Articles Archive - Page 261 of 266

JansZen zA2.1 Speaker Review

The JansZen zA2.1 attempts to deliver the advantages of a full-range electrostatic speaker, but in a small-footprint suitable for medium-sized rooms. Unlike planar speakers, which almost all require a large room to really work their magic, the zA2.1 was designed to fit into a less cavernous environment. With dimensions roughly equivalent to many mid-sized floor-standing box speakers, and drivers contained in a closed rather than open-back design, the zA2.1 can fit nicely into a room where even old Quad ESL-57s (one of the smaller planar electrostatics ever made) would have never fit properly. If you have always wanted to own electrostatic speakers but refused to move to a larger domicile to accommodate them, the JansZen zA2.1 could be YOUR electrostatic.

Basically the zA2.1 is a sealed cabinet, two-way design with a side-firing tweeter. But instead of a conventional tweeter the zA2.1 has two identical electrostatic panels mounted in a barometrically isolated sub-enclosure. At a 500Hz crossover point, the electrostatic panels hand off to a pair of 175mm alloy-cone midrange/woofers. The crossover slope is a very gradual 6 dB per octave, which means there is a fairly wide frequency range where the electrostatic panels and the cone woofers are both producing sound, the main advantage being the improved phase alignment.

To maximize the zA2.1’s flexibility JansZen added several level controls. The electrostatic panels’ level can be reduced by up to 6 dB via a variable control knob. The midrange/woofers have a three-position toggle that offers -3 dB, + 3 dB, and flat settings. Finally JansZen has a side-firing tweeter they call their “airLayer option” which can be continuously adjusted from off to very loud.

The zA2.1 cabinet enclosure utilizes an acoustic suspension design for minimum group delay. With 25mm thick walls and a 63mm thick solid hardwood front baffle that features “front edge scoops” to reduce front panel edge diffraction, the zA2.1’s 91cm tall and 26cm wide cabinet is compact yet solid.

The zA2.1 is very purposefully a limited dispersion design. Both horizontal and vertical dispersion parameters are restricted so less energy radiates out into a listening room’s reflective surfaces. Especially in the upper frequency range, early reflections from the walls, ceiling, and floor can have substantial negative effects on a speaker’s in-room imaging and harmonic balance. By limiting dispersion of the zA2.1 JansZen delivers an electrostatic that will have far less in the way of sonically negative room interactions.

The fit and finish of the JansZen zA2.1 was impeccable. I was sent three zA2.1s for my review so I could have a matching centre channel speaker for my 5.1 system. The right and left speakers were finished with a walnut front baffle while the centre channel was painted to match the cabinet’s dark charcoal tone. At 30 kg (66 lbs.) the zA2.1s are solid, yet still relatively easy to move and position thanks to their rubber feet. Spikes are also available, but especially at first using the rubber feet makes set up a lot easier.

While attention to detail during set-up will most certainly be worth the effort, the zA2.1 speakers were no harder to set up and fine tune than many dynamic-driver and hybrid designs I’ve reviewed in the past. In my primary speaker review room most speakers end up being placed somewhere within a ½ meter diameter circle. The zA2.1’s final positions were about 6 CM father away from the back wall and about 8 CM farther apart than the AV123 X-Static speakers that had been installed in the room prior to the zA2.1’s arrival.

The zA2.1s were toed in so the panels were facing directly at my central listening position. They were also tilted back via 5cm thick AudioQuest Sorbothane rubber pucks. It is vitally important to get the zA2.1s titled back so their tweeter panels are pointed directly at the primary listener’s head. If the speakers are not tilted back enough some high frequency extension will be lost. To hear what the loss of upper frequencies will sound like, you merely have to stand up. The zA2.1 is one speaker that you simply can’t listen to from a standing position. You will notice how the treble attenuates as you go from a seated to standing position, even at the primary listening spot.

The JansZen zA2.1s, like most electrostatic speakers, sounds different from a dynamic driver-based loudspeaker. But unlike many electrostatic speakers I’ve heard, the zA2.1 doesn’t sound overly cold, metallic or zingy. As a guy who’s ping-ponged back and forth from dynamic driver transducers to electrostatic panels for over thirty years, each technology has different aspects of sound reproduction at which they excel.

The zA2.1 takes the good qualities from both technologies and largely leaves the negatives behind.

The adjustability of the zA2.1’s harmonic balance makes it rather difficult to pin down its “native” tonality. When set up for maximum neutrality as measured using sine waves and dB meter the zA2.1 can be very neutral indeed. And while the zA2.1 is neutral, as to whether it is or can be a full-range loudspeaker in your room depends on both your personal definition of full-range and your room’s ability to help out through low frequency room gain. According to JansZen the zA2.1’ s low frequencies can extend down to 30 Hz, but for maximum enjoyment, especially if you favour playback at higher SPLs, I recommend using a subwoofer.

When I first switched from the dynamic driver AV123 X-Statik loudspeakers to the zA2.1 I was immediately struck by how much more lifelike vocalists sounded. There was less of a hard leading edge to their voices. Instead of the additive grain and texture of a conventional dynamic driver speaker, the zA2.1s rendered vocals with a more subtle and natural transient attack.

Another obvious difference between the dynamic driver X-Statik speakers and the zA2.1 was how the zA2.1 emphasized rather than minimized differences between recordings. In comparison the X-Statik rendered soundstages and original recorded harmonic balances with a subtle sameness. As I put on recording after recording that I knew well through the zA2.1s I was greeted with more musical information than through any dynamic driver speaker I’ve heard in my system. Also the zA2.1 speakers highlighted the subtle differences between merely good and truly great recordings.

For some audiophiles the primary sonic drawback of electrostatic panel speakers is their lack of dynamic impact. This isn’t the same as dynamic contrast, but rather the lack of “kick you in the gut” lower midrange and upper bass impact. While the zA2.1s aren’t quite as much of a rock and roll animal as my long-term reference Dunlavy SC VI speakers, they are still far less diaphanous than many electrostatic designs I’ve experienced over the years.

If you are the type of audiophile for whom imaging reigns supreme you may be somewhat disappointed at first with the zA2.1’s imaging prowess. Instead of the pinpoint imaging of a mini-monitor, such as the ATC SCM7, the zA2.1s produce a slightly less laterally precise soundstage. But some listeners may well prefer the more three-dimensional and organic soundstage characteristics of the zA2.1. On my own live concert recordings I heard more of the dimensional cues that emphasize the subtler aspects of the recordings’ sonic environment. The differences between the direct sound coming from each instrument and the reflected sound coming from the sides, rear, stage floor, and proscenium were easier to differentiate through the zA2.1 speakers.

Given the zA2.1’s purposefully limited dispersion characteristics I was concerned that the listening window might be small enough to recreate only a “head-in-a vice” sized sweet spot. I’m happy to report that unless you regularly jump up and down while listening the primary listening area was sufficiently large so that no amount of swaying side to side caused any image shifts or harmonic balance changes.

During the first couple of weeks of the audition period I spent a goodly amount of time trying to dial in the zA2.1’s AirLayer side-firing tweeters. Every time, after many minutes of critical listening and adjusting, I ended up turning them off completely. In the western US we have the expression “tits on a bull” to designate something that is completely superfluous. In my room the AirLayer tweeter option qualified for this particular designation. Whenever I heard the additional side-fired output the effect was negative. The soundstage gained some width when the AirLayer driver was active, but at the expense of imaging specificity. I would strongly recommend listening to the zA2.1s both with and without the AirLayer active. You may well decide that you don’t need it. And ordering a pair of zA2.1s without the AirLayer option saves you money.

Almost all audiophiles love the sound of electrostatic speakers. Unfortunately only a small percentage of them have rooms capable of successfully hosting a large planar design. The JansZen zA2.1 speaker offers the joys and sonic advantages of an electrostatic design in a small footprint that will fit into many rooms where even mid-size conventional driver speakers won’t.

With its hybrid design that mates electrostatic tweeter elements with metal dynamic drivers, the zA2.1 captures the magic of a low-distortion electrostatic while still retaining the jump-factor of a more conventional driver design.

Although not inexpensive, the zA2.1 ranks as one of the best I’ve heard in terms of resolution and overall realism. Especially for fans of minimally processed acoustic music, regardless of genre, listening through the zA2.1s is an experience that few other loudspeakers can match. If you can pay the price of entry,

Details

Price: £9,995 per pair

Manufactured by: JansZen

URL: www.janszenloudspeaker.com

Distributed by: Soundsetup

URL: www.soundsetup.co.uk

Tel: +44(0)7941 330654

Audio Research Reference 250 monoblock amplifiers

Coming after the outstanding Reference 75 stereo amp, I have to admit some reticence in taking on the Audio Research Reference 250 monos. The quality of the Ref 75 sound runs deep, and although these offer three and a bit times the power, there’s that nagging doubt that one little ‘un can beat two big ‘uns. I shouldn’t have worried.

Since acquisition by Fine Sounds, Audio Research has gone through something of a Renaissance. The Italian backers have been very clever with this brand, by not shaking the tree too hard, they seem to have brought the best out of Audio Research’s core values, making products that Audio Research was always good at building, with what seems like a lot of additional R&D budget to realise their potential.

The Ref 250 monos replace the popular Ref 210s. They continue the broad move by Audio Research to switch from 6550 power tubes to KT120s, with each chassis containing three matched pairs as power output tubes, a further matched pair of KT120s as line drivers, two 6H30s (one gain stage and one regulator) and a 6550C as regulator. As a result, you end up with a tube amp capable of around 0.5% distortion at 250W. Audio Research has never been a great proponent of low or no negative feedback in its power amp designs (because you sacrifice output impedance and damping factor, as well as generally giving better measurement on the bench), and the Reference 250 is no exception, with a healthy 8.8% global feedback across the circuit.

This also means an amplifier that creates quite a draw on your electrical supply. The 20A IEC socket isn’t just there for show; the 380W ‘idle’, the 770W at rated output and the 1kW flat out power requirements per side mean it’s probably best to have something more than a 13A circuit behind the wall socket, especially if you are driving these babies as close to full throat. Yet it draws a green(ish) 1W in its ‘off’ setting.

As ever with the best in ARC, this is balanced-only operation, with a heavy duty XLR socket sitting above the rear-firing (and quiet) case fan. Below that is a solid terminal block for four, eight and 16 ohm speaker systems, and there’s a set of 12V trigger phono terminals for automated power up.

The front panel echoes the Reference 75 and has more in common with classic ARC designs than the green fluorescent display of its predecessor. Each Ref 250 has a large central VU meter, which can double as power indicator and tube biasing indicator. You can turn the fan and the meter and or its pale blue glow off from the front panel.

It’s a Reference class product and as such should be used with Reference grade electronics. We used it with the good-as-it-gets Reference 10 two-box line preamp (see box) – this is a truly spectacular combination with a price tag to match. We played them through a variety of loudspeakers at first, but the sessions quickly ended with the new Wilson Audio Duette 2 standmounts, a combination that is possibly amplifier overkill, but really shows what both the Wilsons can do and what the Reference 250 can bring out of a loudspeaker. Although the four-ohm tap is perhaps the right one electrically, I found the eight to be slightly better feeding these speakers. As ever, experimentation and empiricism reign supreme.

Here’s the best way of thinking through the Reference 250. Devote an afternoon to the installation. You’ll spend that long taking the amps out of the boxes, fitting the tubes, biasing the tubes, making sure all your ducks are in a row with regard to cabling and the rest. Then, when all the pre-flight checks are complete, fire them up. Give yourself about an hour, by which time the temperature in most rooms will have increased by about a degree or so. Then listen.

It might seem like a few minutes have elapsed, but seemingly soon after you begin the ‘then listen’ process, your worried family members will be kicking down the door wondering if you are still alive. You might find you need a shave. Hours have passed and you were blissfully unaware of it, because you were caught up in the music. The same happens the next night, and the night after that.

There’s a long break-in period suggested by ARC. You’ll clock up those hours very quickly.

What you get from the outset is very much classic Audio Research fare – a midband and soundstaging that set the benchmark for ‘to die for’ coupled with effortless, controlled bass and dynamic range and the kind of high-frequency performance that invites you to lose hours in your music. And this just seems to get better the more you listen. This isn’t the amplifier for those who micromanage their music, listening to a collection of sounds to determine whether the triangle player was playing left-handed. Oh, it can do all that analysis stuff very well should you so require, but those drawn to this kind of sound don’t tend to demand that sort of musical evisceration. This is music presented as big picture. You take in the whole of the sound in one big gulp here. And it’s a heady wine.

The ‘why’ it’s so good is an almost impossible thing to pin down. It just sounds good with every track. It puts a smile on your face and a tear in your eye. Bad recordings still sound bad, but it extracts the musical mussel from the shell all the same. It doesn’t glare, it doesn’t shine, it doesn’t add weight or slim down the sound. It might not be the quickest sounding amplifier out there, but that doesn’t seem to matter when you are this engrossed in the music.

I have to admit I’m struggling here. This isn’t just an excellent amplifier, it’s an outstanding conveyor of music. It’s just… when I try to explain that in print, I fail to get it across. When I look at my listening notes, they are like a Wiki page on the band or soloist or orchestra I was listening to at the time. They say nothing at all about the amp performance – and maybe that’s it. This is the finest expression of the ‘I know it when I hear it’ school of good music making, and if you slot these into a good system, you’ll understand not only precisely what I mean, but also why any attempt at describing that ends up as word-salad. This isn’t beyond the limits of what’s possible, but it might just be beyond the limits of what’s possible to describe.

All that being said, for some of us in European homes – and I have to admit, myself included – the Reference 75 hits the spot, and the jump to the Reference 250 might be more than you need. ‘Some’ is not ‘all’ however, and there are rooms and loudspeakers that demand more heft than the Reference 75 can bring. But that just shows both how good and how consistent this range is now proving. The Reference 250 manages to combine the grace and charm of the 75 with the kind of earthmover grunt that’s needed to make some speakers and rooms come to life.

Outstanding. Truly outstanding.

Reference 10 preamp

To show what the Reference 250 could do, it came with the two-box £27,500 Reference 10 line preamplifier. Following in the footsteps of the company’s Reference Anniversary preamplifier, it divides the circuit into balanced and single-ended line stage and separate power supply, fed by two large connectors, separating high and low voltage supplies for each channel.

Unlike all previous ARC products, the logo is set asymmetrically and the hard button count is low, everything being passed over to the large touch screen panel. Under the clear top panel, the completely dual mono zero-feedback design uses custom caps and enough energy storage and a valve roll-out that wouldn’t disgrace most power amps.

This is not meant as a review of the Reference 10, more an example of what Audio Research is capable of when cost is no object. And the short, simple answer is ‘a hell of a lot’. Or more accurately ‘not a lot’, because this is a preamp that highlights the sins of commission in other preamps. It’s perhaps the most honest – without being brutally honest – preamp out there, letting the music flow untouched by the electronics to an uncanny degree. Once again, it has the usual ARC qualities of huge soundstage and midrange openness, but seems to apply those qualities across the board.

If I were to sum up the Reference 10 in a single word, that would be ‘realistic’. It delivers musical content with a sense of realism and honesty and accuracy that should be possible at all levels, but immediately shows just how much more there is on offer from our musical sources. There’s an uncanny sense of tonal, textural and timbral ‘rightness’ on offer here; instruments just sound like the real deal here. Not dynamically compressed or electronically processed, but in some respects the only way to understand precisely what I mean is to walk a mile in the Reference 10s shoes. Once you hear what the Reference 10 does with such musical elements, you realise just how much of a bottleneck the preamp can be, and how truly remarkable the sound can be when that bottleneck is taken away. As it is through the Reference 10.

The issue is, can cost ever be no object when a preamp costs as much as the Reference 10? We are in the upper atmosphere of audio here, and few of these products make it to this level without being extremely good at what they do. The Reference 10 is no exception – it’s quite simply the best preamplifier I have encountered in all manners. I’ve heard ones that might come close in one or two parameters, but fail with others (a preamp that sounds remarkable for two tracks then stops working, for example, or one that has excellent functionality, but need you to turn it on with a stick if you want to live). Nothing out there has this combination of ultimate performance and real-world functionality that behaves with such control and poise.

We are living in a golden age for audio, but one that requires quite a lot of gold to change hands in order to realise that potential. This is quite simply the best there is, but that comes at such a price premium that it will only ever be available to a select few with very deep pockets. This is not jealousy at work, but a desire to see audio as something more than a plaything for the super-rich.

Fortunately, while the Audio Research Reference 10 pushes the frontiers of ‘how much!?!’ technology, the company also delivers more attainable products like the new SP20 preamplifier and VSi75. I suspect these attainable products get to be as good as they are through the research that goes into making Reference 10 preamps and Reference

Technical Specifications

Power Output: 250 watts per channel continuous from 20Hz to 20kHz. 1kHz total harmonic distortion typically 0.5% at 250 watts, below .04% at 1 watt. Approximate actual power available at ’clipping’ 270 watts (1kHz)

Power Bandwidth: (-3dB points) 5Hz to 70kHz

Frequency Response: (-3dB points at 1 watt) 0.5Hz to 110 kHz

Input Sensitivity: 2.4V RMS Balanced for rated output. (25.5 dB gain into 8 ohms.)

Input Impedance: 200K ohms Balanced

Output Taps: 4, 8, 16 ohms

Output Regulation: Approximately 0.9dB 16 ohm load to open circuit (Damping factor approximately 10)

Overall Negative Feedback: 8.8dB

Slew Rate: 20 volts/microsecond

Rise Time: 1.5 microseconds

Hum & Noise: Less than 0.2mV RMS – 110dB below rated output (IHF-A weighted, input shorted, 16 ohm output)

Power Supply Energy Storage: Approximately 900 joules

Power Requirements: 105-130VAC 60Hz/260-250VAC 50Hz. 770 watts at rated output, 1000 watts maximum, 380 watts at ‘idle,’ 1 watt off

Tubes Required: 3 Matched pair KT120 (Power output V1-6); 1 Matched pair KT120 (Driver V8-9); 2 6H30 (Gain stage V7 and Regulator Driver V10); 1 6550C (Regulator V11)

Dimensions (WxDxH): 48.3×49.5×22.2 cm. Handles extend 3.8 cm forward.

Weight: 33.2 kg

Price: £24,490 per pair

Manufactured by: Audio Research

PMC fact.12 loudspeakers

For the fact.12, PMC did not rely entirely on its own R&D facilities, but took advantage of one of the country’s most remarkable research institutes. The National Physical Laboratory in Teddington is probably visible from space; it’s certainly pretty obvious from most heights on Google maps. Several hanger-sized buildings with white roofs take up half the national debt’s worth of prime real estate in south west London. The place was established over a hundred years ago so that it could measure things. Quite why you need so much manpower and space to do the job of a tape measure is not clear, but they do take the job seriously. One of the things they measure is sound – the acoustics division has some remarkable facilities, including a room with a 30 second reverberation time that is unsettling to converse in, and more than one substantial anechoic chamber. Plenty of speaker researchers have access to such chambers, but few (if any) have harnessed the know how of a research department on this scale.

It was here that PMC founder Pete Thomas, his son Ollie and the rest of the engineering team went to try and measure what sound waves do when they leave a loudspeaker. Essentially we are talking dispersion, which is the pattern of sound as it is sent out into the room and the way that this effects our perception of a speaker’s character. Using laser interferometry of the air itself, PMC and the NPL team managed to reveal how sound disperses at different frequencies and how the nature of the crossover and the shape of the front baffle effect that dispersion. The benefits of this research can be seen in the precise shape of the flange around the midrange dome of the fact.12 loudspeaker, and heard, if you can spot such things, in the crossover slopes that PMC used for this model.

If the fact.12 looks familiar it could be because it has the same proportions as the fact.8 that was launched a couple of years ago. Put the two side by side however and it’s obvious that the 12 is more substantial. They share an attractive narrow but deep footprint and have chrome plated outriggers that provide stability and a solid anchor for stainless steel spikes. Those not wishing to puncture the parquet can invert these for a rounded ball end. The review pair that PMC supplied came in a white finish that made the 12 look particularly elegant and modern, the contrast with black drivers being far more appealing than with the magnetically attached grille. For a big speaker the fact.12 is surprisingly room friendly, especially if you like a bit of contemporary styling, which as a tasteful Hi-Fi+ reader you undoubtedly do.

Those black drivers may look run of the mill, but contain two firsts for PMC, a 50mm midrange dome and metal coned bass drivers. The dome is based on PMC’s 75mm dome that you see in its pro monitors and bigger domestic loudspeakers, I asked Ollie why they used a dome rather than a cone and he pointed out that this is the case across the range. The reason being that dispersion is better with a dome, cones are more directional, and, equally important, they prefer the timbre of domes. He accepts that there is a trade-off in terms of power handling at lower frequencies, which is why the bass drivers on the fact.12 cover the range up to 500Hz. I did ask why they didn’t simply employ the 75mm dome in this speaker and discovered that on the practical side its magnet is too wide to fit inside the box. On the sonic side a smaller dome can do high frequencies with greater ease, which might explain many of my findings.

The tweeter is the only part that the 12 shares with the other fact models, it’s a Sonomex dome with a metal grille that’s designed to enhance dispersion. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? The bass drivers are very long throw types with profiled aluminium cones that have a special coating designed to minimise resonance. As with all PMCs, the drivers are loaded with an advanced transmission line (ATL) rather than a reflex port. That’s what the two black lozenges are at its base; they are the twin-vents on an ATL and sit at the end of a 3.3 metre line. As is usually the case, the line is damped in such a way that only the lowest frequencies make it to the outside world in order that they remain in phase with the driver output.

PMC understands as well as any professional monitor manufacturer that room acoustics play an integral part in the sound of any loudspeaker. For this reason they have included switches that allow you to tune the response of the fact.12, these are on the lozenge shaped terminal panel, and offer plus or minus 1.5dB in the treble and a 3dB variation at low frequencies.

The fact.12 is in another league to most of the dynamic loudspeakers I’ve encountered, and it has qualities that none of the panel speakers that have come my way have been able to deliver, primarily in the dynamics and low-end speed department. This is a phenomenally fast loudspeaker across the board and the better an amplifier is in this respect the better they sound. In fact, the same goes for everything you use with the fact.12; it lets you know precisely what it’s doing, be it good or otherwise. It’s the sort of speaker that takes no prisoners, but it also has the ability to reach the parts that others can’t and has a refreshing effect on everything you play.

The work that Ollie and the team put into improving dispersion manifests in an incredibly open sound, this has the effect of bringing the soundstage into the room and making the speakers disappear. If the source is up to it. With many CD players this is not the case, the sound remains resolutely between and no higher than the speakers, but a good streamer produces a truly walk in sound field that is replete with spatial detail and cavernous depth. Playing Laura Marling’s ‘Breathe’ proved an intoxicating experience not least because of the dynamic range that this speaker reveals. The nuances of her vocal, the shape of bass notes, the all round immersion created by Marling and her team but usually only hinted at, it’s truly transporting stuff. A veil has definitely been lifted and it’s going to be very difficult to go back. That extra transparency means you not only hear all the quiet bits that other speakers fail to resolve but the influences behind the work. For the first time, it became apparent that there’s a lot of Led Zeppelin in the guitars and drums on Once I Was An Eagle. The truly perceptive Zep head will probably have spotted this without so much assistance, but I need all the help I can get.

I worked my way through Herbie Hancock’s River, the songs of Joni Mitchell and got to ‘The Jungle Line’ where Leonard Cohen speaks the lyric over some superb piano. His voice is deep, rich and sonorous, revealing more of the insight in the lyrics than Joni’s version, while Hancock shows just how solid his left hand can be. The fact.12’s bass is unfeasibly fluent, there is no sense of overhang whatsoever, which is uncanny for a box loudspeaker. This is not an ordinary box of course, apparently the ATL is a high compression type which requires very stiff drivers but gives much tighter control over what comes out of the vents. That also explains the low sensitivity of course. But it’s worth it.

Out of interest I persuaded PMC to lend me a pair of Bryston 28B monoblocks to find out what benefits would accrue if serious amounts of power were available (they’re good for a steady 1,200 watts, I believe). The result was higher resolution, quieter backgrounds and a greater appreciation of the speed this speaker is capable of. The bass got tauter and I was able to switch the level to the 0 or flat setting without running into trouble. Now it was possible to hear exactly what type of colourations were afflicting various components in the chain and I soon realised that the Naim NDS streamer is rather better than it had previously seemed.

Compared to the Bowers & Wilkins 802 Diamond the fact.12 sounds lean and fast. It’s not as obviously detailed but has a greater sense of musical fluency. It’s not as substantial sounding in the bass but goes down virtually as far in extension terms and, again, is faster. I didn’t have any other speaker that comes close to the performance and musical thrills that the fact.12 can deliver, but I did have a few other sources and amps to try. Not least among them being the Longdog Audio VDT1 tube DAC, suffice to say for now that it worked a charm with this speaker. You can hear the tubes, but what they do has such a positive effect that even for the most fervent solid-stater, all is forgiven as you are swept away by the music.

This speaker is one of those rare hi-fi components that tells you so much about the music and the rest of the system that it becomes difficult to make notes about. It’s clear that it is a milestone product, one that puts PMC into the premier league of loudspeaker brands. Not only does it look exquisite for a decent size speaker, it is second to none in terms of transparency, pace, imaging and dynamics. Some will prefer a heavier sound no doubt, but I suspect that the fact.12’s presentation is more accurate because of its speed, heaviness is more likely to be an artefact of cabinet materials than the recording. Unless you’re talking about thickener, don’t worry, if you put on ‘Enter Sandman’ you can hear the thickener. Alternatively try Jimi Hendrix at Miami Pop; he didn’t need thickening and neither do these.

Technical Specifications

Freq response: 26Hz – 30kHz

Sensitivity: 84dB 1w 1m

Effective ATL (Advanced Transmission Line Length): 3.3m (11ft)

Impedance: 8 Ohms

Drive Units: LF: 2 x fact 140mm (5.5”) super long throw bass units damped coating; MF: fact 50mm (2.0”) super clarity soft dome ferro-fluid cooled mid-range with machined aluminium dispersion plate; HF: fact 19mm (0.75”) high-res SONOMEX™ soft dome ferro-fluid cooled with 34mm wide surround

Crossover Freq: 400Hz, 4kHz

Input connectors: 3 pairs 4mm PMC Ag terminals

Dimensions: H 1110mm (43.7”) + 25mm spikes; W 168mm (6.1”) + 100mm (3.2”) ingot feet; D 420mm (14.9”) + 23mm (0.9”) terminals

Weight: 26.0kg 57lbs ea

Available finishes: white silk, rich walnut, graphite poplar, tiger ebony

Price: £11,995 per pair

Manufacturer: The Professional Monitor Company

Tel: +44 (0)870 444 1044

URL: www.pmc-speakers.com

Back to reviews

Abyss AB-1266 planar magnetic headphones

Several years ago Joe Skubinski, the founder of the high-end audio cable company JPS Labs, took a momentous decision. Specifically, he decided to spin off a sub-division of JPS Labs for the specific purpose of developing and marketing the finest high performance headphone in the world. Skubinski did not equivocate by saying he hoped to build “one of the finest” headphones, but rather made the unequivocal claim that his would be “the finest headphone” yet produced. Accordingly, Joe Skubinski and his son Eric worked assiduously for over two years to bring their dream to fruition. The result is the Abyss AB-1266 planar magnetic headphone (£4,254), which entered full production earlier this year. Does the Abyss live up to its designers’ ambitions? I would say it does for reasons I will explain in this review. But, before moving on to talk about the sound of the Abyss, let me first provide some background on the AB-1266 design.

As the Skubinskis began design work on the AB-1266, they were mindful that the Stax SR-009 electrostatic headphone was widely regarded as the reigning ‘king of the hill’ amongst high-end headphones. The Stax, quite frankly, is one of those landmark high-end audio components that can (and often does) change listeners’ perceptions of what is possible in the art and science of music reproduction, forcing us to reconsider what words like ‘resolution’, ‘detail’ or ‘nuance’ really mean—or ought to mean—in an audio context. In short, the Stax SR-009 routinely unearths subtle aspects of the music that most competing headphone and/or loudspeaker-based audio systems tend to miss or to gloss over. To meet the goal of offering the finest headphone in the world, Abyss recognised the AB-1266 would need to equal or surpass the iconic Stax headphone in terms of resolution, focus, dynamics, frequency extension, and all around ease of use. With these ends in view, Abyss implemented a number of innovative design strategies in the AB-1266, with extraordinary results.

First, the AB-1266 is a planar magnetic design featuring what Abyss describes as a “proprietary very thin, very low mass diaphragm”, which speaks to the related issues of low-level detail retrieval and transient speed. Second, the Abyss motor assemblies use “custom made high power neodymium magnets with (an) optimised slot pattern”, which in part addresses the issue of dynamics. Moreover, the driver frames use a “low-carbon steel front baffle with integrated resonance control” said to yield “minimal added (frame-induced) colouration.” Yet another noteworthy construction detail is the fact that the driver assemblies use “no rear magnet structure”—an uncommon design feature said to eliminate “annoying reflections from behind (the driver diaphragm) allowing for a completely open sound.” Finally, Abyss’ precision-matched drivers are put through extremely rigorous performance tests and quality control evaluations before installation (in many instances, even very good drive units are deemed not quite good enough for use in the AB-1266).

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the AB-1266’s design has to do with the extensive steps taken in order to provide a stiff, stable, and resonance free mounting platform for the AB-1266 drivers. Where most designers offer headphone frames that have springy, flexible frames that offer provisions for allowing the earcups to tilt and swivel, the AB-1266 does none of these things. Instead, the Skubinskis have given the AB-1266 a stiff, thick metal frame that is shaped like an inverted ‘U’, with beefy milled aluminium driver/ear cup housings firmly bolted to the downward-facing legs of the ‘U’. The resulting frame is a seriously stout piece of kit, making most competing headphone frames seem rickety by comparison. Given the unusual stiffness and rigidity of the Abyss frame, the fact is that the AB-1266 is somewhat heavier than many competing headphones and also appears, at first glance, as if it might not be very comfortable.

However, Abyss addresses issues of comfort and fit in several creative ways. First, at the centre of the upward bow of the headphone’s U-shaped frame, Abyss provides a milled aluminium, friction-fit, slip-joint that allows users to adjust the side-to-side spacing of the headphone’s ear cups. By design the friction-fitted joint requires significant effort to adjust and once the desired spacing is achieved the frame resolutely remains in the position the user has chosen. Second, to allow for correct vertical positioning of the AB-1266 ear cups, Abyss provides an elliptically-shaped leather headband pad that is suspended by beefy elastic bands from the side-arms of the U-shaped frame. Abyss spent considerable time working out the exact composition of the leather pad and bands, settling upon a design where the pad nicely conforms to the curvature of one’s head and where the support bands provide a just-right amount of tension to hold the ‘phones at whatever height the wearer might choose. While the AB-1266 is a relatively heavy headphone, I found the support bands served to mask the weight of the ‘phone fairly effectively, provided the listener remains seated in a more-or-less upright position (if you tilt your head far forward, backward, or to one side, however, the weight of the headphone becomes more apparent).

Finally, Abyss has come up with a clever means of achieving a comfortable and acoustically correct fit between the AB-1266 ear cups and one’s ears. Abyss, like a handful of other top tier headphone manufacturers (e.g., Audeze) equips its headphones with flexible, lambskin-covered ear pads that, by design, are thicker on one side than the other (viewed from the side, the ear pads appear wedge-shaped). The clever part, however, is that the Abyss pads are magnetically attached and held in position by locating pins on the driver frames, meaning users are free to remove and reposition the pads so that the thickest parts of the pads best fit the contours of their heads. With the Abyss system, the drivers do not tilt or swivel; instead, the pads move in order to achieve a firm but surprisingly comfortable, personalised fit. Does all this emphasis on providing a rigid, low-resonance driver platform really make a difference you can hear? I think it definitely does, judging by the extraordinary resolution.

Everything about the AB-1266’s packaging is top-shelf. Thus, the headphones arrive in a beautiful felt-lined wooden presentation case whose lid is stained a deep aquamarine blue and is silk-screened with a silver Abyss logo. Inside, one finds the headphone, a set of JPS Labs signal cables (separate left and right cables are provided), plus two Y-shape connection yokes—one terminated with a high-quality four-pin XLR-type balanced connector and the other terminated with a ¼-inch TRS plug for use with single-ended amplifiers. Completing the package is an Abyss-labelled aluminium headphone stand and a thick leather carry pouch (or ‘man bag’) embossed with the Abyss logo. While this is undeniably an expensive headphone, one cannot help but sense the careful attention that has gone into even its smallest details. But does the headphone’s sound quality justify its stratospheric price? The simple answer is that it does, and in spades.

Unlike some top-tier ‘phones, which can require a good amount of run-in time before sounding their best, the AB-1266 sounded terrific straight out of the box (it might get even better over time, but it’s so good from the outset that I think most listeners will immediately be pleased and impressed). For my listening tests, I drove the AB-1266s primarily with two headphone amplifiers: the excellent AURALiC TAURUS MkII (reviewed in Hi-Fi Plus 105) and the spectacular new Cavalli Audio Liquid Gold (Hi-Fi Plus review pending). I used both my reference Rega Isis CD player/DAC and an AURALiC VEGA digital audio processor (DAC) as primary source components.

From the start it was apparent that the Abyss AB-1266, much like the Stax SR-009, is an exceedingly revealing transducer that is highly transparent to associated source components. However, unlike the Stax, which in my experience can be finicky about amplifier choices, the AB-1266 seems willing to make the most of whatever (high-quality) amplifier you have on hand. True, the AB-1266 will quickly show you why super headphone amps such as Cavalli’s Liquid Gold are worth the price of admission, but at the same time the AB-1266 will give a good account of itself when driven by lesser amps. I don’t mean to suggest the AB-1266 is in any way soft-sounding or ‘forgiving’ because, in truth, it’s not; it’s just that the Abyss appears to be a moderately low-sensitivity but otherwise straightforward (non-reactive) load to drive. This amp-friendly quality is one area where I think the AB-1266 is clearly superior to Stax’ SR-009

Can the AB-1266 equal or surpass the resolving power of the mighty SR-009? That question is almost too close to call and I must admit that when I first heard the Abyss my thought was that the Stax might still enjoy a very narrow edge in terms of absolute transparency. Over time, however, my opinion has shifted in that the Abyss effectively sheds light on what may be a very, very subtle colouration in the Stax (specifically, a tendency for the Stax to exhibit an extremely slight touch of midrange forwardness, roughly in the 4kHz region). While this characteristic makes the Stax sound consistently exciting and ‘transparent,’ it may nevertheless be a colouration (albeit a livable and potentially euphonic one). By contrast, the Abyss seems no less detailed than the Stax, yet it is arguably the more neutral and thus more chameleon-like performer. What is the ‘sound’ of the Abyss? Well, if you spend enough time listening through these ‘phones you may conclude that their sound is neither more nor less than an amazingly accurate mirror to the sound of the recordings in play. Put on a dark, powerful, brooding, metal-inflected rock recording (e.g., ‘Dogman’ from King’s X) and the Abyss will sound dark, powerful, and brooding—almost overpoweringly so. But play a delicate, subtle, sonorous, and polished string quartet (e.g., the Cypress Quartet’s recording of the late Beethoven String Quartets) and you’ll hear a performance that is as gracious, delicate, and elegantly refined as high tea served in the company of landed gentry. On and on this pattern goes, with the Abyss exploring in astonishing depth and detail the sound of each of the recordings with which it is fed.

Apart from its intrinsic worth, the ability of the Abyss to retrieve very low-level details pays substantial dividends in terms of reproduction of spatial cues in the music. Unlike the left-blob-of-sound vs. right-blob-of sound presentation of some headphones, the Abyss allows soundfields to unfold on an extremely broad continuum stretching from the far left of the listener to the far right and hitting every point in between. As a result, AB-1266 listeners can “read” the placement of musicians and instruments within the soundstage almost as if they had a floorplan of the recording venue detailed with the utmost precision. While no headphone, the Abyss included, can match the soundstaging characteristics of fine loudspeakers, the AB-1266 offers—in its headphonic way—a very satisfying alternative. The Abyss is all about discovering (or rediscovering) your favourite recordings in full detail and with tonal colours and dynamics rendered to near perfection. Over time, I found myself thinking, “I won’t really know how a recording sounds until I hear what the AB-1266 will do with it.” When listening to recordings made ten, twenty, or more years ago, for example, it occurred to me that in the Abyss I had a transducer far more accurate and revealing than any that would have been available to the producers or musicians when those records were first made. Part of why one might considering owning the Abyss headphones, then, would be to seek out those musical truths that typically lie buried within our favourite recordings—truths that fall just outside the reach of most transducers, but that the AB-1266s can access with the greatest of ease.

Two other areas where, in my view, the AB-1266 unequivocally surpasses the Stax SR-009 (and other top-tier headphones I have heard) would include bass performance, which is simply stupendous, and dynamics, which are incredibly expressive and have—for all practical purposes—virtually unlimited headroom. I have rarely if ever heard any transducer (whether a loudspeaker or a headphone) that could match the Abyss’ combination of low frequency weight, power, extension, transient speed, and control. Whether you are listening to a Fender bass guitar at full song (as on Marcus Miller’s ‘M2’), or to a pipe organ (as in the ‘Pie Jesu’ section of the Rutter Requiem), or to powerful tympani and concert bass drums (as in the Hohvaness Mount St. Helens Symphony), the low-end of the Abyss is powerful yet never overblown or overstated, controlled yet not overly tightly wound, and articulate without any loss of weight or warmth. In simple terms, it’s hard to imagine a better bass transducer, although ‘bass-heads’ should be aware that this headphone will never generate low frequency content that’s not actually present on the record (as some headphones frankly do).

In terms of dynamics, as with textures and timbres, the Abyss simply reflects what’s present in the recording, which can at times prove eye opening. As I listened to some tracks that I would have thought were a bit compressed or congested, the Abyss quickly showed me that the sonic problems I encountered in the past were not the fault of the recordings (as I had supposed), but rather were limitations of the transducers I had been using. Through the Abyss there is the sense that the headphone has ‘taken the lid off the music,’ allowing it to breathe and flow freely. A great example would be the Chicago Symphony Brass recording of Revueltas’ ‘Sensemayá’, which presents a series of passages each more expansive (and at times more explosive) than the last. Where the Stax SR-009 does a very fine job with this track, the Abyss really sets it free and unleashes its full dynamic power, outperforming the excellent Stax in the process.

Is the Abyss AB-1266 the finest headphone in the world? I believe the Abyss AB-1266 has established a new benchmark for top-tier headphone performance. It is a stunning achievement—one made all the more impressive by the fact that it represents Abyss’ first-ever effort in the category. Will you appreciate and value the Abyss as much as I do? That’s a personal question only you can answer. Let me simply say that if you wish to hear what one of the greatest world-class headphones ever produced can do for you and your music, you owe it to yourself to give the remarkable AB-1266 a careful listen.

Technical Specifications

Type: Circumaural planar magnetic headphone

Frequency Response: 5Hz to 28kHz

Impedance: 46 Ohms nominal
(non-reactive)

Sensitivity: 85dB

Distortion: Less than 1%; less than 0.2% through the ears’ most sensitive range

Weight: 660 grams (without signal cables)

Price: £4,254

Manufacturer: JPS Labs/Abyss Headphones

URL: www.abyss-headphones.com

UK Distributor: The Music Room

Tel: +44(0)141 333 9700

URL: www.music-room.com

Back to reviews

Consonance Die Walküre turntable and T988 tonearm

Consonance’s Die Walküre is the biggest record player I’ve encountered at this price point. A rounded triangle shape that, when coupled with its aluminium subchassis, will accommodate up to three tonearms.

Starting at the bottom there are three aluminium feet of the adjustable variety, these have cups for squash balls at the top and these form the primary suspension or isolation system for the turntable. When the whole thing is assembled, there appears to be very little compliance in this suspension, so it’s likely to be support sensitive as a result, but which turntable isn’t?

The wood is however very thick, 90mm in total, and this will soak up higher frequency vibration quite effectively. Variations in its density will also break up standing waves, something that the shape should also help to disperse. Atop the woodwork is a cast aluminium subchassis that sits on three brass feet, and provides mounting points for arms. The armbase supplied for Consonance’s T988 tonearm has a single fixing to the subchassis and can be rotated to accommodate different length tonearms (there is a 12inch T1288 for instance that sits on the same base). You can also use the rotation to adjust cartridge overhang, and, as the slots in the Consonance arms are quite short, this is sometimes a necessity. The hole in the base will also take an old style Rega arm with a nut on the bottom, and any other arm that will fit the 20mm hole with a height fixing grub screw in it.

Drive is courtesy of a DC motor that sits at the rear, in between two points of the triangle, and spins the platter with a rubber belt. Most Consonance turntables have used thread drives, and for that matter separate notches on the drive pulley to change speed. This one has a single pulley and speed change is via the separate power supply. This, however, does not have settings for 33 and 45rpm, but a safe cracker’s dial with a locking device. So, if you should want to spin a 45rpm disc, you need to fish out the strobe disc (supplied) and a suitable light to set the speed.

The platter is a 55mm thick slab of acrylic that sits on a short inverted bearing. The instructions suggest you “Fill the bearing with lubrication oil supplied to a level of approx 1mm above the bottom bearing”, although quite how you are supposed to gauge this is unclear. The T988 tonearm is a variation on the unipivot theme that doesn’t have a spike in a cup but a chamfered brass stud in a small bearing race, Consonance supplies silicone fluid to put in this interface and the idea is that you tune the sound with quantity of damping fluid. Which is all well and good but when the cartridge is upright above the record the arm bearing is at angle and, while it works, it looks wrong. It’s not however as frustrating as trying to get azimuth correct with the bell shaped counterweight. The underslung nature of the weight gives lots of scope for adjusting the angle of the stylus in the groove, but it’s difficult to change this by small enough increments for it not to go from leaning one way to leaning the other. There must be a knack to it, at least I hope there is.

The arm wire attaches to a terminal block that fixes to the arm base. Arm wands can therefore be swapped with relatively little faff and the £195 price of them encourages the enthusiast to have at least a nine and 12-inch option available, as complete arms are £795 for either the T988 or T1288. The arm itself is a slim carbon fibre rod with an attractively machined single piece headshell, this being fixed by a single bolt but its not intended to be adjusted for tracking angle.

It took a while to get this turntable dialled in and not just because of the azimuth issue. I started off with the nine inch arm and my cartridge of choice the van den Hul Condor. This has a high compliance and thus a low downforce of 1.4 –1.5 grams, so should suit the low mass nature of the Consonance arm yet did not quite live up to expectations. It produced good results nonetheless, Paul Messenger revived my interest in Laurie Anderson’s Strange Angels recently, this is an excellent record in many respects and the dynamics and imaging it can deliver make it good fun whatever the turntable. These factors were clearly apparent with Die Walküre, the timbre of big drum sounds developing nicely in a deep soundstage and the energy of the music coming across with ease. Timing didn’t seem all that hot however so the strobe disc was given a quick spin, this revealed that the speed had drifted somewhat. Remedying this didn’t completely cure the overall timing issue but it did bring solidity to the sound that made it more rewarding. I greatly enjoyed Leo Kottke’s Big Mob on the Hill, which was not short on vibrancy and had a fluidity that made up for the temporal imprecision. The unipivot brings this quality to everything you play it has to be said, that and a sense of refinement that you don’t get with most relatively affordable turntables.

The bass doesn’t quite have the power that one expects of a substantial turntable; it’s well defined and delivers plenty of detail, but lacks that combination of shape and pace that the best turntables deliver. It has weight however and the ability to reveal just how compressed a recording is, especially if that record is The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers. I love the riff on ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’’ and this turntable gives you its girth if not all of the immediacy. But I was pleasantly surprised not to hear how worn the vinyl is.

The distributor suggested I try dispensing with the thread and weight anti-skate, and taking it off did bring benefits, primarily in an opening up of the sound. Now there was more sparkle in the highs and the percussion came into its own, the bass also got more nimble but at the expense of power. I also tried adding a bit more silicone fluid to the arm bearing to see what that would do and found that it made the music more interesting, partly because the guitar strings on the Kottke had more zing but also because the mid delivered greater textural detail. Ian Large at AA Acoustics had said that Consonance is the Chinese distributor for Dynavector and that they use these cartridges for R&D, so I pressed a DV-20X2L into service.

After a bit more tweaking this proved a better match to the arm, it didn’t cure the issues I’d encountered entirely but made better tonal sense and improved the bottom end. The turntable’s strong sense of ease and flow was increased and this made it eminently listenable. It’s still not the most immediate of vinyl spinners but does a fine job with female voice. Rickie Lee Jones still sounds a little nasal on Flying Cowboys but she doesn’t shriek. I also took the bull by the horns and switched to the 12-inch arm wand, this made a bigger difference than usual, particularly in the bass which got more powerful in exchange for a reduction in articulacy. It does make the Die Walküre beautifully relaxed however and with orchestral material I can see this being the option to go for. Those into music with a stronger percussive aspect would be best advised to start with the shorter arm.

Die Walküre is a mixed bag, but perhaps the operatic name is an indicator of the sort of music it’s designed for, so it may just be a case of taste. It’s a lot of attractive turntable for the money and there’s no denying the appeal of easy arm changing or the ability to have up to three at the same time.

Technical Specifications

Platter: 55mm acrylic

Motor: DC

Separate power supply with speed adjustment

Speeds: 33 & 45rpm

Dimesnions WxHxD: 500 x 250 x 500 mm

Weight: 18 kg

Tonearm

Arm tube: carbon fibre

Bearing: unipivot

Anti-skate: thread & weight

Length: 9 inch or 12 inch

Price: £2,695 inc 9inch arm

Separate 9 inch or 12 inch arm wands: £195

Manufacturer: The Opera Audio Co.

URL: www.opera-consonance.com

Distributor: AA Acoustics

URL: www.aa-acoustics.com

Tel: +44(0)1273 608332

Back to reviews

Aesthetix Janus preamplifier and Atlas power amplifier

The all-tube moving-coil stage is a rare beast indeed. Whilst tube phono-stages are both common-place and popular, when it comes to low-output moving-coil cartridges, the vast majority switch to either transformers (Zanden) or J-FETs (Audio Research) to achieve the additional, noise-free gain required. The one exception is – and seemingly always has been – Aesthetix, whose original Io all-tube phono-stage established the blue-print that the company has followed ever since. The original Io was big (running in its ultimate form to three large chassis), complex and expensive. It has evolved through several iterations to its current flagship form, the Io Eclipse, still a substantial three-chassis unit housing a total of 36 tubes. But it has also been joined by the Rhea: sleeker, more affordable and being built into just one-box, far more svelte. With a ‘mere’ 10 tubes, it’s a lot more affordable and only gives away 5dB of overall gain compared to its big brother. That means that you get variable gain of up to 75dB, remotely switchable loading, multiple inputs, a choice of balanced or single-ended outputs and a built in cartridge de-mag circuit, all in a neat and really rather stylish casing. But such elegant versatility inevitably costs. Throw in the matching Calypso line-stage and you are looking at the wrong side of £9,000, with the Signature versions featuring upgraded internal components adding a further £4,500. Not cheap, although considerably more affordable than the Io Eclipse and its partnering line-stage, a combination that can easily push way up beyond the £30K mark, depending on configuration.

Such prices demand performance to match and in that regard the Aesthetix units don’t disappoint, individually or in tandem: while the Rhea and Calypso turn in excellent results used in isolation, there’s no escaping the fact that used together, the whole is significantly greater than the sum of the parts – the two dovetailing to impressive musical effect. Which rather invites the question, ‘what happens if you combine the two in a single box’? Given that the casework and power supply collectively swallow a large share of the parts budget, doubling up could deliver real gains in terms of value, especially if you can do so without compromising the performance.

Enter the Janus, to all intents and purposes, just what I’ve outlined above. Built into its single slim-line housing you get a full-facilities preamplifier, including phono stage with variable gain from 40 to 75dB, adjustable loading and the de-mag circuit. You get the same 88-step volume control as used in the Calypso, phase inversion switch, feed-back free circuitry and balanced and single-ended options on all inputs and outputs (except phono). In fact, the only thing you lose is the two extra phono inputs featured on the Rhea. That and save a whole hunk of money! The sheer range of facilities and inputs makes both the front and back panels of the Janus pretty crowded but that’s a small price to pay. Besides which, the signature triangular buttons and window rocker volume/setting control that Aesthetix employ keeps things neat, clean and surprisingly spacious when it comes to operating the unit, while all functions are available via the basic but comprehensive remote control handset.

Take a look at the Aesthetix range and the natural partner for the Janus takes the imposing shape of the Atlas stereo amplifier. Large, seriously heavy (this thing has impacted my lower back on at least two separate occasions) and seriously capable, the Atlas is a tube driven hybrid design that will dump 200 Watts into an 8 Ohm load and 400 Watts in 4 Ohms. Despite employing the same basic chassis architecture as the Janus – albeit in outsized form – there’s no way an amplifier with this sort of muscle comes cheap and there’s no way I’d describe an £8.1K price tag in those terms: except that compared to most of the opposition it actually starts to look pretty reasonable. With the majority of stereo chassis amplifiers approaching this sort of output power fetching up well into five-figures, the Atlas really does look underpriced – and that’s before you’ve listened to it. Throw in balanced or single-ended connection, a massive power supply with two transformers and three chokes – one of each dedicated to the HT rail – and operational niceties like a front-panel mute and you’ve got a product that’s not just impressively capable, it’s actually easy to live with – just so long as you don’t need to move it about too often! Factor in the option to upgrade either unit to Signature status at a later date and you’ve got a pairing that’s not just versatile, but one that will embrace your system as it grows – and can grow with your ambitions too.

Now, remember what I said about the Rhea and Calypso used together? The same is true of the Janus and Atlas; things just keep getting better. Used alone, the Atlas is big, enthusiastic and dynamic, bringing an unstoppable sense of momentum to proceedings, the feeling that your speakers are being kindly coerced to perform within an inch of their lives. With this much power on tap, you certainly could take things too far, but I doubt your ears (or your nerve) would let you. The Atlas simply sounds so boundlessly powerful that the need to prove the point (or stretch the envelope) never really seems to occur. Such obvious power serves as its own warning – a bit like a live wire quivering with voltage in a sci-fi movie. In contrast, the Janus is a model of restraint, big on the traditional tube virtues of colour, shape and musical flow. It is a model of refined grace and expressively quick but unexaggerated dynamics. But combine the two and they build on each other’s virtues – the Atlas gains a measure of polish and poise, the Janus an injection of sheer presence and immediacy. Together the combination has the sort of fluid, feline grace and explosive power that makes big cats so fascinating. Ask the Aesthetix amps to jump and the question really is, “How high?” – it’s just that it’s your speakers that will be asking. Gone is any lack of control, replaced by complete security and the sort of authority that escapes most audio systems. As attractive as the virtues of these two Aesthetix pieces are in isolation, put them together and suddenly it really is time to play…

If you want to know just what these amps are capable of then start by hooking them up to a speaker with decent bandwidth and a desire to be dominated. That means all those speakers that are hard to drive, have weird impedance curves or simply fail to spark into life, no matter what you do to them under normal circumstances. As good as the results you might have heard from those products in the past, prepare to be surprised: speakers that so often fail to really integrate, to drive the room or respond to dynamic demands will suddenly come over all obedient and enthusiastic. Of course, it’s not the speakers that have changed, it’s just one symptom of the degree of control that these Aesthetix amps can exert and just how impervious to back EMF the Atlas output stage is. But it’s not just about control; there are plenty of amps that exert an iron grip – and crush the life out of music in the process. What makes the Janus and Atlas so special is the fact that they do control AND life, definition AND dynamics, authority AND entertainment.

Large-scale works are produced with substance and stability, a stability that extends beyond the clearly defined soundstage into the realm of rhythm and timing. Shawn Colvin’s Steady On (CBS 466142-1) features a trip-hammer drum-beat that both anchors and drives every track, but you’ll rarely have heard it projected as solidly or with such impetus as the Aesthetix achieve. The propulsive effect is remarkable, underpinning and pushing the vocal forward. And what a vocal; Colvin’s voice is deceptively sweet given the acid content of the lyrics, the Aesthetix combination revealing both the pain and the anger behind the words. This is a real voice from a real person singing about real events and the amps leave you in no doubt about that. I ran the amps with both my vdH Condor and the Goldfinger Statement, the Janus offering more than enough gain for either, with no noise problems. In fact, the 6dB stepped gain options allow you to balance musical energy against noise in a way that fixed gain stages can’t match. The result is LP reproduction with clarity and resolution, substance and power, a sense of flow and forward motion, natural colours and a complete absence of that synthetic edge or etching that marks out hi-fi from music. It’s a character that offers the perfect foundation for the substantial reinforcement provided by the Atlas, a character that carries over to the reproduction of silver disc. Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker is full of presence and body, subtlety and deft rhythmic touches, while the deep bass incursions that underpin a track like ‘AMY’ are still solid, still come as a surprise. It’s this ability to be solid and stable without becoming planted or static that brings the intimacy and directness to the music played on the Aesthetix pairing. Whilst you’d never mistake this for a small amp, it embodies so many small amp attributes (rhythmic flexibility, natural dynamic expression and warmth, immediacy and communication) that the presence of not just big amp virtues, but big amp virtues done really well can come as a shock. The unmistakable backing vocals from Emmylou Harris on ‘Oh My Sweet Carolina’ are almost ghostly real, while the building chorus and almost anthemic finale swell from nothing, leaving you wondering just where they came from. Turn to big-time classical and orchestral sweep can almost literally sweep you away.

Like every other piece of audio equipment, the Aesthetix Janus and Atlas will always be prey to context. Put them with the wrong partners and they’ll sound sluggish and heavy, dull and overbearing. But unlike most amplifiers, the thing to avoid here is speakers that don’t need (or want) what these amps have to offer. Easy to drive with a tailored bottom-end? Look elsewhere. Super sensitive and high impedance? Definitely look elsewhere. Just don’t be fooled by the numbers. On paper, the Focal Scala V2 – at 92dB sensitivity and a nominal 8 Ohm load – look like exactly the sort of speaker the Aesthetix should avoid, but dig a little deeper and you’ll notice that not only does the impedance curve exhibit a 3.1 Ohm minimum, but the -3dB point at 27Hz is generated from a single 270mm woofer in a true three-way configuration. That’s definitely the sort of speaker that will really benefit from the light-touch control and load tolerance available from the Aesthetix amps, while their sheer class will also make the most of the amps’ refinement. No surprise then that the combination is a spectacularly successful one, reflected by the fact that the Scala V2s, driven by the Atlas mono-blocs and Io/Calypso Eclipse offered one of the best sounds at RMAF 2013 – easily outpacing the vastly more expensive Stella/Soulution system that was also on show! Get it right and these amps will really reward you, their positive attitude bearing magical musical fruit.

Big, bold, solid and surprisingly agile, these amps are good enough and communicative enough to put you really close to the performers and their performance. With unforced power and a real sense of presence, they project music with an uncannily natural sense of pace, flow and colour. Having run the Atlas in a few systems now, it has become a real go-to amp. The Janus, despite the astonishing value, will clearly only appeal to those who use, or want to get back into using, vinyl. For everybody else, there’s always the Calypso – at £4,850. That makes the phono-stage in the Janus pretty much a £1,950 option and at that price it will come as little short of a revelation to many listeners – especially those used to the one size fits all approach adopted by so (too?) many manufacturers. It’s not until you use these Aesthetix electronics together that you realize their full potential – and believe me, that potential is considerable!

Technical Specifications

Aesthetix Janus

Tube Complement: 8x 12AX7, 4x 6922/6DJ8

Inputs: 5x line-level (balanced or single-ended)
1x phono mm/mc (40 – 75dB gain)

Cartridge Loading: 9 values from 75 Ohms to 47 kOhms

Line-level Gain: 23dB

Cartridge De-mag: Yes

Absolute Phase: Yes

Outputs: 2 pairs XLR, 2 pairs RCA

Output Impedance: 1 kOhm single-ended,
600 Ohms balanced

Dimensions (HxWxD): 120 x 455 x 458mm

Weight: 18.2kg

Price: £6,800

Aesthetix Atlas

Tube Complement: 2x 6SN7

Rated Output: 200 Watts/8 Ohms; 400 Watts/4 Ohms

Input Impedance: 470 kOhms

Input Sensitivity: 60mV (1 Watt), 2.3V (full power)

Dimensions (WxHxD): 458 x 203 x 483mm

Weight: 32kg (claimed – but my back says they’re lying!)

Price: £8,100

Manufactured by Aesthetix

URL: www.aesthetix.net

Authorised UK stockists:

Cool Gales: +44(0)800 043 6710

Hi-Fi Sound: +44(0)845 601 9390

Back to reviews

Shanling H1.1 DAC

To Be or not to USB; that is the question.

Although I still play lots of CDs, and some vinyl, I now have a laptop with iTunes and Spotify Premium. So, being able to play the laptop through my hi-fi is absolutely essential.

The Shanling H1.1 has inputs for CD (co-axial or optical, sampling at 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz, or 192kHz), USB2.0, and an input for an iPod/iPhone. There are sets of balanced (XLR) and unbalanced (RCA) analogue outputs, plus a 6.3mm (1/4in) headphone socket. The unit is simple to operate, and straightforward to use. Typically Shanling, both build quality and finish are excellent. Speaking personally, I really like the Full Metal jacket construction and those sexy rounded sides! The unit ships with a CD that contains the drivers your computer will need to work with the H1.1. Analogue outputs level is 2V for the RCA (unbalanced) sockets and 4v for the XLR (balanced) sockets.

Disclosure time: my latest CD player is a Shanling. Having a tube output stage, the Shanling CD-500 delivers a sound that’s crisp and lucid, yet rich and velvety, with a warm well-balanced tonal quality. At the same time, it’s not too ‘tube’; you’re not faced with an overly-warm presentation.

Substituting the solid-state Shanling H1.1 DAC for the CD-500’s tube output, the sound immediately seemed a touch tighter, leaner, and more crisply-defined. The bottom end was firmer, and had a bit more ‘kick’ on things like bass drums and low bass guitar notes. The CD-500 sounded airier and slightly more spacious, but the H1.1 wasn’t exactly thin or harsh.

The DAC definitely sounded a bit more immediate, with crisper transients and added attack. But the upper frequencies remained impressively clean and superbly integrated. Indeed, in some ways I slightly preferred it. In a sense I was slightly disappointed the CD-500 had been ‘ousted’ so soon after I got it. But it wasn’t a ‘night and day’ difference; each had its merits.

If your amplifier offers the option of balanced analogue inputs, it’s worth investing in cables able to use the H1.1’s XLR outputs. You’ll get a bigger more dynamic sound, with increased depth and scale. And while a good set of XLR terminated balanced cables can be a bit pricey, the sonic difference should be worthwhile.

Indeed, if your existing CD player has single-ended outputs, but your amplifier has balanced inputs, the sonic improvement offered by ‘balanced’ operation would by make the purchase of an H1.1 worthwhile. But even single-ended, the H1.1 sounds very good; crisp, clean, and very dynamic.

It seems to have excellent timing, making the music sound cohesive and purposeful. Clarity is excellent, and the presentation is clear without seeming clinical. Comparing results from the H1.1 to the in-built DAC in the CP800 proved interesting. By rights the CP800’s DAC should win – if only because it provides the cleanest, shortest, purest signal path.

Listening via the H1.1 involves an analogue output stage, plus a set of analogue interconnects. You’ve also got to consider the quality of the digital cable connecting the DAC to the CD player. In terms of sheer sonic purity, the direct digital connection to the CP800’s DAC does have the edge. It delivers a very neutral truthful sort of sound – nothing added, nothing taken away. The H1.1 makes the music sound a tad more characterful. There’s perhaps a slight loss of purity compared to Direct, but it’s nothing too noticeable. Via the H1.1, the sound seems a touch deeper and richer, with greater density and weight. It’s maybe a wee bit ‘busier’ and less transparent in the sense of each strand being kept separate, but clarity remains very good.

Costing around £600, the H1.1 offers excellent value. It’s very solidly made, and looks great. Sometimes you see a product and fall in love with the way it looks and feels. That pretty much sums up how I felt about the H1.1 as soon as I unboxed it; I was immediately smitten. The fact that it sounded great almost came as something of a bonus!

Partner an H1.1 with almost any integrated CD player that’s (say) five or more years old, and it’ll almost definitely produce an improvement in sound quality. The additional USB and iPod inputs will allow you to connect other digital sources as desired, adding value to the package. As I said earlier, as soon as I saw it I was smitten. I think you will be too!

Technical Specifications

Frequency response: 20 Hz – 20 kHz (±0.2dB)

Unbalanced out put level: 2V

Balanced output level: 4V

THD+N: <0.001%

SNR: >115dB

Power consumption: 9W

Dimensions (WxDxH): 23 x 37.4 x 8.8cm

Weight: 4.5kg

Price: £600

Manucacturer: Shanling

URL: http://www.shanling.com

UK distributor: Real Hi-Fi

URL: www.realhi-fi.com

Tel: +44(0)1257 473175

Back to reviews

Bristol Sound & Vision 2014

Following a few weeks after CES, the annual Bristol Sound & Vision show might not be the largest audiophile ‘launchpad’ for new products, but it gets more than its share. The ‘Bristol Show’ (only the organisers call it ‘Bristol Sound & Vision’ these days) takes place across Friday, Saturday and Sunday in late February and has become arguably the most important audio and video event on the UK calendar. It always draws a large crowd, with keen listeners from around the country lining up around the block every day.

Because of the Bristol Show’s proximity to CES, we are not going to concentrate too heavily on the brands that showed in both places. Naim Audio’s first UK showing of the Statement amplifiers continued the company’s campaign to deeply impress all those who hear the system (the company has also intimated new interconnects and loudspeaker cables are on the drawing board). Meanwhile, the likes of Arcam’s A49, the Cyrus Lyric and the Chord Hugo are still just as new on this side of the Atlantic.

Nevertheless, Bristol is more than a provincial show, and a number of serious UK brands actively choose the event to showcase their new products. This year was no exception. Bowers & Wilkins, Spendor, ProAc, PMC, and Q Acoustics all showed new models for the first time at the Bristol show. Beginning with Bowers & Wilkins, the company launched its new 600 Series range just a few weeks ago, but took a large room in the basement of the Bristol Marriott City Centre hotel. This range comprises two two-way standmounts (the £350 per pair 686 and the £500 per pair 685), two floorstanders (the £800 per pair 684 and the £1,150 per pair 683) and two centre channel loudspeakers. All the loudspeakers use a common Double Dome tweeter arrangement as used in the more upmarket CM10, and (where applicable) aluminium bass drivers to support the Kevlar mid/bass units. All four pairs of loudspeakers were demonstrated in a room that should be too large for all of them, but they sounded remarkably unfazed by the task in hand.

Spendor’s D1 loudspeaker is not as brand new as the Bowers & Wilkins range, having been announced in late December last year. The 30cm high £1,795 per pair bookshelf sealed box two-way is a fine little Christmas present, and is designed to replace the company’s popular SA1. As ever with Spendor designs, it uses the company’s own ‘LPZ’ tweeter and EP77 mid/bass and sounded nice and room filling running from a Devialet 110.

ProAc announced its Response D20R floorstander at Bristol. The two-way uses the company’s well-liked ribbon tweeter with an open fibre weave cone bass unit and acrylic phase plug. Prices of the loudspeaker are expected to be £2,650 per pair in standard finishes and £3,180 per pair in ebony, and are expected in April. They sounded extremely good on the end of a small Naim system, although other ProAcs (in the Nordost and Michell rooms) didn’t sound that bad either.

Meanwhile, PMC pulled the covers off the latest and largest model in its twenty range, the £5,750 per pair twenty.26. The first three-way and third floorstander in the five-strong line of transmission line loudspeakers, this features a midrange dome remarkably similar to the one found on the outstanding Fact 12 loudspeaker, but this design undercuts the bigger model by a significant amount. PMC played both in quick succession in its closed demonstrations and although the Fact 12 is more taut and probably more ‘right’ as a result, the differences are fairly slight and we expect huge things from the new twenty.26.

Value-driven Q Acoustics showed its £1,000 Concept 40 floorstander. This extremely clever three driver standmount uses a unique ‘Gelcore’ cabinet (more accurately, almost a cabinet within a cabinet, separated by a never-setting adhesive material that at once reduces cabinet resonance and coloration, dispursing excess energy from the drivers as heat within the two layer cabinet construction.

It wasn’t just UK loudspeakers companies using Bristol as a Launchpad. Dynaudio was using the show as the European launch of its three-and-a-centre-strong Confidence Platinum range. We look forward to investigating the C1 standmout soon. The very new Latvian brand Sound of Eden has only been in existence for a couple of months, but already has four loudspeakers on its books, all based on Scanspeak drivers. No UK price or distribution as yet, but the somewhat old-fashioned looking Sound of Eden NS2 two-way bookshelf was expected to cost €3,000 per pair, while the two and a half way floorstanding NS2½ should cost €5,000 per pair, the three-way NS3 floorstander (pictured) will cost €7,000 per pair and the huge NS4 four-way will cost somewhere close to €25,000 per pair. The sound they delivered might need a little more work, but showed promise.

Alongside start-ups, there were a couple of re-starts. Those with very long memories might remember the ARC range of loudspeakers. Nothing to do with Audio Research, ARC was a small UK brand that flourished in the 1980s with a midrange-dominant loudspeaker range, often seen used with fellow middle Englander Nytech. Both companies faded from view over the years, but now both are being reborn, the electronics based in Wales, the loudspeakers from Germany. They are in the last stages of development, so prices and final voicing are still to be finalised, but expect to pay upwards of £10,000 for a full Nytech/ARC system. The sound is as ‘classic 1980s’ as the brands!

If we are heading into the past, the new Graham Audio had a demonstration room that looked straight out of the 1960s or 1970s. the company’s LS5/9 loudspeakers being fed by a Nagra open reel tape player into a Pass Labs XA100S monos and a XP20 preamp. This is the Studiophile’s dream!

Moving away from loudspeakers, a firm Hi-Fi+ favourite, Computer Audio Design has announced the CAT (Computer Audio Transport). Following his concepts in computer ‘tweaking’, CAD’s Scott Berry put his mind to establishing a thorough audio basis from which to work. It’s a Windows PC, but in the process redefines ‘thorough’ when it comes to modification. Computers don’t often have four power supplies (right down to four different plugs) for the appropriate stages, and few people modify their PC down to such a degree. While the choice of storage is yours, the base model transport is £3,980.

Digital streaming was very popular at the show, with hardly any CD material being played even if there were CD players in the system. Even belt-drive CD player maker BMC was more commonly running digital files. Of particular note here, was the first UK showing of the Sony HAPZ1ES and TA-A1ES high-resolution player and amp, plus the SSNA 2 speakers, made a fair impression. In addition, Lumin was showing its A-1 streamer so successfully launched last year, and Primare was showing final prototypes of its Pre60 and A60 processor amplifier package (£6,500 per unit).

But perhaps the biggest digital products were the smallest. The AudioQuest Dragonfly is already well-known, but in its 1.2 version guise, and having a significant price cut to just £129, it was proving hard to beat. The AudioQuest team were also extremely helpful and acted more like a computer audio ‘how to’ service as they were selling their own services. As a consequence, it was one of the busiest rooms in the show, regardless of whether there was music playing.

And then there is Geek. The crowdfunded Geek Out is almost ready to ship to its first investors. The rest of us might need to wait a little longer to receive this small, high performance DAC, priced between £199 for the basic 450mW model up to £299 for the 1W Geek 1000. Available in four colours, it’s up for fine-tuning prior to launch, but if the last stages sound as promising, I began to wonder why I hadn’t become an early investor about 30 seconds into listening to the device.

This wasn’t the only headphone product at the show, but the potential star of the headphone and more world was the PureDAC by BMC Audio. A magnificently-made, plays everything digital preamplifier with a balanced headphone socket, and is priced at £1,290, which on paper is about one-third what most would charge for something this good.

Elsewhere though, there was a distinct lack of headphone makers at the show. Yes, brands like Focal, KEF and Musical Fidelity were showing headphone lines alongside the brand’s core audio products, but where last year the show was dominated by brands such as Sennheiser, the only headphone brand covered extensively at the event was Audeze, which was on display in several rooms and stands, as well as in the distributor (Decent Audio) room. Perhaps the largest single collection of headphones was on the Astell & Kern stand, where the company was inviting people to play the new AK240 on a range of models (including the Audeze range), but this is a marked change in direction for this important show on the UK audio calendar.

Tubes, as ever at this show, were thin on the ground. Ming Da being the regular exception, bringing every valve amp the company could fit into a truck and playing a fantastic, but bewildering array of tubular electronics. Elsewhere, Unison Research replaced its long running Simply 4 integrated amp with the new Triode 25 £2,350. As ever full of Italian charm, this EL34-based push-pull/triode amplifier can even be supplied with a DAC to bring the elegant 1950s wooden coffee machine looks right up to date on the inside.

The solid-state amplifier market was well covered, with few new launches that weren’t covered at CES. But there were a few newcomers, even here. Quad chose to launch the new Vena integrated amplifier at the show. Quad’s cheapest amplifier to date, the 45W design also features AptX Bluetooth connectivity, USB input, analogue connections and a range of finishes, starting at £600.

When it comes to subwoofers, we have a lot of time for REL. The company’s presence at Bristol shows why. Where most sub companies were booming away and making a loud bark around the hotel, REL was going for subtlety in two and five channel sound. A chance to show off its new range of Serie S subwoofers, John Hunter of Sumiko had flown in from the US to give demonstrations on what a subwoofer does for audio, and why. In the process, he fell for the excellent Harbeth Super HL5 loudspeakers (on very tall stands), telling everyone how good they are. A true enthusiast, John is able to heap praise on products when it is richly deserved (even if the picture is not my finest photographic hour).

Finally, turntables. As might be expected given the vinyl revival still going on, there was renued interest in all things LP. But two big British names spring to mind here: Rega was showing its RP10 turntable (seen at CES) in a modest, but nice sounding all-Rega system, and Michell Engineeing played its prototype Orbe SE.ex (perhaps not the best working title around). This integrates the plinth of the Orbe into the stand itself, to lower the profile of the deck and improve performance in the process.

And, although not necessarily new, we have to give full marks to Wilson Benesch for making an all-white version of its Circle turntable, which looked especially striking playing the white-vinyl version of the Nirvana Unplugged album. The Circle 25 is not simply a nice colour scheme, it replaces the MDF plinth with white Delrin:

There was a lot more, as ever. Of special note was the excellent sounding Antelope DAC (now with Atomic Clock!) driving Amphion loudspeakers, the Michell-Johnson range of very low cost electronics that have a striking resemblance to Sansui. The new £425 USB cable from CAD and Atlas’ new Asimi Ultima with better plugs and a new look for £2,750/m. The new Heed Thesus range of upper end amps behind the curtain. And of course, A J van den Hul bringing his lab to the hotel and building vdH Crimson cartridges in the room.

For what could be mistaken as a provincial show, Bristol Sound & Vision has become and remains the strongest event on the UK show calendar.

First Look: iFi iDSD nano DAC/headphone amp & iCAN nano headphone amp

Early this year I wrote a blog about iFi Audio’s iCAN nano headphone amplifier (click here to read), but mentioned at the time that my findings were based on a pilot production sample and not on a full production unit. iFi felt the product units would sound even better than the pilot production model had and they were also keen for me to hear what the iCAN nano could do in conjunction with their brand new iDSD nano DAC/headphone amp. Well, the production units just arrived on my desk a few days ago, meaning a follow-up blog was in order.
__________

About the iDSD nano

iFi’s iDSD nano is a compact, portable high resolution DAC that is priced at $189 (US) or £165 (UK) and that can decode a stunning array of high-resolution digital audio file formats, including:

·      PCM files ranging from 44.1kHz to 384kHz sampling rates and resolutions ranging from 16-bit to 32-bit,
·      DXD files (PCM files at 352.8kHz or 384kHz with 24-bit resolution, or
·      DSD files captured at 2.8MHz, 3.2MHz, 5.6MHz, or 6.2MHz. *

* As many of you know, DSD (or Direct Stream Digital) uses 1-bit files, but with exceedingly high sampling rates, as is apparent above.

From a purely technical perspective, highlights of the iDSD nano include:

·      Use of a “Native DSD/DXD/PCM BurrBrown DAC chipset,
·      Support for all of the formats listed above via “High Definition USB Audio”,
·      Support for Asynchronous USB and what iFi terms “Bit-Perfect” file transfers,
·      Use of iFi’s proprietary ZeroJitter Lite technology,
·      Outputs: A coaxial S/PDIF digital audio output, plus two stereo analogue audio outputs via a pair of RCA jacks and the 3.5mm stereo mini-jack,
·      Controls: A rotary on/off switch and volume control, plus a mini-toggle switch for selecting either “Standard” or “Minimum Phase” digital filer settings, and
·      A built-in headphone amplifier that features iFi’s DirectDrive technology and that offers claimed power output of 130mW.

The iDSD nano requires no additional device drivers for use in MacOSX environments, but for use in Windows environments it is necessary to download and install a free device driver from the iFi web site.
__________

About the iCAN nano

iFi’s iCAN nano is a compact (same size as the iDSD), portable headphone amplifier that is priced at $179 (US) or £149 (UK) and that is designed to capture many of the sonic benefits of iFi’s larger iCAN micro desktop headphone amplifier (click here to see the Hi-Fi+ review), but in a smaller, lower cost, and of course portable format.

Technical highlights of the iCAN nano include:

·      An amplifier circuit inspired by the larger iCAN that employ’s iFi’s DirectDrive circuitry (where there are no output coupling capacitors) and that puts out 150mW of power,
·      A switch-selectable version of iFi’s 3D HolographicSound circuit that is not, please note, a so-called crossfeed circuit, but rather uses a proprietary design said to place “the recording back outside of the (user’s) head…”,
·      A switch-selectable version of iFi’s XBass circuit that allows users to dial-in a judicious touch of low-frequency bass reinforcement for headphones or earphones that can benefit from a touch of very low-end boost,
·      A beefy 1400mAh Lithium-polymer battery said to be good for more than 70 hours (!) of continuous operation, and
·      Useful inputs and outputs, including: two stereo analogue audio inputs (via stereo RCA jacks and a stereo 3.5mm mini-jack), and one master analogy audio output (via a 6.5mm stereo TRS or “phone-type” jack), enhanced by the fact that the iCAN comes with a nicely made, gold-plated 6.5mm-jack-to-3.5mm-jack adapter.

__________

What Have We Learned About the Sound of the ICAN Nano Thus Far?

If you happened to read my earlier blog on the pilot production iCAN nano (click here to read), then please know that the full production model is at least as good as the earlier sample was (though I have not yet been able to compare the two units side by side to see if there is much, if any, difference between them). As before, the iCAN nano has left me wowed by both the refinement, robustness, and sheer “feistiness” of its sound; on first listen, it seems to offer quite a lot more output than its modest 150mW output specification would lead you to expect.

If you weren’t able to hold the compact device in the palm of you hand (with room left over) and if you judged it purely on sound quality, you might easily think the iCAN was one of today’s nicer desktop headphone amps. Yes, really.

About the only point at which you’ll discern the iCAN’s limitation (and, yes, it does have its limits) will be when you try using the iCAN to drive brutally power-hungry ‘phones such as the HiFiMAN HE-6. Then, things will be fine to a point, but when big dynamic swells or power-slurping heavy-duty bass passages come along you will hear moments when the iCAN nano abruptly and decisively runs out of power and distorts and/or runs into audio clipping. However, use the iCAN nano with headphone loads that fall within its wheelhouse and you’ll be a very happy audiophile indeed.

The Xbass circuit is quite tasteful as such things go, so that with headphones that general sound good but are just a bit bass shy, the Xbass circuit can be just what the doctor ordered. The key is that the Xbass circuit focuses on low bass enhancement without drifting too high upwards into mid-bass territory.

The 3D HolographicSound circuit proved, in my experience, to be both an acquired taste and a feature whose usefulness varied greatly from recording to recording. On some tracks, for instance, flipping the 3D switch might have very little perceived impact while on other the effect could be much more dramatic. Is the 3D HolographicSound circuit a good thing? Well, “good”, in this instance is in the ear of the beholder. I found that I preferred the straight, unenhanced sound of most recordings, while not noting that on a few the 3D circuit seemed a genuine benefit. Your mileage, as they say, may vary. Try the circuit for yourself and see what you think.
__________

What have we learned about the sound of the iDSD nano thus far?

Let me just jump right in and say that the iDSD nano sounds ridiculously good for the money—more than competitive with other portable DACs I’ve heard thus far (though I have not yet tried any of Light Harmonic’s new portables, which promise stiff competition). Still, even the least costly of the LH models will costs more than the iDSD nano, meaning the iFi unit has the playing field more or less to itself at its price point.

This little DAC delivers a very full measure of what I am coming to regard as the iFi (and thus, by extension, the Abbingdon Music Research) sound, whose virtues include generous amounts of resolution, a quiet and full-bodied presentation, and an aura of all-around refinement and sophistication reminiscent of what you might expect from (far) more costly gear.

In operation within my Windows 8/JRiver Media Center 19-based system, the iDSD switched very comfortably and seamlessly betwixt various resolution levels of PCM files, though it did exhibit a few minor (albeit easily correctable) glitches when transitioning from PCM to DSD format files. But the sound, both on high-res PCM and on DSD material, was just amazingly good for the amount of money this unit costs. Forgetting the fact that the iDSD nano incorporates a headphone amplifier for a moment, my take on things would be that it is well worth considering even if you purchase it solely for use as a DAC.

But let’s pause for a moment to consider the iDSD nano’s headphone amplifier circuit. The amp, to a point, exhibits sound quality similar in general tone and tenor to that of the iCAN nano (or, for that matter, the bigger iCAN micro), though of course the iDSD has had to forego the iCAN nano’s Xbass and 3D HolographicSound circuits (hey, something had to go overboard in order to hold the price comfortably below $200).

Given that the claimed power output specifications for the iDSD nano (130mW) and the iCAN nano (150mW) are similar, you might expect them to sound equally dynamic and robust, but in practice I found that not to be the case. A few evenings ago I tried the iDSD nano with a battery of headphones including the Fischer Audio FA-002W High Edition, the HiFiMAN HE-500, and the Audeze LCD-3, comparing the sound of the iDSD nano used as a standalone product vs. the sound of the iDSD nano used in conjunction with the iCAN nano. In every single instance, the overall sound quality and dynamic characteristics were markedly better when the two units were used together. Here’s a rough summary of my listening notes from that session.

iDSD nano with the Fischer FA-002W High Edition:

·      Great (vibrant) mids,
·      Sweet and detailed highs,
·      Bass has lovely pitch definition but lacks weight,
·      Overall, there is not quite enough gain available with the iDSD nano, however
· With the iCAN nano added to the system I found, “…the bass and overall sound improves markedly the iCAN nano added to the signal path.”

IDSD nano with the HiFiMAN HE-500:

·      Generally a warmer, more organic, and more natural sound than the Fisher, though the HE-500 is certain no less details,
·      Less overtly midrange-forward sound than the Fischer,
·      Again, iDSD nano has insufficient output for the HE-500, however
· With iCAN nano added to the system I noted, “Sound is dramatically better with the iCAN nano in action; the sound becomes more robust with even better midrange and treble resolution, and dramatically more authoritative bass. There’s plenty of gain, too.”

iDSD nano with the Audeze LCD-3:

· This combination offers the best overall tonal balance and articulacy of these first three ‘phones, and perhaps also the best overall sensitivity,
· Still the iDSD nano lacks sufficient output (gain?) to fully exploit the LCD-3’s strengths, however
· With the iCAN nano put into play I wrote, “Not surprisingly, the iCAN nano fixes everything, providing plenty of output and great bass weight.”

The moral of this story, for now, is that while the iDSD nano is a wonderful thing in its own right (it would be terrific for use with earphones, custom-fit in-ear monitors, and higher sensitivity full-size phones), it pays to add the iCAN nano to the mix if you own somewhat more difficult-to-drive full-size ‘phones.

Watch for our upcoming Hi-Fi+ review of the iDSD nano and iCAN nano. Until then, however, I hope this “First Look” blog will give you some idea of what to expect.

Happy Listening!

KEF X300A desktop speaker system

Hi-fi magazines are not known for their interest in desktop systems that work with a computer, but this is changing. For many people, their computer is now their main source of music (and, vinyl revival notwithstanding, this looks set to increase over the years) and an increasing number of us are now homeworkers, in ever-shrinking homes, the desktop speaker is fast becoming the main speaker.

A few hi-fi companies have seen this desktop audio market as an untapped potential, but have traditionally made products physically constrained by small speaker size – the B&W MM1 for example is a great sounding desktop speaker, but a great sounding beer-can sized desktop speaker. The KEF X300A is not fixed by the conventions of size imposed by desktop audio’s past. These are full-sized, active monitors, just ones fed by USB as well as the mains. A USB B-type socket connects the speakers to the computer and an USB-USB connector hooks speaker to speaker. There is a mini-jack auxiliary input, but the default pathway is very much USB.

And it’s here where you begin to see why KEF is taking desktop audio seriously. That USB input works to 24bit, 96kHz precision, but requires no custom drivers for PC or Mac use. The internal amplifiers (two per side) are Class A/B affairs (20W to the tweeter, 50W to the bass), and it has a four way red/green LED in the cone surround denoting status. There is also a wireless version for AirPlay or DNLA systems.

This isn’t the bit most people will see first, though. Most people will look at these speakers and see a full-sized bookshelf speaker that bears more than a passing resemblance to the KEF LS50. The colour scheme is a little more muted (it’s all gun-metal grey rather than gloss black with a copper coloured Uni-Q unit) and the finish of the X300A is a more squared off (but round edged), ripple-touch wrap with a separate front and rear baffle than the organic shape of the LS50. All of which makes it look very tidy on the desk. The LS50 is a shade bigger all round, too. But – and the reminding of this will be a constant theme of this review – it is a desktop speaker, designed to sit close to your phone, tablet, laptop or desktop. Yes, it has EQ settings for desktop and speaker stand use (suggesting the former is a near-field and the latter a mid-field installation), but this is used primarily in that desktop environment. While it would be a dereliction of duty not to evaluate it in context with other bookshelf and active bookshelf speakers (including, of course the LS50 itself), where it’s intended to go and the rivals it will face in that place must be drawn into the process.

The drive unit is a true Uni-Q model, with a 25mm vented aluminium dome tweeter sitting in the acoustic centre of a 130mm magnesium/aluminium alloy cone mid/bass driver. This doesn’t deliver gut-churning bass – 3dB down at 58Hz, according to the specs – but is designed for use in a setting where too much bass could easily overawe the listener. Almost unheard of in desktop speaker systems, the X300A comes with foam bungs with a removable centre section, allowing the user to tune the bass output of the speaker whether that desk or stand is close to a load-bearing wall, close to a partition wall (saying hello to a whole new potential category, cubicle-fi for office workers) or in free space. Your best bet – experiment. Note however that this is one of the places where the LS50 DNA begins to run out – it doesn’t have the squidgy port material of the LS50 and the bungs used are different in both cases.

In desktop speaker terms, this has a big footprint, each taking up some 18x22cm of desk space. However, one of the great advantages of a UniQ design is their dispersion is excellent. So it means you don’t need to have the speakers raised or angled to have the tweeter target your ears and you don’t need (and, in fact, probably shouldn’t) toe-in the loudspeakers. These are big and relatively powerful speakers for the desktop, however, and computer tables are not designed with audio in mind and a pumping bass line can end with those pen holder and other nonsense that crowd our desks buzzing along in sympathy. KEF puts useful rubber feet to minimise this problem, but I’d recommend a pair of foam Auralex MoPADs under each speaker too. That’s not a KEF-specific recommendation – I’d go for a set under any desktop speaker system larger than a Coke can.

Cut to the chase; this is the best tool for the job right now. I’ve been spoiled recently with excellent desktop audio (the Meridian Prime coupled with a pair of older AVI Neutron actives), but that solution takes up additional desktop real estate and the Neutrons would possibly be at their best perhaps a metre or so further from where I sit (if I want to listen to something at its best, I have to push back from the desktop, which kind of defeats the object). The X300A, on the other hand, needs no such reservation – they sit next either side of the monitor and pump out a very fine sound indeed.

The clever part of the X300A sound is that it is revealing enough of source material to make one want to play good lossless audio through them, but not so ruthlessly revealing as to make the sound of less-than-perfect YouTube or Spotify streamed music unlistenable. It’s not so dynamic that you find yourself constantly adjusting the volume control on the computer, but not so flat that you find yourself bored with endless Call of Duty carnage. And that’s perhaps its best selling point, it’s not just a hi-fi speaker – we can get a little prissy thinking that anything apart from high-quality music played through a speaker system is an abomination, but speakers in this field need to be as multi-role as the computer they connect to. Most hi-fi systems would struggle to get all of these out with equal aplomb, but the X300A aces it, because the overall sound is so seamless, so well integrated and just so well ‘sorted’ for its intended role.

There’s an obvious question. Is this a powered LS50 and if so, why would anyone pay about 20% more for the passive version? The short answer is ‘no’, the X300A is not quite a LS50. The drive unit and the cabinet are not as highly spec’d as in the LS50, and this speaker has a little less bass and very slightly more oil drum effects to the bass (where bass notes seem to take on a tuned ‘boing’ sound instead of just bass notes). Taken out of place – as in used in nearfield next to the LS50 – the X300A has a tendency to sound a touch undynamic and unexciting. But part of that comes down to the words, ‘taken out of place’; used in context, as in so close if you stretch out your arms, they rest on the cabinet, they have all the excitement and dynamic range you need. They work perfectly in that setting.

If you compare this speaker system to most other products designed for desktop computer audio, it’s like comparing an Airbus A380 with a paper dart. The MM1 take a stab at getting close to the sound of the X300A, but even here they are not in the same league. They lack the volume, the dynamic range, the frequency extension and much of the transparency of the KEF X300A; it is not the first, nor will it be the last speaker to take this listening arena seriously, but it does this with such élan, such energy and such sheer sound quality, it has to be one of the best ever.

Technical Specifications

4.7l Two-way active bass reflex loudspeaker system

Drive units: Uni-Q driver array – 25mm vented aluminium dome tweeter in acoustic centre of 130mm magnesium/aluminium alloy cone

Frequency Response: 58Hz-28kHz (±3dB)

Max SPL: 104dB

Amplifier power: LF – 50W, HF – 20W (both Class AB)

DAC resolution: up to 24bit, 96kHz precision

Inputs: 3.5mm analogue stereo jack, USB 2.0 mini type B

Controls: input volume control, balance control

Dimensions (HxWxD): 28x18x24.3cm

Weight: 7.5kg per loudspeaker

Price: £599 per pair

Manufactured by: GP Acoustics (UK) Ltd

URL: www.kef.com

Tel: +44(0)1622 672261

Back to reviews

Hegel H80 amplifier

The role of amplifier has changed recently. The nexus role of ‘curating’ sources and feeding them to a pair of loudspeakers remains, but increasingly ‘sources’ have become a single computer source. That means increasing onus on the amp maker to become an amp+DAC maker, and few companies have taken that new role to heart as much as Hegel.

The H80 is the company’s new hub. Yes, it’s an 75W per channel integrated amplifier, but the overall design quickly shows it’s very much an integrated amp with today in mind. As a line-level amplifier, it’s relatively limited, with just two line-level phono inputs (one of which can be configured as a home theatre direct input) and one XLR input on tap. On the other hand (and on the other side of the rear panel) it has two coaxial digital, two toslink optical and one asynchronous USB inputs. Moreover, it’s indicative of a bold move on Hegel’s part, in that the same degree of importance toward digital audio is echoed throughout the range. There’s a fairly obvious and logical reason for this; the need for line-level inputs is beginning to fade in modern audio (often it now comes down to the output of a phono stage and a tuner) while the need for digital audio connections – potentially for both audio and audio-video devices – is on the rise. It’s possible today that someone might use an amplifier with no line-level sources whatsoever, perhaps connecting the optical link from a satellite decoder and a games console and the USB input from a computer. Line level is not exactly ‘legacy’ and will likely never be consigned to the dump-bin, but it’s interesting just how many sources can be covered with fairly minimal analogue pathway demands now. And Hegel seems to get that change in user demands to a very deep degree.

The analogue stage is not an afterthought though, especially as essentially the DAC sits on top of the analogue preamp section. This has been pulled from the company’s P20 line preamp or top H300 integrated, borrowing heavily from those upmarket devices. Similarly, the power amplifier stage of the H80 also borrows from the Reference class products, using Hegel’s own SoundEngine local error cancellation circuit design, which is claimed to deliver Class A linearity in a Class AB design, increasing damping factor in the process. It also uses hand-matched transistors in the input stage and the DAC, of course, bears a lot in common with Hegel’s 32-bit filtering, AKM4399-based 24-bit, 192kHz precision off board converters like the HD11. OK, so putting DAC, pre and power in the one chassis is never going to be quite as good as having them in separate chassis with separate power supplies dedicated to the task in hand, and the small chassis means there’s no room for the kart wheel sized toroidal transformer and power reserves found in Hegel’s 200W and beyond amplifiers, but this appears an exercise in specification reduction rather than sonic sacrifice.

Hegel’s products stress the minimalist approach. All black, one knob for source, one for volume, a power off switch on the underside of the amp below the source knob and a big blue LED readout. There’s a credit-card remote that accompanies the amp, and can control the computer’s playlists. It can turn off or even dim the large and bright display, too if you press it for three seconds.

But with no preamp output, there’s no upgrade path for someone wanting to add a bigger power amp. More importantly, there’s also no monitor, digital output or headphone socket, so if you want to listen through headphones, not only is it impossible through the H80, but it’s impossible to even take a feed from the H80 to drive headphones, which may be a deal-breaker for some.

Anders Ertzeid of Hegel confided in me that the code name for the H80 within the company was PIGLET (as in the cute one from Winnie the Pooh). But while that’s true from the outside, ‘PIGLET’ bares no resemblance to the sound it produces. It’s more ‘The Little Engine That Could’. It is deceptively powerful; yes, it’s a 75W amp, but it has the kind of grip over loudspeakers that makes it sound more like it’s double that. And it does so in an intrinsically right way. I tried it with a number of speakers (some of which are tested in this issue), but settled on the Raidho D1s as the perfect partners, with Crystal Cable providing the linkage everywhere except USB (one day, I’ll have mugged enough old people to afford Crystal’s Absolute Dream USB, but until then Nordost makes a good stand-in). The front end was mostly Apple-based, but my old Lyngdorf CD-1 was also pressed into service for its S/PDIF connections.

Like the H300 we tested in issue 98, the amp takes a fair while to spring to life. It’s a vapid, listless first few days with the H80, and that’s nothing like the amplifier it grows up to be. Hegel makes a sound that doesn’t draw attention to itself, but that’s what a good amp should do. And the DAC matches the amplifier perfectly. This is not an ostentatious, fireworks sound – it’s in it for the long game, with excellent precision (both in detail and in soundstage width and depth terms), super dynamics and most of all a sense of great poise and integration across the range.

You get the distinct ‘you are there’ feeling with the H80, as if the electronics are out of the way. You put on Schiff or Brendel, and you are in the audience. You put on ZZ Top and you are either in the studio or in the bar. You put on Kraftwerk and you are inside the oscillator. This is not an uncommon impression in the high-end, but it usually comes when components are more divided up than this.

I’m not wholly convinced this is a Class A sound from a Class AB amplifier, but it gets closer than most. Where the H80 wins though it the bass; if it has some of the ease of listening of Class A in the mids and treble, the bass is powerful, deep and satisfyingly ‘chewy’. It grips hold of the drivers to ensure they give good account of their actions, but does so in the kind of way where you just start reaching out for old reggae recordings for the fun of it. There probably won’t be that many Hegel/Raidho combinations that punt out Burning Spear’s Garvey’s Ghost dub remix of the Marcus Garvey album, but it worked. OK, ‘it worked’ is subject to this not being the kind of club rig that can play bass so deep it dislocates knee joints at 30 paces, but ‘surprisingly deep and loud’ for domestic use does it for me.

I play a little game with myself during reviews. Where possible, I try to avoid discovering the price of a product until the end of the review, and I see if I can guess correctly. Usually, I’m in the right ball-park. With the H80, I got this spectacularly wrong. I put this at about the £5,000+ mark, in among some serious top-end integrated amp peers. It’s why I happily drove this amp through a pair of Raidho D1, completely unconscious of just how much of a ‘mullet’ system I had created in the process. The thing is though, the H80 is so ‘right’ sounding, with such good bass control and so much in its favour with such a partnership, it seemed the most natural thing to put this little amp with a pair of speakers that cost more than 10x as much. I can’t think of a higher recommendation than that.

Hegel is one of those brands that deserve to be better known. Products like the H80 make all the right noises and tick all the right boxes for a ‘now’ product. It’s a well-built, deceptively powerful amplifier with an excellent digital audio stage. ‘It fights above its weight’ is a cliché of the highest order, but it really applies here. Excellent!

Technical Specifications

Integrated amplifier

Digital inputs: 2 coax, 2 optical and 1 USB

Analog inputs: 2 RCA unbalanced (1 configurable) and 1 XLR Balanced input

Output Power: 75+75W in 8 ohms

Frequency response: 5Hz-100kHz

Signal-to-noise ratio: More than 100dB

Crosstalk: Less than -100dB

Distortion: Less than 0.01% @ 50W 8 Ohms 1kHz

Intermodulation: Less than 0.01% (19kHz + 20kHz)

Damping Factor: More than 1000

Dimensions (HxWxD): 8 x 43 x 34.5cm

Weight: 12kg

Price: £1,300

Manufactured by: Hegel Music Systems

Back to reviews

Kronos turntable

The word ‘Kronos’ comes from Ancient Greek mythology, but although more correctly directed at ‘Cronus’ (the youngest and the leader of the first generation of Titans and the father of Zeus), the term is often somewhat erroneously connected with ‘Chronos’ (the personification of time, and the root of words like ‘chronograph’). In fact, both terms fit the Kronos turntable perfectly – alongside the TechDAS Air Force One, it’s the youngest of the superdecks and is an excellent timekeeper.

Kronos (the turntable) is the brain-child of Louis Desjardins from Montreal. Just 250 Kronos turntables will be made. It’s an exercise in brushed nickel and tankwood. There’s a similarity in look between this and the SME 30/12, especially with the four rubber band sprung towers. But where the SME has just one base plate and one subchassis, the Kronos has two separate subchassis, because the Kronos uses counter-rotating platters.

The counter-rotating platters are rare (just this and the 47 Labs deck at this time), look great, and the fact the bottom one is so carefully and independently speed controlled is fantastic. From an engineering basis, the advantage of counter-rotation is that the two platters effectively cancel out any torsional force that might be generated from a single platter, reducing any inherent vibration from the action of a platter just doing its job of spinning round and thereby stripping back the introduction of anything apart from the needle running through the groove. While the vibration reduction this creates has strong precedent, the benefits are more usually associated with high-RPM systems (like contra-rotating propellers) or in higher far higher mass systems than are usually seen in the home.

Kronos rightly points out that normally any torsional forces are cancelled out by suspension systems. But, claims Kronos Audio, such systems are only part-effective, because there’s still some residual rotation in the subchassis that can be transmitted back through the tonearm to the stylus, arriving as an out-of-phase ‘blur’. The company suggests this blur is audible as an imprecise soundstage. The usual response to this is to build the turntable as high mass as its possible to make, eliminating the suspension system altogether, but this provides its own set of distortions from vibration, and the cure can end up worse than the disease with a hard-edge and bright sound quality. By hanging the whole turntable (as a complete block) from its baseplate and having the counter-rotating platters, the motor block and the tonearm in fixed geometry, this could notionally provide the best of all possible worlds.

The chassis is designed to accommodate a brass mount to hold the tonearm. Not only does this allow flexibility of arm options, it helps raise the arm up to the relatively high platter. However, it seems most who go with the Kronos use it specifically with a SME or Graham arm, and usually in those cases a 12-inch SME or Graham arm, so a brass outrigger armboard is also available. I used it with a Graham Phantom II (12 inch model) and a Lyra Skala cartridge (Cardas arm wiring throughout), and the three worked together as if they were made for one another.

As you would expect with a turntable costing tens of thousands, nothing is simply made out of ho-hum materials. Every single aspect of the product is pulled from the state of the art materials-science used in aerospace or Formula One racing (such as the woven carbon fibre mat on the phenolic encased in aluminium platter). Nothing is left to chance. So the inverted bearing is vapour deposited coated base metal alloy and is the result of extensive research. But in some respects, the clever part is it is a huge inverted bearing housing, several times larger than almost any seen on a turntable today.

The platters are driven by two Swiss-made DC motors, each one with a three-belt pulley (a second passive driving pulley is on the opposite side of the platter in both cases). Both motors and secondary pulleys are connected to the base-plate of the Kronos, rather than the subchassis assembly; if this were a true suspended deck, that could cause some wow issues, but because the subchassis suspension is more for isolation than overcoming torsional effects, in reality no such wow problems manifest. The DC motors use a computer controlled servo mechanism (they read points on each platter to reference speed), but where most DC motors today are driven by small PWM amplifiers, this is fed by a linear Class A amplifier (either a standalone box or built into the stand). Once again, this falls into the ‘nothing left to chance’ method of construction.

One of the things that irritates me about the superdeck world is the inherent fuss that comes with the package. You’ve just spent the equivalent cost of a nice Mercedes on a turntable, there’s no excuse to spend 25 minutes fiddling with air pumps, warming up the flux capacitor, or any other form of faffing around. Neither should that deck behave like an attention-seeking spoilt brat every other listening session, demanding you attend to the deck’s every whim between records and demand a complete strip-down every few weeks. If that’s your thing, great… but I was never a fan of the ‘Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious’ approach to automotive design and see no reason to pay over the odds for a turntable that acts in so mercurial a manner.

The joy of the Kronos is that it ranks among the least fiddly of all superdecks, and is near enough maintenance-free. Set-up is straight-forward and logical; it’s necessarily a little more thorough (in terms of levelling and lubricating) than making an Ikea chair, but the instructions are better. Once set and levelled, it will take a few days for the speed control to bed in, but shouldn’t need too much in the way of adjustment, resets or lube-jobs, and even the way the belts are used (three per platter) is designed for longevity.

Operation is simple too; the speed control and two red LED read-outs (left hand for upper platter, right for lower) also has touch sensitive controls. Two fingers to the left of the display turns the deck on or off, two fingers to the right of the display changes speed. It’s not the fastest spin-up speed, but this increases with use. This isn’t a big problem, even you have a habit of moving between 33 and 45rpm regularly, unless you must stop the platter between discs; fortunately even the record weight is a Michell-like fit-on type, so it doesn’t need to be screwed down onto a stopped record in the manner of an SME clamp.

The Kronos is a big deck; its footprint is 56x36cm and that puts it at the limits of most audio furniture. Which is why the company also makes a dedicated four-column matching stand. It is not cheap, but is beautifully made and shows the company’s commitment to excellence extends beyond the deck itself.

There is a clear (but undisclosed) way to spot when the deck has bedded into its environment. The two platters at first generate a small amount of self-noise. Not much (the kind of thing you will only hear with your ear to the motors), not intrusive and uniform (it’s a low and mild whirr). When it goes away, your turntable is in its happy place. And that’s about the only noise you get from the Kronos. Everything else is music.

The absence of noise floor has been one of the biggest initial attractors of the Kronos among high-enders. If this is down to the counter-rotating platters, or any other aspect of the design is ultimately unimportant (unless you are a rival – or possibly frustrated – turntable designer), but the end result is the sort of absence of background noise that isn’t normally associated with even excellent vinyl replay. This sounds like vinyl nerd speak of the highest order, but listening to the transition from lead-in groove hash to the comparative silence of a unmodulated groove shows just how silent vinyl can be and just how little the Kronos brings to the party. This helps give the music a real sense of structure and definition that vinyl’s digital detractors feel is impossible to find with LP.

I’m not trying to be contrarian here, but this no-noise thing is perhaps the Kronos’ least important positive aspect in its performance. For me, the remarkable thing about the Kronos is it exposes the ‘horses for courses’ idea as nonsense. There seem to be many ways to crack the vinyl nut at the high-end, but the Kronos is rare in it’s an all-things-to-all-people sound. It’s got that depth and across-the-frequency range accuracy that a good high-mass deck can provide without the top-end scratchiness that can sometimes create, and the bouncy, inviting, unforced sound of a lighter, suspended design. That means it performs magnificently when handed a slab of audiophile-friendly vinyl (like the 200g MoFi Muddy Waters Folk Singer album), creating an ‘in’ with the studio like you were standing behind the faders in the control room. It seems as if the vinyl fades away and you are left at the tape machine. But it also means it does the same with less hi-fi-approved pieces of music, like a regular copy of Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions. Once again you could listen into the mix far more precisely and completely, hearing how that 1970s stereo flanger used on a Rhodes piano had a subtle but almost ‘pulsing’ effect as it moved between channels that doesn’t normally come across. And yet, for all this detail, it didn’t lay the music out cold on the slab; this was vibrant, up-beat, foot-tapping and all the things you associate with Golden Era Stevie Wonder. Move on to practically any recording from here (from the most structurally dense orchestral piece to fey girl with guitar singer-songwriter) and the same result takes place – you hear the detail, the sense of solidity, the ‘in the studio’ sense of ‘thereness’ rising out of that silent background… but you also get the sense of music as performance, rather than that ‘assembly of nice sounds’ that can plague top-end superdecks. Which is perhaps why I caught Boney M being snuck on the platter – it wasn’t me, honest – and what was surprising was just how a 36 year old, scratched to bits album that most people wouldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about can sound surprisingly fun.

I dislike reviews that reference other products, but in this case it’s hard not to. The Kronos has all the best bits from many turntable sounds and makes something better than the sum of those sounds. You have the depth a Kuzma, the control of a big SME, the scale of a VPI, the naturalness of a Well-Tempered and the boppy beat of a LP12. All rolled into one outstanding package. The Kronos joins a very small, very illustrious set of turntables that do it all and do it well. I can’t help but be a little bit jealous of those lucky 250 owners of the best pair of platters around. This one’s something special.

Technical Specifications

Rotational speed: 33.3 rpm & 45 rpm.
Tonearm lenght: 9 to 12
Power supply: dual channel pure class A linear DC, CPU controlled.
DC transmission: pico 3 pin cable.
Data input/output bus: RS232.
Transmission: Pico 4 pin cable.
Motors: 2x DC motors
Motor mounts: Delrin enclosure,
height adjustable.
Speed guidance system: continuous open loop feedback.
Sensors type: optical diode I/O
(each platter)
Correction cycle: every two rotations. 1.5% max. 0.05% min.
Monitoring: twin real time speed LED.
Command input type: 1 capacitance sensor on/off (left), 1 capacitance sensor 33/45 (right)
Platters type: Composite layers and encapsulated & balanced.
Platter weight: 13.6kg.
Drive: 3 silicone/viton 1.8 sting belts/platter
Compensation pulley: teflon and chrome steel bearing.
Main bearings: dual hydraulic isolated inverted sleeve and ball.
Shaft type: grounded heat hardened tool steel pvd coated.
Ball type: ceramic top platter, steel lower platter.
Suspension: full floating top suspended.
Elastomers: 317 o-rings, viton/silicone mix.
Dimensions (WxDxH): 56 x 36 x 28cm
Weight: 41 kg
Price: from £30,000 (stand £10,000)
Manufactured by: Kronos Audio
URL: www.kronosaudio.com
Distributed by: Decent Audio
URL: www.decentaudio.co.uk

Tel: +44(0)5602 054669

Back to reviews

Technical Specifications

Manufacturer: The Professional Monitor Company

Technical Specifications

Manufacturer: JPS Labs/Abyss Headphones

UK Distributor: The Music Room

Technical Specifications

Manufacturer: The Opera Audio Co.

Distributor: AA Acoustics

Technical Specifications

Manufactured by Aesthetix

Technical Specifications

Manucacturer: Shanling

About the iDSD nano

About the iCAN nano

What Have We Learned About the Sound of the ICAN Nano Thus Far?

What have we learned about the sound of the iDSD nano thus far?

Technical Specifications

Manufactured by: GP Acoustics (UK) Ltd

Technical Specifications

Manufactured by: Hegel Music Systems

Technical Specifications

Manufactured by: Kronos Audio

The sound of excellence delivered your way