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iFi Audio Pro iCAN, Chord Hugo2, Final D8000, and Campfire Andromeda system

As high-performance personal audio systems have evolved, they have become more specialised. Some focus on top class headphones and electronics intended for use within the relative quiet of one’s home, while others centre on advanced, high-performance universal fit earphones, CIEM’s, and associated portable components that can be enjoyed either at home or on the go. For a systems-orientated issue of Hi-Fi+, we decided to configure a multi-part personal audio system that not only offers some of the best headphone and earphone sound around, but that also offers exceptional versatility for in-home and portable listening applications.

Our system is comprised of four components: the iFi Audio Pro iCAN hybrid valve/solid-state fully balanced headphone amp/preamp (Hi-Fi+issue 143); the Chord Electronics Hugo 2 transportable headphone amp/preamp/DAC (Hi-Fi+issue 153), the Final D8000 planar magnetic full-size headphones (Hi-Fi+issue 157), and the Campfire Audio Andromeda universal-fit earphones (Hi-Fi+issue 158). These components are strong individual performers, but also harmonise beautifully with one another as a group. Let’s look at each component in turn and then talk about the synergies between them.

iFi Audio Pro iCAN

At a recent personal audio show an industry colleague told me he was considering purchasing a Pro iCAN. “I’ve searched all over the personal audio market space and I haven’t found any amp that offers the sound quality or versatility that the Pro iCAN does,” he said. “Have you found anything that tops it for around the same amount of money?” After scratching my head for a moment, I had to admit my colleague was right. iFi’s Pro iCAN is that rare product that combines exceptionally high baseline performance plus an expansive set of useful features and functions unmatched at or even above its price class.

The Pro iCAN is a powerful yet also quiet balanced headphone amplifier/preamp. Significantly, it offers three operating modes: Solid-State, employing a Class A discrete J-FET circuit; Tube, employing a Class A valve-powered circuit with moderate negative feedback; or Tube+, employing the same Tube circuit, but with feedback reduced “to a minimum”. Users can switch between modes on the fly to choose the mode(s) best suited to one’s headphones, earphones, or listening tastes. Pro iCAN also provides switch selectable gain settings of 0dB, 9dB, and 18dB.

The Pro iCAN incorporates sophisticated versions of two proprietary iFi circuits: namely, the firm’s XBass Bass Correction System and 3D Holographic System, both of which are switch selectable. The XBass Bass Correction System aims to compensate for low-frequency deficiencies found in some headphones and many loudspeakers and can apply a maximum of 12dB of bass boost at 10Hz, 20Hz, or 40Hz. The 3D Holographic system addresses spatial aspects of playback with two ASP (Analogue Signal Processing) circuits—one for headphone listening and the other for loudspeaker listening. iFi says the 3D Holographic System is neither a traditional “cross-feed” system nor a DSP-driven system that adds artificial reverb. Rather, the system aims to provide ‘out of head’ sound source placement for headphone listeners while rendering “the whole 3D sound field in a manner that strongly parallels listening to loudspeakers in a normal room, all achieved without added reverb.”

I tried both systems at some length and found them admirably subtle and restrained in their effects and useful when applied in appropriate contexts. With that said, however, I left the circuits switched off for most of my headphone listening to better appreciate the rich, pure, and unprocessed sound of the Pro iCAN.

Predictably, the sonic character of the Pro iCAN is determined by the operating mode chosen. As a rule, the Solid-State mode yields the tautest presentation with excellent linearity (that is, neutral tonal balance), quick and lively transient response, and crisp, sharp focus. Switching to the Tube mode gives similar linearity with a very slightly more softly focused sound, but with more vividly rendered tonal colours, superior harmonic richness, and even more expressive dynamics. Finally, the Tube+ setting is like listening to the Tube mode on steroids, meaning that, on the right track and with the right headphones, the Tube+ setting is positively enchanting.

When I used the Pro iCAN with Tube+ mode engaged to play the title track of Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Come On Come On[SBME Special Markets, 16/44.1] through a set of almost clinically revealing headphones the Pro iCAN helped draw forth the headphone’s more expressive, magical side. Chapin’s voice sounded downright luminous and seemed to float gracefully upon the air, while the backing instruments—most notably the piano and bass—sounded achingly beautiful with rich, deeply saturated tonal colours and expansive harmonics that made them sound almost breathtakingly realistic.

In sum, the Pro iCAN is a versatile, powerful, accomplished, and masterful headphone amp/preamp that is ready to serve as the centrepiece of a very high-performance personal audio system.

Chord Hugo2

The Chord Hugo2 is a major upgrade on the firm’s original and critically acclaimed Hugo transportable headphone amplifier/preamp/DAC. What’s different and better about the Hugo2? Just about everything.

Chord has given the Hugo2 more power, lower distortion, reduced noise floor modulation, and a more sophisticated DAC section as compared to the original Hugo. For example, where the first-gen Hugo’s DAC was a 4-element pulse array design with a digital filter offering 26,000 filter taps, the Hugo2 DAC is a 10-element pulse array design whose digital filter offers a stonking 49,152 filter taps.

Why is the number of filter taps significant? Chord Consulting Designer Rob Watts has long maintained that a properly designed DACs could theoretically deliver just as much sonic information, detail, and analogue waveform accuracy from a garden-variety CD-resolution file as from an ultra-high-res file, provided it uses correctly designed digital filters with an extremely large (and ideally, infinite) number of filter taps—an astonishing claim. The only difference, says Watts, is that the CD-version would have a slightly higher noise floor than the ultra-high-res version.

Putting theory into practice, the Hugo2 uses Watts’ signature WTA (Watts Transient Aligned) filter system, which is implemented via an extremely powerful Xilinx FPGA device. Recognising that the best off-the-shelf DAC devices offer filter taps numbering in the hundreds, Hugo2’s 49,152 filter taps obviously represent a huge (and audible) step in the right direction. The end result is a portable DAC that renders transient and timing-related details (and especially three-dimensional spatial cues) in the music with exceptional accuracy. Better still, the Hugo2 is sonically competitive with full-size tabletop DACs more than twice its size and price.

The Hugo2 provides four dome-shaped, self-illuminated, colour-coded switches to provide On/Off, Crossfeed, Input, and Filter selection functions, plus an also dome-shaped and colour-coded touch-sensitive volume control. There are four available digital filter settings and also four Crossfeed control settings. Colour-coded lights, visible through an upward facing ‘porthole’, indicate the type and resolution levels of the files being played. Users can choose from five digital inputs including a Micro USB port, coaxial and optical S/PDIF inputs, a TOSlink input, and an AptX Bluetooth input. Analogue outputs include a set of 3.5mm and 6.35mm headphone jacks, and stereo DAC/preamp outputs.

Whether used as a standalone DAC or headphone amplifier, the Hugo2’s sonic character is defined by fundamentally neutral but also naturally warm and ‘organic-sounding’ voicing, with exceptional resolution of low-level transient and textural details, striking three-dimensionality, and extremely quiet backgrounds.

The Hugo2’s noise-free and natural-sounding presentation complements all types of music, but its terrific low-level detail and inherent three-dimensionality really come alive on tracks such as Ron Miles and Bill Frisell’s ‘Darken My Door’ from Miles’ Heaven[Sterling Circle Records, DSD64]. Through the Hugo2, Miles’ cornet simply sounds real, letting listeners clearly hear even the smallest details that define the horn’s attack, sustain, decay characteristics, and dynamics. Moreover, the Hugo2 places the horn with pinpoint precision within a broad expansive soundstage. Frisell’s supporting guitar is captured in a slightly more diffuse way, as if its amplifier had been placed onstage and then fairly closely mic’d. The result is a wonderfully up-close-and-personal rendition of the recording event.

Hugo2 is quiet enough to use with high sensitivity earphones such as the Noble Kaiser Encores or Audeze iSINE20’s, yet powerful enough to drive demanding full-size headphones such as the MrSpeakers Ether Flow or Abyss AB-1266 Phi edition. Only for very low sensitivity headphones like HiFiMAN’s Susvara would one wish for more power. Otherwise, the Hugo2 can drive most any transducer you choose.

Hugo2 is an industry benchmark and is the finest transportable headphone amp/preamp/DAC presently available. It is a superb DAC that just happens to incorporate a versatile and also excellent portable headphone amplifier worthy of use with top-tier headphones and earphones.

Final D8000

Final is a respected Japanese manufacturer of premium-quality headphones, earphones, and other audio products; the company enjoys a reputation for technology-driven but always music-centred product design, a great example of which is the revolutionary D8000 planar magnetic headphone reviewed here.

Final’s aim with the D8000 was to create a ‘best of two worlds’ design that would offer, “…the sensitive high ranges of planar magnetic models and the volume and open-feel bass tones of dynamic models.” Consequently, Final took a ‘clean-sheet-of-paper’ design approach for the D8000 and effectively wound up reinventing planar magnetic driver technology in the process.

The D8000’s driver uses a ring-shaped diaphragm featuring an inward-spiralling circular band of voice coil traces etched into the surface of an aluminium-skinned, ultra-thin film diaphragm material. The diaphragm also uses concentric corrugations to promote more linear motion over the diaphragm’s entire working surface. The result: a driver said to achieve superior “reproduction of subtle high frequencies.”

Each D8000 driver features two sets of ‘doughnut-shaped’ magnets, with one magnet ring placed just to the inside and the other to the outside of the voice coil traces. Importantly, each driver features front and rear-facing sets of magnets (for improved efficiency and lower distortion) positioned to minimise sound wave obstructions. Magnetic fields from the front/back and inner/outer magnet rings combine to create an evenly balanced magnetic field across the voice coil surface.

Finally, the D8000 driver uses an air film damping system the design for which was suggested by Dr Heitatro Nakajima, a microphone specialist who lead Sony’s Compact Disc project and who collaborated with Final on the design. The system places perforated metal screens a precise distance away from the front and rear sides of the diaphragm to provide a semi-constrained layer of air between the diaphragm and the outside world. Sound waves pass through the screen perforations, while the openings in the screens offer a just-right amount of resistance to provide critical damping or “braking” for the diaphragm. The sonic benefits of the system are readily apparent.

Straight out of the box, the D8000 offered astonishingly fine bass and midrange performance, but with upper mids and highs that initially seemed a bit reticent or subdued. However, after several hours of run-in time the D8000’s mids, upper-mids, and highs opened up magnificently, so that the headphone’s tonal balance became pleasingly neutral while its overall resolution, transient speed, and focus took dramatic steps forward.

Stated simply, the D8000 combines in roughly equal parts the following qualities: accurate and neutral voicing, high levels of resolution, superb transient agility from top to bottom, finely shaded dynamic contrasts, energetic expressiveness and impact—all with remarkable freedom from audible ringing, overshoot, distortion, or compression. Listening through the D8000 can be a revelation; it lets listeners hear recordings in their most pure, unexaggerated, and unadulterated forms—as if the slate suddenly has been wiped clean of a thousand small sonic obstructions, leaving just the music behind.

To appreciate the D8000’s superb resolution and expressiveness listen to Imogen Heap’s witty and deceptively complex song ‘Bad Body Double’ from Ellipse[RCA, 16/44.1], which contains a heady mix of natural, synthesized, and electronically processed sounds. The song combines funky and intricate riffs with high-energy rhythms, while Heap’s wry lyrics refer to her being her own ‘bad body double’. The D8000 effortlessly teases out the sophisticated multi-layered sounds used in the track while highlighting Heap’s feisty, self-deprecating humour. What is more, the D8000’s reveal a cool sonic detail that sets the stage for the song: namely, the fact that as the track opens Heap is softly working out the lines of the song as she sings to herself in the shower (!).

Few headphones have captured our attention and musical imagination in the way that Final’s D8000 has. It is a breakthrough design that has an uncanny ability to capture the essence of the music while pushing the usual sonic obstructions aside.

Campfire Audio Andromeda

Campfire Audio arrived on the scene in 2015 with the release of its Jupiter, Orion, and Lyra earphones, followed in 2016 by members of Campfire’s “Liquid Metal” earphone range, plus the flagship Andromeda model covered here. Campfire is a start-up company with a pedigree, in that it is a spin-off from ALO Audio, an Oregon-based firm famous for its specialized personal audio cables, headphone amplifiers and amp/DACs. Industry veteran Ken Ball serves as the president of both companies.

The Andromeda features angularly shaped, matte finished earpieces CNC machined from aluminium, with matching metal faceplates attached with recessed, miniature cap screws. The earpieces are fitted with very high-quality Campfire beryllium-copper MMCX-type signal cable connectors. One small caveat: because Campfire’s earpieces are somewhat angular, it would be good to do a test fit to make sure they are comfortable for you (they are for me). Campfire models each have distinctive colours and the Andromeda’s arrive in a beautiful Kelly green-anodised finish with accents in the form of silver-coloured metal sound outlet ports.

The three-way Andromeda uses five balanced armature-type drivers per earpiece, grouped as two high-frequency drivers, one midrange driver, and two low-frequency drivers. Outputs from the mid and low-frequency drivers are directed outward via traditional bore tubes, but the high-frequency drivers are treated differently. Instead of a “traditional ‘tube & damper’ tuning system,” says Campfire, the Andromeda’s dual high-frequency drivers are loaded into a 3D-printed Tuned Acoustic Expansion Chamber™ (T.A.E.C.) said to provide the requisite “acoustic tuning without compression”, thus yielding uncommonly extended and open-sounding treble response.

Andromeda is an earphone created by and for audio purists. It is a well-balanced all-rounder that offers nearly ideal neutral tonal balance, with a substantial amount of resolution—especially when it comes to capturing spatial cues in the music. The Andromeda might exhibit a very subtle degree of bass emphasis, but this mostly serves to give a sense of more solid grounding whenever foundational bass elements are present. Like many fundamentally neutral transducers, the Andromeda sounds so disarmingly natural that it can at first seem self-effacing, though it is simply standing aside to let the music tell its own story.

In practice, the Andromeda proves highly transparent to its sources. When the music is well recorded and rich in emotional content, the Andromeda sounds accomplished, expressive, and nuanced. But, on recordings that sound flat, compressed, or lacking in focus, the Andromeda will honestly reveal those shortcomings. What this means is that the better the recordings you play and the better your ancillary equipment is, the more you will be impressed by the Andromeda’s sound. I found the Andromeda competitive with top-tier models from firms such as JH Audio and Westone (many of which carry higher price tags than the Andromeda), which is to Campfire’s credit.

A track that highlights the Andromeda’s strengths is Dead Can Dance’s “Anabasis” from In Concert[PIAS America, 16/44.1]—a well-made live recording of the famous electro-acoustic ensemble led by Lisa Gerard and Brendan Perry. This atmospheric track combines both powerful yet delicate high and low percussion instruments, a wide variety of other acoustic and electronically synthesized instruments, plus haunting, Middle Eastern-influenced vocals. Through the Andromedas, the variegated textures and tonal colours of ‘Anabasis’ are brilliantly revealed, so that the track sounds by turns dark, brooding, shimmering, soaring, and majestic. Importantly, the Andromeda’s superb low-level resolution gives the earphones an uncanny ability to capture subtle concert hall sounds and the almost electric atmosphere and ‘feel’ of a live event.

The Andromeda is a serious purist’s earphone that does all things well and that offers particularly good top-to-bottom balance and coherency, plus very effective rendition of spatial cues in the music.

Musical Synergies

In many respects, the heart of this system lays in the components produced by iFi Audio and Chord Electronics, which not only set a very high-performance bar, but also are capable of driving virtually any headphones in almost any context. Notionally at least, they could form the electronics root of any non-electrostatic headphone system.

The iFi Pro iCAN may look compact, but it’s a sonic giant offering the elusive combination of high power, low noise, subtle user-selectable voicing options, excellent resolution, and matchless versatility—including the ability to serve as quite effective preamp in a traditional speaker-based system. Chord’s Hugo2 matches the Pro iCAN step for step thanks to its brilliant, Rob Watts-designed DAC, plus a quiet, powerful portable headphone preamplifier that is ideal for headphonistas on the go. Put the Pro iCAN and Hugo2 together and the two components basically ‘turbocharge’ one another, each making the other better.

Final’s D8000 is one of the finest planar magnetic headphones available today—a headphone whose revolutionary design gives it a well-balanced, powerful, revealing, and highly expressive sound that is wonderfully free of ringing, resonance problems, and other distortions. It is an ultra-high-performance headphone whose sophisticated sound will not easily be outgrown and that takes full advantage of our iFi and Chord Electronics.

The Campfire Andromeda is a very sophisticated universal-fit earphone that sounds almost like an in-ear sibling to the Final D8000. It’s an earphone that—like the D8000—exudes sonic refinement and sophistication that just won’t quit. Andromeda works beautifully with the Chord Hugo2 for those seeking top-quality sound away from home.

Our system takes listeners close to the sonic mountaintop for headphone and earphone performance, yet at a price that would seem modest by the standards of typical high-end loudspeaker-based system. Better still, it’s a system whose performance headroom will give owners plenty of room to grow in the future.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

iFi Audio Pro iCAN

Type: Fully balanced hybrid solid-state/valve-powered headphone amplifier/preamplifier
Valve Complement: Two NOS GE5670 valves
Inputs: Three stereo single-ended (via RCA jacks), one stereo balanced (via dual 3-pin XLR jacks)
Preamplifier/DAC outputs: One stereo single-ended (via RCA jacks), one stereo balanced (via dual 3-pin XLR connectors)
Headphone outputs: Three stereo single-end headphone output jacks (two via 6.35mm headphone jacks, one via 3.5mm mini headphone jack); three stereo balanced headphone output jacks (one via 4-pin XLR headphone jack, one via dual 3-pin XLR headphone jacks, one via 3.5mm balanced—TRRS type—jack)
Distortion (THD):
Solid-State: <0.0004% balanced/<0.004% single-ended
Tube: <0.0005% balanced/<0.005% single-ended
Tube+: <0.1% balanced/<0.01% single-ended
Signal-to-Noise Ratio: >147dB (A) balanced/>137dB (A) single-ended
Power Output @ 16 Ohms: >14,000mW balanced, >4,800mW single-ended
Dimensions (H×W×D): 63.3 ×192.5×213mm
Price: £1,695 UK; $1,799 US
Manufacturer Information: iFi Audio

URL: ifi-audio.com

UK Distributor: Select Audio

URL: selectaudio.co.uk

Tel.: +44(0)1900 601954

Chord Electronics Hugo2

Type: High-resolution portable headphone amplifier/DAC.
Digital inputs: Micro USB (PCM up to 32/768, native DSD from DSD64 to DSD512); Coaxial S/PDIF via 3.5mm combo jack (32/768); Optical via 3.5mm combo jack (24/192); TOSlink (24/192); and Bluetooth (Apt X implementation, 16/44.1/48)
Analogue outputs: One 3.5mm headphone jacks, one 6.35mm headphone jack, one stereo analogue output via RCA jacks
Battery: Two Enix Energies 3.7V/9.6Wh lithium ion batteries. Sufficient power at full charge for playing time in excess of seven hours.
Power Output @ 1kHz, 1%THD: 300 Ohms, 94mW; 32 Ohms, 740mW; 8 Ohms, 1050mW
Distortion – 1kHz 3V RMS output: 0.0001% THD
Signal-to-noise ratio: 126dB ‘A’ weighted
Output Impedance: 0.025 Ohms
Dimensions (H×W×D): 21 ×100 ×131mm
Weight: 450g
Price: £1,800 UK, or $2,379 US

Manufacturer Information: Chord Electronics Ltd.

URL: chordelectronics.co.uk

Tel: +44 (0) 1622 721444

US Distributor: Bluebird Music Ltd.

URL: bluebirdmusic.com

Final D8000

Type: Planar magnetic headphone with air film damping system
Driver complement: Full range AFDS planar magnetic driver
Maximum SPL: 98dB
Impedance: 60 Ohms
Weight: 523g
Warranty: 2 years
Price: £2,999 UK; $3,799 US

Manufacturer information: Final

URL: snext-final.com

Distributor: KS Distribution

URL: ksdistribution.co.uk

Campfire Audio Andromeda

Type: Five-driver, three-way universal-fit earphone
Driver complement: five balanced armature-type drivers grouped as two high-frequency drivers in a Tuned Acoustic Expansion Chamber enclosure, one midrange driver, and two low-frequency drivers.
Frequency response: 10Hz–28kHz
Sensitivity: 115dB SPL/mW
Impedance: 12.8 Ohms
Price: $1,099 US

Manufacturer Information: Campfire Audio

Tel: +1 (503) 853-8606, +1 (855) 204-1492

URL: campfireaudio.com

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Burson Audio Conductor Virtuoso 2+ headphone DAC preamp

This is not our first rodeo with Burson Audio. If they even have rodeos in Melbourne, Australia, where Burson Audio is based. We looked at the HA160 headphone amp in Issue 79, and the original Conductor – complete with matching Timekeeper amps in Issue 105. Of these products, the Conductor was perhaps the most impressive in performance terms, so when the time came to look at it’s latest guise – the tricked-out, Conductor Virtuoso 2+ (‘V2+’) – we jumped at the chance. It more than lived up to expectations, too!

The Conductor V2+ is no simple step-change. It’s a root-and-branch rebuild of the concept from scratch. The basics remain unchanged – a silver box with two analogue single-ended, and three digital connections (coaxial, optical, USB). There’s a good, clicky volume pot behind the front panel and a blue LED volume readout, which is a pig to read unless you are staring right in front of the Conductor V2+.

There’s a palpable sense of solidity to the build. It’s… stocky, not in the modern euphemism meaning ‘fat’, but in the old, original meaning, the kind that everyone in The Godfather(except possibly Al Pacino) did so well. The square thick top panel, held together with large Allen bolts gives it a powerful, commanding weight that bespeaks of quality.

Quality extends deeper than just the case. The entire circuit has been redesigned, and is now based on Burson’s V6 SS op-amp, which Burson thinks is the best sounding audio op-amp in the world. In fairness, if you get to designing your own op-amps, you get to be proud of them.

The Conductor V2+ also uses tighter-wound transformers than before, tighter even than most brands. These custom high-density transformers supply twice the power of previous Conductor products. Also, while still a pure Class A designed with FETs (Field Effect Transistors), Conductor V2+ fully utilises the two 70W transformers to output over 8200mW per channel into 16ohm. Just over eight watts will comfortably drive the toughest headphone in the world.

At the heart of our Burson’s new volume control is Burr-Brown’s flagship analogue PGA2310. It offers a set of impressive specifications, including 120dB dynamic range and 0.0004% THD @ 1khz. The PGA2310 possesses two main components; a set of resistor networks and an op-amp output stage. The resistor network allows for 0.5db steps of fine control with channel matching within 0.05%. Compare that to conventional motorised volume controls which can only match channels to 7-10%.

Burson’s set the PGA2310’s op-amp output stage to unity gain, so it essentially acts as a purely resistive volume control. This arrangement avoids any potential coloration the op-amp output stage may inject into the audio signal.

Burson claims the ESS Sabre32 DAC to be “the most expensive and highest performing DAC chip in the world”. For the new Conductor V2+, Burson completely redesigned all the support circuits around the Sabre chip in order to improve overall performance. The new output stage of the DAC has been improved thanks to the company’s latest V6 SS audio op-amp. Pure Class A, the new output stage with its V6 op-amp is claimed to be able to “reveal micro-dynamics that others can only dream of”.

The new DAC design also utilises the DSP volume control that is built in the Sabre 32 DAC. Such an arrangement means when using with any digital inputs, volume control is handled by the Sabre 32 DAC, bypassing Burson’s own PGA2310 volume control. This arrangement helps deliver those absolutely state-of-the-art objective figures.

Burson also uses the flagship XMOS six-core USB module on the Conductor V2+, which allows for 32bit 346k sampling and DSD 256 streaming and an extremely high level of connectivity with both computer and mobile devices. The Conductor V2+ implementation employs a triple low-jitter clock structure for strong jitter correction.

What hasn’t changed in the move from Conductor to Conductor V2+ is Burson’s commitment to tank-like performance criteria in shows. This remains one of the best made devices you can buy, especially at the price. Everything is solidly built and works together as one.

Like its predecessor, the Conductor V2+ includes a pair of line level analogue inputs, three digital inputs, and a choice of variable output to a power amp or fixed DAC output to a full amplifier. If you go this route, the volume control still works to drive the headphone socket. The five inputs are controlled by touch buttons on the front panel. Then there’s the volume display to contend with. This is a good idea in theory, with the blue LEDs hidden behind precisely drilled holes on the front panel, however, the panel is so thick, they essentially disappear unless you are staring right at the LEDs. This works on an aesthetic level, because the front panel is smooth and the display subtle, but I’d go with less style and more readability.

The last iteration of the Conductor came with a range of DAC options, but this proved more confusing for many (myself included). The latest Conductor is more simple in approach; whether you buy a Conductor V2 (which doesn’t have a DAC) or a V2+ (which does). We tested the full V2+.

I really liked the original Conductor, but this shows just how far the company has come. This is a more mature product from a more mature brand, and it shows. The Conductor V2+ is a beast of a headphone amp, in a good way. It can drive practically everything (to the point where more sensitive headphones have some slight gain issues (you have to treat the volume dial with care if you don’t want to deafen yourself, and there’s a slight amount of hiss when playing quiet music at low levels). Through every headphone, however, the Burson Conductor V2+ is always authoritative and stentorian. There’s a tremendous grip over the music that makes headphones sound bigger than they are, but not in an inaccurate, mellifluous manner. Just through sheer grip, especially in the bass. I used a motley collection of headphones from the great (LB Acoustics 3.2) through the good (Sennheiser HD 660 S) to the reasonably hard to drive (a classic pair of HiFiMAN HE-500s) and more. No amplifier is the ideal model for all headphones, and there will always be high points and low points as you plough through a room filled with headphones. But the Conductor V2+ has a better hit rate than most. That’s a big step in the right direction.

This amp copes with all kinds of music too, I played everything from 1920s Jazz [Louis Armstrong, ‘West End Blues’, Hot Fives and Sevens, Okeh] to Infected Mushroom crunking up acoustic guitar [‘Becoming Insane’, Vicious Delicious, BNE] and all points in between. The Burson didn’t favour one side over the other, keeping the surprising dynamics of a trumpet recorded 90 years ago, while handling the driving rhythms of Infected Mushroom (‘driving rhythms’ they may be, but don’t drive and listen to Infected Mushroom at the same time, or wave goodbye to driving for a few months!). In fact, the purity and impact of Armstrong’s opening salvo on ‘West End Blues’ was surprising, given I’ve been listening to that track time and again for years.

Beyond the grip on the bass, though, there’s a sense of refinement and at the same time a lot of detail on offer. Those two don’t normally go hand-in-hand, but the combination is as sweet as it is well received.

There’s so much to like here; from the five-year warranty to the way the detents on the volume control feel under your hand. This is a very well realised headphone amplifier/DAC that shows just how professional Burson Audio has become, and the last round showed the company wasn’t exactly goofing around. The Conductor V2+ is beautifully made, can drive practically everything, sounds powerful and full of bass while staying lithe and detailed, and the only real fault I can find is those damn blue volume settings. The original was a real star; this one’s a supernova!

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Type: headphone amplifier/DAC
Inputs: 1 ×USB Connection 1 ×Coaxial RCA (Support up to 24bit @ 192Khz) 1 ×Toslink / SPDIF (Support up to 24bit @ 192Khz) 2 ×RCA line level input
Outputs: 1 ×headphone jacks 6.35mm 1 ×RCA Pre Amp output 1 ×RCA DAC direct line out
COAX & Toslink / SPDIF : 24 bits / 44.1K, 48K, 88.2K, 96K, 176.4K, 192KHz
Desktop OS: Windows XP, 7, 8, 10 Mac OSX
Desktop OS: iOS* , Android (require OTG support)
PCM Support: PCM / 384kHz @ 16, 24 or 32bits
Native DSD: Native DSD 64 / 128 / 256
DSD over PCM: DoP64 / DoP128 / DoP256
Input impedance: 35 KOhms
Frequency response: ± 1 dB 0 – 56kHz
Signal to noise ratio: >96dB
THD: <0.003% at 30ohm with 1W ouput
Channel Separation: 142 dB @ 1KHz, 135 dB @ 20KHz
Output power: 4W at 8 Ohms
Dimensions (W×D×H): 26.5 ×25.5 ×8cm
Weight: 7kg
Price: £1,590

Manufactured by: Burson Audio

URL: bursonaudio.com

Distributed by: Elite Audio

URL: eliteaudiouk.com

Tel: +44(0)1334 570 666

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Trilogy Audio 903 preamp and 993 power amp

Trilogy Audio specialises in making valve amplifiers for people who don’t want to look at valves. At least that’s the way it seems when you consider the latest amplifiers in the range. The 903 preamplifier is a very modern looking piece of perfectly finished kit that does nothing to suggest that there’s a thermionic triode lurking within its carefully machined casework. The display and variety of features backs this up even further and makes you wonder why Trilogy’s founder Nic Poulsen bothers with valves at all, but that would be to fail to appreciate how much he loves the sound quality of glass audio. His first products were rather more conventional valve-based designs but one can only presume that he wanted a more contemporary aesthetic as that has been the style of Trilogy amps for most of the company’s 25 year plus history with machined aluminium being the preferred look. The 903 pre and 993 power amp do make one design concession to the glowing tubes within, however, in the form of small ventilation slots on the back panel.

The 903 is currently Trilogy’s only entrant in the preamplifier stakes. Its six inputs are all on single ended connections and one of them can be used with an optional phono stage. All too often phono stages like this are not in the same league as the preamplifier they inhabit, but as Trilogy has a particularly good example in the 907, Nic has taken this Class A design with its discrete circuitry and shunt regulated power supply and incorporated it into the 903. All of the loading and gain characteristics can be adjusted via the front panel display so this is a full-fat phono stage without the cost of casework and separate PSU.

The 903’s line circuitry uses a 6H6π double triode, as found on MiG fighter jets so you know it’s pretty bomb proof; this provides all the voltage gain and is run in Class A as you might expect. Elsewhere there are Mundorf film foil and custom capacitors and resistors with an emphasis on longevity and sound quality. This preamp doesn’t just look well-built on the outside, it is that way on the inside too. The controls are so sparse that they take a bit of familiarisation, but with the manual in hand, the combination of dot matrix display, rotary encoder with enter and escape buttons allow all sorts of things to be changed and customised to your requirements. For a start, it has a built-in security code system that locks it down if the unit is disconnected from the mains for more than 30 minutes, so don’t lose the slip of paper with the code on it! The processor within the 903 allows some useful things like balance control, gain trim and naming for each input, timer based power up, and display preferences.

The front panel controls are a little inconvenient for everyday operations such as changing input because you have to ‘enter’ change input with the rotary and then ‘exit’ before it’s selected, but in truth you are more likely to do this with the supplied remote handset. This is a simple plastic affair but a hardcore machined aluminium alternative is available.

The 993 stereo power amplifier is a chunky beast with heavy-duty fins attractively machined into the front panel, the thick nature of these cooling fins is apparently to avoid the tendency of thinner extruded fins to vibrate. This is the first time I’ve come across this suggestion, but if you run your finger over most heatsinks, they do indeed ring so it makes sense to have something beefier. The same double triode as used in the 903 provides the voltage gain in the 993. The output stage consists of a FET which provides the first and most crucial Watt and higher power bi-polar devices that supply additional current, so this is a hybrid design in more ways than one. Trilogy’s valve inclinations can also be seen in the choke input power supply, an approach found in some of the more powerful triode power amps that consists of a large transformer, which is designed to provide a more linear current supply to the circuit.

Connection wise the 993 is fairly conventional except that it only has single-ended inputs, an approach that makes sense given its single-ended nature but one that is unusual in high-end amplifiers largely because of market pressures. As well as big and easy to tighten speaker terminals there are a pair of RJ45 terminals for Trilogy’s BUS system, this allows switch on from the connected preamp and avoids the finger crushing challenge of using a tiny switch under the heatsink.

Using the 903 with an ATC P2 power amplifier and PMC Fact.8 loudspeakers revealed the Trilogy to be an unusually precise yet relaxed preamplifier. It is superb at defining tempo without any inclination to forwardness or emphasis on leading edges. This is an unusual combination that has speed and definition that is so appealing without the glare that often accompanies it, there is plenty of power in the bass and the highs are effortless and natural but not rolled off. The mid is where the valve element is most obvious, it makes lyrics unusually intelligible and brings a natural transparency that is rare. The balance is warmer than absolutely neutral and concedes a little openness; cymbals are not as bright as they can be for instance, but it’s a balance that works with highly transparent sources and loudspeakers very well.

I gave the phono stage a spin with the Goldring 1042 MM cartridge that is currently residing on my Rega RP8, setting gain to 40dB and impedance to 47kOhm. The result was that the high-quality timing of the line stage is also apparent with vinyl in a musically engaging result that has plenty of air and detail. It could deliver slightly better separation and dynamic shading but there’s no escaping the musicality that keeps you listening so happily. With a Rega Apheta 2 moving coil with gain set at the maximum 60dB, the result was a bit cosier than usual, with lots of tonal richness and bass depth but not quite the spriteliness that this cartridge is capable of. I tried both the 100 Ohm and 240 Ohm impedance settings, the latter proving a bit more open, and I also experimented with capacitance, which seems to effect Rega MCs, but couldn’t get the life and energy that is possible. Using an external Rega Aria phono stage, which is naturally well suited to the cartridge, helped matters but the balance was still on the dark side. At the same time, it was apparent that the 903’s phono stage is excellent at differentiating between recordings thanks to high levels of detail and an ability to open up aspects of the recordings that are often unclear.

With the line input and e.s.t. Live in London[ACT] from a Naim Uniti Nova the sound is firm but juicy, and the three members of the band can be easily followed as they spin out a locked down groove that has a degree of musical flow that’s hard to achieve with solid state electronics. This preamplifier is immensely subtle and revealing; every piece of music you put on shows its character straight away, and this extends beyond the way the music is played to the vintage and style of recording. I’ve been loving Frank Zappa’s Roxy Performances [Zappa Records] box set, but its early seventies era is obvious in the limited bass extension and power and tape compression. However, with a preamp like this it’s easy to hear past this and get carried away by the brilliance of the performances by what was arguably his best band (in the world, ever).

When I spoke to Magnus Öström of e.s.t. recently (see interview, page 100) he said that ‘From Gagarin’s Point of View’ from their 1999 album of the same name was a favourite track, so I took the opportunity to give it a spin and was fully able to appreciate its clarity and poignance. They use Sputnik style electronic noise to give it atmosphere and this worked superbly on the Trilogy/Eclipse combo. Also highlighted was the extent to which Svensson, like so many other pianists it seems, was inclined to ‘sing’ along with his playing. I don’t remember that being nearly so clear in the past. The following track, ‘Return of Mohammed’, is a groove that this amp/speaker combo proved to be properly cooking and had to be indulged as well, deadlines schmedlines (sorry Alan!).

Bringing in the 993 power amplifier results in a slight increase in the warmth and relaxation experienced with the 903, this presumably being related to the character of the valve in both. The sound produced is generous and open with lots of fine detail to enjoy and an increase in the musicality experienced with the preamplifier. You get superb depth of timbre from Amandine Beyer’s solo violin [JS Bach Sonatas & Partitas BWV 1001–1006, Zig-Zag Territoires] which sounds more solid and real than usual and the reverb applied is clearly defined. It could have more ‘air’, but so convincing and real does it sound that you wonder if the sense of openness found elsewhere might just be a characteristic of transistor amplifiers.

I decided to see how the Trilogy pair would work with some Eclipse TD712 Mk2 speakers with their full range driver, a speaker that had proved tricky to get a result with up to that point. I put on Kurt Vile’s ‘Pretty Pimpin’ [b’lieve I’m goin down…, Matador] and was lost to the groove, the sheer coherence was enough to keep the album running far longer than expected and I got the sort of communication that the Eclipse has always promised. A more familiar and even older piece is Conjure’s ‘Wardrobe Master of Paradise’ [Music For The Texts Of Ishmael Reed, American Clavé], this produced all sorts of nuances and tonal riches that are rarely exposed. Voice, piano, and sax in particular have a rightness to them that is addictive – so much so that I put on some late Joni Mitchell singing ‘The Man I Love’ [Gershwin’s World, Herbie Hancock, Verve] and allowed myself a moment of escape.

For thoroughness, I also lugged in the mighty Bowers & Wilkins 802 D3 floorstanders, an effort that proved worthwhile from the first note when the speakers ‘disappeared’ leaving the room free for the Micheal Wollny Trio to deliver the phenomenal set they laid down in Wartburg last year. In some respects, this could have had more dynamic impact but I suspect that the removal of the fine glare that purely solid state amplifiers add to the sound partly explains this. The 993 is not the most powerful amp in the world and the 802 D3 is possibly not its natural partner, but there’s no getting away from the high level of musical engagement the pairing produces. My ATC P2 is a bit more lively and thus makes a more exciting sound, but in the long-term the relaxed demeanour of the Trilogy power amp is likely to deliver an experience that you want to continue with as long as time permits.

Trilogy’s 903 and 993 may look like a stylish pair of solid state amplifiers but that’s a cunning disguise to make them more appealing to the modern music lover. They are in fact rather more musically fluent than most of the competition and in many ways more flexible in operation. Build quality is first class and if you can come to terms with the fact that single ended connections are at least of good as balanced ones (with interconnects up to five metres or more) this is a very sweet and revealing amplifier system that should keep you happy for a very long time.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Trilogy 903

Type: Hybrid line-stage preamplifier with optional MM/MC phono stage
Valve complement: 6H6π double triode
Analogue inputs: six pairs of single-ended inputs (via RCA jacks)
Analogue outputs: Two pairs of single-ended outputs (via RCA jacks), one pair of single-ended tape outputs (via RCA jacks)
Input impedance: 50kOhms (20kOhms, minimum)
Output impedance: < 200 Ohms
Bandwidth: Not specified
Gain: 14 dB +/- 0.5dB
Distortion: Less than 0.05% A weighted at 1V output
Signal to Noise Ratio: Not specified
Dimensions (H×W×D): 106 ×465 ×312mm
Weight: 10kg
Price: £6,495, 903 Phono Option £1,445

Trilogy 993

Type: Hybrid stereo power amplifier
Valve complement: 6H6π double triode
Analogue inputs: One pair single ended (via RCA jacks)
Analogue outputs: One pair of speaker taps (via 5-way binding posts)
Power output: 125Wpc @ 8 Ohms, 200Wpc @ 4 Ohms
Bandwidth: Not specified
Sensitivity: 2v to rated power
Distortion: Less than 1% A weighted at rated output
Signal to Noise Ratio: Not specified
Dimensions (H×W×D): 106 ×465 ×346mm
Weight: 19kg
Price: £6,495

Manufacturer: Trilogy Audio

URL: trilogyaudio.com

UK Distributor: Symmetry

Tel: +44(0)1727 865488

URL: symmetry-systems.co.uk

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Vicoustic Multifuser DC2 room treatment panels

About a year and a half ago I moved to a new, downsized home that had a listening space whose acoustic characteristics I did not fully understand. The room is a second storey space and is roughly rectangular, with enclosed walls on one end and at the other end, balcony walls opening on to the vaulted ceiling of a living room (or lounge) space below. My thinking had been that the rectangular shape of the room would make for good hi-fi sound, with the loudspeakers placed at the enclosed-wall end of the room and facing toward the semi-open-wall end of the room. I reasoned that there wouldn’t be (and probably couldn’t be) reflection problems from back walls that weren’t there, and that sound waves passing over the rear balcony would bounce off the angled vaulted ceiling and be directed downward to be absorbed or diffused in the lounge space below. That was my operating theory, but to my chagrin, the actual acoustics of the room proved much different than expected.

While the room was blessedly free of unwanted bass resonances or obvious low-frequency standing wave problems, it exhibited midrange and upper midrange anomalies that were—how shall I put this? —challenging, to say the least. Specifically, the room seemed to have an issue with characteristic midrange and upper midrange brightness, plus the problem of tending to smear or obscure imaging and spatial cues in the music. In particular, imaging was not as precise and sound stages were not as fully formed as I felt they should have been (especially with loudspeakers whose performance I had observed in the past in different listening spaces). In short, it was as if my room was “singing along with the loudspeakers” in a discordant and acoustically unhelpful way—obviously not a good state of affairs.

Looking for solutions, I tried experiments with absorptive panels and with combination absorption/diffusion panels that I had on hand, but with only moderate success. The absorbers and so-call ‘diff-sorbers’ were beneficial, but only to a limited degree; they were acoustic bandages where a deeper and more profound kind of solution was needed. It was then that an old audio friend, Wendell Diller, head of Sales and Marketing for the loudspeaker manufacturer Magnepan, offered an observation that proved prophetic. “You know, Chris,” said Wendell, “my experience has been that in rooms where absorbers or ‘diff-sorbers’ aren’t getting the job done, there can be real benefits to using true, purpose-built diffusors. What’s nice is that most high-end audio systems seem almost infinitely tolerant of diffusors, so diffusors are an ideal, do-no-harm solution.”

It was at that moment that I recalled an encounter I had had with another old audio friend: John Bevier, National Sales Manager for the North American high-end and pro audio distribution company, Audio Plus Services. At a trade show John had demonstrated for me a then-new set of Focal Sopra-series stand-mount monitors, but what caught my eyes and ears were the distinctive diffusor panels John had placed within the room to tune up the otherwise ‘spotty’ acoustics of the hotel/demonstration room. Since the Focals were sounding better than they had any right to in an hotel space, I asked John about the diffusors, which he explained were Multifuser DC2 panels made by the Portuguese company Vicoustic (whose products are distributed in North America by Audio Plus Services).

“Listen to this,” John said as he removed the DC2 panels from the room. Immediately, the sound exhibited much more midrange and upper midrange ‘hash’, while losing imaging specificity and soundstage width and depth. “Now listen to what happens when I put the panels back,” John said with something akin to a magician’s flourish. As the panels went back in place, the sound transformed. The ‘hash’ went away, the imaging became sharply focused (almost the sonic equivalent of an auto-focus camera optimising focus for a photographic image), and sound stages became spacious once again.

Recalling that demonstration, and heeding both Wendell Diller and John Bevier’s advice, I approached Audio Plus Services about trying a set of Vicoustic Multifuser DC2 panels in my listening room. But what exactly are the Multifuser DC2 panels like? Let me provide a brief thumbnail sketch.

The Multifuser DC2 panels each measure 570 ×570 ×177mm (that is, 23.6 ×23.6 ×5.5 inches) and are made of EPS (expanded polystyrene). The panels are offered in three colours—white, grey, and black—but can also be painted to match room décor using water-based paints. The panels ship in boxes of six. Readers seeking a more upscale (albeit more expensive) and aesthetically more in line with domestic decor, solid wood solution might want to check out Vicoustic’s similar Multifuser Wood 64 diffusors.

The panels’ rear and side surfaces are flat, while the fronts of the panels feature a geometric grid array of posts and wells (196 of them per panel) of varying heights and depths. The exact height and depth dimensions of the posts and wells are dictated by a so-called “primitive root” numeric sequence that in essence helps maximise the range of audio frequencies over which the panel provides meaningful diffusion. What is more, the faces of the posts and wells are deliberately angled, which also helps improve diffusion characteristics.

The primary purpose of the panels is, of course, to provide two-dimensional (that is, “hemispheric”) broadband diffusion and a performance chart for the DC2 panels shows that indeed their diffusion coefficient remains remarkably consistent from 125Hz (coefficient = .67) on up to 5kHz (coefficient = .75) and beyond. However, the panels do also provide a modest degree of absorption, with their absorption coefficient becoming most effective from about 800Hz to 2kHz and then gradually tapering off from 2kHz to 5kHZ. Importantly, and unlike many of the so-called quadratic-residue diffusors on the market, the performance characteristics of the DC2 panels are the same in the vertical and horizontal axes.

How do the Multifuser DC2 panels work in practice? In my room they worked like a charm, transforming a space that initially seemed an acoustic ‘problem child’ into what frankly has become the nicest sounding listening room I have ever had. For my application, I used a total of twelve DC2 panels arranged as four columns of three panels each—two on the rear walls of the room and two on the sidewalls (positioned at the first reflection points). The results were impressive to a downright jaw-dropping extent.

First, the characteristic midrange and upper midrange brightness of the room was corrected, yet with no apparent loss of musical energy or information in either frequency band. Second, imaging became more continuous, meaning there was little if any tendency for there to be a sonic ‘hole in the middle’ between the speakers, while perceived imaging focus and specificity were dramatically improved. In layman’s terms, the diffusors seemed to take the room out of the equation, so that I could more clearly hear what the loudspeakers were doing. Third, spatial cues in the music, including very subtle recorded echoes and reverberations, became much easier to hear, as did sounds of instruments and voices interacting with the acoustics of various recording venues. The upshot was an increase in overall soundstage size and three-dimensionality. Finally, the panels worked equally well with dipole and with forward-firing loudspeakers. When you put all of these virtues and benefits together, the Vicoustics panels seemed like nothing less than acoustical miracle workers.

How are the Vicoustics panels mounted in one’s room? The answer is that in many applications the panels would be affixed to wall or ceiling surfaces using special flex glue that Vicoustics makes for this purpose. At the same time, though, I should point out that the panels don’t have to be attached to walls at all to be effective. In my case, for example, I found it perfectly acceptable to place panels on the floor, butted up against the wall, and then to stack additional panels on top. The beauty of this approach is that you can experiment with different panel placements as you wish without having any glue residue to clean up.

Saving the best for last, let me mention that the Vicoustics Multifuser DC2 panels aren’t expensive: many UK retailers offer them for £339 per six-pack box, while US retailers typically sell them for $649 per box. Either way, the value for money on offer is clear off the charts. Vicoustic says the DC2 is “the best cost/performance diffuser money can buy,” and until I discover something better for less, I would enthusiastically concur.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Type: Two -dimensional (“hemispheric”), Primitive Root sequence-based acoustic diffusor panel.
Construction: EPS (expanded polystyrene)
Dimensions (H×W×D): 570 ×570 ×177mm
(23.6 ×23.6 ×5.5 inches)
Weight: 10kg/box
Price: £339 or $649 US/box of six

MANUFACTURER INFORMATION: Vicoustic SA

URL: vicoustic.com

Distributor Information (UK): Source Distribution

Tel: +44 (0)20 896 250 80

URL: sourcedistribution.co.uk

Distributor Information (North America):
Audio Plus Services

Tel: +1 (800) 663-9352

URL: audioplusservices.com

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Naim Audio Super Lumina interconnects and loudspeaker cables

OK, I’ll get this out of the way first. I hate the way the ‘Super Lumina’ logo looks. I get why Naim Audio did this (it’s meant to show superluminal motion in action, itself an abstraction of an abstract concept) but it just looks like someone had a progressively broken space bar when writing that name – ‘S U P E R’. I’m staying distinctly Newtonian here.

Many of Naim Audio’s core buyers have an ‘interesting’ relationship with cable. Their loudspeaker cable of choice for the last quarter of a century or so is Naim’s NAC A5; this is the perfect example of a ‘do just one thing well’ design, in that it has excellent ‘musicality’ (a combination of timbral properties alongside – naturally, being Naim – a good sense of musical order and beat), but almost everything else takes a back seat. This sonic signature traditionally dove-tailed nicely with Naim’s equipment, but the limitations in detail resolution, soundstage, and even the tonal balance of the cable began to prove something of an obstacle to ultimate performance, especially in the light of products like Naim’s 500 series and Statement line. Yes, other cable brands are available and many Naim users use other brands (most notably from the Chord Company line), but such is the loyalty to Naim that standard NAC A5 is used in some extremely high-end Naim set-ups. Super Lumina addresses that need to push the cable envelope for Naim’s most loyal followers.

In interconnect or speaker cable form, Super Lumina features silver-plated copper conductors and silver-plated tellurium copper alloy connectors and FEP insulation throughout. XLR and DIN connectors for the interconnects use Naim’s unique Air-PLUG connectors. These feature individually machined and anodised aluminium rings. Aluminium’s non-magnetic properties make it consistent with materials used on the chassis of Naim products, and a highly durable connection to boot, but gold terminals are used on its RCA plug versions. All the shielding on both interconnects and speaker cables uses a non-magnetic tin-plated copper weave, and the cables are finished in a subtle and elegant shade of mid-grey. Super Lumina is also thinner and more flexible than most high-end audio cables. Discretion rules!

Like Naim’s other cables (except for sold off the reel NAC A5 ), Super Lumina is made by hand in the company’s Salisbury HQ. It’s also subjected to the same ‘destressing’ process used by Naim for decades (this means cables get hung like game, and periodically shaken like the apocryphal lamb’s tail). Little gunmetal alloy blocks seal the ends of the speaker cables and those ends can be spade lugs or 4mm terminals.

Naim’s cables must be used both within and outside of context. It’s pointless discussing them without passing them through the lens of Naim Audio equipment, but at the same time it’s also worth checking out Super Lumina in absolute terms, comparing it in a system with no other Naim products, just to see if its scope extends beyond the Naim ecosystem.

In the first case (used in a Naim system), Super Lumina makes a very strong case for itself, and not just at the Statement grade; what it brings to Statement, it also brings to the company’s 500 and even Classic and Uniti lines. And what it brings is speed and leading-edge detail, but without the pinched and pitched presentation that often accompanies those attributes. This makes both interconnect and loudspeaker cables extremely adept at conveying the emotion behind the music. It also brings many of those high-end audiophile properties to the sound without undermining what makes Naim sound like Naim. In other words, use this with a pair of loudspeakers with good imaging properties and the width and depth of the soundstage is more expansive, enveloping and three-dimensional, and the level of detail retrieval and microdynamic shading on offer make a Naim system with Super Lumina considerably more attractive than the standard cable. However, that all being said, Super Lumina is not the richest sounding of cables, and I think that – and the price – make it more of a candidate in the more fuller sound of Classic, 500, and Statement pieces; the combination of Uniti and Super Lumina is exceptionally detailed and focused, but does lack a little body.

An interesting comparison here before we leave the Naim ecosystem is how Super Lumina compares to comparable Chord Company cables, like Sarum T. The two in many respects have much in common in terms of detail, inherent musicality, and pace, but the Super Lumina is the faster sounding of the two cables, where the Sarum goes for a fuller, richer sound. I wouldn’t say one is more ‘engaging’ than the other, but where Super Lumina is more ‘emotional’ sounding. Chord Sarum T sounds more ‘elegant’. The Naim cables (especially the interconnects) are less forgiving of bad recordings, but neither lay the music bare. I can see either keeping a long-held place in a Naim system, and the differences between them are more ‘how do you take your coffee?’ than ‘I cast thee into Hell for crimes against audio’.

Moving out of the Naim ecosystem, Super Lumina fares well too. It faces a much harder task outside of Naim territory simply because there are grillions of cable options available to the listener, and the cachet using a cable by Naim may have for people who use Naim fades fast for those outside the Salisbury Set, but it should not be discounted out-of-hand. Strangely, the cable also seemed to have something close to a change of character, sounding slightly softer, more relaxed, and with a fuller bass. The speed and that leading-edge intensity are still present, but even here these transients are somewhat less present and noticeable. For example, the percussion that underpins ‘La Grange’ [ZZ Top, Tres Hombres, London] still bites and has force, but it’s not simply Frank Beard beating the hell out of a drum kit; there is more subtlety and shape to the sounds, a dimensionality that borders on warmth.

OK, so the Super Lumina’s change of character is not a major one and reflects more the nature of the systems in which it is used, making this chameleon quality one of simply showing up more of the system, which is a good thing. Those set on using cables as tone controls will find that all but impossible with Super Lumina because the sound depends on the equipment, as it should.

As with Naim equipment, Super Lumina is not a cheap-system enhancer, a panacea, or a tone control. Use it in that manner and you may find there are better cables out there to meet your needs. Also, aside from leading-edge definition, Super Lumina is a subtle, yet sinuous, and textured performer instead of something immediately impressive and ultimately disappointing.

Combining the results both in and out of a Naim system suggests that Super Lumina is a remarkably well-rounded cable, especially at top-end information retrieval. It doesn’t spit data at you, regardless of system, and likewise across the board is intrinsically neutral enough to let the basic character of the components shine through. I can see this being something of a surprise for those used to more heavily flavoured cable sounds where the honesty of Super Lumina will be mistaken for a performance change to the system. Some of that comes down to my own initial impressions, thinking – in the speaker cable at least – what was going to be on offer was ‘super NAC A5’. Super Lumina is many things, but not an upgraded NAC A5; not only is the tonal balance different, the rhythmic and timbral properties are not identical, either. It does a lot of what A5 does, but in a different way – not better, or worse, different… like a guitarist who has changed pickups in his guitar.

Perhaps the best part of Super Lumina is the consistency between interconnect and speaker cable (perhaps not so unexpected because both are essential spaced twin conductor designs), but the performance of the interconnect is extremely close to that of the speaker cable. This is an obsession of those companies that talk ‘cable looms’ but this shows Naim is taking its cable responsibilities seriously, too.

It would be a shame if Super Lumina only played to the Naim crowd because the interconnect and speaker cables are great in their own right. Although it’s entirely understandable because they work so well in Classic, 500, and Statement products from the brand. Super Lumina is good enough that I ‘sat’ on this review for far too long because I was enjoying its performance so much. This is a cable many high-end brands would be only too happy to call their own. In fact, if they painted over the Naim label and charged twice as much, no one would bat an eyelid in sonic terms.

In short… E X C E L L E N T !

Price and contact details:

Super Lumina interconnect: From £1,925 (1m DIN-DIN)

Super Lumina loudspeaker cable: From £1,950

(3m pair, 4mm plugs)

Manufactured by: Naim Audio

URL: naimaudio.com

Tel: +44(0)1722 426600

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Bluewave Get portable headphone amp/DAC

Taking in the afternoon sun for a spot of al fresco coffee action, I discovered the one big flaw to the Bluewave Get Bluetooth headphone amplifier from Canada. With a dark-coloured headphone cable blending into the table, I was asked several times by people if they could borrow my lighter. From 10 feet away, the Bluewave Get looks like a good quality Ronson. That’s about it though; being mistaken for a smoker is the biggest downside to owning a Bluewave Get!

With Apple removing the 3.5mm TRS headphone jack sales of wireless headphones, earphones, and headsets have increased exponentially. However, many of us still use good headphones and earphones that don’t have a Bluetooth capability, and the amp dongle that Apple supplies, while not hopeless, is ‘mostly hopeless’. The Get is a legitimate attempt at improving the performance of Bluetooth headphone listening. Bluewave packed this little tool with a host of goodies, including Bluetooth 5.0, a 200mAh Li-Po battery (good for up to six hours playback from a two-hour charge), USB charging, and a MEMS microphone that improves your voice on a call immeasurably. It also has a provision to play 24bit aptX-HD files, and decode up to 24/96. The amp inside is remarkably tasty too, and volume level is controlled from a thumbwheel at the top of the Bluewave Get.

Using it is easy; pair it with your phone using Bluetooth, then use it! Job done. OK, with my ‘Buddy’ in the car and my FitBit on my wrist, and a whole bunch of other things used then forgotten in test, my list of devices gets longwinded and contended, but the Get is a firm fixture. Bluewave claims the Get delivers a better sound than a wired link and that bold claim is not far from being absolutely right. Given the lip service paid to headphone connections by most phone brands, this is perhaps not so big a deal as it first seems, but yes… there really is a more dynamic, more refined, more detailed, and more bass-precise, fun sound through the Get.

Bluewave’s Get is an extremely useful device. It means you get to keep those wired headphones you love, in an increasingly wire-free environment. You could even use it as a Bluetooth DAC for a conventional two-channel system, and it wouldn’t embarrass itself in performance terms. It sounds damn good in both applications. The obvious choice: Go get a Get!

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Type: Bluewave portable headphone amplifier/DAC
Controls: Play/pause/call answer/call hang-up/FFWD/FRWD
Supported codecs: SBC, MP3, AAC (iOS), AptX, AptX Low latency, AptX-HD
Price: $129, accessories $14.99

Manufactured by: Bluewave

URL: bluewaveaudio.ca

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Raidho TD-4.8 floorstanding loudspeakers

By big loudspeaker standards, the Raidho TD‑4.8 isn’t actually that big. It stands about as tall as the average middle-aged European and its front baffle is about face-wide. It sits on two outriggers that give the speaker a remarkably narrow footprint. It’s deep, yes, but not that deep and is designed to work relatively close to the wall, so it doesn’t come intimidatingly far into the room. In short, Raidho’s newest addition to the family is the best big little loudspeaker they make.

The core to the TD-4.8 is the ‘T’ part. Raidho moved from aluminium-oxide ceramic drivers to diamond and graphite coated aluminium-oxide ceramic drivers in its top range a few years ago, but while this gave exceptional hardness and lightness, there was a limit to just how much of a coating you can put to a ceramic cone before it fractures, and the diamonding process Raidho uses is already pushing the envelope. Enter tantalum, a material of such ductile strength and heat dissipation, it remains one of the key choices in armour-piercing bullets. A thin layer of tantalum applied to the cone gives it the strength and rigidity (without undue additional weight) to allow the cone to receive more diamond than ever. This makes for a functionally perfect cone material for all the right reasons, with only one downside – the manufacturing process. The tantalum coating process is neither cheap, nor fast, nor capable of significant upscale, meaning that where the move from ceramic to diamond-ceramic was across the whole range, the move from diamond-ceramic to tantalum-diamond-ceramic is always going to be limited to the very top models in the Raidho range.

The TD-4.8 is a pure D’Appolito design, with the two midranges and six bass units flanking the ribbon tweeter. The cabinet itself is a vented sealed box, and right now you are probably saying ‘wait, what?’ but hear me out. There is a difference between a ‘vent’ and a ‘port’ but the forensic use of the terminology has been lost in recent years and many think the two terms are interchangeable. In the case of the TD-4.8, the vent is a small, heavily bunged exit point to an otherwise sealed cabinet. It’s not ported in that no air escapes but allows the loudspeaker to benefit from the speed of a sealed box with the bass extension that comes from the cabinet extension. This is also done exceptionally elegantly with five small rear ‘exhaust pipes’ that, when combined with the overall wing shape of the design, makes for a loudspeaker that looks a little like it’s some classic sci-fi wing shape, turned on its side. The finish options are for the side cheeks alone, and include a burr walnut finish, piano black, and any car paint colour you can think of. The loudspeakers themselves connect to the real world using newly designed ‘red gold’ (gold with a high copper content; not an alloy because alloys are beneath noble gold) single-wire terminals that include 4mm banana plugs.

Moving from diamond-ceramic to tantalum-diamond-ceramic means the drivers look slightly less dark than before (interestingly, the normal black industrial diamond is put under such pressure in the Raidho process, it takes on a slight blue-white hue. OK, no‑one’s pressing the Koh-I-Noor yet, but this is more like what we think of ‘diamond’ than most industrial diamond processes). This also allows for a reworking of the crossover and it’s here that Benno Baun Meldgaard’s input as Chief Designer begins to shine through. This was a project largely already signed off, so Benno’s role was primarily final voicing, but this is interesting in its own right, as it brings together the temporal and rhythmic properties GamuT speakers are so highly prized for with the vanishingly low distortion that defines a Raidho loudspeaker. In the process, Raidho has made a high-end loudspeaker that is both an easy impedance load (mostly around 10ohms, with the occasional dip below eight ohms) and a true 90dB sensitivity. This has a great advantage for high-end users, in that they can pick an amplifier on the basis of how it performs, and not simply whether it delivers enough power. In this case, it was fed by an old dCS Puccini+Clock duo, a GamuT pre/power set, and all connected up with Nordost Valhalla 2 cables. You could easily swap out the GamuT models for a reasonably sized tube amp, as those performance figures mean it’s all about quality not quantity. In all this though, the TD-4.8 remains resolutely Raidho.

There is that distinctive Raidho family sound, a sound that is exceptionally dynamic and detailed, to the point of making everything this side of an electrostatic sound ‘muddy’ and ‘indistinct’. The step between ribbon and midrange drivers is not an easy one to overcome (there’s a technology change between the two devices, and that is always hard to reconcile), which places instruments like violas ever so slightly less forward in the mix, but even here this lone tonal characteristic is mild in nature, and to overcome it in a dynamic driver concept while retaining the other properties of the Raidho would take a bigger, more demanding, and far more expensive loudspeaker. This is where the Raidho TD-4.8 gives some ground to loudspeakers of the calibre of the Wilson WAMM Master Chronosonic. Note that I said this before asking the price of the loudspeakers; having discovered just how vast the price differential, that still holds… but shows just what company the Raidho keeps.

Playing ‘Celestial Echo’ by Boris Blank and Malia [Convergence, Universal], there’s so much going on that you don’t normally hear, like the depth and richness to the string synth sounds, and the complexity of those electro percussion sounds. The sealed-vented cabinet really makes sense here, as the cabinet has the speed and uncoloured sound of a sealed box, but with the bass depth that a cabinet of this size cannot normally achieve.

The slow build of King Curtis’ ‘Memphis Soul Stew’ [King Curtis at Fillmore West,ATCO] is also a perfect example of what the Raidhos do right. And really right. You have some of the finest and funkiest musicians of their time, absolutely not phoning in their parts, and on a good system you can switch your attention between each musician in turn. You can do this here, of course, but what you also get is a visceral real musician playing. Take Bernard Purdie’s remarkable drumming. Every phrase is subtly different, within the same groove. This is his thing, and what made him one of the most sought after – and sampled – drummers in that idiom. Every nuance is portrayed perfectly – other systems can make that sound like dropped beats and mis-steps, but it’s all part of his triplet play that makes Bernard Purdie so gifted. Of course, you also get the sense of the band playing in a club, and in the second track you get to hear the people talking in the crowd in a way few other systems ever even approach. That’s something truly special.

Moving over to the Mi Buenos Aires Querdoalbum [Barrenboim et al, Teldec], there’s a sense of the acoustic that is both excellent and does not overshadow the musicians or the musicianship. Piano, accordion, and bass alike have a visceral, real quality that is the mark of true high-end full-range systems, but with the rhythmic tautness, speed, and temporal precision of a small sealed box. That’s not only quite brilliant but is reflected in the number of tracks you play on each album. But more on that later.

This album also exposes the lie about audio bottom end. These are loudspeakers possessed of a hauntingly deep bass, as exposed by the bowed bass, and the left hand piano work. More importantly, it brings to the fore the humour and intellect of the musicians. Part of that seems to be an absence of distortion on an order of magnitude we so rarely experience in audio. The piano is something of an audio crucible, because almost all of us know what piano sounds like live, and it rarely sounds like that through most audio systems. The Raidhos takes a leap closer, and that piano sounds more like the real thing in a room, at once from a dynamic, tonal, and timbral sense.

Another, personal audio torture test for bass is ‘Chameleon’ by Trentemøller [The Last Resort, Poker Flat]. This is ideal for testing whether a port is musically intrusive, but that test didn’t just show up how well the ‘vented, sealed’ concept works here (it notionally applies to everything from the D-1.1 on up, but this is where it gets to shine), it was one of those great audio moments that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

Wesseltoft and Schwarz’ Duo[Jazzland] is another album that normally gets one track played and ended up staying on for the longest time, the treated percussive sounds and this time a different piano recording just keep on coming. This percussion is more echo and pan than sitting in a 3D space, but it doesn’t matter. The sophistication of the sampled sounds, the precision of the soundstage, the dynamic range and the sheer absence of noise from which those sounds emerge sets a standard that some serious players in the audio world should heed.

On the one hand, these speakers act as remarkable monitors. Everything the artists and engineers recorded is presented with seemingly no attenuation. If this was the known benchmark both in and out of the studio, we’d never hear a compressed recording again because that compression would be immediately and patently obvious. Yet, and this is the clincher, that studio-like quality does not come at the expense of the enjoyment or musicality the loudspeaker presents.

This is one of those rare loudspeakers where the job of a reviewer borders on sacrilege. I have to listen to tracks or even snippets of tracks on albums to highlight aspects of a recording. Those albums are like test instruments to me, and I can determine the integrity of tone with a piano or female vocal, the speed of bass with a synth tone, and so on. That usually means a track rarely stays on for more than about three minutes before the next test music sample gets played. That didn’t happen here, simply because turning the track off was an act of musical barbarism. Pick an album, play track one, intending to listen to only that track. Five tracks later you are still mesmerised and reaching for the ‘Stop’ button is like disrespecting the music itself.

I think that comes from the uncanny amount of detail playing here, or more accurately the absence of those loudspeaker-generated clouds of distortion and colouration normally experienced. Take soundstaging for example; the speaker has a good soundstage, of course, but it’s absorbing and enveloping. You are one with the music through that soundstage in the way you don’t normally get in audio. Tracks were played right through to the fade, and you hear things that are simply lost in the cones and domes of most loudspeakers.

There were a lot more tracks played, with everything from the Rolling Stones to Rachmaninov, and in all cases the same outstanding performance was there. At its worst, it was as good as the best of its peers, but at its best – and it was often at its best – this was a speaker that challenged the best in all ways, except for bass extension and the ability to play at PA levels.

Most of all, it makes music supremely intelligible, in a way few other loudspeakers can. Vocal articulation is a given, but so is the articulation of the voices of all instruments. There’s no sense of ‘is that a bass clarinet?’ to music; one quick blast of the Raidho TD‑4.8 and you’ll know precisely what type of instrument is being played, almost to the point of knowing what kind of reed the musician prefers.

A pivotal phrase in that last paragraph is ‘quick blast’. It’s pivotal because it isn’t appropriate. This is one of those rare loudspeakers that holds the same tonal balance and detailing whether you play at high volume levels, or whether it’s at late-night listening quiet. In most speakers, the best you can hope for is ‘Mumbling Round Midnight’ but here the full balance of the speaker remains unchanged at whisper-quiet and when it is given some beans.

The loudspeaker does require a seated position to hear what it’s capable of. This might be its biggest limitation in public demonstrations, because too many people seem to think standing in the doorway of an exhibit room counts as ‘listening’ to the speaker. In this case, you are getting at best a Raidho-flavoured impression of the sound. Sitting in the sweet-spot with the tweeter ribbon at the optimum height makes for a completely different presentation. The bass, mid, and treble integrate well, the bass gains solidity, and the sense of openness and expansiveness of the sound and the soundstage is beguiling. You are listening to your music anew because these speakers are resolving so much more in detail, dynamics, and staging. The well-worn audio cliché of ‘veils being lifted’ doesn’t work here; we’re talking blankets. They start and stop on a dime, too.

As discussed earlier, I try to prevent being too immediately aware of price when forming my findings about a loudspeaker. In the Raidho TD-4.8 there’s the physical loudspeaker and the sound it makes. Physically, I was pretty close in setting it in price context. It looks like an elegant loudspeaker in the £120,000–£150,000 price range. But that says nothing to its sonic performance, which puts it in the company of the open-ended flagships that make £150,000 seem like chicken feed. OK, those behemoths and dreadnoughts of the audio world tend to come with increased headroom or bandwidth (as in, you can play them at ear-punishing levels or with the sort of bass impact that impales the listener), but that’s all they trade, and you’ll rarely hear this kind of detail and information on loudspeakers that cost a cool half a million or more. Plus, this is the kind of loudspeaker that doesn’t impose constraints upon the choice of amplifier (it needs to be good, of course, but the Raidho doesn’t force you into a huge transistor power amp because of some gnarly phase angle or crazily low impedance).

When a product has few limitations. It feels like an abrogation of duty on my part because such a review could seem credulous. But sometimes there are few limitations. In concluding though I discovered that, yes, there is a massive downside to the Raidho TD‑4.8: it’s the ‘GoodfellasEnding’ downside, and I got it the moment the TD‑4.8 and I parted company. Now it’s all over. And that’s the hardest part. Today, everything is different. There’s no action. I have to listen to music like everyone else. I can’t even get decent dynamics. Right after they went away, I tried to play Saxophone Colossusand I got dinner jazz on the kazoo. I’m an average nobody. I get to spend the rest of my life like a schnook.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Product type: Three way sealed-vented floorstanding loudspeaker
Drive units: 1×Raidho sealed ribbon tweeter, 2×100mm Raidho Tantalum-Diamond midrange drivers, 6×115mm Raidho Tantalum-Diamond bass drivers
Crossover points: 200Hz, 3kHz, 2nd Order
Bandwidth: 20Hz-50kHz
Sensitivity: 90dB/W 2.83V/m
Nominal impedance: 8 ohms
Power requirement: >50W
Finishes: Piano Black, Walnut burr veneer, or any colour to order
Dimensions (W×H×D): 20 ×179 ×63cm including feet: 44cm
Weight: 71kg
Price: from €134,000/pair (depending on finish)

Manufactured by: Raidho Acoustics

URL: raidho.dk

Distributed by: Decent Audio

URL: decentaudio.co.uk

Tel: +44(0)5602 054669

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Burmester Audiosysteme 175 turntable system

It took 41 years for Burmester to make its first turntable, so the 175 had to be something really special. The company showed the world the 175 in prototype form in Munich 2017, with a mind to get the integrated turntable, arm, cartridge, and phono stage system out to interested parties a few months later. Now, just after Munich 2018, it’s finally ready… and it was worth the wait.

Since the reboot of vinyl, there has been an almost undisclosed and undiscussed part of the story; the high-end turnkey turntable replay system. If you are buying a low-cost turntable, you might very well buy a complete system, comprising timetable, arm, cartridge, and phono stage–all in the same box. Clearaudio, Pro-Ject, and Rega have all had successes with turnkey turntables. Once you get beyond a certain price, however, the turnkey system is replaced by a parts bin of different components from different manufacturers. It is then incumbent upon you or your dealer to put together a great sounding turntable.

Burmester is the first high-end brand to challenge this concept head-on with its new 175 model; it won’t be the last, as SME just announced its own turnkey turntable. To some, the very notion of a turnkey turntable is something of an abomination – fine for the lower orders, but not the sort of thing a ‘true audiophile’ would use. Instead, the ‘true audiophile’ way demands a separate turntable, arm, cartridge, and phono stage – chosen by means of a lengthy series of auditions – and either setting up the resultant package yourself or placing it in the hands of an expert.

Scratch the surface in this and you begin to see why this is not the only game in town. First, there’s the whole ‘true audiophile’ fallacy of equivocation. By shifting the goalposts, you can exclude practically anyone from the club. More importantly, some of the concepts of customisation of a turntable system are quite hard to parse today. Those ‘lengthy series of auditions’ are functionally limited by how many components dealers have in their possession, are willing to assemble to demonstrate, or are willing to loan out to even their most trusted customers. Let’s say you are able to put together a good deck, arm, cartridge, and phono stage by listening to three examples of each; that might mean anything from three to 12 separate demonstration turntables to find the best mix. Far better perhaps, to let someone else do the legwork for you?

Then there’s the set-up and installation. Yes, there are experts in the field who specialise in putting together high-performance turntable systems and in the process extract more from vinyl than you ever thought possible – we’ve even interviewed one of them (Stirling Trayle) at length. But it’s also worth noting that there was more than a decade hiatus in significant vinyl sales where those skills were being eroded in both store and listener. Which means a fully turnkey high-end turntable should not be discounted as some kind of soft option. For many, it’s the only way to get good vinyl performance.

Of course, this becomes idle philosophical noodling if the turntable system itself isn’t up to the mark, but the 175 more than fits that bill. It joins the company’s new Reference Line products, putting it at the top of the Burmester Home Audio line-up, keeping company with some of the greats of the audio busines, including the 069 CD player, the 111 Musiccenter, and the evergreen 808 Mk5 preamp. As discussed earlier, it’s also Burmester’s first turntable in its 41 year-long history. Conspiracy theorists will doubtless jump to conclusions about the first ever turntable happening after Dieter Burmester’s death, but the 175 was already a design project at the time of his passing.

The first thing to note is the 175 is deceptively heavy. Rogue osteopaths and physiotherapists could use one to drum up business (“Could you just lift that up?” and thinking it weighs about 20kg, the almost 60kg of the complete package will leave bits of you bulging in places they really should not bulge). A good part of that is the platter itself, which consists of two layers of aluminium with a layer of solid brass in a sandwich construction. This was designed from the outset to deliver optimal damping and less resultant resonance in the process. The bitumen coating on the reverse of the platter and the three-leathers mat increase the damping properties even further. The platter is extraordinarily heavy; if it were any massier, light would not escape its clutches. And that kind of high mass puts strain on the sub-platter and bearing unless it is of a suitably high grade of engineering excellence. Of course this is Burmester we’re talking about so that ‘high grade of engineering excellence’ comes as standard, so the conical sub-platter is equally substantial (its conical shape allows easy mounting, precise centring and excellent concentricity… it’s funny how the ability to be good at being ‘round’ might come in handy for a record platter) and the bearing is designed to be maintenance-free for life.

The 175 turntable is driven by four motors located in the outer square around the sub-platter. This is similar to the layout deployed by the Kuzma XL4 before the company went to DC motors. In this case, however, the belt arrangement is hidden from view. The reason for four motors (aside from providing the torque needed to turn a massive platter) is to prevent any kind of irregular tension on the bearing. This tension won’t shorten the life of the bearing (OK, it might have meant some far off future race – like the Morlocks or the Eloi from HG Wells’ The Time Machine– could have found the bearing was running a bit ‘ticky’ but in reality the bearing will probably outlive the great-great-grandchildren of anyone reading this) but might have some influence on ultimate speed stability. Multiple belts and motors shortens the ramp-up time and improves synchronisation, too. This simultaneously results in an improved sound and a fast starting time for the drive.

The 175’s four AC synchronous motors are driven by digital motor electronics in the turntable itself under the motors, which use a high-precision oscillator to deliver high-quality sine voltages. The electronics are therfore both immune to fluctuations in the mains voltage frequency, and away from the delicate signals of the cartridge and the equally delicate electronics in the phono stage. Due to the seemingly high level of efficiency of the electronics, driver stages, and motors, the entire unit remains cool and free from heat-related impairments.

Moving across to the arm, this is no off-the-shelf affair. Instead, it’s a nine-inch, cardanic mounted tone-arm with a carbon-aluminium composite armtube, with a gimballed bearing in the form of a hybrid of steel and ceramic. Although the arm uses the a conventional counterweight, the anti-skating is gradually adjustable via control knob. This is all preset as standard to match the supplied cartridge. This moving coil design is tightly specified by Burmester, is housed in aluminium, which also helps match the rest of the design, and is supplied installed.

The 175 is designed as a turnkey table, which Burmester calls an “active” turntable, which means it has a built-in phono stage. At the outset, in early prototype form, that inserted phono stage was a Model 100. The one in the production model is more of a distillation of what’s best on a Model 100 for the typical user. This means the very small signals from the pick-up to be gently amplified after the shortest possible path. We’re talking a little less than 30cm from cartridge tag to phono stage. This phono stage contains all ‘the good bits’ from the Model 100 (i.e., almost everything except the on-board MM phono circuit, A-D converter, and the VU meter) and these have been optimised for use inside the 175 and allow external voltage values at a superior level. If you decide to move away from the supplied cartridge, the phono stage is designed for moving coil only and is adjustable for load (this is one of the few immediately visible changes to the production model from the prototype shown at Munich ‘17 – the phono stage controls were on the front panel and arenow moved to the rear of the deck).

Great care has been taken in making sure the Model 175 is of a similar height to Reference Class products like the 069 CD player or 077 preamplifier, and that includes the baseplate. Although appearances can be deceptive here, because that baseplate is in fact a form of magnetic suspension, and the whole enormo-mass of the 175’s upper slopes float on a trio of magnets (all other relevant Burmester Home Audio products have four feet that sit in a conventional plinth/baseplate). This also allows a degree of levelling on less than level surfaces, but no-one in their right mind puts a £30,000 turntable on an uneven surface, would they? I guess that might be a test of the turnkey nature of the turntable, but somehow I think that misses the point.

That point is it’s an excellent turntable package that fits beautifully into the Burmester ‘ecosystem’ (and beyond) in looks but most importantly in sound. There’s an interesting aspect to the performance here; play something with a good, infectious beat like ‘Wake Up and Make Love with Me’ by Ian Dury and the Blockheads [New Boots and Panties!! Stiff/Speakers Corner] as an opening gambit and it almost sounds slow. Come back to it two or three tracks later, and it’s bouncy and rhythmic and deep. This highlights the sophistication of the turntable because that depth of rhythm and sheer low-end retrival takes a time for your brain to process. If I came back to the track after a couple of pieces of music and it still sounded slow, I’d conclude it was because the deck sounded slow. Instead, it took some in-head processing cycles to acclimate to the bottom end energy and drive, which is an extremely good sign.

The overall character of the turntable is extremely easy to sit in front of. There’s a lot of high-frequency and low-frequency energy to be had; there’s a lot of mid-band detail, too, and yet none of this is thrown at you in a hard or aggressive manner, to the point where it almost sounds laid back at first. Like the bass performance, this takes some acclimatisation time, but this hurdle is overcome faster if you compare it to one of its digital stablemates in the Burmester Reference Line. It’s the effortlessness and naturalness of the products that seems to be a common design feature. Whether this is the way Burmester ‘voices’ its Reference Line, or it’s simply that the products are all designed to be the best they can be and that’s how the best sounds, I’ll leave up to you. For my part I think it’s a bit of both. That might not fit so snugly outside of the Burmester ecosystem, where bright and forward is the order of the day, but this effortless character does make for more comfortable listening than happens with the more pinched and forward designs.

What the Burmester 175 does extremely well is atmospheric, room filling swells, because it seems to play these with absolute precision and fidelity. ‘Rakim’ by the Dead Can Dance live album Toward The Within[4AD] is a perfect example of this; it’s a mini-maelstrom of sound, and should envelop the listener in a range of deep and impressive sounds from the musicians. Often, it just sounds like a overproduced, pretentious mess, but not here. That’s difficult to reproduce.

The Burmester’s ability with such tracks seems to come from a combination of two factors; the almost totally noise free phono signal chain (you could turn the amp up to 11 and use the cartridge as a microphone and still barely get above baseline electronics hiss – it’s that quiet) and its outstanding pitch stability. With the hidden belts and the rapid start-up, you’d be forgiven for thinking this a direct drive deck, and the precision of the speed control helps reinforce that thinking.

It also has the rare ability to not be musically troubled by surface noise, even the sort of surface noise that borders on track damage. Pops and clicks are still noticeable and unfortunate, but not as musically intrusive as some. I noticed this with a copy of Faure’s ‘Requiem’ [EMI] that I have and that has seen better days. The choir begins to get almost raspy due to track collapse, but this is masked in most turntables by the sound of bacon frying in the foreground from all the pops and crackles. The frying bacon sound hasn’t gone away, and neither has the raspy choir sound, but you can here ‘through’ them better. This perhaps does dovetail with the more effortless and relaxed upper midband of the 175, but whether this is ‘character’ or ‘accuracy’ remains difficult to say definitively. Certainly if you associate ‘accuracy’ with ‘clinical coolness’ this isn’t the turntable for you, but if you like a sound that is overly lush or rich, then the 175 is not the deck for you either.

There are so many aspects that this turntable does right, but perhaps what makes it most immediately recognisable as a top-notch turntable is its ability to force the listener to drink deep. Turning a piece of music off during play is not quite the travesty it can be with some systems, but you are perfectly happy to let one track drift into a whole side, and maybe reach for more. Don’t go to audition this with Yessongs!

Because this is a Burmester product there is one aspect of the design that some outside of the Burmester ecosystem might find an annoyance. It is a balanced-only output. This is actually an inherently ‘right’ idea on two fronts; Burmester products are designed as balanced products (they supply XLR-phono downmixing connectors for those with single-ended RCA products), and cartridges are an inherently balanced source. But there will be those almost militantly opposed to balanced connections and they will strike this from their list of options. More fool them!

There is another albeit very mild concern for those within the Burmester ecosystem; the 175 replaces the 100 you bought just a few short years ago. There will be a good trade in second hand model 100s and the phono stage remains on Burmester’s books, but those wanting the finest in Burmester turntable replay just got a new toy in the 175, and the model 100 can’t play there.

The Burmester 175 has to be right because of its position in the line. The first ‘headline’ audio product launched after the passing of Dieter Burmester himself, the company’s first ever turntable, the most expensive turnkey turntable ever, and is part of the company’s Reference Line… if it took a wrong turn anywhere, there would be blood! Fortunately, everyone can rest easy and no blood has been spilled in the making of this review. This is just a damn good turntable, more than you might ever expect as a first shot across the vinyl bows from the brand. Its price and position puts it in among the best of the best, and it stands with them on build and sonic terms. If you are interested in those things (and let’s face it who isn’t?), you just got your first turnkey turntable.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Type: Belt-driven, non-suspended turntable, with tonearm, cartridge, and phono stage
Chassis: sandwiched aluminium/brass plate
Isolation: Three adjustable magnetic corner feet
Motor: 4x AC synchronous motors
Platter: sandwiched aluminium/brass plate
Arm type: gimballed bearing
Arm length: 9 inches
Cartridge type: moving coil
Phono-stage: MC only, load-variable, based on
Model 100
Weight: 60kg
Price (including cartridge): £29,800

Manufacturer: Burmester Audiosysteme GmbH

URL: www.burmester.de

Tel: +49 (0)30 78 79 68-0

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WIN! $11,900 worth of Critical Mass Systems Center Stage2 footers

Hi-Fi+ has teamed up with the clever guys from Critical Mass Systems to bring you an exciting chance to win $11,900 worth of Center Stage2 footers to transform your system! Alan Sircom reviewed the Center Stage2 footers in issue 163 of Hi-Fi+. He wrote, “Center Stage2 is made by “choosing and sequencing materials that possess the perfectcombination of damping, elastic modulus, and thin rod speed to lock in the desired effect.” That effect is, “a catalyst in a complex energy reaction that occurs between your equipment and its environment.”

The idea is that kinetic and vibrational energy act in an unregulated and undamped manner inside a product and by using four Center Stage2 under electronic components can “change the prevailing state of equilibrium in that energy reaction and to permanently hold it in a reduced or damped state.”

He concluded by saying, “I can’t help thinking that this is the best of the best. If you can take the short-term pain, the long-term gain is more than worth it!”

Competition Question

What types of energy do the Center Stage2 footers permanently hold in a reduced state?

A. kinetic and vibrational

B. chemical and elastic

C. nuclear and solar

To answer, please visit Critical Mass System’s dedicated competition page at https://mailchi.mp/ca5f42b65418/criticalmasssystem_hifiplus

Alternatively, send your answer on a postcard (including your name, address, and contact details) to Critical Mass Systems Competition, c/o Select Audio, Ross House, Maryport, CA15 8RX, Cumbria, United Kingdom.

Competition Rules

The competition will run from October 4th 2018 until December 6th 2018. The competition is open to everyone, but multiple, automated or bulk entries will be disqualified. The winner will be chosen at random from all valid entries, will be contacted via email (where possible) and their name will be published in the magazine. The Editor’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Absolute Multimedia (UK) Ltd. is compliant with the Data Protection Act and UK laws apply. Our policy is such that we will not pass on your details to any third party without your prior consent.

Rotel T14 tuner/streamer

Stop me if I’m being presumptuous but I suspect that most of the readers of this august journal can remember a time when the only way to listen to music without paying for it was on the radio. And, if you were listening in the UK, that was a very confined experience where the few broadcasters on FM were only interested in a mainstream audience. There were some stations that broke through the top 40 playlist barriers, like Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg on AM, and those prepared to stay up late enough could enjoy a genuinely eclectic mix on the John Peel show on BBC Radio One. But if you missed it that was it, there was no ‘listen again’, no music on demand, and definitely no Spotify, YouTube, or Tidal. All of which meant that the radio held rather higher status in the hierarchy of audio sources than it does today – an age when FM tuner sales were in free-fall, even before the threat to turn off analogue broadcasting came up again.

Radio still has its place for me. I frequently listen to specific shows in the hope of hearing something new and interesting (I have a Tidal account but that’s of little use unless you know what to look for or are a hip hop enthusiast). Rotel is hoping I’m not alone in thinking that, and there’s an audience for an all-singing, all-dancing multi-source ‘wireless’; a single device that can receive the majority of broadcasts and internet streams on the major platforms and more. The Rotel T14 is an FM and DAB receiver and a network streamer with access to internet radio and various streaming services, I don’t think there are many source components that provide the range of options than the T14 does. The back panel says it all, with a coaxial socket for an FM aerial, threaded coax for DAB, and twin Wi-Fi antenna for network streaming. It’s a little odd that there’s no RJ45 for a direct Ethernet connection to a network, but wires are clearly out of fashion these days. Of course, you still need wires to go to the supplied DAB and FM aerials, however the latter is redundant unless you’re living in the right place. I wasn’t initially able to get a clear signal from the T-shaped indoor antenna supplied and resorted to the DAB feed instead.

The DAB antenna has a magnetic base and when placed on a suitably ferrous bit of casework gets a stronger signal than otherwise, again this will be location specific and best results will be achieved with an external antenna, but who has one of those these days? I was able to pick up a good if not comprehensive range of DAB stations using the ‘national scan’ option, it found all the BBC stations but not Classic Rock (now on the Absolute roster). It’s fairly easy to stick your preferred stations into the preset buttons on the fascia or remote for ease of access and the nature of the input suggests you can have more than 10.

When you start to look at the internet radio options, it makes the array of DAB broadcasters seem very limited, I guess that it didn’t cost a lot more to include the terrestrial radio options on the T14 and there will always be times when the broadband is on the blink, but otherwise the net is hard to beat. For a start you can search for stations by name, albeit not always with success; for example, it found BBC Radio 3, but not Fluid, which in its ambient genre listing. You can search by location and city, which is fine if you know which city your station is coming from, but most net radios have station lists for countries. There are also podcasts listed by genre; this has Marc Maron’s WTF but not Adam Buxton’s popular show, popular in my household at least.

The network streaming side of the T14 is controlled by the DTS Play-Fi app, but can only be used once you have managed to get the unit onto your network, a process that proved slightly more tricky than usual, but at least didn’t involve inputting a password via the buttons on the fascia. The App is a little mystifying at times; getting back from the one of the streaming platforms or internet radio to the main menu confounded me for a while, but did prove possible. There is a stack of music services available, more than any other streamer I’ve tried, including favourites like Tidal, Qobuz, and Spotify Connect alongside Deezer, Amazon Music, Napster, and Pandora. Some of these are region specific of course and there’s more than a clue to the T14’s target market in that list.

Quite a lot of operations can be done with the front panel buttons, but hard as I looked I couldn’t find a seek button for FM stations. The manual suggests two methods for doing this, both of which proved reviewer-proof. However, I did note that reception had improved for Radio 3 on this occasion; it wasn’t noise free but gave the impression that a slightly better or better placed aerial would deliver decent results. Sound quality with the same station on DAB is reasonably open with some stereo solidity; it seemed a little lacking in fine detail, but given the compression used by broadcasters, even of BBC R3’s calibre, that’s hardly surprising. More importantly it made some Schoenberg sound remarkably musical and listenable – some very teenage, easy-listening Schoenberg that is; the Second Viennese School isn’t exactly on heavy rotation chez-Kennedy. Switching to the same station’s net stream produced a small reduction in quality, the DAB option being slightly cleaner and more open, but it’s a close call and switching to Play-Fi sources is not terribly quick.

That said, when you are streaming, those buttons on the right-hand side of the display can be useful. Rarely have I seen so many interwebular control options in metal; usually you have to resort to a remote or control app to skip tracks, shuffle, or repeat. Using the T14 as a network streamer with an Innuos Zenith SE server results in a somewhat vague sound by the standards of a good (wired) streamer. Whether this is due to the wireless connection or the streamer and DAC in the Rotel is hard to say, but the fact that it is also a tuner may be a factor – RF noise being the enemy of digital audio. It’s not an offensive sound but neither does it make you want to pay attention, which is a pity when there’s a server of the Zenith’s class feeding it. With Tidal the result is a little weaker than a wired streamer but the difference isn’t as marked, presumably because the signal has already travelled a fair way, and I had a lot of fun listening to a variety of different songs.

Going back to the server feed I tried a number of pieces starting with Beethoven’s ‘smash hit’ the 5th Symphony [Barenboim, Beethoven For All, 24/96, Decca], this had plenty of scale and a good helping of the drama that makes it so diverting, but the sound lacked clarity and imaging was rather vague. None of which stops you enjoying it of course but a good streamer is capable of showing the timing and dynamic subtleties that fail to come through clearly on the T14. Simpler material such as Radiohead’s ‘Decks Dark’ [A Moon Shaped Pool, XL] fares much better; its clearly defined, percussive nature comes through well even if the finer aspects of the imagery are left to the imagination. I think the Rotel’s main problem, however, is timing; the bass line on Patricia Barber’s ‘Touch of Trash’ [Modern Cool, Premonition] sounds slow, limiting the extent to which the music can connect with the listener. Removing the DAB and FM aerials did seem to help a little, but that undermines the point of the product.

There is a digital output on the T14 too, so I gave that a whirl with a rather OTT (under the circumstances) DAC in the form of a Chord DAVE, and this clearly helped. It brought refinement and clarity that made Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark[Asylum] a joy once more, with decent definition across the board and improved if not quite kick ass timing.

The Rotel T14 is a useful piece of kit if you want to kill two birds with one stone without going down the AV receiver route. Whether it makes sense to incorporate a tuner into a product that can find the same programme, and a lot more, online is another question. It’s a niche product no doubt, but one for which there could well be a market if enough of us radio lovers still want a decent source.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Type: DAB/DAB+, FM tuner and network streamer
Control connections: Home automation via RS232, 12V trigger in- and outputs (via 3.5mm jacks)
Antenna inputs: DAB – 75 Ohm F connector, FM – 75 Ohm coaxial connector
Network connection: 802.11b/g/a/n Dual Band.
DAC Resolution: 384kHz/32 bit
Music services/Wi-Fi inputs: Spotify Connect, Tidal, Qobuz, Pandora, Napster, Amazon Music etc.
Analogue Outputs: One pair single ended (via RCA jacks)
Digital Outputs: One coaxial S/PDIF (via RCA jack)
Frequency Response: Not specified
Supported Radio Formats: FM, DAB, DAB+, Internet radio, Internet streaming
Distortion (THD + Noise): Not specified
User Interface: LCD display (on main unit), DTS Play-Fi application software for iOS, Android
Dimensions (H×W×D): 93 ×430 ×334mm
Weight: 5.1kg
Price: £699

Manufacturer: Rotel

UK Distributor: Rotel Europe

Tel: +44 (0) 1903 221 710

URL: rotel.com

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Zanden Audio Systems Model 9600Mk2 mono power amplifier

There’s an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mindset at the heart of Zanden Audio Systems. The Model 9600 has formed the power amplifier basis of the company’s line since the turn of this decade. Zanden announced the 9600Mk2 with typical understatement, but “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” doesn’t quite apply here. OK, so the exterior remains almost identical, and the basic headline specifications are virtually identical between the two models, but where the first amp was awesome, this new one is ‘awesomer’.

Like all Zanden products, it is phenomenally well made. Often boxes come with white gloves, and when you see the ugly tin box of screws and powder coat inside, you wonder precisely the point of them. This is not one of those products. It’s like a giant jewel, with its flawless, mirror-like stainless-steel case and a refined, elegant viewing panel for the valves. Everything about the amplifier is refined, restrained elegance, the kind of thing that makes a Savile Row suit look garish. This is somewhat odd, because the almost gold finished aluminium panels on the front section (something close to white gold) could look very tacky, but instead just looks extraordinarily graceful. This is perfectionism, the stuff of Zanden head Kazutoshi Yamada, and that perfectionism expresses itself in every aspect of the product.

The differences between the original and Mk2 model are subtle and internal. The old and new look identical, but there are changes to the valve complement, improved circuit layout, better power supply, and a new transformer material for both the input and output transformers.

The 9600Mk2 features a cobalt input transformer, Finemet output transformers, and a double-choke valve-regulated power supply. The Finemet transformer is designed by Hitachi metals, this is a nanocrystaline soft magnetic metal, a world first. It combines excellent magnetic flux capacity, high permeability, and electromagnetic noise suppression, making it a popular choice for use in industrial lasers, and particle accelerators in nuclear medicine applications. Zanden first tried this in its ‘entry level’ power amp, and found it so successful that it was ‘trickled up’ to the top-line power amplifiers.

Zanden has been having a spot of quiet rationalisation of product lines of late. Regrettably, the digital audio side has now gone away (not least because parts were becoming scarce) as has the integrated amplifier and cables, and now the company has just six products in its electronics line-up; a phono preamp, line preamp, and stereo power amp in the company’s affordable ‘Modern’ line, and a phono preamp, line preamp, and mono power amplifiers in the cost-no-object Classic Line. The rest is a platter mat and vibration absorber. The improvements Finemet brought to the Model 8120 stereo power amp were suitably large enough to warrant investigation in the top products.

The Model 9600Mk2 remains Zanden’s flagship power amplifier. It employs two KR845 valves in the output stage, with two 6CA4, two 5R4WGB and two 5687WB, replacing the 5AR4, two 5R4WGB, and three 5687WB in the predecessor. That means a lot more valve rectification. As a result, it succeeds in combining both the high power properties of a good solid-state amp coupled with the tonal beauty of valves. It uses a fixed-bias, completely fully-balanced push-pull circuit and a fully valves-rectified power supply circuit. As a result, there are a total of eight valves per channel, including the aforementioned 845s as output valves. This means they put out 60W in Class A or 100W in Class AB. Although impressive in any valve power amp, to our American counterparts, that seems a little underwhelming, however, in use the amplifiers could drive real-world high-end loudspeakers extremely well. It might not be the first choice for power-hungry loudspeakers that need near infinite power, but neither does it fall into the trap of ‘fear the Watt’ low-powered designs. And that new output transformer has a great part to play in that sound quality.

Naturally, a power amplifier of this gravity deserves the best, and in particular the best in partnering preamplifiers. It’s hard to think of a more deserving partner than the Zanden Model 3000Mk2 line preamplifier, also running in balanced mode. The two share the same gain structure so the output of one almost perfectly matches the input of the other, but there’s nothing malign going on in making these too snug a fit. They work well together because they were designed together, rather than designed to dovetail.

This is the sort of system that focuses your attention on the music in a way that so few other systems can. It’s not only about the soundstage properties (which are both uppermost and superb), and not only about the richness and warmth of the sound, it’s the way music – even music you know so very well – mesmerises and captivates you.

In fact, ‘mesmerising’ is perhaps the best description of what the Zanden 9600Mk2 do and what they do to you while listening. Music is not simply good, or exciting, or impassioned. It is all of those things, but more importantly, it is mesmerising… you sit spell-bound in front of your music collection, listening carefully to every piece you play.

In a way, Zanden is like the antithesis to the modern streamed concept. This is a measured, sophisticated, and knowing way to listen to music, rather than an orgy of sound, or a surf through a music collection. Music here has gravitas, and that permeates your listening as much as it permeates your listening tastes with the Zanden.

You find yourself selecting the album you want to hear, you play it in full, then repeat the process a few times, before stopping and taking a break. This is not because the music is at all aggressive or somehow unkempt, it’s that the Zanden delivers so much musical satisfaction, you feel no need to binge.

That sense of musical restraint is not a limitation, in fact it’s a freedom. We have become too accustomed to the musical world fed through Tidal and Roon. These two products combined are wonderful and allow a music lover to discover untold greats that you might never have discovered without these two titans of the post-physical digital music world. But not everyone wants to be so ‘dunked’ in different music. Bizarrely, in the time before Roon and Tidal, we used to choose a piece of music and listen to it, then maybe do the same to the next record, and then stop for the evening. In a way, this is respecting the recording. The Zanden’s musical approach is so mesmerising (that word again) that you can’t help but respect the recording, and that imposes a limit on playing time. You walk away from a Zanden-based listening session composed, refreshed, and musically satisfied enough to want to repeat the experience regularly. But that audio cliché of discs strewn round the room (which does happen, despite it being a cliché) is not what happens here.

This mesmerising property of the Zanden is simply that it’s impossible to break past the music and into the audio aspects, because your mind is drawn back to the music. So I play a piece of music designed specifically to focus on bass – ‘Chameleon’ by Trentemøller [The Last Resort,Poker Flat] for example, and you forget about the bass and focus on the gestalt of the piece. Put on the next album to evaluate soundstage – ‘Memphis Soul Stew’ by King Curtis and the Kingpins [King Curtis at Fillmore West, ATCO] and the same happens. It’s mesmerism at its best.

Eventually, after a protracted listening session, those cognitive powers begin to take hold, and you get past the sheer enjoyment music has on the Zandens, and focus on individual attributes of audio performance. This is very definitely an amplifier that leads from the midrange out; the vocal articulation and image solidity within that midrange is world leading. This extends up into the highest registers, but in a very elegant, never forced, never pinched, and never sharp manner. And it extends down into the bass, which is both cavernous and extremely well ordered. Bass can be a problem with valve amps because they lack the damping factor to really control the bottom end, but in this case, the loudspeaker feels like it’s being driven by a solid-state amplifier. All of this combines to make a sound that feels remarkably natural, and one that goes for richness of tonal palette rather than starkly etched details. In fact, the 9600 is extremely detailed, it’s just that it’s not ‘excessively’ so, unlike so many more immediate sounding devices.

There’s one important aspect of the Zanden sound that few systems do well, and it’s ‘beauteousness.’ We get so wrapped up in quantum of musical performance, we often forget how good or bad the overall sound can be. I’ve often heard extremely well liked products that somehow fail to make the cut because they work well when highlighting individual aspects of performance, but these individual components do not combine well sonically. The Zanden is the diametric opposite to this type of presentation. The way things sound on this system are always beauteous and refined. Not to a fault, but when you sit back and listen to a piece of music it just sounds so, well, beauteous.

In writing this, I’m detecting a sense in my own writing that could be seen as saying the sound lacks some guts and drama. That’s not entirely the case. Zanden is probably not the first choice of the hardcore death metal or dance music fan, because they are likely to go for something more immediate and more overtly dynamic than the 9600Mk2. But for those of us who don’t have such exclusive tastes, the elegance and approachability of the sound wins out, and wins big.

The result is – purely and simply – one of the best amplifiers I have ever heard. This is one of those career defining moments for me, like the brief time I had an Audio Note Ongaku at home when it was the most expensive thing on the planet. Or when I got to experience the Wilson WAMM Master Chronosonic in the late Dave Wilson’s own home. It’s both a humbling experience and a level resetting experience. You now know what good audio is capable of, and it’s not something you can come back from. On a very basic level, that audio reset button applies to valves specifically, because I have never heard a valve power amp sound this quiet and this capable before.

But absence of ‘valve rush’ alone does not make a good audio product. What sets the Zandens apart from the morass of good amplifiers keeps drawing me back to the music. It’s all about the music, and making that music sound more approachable, more accessible, and – yes – more musical. That happens the moment you turn them on until you turn them off. Virtually whatever the music, the Zanden rises to the challenge.

The Zanden’s limitations are few. Yes, this will not find favour among those wanting to cram as much top end energy as possible into every musical experience. And if you play this into difficult loudspeakers in a huge room, and then deluge it with heavy opera, the Zanden will eventually run out of puff. The valve regulation, however, seems engineered well enough to withstand complex themes without folding up and compressing the midrange.

You know you are onto a winner when a brand is spoken of in hushed tones. Zanden Audio Systems is one such brand, and the 9600Mk2 is part of the reason why those hushed tones are uttered. Of course this amplifier deserves world-class partners and that makes it extremely expensive in context, but it defines a musical performance the likes of which you simply don’t get from other components. That doesn’t just put the Zanden in the audio A-List, it turns out to be Audio Royalty, and you want that music in your life more and more.

The crazy thing about Zanden is no matter how good you might think a pair of very high-end, practically bespoke mono amps from Japan might be, in reality they are much, much better. Hands down, this is one of the most real musical experiences you can get from audio. Aficionados who take their audio extremely seriously have to try Zanden. It really is that good.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Type: Mono valve power amplifier (all specifications per channel)
Tube complement: 2 x KR845, 2 x 6CA4, 2 x 5R4WGB, 2 x 5687WB
Power output: 60W (class A)/
100W (class AB)
Input: XLR
Input impedance: 7.5kΩ
Output impedance: 2Ω / 4Ω / 8Ω
Frequency response: 6Hz–50KHz (-3dB)
Dimensions (W×H×D): 32 × 44 × 45cm
Weight: 42.5kg
Price: £59,995 per pair

Manufactured by: Zanden Audio Systems Ltd.

URL: zandenaudio.com

Distributed by: Audiofreaks

URL: audiofreaks.co.uk

Tel: +44(0)208 948 4153

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Continuum Audio Labs Obsidian turntable and Viper tonearm

Afew years ago, Continuum Audio Labs made the Caliburn turntable. It was an air-suspended, air-bearing, air-and-vacuum everything design that pushed the frontiers of both what you can get out of a record and – let’s be brutally honest, here – just how much you can spend on a record player. Just 100 of these six-figure decks were made, and then Continuum became little more than a footnote in sister brand Constellation Audio’s back story. The electronics brand was growing exponentially at the time and making a hundred six-figure turntables was considered saturation point, even with a deck as highly prized as the Caliburn and its Copperhead arm partner. Many thought that would be the last we would ever see of Continuum. And many were wrong, because the company is back with the new Obsidian turntable and Viper tonearm.

The Obsidian is a complete departure for Continuum. Where its predecessor was all air and vacuum, sucking the record in place and creating an almost suspension, the Obsidian is a solid chunk of deck. This doesn’t mean compromise, however, every aspect of the turntable might be different from before but that doesn’t make it inferior, more ‘differently better’, and given that you could buy almost three Obisidians for the price of a Caliburn, ‘differently better’ is one hell of an achievement.

Obsidian is actually the end result of the project that spun out of the Caliburn. Launched in 2005, that turntable was Continuum’s vision of the best turntable it was possible to make at the time. With more than a decade of research into turntable design and materials science since then, the Obsidian represents Continuum’s vision of the best turntable it is possible to make today. That the vision itself is very different does not change the goal.

The root of the clever parts of the Obsidian is that ability to not be hide-bound by past conventions, and especially by past glories, and instead to start ‘tabula rasa’. In the process, Continuum liken the development of the Obsidian to that of an elite sports car, spending dozens of man-years researching into motor technology, bearing manufacture, chassis design, platter design, and more. The company didn’t just throw out all the elements of the Caliburn for the sake of it; they analysed the original project to see what aspects of the design could be recycled, transplanted, or improved upon, and what parts could be consigned to history.

For example, the nested platter is retained, but radically improved. The turntable maker deployed a lot of finite-element analysis modelling to damp vibrations, both the ones coming from the stylus-record interface, and the ones coming through the ground via the base. By careful design, any unwanted resonances are pushed way outside of the audio band where their influence is minimised. According to Continuum, the platter is the component that contributes the largest amount of character to the sound thanks to those resonances. By removing those resonances well outside the audio band, the turntable loses an intrinsic character of its own. As you will see, this is something of an obsession at Continuum. It’s also worth noting that the new version of the nested platter is of sufficiently high mass to create its own flywheel effect.

That can be exploited if the platter sits on a bearing hard enough (both in literal ‘Rockwell’ and figurative ‘hard man’ terms) to benefit, and Continuum nailed this by going big. Really big. The massively oversized bearing in the Obsidian is larger than that of almost every other turntable brand on the planet. In fact, this is not simply to help spin a massive platter, it’s because of the relationship between bearing size and platter resonance that only Continuum and a handful of other deck makers seem to have noticed. By replacing the normal spindle-sized bearing with one that wouldn’t look out of place on an axle of a small truck, resonance is kept below 10Hz.

The really interesting part here is the bearing is magnetically opposed, but does not float, so it acts as a low-friction design, but retains a mechanical grounding path. That means none of the risk of wobble found in other mag-bearing designs. It also has a ball and shaft made from tungsten, which means torque transfer is excellent and the bearing will last a lifetime or three.

The obsessiveness applied to the bearing and platter housing are echoed in the design of the motor and its housing. Continuum refers to this motor as The Quiet One because the 35mm, 60V DC motor uses a high-power design with graphite brushes and ball bearings instead of sleeve bearings, making sure that any vibrations are damped elsewhere in the structure. The DC motor itself is servo controlled at a higher rate (53.6kHz) than its competitors, meaning cogging effects are functionally zero. This is fed by an off-board power supply that can be used to set precise, drift-free 33 and 45 rpm, or can be speed controlled slightly through a series of button pushes on the external box’s front panel. The logic to drive the speed control is a little ‘modal’ (press to engage 33 rpm, depress to disengage 33, then press to engage 45 rpm, and so on) but this soon becomes second nature. Almost.

Even the armboard has been given careful consideration, and as that is the part that is usually given lip service in a turntable design, this is impressive in the extreme. The armboard housing has two outriggers (it can be connected to both the regular position to the right of the turntable, or applied to the two covered holes in the front, allowing for two arms should you wish. The arm is actually ‘suspended’ using a magnetic attachment system, although this is – once again – to prevent vibration interfering with the arm’s operation.

This creates a high-mass arm base, but also one that is double-isolated against the transfer of vibration or resonance. Like the deck itself, much of the mount is tungsten.

Any arm could be fitted to the Obsidian, although a 10” arm is optimal. Theoretically, Continuum could build an armbase with longer tungsten mounting bars to accommodate a longer arm, but eventually such things get self-defeating, either from an engineering standing, the cost of the custom mounting bars, and so on. But more importantly, why bother in the light of the Viper tonearm, which makes such a fine and logical match, casting the net for a better arm is almost academic.

The Viper is a unipivot with a sapphire vee jewel bearing on a hardened stainless steel pivot is a work of genius; the bearing housing itself has been designed with the Continuum in mind, and features extremely precise adjustments of VTA, Azimuth, and VTF (down to 0.001g increments). Arm tubes are easily detached and are interchangable. It uses an underslung counterweight in a set position. Changing its balance point means running through a series of different counterweight washers. This is a bit of a pain, but ensures the geometry of the arm remains consistent no matter what. The armtube itself is exceptionally light (it’s about as thick and as heavy as an eggshell, although a lot more rugged and incapable of being fried over easy).

Installation of the turntable is easy, and while the turntable is high-mass, it’s not unliftable when in its component parts. You can go from box to shelf in an hour or so. The arm is not that much slower, but it demands attention to give of its best. If you aren’t the kind of person that would routinely devote a day to setting up a cartridge to get it just about perfect, then you might want to call for back-up. Like any first-rate tonearm, the performance is only as good as how much time you spend on it, and this is really worth the effort.

All that obsession about resonance and vibration pays off, big time. I guess that’s pretty obvious, if you think it through for a few seconds: a turntable is acting like a seismograph in reverse, so every time you introduce extraneous vibration or resonance you are going to undermine that backwards-seismograph’s signal, and conversely, everything you do to make that signal less interfered with by vibration or resonance, the better it is going to sound. It’s not rocket surgery!

This is perhaps the easiest part of this review to write, because the deck and arm combined do exactly what they are supposed to do: be a blank canvas for the cartridge to drag its rock through a groove. About a minute into the second album you play on this turntable, it dawns on you that the deck is just determined not to make a sound, and leaves all of that to the cartridge and the phono stage. With great power comes great responsibility, however, and this means taking an uncompromising line on those parts. Given the family history and relationships, the phono stage was from Constellation (the Perseus) and the cartridge was from Koetsu (Onyx Platinum). This was all you heard; no platter ring, no vibrations, no ‘bright’ no ‘dark’… just what the cartridge is telling you about the record.

As I said earlier, this takes two records. You listen to the first one – in this case Marty Paich Big Band’s The New York Scene[Discovery] – then you put on a second – in this case Duke Pearson’s The Right Touch[Blue Note]. You then realise they sound like they were being played on completely different record players. Both record players were perfectly optimised for that record. You move on to a third and a fourth, and the same happens again. And that makes this the worst part of a review to write, because I can’t pin anything down. Is vocal articulation good? On Sweet Baby Jamesby James Taylor [Warner, Speakers Corner], it’s sublime. On ‘Figure It Out’ from Royal Blood’s eponymous debut [Warner, again], it’s more blurred, but the guitar and drums are powerful and dynamic.

You then fall into the trap of thinking about the deck in terms of other decks, and you are in deep trouble. On one record, it sounds like a Linn, because the record has that kind of tonal balance that benefits from a Linn’s presentation. On the other, it sounds like a VPI, for similar reasons, on a third, a Rega, and so on. This is in the danger zone for a reviewer, because it leads to ‘waxing philosophically’ and then you are well and truly lost.

The trouble is, there’s nothing to see here, and that is a wholly good thing. A source component isn’t supposed to be a filter or a influence on the sound, and that’s precisely what the Continuum is or isn’t doing. It has no ‘drag’ on the sound, no influence, no footprint, nothing. Images are as wide as the record, dynamic range changes from album to album. This deck and arm do almost nothing to the sound.

When you listen to a soundless turntable, you are transfixed. You are enthralled. One minute you are wiggling along with Duke Ellington taking hold of Newport in 1958, the next you are wailing in sorrow while listening to a requiem mass. The sound of nothingness is the sound we signed up for originally all those years ago. It’s the sound records are supposed to make, but seldom do in reality.

For all this, however, the turntable and arm are relatively forgiving to bad albums. OK, so I didn’t have my copy of The Handless Organistto, er, hand, but you play something thin and clipped it will play that without making it unlistenable. The really unsaveable recordings will stay unsaveable, of course, but even here, the Continuum’s sense of even-handed order will usually make the best of a bad job.

Of course it is on the really good records where the Continuum shines. The Columbia reissue of Berlioz: Symphony Fantastique (New York Phil, Mitropoulos Cond.). ‘Un Bal’ and it’s waltz-like properties were inspiring. The changes in tempo, the sense of space around the instruments, the tonality of the instruments themselves, and the absolute lack of anything getting between you and the music was extremely alluring.

And then there’s the musically wonderful moments that make it all worthwhile: playing something like ‘Crying’ by Roy Orbison. That’s not a record that I was there for the first time round, but it’s not difficult to empathise and realise that for the length of time the record played, the turntable was a time machine. Funny how records you might have only heard on a cheap 1960s turntable and stuck away for decades can have such emotive energy when played on the really good stuff.

A parting shot here was the use of a good cleaning machine, like the Klaudio. Granted this can make changes that can be heard on almost any table, but the impact it had on the Obsidian and Viper made such a thing almost mandatory. A small change on a normal turntable became a transformation of epic proportions through the Continuum.

This is a truly wonderful deck to experience, or rather not experience. It’s complete absence of sound and total neutrality is not stark, bright, or forward. It’s neutral, but not in a ‘Switzerland’ kind of way. It’s actively neutral, making a sound that is beguiling and exciting because the impact of the Continnums is so minimal on the music. It makes music come to life in a way few other turntables at any price can.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Obsidian Turntable

Type: Belt-drive non-suspended turntable with DC motor
Rotational Speeds: 33 1/3 RPM, 45 RPM
Supported Tonearm Length(s): up to two 9-inch arms supported as standard.
Drive Mechanism: Belt driven via 60V DC motor, via external PSU
Speed Control: via PSU (fixed and variable)
Platter Type: FEA-modelled Nested Platter
Bearing Type: Oversized magnetically opposed bearing with tungsten ball and shaft
Arm bases: magnetic support base for arm, tungsten rods as outriggers
Dimensions: not stated
Weight: not stated
Price: £39,998

Viper Tonearm

Type: Unipivot tonearm
Bearing type: sapphire vee jewel bearing on a hardended stainless steel pivot
Overhang: not stated
Adjustment options: VTA, Azimuth, and VTF (down to 0.001g increments)
Dimensions: not stated
Weight: not stated
Options: Spare arm wands (£POA)
Price: £11,998

Manufacturer: Continuum Audio Labs

URL: continuumaudiolabs.com

Distributed by: Absolute Sounds

Tel: +44(0) 208 971 3909

URL: absolutesounds.com

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Manufacturer: Continuum Audio Labs

Distributed by: Absolute Sounds

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Distributor Information (North America):
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