuitive to use and offers full control of the ACE including volume control and selection of inputs.  Access to Internet radio stations and Tidal (if you h ave a subscription) is also included.  Every app has its own way of doing things and some can take a while to get used to to but with MIND I was quickly using my tablet to browse the files on my NAS, create  playlists on the fly and explore new releases on Tidal.  Compared to Naim’s app for the Superuniti, the display is perhaps a little cramped but in terms of functionality, the MIND app did everything I wanted it to do in an intuitive fashion and, being generally highly critical of these types of app, I was very pleased with how it operated.   Like the Superuniti, the ACE uses the UPnP streaming protocol and how the app displays your music library depends on the UPNP server that you have installed on your PC or NAS.  I have Minim Server, Logitech’s LMS server (in UPNP mode) and Synology’s Audio Station server installed on my NAS and each presented the contents of my library slightly differently.  My preference was LMS but all were acceptable, with the caveat that Synology’s server does not support gapless playback.

Sound 

So far then, the ACE is a winner on looks and functionality but how does it fare on sound? It handles PCM up to 384khz and DSD up to DSD256 (should you be able to find files at either of these highest resolutions).  Not all resolutions are supported on all inputs.  As I didn’t have access to a turntable with a MM cartridge during the period of the review, the phono input was not tested.

Perhaps influenced by the ACE’s elegant looks, I started off my listening with nothing too raucous.  Shelby Lynne’s Just A Little Lovin’ is a first rate recording – a tribute to Dusty Springfield in a soulful and sophisticated style.  The ACE allowed all the dynamics and subtleties of the recording to shine.  The drums on the title track are understated in quantity but not in quality, each cymbal stroke gangs in the air with a realistic decay and every snare thwack resonates with the shell of the drum, not just the skin.  During the song, Lynne pauses between lines and the print through on the recording tape results in a pre-echo of the line she is about to sing.  The ACE picks this detail  up effortlessly.

This gets me in the mood for a bit of Dusty herself so it’s time for a spot of the classic Dusty In Memphis album.  On Son Of A Preacher Man, the ACE has no problem conveying the live feel of the performance.  In particular, the intricacies of Tommy Cogbill’s bass line which maintains a kind of inverted dialogue with Dusty’s vocal are handled deftly.

Picture 2333

Moving on to something completely different, solo piano can be tricky to realistically reproduce.  Streaming Khatia Buniatishivili’s version of Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition via Tidal, the ACE conveys a realistic sense of the performance space and keeps the piano locked down solidly within it. And proving that this is not a one off, the ACE also comes up trumps with Alice Sara Ott’s live recording of Pictures At An Exhibition from St Petersburg’s White Nights Festival.

One of the qualities I really liked about the ACE was its volume control.  I occasionally find that some amplifiers lack subtlety in volume control – 12 may be just too loud for some situations but 11 not loud enough, for example.  Whether operated manually by the volume knob on the unit, by infra red through the remote control or via wifi by the MIND app, increase or decrease in volume is handled in smooth half steps and I never had a problem finding a volume level that suited my requirements.

Conclusion 

The ACE is a stylish, compact, well built single-box design that provides everything you need to  deliver a high quality streaming solution.  The inclusion of a moving magnet phono stage and a variety of inputs provides added flexibility, giving it the opportunity to become an all-singing, all-dancing entertainment centre, handling, vinyl, an external CD player and audio from TV, satellite or Blue ray.  Just add the speakers of your choice.

If I’m forced to make comparisons with the Naim Superuniti, and I suppose I am, then in terms of absolute sound quality the Naim wins out.  But, and it’s an important but, there is around £1000 price difference between the Superuniti and the ACE, and that could buy you a nice turntable or pair of speakers.  You need to hear both and decide where you need your money to go.  If you do go for the ACE though, I doubt you’ll end up feeling short changed sound wise. The ACE matches sophisticated looks with an equally sophisticated sound and comes highly recommended.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality: Attractive and well put together unit that is complimented by a well thought out app.

Sound Quality: Dynamic and detailed, yet subtle when needed. A sophisticated sound.

Value For Money: If there is a single box solution out there that offers better value for money than the ACE then I really need to hear it. I get the feeling I may be wailing a while though.

Pros:

Good looks

Compact size

Competent control app

Detailed, involving sound

Cons:

I honestly can’t think of any

Price: £2800

John Scott

Specifications

Output Power at 8Ω: 50 Watts per channel

Input Sensitivity: 370mV – 3.0V RMS

Input Impedance: 22,100Ω

Gain: 37dB

Frequency response (full range): 10Hz – 80kHz +0/-3dB

Crosstalk: -100dB THD (20Hz – 20kHz @ 1 watt / 50 watts) 0.02% / 0.02%

Intermodulation distortion: 0.005%

PCM Bit-depth range / sampling rates: 16 – 32 bits / 44.1 – 384kHz

DSD sample rates: DSD64, DSD128 & DSD256

Shipping weight: 24 lbs / 11 Kgs

Dimensions (width x height x depth): 16.9 x 3.5 x 14.4 in. 42.9 x 8.9 x 36.6 cm

KATCH from Dali is their first-ever compact Bluetooth loudspeaker.

Under the extruded aluminium hood sits a Class-D amplifier – capable of pumping out some 2x 18 Watts of power – 2 x 21mm soft-dome tweeters and 2 x 3.5-inch aluminium woofers, one pair facing front and one pair at the rear.

The KATCH features two placement profiles that run in conjunction with the front/back driver configuration, one for freestanding play and one that utilises placement on a shelf to reflect sound back from a wall.

Bluetooth 4.0 with Apt-X gives a wireless connection within seconds, while the NFC option is even quicker.

DALI has included a stereo mini-jack input, while the KATCH’s USB charge connector means you can drive a Chromecast Audio dongle too, integrating your KATCH into your home network.

Available in three striking colour schemes, Dark Shadow, Cloud Grey and Green Moss, the DALI KATCH Bluetooth 4.0 with Apt-X

• 2x 18W RMS Class-D amplifier
• Extruded aluminium body
• 2x 3.5-inch aluminium woofers
• 2x 21mm soft-dome tweeters
• Stereo mini-jack
• 2600 mAh internal battery
• USB charge output

Priced at £329, the new DALI KATCH portable Bluetooth speaker is available from October 1st.

At £299 a pair the Tannoy Eclipse Three loudspeakers certainly look like a lot of speaker for the money. Dave Robson takes a listen. 

So here I am, 35 years in our hobby and I have my first pair of Tannoy speakers, the Eclipse Three. The company has been in the speaker game for over 90 years. The brand probably needs no introduction, but it is worthwhile knowing that in 1947 Tannoy successfully invented the Dual Concentric Driver which has been used by other manufacturers since and can be found in their current high end speaker systems. Its speakers have also been used in Abbey Road studios and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side Of The Moon” was recorded using their Lancaster monitors fitted with Monitor Gold drivers. The Eclipse Three speakers I have here for review are part of their Hifi entry range. The box contains each speaker with its removable grill attached, a pair of plastic feet with bolts to fit them, a full set of carpet penetrating spikes and small metal cups to fit under said spikes if you don’t have carpet and don’t want your floor damaged. There is also an instruction/assembly manual included. The Elcipse 3 are designed and engineered in the UK and built in China. 

Design and Packaging

These are a floor standing two way designed speakers and are bass ported at the rear. Each speaker incorporates two 127mm multi fibre paper cone woofers and a 28mm polyester tweeter. Frequency response is a claimed 38hz – 32khz and sensitivity is rated at 90db (so an easy load to drive for lower powered amplifiers) and have a single pair of 4mm sockets for speaker plugs but which will also take bare wires. Physical dimensions are 95.9cm x 26.96cm x 28.7cm (HxWxD) and are a pleasing size that does not feel too domineering in my room. These are actually a second pair as the first was damaged in transit by the delivery company. At a smidgeon over 12kg there isn’t a lot in the box to protect the speakers once the cardboard outer has been breached. I also found one of the inserts for the spiked feet on the first example would not take the spike. On the second batch all was good as the speaker box carcases were very soundly wrapped. The only problem here was that one of the bass port liners had come adrift in transit. Once pushed back in it was fine. If you do order a pair I’d ask your dealer to fully check your speakers before leaving the shop. A few little niggles but nothing that can’t be sorted easily. Once fully assembled I left the speakers running for a good few days to loosen up. After approximately 50hrs the sound had settled and to be fair really didn’t need the full time as they seemed to burn in very quickly.

Sound

I remove the grills and place the speakers 2m apart, under a metre forward of the rear wall and 40cm from the side wall and facing straight out. (The instruction manual recommends some toe-in but I preferred without.) I start the listening review by playing some Robert Cray and “Sweet Potato Pie”. This album, having great vocals, brass and a good wallop of Mr Crays Bass guitar is a well recorded little gem. “Nothing Against You” has a funky verve, the bass guitar is easily clearly defined and well integrated, each chord can be heard and followed without having to strain. The music from the Tannoys has me loving the bass lines, (my personal speakers are a little lean) the long lead guitar solo again having good clear crisp tonality without being too hard or harsh. “Save It” has a good smattering of drums within the track, drum skins have a decent smack, although they may lack a little in texture to produce a full realism, but that doesn’t detract from enjoying the music. The sound produced seems well balanced, there isn’t anything that is sticking out as glaringly annoying or obvious. “The One In The Middle” is a more soulful and bluesy track. This song picked for demonstrating the high frequencies and brass section. The transients from the tip tapping on the cymbals has a good feel and crispness to each strike, I was expecting a bit of an ill-defined shush shushy sound, but the tweeter seems to have a hold on this. The brass section comes out across the rear of the soundstage, they are quite defined and in their own space, you can hear the individual instruments so it’s detailed enough to separate from the rest of the music, but the Eclipse Three just can’t manage that last tiny bit of detail to take an accomplished sound up to the next level. The overall presentation here is very inoffensive. The speakers produce a good sound stage, not 3d as such, but it has width, height and vocals and instruments have separation, which in my opinion moves them away from just making a noise and into proper Hifi territory.

Swapping CDs to the new highly acclaimed (by the media) Rick Astley “50” album. Rick has a great and unique voice in the glut of high pitched squawkers of popular music. “Angels On My Side” has a nice blend of gospel with the thump of disco thrown into the mix. Mr Astley’s voice hovers centrally, the driving electronic beat is unfortunately compressed and lacks extension, this I’m afraid is more down to the recording and engineering processes, which is a shame as I feel he, like so many other artists are being robbed of producing classic tunes and albums… (I digress, moan over!). What I am happy with is the fact the Tannoy Eclipse has enough transparency to see this flaw, they just don’t pump out noise, they are trying their very best to produce exactly what’s being fed into the plugs at the rear. “Pray With Me” like the other tracks on the album has a church like vibe, with a twist of disco funk. Here on the bass heavy and complex multi layered track, Ricks vocals take on a slightly coloured or wooden tone, I’m listening at a high-ish volume and there seems to be a bit of bleed-over and this muddies the music a tad. Back down at a more civilised volume level things perk back up and clearer and cleaner vocals present themselves yet again.

Going from the “Pure” to the “Downright and Dirty” rock thrashing of Foreigner and my second ever CD I bought, the classic “4”.  The atmospheric “Juke Box Hero” with its rock heartbeat beginning rhythmically banging out has me turning up the volume to hear the Threes low bass tones ripple up my listening room, the Tannoys go quite deep and again, beyond my expectations, keep it all under control, never getting sloppy or ragged, but an even and quite addictive rendering. Only on tracks like “Break It Up” do the vocals of lead singer Lou Gramm get a slight hardness about them and only then when volume levels are pushed upwards. Playing “Girl On The Moon” has the speakers giving a concert like performance; their ability for the two pairs of easily driven drivers to fill the room with music has the twang of the lead guitar play from rearward of the speaker, and to project up and overhead while the drum beats are positioned behind with Gramms talents sitting bang in the middle. Yes, there is a little lack of “feeling” due to having a little less detail, but there is enough not to sound cold or heartless and keep you engaged with the music.

Conclusion

Timing and rhythm plays a good part of the likable characteristics of the Tannoy Eclipse Three, along with a sweet, deep and controlled bass. For £299 these speakers do a great job of playing music “musically”, they are fun and even in what they portray, and never offend. The high and low frequencies marry well and don’t leave you feeling like there is something missing or un-natural. Fed with a good source material these won’t disappoint.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quaity: Some issues with packaging but overall reasonably well put together speakers, but there is room for improvement.

Sound Quality: Fun and even handed sound that does not offend.

Value For Money: For £299 there is little not to like about these speakers. They offer those on a tight budget a real feel of what Hifi is about.

Pros:

Great bass response, powerful and even sound, easy to drive

Cons:

Sound hardens up at higher volumes. Could have a little more detail. Fit and finish could be better (over 2 samples) but at this price and sound this is easily overlooked

Price: £299

Dave Robson

The efficacy of cables, and in particular USB and digital cables, is a much debated subject in the audio world. However, Dan Worth, Hifi Pig’s resident computer audiophile is convinced of different cables’ bringing benefits to the overall system. Here he tries out The Chord Company’s Signature Tuned Aray USB cable costing £400 for a 1m length. 

The market today is awash with USB cables from various companies. It wasn’t so long ago where people would turn their noses up to the idea that a USB cable could influence the sound quality of the protocol when running a PC or dedicated streamer into an outboard DAC or clock. The hobby still contains its usual sceptics of cables, but many of those with the foresight and open mindedness to try different cabling and make their own relative decisions have concluded that cables, and more to the point USB cables, can have a profound effect on overall sound quality and performance of their systems.

With such a wide range of USB cables readily available, where does one start?

The simple answer is within your budget. At each level or ‘pay grade’ there is a range of electronics, speakers and cables to suit budget. So don’t be shy, go to your local dealer or hit the secondhand market and start trying a few to gauge where the sweet spot in the price range strikes a chord.

The Chord Company with their extensive knowledge and years of experience with cabling have a good range to suit the end user’s budget. With a company such as Chord you can rest assured that build quality and the all important value for money is at the forefront of their expertise. Yes they do offer cables with a price tag that would make your dog weep but then these cables are produced to cover the top end of the spectrum, supporting systems running into the hundreds of thousands of pounds. Back here in the real world they still have an extensive range of cabling in clearly designated ranges to guarantee excellent performance for even the most basic and modest systems.

I myself have been on a long journey with cabling in hifi, starting off many years ago hooking up equipment with whatever I could lay my hands on – bell wire, power flex, joining odd pieces of cable together to increase length and getting a few shocks along the way. When more specific (to audio) cabling began to be more plentiful I began to experiment and soon found that cabling had a quite profound effect on my systems and it soon became an integral part of the whole.

When computers first started to become a more useful tool in music playback within the hifi system, mainly due to Apple Music and streaming services, I was already a very long term user of computer based music, using Mac and PC for many years, hooked up via various sound cards using spdif to DACs, but it’s only been in recent years (since 2009) that USB has become the main protocol for this method of playback.

One of the earliest USB DACs I remember using was based around Phillips’ TDA1543 chip, using the Dir 9001 USB chipset which was shared with optical and the two would require switching dependant on input. At the time there was absolutely no USB cables around apart from the typical ‘printer’ cable, so that’s what I used. Being a firm believer in the importance of cable in a system I trawled the internet time and time again searching for anything that would (on paper) have superior conductors and geometry, there wasn’t anything.

Back to today and the vast availability of USB cables on the market. What makes a USB cable good? In my experience of creating my own designs, it’s not an easy standard to get right. High or low capacitance plays a big role in chip compatibility, extensive or no shielding, separated for data and power with dedicated power supply and conductor type and size, like any cable, play a huge role and more crucially so where digital is concerned in my opinion.

In Chord, I think we can trust that what they have to offer is going to be of excellent construction and vigorously tested for quality control and performance, so we could say – it’s not a bad place to start. From the C range, through to Shawline, on to Signature and finally the range topping Sarum, Chord will accommodate the budget conscious as well as the larger spenders with their range of USB cables.

I’ve already reviewed the Sarum Super Aray USB, stating quite openly that it is the very best USB out there today, to my knowledge and I’ve tried most. Today is the turn of the Signature Tuned Aray, second to the top of the range and coming in at £400 for a one metre length, a respectable middle of the road price, not as expensive as the £1000 Sarum Super Aray and I suspect there margin in expense will soon be filled by another option under the Indigo Plus banner? Admittedly £400 isn’t exactly budget, but it’s a middle of the road cable with superior performance making it a worthwhile cable for closer examination.

I will endeavour to obtain USB cables from the other ranges from Chord in due course, but for now after my glowing review of Sarum and the Signature being based on Aray Technology, sharing key construction aspects with the Sarum it’s something I personally wanted to try next. I have had very positive initial listening tests with Signature Tuned Aray and need to assure myself that Sarum Super Aray is worth the extra outlay.

Fit and Finish

Chord have paid particular attention to the strain relief of the conductors on the ever so delicate USB plugs, which is the cable types nemesis and I am shocked that nobody has had the foresight yet to redesign the plugs specifically for more sustained use in the audio world, where more complex and heavier gauge cables are apparent. The overall finish of the cable is neat and visually appealing, keeping in line with the designated red colour scheme of the new Signature range. Packaging is very strong and protective with nice visuals, not that it’s makes much of a difference as it’s a cable after all, but still nice to see that Chord offer good attention to all aspects. 

Sound 

Wth the Signature Tuned Aray (STA) in my system between Mac and Hydra Z, replacing the Sarum Super Aray (SSA). Relaxing into a live Derrin Nuendorf album, the sonic signature of the STA clearly speaks volumes of similar design techniques with that of the SSA. What really stands out well about the SSA is that its retrieval of ambient information maintains a realistic flow to the music, Signature TA offers an intelligible and informative amount of spatial awareness reflective of its extremely low noise floor through Aray Technology also which makes live music very convincing in naturalness and clarity.

The acoustic guitar work of Nuendorf is often commented to be let down by his vocal, but for me, I enjoy the duet. Derrin produces very complex string work, lots of very small string rubs, small tweaks and raps on the body of the instrument which, without an extremely low noise floor smear, masking depths of decay with layered leading edges. Signature TA has a fantastically black background which in turn increases breadth of soundstage.

Playing some big band music allows for that typical cliché of individual placement of band members and space around instruments to be denoted, but what surprised me more at this lower price point in comparison to my SSA was how fluid and fulfilling the music cohesively sounded, whilst still being able to determine individual placement well throughout a soundstage that was large and palpable.

Layering of instruments during more conventional four to five member bands such as Fleetwood Mac covered great depth and forefront layering, whilst keeping individual tonality and instrument timbre very true and really quite natural, falling short of Sarum’s abilities by not too great a margin at all in main information conveyance, allowing for vocals to stand strong and projected without over-masked clarity, forwardness or liberal interpretations of unrealistic tone. SSA does give a larger a more intimate soundstage with the finest micro details and dynamics concluding the ultimate in realism of a performance.

To break down each tonal area of the cables sonic signature is something which I generally find very easy to do, however with Sarum and Signature I would hesitate to call neutral, it would be easier to convey what they offer to an individual performance or piece of music, but then we all listen differently and have different systems and rooms. I think the most informative way to describe STA is to say that it has hardly any bottleneck on the frequencies of all music types I’ve listened to with it in my system. If Sarum Super Aray was to have extremely minimal resistance on signal, then Signature Tuned Aray has a performance that will in fact leave Chord scratching their heads a little when or indeed if they were to produce a USB cable that sits within the Indigo range between the two.

Bass guitar sounds full, playful and bouncy with great extension. Midrange is solid, transparent and has enough clarity to really engross me into sultry vocals and ‘see’ through the soundstage. Top end performance reflects great ambient information and interacts organically with tonal qualities befitting the material played. I still don’t like to say neutral, as for me, a lot of the time neutral can be boring or lifeless, the Signature TA is the total opposite, it allows the digital signal to resonate with the listener in a non digital way and allows the music to effortlessly flow and ride the waves, hanging ten at opportunities of aural excitement and doing equally well with intimate detailed listening at lower volume levels, maybe we could say it’s less resistive and allows more information throughput, the systems tonal balance remains but it’s abilities to communicate more increases.

Conclusion

We have to remember that most things in life are relative, although there are always exceptions to be had, the general rule of thumb is you get out what you put in and the whole is only as good as its weakest link. You wouldn’t put a lorry driver in an F1 car or wooden wheels on a carbon fibre bike; skill levels, quality of parts and implementation is key and most usually relative.

So, would I take the Sarum still over the Signature? Yes I would, but only if I had the funds to allow that choice to be a choice in the first place and my system was really quite high-end. If my Sarum was to leave the building would Signature keep me so engrossed in the music? In my main system I would notice what I’m missing, this is mainly in small special cues and the smallest of micro and macro detail, but it’s what I’m used to after all. Placing the STA into two other lower priced systems I have here really brings them to life and Sarum was unable to obtain more due to the nature of the limit of the electronics, which are still very good. There needs to be some seriously resolute equipment in the system for Signature TA to cause any resistance to musical information and what it achieves will give the majority listeners absolute pleasure.

If I hadn’t of heard the Sarum SA I would say that the Signature TA is up there with some of the very best USB cables I’ve heard.

In fact I’m going to buy the review sample for my active system as I’ve now realised that the setup has more to offer after this review.

AT A GLANCE 

Build Quality – Solid, with great strain relief and attractive styling

Sound Quality – Extremely well tailor, transparent, effortless sound

Value For Money – Price/Performance is great for a cable

Pros – Exceptional sound quality, with very low background noise and a transparent and effortless sound

Cons – Er…

Price: £400 / 1m

Dan Worth

The Connoisseur Of Sound D1 is Tiawanese in origin and costs £8000 in the UK. Janine Elliot puts it through its paces in a truly international rig. 

I don’t usually get to the nitty gritty of a product in the first sentences of a review, but this was a special moment for me. To get a DAC and a preamplifier all in one box that looks this good and sounds so open as the Cos D1 does isn’t something that happens every day for me. To review this £8000 Taiwanese kit I used a collection of hifi encompassing most of the world; American Eminent Technology LFT8b ribbon hybrid speakers, Serbian Trafomatic Belus tube/MOSFET power-amplifier, 24/192 FLAC files on a Chinese Fiio X5, CEC TL5 belt drive CD player from Japan, and cables from England, Scotland and USA. This review showed that the world can seriously work together in (musical) harmony. Lots of harmony!

Standing for ‘Connoisseur Of Sound’ COS was formed by three close friends who were very serious about audio entertainment and with an aversion, like most of us, to cacophony. The Cos D1 is their first digital converter. The company wanted to create something that produced a clarity and simplicity of sound that just allowed the music to speak, all three men with years of experience in mathematics, electronics, and research and design. This product made its debut in 2014 and I first heard it the following year wanting to give it a full review as soon as I could.

Build and Tech

It is a very stylish design, which I guess is what initially drew me to it; a large knob at the front that goes beyond its top profile. The finish is grey satin aluminium, which I always like, though not so easy to dust. The feet are a very posh screw-in stainless steel affairs oozing quality, though the aged argument over spike or sponge may affect whether you like them or not. Apart from the protruding knob there is nothing of note, other than the COS logo and an array of 25 LEDs that form a curved smiley-face below the knob to indicate the volume. When the knob is pressed the row of lights is reduced to 7 for you to select one of the 7 inputs (so you’ll need to memorise which input is which. SPDIF is 4 and 5). This is simplicity in the extreme and I loved it.  A classy 6-button aluminium remote control can also be used. The remote also has a mute button, which when pressed changes that smiley face into a small almost straight face, expressing my mood at not hearing anything anymore.

This is more than a DAC, though. This is a fully functioning balanced pre-amp with XLR and RCA outputs, with a very reasonable analogue balanced/unbalanced input, plus a selection of digital inputs from USB Asynchronous Audio Class 1.0 and 2.0 (class 1.0 only works to 96k samples), plus 2 Toslink and 2 SPDIF. Inputs up to the basic 24/192 are supported. There was no mention of DSD in the manual, though it actually allows DSD 128 via USB and DSD 64 via S/PDIF. As someone loving the technology behind Direct Stream Digital I am ironically somewhat disappointed every time I listen, so I chose to use FLAC and a CD transport for aged 16/44.1 in my listening. To interpret the digital inputs COS designed their own proprietary algorithm, which up-samples data to 24bit 176.4k or 192k, by a process in an array of 4096 with 32bit precision.   A linear-phase delay Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter is used which is preferable to the more usual Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter, the former which as its name suggests has a finite duration settling at zero, rather than responding indefinitely. A massively powerful computation of 3648 MMAC (Million Multiply Accumulate Cycles) per second DSP leads to a clarity and detail that I found very addictive. Whatever input is selected the COS D1 aligns them with a 1-second buffer to be sent to be processed and converted into analogue with a jitter precision of less than 1ps. There is however a buffer switch marked “BUF” on the back panel of D1 which needs to be turned on for optimum performance; if the digital music data isn’t converted in perfect tandem it can cause jitters, and even a few micro-seconds timing error is enough to perturb the ears and frustrate the mind. This one-second depth buffer, using an independent clock to receive and align data, sends them out in precise time frames for conversion and reminds me of my Sony portable CD player I used before technology went solid-state, with its 20” buffer in case I knocked the CD laser as I walked (or ran) to work each day, which of course it would constantly be doing. How some manufacturers could even think about selling portable CD players without this buffer amazes me even today, but that’s another story. However, the switch on the COS D1 can be switched off if you are playing audio for video, so that it will prevent the even more annoying mis-synchronisation of the audio with the pictures!  There is another switch on the back to choose between USB 1.0 and 2.0, allowing you to choose depending on whether you are using Microsoft Windows without a suitable driver which means it will only get to 24bit/96kHz, (position 1), or a proprietary Windows driver to get it to 24/192, plus Mac OS X and Linux which allow it in the first place (position 2).

The analogue stage is on two separate boards for left and right, each with its own power regulation, filters, DAC chip and volume control. Indeed, the DAC chip on each board is a stereo 24bit chip running as mono, to improve performance; two mono channels combined to produce the single balanced output. COS manually tune and match the two pairs of outputs and therefore achieve a lower distortion by more than 6 dB as compared to the chip’s quoted specification. The volume control works in 256 steps at 0.25dB/step, operating a total range of 64dB with less than 0.1dB accuracy. There are two power supplies in the D1; one for the digital circuit and the other for the analogue, thereby eliminating cross interference.  The unit is balanced within, ensuring improved specification. The volume control is an array of analogue switches and a series of precision resistors that are quoted  as “low in resistance, noise, and distortion”. My only criticism of this first product is something I have seen so many times in separates over the years. I really don’t like mains rocker switches next to the IEC socket. This might be a convenient generic product to use, but it is fiddly to get to, especially when the rocker switch is the wrong side of the socket when you are fiddling behind the unit to switch it on, and especially at a time when most home economists tell us to not leave products on standby when they are not in use. At least turn the IEC/rocker/fuse unit round so that the switch is at the corner. Whilst manufacturers want the lead to be at the edge of the unit it does mean it is harder to get to the rocker switch to turn  the unit on and off.  I still love mains switches at the front, or better still underneath the unit at the front. End of rant.

Sound

Using the X5 SPDIF output I started by playing my favourite conductor, Simon Rattle, playing Sibelius Symphonies, (24/192, Berlin Philharmonic). His leadership ensures a tight, musical and expressive performance, which matched the foot-fall of the COS.  This Taiwanese product surprised me at just how accurate yet still very human this product was at giving a very precise and exciting playback with warmth from strings, punch from brass and clear rumbles from timpani. Nothing was too much, and nothing was wanting. This DAC was full of love, giving tons of detail and bite but no sting. The CEC TL5 is a superb belt driven CD transport, and the musicality from this great product came to the fore in Cantata NWV 6c, Bach (Accademia Amsterdam); plenty of space for the instruments and the reverb in the room and with a tight harpsichord continuo keeping it all taut and organised beneath the vocalists German language invocations. This DAC was epic when it came to reverb and space in recordings, offering an expansive rendition in both accounts. All music was allowed to decay in its own time. We might run down the CD whilst we have our second honeymoon with vinyl, but 16/44.1 can still offer an exciting and musical sound with the right Studio Manager, musicians and CD player. This DAC showed the format to its extreme. Turning to Goldfrapp, their “Seventh Tree” album is perhaps not their best, but it does show the D1 could accurately play more laid back recordings. This album might have Bass speed and treble clarity but nothing is over the top.  In track 1 “Clowns” the birds behind the descending string scales in the closing section are well placed within the musical soundstage to not sound all mixed up, like many players will do. This was their fourth album which is more ambient and down-tempo than the Duo’s earlier sets. Alison Gregory’s laid-back voice and the synthesiser sounds from Will Gregory in “You Never Know” is a live track recorded at a London concert. Many DACs would make this track quite unassuming that you would hardly know you were playing it. This DAC showed just how ambient and ethereal this track actually is, but still with enough detail to give me a sense of actually being there at Hammersmith in the audience.

Conclusion

It is rare for a first product to be so good. For £8000 (€9000) it might not be cheap, but it is that good. This unassuming machine was like cleaning my glasses from fingerprint stains and climbing to the top of the Lake District in Autumn and just seeing how beautiful it all is, with bright sunlight glistening in the waters and a colourful palette of autumn leaves falling from the trees as far as the eyes can see. You get the point. The amount of speed, detail and colour from the music was second nature to this DAC. This might not be as full-featured and glitzy as some might like, but what is inside is pure magic.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  Beautiful looks, and solid craftsmanship. 

Sound Quality:  Excellent speed and detail without sacrificing musicality. Enjoyed every minute of music I played through it.

Value For Money:  If you are looking at spending around £8000 then this machine is definitely worth considering an audition. 

Pros:

Detailed soundstage
Speed and sparkle
Excellent noise floor
Fluidity of sound
Simplistic and gorgeous looks 

Cons:

Limited DSD might concern some

Price: £8000

Janine Elliot

German brand CEC’s belt driven CD transports are legendary in audiophile circles but have had traditionally been out of the reach of most people. The £2600 CEC TL5 CD Transport, sold by Definitive Audio in the UK, puts this exotica much more within the grasp of more people and Janine Elliot couldn’t wait to get her hands on it to review for Hifi Pig.

CD is alive and, well, still going strong in some circles. Actually, the CD format is better than many would think with all the hype over the vinyl revival. I remember Russ Andrews last year writing a piece saying that we shouldn’t be running the format down and that CD quality is still very good. It is, though often let down by bad mastering, performance, and bad CD players. Yes, there are limitations in the format, but I still do use my own Krell KPS20i CD player. With a CDM-Pro9 transport this is often considered one of the best. However, there is one make of CD transports that still has a great following, and when I was offered to review the CEC TL5 I put my hands up as quickly as my aged body would allow.

When I first heard about CEC producing belt drive CD transports in 1991 I had visions of analogue wow and flutter until I thought better of it. Why anyone would consider using an elastic band to revolve that silver disc seemed anathema to my limited brain intelligence and I wondered if it was merely an advertising ploy. But when I glimpsed their amazing looking CEC-TL 0-X in 1995 I realised that perhaps there really was something important in all this that other manufacturers hadn’t grasped. Their new top model, the TL 0 3.0 doesn’t look too far removed from this one and at €29500 and weighing in at 30kg works out at €1000 a kilogram and much more than you perhaps would like to spend. But CEC’s pedigree is as important to the CD as Stax is to electrostatic ear speakers, and people are buying them. It is therefore much relief to see the TL5 coming in at a mere £2600. 

CEC were the first company making turntables in Japan and their turntables and CD players have been supplied to major brands to be badged as their own including Grundig, Marantz, Teac, Sony, Sharp and many more. So from the first time I heard about CEC playing with elastic bands in 1991 I needed to understand their philosophy and hopefully try one out, which I did many years ago, and was duly impressed.

CEC’s interest in belt drives actually goes back to 1954, the year the Japanese company was founded, being in fact the first manufacturer to use a belt drive on a turntable. Until then we were used to rubber idlers rotating our Thorens, BSR, Lenco, Collaro and Garrard (indeed, the legendary 301 was launched that same year). Whilst CEC’s earliest work on CD players comes from 1983, they didn’t actually introduce a belt driven model until 1991; the TL1.  Their thinking with the turntable was that the belt decoupled the motor from the important audio source; the record, meaning vibrations and other hindrances didn’t make their way to the record platter. In the CD it has the same intention, though where the turntable needed to keep a uniform speed, on the CD it uses Constant Linear Velocity (CLV) meaning the rotation speed is faster at the start of the CD (it starts at the centre) and slows down as it gets to the edge. A conventional direct drive CD system requires a motor with considerable torque to be able to quickly adjust speed as appropriate and because it is directly linked to the CD itself, placed directly under the CD, it will add vibrations and electromagnetic influences. With a belt drive system, as in the TL5, the much lower torque motor is now separated from the CD and consequently those vibrations and electromagnetic disturbances are much less. The motor still ensured that changes in the rotation speed happened as precisely as with a direct drive motor, and start-up of CDs from stationary wasn’t noticeably slower even without this high torque. There isn’t even a motor to open the top-loading tray on this entry-point CEC machine, though I actually really enjoyed opening up the top, placing inside a CD and holding it down with an oversize heavy washer, or “puck”.  The plastic lid, that makes a pleasing ‘clunk’ when fully closed to confirm the motor can start revolving, is opaque tinted black, allowing you to just make out your revolving plastic disc inside. Even the belt drive can be replaced by the user, not being hidden below the base plate, unlike other CEC machines. Having replaced broken and slipping belts on cassette decks and reel to reels which take many hours to do, this one is really well thought out.

Unlike your average CD player most of the CEC’s machines, including the TL5, don’t even have a DAC built in. This is not a money-saving ploy. This one is simply a CD transport with mains power. Not that CEC don’t make their own DACs; indeed there will be a partnering DAC, the DA5, for this transport coming out soon at £3999. There is already a choice of 6 on their website, plus 6 CD players, 5 CD transports and numerous amplifiers including a valve integrated. They just feel for the ultimate audio control they should be separate from the transport, just like the iconic 1986 Meridian MCD Pro that was a Philips transport with the DAC and power supply below, and the Cambridge Audio CD1 from the same year, for that matter. This was not a problem as I had several D2A converters I could use in this review. Indeed, I really like the idea of separate transport and decoder, as it allows the user to select and upgrade in a manner they like. It also can prevent resonances from the CD player affecting the electronics, and vice versa. However, it can sometimes introduce its own problems, such as jitter irregularities, though none of the three DACs I used for the review had that problem. Many amplifiers/preamplifiers hitting the market now have their own excellent built-in converters, so having a separate CD transport makes more sense now than it did when they first introduced the idea.

The puck, or “high precision CD Stabilizer” as it is called, is very heavy at 330g to ensure that not only does the CD play without any movements up or down, but to also create a higher flywheel effect without the need for lots of speed correction or a really high-torque motor which introduces electromagnetic noise. The puck also improves coupling to the spindle and also, of course, mechanical damping.

As mentioned above I decided to use three machines for the review; firstly the £8000 Taiwanese COS D1, then more reasonable Graham Slee ‘Majestic’ at £1600 which more matches the TL5 price point. Latterly I used my own DAC that I hadn’t switched on for many years. I built this based on the Burr Brown PCM56’s (the Krell KPS20i uses 4 PCM63’s). Whilst it is a dated design, the warmth and analogue-esque sound I created in this device would be an excellent pairing with the CEC. Similarly, the Majestic has an excellent 16 bit/44.1kHz engine that through the Class A/B Propius mono-blocks gave a powerful and musical performance that was able to show off the CEC to the fore. The COS D1 was epic, a DAC that I have reviewed recently on HiFi Pig. This was the pinnacle of performance, giving a speedy and precise rendition of the music.

I was very surprised when I started to play music. I was surprised at just how musical this was and how relaxed the performance was. It was so un-naturally natural, if that makes sense. This didn’t sound like a CD player. Everything was so easy flowing and fun. It wasn’t that it was slow in any way, just that it was so very musical. The timing and flow of the music was so ‘analogue’, and I don’t feel that is totally due to the DAC. Our ears can pick up things we don’t knowingly observe; just like a single picture frame of a McDonald’s burger hidden in a video clip might make you suddenly fancy a quick bite of food. I just sensed something was so right, and if it was related to the use of the belt it is just as well CEC copyrighted this drive philosophy, preventing other manufacturers trying it out. The TL5 just made me relax and enjoy the music; the timing was so good, and I forgot this was a CD.

Playing Mike Valentine’s Big Band Spectacular was just so open and so detailed that I had to stop writing this review to listen to it. Everything was so well timed, so open and just so natural, each individual instrument positioned perfectly and it wasn’t all down to my aged DAC, though I was impressed. Things were even better with the COS D1; the space between the instruments at 6’32” into track 6 “String of Pearls” had more space in the descending piano chords than I had heard them do before. Trying a different Sony transport that I had to hand just didn’t give the same amount of space and musicality even if the detail was still all there; the CEC just wasn’t clinical, it was more analogue, more real, and easier to listen to. The trombones in track 7 just sounded more like 24 bit than 16 in terms of their detail.

The TL5 has three digital outputs for AES/EBU XLR, RCA SPDIF, and Toslink. The off-on switch was just as I liked; at the front. I could quite easily cope with the manual loading of CDs, but my only gripe was the remote control. I just wouldn’t want my neighbours to see it. It might be fully functional and feel nice to the hand, but it was boring and in a cheap black plastic. It included buttons to change brightness of the display as well as programming track playback and display elapsed or remaining time, but it also included buttons to select USB, COAX, TOS, CD and Filter, suggesting its multiple use with other CEC players and DACs (such as the equivalent CD5).  But it still looked cheap and was too lightweight. Today metal remotes are being made for machines considerably cheaper than this. Cambridge Audio’s Azur 640C CD remote was iconic in its day and could be used with all their other products, a metal-fronted remote that started to dispel the theory that you had to spend mega bucks in order to get a good looking remote. Today Devialet show you that it can also be a work of art.  Apart from this, there was nothing I could fault the machine with, being available in silver or black.

The Music

Beethoven’s Symphony No 7 with the Dresden Symphony Orchestra showed an immaculate positioning and timing of all the instruments with particular detail in space between the notes.  The closing of the first movement displayed an extended reverb, even if perhaps it was aided by a Lexicon or other digital reverb unit. The second movement starts with the violas leading the melody. The space and depth of field was compelling, and I felt I was sitting in the audience listening to one of my favourite movements of all time.

The CD transport came complete with its own 19 track montage CD, including Mitchell Bomber B25 and DC3, 6 and 7 aeroplanes which flew across the soundstage with such ease and power that my cat had to run for shelter lest they crash on him.

Back to more mundane things like music. Patricia Barber’s ‘Café Blue’ is an exceptionally well recorded album that the CEC gave a compelling performance.  Shimmering cymbals heard in “What a Shame” were initially assumed to be hiss in the recording, but this transport and my choice DACs skewered out this decaying sound in a way I had never heard before; each time the decay was able to execute its rattle without being lost in other sounds in the music. This was so open. I actually found it hard to explain the magic that this transport delivered. Whatever the music I played in each of the DACs it gave of itself in a way that left me short for words. Yes, you can spend €29500 on the twin-belt-driven TL 0 3.0, and boy, would I like to try that machine for myself, but at £2300 the unassuming TL5 was an all-absorbing player that had me surprised at just how human and magical CDs could be after all.

Conclusion

My expectations on playing the TL5 left me overwhelmed. This was a CD transport on a grand scale but requiring minimum expenditure. If you have your own decent DAC, or don’t mind purchasing (or building) your own, then this player is an excellent choice. The performance was exceptionally engrossing, though I couldn’t quite put my fingers on why. I guess it must be that elastic band.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  Solid construction with good mechanical sliding top mechanism. Only let down by a boring remote.

Sound Quality:  Silky smoothness and a sound that is very addictive.

Value For Money:  At £2600 this is an extremely good value offering, allowing you the freedom to choose the DAC or use inbuilt DACs in your amplifier, if you have that choice.

Pros:

Musical performance with silky smooth but precise and quick top end
Gives you the choice of your own preferred DAC
Easy replacement of belt, should that need ever arise
Solidly built

Cons: 

Remote control is weakest link

Price: £2600 inc VAT

Janine Elliot

TECHNICAL SPECS

Spindle Drive System :Belt Drive

Playable Discs :Audio CDs & Finalized CD-R/RW

CD Stabilizer Diameter : 0mm, weight 330g (Brass)

Digital Outputs :

AES/EBU x 1: 2.5Vp-p/110Ω (pin2=hot)

Coaxial : x 1: 0.5Vp-p/75Ω

TOS x 1(optical): -21~-15dBm EIAJ

Power : AC230/120V, 50/60Hz (specified on rear panel)

Power Consumption : 17W

Dimensions :

435(W) x 335(D) x 109(H)mm

Weight approx : 9 kg (incl. CD stabilizer)

Accessories: CD Stabilizer

Remote control unit

AC power cord and Owner‘s Manual

In Italian Valore means value and at €1495 complete with arm the Valore Plus 425 turntable from Italian manufacturer Gold Note certainly looks to offer a good bang for your buck. Janine Elliot spins some tunes. 

The Valore is the entry level turntable in the Gold Note range, a company set up in 1992, though only registering the name ‘Gold Note’ four years ago. As Tommaso Dolfi,Marketing Manager, informed me;

“Until the introduction of this brand, the company wasn’t known to many since we were working mainly as OEM/ODM supplier for audio companies worldwide. It’s something we still do”.

Indeed the Canadian company Bryston’s new turntable the BLP-1 is manufactured by Gold Note.  The company is 15 personnel in number, plus they have the sister milling company counting a further 12. The company don’t just make turntables, arms and cartridge of beautiful looks and sound. Their portfolio also includes phono stages, speakers, amplifiers, CD player, DSD streamer, cables and stands. Gold Note resides in Montespertoli near Florence in Italy. The Valore, meaning “Value” was first produced in 2010. Their Valore 400 was their cheapest version at 400mm width. Now in its 425 incarnation it has grown to 425mm wide comprising a choice of 425 and 425 Plus versions with 30-mm thick MDF or acrylic plinth carefully shaped and indented around the bearing of the platter and the motor in circular shapes to drastically reduce all unwanted vibrations. The platter itself is made of 20-mm acrylic. The MDF versions can be finished in lacquered black and white or to special order covered in real Italian leather (in a variety of white, black, red and sand), with the Valore 425 Plus Special Edition, as in this review, completely made in transparent acrylic and being the top priced version, though at a still very reasonable €1495. What makes this turntable especially good is that it comes complete with 9” tonearm derived from the Gold Note B5.1 arm. It even comes readily supplied with a hinged dust cover, just like in the good old days. No extra expense. My Gold Note arrived with a Vasari Red moving magnet cartridge tracking around 2g.

Motor

The Valore 425 Plus has a 12V synchronous Gold Note PWM motor which they developed with a unique PulseWidth modulator, the same idea as seen in their top end Bellagio (and also on the Bryston BLP-1), and which is designed to transform power voltage in AC-DC-AC mode. This triple conversion enables the best coupling of the two AC half-waves which removes motor resistance and vibration, plus providing a higher motor torque. As Tommaso explained to me;

“This power supply works as an inverter and converts the power AC high voltage to DC high voltage, then reduces the voltage to 12V and finally it reconverts it again to AC, precisely aligning the three coils of the motor to get very low noise and high torque at the same time”.

The motor drives the platter using an hourglass-shaped motor pulley of beautiful physique to pull the round belt around the edge of the platter. There is no need to move the belt by hand to change from 33 to 45. Control of the motor is via a separate electronic power unit with two buttons to select between 33 and 45 and a fine speed pitch adjustment achieved by pressing the two buttons together for 3-4 seconds. The fine speed adjustment facility even keeps the selection permanently in the turntable memory after it has been un-powered. Both speeds are indicated by a red LED. It is great to see a turntable using a quite an expensive design in such a modestly priced package.

Platter

The platter is a rough surface acrylic, which is a good surface for ‘mating’ with the vinyl disc.  The design comes directly from the top level Gold Note turntables. They chose the rough surface as opposed to a shiny surface so that it would create a different surface of contact and avoid being electrostatic. The bearing houses two Teflon/graphite rectified bearings that hold the 60mm long spindle CNC-machined from stainless steel.  A large longitudinal groove is located on its axis which allows the lubricating oil to run fluidly. The longer spindle gets rid of any clock pendulum effect and distributes the inertial energy along the whole of the axis, which reduces lateral friction. Indeed, spindle and bearings are held with great importance by Gold Note; their €65,000 Bellagio Conquest Black King features a massive 270mm spindle! The platter is designed to stay just 3-mm above to the turntable plinth so that, according to Gold Note, such small platter/plinth interference reduces turbulence allowing a noiseless rotational stability. This turntable is very quiet.

Arm

Gold Note also uses the B-5 arm, based on the B-5.1 tonearm as featured on their higher-end Mediterraneo and Giglio turntables, with ball bearings used for both vertical and horizontal movement, pivoted through stainless steel bolts. Indeed, the Valore can be upgraded with the B5.1 if wished, which has different counterweights and custom made ball bearings manufactured by the German company GRW.  Gold Note makes a total of three arms; the B-5, B-5.1 and B-7 Ceramic.

Set up

The Valore Plus 425 was a doddle to set up, not because it arrived with cartridge set up for very slightly more than 2g, but because adjustments are simple to do and the instruction manual is impressively detailed for the installation. The angled headshell, with its own adjustment for azimuth with long head-shell interconnnects makes mating the cables to the four pins just as easy. Some arms (and cartridge connectors) can make setting up a lengthy and at times terrifying ordeal. It even comes with a calibration sheet containing a 50Hz stroboscope and alignment protractor, as well as Allen keys and extra counterweight for heavier cartridges. Those feet might well be adjustable for height, but I am not quite so in favour that they are made of a smooth-edged cone shaped acrylic. It does mean that they will slide about on a smooth platform, especially glass stands. Of course the use of Acrylic has been chosen by Gold Note for its ability to deaden vibration, it having “higher dampening performance due to the particularly absorbing quality of the material”, but it has very, very little friction with a glass or acrylic bass, meaning that just by lifting the lid or if I needed to remove a disc that fitted tight to the spindle meant the whole unit moved worryingly about the platform. I needed to rectify this with a rubber washer between the two surfaces. Perhaps these should be added to the bundle. More importantly using my seismic measuring tool, there is more vibration getting to the turntable from external movements, though this means internal vibrations exit through the feet with equal amounts.  Indeed, sitting silently in the Hifi pig settee, this turntable was exceptionally quiet and the Vasari RED, a full-bodied and detailed moving magnet cartridge at €195, was a surprisingly good player. I loved moving magnets in the 1970’s and my favourite Stanton 681 EE, Decca London Gold, Ortofon VMS20E and Shure V15iv cartridges still play well on my various old turntables. In terms of price verses quality this is an exceptionally able cartridge (see separate review in the coming weeks) and puts those others back into history where they belong. The Vasari RED also has an elder brother, the Gold, coming in at €350.

The Music

I was pleasantly surprised at how transparent this transparent turntable was. Detail was extremely quick and vivid, with start-up time of the turntable probably one of the quickest from a belt-driven platter (and the stop-time was equally rapid) at within a second, appearing more like a direct-drive turntable. It is not that the turntable has a lot of friction; that spindle is extremely free flowing when the belt isn’t tied to it. The fear that such tight control from the motor would mean higher rates of speed fluctuation did worry me before I started listening, but the speed controller and motor and PWM power controller does deliver particularly excellent speed stability and mitigates resonances.  I refrained from playing AC-DC.

Listening to Genesis “Genesis” album (I think this is one of their worst musically and from an engineering perspective, though it is Mike Rutherford’s favourite) showed a detailed and laid back sound. This is the rock band’s twelfth studio album, released in October 1983. The vague title was due to the fact that the nine tracks were single ideas from their members. However, the opening track “Mama” was their highest rating single, reaching number 4 in the UK in 1983. The Yamaha CP-70 piano, Sequential Circuits Prophet 10 and Synclavier ii played by Tony Banks and the harsh drum machine in the introduction might well be very dated keyboards now playing them in the 21^st Century but they are managed surprisingly humanly in this Gold Note duo, and Phil Collin’s voice and the forward sound in this badly recorded vinyl gave me a chance to see that this turntable, arm and cartridge could cope honestly and fairly. Actually, better than I could have imagined, with very good mid-band and vocals in the second track “That’s All”. Turning appropriately to Stravinsky Symphony in C permitted an extremely vivid placement of instruments, especially the depth of clarity in the cellos. The cello is really the closest instrument to the human voice, ranging from a bass singer bottom “C” to above top “A” in the soprano’s high end. This turntable played cello with almost human character, and equally with a sensitively warm midrange of the violins and violas. Indeed, it was the bass and midrange that really stuck out to me as being one of the best properties of the turntable, giving a musicality that was quite intoxicating. It just missed out in terms of detail and vastness of sound that turntables costing north of £3000 can offer.

Turning to the excellently recorded Katie Melua ‘In Winter’ album, gave the turntable and arm and cartridge to all three work in a way I didn’t think an under £200 cartridge could do. The snow-white coloured album is so spacious and detailed in all the parts of its recording; from Katie’s very distinguishable gentle voice, the Gori Women’s Choir, and the guitar backing. Only some subsonic mic “pops” in several tracks took away my enjoyment from this new album, but it showed me just how quick the Valore was at picking up all microscopic detail, and just how valued my Wilson Benesch Torus subsonic generator was. I just wished I had the Bellagio Conquest Black King in front of me. In “Plane Song” I was in heaven; a slow ethereal track with gentle whistle, backing “ooohs”, acoustic guitar and over-reverbed voice from Katie, joined to make me feel I was floating in the clouds.

From one round table to another, trying Rick Wakeman’s “The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table” the amount of orchestration is as long as the album title, and often can sound congested and confused when not played on the very best players. This turntable and the Visari Red cartridge gave a very forward sound slightly less open and detailed “front to back” than my choice turntable, but still highly acceptable for the duo’s price of €1690.

I tried a few upgrade plans from my collection, including using a variety of light-weight record clamps, and I also replaced the OEM 4pin Din plug-RCA connector for my own-designed silver interconnect which created even more detail and magic. The good thing is that this turntable can have upgraded arm and cabling to give even better sonic qualities, meaning that more expensive cartridges wouldn’t be out of place.

Conclusion

Whilst this turntable might be at the starting end of the Gold Note collection, it is by no means a budget player. The arm is based on the B5.1 (retails on its own for €790) which shows just how good this arm is, and the spindle and motor are inspired by the more expensive turntables. You get my point. And if you don’t like transparent looks, there is a choice of other finishes, which come in at an even cheaper price-point.

Bass and mid were absolutely superb, and with a good fluidity and speed at all frequencies, with slightly forward and exciting sound, easily quantifying the price, even at today’s exchange rates.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  Excellent construction and attention to detail, including hinged dust cover

Sound Quality:  Open and quick, and with a human element to the sound, particularly in bass/mids

Value For Money:  At €1495 this is competing very ably in the lower end of the market, and compares well with turntables at £3000. Add the €195 Vasari Red and it is even better value

Pros

Valore 425 Plus Acrylic turntable is excellent ‘Valore’ at €1495 when you realise it comes complete with external PSU, Speed Control unit, B-5 tonearm and acrylic Dust Cover

Choice of finishes and prices

Excellent bass and midrange, especially on voices and strings

Good speed and definition of all instruments

Cons

Those feet

Price: €1495

The £280/m Experience 680 interconnect from British manufacturer Wire On Wire is an interesting concept in that is able to be ‘tuned’ by the owner. Dominic Marsh tunes in for Hifi Pig. 

When you have had as many cables through your hands as I have, it takes something either exceptional or really off the wall to get my immediate attention and this Wire On Wire interconnect certainly did that when I first opened the packaging. 

Wire On Wire kindly sent me two cables to evaluate, one that was “naked” without any spacers and another with the full complement of adjustment variables having all the spacers installed.  At first look it looks like something a drunk spider has fabricated after a generous glug of some home brew with what appears at first sight to be a haphazard weave pattern, but look past that and you find a cable that obviously has a great deal of attention paid to its construction.  Any idiot can do a simple three strand plait weave blindfolded, but this cable is a lot more complex than that and according to the designer Chris Bell it took an inordinate amount of research and experiment to arrive at this final design.   The resultant geometry is called “REDpurl” and I understand that a patent has been applied for and is pending (GB1602578.5).

Most of us will (hopefully) know that  resistance, capacitance and inductance are all traits inherent in any speaker or interconnect cable and whilst resistance remains fairly constant dependant on wire metallurgy, tamper with capacitance parameters and inductance falls victim to that and vice versa.  Some designers rely on those two parameters to shape the final sound, but it is fixed once the cable is manufactured into the final product.  Wire On Wire decided that there was an opportunity to manipulate these parameters in their favour and also allow the end user to do likewise by a simple yet ingenious method of adding or subtracting spacers to vary the geometry of the weave pattern.  These spacers are not introduced randomly; they are allocated at predetermined intervals or “nodes” along the length of the cable.

Construction

Wire On Wire have chosen silver plated copper conductors despite this configuration having a reputation for having a sharp edgy treble performance, but that is mostly earned by cheap silver plated copper wires and many leading cable manufacturers also use this combination of silver plating and copper core to good effect, so that reputation is rather too generalist, applied with a very broad brush and perhaps not applicable to all silver plated copper wires.   Although not actually measured, the conductors themselves appear to be of different diameters, some with a red outer insulating jacket to preserve polarity for termination.  Insulation is by PTFE.  Capacitance is quoted at 69pF per metre which of course is variable depending upon spacer configuration.

The cable is fitted with good quality and genuine WBT- 0114 RCA locking connectors.

There is the option to have the cable covered in an expandable outer mesh sleeving.

Price is £280.00 for 1 metre pair at time of testing, with other lengths available to order.

Sound

I spent a considerable amount of time familiarising myself with the sonic qualities of the cable without the tuning spacers, before delving into adding/subtracting the spacers to tune the sound.  I am fortunate that my latest CD player acquisition has two line level outputs so comparing cables with instant A/B switching  by source selection on my pre-amp makes comparisons so much easier, although I still prefer using my ears as the arbiter.

To put it mildly, I was stunned at how good the “naked” Wire On Wire cable sounded when put head-to-head against my resident interconnect cable which has a price tag of £2,000.  Yes there were differences in presentation but they were fractional and as a result, very subtle and had to be critically listened for.

Into the CD drawer went Fink’s “Wheels Beneath My Feet” live album and that has many cues that puts any Hifi components through their paces for me.  The first is the ambiences recorded at each venue of Fink’s European tour, where each has its own unique reverberation and of course, each audience too has its own signature in the way they cheer and applaud the performance.   I would expect to hear each as unique and the Wire On Wire cable performed this with ease, so you could easily tell the volume of each theatre by that ambience.  Imaging, width and depth very good, with steady instrument placement in the sounstage.  Bass however was just a fraction behind my resident cable and didn’t quite have the power and energy, nor did the Wire On Wire cable muster the sheer definition and shape of bass notes the resident cable can portray down in the lowest registers.  Midband was equally as clear and lucid, male and female voices too for that matter was certainly on a par between the two cables.   Put into context then, the Wire On Wire cable at £280.00 fared very well against a £2,000 cable and there wasn’t much outclassing going on unless one is being hyper critical. I went through most of my CD collection over a period of two weeks and then I felt the time was right to introduce the full ‘spacered’ up variant of the Experience 680 interconnect.

The sound to me was a chasm away from what I heard from the “naked” cable;  a tad thick sounding and bloated in the bass, the treble to me had lost its polish and refinement and the midband acquired a chesty quality, so it shows just how critical conductor geometry spacing is with this cable, indeed with all cables.  Thankfully, Wire On Wire provide a handbook that shows how to tune the cable by subtracting and adding their plastic spacers to the cable, the nodes being numbered and counted off from the source end, no matter which way round the cable is initially installed.

Above is a chart copied from Wire On Wire’s website explaining the effects of adding or removing the spacers has on the perceived sound.  Being the thick idiot that I am, whenever I took a spacer out I placed a square of masking tape onto the loop the spacer was removed from so I would know the exact place it came from.  The combinations and permutations of spacers installed or not runs into the thousands as Chris Bell pointed out to me, so it would be rather unwise and indeed pointless typing out the results that I got during the evaluation, as in all probability none would match those obtained by buyers of this cable in their own systems and of course meeting their own listening preferences.  What I can tell you is all the changes were subtle rather than manifested in clearly obvious amounts.

CONCLUSION

Wire On Wire’s website has an anecdote about Chris Bell’s cable which says their product HAS to sound good or the man will be locked in the shed until it does.

In the final analysis, I much preferred the “naked” variant above the cable that had the spacers installed, no matter what combination and permutation of spacers I took out and put in with my current system as it stands.  Readers should not be concerned by this statement as I am more than certain your results would probably be at complete variance with mine anyway.  To me the spacers were an optional extra and of course the price remains the same with or without the spacers so that is a good value proposition for the asking price.  Obviously the planets were aligned just right for the unmolested cable to sound just right for my system and I don’t know whether that is a good or bad thing for the purpose of this review and I make no apologies if you wanted a full autopsy of my many spacer swapping trials, but I still went back again and again to the sans spacer cable.

However, being the inveterate box swapper that I am, there might come the day that the spacers become an essential tool in tuning the sound to my personal tastes when one of my myriad of blind purchases has an acute attack on ‘non-synergy’ when introduced into my system – as has happened in the past.  At that precise moment it would be comforting to know that I have to hand an easy method of accomplishing that fine sonic tailoring instead of hunting around for a completely new cable to match, so the Wire On Wire Experience 680’s versatility and adaptability earns my recommendation.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  At first glance it looks a right tangle and a bit fragile, but looks are deceptive in this case.  The inclusion of good quality and genuine WBT connectors is a welcome sign.

Sound Quality:  Gave a pair of £2k high end interconnects a surprisingly good challenge. Says it all.

Value For Money:  I rated it well without the spacers installed, but the day might come when they earn their keep with their tuneable options as the spacers adds no additional purchase cost.

Pros:  Great quality sound with the ability to be customised to your own listening tastes.  At £280 a metre it represents good value too.

Cons:  Not the prettiest cable around.  If it bothers you then an outer mesh sleeve is available.

Price: £280/m

Dominic Marsh

Lehmann are a German manufacturer headed up by Norbert Lehmann and make a range of widely respected electronics. Here Janine Elliot pops on her cans and takes a listen to the Linear D Headphone amplifier and DAC costing £1050. 

There are certain duo’s that should always go together, like fish and chips and Marmite and cheese, and a few that probably shouldn’t like Audio Innovation’s CD player with built-in FM tuner. A few years ago the idea of a headphone amplifier with a DAC were equally frowned upon, but as we become more involved in hi-res players and turn ‘antisocial’ using headphones as opposed to antisocially playing our loudspeakers too loud, this duo seems all the more relevant. And, with the Lehmann Linear D being reviewed here, should you have friends to share with then there is an additional headphone socket so the two of you can listen together. Sweet.

This model is basically a single analogue input Linear with additional Toslink and S/PDIF RCA digital inputs. A blue light next to the sockets will indicate when a digital source is connected, with priority for the Toslink.  I just wish the on/off light at the front of the Linear D changed from blue to red to indicate a digital source, as you won’t see the blue light on the rear unless you turn off the room lights! The unit doesn’t need any manual switches to toggle between the analogue or digital sources, rather it recognises if a digital source is playing and switches across automatically, picking the optimal setting. The Sabre K2M DAC from ESS Technology on the quad-layer circuit board, which has been optimised against HF interference, can handle  24 bit digital inputs at sampling rates of 32 kHz; 44,1 kHz; 48 kHz; 88,2 kHz; 96 kHz; and 192 kHz. There is no provision for higher 384kHz or DSD conversion. The front of the unit is quite sparse with just the blue light to tell you when the unit is switched on, the all-important volume control, and two ¼ inch stereo Neutrik gold plated headphone sockets.

All sockets at the back are tightly packed at one end due to there being the on/off switch, IEC socket and fuse block at the other, and whilst there is labelling underneath the unit there is none at the rear itself which can be rather confusing if you are in a hurry to set up, particularly because the analogue left and right and digital RCA socket are not separated, which could be puzzling if you don’t read the manual or peek underneath the unit, and because where left and right analogue RCA inputs are set horizontally, the output left and right RCAs are vertically set on the right.  I prefer in/out and left/right to be placed in rows, in the same way as they were in cassette and tape recorders, but old habits die hard. Two parallel outputs on the discrete class-A solid-state output stages powerfully feed two headphones connected in sockets at the front of the unit, preferably of equal impedance. For this test I used Sennheiser HD650’s (always difficult to drive well), Audio Technical W1000, Meze 99’s, and borrowed a pair of HD800’s. 

Norbert Lehmann set up Lehmann Audio in Cologne, Germany, in 1988 when a young student of audio engineering, Since the Summer of 2007 he has been operating from Bergisch Gladbach. With a passion for detail of sound this German manufacturer has been producing a big selection of headphone amplifiers, phonostages and power amplifiers as skilfully as Britain’s very own Graham Slee. This product like many in his range is offered in a choice of matt aluminium, black or my favourite the shiny anodised aluminium.  The Linear D also has vibration-absorbing SSC feet to “decouple the Linear D from its base and provide calmness”. Calmness was certainly manna from the power reserve in the zero global feedback Class A output stage that works well with any headphone, no matter what impedance. At £965.00 this is a medium price for a headphone amplifier, but bearing in mind the cost of decent headphones today it is proportionally only a small amount to pay for what for me was quite exceptional sound-per-pound. You get a headphone amplifier based on their very successful £649.95 Linear with added digital input, and one that is easy to operate once you get past connecting it up.

Sound

Kate Bush’s A Sky of Honey “Prologue” from her iconic ‘Aerial’ album gave an open and full-frequency performance delving into each individual instrument methodically and with great ease. Even the combined assortment of closing drums, piano and vocals were clearly defined in their own space, and the open C-chord from violins and piano ‘G’ in the centre stage isolated itself from an Ab “hum” that was well defined on the right ear, and continuing until the final fade. I hadn’t really noticed this before and I wonder if Kate also knew that it was there when she recorded the album in her home studio. The Lehmann gave excessive amount of detail without making it all sound confused or clinical. The sound was passionate, involving and musical. This was electrostatic detail with oomph.

Playing the Queen Symphony through the DAC, the piano-key pressing gave quick attacks that sounded good on the HD650. All instruments were clearly defined in their allotted space, and all sounds, whilst powerful and sumptuous, were still very sensitive to the detail. From the lowest sounds to the high glockenspiel I never got tired of listening. Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique (Robin Ticciati, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Linn 24/192) was crystal clear, from the “brushing sounds” merged under the string introduction (which seems to be synonymous with a number of Linn recordings) to the brash brass bursts in the fourth movement. The dynamism of the music is allowed space in this headphone amp, and I felt more front-to-back awareness in the 2-dimentional HD650’s than I thought was possible. These are unflustered and clinical headphones at the worst of times, and this headphone amp played each individual note with a high degree of musicality and pizazz. The manual supplied shows how you can select the best output for your cans, with 2 micro-switches per channel situated under the unit allowing you to adjust amplification in a range of 0, +10, +18 and +20 dB, with the manual even listing suggestions for German headphones from companies including AKG, Beyer, Grado, Sennheiser and Ultrasone. Output gain was considered more important than matching impedances, and the unit worked well with both low and high impedances. Giving the HD650’s and HD800’s an extra 10dB of “welly” meant I was never short of power and the Linear lived up to its name with a very undeviating frequency response from lowest to highest.  And, like the Black Cube Linear that I heard some years ago, the sound was full-bodied, rich and meaty, giving me masses of enjoyment.

Turning to mono with Ella and Louis “Can’t We Be Friends” (Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong) was defined and accurate, and with both of them singing the fact that this was a mono recording made it none the less enjoyable. Switching to the HD800’s and Audio Technica W1000 fifth generation headphones opened up the sound even more, becoming more human and enjoyable, especially the ‘muted’ trumpet solos. I didn’t really notice it was mono with the distant trumpet solos and piano contrasting with the closer vocal interjection.  Prog rock album ‘Life within a Day’ track “Tall Ships” from Squacket (Chris Squire and Steve Hackett; YES  and Genesis respectively) played with authority and detail, with clear decays from the bass drum that I could still hear clearly amongst all the other instruments still playing. Nothing was hidden. Indeed, in a later performance Pavlo Beznosiuk playing the Toccata and Fugue in A minor (JS Bach) on the solo violin rather than the organ illustrated further the space and decay of sounds. Back on Squackett, whilst I still prefer the original YES and Genesis, there are some great tracks on this second album from this duo. The Lehmann didn’t disguise some unadventurous mixing in this album, but kept it as I remember; particularly the very centralised mix-down in ‘Divided Self’.  ‘Aliens’ was a very tame track and the Linear D made it all the more clear and not frightening with all the different short riffs fitting together that left me with a sea of smiles.  Queen “One Vision” from A Kind of Magic (Queen Studio Collection, 2015) played with power and awe, with the bass particularly good on the Meze 99 Classic headphones, recently reviewed, and this MP3 download sounding surprisingly musical. The title track wasn’t flustered with its highly compressed drum beats. If anything the Lehmann opened up the sound so I didn’t get a headache. David Gilmour’s “5am” from ‘Rattle that Lock’ took me back to a restful state of mind.  Pat Metheny Group ‘The Way Up’ opening track sounded clear and powerful with the ride cymbals in the percussion, guitars, synthesisers and Steve Reich’ inspired repeated phrases sounding crystal clear and refined. The HD650 relished this music, giving of itself as good as I have ever heard. Nothing rushed, all there and very detailed. Where I normally prefer my Audio Technicas, they now sounded too bright and the HD650 sounded more natural, and the HD800 just improved it one more degree.

Conclusion

The Linear D was surprisingly good choice for me to play with. Where I usually prefer tube headphone amps in order to get the musicality and personality in the sound, I felt very happy getting to know this product, both with analogue and digital sources. The sound was powerful, human, never flamboyant, but still sensitive to detail. It worked well with all I played, from classical, jazz, pop and folk. Having that extra 20dB of power up my sleeve was also good for those less efficient planar headphones that are flooding the market. I would therefore most certainly give this product a listen to if you are in the market for a headphone/DAC duo.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  Minimalist, well-built design, both component design and construction

Sound Quality:  Accurate, full frequency sound with lots of warmth and vivacity

Value For Money:  With a price of £965 this is not a basement price offering, but bearing in mind the price of the headphones you should be using with the Linear D, this is excellent value

Pros:

Immense musicality
Full sound
Works on all music
Detail that doesn’t tire you out
Detailed soundstage

Cons:

Limited to 1 analogue input
Limited to 24 bit PCM digital inputs
Confusingly laid out sockets
Having the digital source light at the rear

Price: £1050

Janine Elliot 

Technical Specification

Father and son team David and Rob Stevenson review the entry level Pro-Ject Primary turntable costing £189.

The vinyl revival has extended to supermarkets but its delights and reputation are lost in the plethora of cheap nasty plastic ‘record players’.

European makers Project offer a range of decks from basic to exotic and now offer a very budget entry level named ‘ The Primary’ .Its an ideal gift aimed at fresh starters or at upgraders from a tacky thingy, and to those wanting USB interfacing or to add to AV setups.

The sample arrived in a box emblazoned all over with ‘EISA 2016 Best Product Turntable’ and in smaller print ‘The Classic.’ We got excited…until a smaller label announced its contents as ‘The Primary‘ which was a plain all black, very lightweight turner of MDF plinth and thin aluminium arm on 3 anti-vibration  feet that could easily tuck away between shelves unnoticed.

Enthusiasm was waning. Maybe the red or the white variant would have more interest; expectations were on the low side for sound too. This deck had an uphill task convincing us that it was worthy.

It did and then some!

Project has wrought a super enjoyable listen from budget bits.

“How was the setup Dad?“. Rob is in work tea break now. “No fiddly bits, it’s factory set, a ‘plug and play‘ as they say”.

“Well errr. I washed my hands free of the expensive skincare balm that attracts sophisticated ladies and fast cars and applied the silicone belting around rim of the 12 inch MDF platter, but then came the plugging in bit”.

“So?”. Honourable son was puzzled wondering if ageing Father was ‘losing it’.

“Its multi part international wall wart style puzzle designed to fit sockets in Azerbaijan, Mongolia, and Zanzibar and France depending on the configuration. I eventually choose a shape that would enter the mains near the Russ Andrews ‘Silencer’. Actually setup was easy and the phono lead is solid quality too with decent gold plugs.

“I levelled it on a wall shelf next to the modded Technics. I’m sure I saw the Hana SL looking over disparagingly.”

“Yeah right“. Mutters Rob.

“It’s more than ten times the price and is silent without its SUT. Anyway the USB variants have on board phonostages but this variant doesn’t so what are we using, the valve Ear 834P, the Lounge LCR, or the Rega Fono Mk11?”.

“Well err, I was thinking (Rob groans), the person buying would be on a budget, so I found this £30 Maplins phono preamplifier“. More groans.

Rob says. “You’ve fetched down the attic based NAD 326 B then?”

“Well it did win EISA best amp”.

“Mmmmm, this century?“

Pater uses Van Damme connect and cabling to budget 2.5way style Epos floorstanders.

Fifteen minutes later Rob gets a pinging mail “It’s good”.

45 minutes later. ”It’s truly good”. The sonic balance starts to form.

Four LPs later it’s working. “It’s a good listen Rob, you are in for a surprise, see you later”.

How can it be that less than £200 can give this amount of joy?

It’s not a ‘looker’. The designer has concentrated around the long time tried and tested cartridge Ortofon OM5e. It’s a small and light but a capable clean moving magnet, mounted exactly on a simple short arm with under slung counterweight and very good bearings. The deck is low mass so resonances are minimised and adds very little, if anything, to the signal.

It has no bias control or down force adjustment other than the movable counterweight or pillar height change. It’s set for this elliptical diamond only.

Our usual test record (Hifi and Sound) was passed on the two accepted tracking ability levels but, along with many very fine cartridges, failed the third torture band at 13+ dB.

The lid was interesting. The friction of the hinges allow it to ‘park ‘nicely and the deck plays cleanly with it down!

Regular test routine starts with Joan Armatradings standard cut disc inner grooves on “Me Myself I”. It’s an ‘open’ recording with big dynamic swings, strong drum work, bass, sustained low tones and testing vocals. The music gushed out exciting, clear multilayers, good central voice, dipping, soaring  and expressive. Simply enjoyable!

We looked at each other. ”Errrr, how much is this?” Asked Rob.

“It’ll fail on complex harmonics and dynamics. Get the Gregory Porter”.

‘Liquid Spirit’ sounded out. We had heard it recently from the Hana SL  MC so this was not really fair, but this little gem gave us the shapely stand up bass and the rasp of his voicing. We liked it. That certain ‘air’, that mystical ‘ethereal vibe’ (no we don’t know what it is but we know when it’s absent) was not there but there was enough top notes with harmonics to suit most CD listeners. And of course just a touch of that lovely warming that Moving Magnets can give to make a lovely listen.

My turn. “Errr, how much is this?”

Next under was Yellos new ‘Toy’. A super recording from all points of critique (unless you hate electronica) and really showed the ability was inherent.

It bounces joyfully through 70 – 80s tracks with nails and hammer hits on strings, distributed cymbals, sufficient slam and heft, with acoustics around the voices enough to satisfy.

Tchaikovsky symphony 5 did not extend further left or right than the speakers but it did ‘big fast clout’ when asked and carried the orchestral sections well.

Mono did well. The Zombies classic ‘She’s Not There’ had all the angst required. The Stones recently announced a return to their early music with the Blues, so ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ sounded out and was much enjoyed.

On and on and on, all day vinyl, no edge of the seat ’will it, won’t it?‘ It just did, and at volume without ear fatigue. Simply pleasing.

Rob says. “I could live with this”.

The Primary is a synergy of good value parts maximising the hifi content by operating within their performance envelope.

Overall – a balanced soundscape with clarity and bounce beyond expectation for this budget.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality: It’s ample and functional for the job at hand

Sound Quality: Surprisingly good speed stability and a great sounding way to enjoy your vinyl

Value For Money: Very much worth the stretch over the cheaper turntables on the market

Pros: VERY easy to set up and sounds great

Cons: Not much, perhaps isolation, but it’s nit picking at this price

Price: £189

David and Rob Stevenson

Specifications

Replacement Stylus:  Ortofon 5e Stylus

Pre-Fitted Cartridge: Ortofon OM5e

Nominal Speeds: 33/45 RPM (Manual)

Speed Variance: 33: 0.80% 45: 0.70%

Wow & Flutter: 33: 0.29% 45: 0.27%

Platter: 300mm MDF (0.8kg)

Effective Tonearm Length: 8.6″ (218.5mm)

Effective Tonearm Mass: 8.0gr

Overhang: 22.0mm

Tracking Force Range: 0 – 25mN

Power Consumption: 4.5W

Dimensions (W x H x D): 420 x 112 x 330mm

Weight: 4kg

At just £200 the funky yellow Steljes NS3 powered speakers offer a whole lot of connectivity including Bluetooth, but can they cut the mustard? 

We’re keen at Hifi Pig to be inclusive and we realise that not everyone either has the money or the desire to own systems that cost thousands and take up a good deal of space. We also realise that there are younger people out there that access their music in a whole new way with many using their smart phones and computers as their main source of music. Step up the NS3 from Steljes Audio.

These powered speakers arrive well packaged and in a very cool looking bright yellow, though another six colours are available, including the more traditional black and white. They certainly make a bold statement on the shelf and look modern, compact and funky.  In essence one speaker acts as the “master” with the other being connected to it by standard speaker cable – the included cable is pretty flimsy stuff and I would perhaps suggest it’s worth spending a few quid to get better. However, build is solid and the speakers are really well finished…and not just for the money.

The master speaker has a remote receiver window, volume/selector button and an LED light that is red when the speaker is on standby and then blue when in Bluetooth or work mode. Around the back of this speaker you have a plate with a pair of RCAs so you can connect a CD player or other line source, even a turntable if you have an external phonostage. There’s a 3.5mm minijack for connecting sources using this kind of connector, a sub out, a power on off rocker switch, a digital optical in and a USB socket that can be used to charge your smart phone or other device. There’s also a figure of eight power input and a pair of speaker binding posts. This pair of binding posts is used to connect to the second speaker which looks much more conventional around the back with just a pair of speaker binding posts. You also get a remote control which is nice looking and it controls all the functions of the system. Point it at the master speaker and you can turn the system on, increase or decrease bass output, mute, select the source, adjust the volume and treble and pair your Bluetooth source, you can also pause tracks or skip/shuffle tracks.

Setting up the speakers is a two minute job and the instructions are clear and simple to follow. Bluetooth connection likewise is a doddle, even for this relative newbie to the whole smartphone thing – select Bluetooth on the remote, enable Bluetooth on your phone, enter the pairing code and your done…the LED on the front is now blue. I was up and playing tunes in a matter of tens of seconds which was a bit of a shock really!

Connecting other more standard sources is a doddle too with – plug them in, select them from the remote and off you go.

The 45W x 2 power is provided by a class D amplifier and you’ve got one inch soft dome tweeters and four inch woven fibreglass woofers with a port on the back of each speaker. The speakers are 85dB sensitive, 4 Ohm and have a claimed response of 60Hz to 20KHz. They’re a relatively dinky 210 x 140 x 190mm (HWD) and weigh 6.1Kg.

Sound 

For the purposes of this review I initially simply plonked the speakers on one of the hifi racks we have, spaced them about a metre apart and that was it. I reckon most of the folk that are going to buy these speakers are going to be using them on desks, in bedrooms or either side of the TV or computer, but more of that later.

Initial reaction was a bit of a “Wow, these don’t sound half bad” playing files off the Android phone and I confess to thinking immediately that I’d have been well happy with these in my early teens for my bedroom, but then this wasn’t any critical listening session.

As I said previously lots of people are going to be using these on their desks and so, having recently moved into a new office space, the little Steljes were installed on my desktop. I’m a reasonably happy bunny sat here listening to Daft Punk’s Discovery album via Bluetooth. What’s pretty nice is that the stereo image is like having a mini soundstage in front of you. Hats have a bit of grain to them, as do vocals, but there is movement of instruments within that image – by this I mean that it’s not just a left and right one dimensional image and there is an element of three dimensionality.

Listening critically to Eels Novacaine For The Soul at decent volume there is some confusion and lack of separation of instruments and a feeling that I’m driving the speakers a little too hard, but dial back the volume a notch and things improve, but there is lack of definition and that graininess. I believe this is not down to the speakers but the fact that I’m feeding them with crappy files and that is a positive point for the speakers in some ways.

We have a little AR DAC/headphone amp here for review that is sat on my desk so lets see what happens when we play higher resolution files at the NS3s.

The little Steljes have enough about them to be able to tell you are listening to a superior format and that is a very good thing. On the same Daft Punk album I’m able to turn the volume up to uncomfortable levels on One More Time and get the diminutive drivers really moving and it feels like there is more balance to the overall sound. This is interesting to me. Many teens use their phones pretty much exclusively as their source of music, but it is clear that it is not really suitable for critical listening in my opinion; FLAC, through the AR DAC is clearly a much better listening experience with the NS3s. There is a feeling that the Steljes have been allowed to open up and sound a good deal better than previously. The soundstage is still in miniature and between the speakers but that’s just what happens with desktop speakers, though it does extend forward towards the listener in a pleasing manner. The hats have lost that graininess to them and there is good definition throughout the frequency range. Bass is tuneful and whilst it is still limited in its extension, is perfectly acceptable for such a small speaker.

Gil Scott-Heron’s Pieces Of A Man goes on next and I’m really surprised at how good these things sound. I did find I have to wind back the volume a little otherwise it’s all a bit much for the NS3s. Pianos sound acceptably like pianos as do the rest of the instruments in the mix. There’s not the refinement or depth of insight into the mix we get on our main rig, but you know what, these certainly play music and get your toes tapping which to me is the main thing and they are detailed enough to be more than acceptable to the vast majority of people.

Conclusion

Truth be known, I wasn’t expecting much at all from these speakers, but I’ve been really pleasantly surprised by how much fun they are. As an office pair of speakers, or if you are on a tight budget they really do play your music very nicely.

Yes they have limitations; bass is obviously restricted and they focus on the mids and tops, but at this price, and considering all the onboard amps, Bluetooth etc, they offer great value for money. In a lot of ways I’m reminded of my first proper pair of speakers, the original Wharfedale Diamonds.
Speaking of Bluetooth; it’s fine if you are having a party and you are not really concentrating on the music, but I do think in its standard iteration as used on these speakers it is limited to what it can convey in regards of detail and definition. It’s a useful feature to have and people not used to high quality audio may well get on well enough with it, but it is worth spending a little more on a decent little DAC and feeding them with good files to get these speakers really singing. They certainly come on song with better files!

The included remote is a useful little device and whilst not the last word in fit and finish works well enough and is better made than many of the remotes I’ve seen on similarly priced products. The USB out on the back is useful for charging your phone and if you do want more bass you can add a sub.

Overall it’s hard to find fault with the NS3s; they are very well made, sound fab’, look funky and offer brilliant value for money. If you are looking to add a pair of speakers to your desktop they’re great. If you are looking for your first pair of speakers and can live with some limitations that all small speakers inherently have these are great, just feed them with the quality signal they deserve.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality: Really nicely made and solid feeling

Sound Quality: Offer enough detail and insight into quality recording to make them more than acceptable. Bass is limited as it was always going to be

Value For Money: It really is difficult to fault these speakers given the very modest price-point 

Pros:

Great value

Very nicely put together

Fabulous fun but with enough detail in the music to satisfy more critical listeners 

Cons:

Bass is limited 

Price: £200

Stuart Smith

Specifications

• 45W x 2 Power Output
• 1 Inch soft dome tweeter
• 4 Inch woven fiberglass
• 4 Ohm Nominal Impedance
• 85db Sensitivity
• 60Hz – 20KHz
• Class D Amplifier
• Inputs: RCA Pair (1), 3.5mm Stereo (1), Optical (1), Bluetooth (1)
• Outputs: USB Charge (1), Sub-Woofer (1)
• Dimensions: 210 x 140 x 190mm (H x W x D)
• Net Weight: 6.1Kg

1More is a  Chinese brand that make a range of headphones and in-ears. Here Stuart Smith tries out the £89.99 dual driver C1002 and the three driver E1001 costing ten pounds more from their UK website. 

1More C1002 and E1001 In Ear Headphones 

1More is a Chinese brand that makes a small range of IEMs and more traditional looking headphones. Their offerings start at just £29.99 but here we have the £89.99 capsule dual driver IEM (C1002) and the triple driver IEM (E1001) costing £99.99. The price points put these IEMs in the sights of those wanting to get something more out of their portable music player without breaking the bank. 

C1002 Capsule Dual Driver 

The packaging is pretty cool on these and a lot of thought has gone into the whole experience of buying them. In the pack you get the headphones, a range of 4 tips, a little carrying pouch, a silicone cover for the capsules that is designed to increase their size for those more well endowed on the lughole region and an instruction manual in a range of languages. There’s a matching shirt clip included too. 

Features

The C1002 has a balanced armature driver along with a separate dynamic driver. There is an in-line remote that is compatible with Android and Apple devices that you can change volume, skip through tracks and change the volume. A MEMS microphone is included too.

When you’re not using them the C1002s have handy magnetic tips so you can put them around your neck. The cable is enamelled copper around a Kevlar core with the lower part being braised with nylon whilst after the split it is covered in TPE. He capsules are marked for left and right ears.

Comfort

I’m a weird one with IEMs and I tend not to get along with them at all but the capsule shape of these is really comfortable for me using the smallest of the silicone tips. I’m able to shake my head around pretty violently without them becoming dislodged or moving about and I’d certainly be happy to take part in vigorous physical activity whilst wearing these…were I of that persuasion…I’m not. These certainly block out the outside world when you are using them and I had no complaints from Linette about leakage of sound whilst using them.

Sound

You’re never going to get the full listening experience that a proper stereo can offer when using any headphones in my opinion, but there are folk out there that actually prefer listening to music like this. Of course the main benefit of these kind of devices is their portability and the fact you can have music wherever you go.

However, my first listen is from the desktop computer using FLAC files through an AR DAC
From the first few bars of Gil Scott-Heron’s compilation album Ghetto Style it is clear that the 1Mores are a quality product. My initial comments would be of a sound that is clean, well defined and with a bass that sounds tuneful and bouncy. The all important midrange is sweet and mellifluous whilst the top end isn’t at all harsh as can be the case with some IEMs I’ve had the opportunity to use.

Body Count’s first album is a raucous metal-fest and the C1002s cope well even at loud volumes; these will go very loud (dangerously loud) without distorting. I was never of the opinion that these were getting stressed out and finding the going a bit much, they were composed and polite throughout. Audiophiles will like their presentation a good deal I think. There’s a real snap to the snare on the track Body Count that is really pleasing, whilst the grinding guitars come through really well. Separation of instruments is good with vocals being dead centre and you can hear where things are panned in the mix.
As I mentioned, these are priced to appeal to those looking for an upgrade from the standard ear buds that come with a phone or portable player and so I plug them into my WileyFox Android phone. The remote works as it should but I find, having sausages for fingers, the buttons a bit fiddly to use and I kept turning the music off to begin with…I got more used to them after time.

Playing Gregory Porter’s Liquid Spirit I found I had to turn the volume up pretty high to get to decent volume levels. Perhaps this is a good thing given my previous comments about these being able to be pushed to loud volumes before breaking up. There is a silkiness to the presentation and good insight into his vocal presentation whilst retaining a snappiness to the tops and decent bass. Again I’d say these will appeal to audiophiles on the move but who don’t want to go to the expense and hassle of a separate mobile set up.

Conclusion 

Over long periods of use these earphones were comfortable in both the way they fit and their non-fatiguing sound. For the asking price I consider them a bit of a bargain. Some mobile users will want more volume. The cables don’t tangle easily and the magnetic tips are a useful feature.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality: Great packaging and a solid feel to the product itself. Cables on these kinds of product are inherently fairly flimsy 

Comfort: Very comfortable indeed and stay in the ear 

Sound Quality: Silky and detailed presentation 

Value For Money: Great value for money 

Pros:

Comfortable

Non-fatiguing sound

Cons:

Need driving pretty hard to get the best out of them

E1001 Triple Driver 

The packaging for these is brilliant and adds to the whole experience of opening them up – a real Christmas morning experience. The box, in the form of a book, opens up to reveal drawings of the headphones and the philosophy behind the brand. As well as the earphones themselves you get six pairs of silicone tips, three sets of foam tips (my preference was for the smallest silicone tips) a natty little carrying box to protect them when out and about, a dual prong adapter for using on planes and the instruction manual. There’s also a matching shirt clip. 

Features

With the E1001 you have two balanced armatures and a dynamic driver. The cable and the remote are the same as on the C1002. The aluminium housing are angled to better fit the ear.

Comfort

As I mentioned earlier I am funny with IEMs and find many of them pretty uncomfortable. I used these on the trip too and from the recent Warsaw show and found them to be one of the most comfortable earphones I’ve ever used. The go pretty deep in the ear canal and whilst they don’t feel as secure as the previous model, I was still able to shake my head about without dislodging them – I’d certainly be happy running about with these in place.

Sound

These are sonically a step up from the previous headphones in every respect and are one of the best sounding set of in-ears I’ve ever used. Using the desktop computer and the AR DAC/Headphone amp and playing Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album it’s clear from the opening drum beat and guitar strum that you are listening to a superior product…and not just when compared to the dual drivers above. The drums are tight, bright and you can hear the effects used, guitar is crystal clear, bass is well defined and tuneful and Bowie’s vocal is great. There’s bags of detail in the mix too which is good to hear.

Ice Cube’s Good Day is a laidback funky rap tune and here what I’m getting is a deep melodious bass and again loads of detail in the mix. What I do get here is that this tune is a bit compressed in the mix…not the fault of the earphones, but it did annoy me.

The Grunge of Veruca Salt’s American Thighs album was great using these, conveying power and subtlety in equal measure. What stood out here was the clout in the bass and sheer believability of the overdriven guitars – Seether sounds stunning!

Again it’s time to get these IEMs onto the phone to see what they’re like in a more realistic environment. Gregory Porter’s Liquid Spirit is a delight. I’m finding that I’m really enjoying the detail and sleek presentation at lower volumes, but even when turned up full the sound never strays into the territory of sounding overblown or at the point of break up. Overall there’s a smoothness and liquidity to these earphones that many audiophiles will love.

Massive Attack’s Blue Lines makes me just sit back and just enjoy the tunes and that’s a great sign in any product. Details in the mix and sounds are really apparent, with the bass being controlled and fully in check. Spatially I’m getting a more out of the head experience with these than previously.

Conclusion

These are a very, very good in-ear at a price that is something of a bargain. Sonically they are a class act that is, in my opinion, amongst the best I’ve heard. They are comfortable in the ear and the presentation is seriously non-fatiguing. Truth be known I’m finding it hard to find fault with these, particularly given their budget territory price. I know it’s a cliché in reviews, but these really do offer audiophile performance at a relatively budget price.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality: Great packaging and good build quality 

Comfort: One of the most comfortable IEMs I’ve ever used 

Sound Quality: Great bass, superb midband and a snappy top end make for a great ‘audiophile’ type listen 

Value For Money: An audiophile product at a relatively budget price 

Pros:

Fabulous sound quality

Great build

Cons:

Struggling to find a negative at this price

Stuart Smith

Studio Connections are based in the UK and produce a wide range of cables for home audio use. In this review Dan Worth and Dominic Marsh take a look at the company’s Carbon Power cables retailing at £190 for 1m. 

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.

System Efficiency and General Implementation

High performance power distribution is not just about providing energy to components in my opinion, but also bonding components together to form a single, cohesive system. This demands providing a stable common reference ground͛ between components and preventing stray voltages and noise occurring between different parts of the system.

All electronic and electrical circuits create electromagnetic fields and noise. If these are not managed in a system then they will propagate throughout the system and cause disturbances. Most equipment and power conditioners use filters to reduce noise emissions. However, noise is rarely nullified into non-existence, and usually residual noise is reflected or sent to a ground connection or to a chassis.

There is an assumption a system ground has the infinite ability to absorb noise; in reality it is a wire network. Because it connects chassis together, it can minimise noise voltages between components, but it equally transfers noise energy between components as eddy currents͛. An increase in noise levels always degrades stereo image.

The only way to truly remove all noise from a system is, instead of trying to hard block͛ it or send it somewhere else, is to ensure there are no circuit loops that current can travel around and all the components share a common reference ground. To ensure any interference is dissipated as heat.

Installation

As mentioned in the previous paragraph strapping the earths to a common location is essential in appraising any power cable and really obtaining the best electrical solution for the components. Known as star earthing, designers have been implementing this technique for many years now within their electronics and distribution mains blocks. My own system a period of time ago consisted of two separate radials for front and back end equipment, with each having a balanced power supply and a filtered block for the front end and a passive for the amps.

Although the sound was terrific and all the equipment fed by seemingly capable and competent products, I could from time to time find myself with a soundstage that didn’t produce as accurate an image as I believed should have been presented to me. I had instances of overtones in higher frequencies that had a lack of body and lower notes which felt crumpled and crushed.

As Michael Whiteside, owner and designer of all Studio Connections products is as obtainable to the public as he is to industry personnel and is responsible for really honing down the wiring of some of our best known studios and theatres, I gave him a call with my concerns and he was as always ready and willing with advice.

We sketched out the systems wiring and immediately his suggestions were to remove the use of one of the radials in the circuit along with one balanced power supply. ‘Less is more in this case’ Michael stated. I naturally hesitated at this prospect as I believed that keeping the two balanced supplies in place would in fact eliminate crosstalk. Our first step in this case was to take a preliminary approach by strapping the two grounding points inside the balanced supplies to each other. This did not yield any ground breaking results (excuse the pun).

So next I went with Michael’s initial plan and removed one of the balanced supplies and negated one of the radials.

The new chain of power was one radial feeding one balanced power supply, two feeds from that supply, one to the front end filtered extension block and the other to my all star wired (neutral and live lines included) passive block for the amps the results were really staggering. Phase and timing was considerably more accurate and instrument tone and timbre was more natural, fluid and dynamically true.

Bring in the Carbon Mains Cables 

The installation of the Carbon Screened Mains Cables into my system began as straight forward as any other power cable review. I initially added one to each of my Reference Mono blocks. My first inspection on the sound was that over my previous far more expensive cables from various companies the sound gained solidity in the bass. I felt that initially I was hearing more bass, but during more intense listening it wasn’t the levels of bass which increased but more so the timing and accuracy of the bass line which had better energy and more natural dynamics allowing me to ascertain better separation of kick drums over bass and the extension of lower bass was freer and more substantially apparent.

I then proceeded to replace my existing cables back into the amplifiers and changed the one in the DAC for a SC Carbon. Most notably I understood the vocals better. What I mean is I could feel more emotion and realism in the artist’s rendition of the given music. When watching a live band, eye contact from the singer is essential in conveying the emotion that is felt in the lyrics, but we cannot have that with Hifi, as we strive to ascertain the emotion from the description of the vocal and with  the SC Carbon in place in my DAC I really felt a good connection with the singer. Not to degrade my other cables at all I could say that at a staggeringly cheap cost I felt that I was retaining a palpability that I had worked so hard to achieve which cost a great deal more previously.

Leaving this cable in place and adding another to the Paul Hynes power supply which keeps my modified Mac sustained. I actually achieved what was a more fleshed out and rich top end. The combination of the two was marvellous and the previous cable in this position being an all silver design was chosen as it gave a fantastically airy feel to the upper registers that I preferred over copper variants previously. The SC Carbon did two things for me, one it gave me a denseness to the frequency extremes in the top end allowing them to become more prominent and articulate and secondly the more natural timbre suddenly exposed to me that the top end previously was in fact over airy and almost overly dispersed. When listening for acoustic air and space in live venues I felt that the sound I was hearing was definitively truer and more representative, almost as if the other silver cable was a bit artificial in its sonic approach.

Of course the next step was to combine the results with the power amplifiers and the front end. Accuracy was at the forefront of the characteristics I was now presented with, accuracy in terms of tone and timbre, with a soundstage which produced dynamic depths and stage placements that made terrific sense. I had achieved a lot of this previously by honing down the grounding and layout of the power circuit chain but this was some time before having the ability to work with several of the SC mains cables. Energy, tactile responsiveness and subtlety combined for a ponderous listen and it was a good 10 days to a week before I remembered that I had yet not installed one of Michael’s power cables in the preamp. Up until now I haven’t found any faults with what I was hearing and my listening joy had taken on a different dimension which was extremely satisfying.

Placing another Carbon cable into the preamp had similar results to adding one to the DAC initially, I felt that from the upper mids to the upper bass I had more dimensionality to the soundstage and band member placement was more sustainably accurate. Dominic popped over for a listen and immediately said that he felt that there was more presence to the overall imaging and that I had achieved a richness in tonality that only comes from good copper cabling which he felt may have always been overshadowed by the flaws of my ceramic tweeters. We swapped different power cables of his and mine in and out a few times and although pronunciations of certain frequencies were adorable with some of the other cords used we both agreed that the full internal loom of the SC power cables had an unforced and naturally energised sound that didn’t highlight anything in particular but rather lent its hand to overall frequency expression and simply great timing, which I’ll add I didn’t think could be achieved by a power cable and especially one at this price.

I contacted Mr. Whiteside again and briefly told him that I was achieving some favourable results from the power cables he had sent me, as we like to keep our reviews close to our chest until release and asked him for some additional cabling which could be hard wired from the balanced power supply to each of the mains blocks and for another from the wall to create a full loom.

On arrival of the extra cables for the full loom, I had my engineer reconfigure the balanced supply to incorporate the additional cables, one for the passive amp extension block and one for the front end filter extension. Results were very favourable indeed. I did lose a little punch in the upper bass in comparison to the previous cabling, but what I lost in punch was substituted with great extension in the bass and better spread of lower waves throughout the room. Better, well, a bit of give and take really, things were slightly different.

The entire loom made complete musical sense to me and flow and sculpture of the soundstage was fantastic, leaving nothing in the mist of background hashes, with ambient harmonics retaining great stature throughout the soundstage and micro details, maybe a little more rounded but contacting the music and the listener with full ranged articulation. I do like a bit more of a slapstick sound overall, but arguments could easily be raised for both alternatives, especially when concerning myself with the wide range of musical taste I have.

The ever crucial midrange in my system which for me needs to project vocals with absolute tonal balance and clarity, with plenty of transparency and spacial awareness took on a very slightly more natural role in the mix. The upper midrange with female vocalists was a touch calmer and the chestier deeper tones of a males vocal had more grunt and body with the very lowest of their range being slightly more tempered due to the rounder upper bass characteristic of the additional cables in this particular place in my system. 

Conclusion

An F1 car is a piece of engineering greatness ,but it’s the culmination of its smaller parts which allows the whole unit to run at its very finest and extract each little piece of performance gains from the overall package. Cabling is very much the same; a good system with poor interconnecting cables will not reveal its true performance and like the F1 car, if all the component parts are not just right, overall performance is degraded. Using the Studio Connections Carbon Screened Power Cables in my system hasn’t dramatically changed its ability but it’s made the whole package more tactile, has better handling of frequency extremes, has increased image performance extremely naturally and has defined the tonal balance of the overall music in a way that comforts me greatly.

In any high-end system all the small tweaks we make for the better usually add a little bit here and a little bit there to the overall sound and when describing these tweaks and changes it can be perceived that some may overstate the claims. We have to be realistic and understand that a review such as this needs to always be kept in context. Yes, but what is context in today’s age of high-end audio, a power cable that costs £3000 or more that adds definition, clarity and body to the sound or a cable that does nearly as well that costs £200, so you decide.

Dan Worth

SECOND REVIEWER’S VERDICT GIVEN BY DOMINIC MARSH

I was also called upon to evaluate these Studio Connections Carbon power cords for Hifi Pig and was supplied with enough cables to completely wire my system from wall socket to all IEC inlets throughout, including the input socket to my MS Audio 6 way mains distribution block.  Usually we only get submitted to us a single power cord to review, so it was both refreshing and indeed very welcome that Studio Connections made available a whole set which gave a sort of “completeness” to the review, rather than a mere snapshot in total isolation of one cable alone.

Dan hasn’t mentioned the Studio Connections power cord’s appearance so I will here.  It is a refreshing change to see a power cable’s outer coat that isn’t the ubiquitous expandable mesh sleeving, or some form of squashy rubberized jacket, instead we see what is undoubtedly designed in-house and not bought off any peg, being a smart “candy stripe twist” design in black and silver, so it is instantly recognisable as a Studio Connections product.

Sound

As Dan has already done a pretty comprehensive breakdown of the specifications and build parameters, I will take the opportunity to crack on without further ado to give you my perceptions of how these cables performed.

As with any power cord evaluation, my first task is to listen out for any boom or bass overhang that poorly specified and built power cords are prone to.  After many hours of listening with real bass heavy music selections I couldn’t detect either bass boom or overhang at all, so that tells me there is sufficient gauge of wire within the cable to meet transient current demands.  I then focus my attention on the treble regions for noise floor problems, hiss and smearing because that again is a signature trait that poor power cables demonstrate.  Treble was clean, clear and free of any congestion or smearing, in fact with these cables installed it made listing to Fink’s “Wheels Beneath My Feet” live album a real pleasure because the venue ambiences distinct within each track that was recorded in different venues during one of Fink’s many European tours and there was no ambiguity at all that was embedded into the recording of this album and delivered with sweet airy crispness.  I listen very carefully to the drummer’s rim shots on the snare drum and in addition to the sound of wooden drumstick to the ‘skin’ of the drum, the body or shell should also be heard in true fidelity – it MUST sound dynamic and taut with natural reverberation decay, which is very hard for a system to be faithful to.  With these cables I found Fink’s enunciation a good deal more lifelike, with a distinct gruffness to his voice.

Any level of noise floor to me trashes any musical nuances to a large degree and also clouds up the imaging, taking away width, depth and spacial placement qualities of artists and instruments within the sound stage.  I am pleased to inform you that I found a very low noise floor which didn’t intrude into the musical performance, the width, depth and placement rendered accurately and silently.

Of course, just like Dan I too have a boxful of other assorted power cords to compare with and that gives me an idea where in the great scheme of all things power cord they fit into the marketplace and what competitors if any are there to rival it, so I can form an idea on whether or not they offer good value.  At circa £190.00 for a standard 1 metre cable I couldn’t find any cable that could directly compare with the Studio Connections Carbon power cord, in fact I was looking at close to four figure priced products that even came close.

To prove that point then I took out all the Studio Connections power cords and fitted a right old mish-mash selection from the spares box, ranging from a £40 cable to a £1,500 cable and it was very obvious the ensemble I put together just didn’t have the crisp organic fluidity to the sound the Studio Connections power cords complete set had imparted.

Conclusion

The Studio Connections Carbon power cord set has acquitted itself very well, with honour too I might add. They are still to this day installed in my system and I am in no rush whatsoever to uninstall them, because for the first time in many years I have a set of power cords that I don’t feel the impetus to ask questions about and simply let them get on with the task I have set them, happy in the knowledge it would cost a lot of additional cash for any kind of tangible improvement over what these cables do, so they really are a fit and forget product so my spare cables box will have an emptying session soon.

I concur wholeheartedly with Dan that these cables offer tremendous value for money considering the returns in sound quality they provide, so I herewith add my endorsement to them.

Dominic Marsh

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality: Unmistakable external appearance, well built

Sound Quality:  You would have to spend considerably more to best them

Value For Money:  At £190.00 for a 1 metre cable it really is a no brainer purchase

Pros:

Unforced natural sound

Excellent detail retrieval

Very quiet noise floor

Very flexible and visually very appealing

Price to performance ratio is fantastic

Terrific sound quality, an exceptionally low noise floor and great with fast transients.  Great performance at sensible money(DM)

Cons:

Very difficult to fault at this price or even multiples of it

Price at time of review: £190 + £30 every additional 0.5m

I spent a very long time in thinking of an “against” argument, so let’s just say I drew a complete blank here (DM)

SPECIFICATIONS

Conductors: 1.5mm cross sectional area, 47 x 0.22 strands ultra high purity Nordic Copper.

Insulation : Brown, Blue, Green/Yellow

Insulation diameter: 3mm over dielectric

Bedding and Primary screen : 100% coverage, semi-conductor loaded

Outer Jacket: Clear PVC

Drain element: 0.46mm cross sectional area, 3 x 9 x 0.147 strands tinned copper wire

Resistance: Each core: 6.98 ohms/km

Capacitance: Core to core: 100pF/m

Inductance: Each Core: 26mH/km

Rated voltage: 500Vac

Overall diameter; 9.75mm

Tellurium Q make a wide range of speaker cables, interconnects and other audio cables at prices to suit most pockets. Here Stuart and Linette Smith take a listen to their range topping Silver Diamond speaker cables and interconnects. 

We don’t do many cable reviews here at Hifi Pig Towers because we tend to find what we like, place it in the main system and leave it there. The last such cable to find a permanent spot in our main system was the Ultra Blacks from Tellurium Q. We’ve a hundred and one different cables we could have in the system, and which we do use when we put together and review more modest systems, but time and time again we always found ourselves going back to the Ultra Blacks in our reference system…until recently.
I say recently, but truth be known we had the Silver Diamond cables probably before anyone else, but I like to get a proper feel for a product before spouting lyrically, or otherwise, about it and so these cables have sat in the main system for months and months and I’ve no desire to take them out and substitute them for anything else. I’m going to speak about the cables as a whole; that is speaker cables and interconnects as a loom, simply because that is how I’ve used them.

Construction

The interconnects are pretty straight forward affairs with a relatively modest thickness cable in black sheathing connected to very nice quality XLRs. There’s little to say other than that; they look straight forward and nothing particularly flash. If you are one of those people who are looking for glitz and glam over what comes out the speakers then move along, there’s nothing to see here. That said, the presentation box the interconnects arrive in is rather nice in a “ I’ve clearly bought something that’s quite lovely” kind of way, but again it’s nothing overly flash or “look at me”.

Likewise the speaker cables. They’re a similar construction to the Ultra Blacks in that there are two, it has to be said pretty thick cables (much thicker than the Ultra Blacks), separated from each other by about an inch or so and then hidden in a black braid. Tellurium Q have added a metal block where the sheath ends which adds to the overall quality feel of these cables and they are terminated with good quality spades with what looks to be a silver coating. The speaker cables are pretty heavy beasts but once locked in place they don’t go anywhere.

That’s about all I can tell you about what goes into making up these cables as, as with all their cables, Tellurium Q aren’t particularly forthcoming with specifics…understandable given the number of copy cats out there ready to pounce and make a fast buck on the work of others.

Sound 

There’s always that moment of anticlimax with cables in my experience. Truth is cables don’t really excite me in the same way that a new preamplifier or pair of speakers do. What I’m trying to get across is that my expectation is that cables are much of a muchness…or this was my thinking up until a few years ago when I actually bothered to experiment and listen closely to the differences cables could have on a system….though they still don’t enthuse me overly. I’m still very wary however, and treat much of what is said about the magic properties of some cables with a rather large pinch of salt and I’m well aware that when a cable rep’ starts talking about their cables that I’m being sold to. Geoff Merrigan arrived chez nous with no such bluster and little more than a “plug them in and tell me what you think in a few weeks” attitude. I’ve read the Tellurium Q website and all their chatter about phase distortion and what not and to be honest that all goes over my head; it doesn’t interest me, something either does its job or it doesn’t…end of story!

I’ve had conversations with Mr Merrigan over the last few years and he has a theory that all cables act as some kind of filter and the job of the cable manufacturer is to make that filtering as unobtrusive/negligible as possible. I have issues with the whole filtering concept but that’s a different story and for another time.

Our system has been put together very carefully over the years and it is there to do two things: First of all it has to play music in a way that we enjoy and secondly it has to be resolving enough to be used as a review tool. Nothing gets in the system if it doesn’t meet these two criteria.

Plugging the Silver Diamond loom into the system was greeted with an immediate, and somewhat surprising “Oh, this is actually better in many ways”. Actually it was more of a “F%3k, where did that come from?”  

There’s a feeling of more of everything. More involvement, more toe tapping…more musical enjoyment. OK, let’s back off for a while and just leave the system to play for a bit without listening too much as I don’t want to get into that whole “ well it’s certainly different, but is it better” situation…but it is better and there is no doubt about it! There’s better separation of instruments, better and bigger soundstage, more fine detail in the mix and just an overall picture that you are getting closer to the music in a very real sense. This is not subtle either! There’s speed, slam and everything that makes music exciting in spades and it’s quite something. Daft Punk sum this cable loom up pretty much spot on in their tune ”Faster, Better, Stronger”. Veils lifted, inky black backgrounds…insert audiophile reviewer babble of choice! They really are that good in this system!

OK, perhaps it’s a synergy thing and so a more modest system was thrown together…and you know what, you get the same effect; more of everything. Fine detail is the thing that really comes to the fore; little clues in the mix that you knew were there but took little notice of suddenly become more apparent. Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird is a case in point; there’s a real palpable feeling that you are sat about ten rows back in an empty concert hall with all the atmospherics that that conjures…the same track on the main system is a real close your eyes and you’re there moment.

OK, popping the Silver Diamonds into a crap system isn’t going to elevate it to the level of the upper echelons of audio nirvana, but it is like you’re playing with much better kit throughout.

Conclusion 

These are the best cables I have used in my system… period… and I do not say that lightly! They have been in and out and compared with other cables we have to hand and every time they are taken out there’s an immediate “nope, get them back in” comment from Linette or myself.  What they do is difficult to put your finger on exactly; there’s a feeling of rightness and a sense that you are getting closer to the feeling of the music in an emotional sense. There’s more detail, more space…and they just sound right.

There’s an elephant in the room that I’ve not mentioned as yet. Yep, these cables cost as much and for some more than a serious electronics upgrade. The speaker cables are £895.80 a metre and the interconnects are £2292 for a 1 metre pair (XLR). That’s serious money of course and I’m not going to make light of the fact that this review is going to upset a lot of people who will moan about the price of a bit of wire.

I also won’t make light of the fact that these cables are a game changer in terms of what they allow our system to achieve. Yes, they are relatively expensive… there are MUCH more expensive cables out there should you care to look… but they do offer a considerable and tangible upgrade and as such could be seen as being good value for money in the context of a high-end system. In a less high-end system then you would need to be the judge, but do not dismiss these cables as being out of your league before hearing them in your own system. Mine are going nowhere and I have no hesitation in giving these cables an outstanding product award of which we have only awarded six in the last year!

AT A GLANCE 

Build Quality: Nicely put together cables but they’re not going to impress those looking for glitz and glamour

Sound Quality: These cables bring you a sense of reality and excitement I’ve previously not experienced in our already fantastic system

Value For Money: In the context of a high-end system these cables offer very good value for money. 

Pros:

More of everything in the mix, particularly fine detail. What these cables do is difficult to put your finger on but you will know it when you hear it

Cons:

I’m genuinely struggling here but they are quite pricey when looked at out of context

Price:

Speaker cables: £895.80/metre

Interconnects: £2292 

Stuart Smith 

It was Tellurium Q that first really opened my eye’s to the fact that cables could make a difference to the sound of a system, with their Ultra Black speaker cable which we have had in the our hifi since we tried it back in 2013. Since then I’ve definitely become a ‘cable believer’ (I know, in some folks eyes it’s like being in a loony religious cult) and I can hear differences, not just with speaker cable but with interconnects and other cables (I’m going to stick with speaker cables and interconnects for now rather than get into a USB-cable-based-brawl with someone). I’ve discovered that ‘different’ is not always better. Some cables go into the system and then out again because I don’t like the sound. I’ve also discovered that the cables that I like best seem to strip back rather than add anything to the sound, if that makes sense.

As I said, we have been ‘Ultra Black’ in the speaker cable and interconnect department for some time, they have seen off many contenders, but since then Tellurium Q have developed their cables further and their ‘Top of the Pops’ speaker cable is now the Silver Diamond. At just under £900 a metre it isn’t cheap, but in a high end system, where thousands have been spent on the electronics and loudspeakers, it certainly isn’t out of place…in fact, compared to some brands, it is quite modestly priced. The cable looks the business, not some over stuffed python of a cable (yes, we’ve all seen ‘those’ kind of cables at shows, lurking behind the gear like they swallowed a baby goat) it’s very nicely finished, purposeful looking and very well made.

So, to the sound.  Is there a noticeable difference? Very much so. Sometimes it is very difficult to put your finger on just what it is about what a new system component or cable does to the music.  It’s like a name on the tip of your tongue that evades your brain the more you try to remember it. I could get into ‘veil-lifting’ type Hifi Reviewer clichés here but there really is no need.  What the Silver Diamonds do is strip everything right back to the music. They don’t add anything, they just seem to focus the sound so that what you hear is clarity.  I’m not suggesting for one moment that you should go out and get some of these for a low or mid end system and expect angels to start singing to you, these are cables, not magic beans! (To be fair if you are in the market for something more affordable you should try out some of the TQ ranges priced below the Silver Diamond). They work their magic when you put them where they should be, with quality electronics into a quality pair of loudspeakers.

If a stealth-crew of Hifi Ninjas came and put the Silver Diamonds into your system while you were out, you would come back and listen to music and try for ages to put your finger on just what exactly had made things improve. In my mind, that’s an outstanding cable.

Linette Smith

Erzetich make a habit of telling you their products are evil animals, and that they need to be tamed after the company cage them in the cardboard boxes ready for their new home. Even the company logo looks like a bull ready to charge at you, being a circle with two horns. Janine Elliot runs with the bulls with the Perfidus Class A headphone amp costing £999. 

The Perfidus  has the words “class-a evil headphone amplifier” on the front panel, and actually arrived quite tame, though I needed to keep it busy house-training it for a few hundred hours until it started to behave at its very best.

This relatively new Slovenian company are proud to just stick with just designing headphone amplifiers and a cute headphone stand, and designer Blaž Erzetič has four models in the range headed by the Deimos, his latest incarnation, for serious audiophiles who can afford the €4000 price tag. The Perfidus is the second from the top, at £999, which was more in line with most of my own headphone amps and those I have reviewed over the last few years.

Blaž Erzetič has been playing with electronics since his teens; going on to study electronics and being involved in sound for almost 25 years, though actually having spent most of his professional career working in graphics as a designer, illustrator and photographer, and teaching at two Slovene universities. Like many audio manufacturers, he is also a musician having released 4 albums. Much of the monitoring in studios is done on headphones, and Blaž being unsatisfied with what was available, has been spending his time since 2012 improving personal monitoring; setting up Erzetich, a company producing headphone amplifiers which are effectively small power amplifiers.

In an age of headphones costing prices unimaginable just 10 years ago, he believes they should be fed with amplifiers that can give them due justice. As a music professional himself he has designed a headphone amp range for “music lovers, sound studio engineers, on-stage sound engineers, musicians, DJ’s and other sound professionals”. Great credentials then for everyone who wants to listen to music, and by an artist who claims that “When I design a headphone amplifier, I intend to create a work of art”.

The Perfidus is basically a class-A amplifier, but one that is much different to how I expected it to be; the amplification is in the first stage using the OPA627 op-amp with the Class-A part as the next stage using STMicroelectronics BD139 (NPN) and BD140 (PNP) bipolar transistors. This end stage, along with four other transistors is mostly just a current buffer, acting in push-pull with gain just a bit higher than 1. As Blaž informed me, it also has another op-amp “which is a fine tuning for DC component in the output (it pushes DC towards zero)”. What it does is detect DC offset voltage and corrects it. According to him, Class-A headphone amps can have a tendency to increase DC offset drift which he suggests might be dangerous for the headphones. The main four transistors (BD139/140) are conveniently bolted to the side unit (the bolts show – on the side of the unit) acting as the heatsink, and the unit also features an Alps Blue Velvet volume potentiometer and WIMA high quality pulse input capacitors. Power is provided by a small toroidal and 4 Rubycon power stabilization capacitors totalling 40,000 uF at the rear of the shoe-box shaped unit. The box itself is of good design in grey matt finish, and sporting a 7mm aluminium front panel which has the aluminium volume knob, headphone jack and an LED light. The rear of the unit has the RCA input sockets and IEC plug plus on-off toggle switch. The first version of this headphone amplifier had a non-detachable power cord, so I am glad that this has been amended, though I needed to ensure the IEC lead was inserted fully or it would cut out; the socket being slightly loose.

Running flat from 4Hz-40kHz this amplifier gave me a lot to think about. Where many headphones work OK with whichever cans you plug in, some, like the Perfidus, work great with certain headphones and not so good with others. Plugging in my usual Audio Technica ATH-W1000 headphones gave for an incredible top end detail and lively portrayal of the music, but the bass end was just not there enough for me to be satisfied. These headphones are not known for their bass end but having an excellent mid and treble detail and angled drivers giving a good natural soundstage, as well as their incredible comfort over long listening sessions, make them my usual first choice.  They just don’t work on the Perfidus. Playing Patricia Barber Café Blue gave a pin-sharp performance that was highly addictive, especially the gentle ride-cymbals, but her voice was just too clear and sounding a touch sibilant on the top end.

However, plugging in the Sennheiser HD650 gave for a powerfully involving sound covering all frequencies with superb headroom, sounding quite better than I imagined these headphones could ever sound. These might well not be the best in today’s hype over planar designs, but for professional sound engineers they, and the HD800, are a reliable source of sound reproduction.  The lower impedance Audio Technica’s didn’t work so well, but the load wasn’t the de Facto, as when trying a friend’s 45Ω Hifiman HE560 they gave a very good all-round performance. These planar’s are known for their lack of distortion and high speed but low output, and the Perfidus could show off these cans working well at both low and high frequencies, turning Patricia’s voice into a human again, with enough gain to run these low sensitivity planars well.

I guess what I am saying is that if you intend to purchase the Perfidus you should try it with your choice headphones.

I also plugged in the lower-end but highly satisfying 32Ω Meze 99’s which again showed how versatile the amplifier is with both cheaper and more expensive headphones, as well as a variety of other headphone designs. ELO’s In the Hall of the Mountain King (based on Grieg, from the album ‘On the Third Day’) has so many different elements of music from close mic’d cellos and loud drums and out of tune piano, the Peridus was able to untangle the different elements into their separate niche’s and make listening both intuitive and enjoyable.

Perfidus means ‘faithless’ or ‘treacherous’, and whilst I had full faith in this machine, it really did want to argue and take risks with the music; this wasn’t just going to sit down and be sweet, it wanted to show the music for what it was; identifying every nook and cranny in the music.

And I loved it.

Stravinsky’s Symphony in C (Charles Dutoit, L’Orchestre de las Suisse Romande) is full of off-beat accentuated quaver bows in the string section and brass bursts and kettle-drum rolls and then silences. This work is hard to relax to at the best of times but great to perform, and this headphone amplifier gave a very credible performance, keeping my attention from the first beats to the distant fading into silence at the end. Turning to Dave Brubeck Blue Rondo, the clarity from all musicians including space between the instruments shows a really good link between sound engineering and electrical engineering. The Meze was more laid back in the high end than is the Audio Technica, with the Sennheiser the better in terms of detail and full frequency reproduction.

Being a woman of sound waves rather than those on the sea I thought it appropriate to play Michael Franks ‘Women in the Waves’, a well recorded song covering tight percussive rhythms and smooth vocals, and I wasn’t left drowning in confusion, rather given a performance of excellent power reserve and authority showing the Perfidus is meaty with all frequencies and sounding like I expect a fully-fledged Class A power amplifier should. Prokofiev Piano Concerto No3 (Mstislav Rostropovich and Russian National Orchestra) was forceful but precise, giving excellent depth of sound and ‘bite’ that this Russian work commands. My only complaints was what i assume to be a slight earthing problem when touching the volume knob which gave buzzing sound whether or not a source was attached to the back RCA sockets. I tried this through my mains conditioners and found a similar result. Connecting mains powered sources reduced this, though not completely. I can only assume this was just an issue with the review sample. 

Conclusion

I really enjoyed playing music through this headphone amplifier. Blaž Erzetič truly understands the importance of providing enough power and a design philosophy to give a well immersed and professional listening experience. This amplifier worked well with whatever music I provided, and surprising me at just how good the now aged Sennheiser HD650 could be. The Perfidus is a responsive and dynamic performer with a clear and detailed sound.

There are so many headphone amps coming into the market-place these days, and particularly from the lesser known and Eastern countries, that it is vital you take a good listen before you buy. With the Perfidus you won’t be disappointed!

AT A GLANCE

BUILD QUALITY:  solid construction with good electrical design that is only let down by the mains socket 

SOUND QUALITY:  Bright and quick, and with a classy bass end making listening on headphones very pleasurable

VALUE FOR MONEY:  At a pound short of £1000 this is competing with a lot of other headphone amps. For a Class A poweramp in miniature this is money well spent.

Pros:

Devilish Class-A warmth and power
Excellent bass and clean treble
Bright and quick sound

Cons:

Can be choosy as to which headphones work best
Price: £999