In case you are not familiar with the name Unison Research, it is an Italian company in business for some 20 years or so at Treviso, a municipality just to the north of Venice, with a well earned reputation for producing some excellent hifi components. Dominic Marsh has a play with their Triode 25 valve amplifier.

“At first glance this amplifier looks positively handsome.  The sample supplied for review sported a real Cherry wood fascia which I found rather attractive and a welcome change from the ubiquitous black or silver finish.  The remainder of the chassis is painted black however and as a foil to that the valve bases are inset into two polished alloy heat shields which extend from the front panel in a sweeping arc upwards, meeting the top plates of the transformer covers.   A rather substantially built chrome plated valve cover cage is supplied, removed by slackening off four Allen bolts and sliding the cover along keyhole slots in the cover’s base plates to quickly release the cage…”

Read the full review here

Danish manufacturers Densen have launched their brand-new Cast Amp Streamer, the first in their brand-new Dino range of products.

The Cast Amp is the first product from Densen to allow streaming. By using Google Cast Audio technology, users will be able to stream music directly from services such as TIDAL. The component can also be used with Google Home to implement multiroom listening. A specially shaped, pure aluminium cabinet encases the external Wi-Fi Source along with a high-end DAC.

The most interesting and unique feature of the Cast Amp is the internal Power Amplifier. This is a scaled down version of the upcoming B-390 Power Amplifier (set to be released in late 2017) that has been 15 years in the making. The delivery of the Cast Amp is 2 x 60 W in 8 ohm and 2 x 120W in 4 ohm. As such, the component can also be used as a standalone power amp with a 5V trigger. Densen’s Cast Amp uses already pre-established streaming software to ensure that no issues are created between Densen created software and Google Cast. The non-magnetic casing adds to the Cast Amp’s benefits and decreases magnetic distortion. The aluminium casing also creates a heatsink, ensuring that it does not overheat.

Retail Price £2,895.

Technical features:

·         Output power: 2 x 60 W 8 Ω / 2 x 120 W 4 Ω

·         Power supply: 400 VA and 20.000 uF

·         9 individual powersupplies

·         5 volt trigger for remote control, when used as pure poweramp

·         Upgradeable DAC

·         Controllable via GOOGLE CAST AUDIO

·         Size: Height: 64mm (72mm with feet). Width: 220mm. Depth:310mm (+cable connectors)

·         Available in both Albino silver and black

·         Manufactured in Denmark

Rupert Neve is a name that will trip of the tongue of anyone who has been interested in or worked in recording studios; put simply he is a giant/demi-god in the industry. Neve has now put his name to a £469 headphone amplifier and who better to put it through its paces than Janine Elliot. Having spent a quarter of a century listening to various form of Neve mixing desks at the BBC, whether the GP desk produced under licence by them and two other companies (Calrec and Audix), or my favourite the Neve 66, I have got accustomed to the sound produced by this great man. Air Studios in London have three specially made Neve consoles. Legendary Beatles producer and founder of Air Studios, George Martin (1926-2016) was heavily involved with Rupert Neve in the design process of what was a radical new desk at the time. With toroidal wound transformers it was clear that sound quality was the key aim here, as it always should be. As a new BBC sound engineer in the 1980’s aiming for the best in sound quality, with Neve desk plus Quad 405 bi-amped into LS5/8 speakers I was near to heaven. Those GP desks, first thought of in 1975, were so well made they lasted well into the 21st Century, maintained and loved by sound and electrical engineers alike. Some parts were taken out and adapted in standalone boxes well after the GP desk saw its (other) celestial maker in the skies; the compressors, limiters, and EQ were just what was needed. Then when Rupert’s new Neve 66 desk arrived I was even closer in heaven; an analogue desk with digital routing of channels that had clout and passion and that worked so well and was so easy to use.

To see a Rupert Neve headphone amp at Whittlebury in 2016 for £469 pricked my ears into wanting to relive all that I had wanted to be involved in since my teens; broadcasting, mixing, performing and working with legends. Rupert Neve is a legend, and this modest looking, professional headphone amp was something I just had to listen to.  Rupert was born 31 July 1926 in Newton Abbot, England. Growing up mostly in Argentina before WWII, his experience with broadcast equipment design spans almost 80 years.  Starting it all from his home and then moving to a purpose built factory near Cambridge, Neve Electronics created professional audio consoles and systems with class-A designs and using high quality components. The Neve history is complex. Setting up the company in 1961 and then leaving it in the 70’s Neve was sold to German company Siemens in 1985 and then linked with AMS (Advanced Music Systems) becoming AMS Neve. Siemens moved the Neve factory to the AMS Burnley site. Setting up ARN Consultants, Rupert’s links to Focusrite, Amek, sE Electronics and others show his interest in getting involved in all areas of analogue broadcasting consoles and ancillary equipment. The massive Amek 9098 was probably his best work to my mind. sE Electronics is a recent venture helping designing microphones for the Shanghai company. More importantly for this review, Rupert Neve Designs was set up in United States, where he has resided since he and his wife became U.S. citizens in 2002. This great British master craftsman now has his masterpieces designed in Wimberley, Texas, not Wembley, London. This company continues the work of one of the most  respected names in the business, with many famous musicians and broadcasters having their utterances played about through his creations.

My favourite mixing desks were analogue, and Neve continues to produce analogue products. Their 5088 console combines the best of analogue including audio transformers on every single input and output with a true floating ground and high quality capacitors and inductors. His present portfolio goes back to the days of modular design; the days when you could get your fingers to any controls on the desk without needing to press a touch screen with drop-down menu. By which time it is too late. Even synthesisers are now going back to buttons and knobs. The new 24V 6W RNHP headphone amp is based on the headphone output circuit in the 5060 ‘Centerpiece Desktop Mixer’. Headphone monitoring in the studio is sometimes a necessity and Rupert Neve can see the importance of a reliable and accurate monitoring source. Originally designed for studio use this little beauty is now available for anyone to enjoy.

The RNHP

The surprisingly small unit (just 165 x 117 x 48mm) is machined from solid-steel to reduce RFI, a clam-shell construction, and built to a high standard with an overhang to protect the connectors at the back and main level control at the front from glancing blows, as well as having shock-absorbing rubberized feet. This is a very robust and industrial looking machine which can also be VESA-mountable. Indeed, the name ‘RNHP’ is equally industrial, reminding me of the days of BBC equipment codes such as DK4/19, DK4/26 (original GP desk working name), AM8/12 (power amps for use with BBC speakers), oh and of course names like LS3/5, LS5/8 etc.  “DK” was the short cut for “DesK” and “AM” for AMplifier, “LS” was short for, well, you know that one.

The new Neve headphone amp has three inputs, selected by three green illuminating buttons on the front, and allows stereo RCA phono sockets, stereo 3.5mm input (calibrated to work with mobile devices such as phones, tablets and laptops). Thirdly is a calibrated +4dBu line input with two combo jack accepting either XLR or TRS inputs for balanced professional devices. Both impedance and gain have therefore been carefully optimised to best suit whatever source is to be used. The RNHP allows high-impedance up to 600Ω headphones. Importantly the RNHP has been designed with a near zero Ohm output impedance (.01Ω at 1kHz) to minimize changes in the sound due to reactive load impedance; something which is noticeably greater on headphones than loudspeakers.  Indeed, headphones can sound so different on different amplifiers and at different levels that I often have to touch base with original sources I know well. It was good to be able to use any headphone and know that I was getting an honest account of the music with only the headphone driver and design being the limiting factor.

For the review I used the Fiio X5 DAP analogue line output into the RCA inputs, .wav files from an iPod, and XLR line output from my Revox 15ips PR99 reel to reel.  There is a single highly damped dark red aluminium potentiometer on the front and a cute looking small rocker on/off switch on the rear. Power supply is, surprisingly, from an external wallwart switch-mode power supply, this from a man famed for class-A designs and toroidal power supplies. But, switch mode supplies can be very efficient and quiet and he intentionally chose them for this design, which is no doubt also reflected in the extremely good price point. They also operate with whatever input voltage and frequency you have in your country meaning that one unit fits all. It would be nice to see a toroidal option to quell my inquisitive quandary, though the supplied unit is selected for best output power and noise performance. My only criticism is when affixing the UK’s 3-pin 13A plug (or indeed any of the others) the rectangle unit fits sideways meaning you cannot connect it on a multiway mains adaptor without hiding other sockets. However, that is my only criticism of a product designed for the professional and audiophile alike, and at a price that is hard to believe. No clever spin, frills or selling hype. Just pure, honest audio in a design you can feel secure is going to give you sound satisfaction.

Whilst normal headphones can be used, balanced cannot. That didn’t give me any problems as I used my broadcast Sennheiser HD650 and latest generation Audio Technica W1000X, two entirely different sounding headphones and different impedance matching.  The former is still widely used in recording studios and the latter offering an exceptional 3D sound with a spacious and clear presentation giving me a chance to explore these headphones accurately.

The Listening Tests

“One More Time” (Ray Davies ‘Working Men’s Club’) offered a smooth and lifelike presentation of Ray’s distinctive voice on the 300 Ω HD650’s, showing how musical and well-designed these aged cans now are. It was only after putting on the much more comfortable 43Ω AT’s that the soundstage totally opened up and the individual elements of the music excelled, and the love affair with the RNHP began. We might all be having relationships with Planar based headphones these days, but AT headphones are very capable and underestimated, like their cartridges. The openness from the AT’s and the clarity and depth from the RNHP gave a fullness of sound in Ray La Montagne’s “Till Son Turns Black” that I hadn’t heard so well on a headphone amplifier anywhere near this price. The atmospheric reverb and the genteel piano and strings, plus pin-sharp acoustic guitar on the right ear were individual pieces of a jigsaw pieced together to form a well-framed painting of beauty. The bass tom rumble at the start of “Empty” was clear and very precise, just as the recording engineer would have heard it. This headphone amplifier was not wanting, coping precisely with any extremes I threw at it. The Sennheiser HD650 just wasn’t so good at the tops and with such speed, however it was able to present the violin long notes that anchored me back to my days at the BBC mixing violins on a Neve 66 through LS5/8s. Turning appropriately to the strong string entrance on Sibelius Pelleas et Mielisande “At the Castle Gate” (Linn Records 24/192, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Joseph Swensen) the AT W1000X opened up the sound with a clarity and musicality that only someone with the studio experience of Rupert Neve could have produced.

Johannes Fischer’s percussion album “Gravity” is an exceptionally well recorded compilation to indicate initial transients and decays of percussion sounds. This is particularly shown by the non-pitched hand drums in Xenakis’s ‘Rebonds A’ and ‘Rebonds B’ that open and close the album respectively. ‘Calculo secreto’ by José Manuel López López shows immense detail and encapsulation of the transients and harmonics of the vibraphone. This was getting addictive, and the more I wanted to unplug and get on with other house work, the less I could.

Turning to the ‘Jazz Masters Vol. 1’, a ½ track 15ips recording courtesy of STS recordings, the extent of the musicality from this pint-size unit came into its own. This excellent album includes Buddy Tate on tenor sax, Milt Buckner on electric organ and Wallace Bishop on drums; all effortlessly performing with a tight close mic’d saxophone and live organ sound (complete with noises from Milt), plus a carefully performed drum kit. Sometimes simplicity is best and this pairing excelled with ease and space. Being accurate didn’t make this RNHP boring. Quite the opposite. It was lifelike, and that was far more important, getting me very close to the musicians; more so than most headphone amps I have tried. A sound engineers dream.

Listening To Britten’s “Dawn” from Peter Grimes (Michael Stern, Kansas City Symphony Orchestra) gave further evidence of the speed and clarity of sound that make this a truly professional sounding purveyor of honest music. The detail in strings in the third movement between the viola and cello, with wind rustling noises from violins and birds flying about from the flutes with patterns of rain and thunder splattered about the landscape, capture an almost pictorial image of nature.

Pink Floyd’s “Cluster One” from ‘The Division Bell’ gave tight ride cymbal minim beats effortlessly floating high above the long chords and guitar lines, in a way I could impelled to listen on and on. Everything was honest and sincere. The top wasn’t sacrificed for the bottom or vice versa. Swapping the unit with other headphone amplifiers at this price point I could see just why this one was so special. A secure and detailed bass, extension in the highs and low noise made this a very enjoyable listen. I guess my background with mixing desks for some 40 years and recording speech and music made me realise that sometimes simplicity and good old fashioned ideas are the best. This might be a 21^st Century product but it has a lifetime of sound soul searching.

Conclusion

For around £469 the RNHP was far more than just the headphone stage of a mixing desk. This was a far more musical and authentic product than its price point might suggest. With sockets for all your likely analogue line sources, plus honest performance and excellent headroom this is a little belter well worth considering, if you are happy with the rather industrial looks.

Another Neve work of art.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  Solid construction with good electrical design, though might look too industrial for some.

Sound Quality:  Detailed, quick, and very good headroom, with a classy bass end and treble finesse. A totally neutral performance with nothing added or taken away.

Value For Money:  One of the best headphone amps I have heard, whatever the price. Worth a listen to and if bought from Russ Andrews you get a 14 Day ‘Home Equipment Trial’ just to be sure. 

Pros:

Excellent audio quality for £469
Transparency of sound; nothing added or taken away
Analogue musicality that you just won’t want to switch off

Cons:

That power supply hides other sockets.

Price: £469

Janine Elliot

Technical

Maximum Input Levels
“A” XLR I/P: +22.8 dBu @1kHz “B” RCA I/P: +14.7dBu @1kHz, “C” 3.5mm I/P: +3.3dBu @1kHz

Output Power: 
As measured with typical headphones, Z=44 Ω: 3.617 VAC RMS @1kHz = 300mW RMS 16 Ω typical Load: 1.933 VAC RMS @1kHz = 230mW RMS 150 Ω typical Load: 5.108 VAC RMS @1kHz = 175mW RMS

Output Impedance
.08 Ω @ 1KHz, 16-150 Ω load, 0dBu input

Frequency Response
+/- .2dB from 10Hz to 120KHz

Noise
Measured with typical headphones, Z=44 Ω, BW 22Hz – 22kHz “A” XLR Input: -101.9dBV, “B” RCA Input: -100.9dBV “C” 3.5mm Input: -88.8dBV

Dimensions
6.5” wide x 4.6” deep and 1.9” tall

The Fiio X1ii is a personal music player that costs just £99 but has great specs. Janine Elliot has a play.

I love reviewing personal stereo, and it shows how times have changed in the last 30 years. As someone working their way into the older generation I can see we have become more insular, as the days of sharing our music and talking face to face seems to disappear seamlessly into a world of private listening, private viewing, and ‘talking’ to others via texts or Facebook. Even the latest fad of 3D VR boxes can only be used by one person at a time. Sad days. Or is it? Whilst I loved my Sony and Akai cassette Walkmans, they still had that limited frequency response, hiss, and wow and flutter. It did, however, mean that playing unsociably loud music became more limited to car stereos.  Whilst personal stereo took a step back with MP3, the rise of higher definition uncompressed digital files is beginning to mean we can start to have higher expectations of audio, as we retrain our ears into accepting better sound quality. With increasing competition of FLAC and DSD audio DAPs, and most importantly prices beginning to come down at the same time as growing performance and bigger storage capacity, high end personal audio is becoming even more popular. One name that has been foremost in making it all accessible to the general public is Chinese company Fiio.  I regularly use my X5, and now their original and popular range of X1, X3 and X5 have been improved into easier to use and better looking second generations, plus they now have a top-end X7 and at the other end of the market a very cheap M3 capable of 96/24 FLACs.

The original X1, almost 3 years ago brought cheap hi-def audio to the masses, and this new X1ii is equally important at £99, having a similar front layout to the original model, but being smaller and much better looking and almost Apple Nano’esque with its curved sides and flat top and bottom. At under £100 the original X1 was extremely good value at a time of very little competition anywhere near the price. So to do a similarly priced and improved unit now it needs to be that much better and with more facilities, which I am glad to say it certainly does on both accounts.  Of course you still have to pay for the microSD cards to assemble your music but as prices of storage is reducing each year that outlay is getting less. The original 106 gram 96.6 x 57 x 14mm X1 used the PCM5142 DAC from Texas Instruments. This new aluminium alloy shell model has the excellent TI PCM5242 which achieves a higher S/N ratio (the X1ii can achieve around 115dB SN and 107dB dynamic range) and supports full differential line output to achieve balanced line output function, and is in a slightly thinner and 4 gram lighter box at 97 x 55.5 x 12mm, available in black, rose gold or black. Whilst much of the architecture has changed, the Intersil ISL28291 buffer chip and an OPA2322 op-amp remains the same. It is fully featured, too, with iPod-esque touch wheel, and four buttons one at each corner, two-way Wireless Bluetooth 4.0 allowing you to receive Bluetooth signal at the same time as sending, so it can be used in your car or with wireless IEMs. It even turns on or off when you start or stop your car engine, if it is equipped with Bluetooth. The unit has a good support for lossless audio including up to 192kHz/32bit WAV and 192kHz/24bit FLAC, though not DSD. The previous first generation model only did 24/192 for both WAV and FLAC). The single microSD socket now allows a 256Gb card (the X1 was 128Gb) and has a switchable headphone/line output socket. It allows in-line remotes on IEMs as well, though not allowing volume control support of Apple earPods, nor my Flare R2s. The 1800mAH 3.7v battery gives a further hours’ use at more than 12 hours, and with a fast charging time of around 3 hours. Not only this but the deep-sleep standby mode means it can give you up to 15 days of ‘instant’ wakeup, a feature also introduced in the second generation X3 and X5.

Accessories are vast in this package. Not only can you purchase one in a selection of three colours but then you can “dress” the X1ii with a choice of two bodywork carbon-fibre stickers in black and white if you are still not satisfied; I kept mine nude in black for this review. The unit also comes with a plastic almost-transparent clear cover to protect the back and sides from scratches and bad treatment in your pocket (it also has a standard clear plastic protector already over the screen, and with a spare should you need it). Whilst the cover was a great idea for the back it did mean that you had no protection on the important front panel except for that 320×240 screen, or if you used the carbon-fibre stickers. Of course inline remotes on the IEMs give you some of the controls you need, but I still prefer the rubber cover of the X5 which allows access to the wheel and with full safety around them, though does increase the size of the unit, which might concern some. Also supplied is a USB-to-micro USB cord.

For this review I mostly used the Flare Audio R2Pro IEMs, an excellent quality product which would show up exactly the audio quality without adding any of its own personality. Consequently it gave me a chance to give a general judgement that detail was fast and with an excellent top end, though sounding more clinical and less musical than some DAP Walkmans I have played with over the last year, though they are considerably more expensive. For the price, though, this was a surprisingly good player, if a bit low output at around 100mW at 16Ω. Dadawa’s “Home without Shadow” (‘Sister drum’ album) is well known for the bass extremes and excessive dynamic range. Where the top-end on the recording is excellent, indeed better than the original X1, the bass end just isn’t there as much as would like. Playing most Planar and Dynamic headphones would be limiting in sound level; where my X5 at 150mW has slightly more dB, the new X5ii has 250mW! Having the facility for Bluetooth connection to wireless IEMs, now the ‘in-thing’ following the news of the iPhone7 having no headphone sockets, allowed me to connect up the Optoma BE6i wireless IEM, though the absence of aptX meant the quality was not quite so good as it could have been, especially in terms of dynamic range.

The 320×240 screen is better than the original model, which seemed a bit anaemic in detail and colour, and it shows track details including file details at all times the screen is lit if you haven’t downloaded the cover photo. I really like to see this detail at all time, but few have sufficient screen size to permit full details and an unspoilt front cover picture simultaneously. The unit does, however, allow full screen and normal screen selection, so you can choose what you see. It even can display supporting lyrics if you like singing along to the music.

Where the mechanical wheel on the X5 was rather over-sensitive and fidgety, the X1ii is a very precise and virtual touch wheel as in the iPods, so is much easier to use, though not quite as good as the Apple. Also, as in the new X5ii, there are no covers for the microSD socket, something I liked in the X5. Whilst this shouldn’t be a problem it does mean that dust might get trapped inside. Another shortcut in the design is that there is only one 3.5mm jack that serves headphone or line output which needs to be selected in the setup, and both headphone socket and microSD card slot are now at the bottom of the unit, rather than on top and side, respectively. I prefer them at the top, especially if the unit is sitting in a top pocket.

Initial updating media loading of songs onto the unit took longer than I hoped, but once all registered in the UI, allowed faultless playback of all file types, if just a little slow between track selecting, though the latest firmware FW1.4.1 did speed it up a tad. Only wish it had the facility of using as a USB DAC, but that would be too much to expect for the price.

Bach’s Goldberg Variations BWV988 Aria (24/192 FLAC), had a very precise and fast harpsichord showing me an improvement in timing and detail in the top end, though I found the sound not as musical as players costing north of the X1ii, though still acceptable.   “Music for a While” (‘Classically Minded’ David Rees-Williams Trio) gave me a chance to test space and detail from lows to highs, and the X1ii did this very acceptably, with the BE6i showing a greater warmth in the bass end, though not quite as good as some players over £100. Katie Melua’s new album ‘In Winter’ (WAV download) is beautifully recorded, though there are a number of very low frequency and low amplitude mic pops which the X1ii couldn’t show when carefully listening, suggesting a slight attenuation at lower frequencies, though when you consider this unit is priced the same as “good” cassette Walkmans back in the 80’s, which had none of the technical finesse of 21st Century DAPs, I have no complaints. Katie’s close-mic’d voice in ‘Perfect World’ (track 3) comes across with a very human quality, showing an almost perfect world. “Can’t we be Friends?” (‘Ella and Louis’, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong) might have turned everything now to mono inside my head, but the clarity in this old recording was carefully assembled in the X1ii. Finally to Ray Davies ‘No one Listen’, this grainy recording just slightly missed out in its performance, being slightly less clear in the mids than the tops, though by no means a problem, and the grainy recording slightly encouraged by the lower end DAC. If only this was an ESS Sabre DAC.

Conclusion

I actually really enjoyed using this machine, and whilst tonal quality was not as good as the more expensive X5ii, or indeed a number of much higher priced DAPs, easily took its place as the best value out there now and still highly acceptable for the price. When you look at its good looks and features you wonder how it can be so cheap.  Being so small, and allowing 250G of FLACs makes this obvious choice for the price-conscious personal audiophile. Well done Fiio!

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  Excellent aluminium shell and good looks

Sound Quality:  Very detailed and tidy sound, with improved top end compared with the original X1

Value For Money:  At £99 everyone should have one in their top pocket. Don’t forget that microSD cards and earphones are extra cost, though

Pros: 

Excellent value

Good looks and build quality

Having a non-mechanical scroll wheel

Bluetooth functionality

Cons:

Bass not quite as extended or flat

Slower user interface than some DAPs

Price: £99

Janine Elliot

Based in Serbia, Trafomatic are well known in audio circles, not least for their £100 000 Elysium amplifiers, but they also produce more moderately priced products. However, £2350 is a serious commitment for a headphone amplifier, Janine Elliot takes a listen to the Audio Head 2 and tells us if it is worth the outlay. 

Some of you will remember my glowing report on the Belus preamplifier from this relatively new Serbian company run by Saša Čokić. When looking at the company’s portfolio one product (apart from their £100,000 Elysium monoblocks) got me very excited, and that was their (almost) Ferrari-red Audio Head 2. This model is also available in white and black, and in fact can be in any colour on the extensive RAL card if you request nicely.  I had to make do with the black unit for the review, which actually looked very good against the classy silver knobs on the front. Whatever colour you choose, this model replaces their more traditionally looking Experience Head 1 which appeared when headphones were efficient little beasts; conventional driver-based cans from the likes of Sennheiser, Grado and Audio Technica. Now that today’s must-haves are inefficient planar designs from HiFiMan, Audeze, Mr Speakers and Oppo to name but a few, that 300mW powertrain was not really sufficient enough to drive them well.

Hence Audio Head 2, a curvy number with its Class-A Push Pull circuit design based around a pair of hand-picked 6N30P and ECC88 double triode tubes per channel give a whopping 2 Watts into 50 ohms, designed with 3% feedback, and of course all amplification through those valves. The Woo Audio WA5 300B can give out the same 2 Watts at 50ohms (8W at 8 ohms), this amp offering more, though that model can also suffice as a speaker amplifier. The 6N30P is a gorgeous but expensive tube very similar to the ECC99 and is very long lasting (10,000+ hours), and the ECC88 was designed as a VHF television amplifier valve, and is often used as a replacement for the 6922, and based around the famous ECC83. Saša loves these tubes;;

“The 6N30P, also called ‘super tube’, is a very, very linear tube and is very important for headphone amplifiers. Very low THD is important considering you have speakers at your ears and no air gap between as is in the case of speakers. The ECC 88 is recognized as a very musical tube and simply I love that tube”.

The culminating sound quality from this beautiful looking machine shows Saša’s love for creating the best sound as well as his great knowledge of valve design, and this model goes much further than the Experience 1. This latest model also has an input for 4-pin balanced headphones as well as traditional ¼”-jack variants (the original release of the Head 2 had a combo XLR/¼” jack). Just as the Belus I reviewed had some original architecture in its design, so does this; firstly the model features the ability to make it highly attractive to both the shy and not so shy listener alike; yes, as well as offering excellent private listening on cans, by turning the left of the two knobs fully clock-ways transforms the unit into a fully-fledged (well, single input) pre-amplifier with XLR and RCA outputs for your balanced or non-balanced power-amp. The ‘overbuilt’ power supply features a robust multi-stage high-voltage filtering, for superior low-frequency performance, and a proprietary output stage with two double C-core output transformers and Quadfilar Windings allows use of a wide range of headphone impedances stepped at 25, 50, 100, 300 and 600 ohms.

The Head 2 is very distinctive in looks; a highly lacquered curvy unit made of plywood with aluminium grille on the top to show off the horizontally positioned valves and also with air vents underneath, that combine to allow good circulation of air to allow heat to escape out the top. So many valve products just have vents at the top, which is not so effective. With on/off toggle switch carefully indented on the left side and a red indicator at 7 o’clock on the output selector knob this was visually quite a beautiful piece of audio-architecture, especially with the two large almost industrial looking knobs on the front. This plus the fact that it is available in any colour , so you can even get it to match your toaster, and that you can choose between gold or silver control knobs and feet, shows Trafomatic’s desire for absolute customer satisfaction and confirms its price point of £2350. How it sounds, though, should always be the reason for purchasing any high-end audio, and as expected I was not to be disappointed.  

Listening

As a sound engineer by trade I chose to stick to the conventional driver headphones I was used to using in most of my reviewing, namely Sennheiser HD650 and Audio Technica W1000, but also the less efficient planar Oppo PM2’s that I was able to borrow for the review and at the cheaper end the brilliant Meze 99 Classic. My first listening was actually my own new 24bit/96kHz album that I am working on; giving me a chance to compare with sounds I had been creating in the studio.

The amount of detail, speed and depth of sound was quite startling. My voice is not the best, but the Trafomatic was sensitive to my vocal limitations and the Audio Technica gave a forward sound that kept my voice clear and precise, with violins and backing vocals clearly positioned about the soundstage. One of the tracks sounded very, very slightly compressed, which surprised me, as compressors are never used in my studio work, only the occasional limiters, perhaps showing just how good the unit was at extrapolating every detail out of the music and showing me my own studio failings, though that bass end was certainly generous. Playing the very open and excellent top-frequency Oppo PM2 showed no compression, perhaps due to its slightly light bass-end. Whilst top end was excellent, especially from my glockenspiel and ride cymbals, the lower frequencies were still there and certainly not for wanting. Back to the AT’s, the extension of frequencies from bass guitar to glockenspiel was excellent, and the amount of ‘three dimensionality’ in the sound-stage was quite noticeable, with every instrument positioned exactly as I had expected, largely due to the slightly forward facing drivers, my main reason for buying these cans. This really does help with natural audio dispersion, something I first got excited about with the original Stax SR-Sigma ear speakers. Turning to another album that I was party to the recording session gave me a chance to see how that 3D soundstage excels.  Mike Valentine’s binaural recording of the latest album “A Tribute to Spain” with The National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Debbie Wiseman and featuring mezzo-soprano Rosie Middleton, was recorded at the Air Studios in London to celebrate Valentine’s Day, and featuring music all about love. Using the Neumann KU100 binaural system resembling a human head with the microphones positioned in the ears, and which was carefully placed above and slightly forward of the conductor, gave  a perfectly presented account of the positioning of the instruments. I loved dummy head stereo when it first presented itself to me in the 1970’s, and this ‘out of the head experience’ excelled through the Head 2 in a way that I found highly compulsive. This new album from Chasing the Dragon is available on direct-cut vinyl and digital DSD and FLAC versions in either the mix down from the massive 96 channel Neve 88R mixing desk or direct from the binaural microphones, including Rimsky Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol and Chabrier’s Espana, and with mezzo-soprano, Rosie Middleton singing two pieces from Bizet’s Carmen, “Habanera” and “Gypsy Song”.  The pizzicato and cello undergirding the start of Rosie’s entrance in Bizet’s ‘Habanera’ from Carmen was poignant, with the instruments at my left and right as they would be had I been standing at the rostrum. The distant percussion might be arriving at the (head) microseconds late but this just added to the reality of this recording. I was there again. The lower string pizzicatos at the start of ‘The Gypsy Song’ from Bizet’s Carmen were as clear and real as binaural can get. Rosie’s fortissimos were clear and undistorted as only the best sound engineering or real life can get. Only trying my AT W1000 at 50Ω gave a slightly edgy sound on the peaks. Chabrier’s Espana is a track that takes me back to my first recordings I did on reel to reel as a child, copied as I did from vinyl as I thought the record wouldn’t last more than a few playings. Funny that my reel-to-reels oxidised and fell apart, and the record from my youth still plays fine. This recording has a very energetic start, only slightly losing excitement midway, though the harp and brass forays in the middle section brought back some of that fun, if with a slight mistiming from a few of the musicians. This is a once-only performance – no editing as it is recorded direct to vinyl – and this makes this album so enjoyable. Turning to the open back HD650 gave a more open performance that made the binaural even more fun. Those cans might be old news, but they are still a favourite of sound engineers.  The pizzicatos from the violins at the start of Chabrier’s Espana allowed me to pinpoint nearly all the individual violins, and the energy from the kettle drum and cymbal blasts and trombone calls throughout this exciting work reached my ears as if I was standing where Debbie Wiseman was waving her baton. This was fun.

After all that excitement Sibelius’s 2^nd Symphony (Simon Rattle, Berliner Philharmoniker) was a welcome relaxation. This set of discs and 24/192 FLAC downloads of all 7 symphonies was put together to celebrate the composer’s 150^th anniversary, and is one of my favourite recordings of these fine works. Whilst the musicians were now inside my head I did not find this at all claustrophobic; the Head 2 seems to get you so engrossed in the music that you don’t feel you are actually wearing headphones apart from that slight pressure on the head. Whilst the Audio Technicas are my choice of cans for comfort, the Senn’s gave a much more spellbound performance.

Finally turning to “Hey Now” from London Grammar album ‘If you Wait’ played from vinyl via my Manley phono-stage gave me a chance to experience an extremely powerful keyboard bass, and also bass vibrations from the record grooves that I hadn’t heard before on other headphone amps from the Sennheisers; this amplifier has a very able bass end. Only moving from the recommended 300Ω setting to 100Ω did I get a more natural frequency response in the lower region, however I quickly turned back to 300Ω when next playing “Walking on the Moon”, Yuri Honing Trio. The bass, drums and saxophone trio were positioned inside my head as best as I had heard them. Reading between the lines you may guess that with certain music I found the bass a little more pronounced than I wanted, and although it wasn’t OTT  it just felt a wee bit slow. Turning the unit into a preamplifier playing balanced at 25 ohms (or through the RCA sockets at 6 ohm) to my Krell/Wilson Benesch system brought me back into true 3D soundstage that non-binaural recordings cannot do. The bass end was particularly noticeable as a preamplifier, especially compared to my choice MFA Baby Reference pre, but the music had plenty of grunt and reserve if I needed it, and though whilst perhaps a little less controlled than a top end preamplifier it was none the less musical and fluid. Where it really excels, though, is as a headphone preamp, and what is very important is that I did sense a good degree of spaciousness and authenticity of music through the headphones that I didn’t expect I would get. The Oppo PM2’s were the real surprise here; plenty of volume at my control and speed and detail that shows why this planar technology, like electrostatics, is so important in today’s breed of FLAC and DSD files. If only I could have plugged in my Stax 407’s. Similarly the HD650 gave one of their best ever performances; these cans are not easy to drive.

Conclusion

On looks alone this headphone amp should be one that you take for a drive. £2350 might seem a lot of money but if, for example, you are spending around £2600 on a balanced HE1000 then you really do need to have a good amplifier. Saša used a HE1000 himself when designing the Head 2, and whilst I tried a number of different headphones in this review (including others not mentioned above) this amplifier never left me wanting more power. Nor did I find any type of headphone, whatever load, that wasn’t able to harmonise with this beauty. The Head 2 was quick, full frequency and with an excellent noise floor, offering a very dynamic performance with excellent 3-dimentional sound.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  Excellent looks and materials. Valves screened in their own section of the body. Beautiful finish to the paint work

Sound Quality:  Dynamic and wide response. Low distortion and very quiet amplifier. Plenty of power in reserve for those inefficient planar headphones

Value for Money:  At £2350 this is a headphone amplifier for those who want the very best, and the fact that it can be a preamplifier as well makes it even better value for money

Pros:

Dynamic and detailed
A gorgeous curvy number you won’t want to hide on the shelf
Works well on all types of music and headphones
Good facilities and can be used as a preamplifier

Cons:

Bass might be a tad too rich for some.

Price: £2350

Janine Elliot

Specifications:

Input voltage: 230V/115 AC selectable by switch
50/60Hz – 100VA – Consumption: 60VA
Output impedance: 25 – 50 -100 – 300 and 600ohms
Output impedance as preamplifier: RCA outs – 6 ohms, XLR outs– 25 ohms
Gain: 26 dB
Maximum output power on headphone output: 2W into 50 ohms
THD at 0.5W/1kHz: 0.2%
Outputs as line preamplifier: XLR + RCA
Output for headphones: Neutrik Combo, XLR + ¼”
Inputs: AUX , XLR + RCA
Input sensitivity: 0.5Veff – Input impedance: 47Kohm
Frequency bandwidth: headphone and line out 10Hz (-1dB) – 80KHz (-3dB)
S/N: 88dB

The vinyl revival refuses to slow and as such more and more turntables are coming to market at the budget end of the spectrum and with more features that will appeal to a younger audience. The Elipson Omega 100 RIAA BT costing a penny shy of £500 comes with a built in phonostage, USB out to digitise your records and even aptX Bluetooth for wireless use. Janine Elliot gives it a spin for Hifi Pig.

Elipson are a unique French company founded in 1938 and well known for their distinctive loudspeakers of unusual spherical shape, but their pedigree is more than just what we see at HiFi shows.  Not only have their speakers been used by then French national radio station ORTF since its beginnings in 1949 but their loudspeakers were also taken up by the French experimental Musique Concrète music research group GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) made famous by important French composers such as Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer. These pioneers of sound experimented with tape recorders and electronic wizardry long before the BBC radiophonic workshop. They needed an array of speakers to create a vast sound-space that were able to perform a trusty portrayal of the complex sounds in their music. Just as the electroacoustic music itself could be described as ‘sound sculptures’, the unique Elipson products could similarly be labelled, being unique works of art that you will either love or hate; a bit like the music. Founder Joseph Leon tried lots of different shapes of spheres and reflectors predominantly using reinforced plaster, until he could create the best sound, and ever since then the Elipson engineers maintain that the best results for the sound is attained by using spherical shaped boxes, something that has remained an emblem of the brand, and not just with their loudspeakers. The new turntable up for review here is similarly curved at the edges, as well as having a round platter – of course.

Elipson have extended their portfolio to include a gorgeous Sound Tree (multiple suspended speakers), and new areas such as a circular music centre, cables, and now two turntables. The turntables, named the Alpha and Omega look very similar and offer similar features. The cheaper Alpha has a matt black PVC chassis whereas the Omega has a PMMA chassis (polymethyl methacrylate, also known as Perspex or acrylic) available in red, black or white. Under the solid plinth are the electronics and the unit effectively has 4 feet, with the front two isolating vibrations, though not adjustable so it is necessary to ensure the platform for the turntable is level before using the turntable. Both models come complete with Ortofon OM10 cartridge and whereas the Alpha uses an aluminium version of their OTT (Orbital Tension Tonearm) arm, the Omega arm is made of carbon fibre, a good feature for a turntable at this price point. The basic Omega and Alpha 100 have conventional RCA socketry, version 100 RIAA is equipped with a MM/MC phono preamp so it can be connected direct to a line input of your amplifier, and the 100 RIAA BT has, in addition to the phono-stage, a Bluetooth with aptX transmitter which allows better audio than the basic Bluetooth. Importantly for many, this model also has a USB output compatible with Mac and Windows allowing you to record your favourite discs at 24bit/192kHz resolution. Where turntables with built in RIAA phono-stage isn’t a new idea, several other manufacturers are beginning to add USB and Bluetooth. The Teac TN-400BT also has aptX Bluetooth but only 16bit/48kHz USB output and moving magnet phono-stage, and the Sony PS-HX500 that became big news in 2016 has DSD 5.6MHz as native conversion or up to 16bit/192kHz Wav but no Bluetooth. What singles out the Elipson model as special for me are the excellent dual MC/MM phono-stage, the good S/N ratio, and that it decodes as 24/192 wav files. It does require you to have a system of editing on your pc, which is fiddly, but worth doing if you want your vinyl ‘on the move’ at a later date. Nothing is done automatically, as in the Convert Technologies Plato, which I reviewed last year. You will need to edit the start and end of each track manually.

What was particularly exciting and relevant for today’s ‘look, no wires’ hifi audiophile is the fact you can play your records directly to your Bluetooth speaker. This is particularly relevant for the younger generation and particularly students – who are incidentally getting more and more interested in vinyl.  The modern look of this turntable – like their speakers – will certainly attract the younger audio fan. This turntable, like their speakers and the music centre, is rounded off at the edges, and its good looks appealed to me; you won’t want to hide it on a shelf. The one piece arm might be cheap, and doesn’t even come supplied with a cueing system but rather relying on your steady hands to raise and lower the cartridge onto the record, but its design was certainly not an afterthought, and has very low friction. The turntable motor has a DDS digital frequency generator (Direct Digital Synthesis) to keep constant speed and the motor is suspended using rubber mounts so that vibrations don’t reach the arm and cartridge. The unit comes complete with a separate power source, so that it can work at any voltage, converting as it does to 12V DC.  Although that part was missing for my review (previous reviewer please note) I was able to use one of my many regulated supplies, which gave a very steady direct current enabling this unit to play music with very low wow and flutter. The turntable uses a bronze bearing to ensure perfect centring of the turntable plate and low noise. The built in MC and MM phono-stages similarly give good readings of 78dB and 82dB respectively. The Omega is slightly heavier than the Alpha at 5.8kg, but still is a very light unit. The steel forged platter is just under 11” diameter, reminding me of my first record deck. As a child with a Philips turntable with just a 10” platter I always longed for a 12” one, just as I wished my FM radio aerial extended higher than my school friends FM radio; size mattered in those days. Interestingly the platter is fixed to the spindle and is supplied with it in place, rather than separately stored in the carton for you to assemble. Whilst this platter will ‘ring’ if tapped the felt matt does stop this affecting the sound, and the PMMA plinth itself is very absorbent of noises and vibrations, unlike many turntables costing significantly more that. The unit comes with a semi spherical weight (they call it a ‘centralizer’) to place on the spindle to keep those records flat on the platter, though it just sits on the top, rather than screwing in, probably to keep the costs down. Anti-skating is altered by turning a track-wheel on the arm pivot/bearing assembly, which makes a nice change from the conventional suspended weight on a nylon thread, though accurate setting-up relies on observing arm movement or using a test record. The turntable cover matches the plinths curvature nicely, though its hinge is not tensioned, so the cover needs to be fully lifted so that it doesn’t fall down. A pity. A tensioned hinge wouldn’t have added much to the price, though I shouldn’t ever recommend playing turntables with lids on.  However, what is good is that the lid is provided in the box rather than an expensive accessory. Speed control is via a 33/45 toggle switch on the top of the unit, which is really a good looking feature, as is the fact that the turntable does not start revolving for a few seconds until the motor is able to go at full speed, to prevent belt slippage and eventual stretching; the motor feeding the flat belt around the edge of the plate. The DDS digital frequency generator maintains a very accurate speed. With speeds for 33 and 45 via the toggle switch, you can even persuade it to play 78rpm, should you have any shellac, by playing the unit at 45 and quickly moving the toggle back to zero and back to 45 again. You then need to repeat this procedure again once you wish to play a 45rpm disc again. The tonearm has a carbon fibre tube for stiffness and a low friction polymer plain bearing with an adjustable counterweight to get the cartridge to the correct tracking force. It should arrive ready to play the OM10, but do check that weight. The arm does not have a measurement engraved on it nor a means of setting to zero force, rather the turntable comes with a paper template for you to measure the distance from the gimbal to the adjustable weight, which is assumed to then be exactly to match the required tracking force for the supplied Ortofon OM10. No, this isn’t a good idea, nor very reliable as the template puts it nearer 1.75g. The OM10 is best set at just above 1.5 grams. My trusty cartridge scale to the rescue, then. Once optimum setup was attained I could then start to enjoy this threesome of turntable, arm and cartridge. A brand new Elipson 100 will have the cartridge already set up on the arm.

The Music

My listening started with the Schubert ‘The Trout Quintet’ (Sviatoslav Richter, Borodin Quartet), playing via my Slee/Graham Audio LS5/9 system. The music was so open and relaxed and very much in control, it was surprisingly good, and although bass and top end could have been better, and minute detail was somewhat lacking it was a good performance from everything, especially the musicians. It just lacked dynamics and detail that I would expect in a more expensive turntable and cartridge. Moving to the ELO ‘Out of The Blue’ re-pressing of this iconic album from my youth, it brought back memories of my attempting homework whilst pumping music loudly through my VMS20E/Trio KD1033/Sansui AU-D33/Audiomaster Image 2 set up. Just as then the deepest bass wasn’t as clear as I had hoped, and this new turntable lacked real detail that I needed to extrapolate from the music; I must be fair though, the OM10 is not the best cartridge out there for musicality, though its stereo detail and positioning of instruments was very clear and unwavering, showing that the arm is indeed better than its simplistic set-up and materials might otherwise suggest. This turntable was perhaps really crying out for a cartridge such as the Ortofon 2M Red, and with its selectable MC phono-stage, perhaps something even more exotic. The phono-stage had a flat response and excellent noise level. The lack of bass detail meant the deep spoken vocal ident in ‘Believe Me Now’ didn’t have the depth that I have got accustomed to hearing, though the lowest notes from the piano in Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 2 (Julius Katchen, LSO Sir Georg Solti) was very able and full. For the wallet-shy audiophile this was however still a reasonable performer. What really makes this turntable really worth the money, though, are the additional features offered.

Turning therefore to the Bluetooth facility, this is limited as one would expect to a 10m line of sight distance to your enabled speaker(s). Pairing is easy with a button at the back of the turntable, and will, by virtue of the format, limit audio quality, though I did find it adequate particularly with the aptX transmitter which is an improvement over the basic wi-fi standard. Of course audio interruptions will happen if other wi-fi signals are in the vicinity or if the Bluetooth device performs other activities (eg internet). When the record is switched off at the end of a “side” the wi-fi connection will continue for another 2 minutes of inaction before disconnecting. Not only did I try it with my miniature Bluetooth speakers but also with my Optoma BE6i aptX IEMs, which I have to say was extremely fun; wearing earphones and moving around the room whilst listening to music from a turntable.  Quality was surprisingly musical and full frequency, making performances of Mozart, Pink Floyd and London Grammar highly enjoyable. This turntable would therefore be ideal for those fed up with wires trailing across the room to their speakers or who just like listening on IEMs/headphones, particularly students or those with limited space, or those simply wanting to enjoy the latest technologies. The range will suit every need and pocket; where the basic Omega 100 comes in at a penny short of £350, you can add £80 to the price for the 100 RIAA with its internal MC/MM phono-stage and a further £70 to also including the BT function making a grand total of £499.99. Not only can I play to my Bluetooth enabled devices but I also have the USB function, meaning I can copy my vinyl onto my computer. I was able to use Cubase to record 24/192 copies of my albums, though there are a number of free audio recording programs out there. I was disappointed that there aren’t any suggestions on either the instruction booklet or their website to offer help on finding a suitable program, nor do they have their own basic audio program to download (Sony supply one with their PS-HX500) and nor do they even supply a USB lead. But, this is a good looking and able machine with rather a lot of facilities for the price.

Conclusion

As a basic turntable at £349 this is certainly a reasonable product, offering good sound quality, and to some perhaps looking more fun and modern than Rega/Pro-Ject equivalents. The Carbon arm is certainly a good feature, but whilst the lid is rather cute it lacks a damped hinge. Once you add the RIAA stage and the BT/USB features then this turntable begins to shine. For an ‘all singing all dancing’ affair complete with a reasonable starter cartridge this is a good product. I just wished it came complete with audio software and USB lead. Being able to play 24/192 digital files is very attractive, and the sound quality and reasonable noise floor from the motor makes this a very well-priced package. OK, the detail extracted from your record won’t be as good as is possible from the best ‘basic’ £500 turntables, but then this is deck has so much more. If convenience of set up without leads is important to you, and you want to copy your vinyl to your DAP, then this turntable is well worth checking out and comes highly recommended for its target audience. 

AT A GLANCE 

Build Quality:  Modern looks and ease of setting up. Solid PMMA  plinth with electronics underneath.  Carbon arm tube is a good feature

Sound Quality:  Very pleasurable and surprisingly musical for the price

Value For Money:  At £499.99 for so many features this is an excellent buy for those at the cheaper end of the audio market 

Pros:

MC/MM RIAA stage, 24/192 USB, and Bluetooth with aptX

Modern looks and choice of colours

Already set up with basic cartridge 

Cons:

No cueing lever

No damped lid hinge

No system for levelling 

Price: £499.99

Janine Elliot

Specifications
Plate : Pressed steel
Chassis : PMMA
Finish : Acrylic laquer
Cartridge : Ortofon OM10
Electronic : RIAA preamp
Bluetooth aptX & USB : 24 bits / 48 KHz
RCA cable provided : Yes
Centraliser : Aluminium

Frequency response : 25Hz – 20KHz (-3dB / +1dB)
Gain : MM = 40,5dB / MC = 61dB
Crosstalk : MM = 88dB / MC = 78dB
THD : MM = 0,006% / MC = 0,05%
Signal / noise ratio : MM = 82dB / MC = 76dB

Stemfoort may not be a name that immediately trips off the tongue when speaking about amplifiers, but the companies heritage goes back to the mid eighties and they are owned by J.E.Sugden, who many will know for their Class A amplifiers. Lionel Payne takes a listen to their SF-200 Passive Line Amplifier costing £2135 for Hifi Pig.

I have to admit that I hadn’t heard of Stemfoort Audio before being asked to review this integrated amplifier. Stemfoort began life way back in 1985 in Holland and was a partnership between a recording engineer and a group of enthusiasts and audio designers. J.E.Sugden & Co. acquired the company in 1988 and, interestingly, the original founder still remains an active and valued technical director with Sugden and was the designer of the SF-200’s unique circuits.

The SF-200 is a passive line amplifier, often referred to as a straight line amplifier. This means that the basic configuration is a volume pot directly coupled to the power amplifier section, i.e. the preamplifier is passive ensuring the most direct signal path from your source to your loudspeakers. Handmade by a team of dedicated audio enthusiasts, the SF-200 is a wide bandwidth design reaching frequency extremes of 6Hz to 120kHz making it an ideal partner for hi-resolution formats such as 24/192, DSD and SACD amongst others. Power output is listed as a very capable 100 watts per channel and there is plenty of current available providing impressive tone bursts and resulting in greater control of loudspeakers and powerful deep bass when required. My own reference loudspeakers (Impulse H2’s) are known to require a good, strong current supply and the SF-200 did a fabulous job in driving them. The robust power supply has quite a unique selling point as the manufacturers claim that the amplifier can remain operational even when faced with a 30% drop in mains voltage. That seems quite a feat to me !

Visually, the SF-200 gives a little hint to its heritage. It has a 10mm thick aluminium faceplate with rounded corners that are identical to the Sugden’s portfolio of products. However there is a central line cut through with a CNC machine to allow the placement of a central dial for input selection, a similar sized dial to the right for volume control and on the far left a smaller push-in on/off button. In between and to the left of the central dial is a small red bulb which lights to indicate power is on. To the right of the central dial is a small sensor for remote control of volume only.  This central cut out with curved edges to mirror the two dials and the smaller power button reflect back to earlier Stemfoort designs and , in particular, their LPA-10 which was a popular high powered integrated, dating back to early Sugden ownership. There are substantial heat sinks to both sides of the amplifier but during operation I found the amplifier to be absolutely stable without even a hint of getting warm. To the rear are 3 way gold-plated loudspeaker binding posts, five pairs of single ended line inputs and a tape out which are also all gold-plated. Other than that there is the proprietary IEC socket. It should be noted that there is good distance between all the sockets so even the broadest of interconnects and speaker cables can be utilised.

The SF-200 is visually as impressive on the inside as it is on the outside with military specification wiring to eliminate interference from power supplies, while the custom designed transformer sits within a steel sub assembly to reduce noise and vibration. Quality components have been used in all areas, chosen for performance and reliability; low inductance resistors replace standard components in critical areas of the signal path. Each circuit board is always completely hand-soldered and there is no sign whatsoever of surface mount components that can degrade sound quality.

Sound

I knew the SF-200 had been run-in when it arrived so it was quickly put into action within my reference set up. The first CD placed into my venerable disc spinner, the Acoustic Precision Eikos, was Tracy Chapman’s self-titled debut album. I wasn’t immediately planning to get into review mode but simply wanting to listen to some good tunes. However, within two or three tracks I had identified what turned out to be this amplifier’s strongest attribute. It has a captivating way of portraying the rhythm and timing of a tune that only the very best possess. A slight caveat on that statement would be that the partnering equipment, and in particular, the loudspeakers must be reading from the same hymn sheet. Synergy is definitely the premium element when looking to build a system around this amplifier but if you get the chemistry right you will be rewarded ten-fold. I listened to the amplifier through several pairs of loudspeakers and the results were mixed but never below par with it.  Without a doubt, my favourite combinations were with my reference Impulse H2’s and the recently reviewed Monitor Audio PL300ii’s and further references within this review will be discussing the SF-200 driving these loudspeakers.

Listening to that first Tracy Chapman CD really highlighted a wonderfully taut, transparent midrange with Chapman’s intonation really to the fore. One of my favourite bands are New Model Army who date right back to my Indie DJ’ing days of the eighties. They are a band that somehow have missed the bigtime but surely deserved more success than they have attained. They are a difficult band to put into a genre as they could be categorised in punk, post-punk, indie, rock, political, folk and probably a few others besides. I think I have virtually every album they have ever made but I do tend to listen to their live albums more frequently and because I listen to them so often I can more easily identify slight changes in presentation with the hardware being used. Listening to one such album (Between Wine And Blood – CD2 which is a live recording) I was astonished at how tangible their lead singer – Justin Sullivan’s voice appeared, I swear I could hear the fact that he has a front tooth missing (he has !) as he got stuck into his performance. The SF-200 is capable of producing this kind of detail and is the type of amplifier that will have you rediscovering your music collection all over again.

I do find a lot of amplifiers that are capable of  highlighting these small details like this are often balanced a little bit towards the bright side but I found this SF-200 to be right on the money in terms of tonal balance. I listen to a lot of rock and acoustic music, particularly live recordings, and the Stemfoort played both extremely well and always gave a view to the size of a venue with an informative soundstage. Perhaps, if I were forced to choose, I would favour its execution of an acoustic set over a rock performance and, although I rarely listen to jazz, I would wager that a jazz aficionado would adore what the SF-200 has to offer.

I also found that the SF-200 was an extremely entertaining listen at low volume but I did find when I pushed the volume up to concert level output the combination with my Impulse H2’s did become a little strident. However, this was not the case when I pushed the amplifier to similar sound levels with the Monitor AudioPL300iis. 

Conclusion 

The Stemfoort SF-200 is a lovely amplifier and one that has a lot of good selling points. It has great tonality and timing and is really well put together. The design is obviously all about creating the best sound quality possible and to this end it does eschew facilities that a lot of modern amplifiers are now including; there is no phonostage, on-board DAC, headphone socket or led display. It does have a remote control but this is only for volume control and nothing else, making this a fairly utilitarian offering. However, for all its shortcomings in facilities it does what we really buy an amplifier for – it plays music… and it does so with great aplomb.

I really like it !

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality : Impeccable throughout and should last for years                        

Sound Quality : A mellifluous tonal portrayal with fabulous timing 

Value For Money : In a tough price sector but don’t dismiss without audition 

Pros : Well built, good soundstage, great tone and fantastic timing 

Cons : Lack of facilities 

Price : £ 2135.00

Lionel Payne

Specifications 

Power output: 100 Watts per channel both channels working

Noise Level: Greater than 85dB

Weight: 16 kgs

Size: 115 x 430 x 360 mm

Rupert Neve is a name that will trip of the tongue of anyone who has been interested in or worked in recording studios; put simply he is a giant/demi-god in the industry. Neve has now put his name to a £469 headphone amplifier and who better to put it through its paces than Janine Elliot.

“Having spent a quarter of a century listening to various form of Neve mixing desks at the BBC, whether the GP desk produced under licence by them and two other companies (Calrec and Audix), or my favourite the Neve 66, I have got accustomed to the sound produced by this great man. Air Studios in London have three specially made Neve consoles. Legendary Beatles producer and founder of Air Studios, George Martin (1926-2016) was heavily involved with Rupert Neve in the design process of what was a radical new desk at the time. With toroidal wound transformers it was clear that sound quality was the key aim here, as it always should be. As a new BBC sound engineer in the 1980’s aiming for the best in sound quality, with Neve desk plus Quad 405 bi-amped into LS5/8 speakers I was near to heaven….”

Read the full review here

Dan Worth takes a listen to the Russell K Red 50 standmount loudspeakers costing from £975.

Monday’s are usually considered as the most hated day of the week by mass consensus but when you receive a call from Russell Kauffman asking if it’s possible to meet up to discuss a review of the bottom of the beanstalk standmounts he produces you know this Monday isn’t going to be as torrid as the last!

Russell and I discussed some extremely important parameters for the review process, namely a range of good ciders and a place to eat. Russell stated ‘take me somewhere where I can try some good local ciders Dan and I’d love a good Chinese, the rest is up to you’.

It always fills me with joy when I’m given so many options to work with and with this criteria in mind my options were not exactly rich but who’s complaining, I’m a cider drinker and love a good Chinese – now all we needed was a designated driver…in comes Dominic, as he doesn’t drink, it would be rude of us not to include him in our somewhat adventurous Monday.

Our day got off to a not so ideal start when Dom arrived in the work van, kind of resembling a lunchbox on wheels and as neither he or I gave enough thought to the logistics of three in a two seater van and once Russ had dropped his car off at the hotel it quickly became evident that either Russ or I were to be seated on the floor in the back.  I jokingly asked ‘so which of us I’ll be in the back then Russ?’ And to my amazement Russell rose his hand. Of course I explained I was only kidding but was ever so grateful as I’ve been suffering with some lower back issues, I commended the man for this as he slid back the side door and parked himself on the Royal throne of cushions Dominic had placed in the rear of the short wheel bass buggy.

I decided we would go to a nice little pub on the outskirts of Dartmoor where the landlord Simon regularly attends the local cider festivals and has a great choice of brews. Getting there from mine isn’t an awkward affair until you’re the only one who knows the way, it’s almost dark by 4:30pm this time of year, you suffer from an eye condition that means you can’t see at all in the dark and you have an iPhone and Google maps!

Typically in sat nav fashion and always when in the country, the swine takes you somewhat off piste and the blinkers of two headlamps is the only small amount of light down the narrowest of country roads – no, let me rephrase that, a dirt track that even Colin McCray would have been weary of.

Poor Dom’s little trooper of a van was bouncy over turrets, sliding across verges and jerking through rocks, puddles and the occasional badgers den.

With Russell in the rear doing a great impression of pong and my back splintering at the seams, all of this on one of the most hideous days of weather this year, torrential rain a wind that cuts right through you and plummeting temperatures that would make a brass monkey drop its balls!

Fortunately though we were safe in the shell of the vehicle, well all apart from dear Russell who was rattling around somewhere behind me.

Good old Google maps was still confident that we were on a ‘fastest route’ to get to our first port of call, so we persevered a little longer, praying the phone and satellite signal would not deplete in case of the need to phone the AA because we really were getting deeper and deeper into bandit country.

All of a sudden we stop, I ask ‘what’s wrong?’ Dom says ‘I just need to open a gate in the lane’, he jumps out and quickly returns, ‘it’s locked!’ oh, that’s unfortunate we say, you’ll have turn around sir (or words to that effect). So Dom backs up a little and attempts a three point turn, we go 90 degrees to the left and oh no, we’re stuck and I mean stuck, wheels spinning, wet mud flying everywhere and no brew in sight!

I say ‘come on Russ we are going to have to push’ and out we get. So now imagine the scene, it’s pouring with rain, freezing cold, slippery and muddy, there’s a black and blue manufacturer and a blind man trying to push a van out of its muddy ditch – Monday bloody Monday’s! Could we get free, could we hell, so Russ and Dom swap roles and finally we break free of natures grasp. Russ will argue that it was due to his driving skills but personally I think it was down to Dominic’s brute strength!

10 minutes later we are in a warm pub with a pint and a couple hours after in a wonderful restaurant on the sea front eating what was – and I think we would all agree the most fantastic Chinese meal we had all ever had. Finishing off the evening sat in front of a log fire back at Russell’s hotel with a Jack Daniel’s in high spirits and laughing about our evening’s escapades.

The Speakers 

Did I mention earlier in this supposed review that Russell was bringing the Red 50s along with him? Well yes, indeed he did.

The Red 50’s are the smallest of the Standmount speakers from the ever growing Russell K range measuring in at H- 310mm W-205mm D-200mm. Constructed from 16mm MDF all round apart from the front baffle which is 19mm MDF and rear port tuned to 55Hz, the completely undamped cabinet does have an internal acoustically tuned shelf with several ports or holes above the woofer.

Driver compliment for the Red 50 is a 5″ mid/bass injected paper cone and a 1″ soft domed tweeter. Crossovers connect drivers in positive phase with a crossover frequency of 2200Hz nominal 12 db/Oct. Both drivers have only one component in the signal path! this all culminates for a reported in room frequency response of 45Hz-22KHz.

Finished in a range of real wood veneers and and real auto grade deep lacquered finishes the Red 50’s look stunning, a real sense of pride of ownership is evident when removing them from their packaging, they are simplistic, stylish and somewhat elegant in style.

The Sound 

After positioning the speakers into a position where I would usually seat a speaker of this size I played various pop music. Russell and I had previously talked about how suitable the genre is in initially testing speakers and drivers alike. We both agreed that the wide range of instruments, vocals and frequencies gives a great impression of how a speaker may behave with further listening. My standout impressions with these initial listening tests were that the little Red 50s had great bounce and enthusiasm with a terrifically stable soundstage.

I moved on to some music of very opposite appeal in order to try and distract the 50s from their seemingly comfortable characterisation. I played some Loreena McKennit as I wanted to explore how intimate they could sound. From Loreena’s first phrase I simply sank into the sofa and any anxiety I had on behalf of the 50s dissipated when the velvety smooth and passionate rendition of her vocal compared admirably against my own Ayons and some more expensive speakers from larger manufacturers. Russell always says ‘we are a big company stating in a smaller way’ and I can give him respect for this as these babies have performed excellently so far.

Without any forwardness at all, no peaky upper midrange and the availability of emotion from a speaker so small and under £1000 I pushed on with optimism and confidence that listening to a male vocal counterpart could also lead to some further positivities from the Red 50s.

In light of the connection Loreena McKennit gave me I played some Damien Rice. His lyrics and  overall style is not to everyone’s taste and usually takes centre stage in my room only at certain times during late night listening. His passion for music is very explanatory within the phrasing and tempo of his voice, conveying a belief of emotion within his lyrics.

This honesty was appreciated greatly through the 50s and although the bigger brother, the 100s have more intensity of vocal inflections, detail and realism the 50s within their own right have a real coherence attitude which really gives the impression that you are not losing out on the fullness of a male vocal either and the richness that would be expected from a larger cabinet shocks when heard from the Red 50.

Very recently I had the pleasure of reviewing speakers from the new ATC range of Standmount speakers, which got great reviews from Dominic and I. The smaller of the speakers, the 7 and 11s ticked so many boxes, including detail retrieval, speed, accuracy and transparency but they were very specifically voiced to the cleaner presentation. What I find just so embracing about the Russell K’s is that they can compete with ATCs toe to toe and with their internal acoustic shelf and porting add another layer of enjoyment through conveying that little bit of warmth which makes them so much more engrossing and rich sounding, allowing for more intimacy, especially in the midrange, fleshing out vocals and giving the impression of greater soundstage depth with a smoother upper midrange which controls female vocalists especially well.

This richness is also evident when listening to Jazz music and Acoustic pieces. You cannot listen to Trad’ Jazz without richness. Overall bass weight can be questionable or user specific but the richness has to be there and when equally balanced with strong detail and transparency a standmounted speaker in a smaller room such as the Red 50 will be so effective.

On the acoustical side of things my main concern with a small speaker is that when a guitar note is played, so often do you only hear the top half of the note, the decay can be missed, the note sounds too sharp and the instruments cabinet resonance is non existent. Russell K’s Red 50 do not suffer from this issue, yes it can be done more effectively with a speaker of a larger scale but from a cabinet of this size and again I reflect on the price tag, the Red 50 holds it head up high without a smug grin, just a look of confidence in their abilities to outperform some of the serious competition in today’s extremely competitive market.

During the process of reviewing the Red 50s I’ve used a few amps on them. A Jeff Rowland integrated some Muse Monos with Rowland pre and my DiDiT DAC/PRE with some Cairn Monos. Each pairing of amplification has driven the speakers with no issues and although not very sensitive they are an easy load to drive. Each pairing has also proven to me how transparent the 50s are and the character of each amplifier has really shone through without damaging the Russell K flavour of house sound.

Capabilities of a small speaker can be somewhat limited especially in the bass region, although the Red 50s have had to have a tweak around 80Hz in order to bring more realism to the spectrum I categorically state that they do not sound as if they have a ‘hump’, something that personally drives me crazy with smaller speakers as it inevitably loses the truthfulness of the material.

On the same subject, tweeter integration can be tricky when managing the coherence of a diminutively sized cabinet. When balancing the articulation of a tweeter with its mid/bass counterpart I’ve experienced speakers which can be violently aggressive in the higher frequency field and the lack of bass weight and richness makes the tweeter sterile in sonic signature, a lack of underpinning of the high notes and a more forward presentation. For a smaller speaker I’ve generally favoured a ribbon style tweeter with a lower crossover point.

The Red 50s didn’t suffer at all in my many listening sessions with any fatigue associated with the soft dome tweeter implemented here. Russell has a neat little process which he vigorously goes through with all of his designs. He will acquire a range of high frequency drivers and play predominantly pop music through them on a bench in full range from an amplifier to asses their capabilities. This process has worked excellently, he will then select the most suitable tweeter for cabinet design and have it tweaked further with copper faraday rings (for instance) and careful crossover component selection. Anybody hearing his designs will have undoubted appreciation for his approach and implementation.

I ran the tweeter through its paces with a wide variety of music. At the time of review I also had the Martin Logan Motion 15’s in with their undoubtedly exceptional Motion Ribbon, which for me is the standout driver of the design. The Russell K tweeter excelled with the very peaks and air with Nils Lofgren’s guitar on the Acoustic Live version of Keith Don’t Go and the pace was ahead of the Motion Ribbon. However the ribbon tweeter had a slightly more fleshed out tonality allowing for more body in the lower treble regions, both still exciting and engrossingly musical.

Electronica and dance music favours the soft dome tweeter and transparency in the upper limits was dynamically more mature and thrilling. Integration of the entire Red 50 design with the faster paced music was flawless and the Red 50 can certainly be enjoyed very much indeed with many genres and the overall compliment of drivers, crossovers and cabinets makes for a level of dynamics and realism that can be natural or within the realms of electronic music, the designs bass limitations and room size is just great!

Conclusion

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a small standmount sized speaker which can offer lucid mids, natural tones and sheer enthusiasm in a realistic sense for under a grand.

The Russell K Red 50 is such a compliment to Russell Kauffman’s years of work in the Hifi industry and his extensive knowledge of driver selection and integration through working at with other driver design companies is reflected in the speakers’ instinctive performance.

I listened intently to flaws in the design after first impressions were just so good and I don’t believe that anything that resided in their frequency response ever sounded out of place or unsympathetic to the material I played.

With true transparency a whip like responsiveness and the ability to hold the emotion of a strong vocal, the Red 50 is one of the very best small standmount speakers around £1000 that I have heard to date.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality: Very high quality lacquer or real wood veneer, with great overall styling

Sound Quality: Unexpectedly impressive from such a small cabinet. Very well voiced and even-handed

Value For Money: Great amount of sound per pound, what should be expected from a speaker of this price

Pros:

Astonishing bass for the size

Detailed, transparent with a touch of warmth

Realistic appreciation for many genres

Price

Cons:

Binding posts have an opposite orientation than the norm and spade connectors need placing from the sides. No dedicated stands (yet)

Price: £975 (real wood veneer), £1099 (gloss black), optional grills £85

Dan Worth

The €24000 Aequo Audio Ensis hails from The Netherlands and has an innovative and interesting design. Stuart and Linette Smith take delivery of a pair and naturally throw some Dutch techno at them. 

We first got in touch with the Aequo Audio guys before last year’s High End show in Munich and  when we arrived at the MOC were drawn to their booth because they were playing electronic music rather than audiophile music that is de rigeur at such events…and we were really impressed with what we heard. Of course, a booth at a mega busy Hifi show isn’t an ideal environment for any kind of critical listening and so we were keen to get a pair in our main system. And so it was that Paul and Ivo made the journey from the Netherlands to our humble abode.

The Ensis speakers are an elegant looking proposition and should find favour with those looking for something that is modern looking yet stylish. They are narrow and stand 116cm high so any room should be able to accommodate them. The speakers are sloped backwards to time align the drivers.

At the bottom of the speakers is an enclosure that houses the ten inch aluminium subwoofer that is actively driven and is adjustable: This is a very useful and sensible feature that allows the Ensis loudspeakers to integrate brilliantly into any environment and room situation. The mid/bass driver uses a Hexacon voicecoil with a Kapton-Aluminium former. The soft fabric tweeter’s dome is centre fixed using a carbon rod and billet aluminium dispersion cone and utilises an acoustic lens.

Ensis is a closed design that is heavily braced and uses four types of wood. The crossover for the mid and tweeter uses matched polypropylene capacitors and air core baked wire coils throughout, though there are no capacitors in line for the midbass, whilst the aforementioned sub uses “ARPEC” sound processing and a 500W per side N-Core amplifier.

Terminals are WBT and accommodate bananas, spades or bare wire. The front of the speaker is made of a mineral filled polymer and available in white, black or custom finish.

The overall feel of the speaker is one of understated luxury with fit and finish being exemplary.

We used our Nord amp and Music First Audio preamplifier along with a Chord DAVE DAC, but also drove these 90db speakers with a little Clones Audio i25 (25W) and a Audio Hungary valve amp with no feeling that we needed to pump more power through them. This is a good thing given that Ensis is likely to be used in homes that are modern and clean, in keeping with their deign and people that buy these are unlikely to want clutter and boxes all over the place – I could see them being used with something like the Roksan Oxygene amp and CD player for a compact and neat solution.

Set up of the speakers was a doddle as being a closed design they just aren’t that fussy, though a small degree of toe-in was preferred and a bit of fiddling with the beautifully crafted bass controls was needed to match perfectly with the room.

Listening

Now, techno is a much maligned and often derided genre of music, particularly the head down, furious gabba variety that comes out of Holland, but for those in the know this kind of music has a beauty and complexity that to some, and I include myself in this, is preferred to more audiophile-centric styles of music, though you need a proper and detailed system to appreciate this. Electronic sounds are layered in such a way that what may at first appear just to be a racket, on closer inspection reveals itself to be an intricate and gorgeous sound. So what you may ask and that would be a valid question, but Paul and Ivo who delivered the speakers were weaned on this kind of music and after the initial niceties and getting to know each other we soon realised we shared a love of this style. I played the original Technohead (React) album and found that whilst the sound coming out of the speakers had that rawness and visceral feel that is essential, it was also possible to lose yourself in the depth of each sound, with the Ensis delivering loads of detail in the mids and tops to the extent that the make-up of each sound was easy to unravel and fall into. Crank the volume button up a few notches and you lose nothing of the detail…you just have more volume, and again this is a very good thing. Lesser loudspeakers can get all flappy and distressed with this kind of material at high volume, but not so the Ensis; they remained composed and unruffled at all times. Bass tones and that very recognisable bass kick had a depth and layering that again drew you into the individual sounds but without losing and overall cohesiveness. Bass is low, controlled and tight which is another must for me with a loudspeaker.

Speed is a key factor with any good loudspeaker and the Ensis are as nimble on their feet as I’ve heard. In some ways they have that immediacy and speed that great horns have and whilst one some systems this speed in the mid and tops can lead to a lack of cohesiveness with the bass, the Ensis’ solution of having a separate but fully integrated sub works an absolute treat. Timing is fabulous and you never feel that anything is remotely out of phase leading to a transparent and open sound with real coherence across the frequency spectrum.

OK, I’m well aware that very few people are going to be listening to gabba on a set of speakers that costs this much money and it’s rather likely that I’m in a small minority of people who “get” this genre and so, as we always do when reviewing any piece of kit, a wide and varied selection of music was listened to. On acoustic music there is a real feel for the instruments and their timbre with Baden Powell’s nylon strung guitar sounding as lifelike as I’ve heard. There is just so much detail evident in the music when listening with the Ensis loudspeaker, but this doesn’t come with an over analytical or fatiguing character; you could listen to these all day and not feel you were overloaded. Late night listening at low volumes is often a good test of a speaker’s capabilities, with lesser speakers not having the ability to convey the full range of the music, but with the Ensis, as when you turn them to high volume, you do get everything that is going on in the performance.

I’m a sucker for speakers that create an all encompassing soundstage and was a fan of Audio Physic loudspeakers in the past (though I’ve not been as impressed with their more recent offerings when I’ve heard them at shows) because they did that three dimensional presentation; the Ensis do this trick brilliantly too and you feel that the musicians are laid out in front of you both left to right, front to back and up and down. Despite having to concentrate and listen critically to what is going on I often found myself just listening to tunes for long spells without taking notes and just enjoying the experience, which is a great sign the speakers were doing something right. Moving out of the sweet spot there is still a good sense of this image and the Ensis are a speaker that can be enjoyed with friends as well as for when you are feeling a little more isolationist.

Turning to Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah and it’s as good as I’ve heard in our room. There is a purity to his voice that conveys the emotion of this tune and this comes across beautifully with these speakers. Real goosebumps time! And this is another key characteristic of a loudspeaker for me; it should connect you with the music and the performance on an emotional level and given their low colouration and amounts of micro-detail the Ensis give you a direct connection.

I’m really struggling to find anything negative about these loudspeakers. They are detailed in the extreme but not fatiguing. They have a hugely three dimensional presentation that is highly addictive. They convey the emotional content of music brilliantly. They are controlled, uncoloured and transparent. They are elegant and clean in their appearance. There is the old adage that all loudspeakers compromise in some aspect of their presentation and of course this is true to an extent but I’m struggling to find a compromise in these speakers…perhaps the price is a little out of the reach for many.

Conclusion 

These are as good a pair of loudspeakers that I have had the pleasure to have in our listening room (and I include our current reference Avantgarde Duo XD in this, though their presentation is obviously different). Presentation is clean, uncoloured and powerful when it needs to be – and likewise subtle when there is the call for it. Dynamically they are brilliant. They present every nuance of a performance or piece of music with dazzling detail and yet remain an easy listen.

Good source components are a must for these speakers given the level of detail they provide, but that needn’t mean spending a fortune and we got great results using a gainclone based amplifier costing less than £1000.

They look good and will appeal to those looking to have a modern looking, stylish loudspeaker in their home that really delivers on the sound front. For me their big selling point is that no matter what style of music you throw at them, be that Industrial Strength techno or something like Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird, they allow you an open view into the recording and the music. Yes you can get lost in analysing what you are listening to if you want to but for the most part you will find yourself just feeling connected directly to the  music on a truly emotional level and to me that is what music is all about!

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality: Impeccable build and styling where form follows function beautifully

Sound Quality: Detailed and uncoloured, with a three dimensional presentation

Value For Money: Twenty four grand is a lot of money but in the grand scheme of things these offer a great sound in a stunning package at a price that is commensurate.

Pros:

Fabulously well built and stylish looking

Brilliantly dynamic sound quality from a relatively small package

Very room friendly in regards to placement

Cons:

Can reveal inadequacies in partnering equipment and of poor recordings

Price: €24 000

Stuart Smith

And now Linette’s thoughts…

We get asked to visit a lot of people at High End Munich; companies launching new products are keen to get the press to cast their eyes and ears over their wares. When Paul from Aequo got in touch about their Ensis loudspeaker I was surprised that we hadn’t heard of them before, they came across as a well established company, confidently launching their new loudspeaker at the High End show. The Ensis is in fact their first production model but Ivo and Paul have taken a lot of care over how they present themselves and the company.  From the first contact Aequo are a very professional outfit, from choosing the world’s greatest hifi show to launch their speaker to the slick graphics of their promotional material you get a feeling that these guys know what they are doing…it inspired confidence that we were in for a treat when we visited them in Munich.

The Munich visit did not disappoint and we were immediately impressed with both the looks and sound of Ensis, we also knew that we would get on with Paul and Ivo…their love of electronic music matched our own. Their embracing of non-audiophile music continued when we saw them again at the Warsaw show.  Their room was belting out Michael Jackson while most of the others played jazz or classical, we liked their style.

The guys personally brought Ensis to Hifi Pig Towers for us to review.  It was a pleasure to get to know them on a more informal basis and also to have some time alone with the speakers. The professionalism of the business is carried on in the product.  Ensis is an elegant looking speaker, made of high quality materials and with great attention to detail.  Its actually a very compact speaker and the slender, gently tilted back design makes it the perfect fit for the home environment. The sound that comes from Ensis is also very refined, clear, precise, detailed and a surprisingly big soundstage makes for a very enjoyable listening experience. The precise nature of the speakers is never clinical and they are very easy to listen to, whether playing at low volume in the background or belting out techno they are the kind of speakers that you could just live with day in, day out. Their clever design also means you can put them more or less anywhere, another plus point for modern living.

Ensis is very much like her creators, a smart, slick and businesslike exterior wrapped around a love of music and a fun personality. I like a diverse range of speakers but they do have to tick certain boxes in order for them to make it onto my ‘Would like to own’ list.  Ensis really does tick them all. Great looks, sound great with all types of music (not just ‘audiophile music’) a lively detailed sound which is never fatiguing and a very reasonable price. Definitely on the list, outstanding!

Linette Smith

We spoke to Ivo Sparidaens who designed the Ensis speakers to get the background to his Octagon philosophy of design and how it affected the end product we see here. 

Size And Form (one of the eight aspects in the Octagon philosophy)

The size and shape of a loudspeaker is an aspect which we are confronted with all the time when we are in the same room with them. Even if they are not playing music. Several aspects of a loudspeaker’s appearance obviously derivate from its function. Form follows function is indeed a great credo to design a beautiful product. As if our touching and seeing it can analyze its features to be processed in our mind. After this evaluation, the design “feels” right, when it actually is capable of sounding right.  But yet, one functional demand can account for design choices that will be contradicting to other functional demands. And in practice we see a lot of speakers that sound well but are not shaped in a way to please the eye and even worse: vice versa. If we would trust our instincts instead of just letting go the relationship between looks and performance, we need a better explanation for the divorce instead of the happy marriage. This problem could very well be a symptom of, or better: a clear sign of the existence of contradictions mentioned earlier in functional loudspeaker design. The understanding of this concept is in fact the foundation of Aequo Audio’s conceptual design. It is making the right choices for a good relationship between the two. For better explanation let us start with a sum of such demands, then continue to zoom in on the possible contradictions between them, and finally shift to what design choices accompanied with the right technology do deliver the goods on all fronts and ensure staying happily married forever.

Functional demands of loudspeakers with consequences for size and form

• Listening height: something we must consider to give a realistic and comfortable presentation of sound (and stage) at the right height.
• Functional mounting space: room for fitting capable transducers/drivers in the cabinet to deliver the full sound spectrum properly.
• Sensitivity/amp matching: often many, or large drivers are needed to get high enough sensitivity and 8 ohms nominal loads to work with all amplifiers.
• Directivity: Mounting drivers in the right direction (with respect to the directivity of each driver)
• Volume size: having the right enclosure volume matching with each driver.
• Diffraction: effects of sound resonance from edge to edge on the outside surfaces of the speaker.
• Indirect sound from cabinet: sound bouncing from the source driver to the surface of the speaker and then to the ear, arriving a fraction late in time (out of phase with the original sound).
• Interaction as an object with the room: resonances between the point of sound output and a wall or corner, or just that of sound resonating between walls and a speaker surface.
• Point Source or homogeneity of multiway speakers: music and multichannel material are recorded with loudspeakers to operate as a single point source each, not matter how many drivers (ways) they need to do the job.
• Mechanical capabilities: a solid construction of the speaker cabinet and mounted parts, without unwanted cabinet resonance.
• Construction complexity: what is the simplest way to get the right size and form or shape, to meet all demands as well as possible.

Contradictions

If some of us had their way, the only high-end speakers of the future would maybe end up as something like two small spheres hanging in the room with unlimited full range capabilities. Or they disappeared at all, but without the suffering that accompanies today’s in-wall and on-wall speakers: poor soundstage and imaging because of all the indirect sound coming from so many surfaces in close proximity of the driver/source,  plus a serious construction project to have it installed in case of in-wall speakers.

Speaking for all of us that still love to see a real speaker in the room: even a hardcore high end enthusiast that enjoys the view of his loudspeaker must accept it has to fit in the room without his spouse filing for divorce. It must be proportional to the room itself and to other furniture. Hence: if the room is not dedicated to listening only, it should not be in the way both practically and visually speaking. Instead, it should be considered a piece of art to look at, adding value to the room for all its users. A design is needed that isn’t compromising size for full range dynamics or vice versa. A design that doesn’t compromise soundstage if not placed unrealistically far from rear walls. For most domestic environments this means it must be compact and still it doesn’t compromise technology for usability. Or performance for looks and feel. It has room for the right drivers and parts, and at the right direction and at the right height. As if that is too much to ask and you need big bulky speakers if you want enough inside room and a sturdy cabinet that doesn’t add any unwanted sound. And they will be in your way to get them right. That is the gestalt of the first main contradiction to start with.

Design choices that work on both fronts

Unlike sports cars, where looks, feel and performance of certain models have gone hand in hand for decades, in Hifi we have just only left the era of plain rectangular boxes. One can say this is only because of the very different type of performance in speakers versus automobiles and thus no need for aerodynamics in loudspeakers, but one would be wrong. Every 90-degree corner and sharp edge at the wrong place can lead to sound resonance due to diffraction. Wavelengths with the size from edge to edge will be pronounced. More indirect sound will be added. Ideally sound should slide over the loudspeaker evenly and untouched. Just like an aerodynamic car sliding through the air and using its shape to overcome problems. And only there were diffraction effects can be used as a correction for certain shortcomings, such should be implemented just like spoilers and diffusors on cars are used to overcome lack of grip and unwanted lift. Actually, what one should say or point out on this topic is the fact that not only outside aerodynamics count in speakers, but also those inside the cabinet. Parallel walls mean inside resonances of specific wavelengths/frequencies. Even more reasons for a better looking curve instead of the dull plain boxy lines! And as in a usable sports car, the designer should try to get it right without too much ugly add-ons while also providing enough space for performance parts, a view through the windshield and space for the big gripping wheels to fit. And at the same time a curved loudspeaker cabinet panel is much stiffer automatically, and less prawn to panel resonances.  See where this is going and how it matches your instincts about form following function as for it being something that actually results in beautiful instead of boxy, bulky and ugly?

Fixing the remaining contradictions

Let’s stay with the car/speaker metaphor for just a bit more and take a look at the back of a Porsche 911. For decades, it is unchanged in being elegant and curvy, while providing enough room for big rear wheels at a wide enough span for proper handling and also loading a powerful engine in its low rear not rising the center of gravity. The engine can provide enough power being fitted in that limited space, because of refined technology that made the famous rear shape possible: a low profile and compact 6 cylinder boxer engine, made with special materials enabling high rev power from small displacement or even more so when fitted with a turbocharger. This technology enabled Porsche to bring a beautiful design with high performance without throwing just more cubic inches under a longer and higher lid or hood. Aequo Audio has put enormous in-house R&D efforts in getting the right technology, materials and production facilities to do something very similar. Technology to get the full range bandwidth from a smaller speaker. Materials for a compact, non-resonant cabinet without the need of extremely thick walls. A special 20 ton press to form different layers of wood into super precise and ultra-stiff curved panels. Further technology was developed to allow speakers to throw a holographic soundstage even when setup in problematic room positions and/or acoustically poor rooms. And also allowing bass adjustments for different sized rooms and positioning near walls or corners, without the need of digital sound processing.

Size and form of the Ensis loudspeaker and its enabling technology

The unique design of the Ensis cabinet, best described as a three-dimensional music note, is a compact slim shape that holds three powerful transducers at the right place. Two high sensitivity passively driven, high sensitivity drivers for mid and high frequencies are placed very close together and at the right listening height and direction.  A long excursion, active 10 inch subwoofer is placed very low and coupled to the floor, facing enough to the front for its directivity and to keep from turning to walls with optimized toe-in positioning of the speakers. The music note tilts back to time-align all drivers to the listening position. In house developed ARPEC™ technology is added to the subwoofer to ensure a full and dynamic reproduction of the lowest octave, without the need of a larger enclosure or an ugly separate subwoofer cluttering the room. It also allows analog adjustment for room size and placement. The addition of a 500watt Ncore amp added to the mix further helps with less than easy or highly powerful amplifiers without the need of many or large and highly sensitive bass drivers. The ellipse shape of the vertical upper part of the music note is carefully chosen for the optimized travel of both internal as external sound waves. It is built with new state of the art materials, like the artificial stone front and finally evaluated with advanced resonance measurements to be optimized with Grey Matter Compound™ (in house developed non-toxic dampening compound three times heavier than granite stone). Diffraction is lowered further by rounded edges on the front and a rounded off and sloped top near the tweeter. The narrow baffle of less than 14cm wide prohibits indirect sound from the baffle and allow the speakers to shine in the “disappearing act”. The lower part of the enclosure is also round at the back for maximum strength and together with its angled sides, it completes the speaker’s avoidance of internal parallel walls and resonances associated with these, while giving more room than expected at first glance of the slim appearance. Without rear bass ports and with the positioning adjustments the speakers are easily placed. Addition of the EHDL™ tweeter system makes sure you have problem-free holographic soundstage and imaging performance in real domestic environments. The Ensis speakers are a perfect example of how form follows function can indeed result in perfect harmony between performance and beauty.

RD Acoustics are based in the Czech Republic and we first came across the mat High End Munich where their Evolution loudspeakers were being powered by KR Audio amplifiers being fed by a 440 Audio turntable…all Czech brands. The Evolution loudspeakers are a single driver design using a backloaded horn and cost from €9990. 

The Evolutions are an imposing back loaded horn loudspeaker standing 180 cm high, weigh 75Kg a piece and come in a variety of real wood finishes, embellished on the front baffle with artificial leather; again the customer can choose the colour. Evolution is a single driver loudspeaker with no crossover and you can choose between Voxativ, Lowther, Enviee and a few other 8” drivers. Our review pair came with what I think is the pick of the crop, the Voxativ and the Oris 500 front horn, which is designed to boost frequencies above 500Hz by 3dB. Oddly the speaker terminals were on the side of the cabinet near the driver and when I questioned this I was told this was to keep the internal cable lengths as short as possible but again customers could choose to have them placed on the back. Prices start from €9990 with the driver type being the deciding factor. Fit and finish is lovely and despite these being imposing we loved them in the room.

Listening

The first thing to be played was the wonderful Souvenance album by Anouar Brahem…go out and buy it! The first thing that grabs your attention with these speakers is the amount of detail that is being conveyed. With little details in the background of the recording becoming that little bit more evident. Piano is fast and believable in an organic sense, which is something that not all loudspeakers are able to manage. Plucked strings have weight and again there is a ‘realness’ to the sound. As the music rises and new instruments come to the fore there is a sense of scale added to proceedings, but the RD Acoustic Evolution speakers don’t get ruffled or unnerved and simply get on with it. This album appears to be very simple and with little going on but it is actually quite complex in its structure and where the Volya Bouquet loudspeakers we reviewed recently were massively analytical, what we have here is, and I hate to use the word again, is an organic feel to the music and with this kind of music quite effortless.

Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson’s classic album “Winter In America” has the tune that many will be familiar with, The Bottle, on it and it is a tune that gets hammered (excuse the pun) in this house. It starts off with the musicians giggling and the sense of the room it is recorded in comes across really well with the reverb of Heron’s “Uno, Dos…” having the required presence and believability. Again not all loudspeakers manage to do this. Tambourine cuts through the mix really nicely and the frantic bassline is easy to follow and fast – in the stop start sense of the word. Little flourishes on the flute again cut through the mix really nicely and words that come to mind are natural and organic. Detail in the mids and tops is mightily impressive and I put this down to the effect of the Oris 500 front horn, something I would consider a vital purchase. Whilst there is colouration of course (something folk who love the speed and immediacy of single driver designs just, I believe, learn to live with) you are left feeling like you are listening to the music as a whole and not dissecting it into its component parts.

Up to now I’ve played pretty straight forward and undemanding music through the Evolutions, Heron’s voice through them is pretty addictive it has to be said, but it’s time to get the test tracks out. These are tracks I know inside out and back to front but are also tunes that can be somewhat challenging for loudspeakers…torture tracks if you like.

First up is Deep Purple’s live version of Smoke On The Water from Made In Japan and this is used primarily for the bassline. With the RD Acoustics Evolution speakers the guitar and hi-hats at the start of the tune are absolutely stunning in their believability but the growling bassline is missing the impact that we are used to using our Avantgarde Duo XDs. Don’t get me wrong, bass is there but it is not going as deep as I am used to. The guitar solo on the other hand is presented as realistically as I’ve heard on any speaker at any price. Compromises are inevitable with any speaker design and here, whilst you have stunning mid and top detail, the bass department is compromised a little – this is something you will either be able to live with or not.

Hardfloor’s Once Again Back is another tune used primarily to check out how a loudspeaker copes with extreme bass and again the RD Acoustics don’t go down deep but there is just so much detail, speed and insight into the mix everywhere else that you could forgive them.

Neil Young’s Heart Of Gold is sublime when played on these and again it is the amount of detail these speakers give you that impresses most. Snare hits are tight, guitar stops ans starts superbly and Youngs voice is projected into the room with reality and micro-detail that makes for a very believable performance indeed.

Induologue’s Day By Day is a record I often reach for to get a sense of how a speaker presents a the space a recording is made in and the Evolutions do not disappoint at all. What is really impressive with these speakers and on this recording is the whispered nursery rhyme over the main mix at the start and the detail that it is presented with. This is as good as I’ve heard at any price…again. Contrabass doesn’t go deep but it is pretty believable and natural sounding and the more I listen to this recording the more enamoured I become of this speaker’s ability to make you feel you are listening to real musicians playing in real space before you…the vocal is truly stunning!

Conclusion 

Single driver loudspeakers live or die by the quality of their drivers and to my mind the Voxativ units used in these speakers are perhaps the best available, though you could save yourself a bob or two and, as mentioned add Lowthers or another brand. I’ve heard these very speakers with the Lowthers and my advice is to save a little harder and get the Voxativs from the get go. I also see the Oris 500 front horn as being an essential element of the speaker and much preferred the presentation with is on.

If you listen to mainly jazz or small scale classical music then you should seriously consider these speakers. They are stunning in the amount of detail and insight they afford the listener with this kind of music. Vocals are delivered in such an organic, natural, believable and realistic way that it is very easy to forgive the speakers shortcomings in the very lower registers.

Soundstaging has scale and depth and whilst these speakers certainly don’t disappear, you are presented with a wholly believable and realistic portrayal of the performance. Just play the DSD version of Jazz at the Pawn Shop on the Evolutions and you will understand immediately what I am batting on about…you really do feel like you are part of the audience.

Techno and hard rock fans may want to look elsewhere, but once you accept that you aren’t going to get trouser flapping basslines you get in a nigh club, you just fall into the music in a way that is hard to describe but very easy to fall in love with. If I wasn’t a bass junky, I put this down to years of Djing and playing in Dub reggae bands, I’d have these speakers in a heartbeat for the sheer wonderfulness of their mid band and the effortless way they bring the music to you.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality: Very solid and well built

Sound Quality: Impeccable in the mid and top frequencies but don’t expect trouser flapping bass

Value For Money: You are getting a lot of speaker for your money here but save harder for the Voxativ drivers

Pros:

Stunning Mid and top frequencies

Well built and impressive looking

Detailed, fast and organic presentation

Cons:

Don’t do very low bass.

Price:  

From €9990

Stuart Smith

McIntosh has introduced the MXA80 Integrated Audio System. Amplifier, preamplifier and speakers all in one.

The MXA80 Integrated Audio System is the next generation of the MXA70. It maintains the same compact footprint and functionality while adding support for DSD and DXD digital music files thanks to a new digital-to-analogue converter (DAC).

The MXA80 features a 50 watt stereo amplifier and a pair of specially designed 2-way desktop speakers. A total of six inputs, 4 digital and 2 analogue, allows for connecting a variety of music sources. The USB input accepts PCM signals up to 32-bit/384kHz and supports DSD64, DSD128 and DSD256 along with DXD 352.8kHz and DXD 384kHz. Our exclusive MCT input offers a secure DSD connection to enjoy the high definition audio on SACDs when paired with the MCT450 SACD/CD Transport. A dedicated headphone amplifier is available for those times when the user wants to listen to their music more intimately. It takes advantage of several McIntosh technologies. Headphone Crossfeed Director (HXD®) brings added dimension to the music while Power Guard® prevents clipping that could damage the speakers or headphones. A 5 step Bass Boost Control allows for further tonal customisation.

The MXA80’s compact size makes it a system for an office, bedroom or vacation house. Combine it with the similarly-sized MB50 Streaming Audio Player and MP100 Phono Preamplifier to form the basis of a complete audio system. The amplifier is housed in a polished stainless steel chassis that compliments the classic glass front panel, knobs and brushed aluminium end caps; the speakers come with a high gloss piano black finish.

Pricing and Availability

McIntosh are now accepting orders for the MXA80 with shipping expected to begin in April. Suggested retail price (VAT, shipping and any customs duties related to current standards of individual countries are excluded): $6,000 USD

Dan Worth takes a listen to the Russell K Red 50 standmount loudspeakers costing from £975.

“I say ‘come on Russ we are going to have to push’ and out we get. So now imagine the scene, it’s pouring with rain, freezing cold, slippery and muddy, there’s a black and blue manufacturer and a blind man trying to push a van out of its muddy ditch – Monday bloody Monday’s! Could we get free, could we hell, so Russ and Dom swap roles and finally we break free of natures grasp. Russ will argue that it was due to his driving skills but personally I think it was down to Dominic’s brute strength!…”

Read the full review here

Audiovector are based in Denmark and produce a wide range of loudspeakers? Here Dominic March takes a listen to their £750 QR1 standmount with ribbon tweeter. 

When the stand mount speaker market has plenty of competition and rivals to fight amongst themselves, it takes something a little bit special to stand out from the herd.  All of them however have limitations due to their physical cabinet and driver sizes, so invariably have to perform with a whole host of compromises and we as consumers have to decide which of those are acceptable to us and which are not.  Every once in a while I find a product that defies the odds and if there are any compromises being made, then I really am not really aware of them, because the package as a whole exceeds the sum of it’s parts.

For those of you that are not familiar with the Audiovector brand, they are in fact one of Denmark’s leading speaker manufacturers, up there with the likes of Dali, Dynaudio and B&O, headquartered in Copenhagen.

Audiovector also provide what I think is a rare and rather unique service for it’s customer base and that is to offer a full upgrade service for your existing base level speakers to the higher specified version of the same model.

Under test here then is Audiovector’s compact QR1 loudspeaker.

Construction

The very first thing I noticed about these speakers when unpacking them is just how handsome they are.   With a high gloss black cabinet they were impressive at first sight, but when I removed the grilles they looked even smarter still, with a light gunmetal coloured chassis ring to the bass driver and what appeared to be gold coloured screen mesh sitting in front of the Air Motion Tweeter’s delicate ribbon membrane, which Audiovector have termed an “S Stop Filter” which in plain English is purposely designed to minimise sibilance.  The mid/bass driver is a 150mm concave dish shape with no central dust cap.  Material is said to be an aluminium sandwich with a fibre and foam filling.

Both the bass driver and ribbon tweeter frames are laser etched with the word “Audiovector”, so if aesthetics are important to you then the QR1’s will do very nicely on that front as they have a quality air to them.  Beneath the drivers sits an elongated slot type of reflex port, extending almost the full width of the front baffle.

Cabinet dimensions are 32,5H x 19W x 23,2D (CM), weigh in at 6.2Kg and much to my surprise are fitted with four small rubber feet so shelf mounting or indeed stand mounting is as simple as placing the speakers where you want them and there is no sliding about or damage to the underside of the speakers – especially so when sited on metal framed stands.

To the rear we find a single pair of well made high quality binding posts that accepts bare wire, 4mm banana plugs or spade connectors.

Price at time of review is £750.00 retail.

Sound Quality

As befitting their good looks, so too are the Audiovector QR1’s are up to the mark regarding sound quality.

They are extraordinarily unfussy about placement.  While installing them into my system they ended up perched on top of their boxes while I re-arranged my entire rack.  This being a lengthy process I had a break half way through the task with a cup of tea and a biscuit and casually connected the QR1’s exactly as they were sat on their boxes.  Conventional wisdom says that being too low, on top of hollow wobbly cardboard boxes, one speaker near the rear wall the other two feet out, one facing dead ahead into the room and the other around 45 degrees facing the other way, should by rights  not sound pleasant at all but pleasant indeed they sounded and they actually imaged rather well!  Once correctly installed on to 60cm steel stands and sited around 30cm from the back wall with a slight toe in, they sounded superb, especially imaging and sound-staging which was both wide and deep.  Running in period was surprisingly short too, at around 20 hours or so as I recall.

I will use the words “uncoloured”, “lithe” and “precise” to describe their overall sound characteristics, which might lead you to think they are lean or thin sounding, but not so.  They also have a fair measure of deep bass for their size and for once isn’t hidden behind an artificial uplift in upper bass to give you that perception there is more bass than there actually is in reality.  Indeed, I would say the bass extends down below 45Hz that Audiovector claim for the QR1, albeit well rolled off but still easily discernable and this I prefer much more than the upper bass “hump” put there on purpose to fool you into believing the lowest registers are being rendered when they are not.

Midband is free from any congestion or bloom and having the crossover point between bass driver and tweeter at 3kHz is no doubt largely responsible for this accuracy and cleanliness.

The AMT tweeter is a real peach in my view, because while it maintains accuracy to a high level, it never spills over into harshness or brittleness, unless of course it is there in the recording to begin with.  I do have some recordings with some sibilance and the “S Stop Filter” did a grand job of reducing the effect considerably, but not eliminating it entirely.

Time to play some music to get a handle on the QR1’s performance envelope.  Into the CD drawer (none of this new fangled streaming malarkey for Dominic during a review) went Fink’s ‘Wheels Beneath My Feet’ live album which has a clearly defined set of benchmarks that any component must either match or exceed.

Track two called ‘Perfect Darkness’ has some intro bars with bass provided by the bass guitarist and drummer on his kick drum, plus some very crisp rim shots on the snare drum.  I pay close attention to the reflex port to make sure it isn’t chuffing away in time with the bass and the QR1’s were not so afflicted.  A definitve and cleanly portrayed “tock” sound as the drummer was hitting the snare drum with rim shots, not only that but I could also clearly hear the shell of the drum and the ambience of those rim shots ringing out into the venue too.  You could also tell that the drummer has a hard faced beater on the kick drum with some good heft behind it.  Beautiful.  So free flowing and natural, a real joy to listen to and I could have easily bathed in that sound for many hours without fatigue.

Moving on to track 12 called “Sort of Revolution” the initial intro bars are a bass guitar solo with the audience clapping and cheering in time, which carries on throughout the whole track.  It has to be propulsive and engaging, in perfect time and rhythm to be fully appreciated, dare I say it, toe tapping too.  This was no test at all for the Audiovector QR1’s, it was their playground and they just drew you further and further into the music itself without you even realising it.

I played some jazz, orchestral, acoustic and a film score too with equally engaging results, so they are suitable for most genres of music.

Conclusion

Here is a small challenge for you; if you know of a good looking, good sounding and highly specified stand mount speaker with an AMT ribbon tweeter for £750.00 or less, then kindly let me know. As I cannot think of one that meets all of those criteria.

If therefore you have a hankering for a really great stand mount speaker and around £750.00 burning a hole in your pocket, then it would be unwise to make any decision on which speaker to buy without giving the Audiovector QR1 a hearing at the very least, so do make sure it is on your audition shortlist.

I found them to be engaging, enthralling and entertaining all at the same time and not many speakers have that level of capability, especially in this fiercely contested sub-£1,000 price bracket.

On that basis then I have no hesitation in giving them my recommendation.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  Superbly built and finished, with a top notch ribbon tweeter fitted as standard no less.  They have become my new benchmark in this price range

Sound Quality:  Detailed, clean and transparent, with no colouration.  Bass won’t shake your ornaments off the sideboard with sheer power, but the bass is deep and well controlled

Value For Money:  For me they are at the top of the tree for their £750.00 asking price

Pros: 

Peerless build quality, stunning looks and fantastic sound to boot.  You will love the tweeter for sure

Cons: 

None at this price

Price: £750

Dominic Marsh

The €24000 Aequo Audio Ensis hails from The Netherlands and has an innovative and interesting design. Stuart and Linette Smith try them with Dutch Techno.

“OK, I’m well aware that very few people are going to be listening to gabba on a set of speakers that costs this much money and it’s rather likely that I’m in a small minority of people who “get” this genre and so, as we always do when reviewing any piece of kit, a wide and varied selection of music was listened to. On acoustic music there is a real feel for the instruments and their timbre with Baden Powell’s nylon strung guitar sounding as lifelike as I’ve heard. There is just so much detail evident in the music when listening with the Ensis loudspeaker, but this doesn’t come with an over analytical or fatiguing character; you could listen to these all day and not feel you were overloaded…”

Read the full review here

Ziro is headed up by Adam Fairless but he’s not letting on what’s inside the little black box on his Disclosure power cable. Dominic Marsh and Dan Worth attempt unravel the mystery of this £900 power chord. 

Ziro Audio is a new company who say they have spent a lot of time and money on research before launching their products onto the market.  So when Adam Fairless at Ziro Audio sent me one of the best one-liners I’ve had so far in an email by saying “I will let the cables do the talking” it was a sure sign he had confidence in his products. 

There is no such thing as the “perfect” cable and my approach to the subject is to work from the bottom upwards by observing that an upgrade cable that sounds “better” is in actual fact “less imperfect” than the cable it replaces.  If your starting point is the ubiquitous given away for free three ampere rated IEC computer lead, then substituting a “better” sounding lead as a replacement, only means it is “less imperfect” than the lead it has just replaced and that applies to all aftermarket mains leads in that broad scale, whether they cost £10.00 or £10,000 the principle is exactly the same when applied logically in the way I suggest.

There are many hundreds of cable manufacturers in the marketplace all claiming to be the best ever and my job as a reviewer is to put that assertion to the test, so herewith below is my perceptions of the Ziro Audio Disclosure mains power cord.

Construction

Standard length of their Disclosure power cord is 1.25 metres and the sample supplied for review was that same length.  The actual length of the cable itself was sufficient to easily reach from the wall socket to my MS Audio distribution block, but there is a rather large and heavy oblong aluminium cased module situated half way along its length.  My mains sockets in the listening room are around a metre off the floor so either the module was suspended by the cable, or I had to support it in some way.  I found a sturdy cardboard box which supported the module and relieved the strain on the cable.  I am advised that the module can be sited anywhere along the length of the cable which should be clearly specified when ordering.

I have reviewed cables with modules built in (Audiomica Ness Excellence as I recall) before and if the manufacturer deems it wise to reveal what’s inside their modules then all well and good, but if the manufacturer decides not to reveal the internal workings, then I don’t ask and I don’t tamper with anything either, it remains a mystery then and so the Ziro Audio Disclosure power cord remains in that latter band.  As long as it works as claimed, then it could contain cold porridge for all it matters to me.

I suppose though the closest competitor to the Disclosure power cable is the Vertex AQ Roramia which has an outwardly similar design.  Neither manufacturer though is giving anything away regarding their construction details, so it’s a moot point whether they compare directly or indirectly in price or performance terms so I will not dwell on this.

The cable itself is around 14mm in diameter and surprisingly flexible for its size.  Conductors within the Disclosure models are said to be 3 x 2.08mm of high purity silver in a twisted configuration.  The cable has an outer sheath covering of a multi-coloured fabric weave pattern.  At either end of the module the cable enters and exits via metal gland fasteners.  With regards to terminations, the review sample had Furutech connectors at each end, with a bottom entry FI-UK-N1G 1363-L  3 pin UK plug fitted, with a FI-11 IEC socket at the component end.

Price at time of review:  £900.00 for the standard 1.25 metre length.

Ziro Audio also produce the “Tranzient” range which has a similar outward appearance to the Disclosure range, but use copper and silver plated copper for their conductors and substitute Wattgate connectors instead of the Furutech connectors.  Naturally, the Tranzient power cord costs significantly less than the Disclosure power cord equivalent and is priced at £370.00 for the standard 1.25 metre length.

Sound Quality

When I received the Disclosure power cord I was stuck in a quandary while evaluating a pair of loudspeakers, which I couldn’t quite summarise accurately and was rather perturbed by that.  I don’t normally add new components to my system during an evaluation in case it confuses matters and what drove me to it is still beyond comprehension, but in this instance I did so and I am very pleased that I made that decision.

What was to me a vague, loose and indistinct bass from these particular speakers suddenly became  perfectly controlled and I mean PERFECTLY controlled in every sense.  Treble acquired a stunning realism, with copious amounts of inner fine details and macrodynamics not heard before and as for midrange, that was free from any congestion or bloom whatsoever, bass both powerful and highly communicative, a total joy to listen to.  I simply had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t imagining what I was hearing and to be sure I swapped back to my resident power cable several times to check – I might add and there was no comparison.   I could actually hear shapes, timbres and textures from every single note from the Disclosure cable and trust me, I have never heard ANY mains cable do that to this degree before now.  Yes, I have had a touch of firmer and tighter bass before with a lessening of boom, perhaps wider and/or deeper imaging too, yes I have had a cleaning up of midrange bloom, a quieter background and perhaps a touch more definition in the treble regions from other (read expensive here) mains cable confections, but never all of these factors added together as a whole and never to such a degree as the Disclosure cable was giving me.  I fell in love instantly.  With a mere power cable?

The sound became so natural, effortless and accurate but not in a sterile or monotone way.  Dynamics and transients maintained superb contrasts and acquired razor sharp acceleration.  I might have  expected some sibilance artefacts or some intolerance of poor recordings, but even that wasn’t manifested, at least not exacerbated because a bad recording remained so, just it seemed to irritate me less than at any time before.  Now that was impressive to say the least.

To illustrate this point I played Porcupine Tree’s “Deadwing” album which has plenty of raw edges to it and can often induce some real wince moments at high volumes.  It was no different with the Disclosure power cord installed, it sounded even more wince inducing, but strangely enough found some content I had not heard before that took me completely by surprise in the form of hearing each guitar string during the rough chords and the drummer stayed clearly focused throughout the title track which my experience says is very hard to achieve.  At 6 minutes 42 seconds there is a long low bass note that goes way down the registers and seems to roll out of the speaker and advance across the carpet towards you in a rolling motion, but in this listening session it was even more accentuated than I have heard before.  None of this album was rolled off, masked, or muted by the Disclosure power cord.

Of course I also played my reference CD in the form of Fink’s “Wheels Beneath My Feet” live album.  That was a real feast for the ears with a constant stream of newly revealed details and a powerful, deep and articulate bass that left me utterly bewitched.  I could have listened to the same CD all night long, it was that enjoyable, overflowing with vitality yet still non-fatiguing.

At that point though some questions were beginning to run through my mind; was this some sort of chance event only happening with my system in the current configuration?  I had to find out more.

Out went the evaluation speakers and in went my resident speakers which of course I know their performance intimately.  Same result, they took on another dimension of neutrality, refinement and exquisite detail, the bass became much more powerful and communicative.  I had toyed with the idea of replacing them soon, but they are staying now I have experienced what their true capabilities are.  On I pressed, connecting up a pair of Roksan TR-5 stand mount speakers which I have the kind use of courtesy of Roksan and they too moved up a gear or two in sound quality and a pair of Audiovector QR-1 stand mounts also gave more performance than I ever heard from them before.  As I write this review I have a pair of Melodika BL40 floorstanding loudspeakers submitted for review, currently playing Peter Gabriel’s Real World album and they are sounding utterly sublime, way beyond expectations and almost rediscovering the whole album from scratch.

This was of course just one Disclosure mains cable alone fitted to my mains block feeding the entire system and another question that will haunt me now is how would another 3 more Disclosures fitted to my CD player, pre-amp and power amplifier bring to the party?  Past experience suggests more gains and I would relish the opportunity to put that to a test.

The Ziro Audio Disclosure mains cable had an even bigger challenge than any of this to face which is, can it impress my fellow reviewer Dan Worth?  Dan has a more sophisticated system than I have, plus he has mains enhancements that I don’t have in the form of dedicated mains spurs and balanced power supplies. We meet regularly so I took the Disclosure cable over with me during one visit and I will let Dan give you his verdict in his own words.

Conclusion

If you are not convinced that an upgrade mains cable can have a truly profound effect on a hifi system’s performance then I have no wish to debate the issue because I have heard first hand what this cable’s real capabilities are.  If you are open minded and a true music afficianado, then I do urge you to audition one and then decide for yourself.  I reckon you will be equally as impressed as I am.

I have over the years both heard and owned a vast range of power cords into the many hundreds in number, ranging from just a few pounds well up into the five figures league.  The overwhelming majority have given pretty small improvements in sound quality ranging from the barely perceptible to easily heard improvements in different areas of the audible spectrum.  Some have given a firmer bass and sweeter treble, a lower noise floor too, better sound-staging and combinations thereof.  What I can say for sure is the Ziro Audio Disclosure cable is a top notch music making component which leaves others way behind and you should set aside your own scepticism at least long enough to give it a hearing.  If my editor ever asks me to nominate my personal Product Of The Year, this could well be it for me, as it had a major and highly profound effect on the way my system sounded and I am still reeling from knowing that a mere power cable had achieved that.

The big question though is would Dominic put his hand in his pocket to buy it?  Without any hesitation is my truthful answer.  I will be haunted for eternity by that magical sound when it is returned to Ziro Audio, so if I don’t buy one I will surely rue the day of not doing so.  Building a special shelf behind my rack for the module to sit on is but a small price to pay when this much performance is on tap.

It isn’t cheap, but anything that has this much quality never is and I’m sure I will live well without one of my kidneys to raise the necessary cash, as my street busking skills are truly appalling.  I jest not.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  Good rather than exceptional, but the connectors make up on lost ground here.

Sound Quality:  In one word; Peerless.

Value For Money:  Given the performance level available, it is very good value. 

Pros: 

Phenomenal sound quality and there wouldn’t be much incentive to upgrade either.

Cons:

The module is a pain to house sensibly because of it’s size and weight.  My own solution would be to put up a special shelf to accommodate it behind the rack.  Minor inconvenience.

Price £900

Dominic Marsh

While Dominic appears to be impressed by the performance of the Ziro Audio Disclosure power cable, to be even considered as nominee for an Outstanding Product Award by Hifi Pig, any product must pass the scrutiny of a second reviewer, in this instance Dan Worth puts the Ziro Audio Disclosure to the test and here is his verdict:

Dom has been wonderfully accurate with the vague description given to him of the Disclosure power cable from Ziro Audio, however I was able to dig a little deeper, well in a continued manner of vagueness. The cable is constructed using a few carefully selected diameter strands of ultra pure silver which is softly annealed to allow for a very finely tuned frequency response and tonal balance. Which in turn allows for better flexibility of the cable to its single overall gauge counterpart. Conductors are wrapped in natural materials rather than man made plastics and the connectors are by Furutech,

Adam Fairless will allow customers to specify specific Furutech plugs of their preference as he does the position of the magic box. Personally I prefer the non-plated versions of the Furutech plugs and after Dominic brought the Disclosure power cable over for my attention I promptly ordered three more with all Cu plugs fitted – I find them to be a more cohesive listen with less of a ‘wispyness’ in the upper frequency extremes over my years of tweaking.

The magic box itself (or whatever you wish to call it) has a three pronged topology applied to it, what these topologies are will not be revealed and rightly so, if I had spent a few years developing a product that has a lot of money invested into it, and of course time, I wouldn’t be eager to divulge its implementation to the masses, so no hard feelings there.

Overall build Quality is very nice indeed and the soft cottony feel to the cable is a little more luxurious to the standard nylon braids regularly used, overall presentation of the product and its packaging is really nice looking.

The Sound

As for the sound of the Ziro Audio Disclosure power cable, I was extremely impressed and after Dom and I had our first joint listening tests, we both whole heartedly agreed that we would be inclined to pursue the cable further on the basis that an Outstanding Product Award was very likely to be awarded by us.

Performance in my system and his was exemplary and in this world of Hifi very reasonable price wise.  I have been very intimately drawn to the characteristics of the cables performance and attributes. A refined, effortless, smooth and detailed presentation ticked all the boxes for both myself and Dom.

I have never in all my time heard a pure silver cable which sounds so natural, smooth and detailed; there’s generally some gripes with any silver cable which becomes a trade off to other positive aspects, but I don’t hear this in the Disclosure cable.  Needless to say after Dominic left on the Friday afternoon’s listening tests I spoke with Mr Fairless to arrange a few more samples for my system.

I initially placed one from my balanced power supply to the wall socket and changed it out to the amp, then after further listening added another to the BMU again. The effects of one, especially on the amplifier was more profound in my system than the additional, yet further power cables only seemed to enhance system qualities and firm up my registered feelings on performance, giving real solidity to bass and allowing the soundstage to increase in size and texture.

Bass notes are firm, expressive and wonderfully extended. During initial burn in of say 48 hours if I was to be critical there was a slight smearing between the lower mids and upper bass but this soon cleaned up to reveal the skin of the drum being hit on London Grammar’s “Hey Now”.

Generally  when auditioning cables an initial focal point is the top end, too bright, too rolled off, thick or thin, how spacious etc., etc. The Ziro requires no focus as it simply lays out incredible amounts of definition and air to the listener with a beautifully sweet treble which is satisfying from the outset, I was truly impressed straight out of the box with the treble response, allowing the listener an ease of appreciation and for the sound to blossom over the burning in period, which surprisingly isn’t as long as most cables, or maybe it’s just that they sound so good out of the box that satisfaction begins immediately and the distraction of analysing becomes replaced by the enjoyment of the music.

Midrange transparency is also very natural, the cable allows the performance to remain somewhat truer to the recording and can really determine a clean, warm or gritty tracks soul very well, especially with vocals, I don’t hear any colouration in the midrange at all and it’s neutral yet full nature is very accurate and has great substance, cohesively integrating surrounding frequencies without masking inner details or focus.

As a whole and I think Dom would agree, sound-staging really is a strong point with the Ziro, large and complex, even front to back and the rhythmic nature of a system is never lost in an over manufactured overly clean display, everything sounds just so effortless and engrossingly musical, which has to be the deciding factor surely when buying any piece of Hifi equipment or accessories. The attachment to the music is paramount and the Ziro Audio Disclosure power cable doesn’t just tread the line between Hifi and musicality (which is often lost in translation) it does an awful lot to help define it, so well done guys, it was a pleasure.

Sound Quality: One of my most favourite power cables to date resulting in me ordering a couple.

Build Quality: very good indeed, substantial, sturdy and flexible.

Value for Money: this is Hifi, so in that respect I say really very good indeed, the quality of materials is right up there, I see cables costing many times more that probably don’t cost even half to make.

Pros:

Unmistakably natural coherent musical sound

Beautifully sweet treble

Great build quality

Cons:

Inline box can be a little unwieldy so measure and order the cable with placement of the unit in mind

Dan Worth

Lab 12 are based in Greece and that is where they handcraft all their products. Here Stuart Smith takes a listen to their pre 1 valve preamplifier costing €1440 and their knack power cable costing a further €210.

We’ve been using the Lab 12 gordian power conditioner for a little over a year now and it has been the one bit of kit that has simply been fit and forget; it’s set to auto and just gets on with its thing 24/7.  So, when Vichos Stratos asked us if we’d like to review the Greek company’s unassuming looking valve preamp costing a modest €1440 I jumped at the opportunity.

Internally Lab 12 uses a matched pair of E88CC valves along with a solid state power supply with four separate regulation stages for each channel. pre 1 is fully dual mono and uses the company’s trademarked “Fine Symmetry” in every part of the circuit. MKP audio grade capacitors and resistors are used and are selected to be accurate to 0.1%. You can order the pre 1 in matt black or in pearl white, but special orders can be accommodated.

The pre 1 has the same clean and simple lines of the rest of the company’s products and I like the way it sits on the rack. The front panel has an input selector, a motorised volume knob (ALPS Blue Velvet), five red LEDs down the left hand side to show which source is selected and in the centre of the panel is an LED showing power is on and a further pair of LEDs to tell you that the left and right channels are working. On start up left and right channel indicators blink slowly until the unit is ready to go and this takes around a minute from start up.
Round the back you have two sets of outputs (both RCA on this version, but the latest version comes with one RCA and one XLR) and five RCA inputs. Then there is the IEC input and the power switch. Included in the box is a simple Lab 12 branded remote control which can adjust volume, change input and mute the preamp. You can also turn the unit on and off from the remote. The remote is a bit plasticky but is functional and better in build quality than some remotes I’ve had on kit costing a lot more than this moderately priced pre. The pre 1 comes with a five year warranty which is very reassuring. 

Listening 

I’m a big believer in putting gear we get for review into a system that is relevant from a cost perspective and so with this in mind the pre 1 was partnered with a Nord power amp, Leema Xen speakers and a Nova Fidelity player. Cables were from Tellurium Q, Chord and Atlas made up the power cables, other than the power for the pre 1 which was Lab 12s own knack 2. Interestingly I found that that the preamplifier performed at its best with their own cable, though I’ve no idea why this should be …I have had the same experience with powering the Gordian unit and I would suggest that when considering buying the pre 1 you factor in a further €210 to the buying price.
Lab 12 suggest a burn in period of 200 hours but straight out of the box it is pretty clear that this is a good sounding unit but critical listening was left until the suggested period had lapsed.
Being a valve pre I had expected at least some background noise but this is very quiet indeed (pretty much silent) and proved to be a great match for the Hypex moduled Nord power amp…you can turn the volume up pretty much full whack and there be nothing in the background.
Bowie’s Five Years is a good track to start things off with and the opening drums are crisp, dry and correctly placed around the soundstage and there is very good detail throughout the rest of the song. There is the misplaced assumption amongst many that valve amplifiers inherently add warmth to the mix, but with the Lab 12 this is just not the case and words that spring to mind are neutral and dry, though Lab 12 do mention warmth on their website…I’m just not getting that at all with this combo. If you are looking for a pre that does add warmth and bloom then perhaps you should look elsewhere as the pre 1 just doesn’t add much of its own character…Lab 12 do use the word analytical in describing the pre 1 and I would go along with this wholeheartedly without suggesting it is hard or cold sounding.
Jon Martyn’s Solid Air has good weight and speed to the bass and there is plenty of detail coming through the mix. I switch out the pre 1 for our reference pre and whilst there is more space around instruments and a better feeling of texture in the performance we are not comparing like for like price-wise, with our preamplifier costing four or five times what the Pre 1 costs.

So, the Pre 1 can do relatively simple acoustic tunes, you know, the kind of thing that gets played at shows to show off a system to its best, but regular readers will know we are techno junkies at HIfi Pig Towers and so I reach for the remix of Juno Reactor’s The Golden Sun. This is pretty complex music with lots going on in the mix but the Lab 12 certainly doesn’t disappoint. The mix is portrayed very well with sounds coming from the right places in the mix and with mids and particularly tops being very well presented and with lots of space and an etched like quality to the stereo image. Again, switching to the reference you are rewarded with a bigger and more detailed sound but to be honest there is not a great deal in it.

The pre 1 is fast, with bass stopping and starting where it should and, as previously stated is a great match for the Class D amp we partnered it with; just the right side of analytical without being tiring on the ears. We’re lucky enough to have a Trafomatic 2A3 amp at our disposal and I’m well aware that there are going to be folk out there who will want a full valve set up for whatever reason and so we team the pre 1 with this and our Avantgarde Duo XD loudspeakers that use active bass. The pre 1 should feel well out of its league sonically but it just doesn’t and were I not used to the extra detail and better staging of our reference I could quite happily live with this in the main system. There isn’t the absolute level of detail that I’m used to but you are certainly treated to a beautiful performance and getting to the point of splitting hairs to quibble. Neil Young’s Old Man has the vocal projected well into the room and with enough feel for the recording for it to be very believable indeed.

Conclusion 

The Pre 1 from Lab 12 offers a seriously strong performance that belies its relatively modest price-point. It is not absolutely neutral but offers up a dry, clean and detailed performance that many, including myself, will really enjoy. Micro-details aren’t as evident as with our reference but at this asking price it is hard to quibble with what you are offered sonically.

The unit is very, very quiet and has enough gain to drive the three watts of the Trafomatic 2A3 amp we played with to realistic levels when turned only half way up. The quietness of the Lab 12 pre 1 is a major selling point for me as silences in music are often as important as the music and quieter passages are allowed to flow nicely against this background.
Build quality is good throughout and whilst the looks aren’t going to wow those long for glitz and glamour it is a handsome enough beast… in a minimalist kind of way. Bear in mind the all important five year warranty!

I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending this product and whilst it is not bargain basement in price, it does punch above its weight sonically.

AT A GLANCE 

Sound Quality: Dry and clean performer with low background noise allowing more of the music to come to the fore

Build Quality: Solid build and understated looks

Value For Money: Very good performance for the money and should be on your audition list if looking for a preamplifier in this price range, though you should also factor in the knack power cable which I think is essential. Even then this offers seriously good value 

Pros:

Solid sonic performance

Good build

Ample inputs

Included remote 

Cons:

Lacks the absolute detail of our reference

Need to factor in the knack cable to the price 

Price:

pre 1 – €1440

lack 2 – €210

Stuart Smith

RDacoustic are based in the Czech Republic and we first came across them at High End Munich where their Evolution loudspeakers were being powered by KR Audio amplifiers being fed by a 440 Audio turntable…all Czech brands. The Evolution loudspeakers are a single driver design using a backloaded horn and cost from €9990. 

“The Evolutions are an imposing back loaded horn loudspeaker standing 180 cm high, weigh 75Kg a piece and come in a variety of real wood finishes, embellished on the front baffle with artificial leather; again the customer can choose the colour. Evolution is a single driver loudspeaker with no crossover and you can choose between Voxativ, Lowther, Enviee and a few other 8” drivers. Our review pair came with what I think is the pick of the crop, the Voxativ and the Oris 500 front horn, which is designed to boost frequencies above 500Hz by 3dB…”

Read the full review here

Tune Audio will be at High End Munich next month…

Read the full story here

The Atmo Sfera Platterless turntable certainly raised a few eyebrows on social media when we announced we would be reviewing it, it’s just like nothing else out there! Ian Ringstead checks out this Italian oddity costing £3500 including arm and cartridge. 

I first heard about this unique design when I saw the press release for it on Hifi Pigs news pages (dated 31^st March 2016). The date is significant because as the following day was the first of April, I immediately thought it was an April fool’s day wind up. This is not a criticism of the design but my reaction to such a radically different looking turntable and approach to achieve high end sound. On first seeing the turntable I thought what on earth was the designer Paolo Caviglia thinking of when he came up with the concept? To look at, it reminded me of a tower crane (which represents the arm and cartridge) next to a domed building such as the Sistine Chapel in Rome. The model I received for review was in a fetching gold and black finish with an Ortofon Quintet Bronze moving coil cartridge.

The Atmo Sfera has been funded by a Kickstarter project (95 backers pledged €61,509 to help bring this project to life).

Putting Things Into Context.

Having attended The Munich High End Show last year I was amazed by the plethora of extraordinary turntable designs on show and the incredible prices of some which were gargantuan in size and price (£100,000 plus). Now I have seen many designs of turntables over the last 45 years and some have been truly incredible to look at and listen to. Ira Gale’s Perspex turntable from the seventies was a sight to behold and then the amazing Oracle Delphi, which I had the pleasure of selling and setting up for a customer in the eighties with a Fidelity Research FR-64S tone arm and Koetsu Black moving coil cartridge. (Nice !!!!) Oracle burst on the scene in 1979 with the Delphi turntable, and to many, set a new benchmark for analogue playback. The Oracle also blazed a new trail for turntable aesthetics; its open suspended chassis and clear acrylic plinth dramatically contrasted with those of the then-voguish British turntables. The audio magazines loved it. After forking out £2,000 and adding a tonearm, many listeners (including yours truly) found themselves in analogue bliss. However, back then, £2,000 represented a lot of money to spend on a turntable; my first house was only worth £15,000 in 1982.

The Design Philosophy.

Atmo sfera literally means steam and sphere. The idea behind the name is therefore an analogy of the design where the cup and clamp form the sphere and the steam is the air supporting the record. Modern design and materials allow the designer to think out of the box far more than they ever imagined they could a couple of decades or so ago. To revolutionize the classic turntable design with all its drawbacks, such as heavy weight, size, playing mechanism and vulnerability to vibration and to achieve the highest sound quality, Audio Deva, the company behind the Atmo Sfera concentrated on only the key components, using high-quality materials.

The result is an engineering masterpiece producing playback audio quality, that Audio Deva feels surpasses even the most sought after turntables. In the Atmo Sfera turntable there are no gimmicky accessories, it is solely focused on music-making components.

The Atmo Sfera Turntable is designed primarily for being a beautiful piece of design and is fully designed around a small circle (the design originator), with the diameter of an LP label. This gives to Atmo Sfera a shape directly related to its function. Audio Deva didn’t create a platterless turntable for the sake of the platterless design, but the creation of the platterless design was a side effect of creating a beautiful turntable. The Atmo Sfera shape is not, however, primarily dictated by the designer’s taste, but it is ruled by the technical and sonic features they had in mind.

“The first design rule of a mechanical or electrical engineer should be: if it is made of an elastic material, it stores energy…

…and the second rule is: if it stores energy, it releases such energy, sooner or later.” Say the company, continuing “The uncontrolled energy, stored and released, causes distortion of the sound, in an average turntable. Mass is one way to try and control the sound in a turntable, but the concept of (huge) mass in a turntable is completely meaningless, unless you consider also how this mass is distributed. Damping is another method, but damping actually means spreading the stored energy of the physical body all around the audio spectrum, with bad results”.

So, how is the Atmo Sfera different: Every man-made turntable has an elastic behaviour, so Audio Deva chose to put all “resonances” (the effects of the energy release) in a part of the audio band in which they cannot be very harmful.

First thing first: they chose to make the entire Atmo Sfera body in Anticorodal aluminium; aluminium is stiff and has a pretty isotropic structure; the behaviour of the aluminium is fully predictable. Second, but a very important, issue: the shape of the turntable base and of the LP disc support are designed to show a series of natural vibration modes far away from the audio band or from the vinyl resonances.

Take, for example, the small reverse cup that holds the vinyl record: the cup and the record screw down clamp form a hemisphere, that is a solid with controlled and predictable vibration modes. Audio Deva fix the turntable motor directly to the base, without the use of damping material.

Next step for a turntable design: how to guarantee a rotation free of wow and flutter, especially with a low mass platter which can’t rely on inertia. Audio Deva say the secret is simple: “Imagine you have two different drive belts for your turntable: the first made of rectified silicone rubber, like those used in many British turntables, the second belt made by a rubber band used for closing small packets. Should an audiophile choose one of them for his turntable, he will undoubtedly choose the rectified silicone rubber belt without any doubt”. Paolo Caviglia, instead, chose the rubber band, because it helped him get the results he was after.

Audio Deva really tested the rectified silicone etc. against a rubber band and the rubber band performed better in their design, from a point of view of wow and flutter ratio.

The arm is another interesting part of the design which is different to any other arm I have seen or used. Audio Deva are very serious about this design and are keen to make use of the turntable and arm as simple as possible. This means the arm generally comes set up for use by the dealer and is a plug and play design where all the end user has to do is plug it into their system, place a record on the mini platter, screw the clamp down and place the stylus on the record. The arm has no obvious means for adjustments (as this is done by the dealer after the relevant training) and Audio Deva don’t supply any instructions for the customer to try it themselves. I asked Duncan Saul of Intimate Audio, the UK importer why this was the case? He replied that Audio Deva felt that the customer shouldn’t have to worry about set up as most customers expect or are happy to let their dealer do this for them. As a very experienced turntable installer I would have liked to have been able to experiment myself, but I respect Audio Deva’s approach as they want to take all the hard work out of the equation for the customer, who should just enjoy the end results. One of the first things I observed about the arm is that there is no cueing device or obvious arm rest. Instead the user must manually place the stylus on the record and take it off at the end. So, steady hands are an absolute must. The arm is cleverly held in the rest position by a magnet built into a second pillar behind the main arm pillar that holds the arm securely. At first this seems strange, but with use I soon got the hang of it.

The record clamp which is a critical part of the decks design and function is beautifully engineered and screws down on to the record via the threaded centre spindle. This isn’t a new idea of course, but it was at this point that I got frustrated because the finger hold on the clamp is very smooth with just two small groove cut into its vertical surface for grip. Now I haven’t got large fingers by any means but I found gripping and screwing the clamp on or off quite a fiddly process and once off I had to be careful not to drop the clamp. I spoke to Duncan about this issue and he came up with a solution by sending me a couple of rubber O-rings that fitted very snuggly into the grooves on the clamp and made gripping and using it far more practical. I applaud beautiful design but it needs to be practical. Look at some of the beautiful pieces of furniture out there such as chairs. It’s no good them looking superb if they are terribly uncomfortable to sit in or get out of.

The turntable is actually very compact in size due to the lack of the usual 12”/30cm platter and the plinth supporting the motor, record cup and arm sits on three inverted metal cups with rubber feet that are sprung. The bearing spindle shaft is made from Ergal aka alloy 7075 which has been the standard workhorse 7XXX series alloy within the aerospace industry since 1943.

The power supply is kept separately away from the turntable in either a neat highly machines metal elliptical case or the cheaper plastic box which I had. Connection is made by an RJ45 Ethernet cable. Speed change is on one rocker switch and power on another switch. There is also a power switch on the turntable plinth under the arm assembly. Connection to the amplifier or phono stage is by a separate RCA cable of good quality and length, with a separate fixed earth cable that is terminated with a spade connector. This does mean if you want to experiment with different arm leads you can. I tried my Way silver interconnects and had good results.

That’s the theory and design quirks. Does it work?

The Sound

Everyone I spoke to or who saw the turntable in the flesh said how can it work and it wouldn’t have any bass due to such a small platter and no support for the record. Well how wrong they were!! I was as sceptical as anyone, but as a reviewer I need to be open minded. You must admire the lateral thinking that has gone into this turntable. Duncan Saul of Intimate Audio (The UK Distributor) was so impressed by Audio Deva’s passion and the care and attention they take, that when he went for a factory visit in Italy, he was convinced to import the turntable and distribute it here. Of course, the sound had to be exceptional and Duncan loved what he heard. A light, airy, tight and fast sound is how Duncan summed up the Atmo Sfera      

Once you acclimatise yourself to the presentation it’s rather good. The Ortofon Quintet Bronze supplied (and recommended by Duncan and Audio Deva) is similar in sound to my Quintet Black, so within reason I could compare the Atmo Sfera   against my Project Extension 9, which is about half the price, to see how it faired. The first record I tried was an old favourite, Peter Gabriel’s fourth album. “Shock the Monkey “and “Lay Your Hands On Me “are classic tracks which are both superb musically and have great dynamics. Both turntables turned in a very creditable performance with clear well defined bass and great dynamics on the drums in both tracks. The difference between the turntables wasn’t big considering the price gap. The Project 9 had slightly deeper bass and more slam with a seemingly better extended treble, but the Atmo Sfera was still very clear with well-defined bass, an open midrange and a duller treble. Now these are my observations and I would say the Atmo Sfera has a light and airy sound with good pace, therefore some may perceive this as duller. Whether it’s because it’s controlling the top end better and being less coloured I can’t say. Bearing in mind that the two Ortofon cartridges are different and the top end of the Quintet Black is better, without being able to swop cartridges over, (which wasn’t possible as mentioned earlier) then I suspect both turntables were showing the capabilities of the cartridges faithfully. I know Audio Deva has experimented with many cartridge combinations and they like what the Quintet Bronze does partnered with their turntable.

After the comparison, I concentrated on the Italian job (pun intended) and tried a wide range of music with London Grammar’s double album (45rpm) “If You Wait” and the opening track “Hey Now”. I know this album is an overplayed show favourite due to its excellent recording quality and superb songs, but I really like it and make no excuses for playing it. The haunting lyrics and voice of Hannah Reid really shone and when the bass kicked in I had a big smile on my face. This album was recorded and mixed at several studios, but it really works well as modern digital technology allows artists and engineers to be on different sides of the world and still put a great album together.

I spent a couple of months getting to know the Atmo Sfera and it is not without its quirks. Due to the low mass and inertia of the cup and motor torque the record will start up very quickly and reach speed within a revolution ,whereas my Project takes a few revolutions due to the platter mass. When you try to clean a record with a carbon fibre brush as the record rotates the record will stop rotating unless the pressure of the brush is very light. Also, because there is no platter you can see the record with all its imperfections bobbing up and down as it rotates. No record is perfectly flat as I discovered years ago, and the Atmo Sfera clearly points this out. I must point out that apart from looking peculiar it has no effect on the sound or performance of the arm and cartridge. In fact, I believe the arms clever design aids the tracking ability because the cartridge is mounted below the bearing housing rather than being in line with it when you look at it sideways on. Apparently, Duncan said when he visited the Audio Deva they played a record that looked like a force ten gale at sea as the arm moved up and down so much but still managed to play the record successfully.

If you get over the idiosyncrasies of this design and let’s be honest most high end designs have them (look at Ferrari cars; beautiful to look at and drive brilliantly on the right roads, but are not practical around urban areas in busy traffic or taking the kids and wife shopping, you get my drift), then it offers a radical alternative to other turntable designs. It’s neat and compact, easy to use and requires very little set up.

I admire Audio Deva’s belief in this product and taking a very brave step in designing and manufacturing something out of the ordinary. The turntable comes in a variety of finishes –  base colour black, silver or orange. Accent colour silver or gold.

AT A GLANCE                                                                               

Build Quality:  Excellent precision engineering beautifully finished

Sound Quality:  Very good with a light, airy, tight and fast rhythm that is easy on the ear

Value for Money:  Relatively expensive against its rivals but there is nothing like this in the marketplace currently

Pros:  Fit and finish are excellent and generally easy to use with virtually no set up required. Very compact footprint and easy to transport.

Cons:  The lack of a cueing lever makes putting the arm on and off a delicate matter that some may find tricky.  Personally, I urge Audio Deva to rethink having a cueing lever as not having one may put people off. Its looks will polarise opinions, like Marmite you’ll either love it or hate it.

Price:

1. Atmo Sfera `Hi-End Edition` Turntable (including matching, machined aluminium controller). – £3100.00. Ortofon Quintet Bronze (fitted) – £400.00 

2. Atmo Sfera `Hi-End Edition` Turntable (plastic controller as per the review example) – £2700.00. Ortofon Quintet Bronze (fitted) – £400.00 

3. Gold Accents – £300.00 

The High-End edition has a precision steel tonearm bearing, a carbon fibre tonearm, the option of high precision machined aluminium controller and litz arm wiring. 

Ian Ringstead