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Silent concert launches JBL Synchros in Europe

JBL is a big name in the whole audio field. It’s reach extends from PA systems and studio suites to home systems big and small and automotive. So big in fact, you could easily miss its importance thanks to its ubiquity; the brand is featured in Toyota premium in car systems (other names in the Harman stable, such as Infinity and Mark Levinson are used as premium line-fit systems in a range of cars including Kia and Lexus), but more recently JBL has begun to appear in Ferraris!

The company isn’t perhaps the go-to name for headphones – the JBL brand has been closer associated with docks and iThing speaker systems since the iPod and iPhone became synonymous with audio on the move – with sister Harman brand AKG taking most of the credit for high-end headphone audio. With its new five-strong Synchros line, however, JBL is trying to bring its reputation for scientific research to the in-head world.

During the company’s combined Synchros launch and start of the brand’s Journey of Sound, Harman’s Director of Acoustic Research – Dr Sean Olive – gave a fascinating presentation about just how little research has gone into headphone sound, how we listen through headphones, how much of the whole headphone experience is driven by marketing today (like we didn’t know, but it’s good to put some stats behind the hype-breaking) and how JBL is attempting to create a target response of a headphone to approximate that of an accurate loudspeaker in a well-designed listening room.

 

This last is interesting; it’s not an attempt at making headphones sound like loudspeakers, but tries to make headphones create the sound outside the head of the listener (in audiophile terms ‘soundstage’). This – called LiveStage in JBL-speak – is a signal processing system, that in use is not too dissimilar to that used by Meridian in its Prime headphone amplifier, except this is an active system in the headphone itself. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this, JBL conducted a ‘silent’ concert in the famous Cavern Club in the heart of Liverpool. Sadly John, Paul, George and Ringo aren’t available for gigs any more, but Canadian duo Jonas and the Massive ably stood in with both their own works and a few Fab Four covers in an acoustic set.

This ‘silent gig’ concept has been tried before by JBL to launch the Synchros range in the US, but the first outing was less than ideal. The individual listeners had no control over the headphone output and many complained about the ultimate volume. Here, the output was fed to dozens of Pro-Ject headphone amps, and the assembled European car and audio journalist ‘pack’ could select their own personal volume level and compare the sound of the Synchros S700 range topper headphone with and without LiveStage processing to the real deal. Of course, the real deal was played through a small PA system made up of Harman products, but the Cavern club’s room is small enough for the PA to be as much sound reinforcement as sound delivery, and comparisons were possible.

There was good news and bad for JBL here. First the good news; the sound of the Synchros S700 was very, very close to the real thing. They are closed back headphones that make a very tight seal and attenuate a lot of extraneous noise, and the tonal balance, range and articulation of the headphones was close enough to the live singer and guitar sound to make almost no odds. No bass boosts, no veiled midranges, no too soft or too sharp treble. An excellent performance.

The bad news was that engaging LiveStage wasn’t quite as successful. While it did make it seem more like the musicians were out in the open (instead of somewhere inside your skull), there was a lightening and brightening of the upper midrange and treble that deviated from the otherwise extremely neutral tonal balance. This wasn’t aggressive or hard sounding, but in looking around, there were many listeners who spent much of the later parts of the silent gig with the little white LED denoting LiveStage turned ‘off’. In fairness, the LiveStage system works better on recordings where there is a distinct sense of ‘soundstage’ and a live, amplified event might not be the best place to demonstrate that.

The JBL/Ferrari link is an interesting one too. Unfortunately, ‘time pressures’ (as in ‘you aren’t an automotive journalist’) did not permit taking a whole week out of the schedule to experience the joys of the new Ferrari FF and its in-car system, with hot laps around the track with Nick Mason of Pink Floyd and culminating in the second stage of the whole Beatles experience in Hamburg, where they honed their skills. However, I did manage to score a pair of Synchros S700 headphones for review. First impressions are extremely favourable… and as everyone knows, first impressions count!

http://uk.jbl.com

dCS Vivaldi upsampler and master clock (part 2) (Hi-Fi Plus)

Last issue, in the first part of the review, I spoke mainly of the Vivaldi as a two-box CD player and what a profound improvement it was on the four-box Paganini system I had grown so accustomed to over the past couple of years. Using just the Vivaldi CD/SACD transport and the DAC, driving power amplification directly and without a preamplifier could never be considered a low-cost option but, if CD replay is required, it is the cheapest way into the Vivaldi system. It showed me in no uncertain terms that many of the sonic artefacts I had always associated with the format either vanished or were greatly reduced. Soundstage width and depth, bass articulation and pitch, shuddering dynamics, a massive reduction in the compressed space between instruments and their range of tonal colour were all of a different order. But it was really the improved sense of musical communication and involvement that was the most persuasive. Put simply, I had better and longer listening sessions, finding myself involved the musicianship and recordings on a deeper and more fascinating and personal level.

The Master Clock is a far more precise way of synchronizing the musical flow through the Vivaldi components. It sits outside the signal path regulating the beating heart of the system by performing all the clocking in one place (when just the transport and DAC are in use the former is slaved to the clock in the DAC). This locks all the digital operations within the three other boxes to the single, highly accurate master clock that is orders of magnitude more precise than those built into each component.

When the Master Clock arrived I was expecting a greater sense of precision and sharper timing and an enhanced feel of the music being more solidly planted with perhaps better strength. I certainly got those, but it was the other directions that the music moved that were so interesting.

Incorporating the clock into the transport and DAC system produced some barely believable results. Yes, the music is more direct, powerful and better grounded and the anticipated feeling of stability throughout the bandwidth is certainly undeniable, but the clock removes as much as it adds and it is what it leaves behind that is so significant. Once again the system moves further from sounding anything like a conventional CD player. What we have come to accept as the ‘digital sound’ or should I say, the ‘sound of digital’ recedes even further. Harshness and the spiteful leading edge that so many CDs seem to be embedded with, falls away. Voices, in particular are less artificial, more open and much sweeter. The bitter compressive squeeze that surrounds so many vocal harmonies is replaced by a much more natural feel entirely where each individual part is far better expressed. Everything that the two-box Vivaldi did so well is even further enhanced with the addition of the clock. There are no downsides. It can show you musical threads and harmonic possibilities by removing so many characteristic CD-type colourations that it simply allows you to relax into the music.  This was something picked up at a very early stage by Chris Binns when he came round to listen and was only reinforced as the weeks passed. By allowing the music more room to breathe, the Vivaldi grows ever more expansive with the clock in place. So much of what I had always assumed to be studio ambience and digital reverb vanished and while the music certainly seems ‘drier’, it grows enormously in texture and becomes much more ‘real’ and touchable. Once again and like the initial two-box set-up, it made me question and re-evaluate so much of what I had taken for granted about CD replay and by definition, what I had always accepted as some of the limitations of home audio.

 

But while well produced CDs revealed layers of musical delights that I had never heard before, I soon began delving to the back of the piles of discs to find those rather unpleasant sounding examples, expediently released in the 1980’s. These would be transfers, largely from analogue master tapes, of music that originally had existed domestically only in vinyl and cassette form. So often these are thin, rather nasty and mean sounding discs, flat as a pancake with a built-in harshness and generally uninspiring sound quality that irritates rather than delights. They characterise so much of why some people still dislike CD. I started working my way through the Santana, Steely Dan and Weather Report early catalogues, expecting little. How wrong I was. Now, I don’t claim that they were miraculously rejuvenated into masterpieces of digital transfers. The original studio recordings themselves are actually pretty good. Many of the old characteristics were still there but vastly reduced. Paper-thin drums now had a sense of dynamic weight and impressive impact, voices lost much of their boring, one-dimensional character and the whole tonal balance improved out of sight. Again, that irritating CD ‘edge’ was greatly diminished and there was now a much better feeling of depth, body and stability from these unloved shelf-fillers. Rediscovering older music that you used to love on vinyl but simply couldn’t listen to on CD is one of Vivaldi’s greatest tricks for me as before I would estimate that up to around 60% plus of my CDs were poor to average sounding. Now that is down to about 25-30%.

The time had come for the family of components to be united and the Vivaldi Upsampler was duly installed alongside a complete wireless network with server. Every component arrival had heralded yet another cabling adventure, but now I was able to hear the full Vivaldi installation doing its thing with more than just CD as a source. Again, I had pondered what kind of improvements the Upsampler might bring. After all, the transport offers limited upsampling abilities from DXD to DSD but the dedicated unit slips between transport and DAC and expands this enormously as well as offering more comprehensive processing and dedicated, isolated power supplies. Connecting either a computer or a NAS drive is simple and the Upsampler can also support DSD over USB, a dCS-originated protocol that also allows the playing of DSD files from a network server. All the processing options that are available to CD replay are also available for the network or computer playback. There is a dCS app that allows full library access and control of playback from the server and the Upsampler will also cater for USB memory sticks, again selectable and controlled through the app. I used both the hard disc storage and USB stick high def. playback extensively during my time with the Vivaldi. I should add that, at this stage, it is becomes easier to get lost in the options where the upsampling and filter settings are concerned and it will take a few days of tinkering fun before you settle on your own personal preferences. The Vivaldi, at the heart of a fully blown network/CD, replay system that can also incorporate Apple devices, really is a complete digital processing station.

Even with the network now fully operational I still preferred DSD. Like the Clock upgrade, the Upsampler bought some of the anticipated improvements but there were the big surprises too. Yes, there was another new dimension of seamlessness to the music and more breathing space for each and every instrument or voice but once again, it was what had been stripped away that was so vital. Whoever said “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone” could have been talking about the Vivaldi. The improvements the Upsampler brings are completely across the board. From the lowest bass note and the exposure of its pitch, tone and character to the most airy treble suggestion that would have floated by unheard and unloved, the Upsampler knits it all together as the intriguing icing on an already sumptuous cake. The layering of musical perspectives and the lack of instrumental smearing are unique, but like all true improvements it is perhaps somewhat unspectacular to those seeking more Hi-Fi. What it brings is actually less Hi-Fi. It irons out the remaining compressive edges and leaves music sounding tonally rich, whole and rhythmically and dynamically unconstrained and gives you a far better view of each and every instrument with an excellent and intriguing view of their note envelopes. To say that it is a revelation would be selling it short. It is simply at another level completely. I always say that if you want analogue music, then buy a turntable. But I am bound to say that the full Vivaldi system bears an uncanny resemblance to the best of that format. Though this is not the way I like to think about things generally, I include it for perhaps a clearer picture of what Vivaldi can achieve.

I have been impressed but never completely convinced by SACD to the extent where I would say that the format itself made the difference. I have heard both good and bad SACDs but, listening through the Vivaldi and particularly to the Esoteric SACD Classical re-masters, has just about converted me. The body, musical power and tonal depth are very impressive and of a new order. Textural balance from stringed instruments is completely transformed and the accentuation I am used to hearing between the bow and the string now seems to have shifted to include the body of the instrument to a much greater extent. Similarly, I have never heard brass conveyed with such power and rasp and transient impact. System resolution now reaches much, much deeper into the recording to include a more illustrative view of the shape and size of the orchestra. The balance of the instrumentation just seems so much more natural and warmer through SACD than I have ever heard before and it felt to me as if I was listening to completely re-re-mastered discs.

There is certainly a debate to be had about the staggering cost of the full four-box Vivaldi set-up and depending on how their digitally stored music is sourced, some users won’t require the full system. But the fact is that dCS, a UK company, have essentially redefined both CD replay and digital processing within one family of products. What started as a desire to expand the Ring DAC’s potential resulted in an incredibly brave undertaking that was not without risks. They have succeeded hugely I think. No doubt rich buyers, many of them in other markets, will revel in the technical delights. As a CD user I too want one but, alas, cannot afford it. I would happily settle for the two-box version myself and perhaps, if I gave up food and relied on the charity of friends, I could eventually add the other boxes. But, thinking of the entire package costs, I doubt if even that would be enough. I, rather selfishly, want one for the way it makes me feel and for what it can teach me about music. To be able to settle down for the evening, alongside a Vivaldi, with the music of your choice is rather like seeing the curtains draw back for a performance. After just a few bars of music you can see the stage-set before you and can let go of the world, knowing that the musicians will take you on a journey. It becomes an event.

 

The Vivaldi has much to show us. Harmonic complexity and the explicit nature of instrumental and vocal character, playing techniques and phrasing are a far cry from the bleached and harsh tonality of those high-end machines that seem dedicated to needlepoint informational retrieval, but at the expense of the musical experience. I can’t help but smile when I see the current silliness that is written about CD replay and the brave new world of streaming audio. It will almost certainly get there, but is not there yet. Then again, I know that none of the writers have probably experienced a Vivaldi in full flow.

When I read a review of any piece of audio I always ask myself why should I buy this and what can it do for me musically? As the years have rolled by and the flow of equipment through my hands has increased I have become ever more music-centric. I would keep the technical prowess of the Vivaldi in my back pocket. It is ultimately the sense of anticipation and the emotional intensity of the musicianship that interests me, alongside the sheer pleasure of just listening to the art. It is both the Vivaldi’s greatest achievement and what has kept me interested in high-end audio for so many years. Without the promise of new musical insights and the sheer thrill of the human heart that drives the performances I doubt I could sustain any interest at all. But those deep personal attachments, fascinations and commitments that I feel to the music I love have been given an enormous boost by the dCS Vivaldi and I must thank the company for some lovely moments.

This is what Vivadi achieves. It is genuinely exciting and compelling to listen to because it is so involving and will draw you into the music, show and even teach you things that will inspire you. Put simply, it is a new generation and level of digital replay. But the music wins every time.

dCS Vivaldi – Technical Details
by Chris Binns

Despite the legacy of the company’s previous Scarlatti reference, the dCS Vivaldi has been planned from the ground up to take advantage of the very latest electronic components. The use of FPGA’s (field programmable gate arrays) and cutting edge DSP chips has endowed the hardware with massive processing capability (some 200 times greater than its predecessor) and very high data transfer speeds. It also allows the software to control more of the machine’s operation.

The Esoteric mechanism is machined from solid steel ingots. A large diameter Duralumin clamp holds the disc securely against the heavy flywheel platter, which is driven by a substantial brushless motor for greater speed stability. The whole assembly is critically damped and mechanically isolated from the rest of the casework and has its own independent power supplies. The Vivaldi transport offers the option of upsampling 44.1 KHz CD data to DXD  – 24 bit / 352.8KHz with a data rate of 8.4672 Mbs – or to DSD, the encoding pattern used by SACD, which is played unaltered with a lower data rate of 2.8224Mbs.

The upsampler acts as the hub of the system by accepting digital information from a variety of sources. Connection is available to a network via a RJ45 socket and to computers through both type A and B asynchronous USB (to provide better isolation from the usually less than clean computer clock) and direct input on four SPDIF sockets, two RCA, one BNC and one TosLink. To enable playback of DSD files from a PC or server dCS developed the DSD over PCM (DoP) protocol, a now widely adopted open standard framework. Type A USB will directly play files stored on a stick, with access and information available on the display panel. Direct digital playback is available from Apple devices, because the Vivaldi bypasses the internal DAC and other electronics.

The DAC can cope with any digital data stream at all standard sampling rates. Central to this is dCS’s proprietary Ring DAC. This operates by mapping the incoming signal into a unique five-bit code that is used to open and close latches connected to a current source and five resistors of nominally the same value. Because these cannot be made absolutely identical, an array of matched resistors are used and the audio signal is randomly shifted between them with the result of converting what would be amplitude errors into low level random white noise, which can be easily dealt with. It is this process of passing the signal ‘around’ that has led to the title of ‘Ring DAC’. The end result is a cleaner, more accurate waveform with less noise on its tail that does not require extreme measures to remove.

Filters are available for each sample rate, and these are accessed via the remote control or the front panel. Six of these are filters for PCM decoding and four for DSD, which vary only in the cut off frequency.

Where previous generations of the Ring DAC core consisted of high-speed quad latches and metal-film resistors, the Vivaldi uses individual latch chips. This eliminates the on-chip crosstalk between the latches and therefore improves the jitter performance. Additionally, the total number of latches has been increased to make better use of the available dynamic range.

The analogue output stage has better capability to drive a power amplifier directly, while the redesigned gain switching offers a more consistent performance at both 2v and 6v output settings.  A number of other changes including separate low-noise regulators for each channel and opting for discrete transistors in the analogue stage resulted in improved crosstalk and a lower noise floor.

While the other three Vivaldi boxes have their own clocks and will run quite happily independently, the dCS Master clock provides an ultra clean, highly precise clock signal that is ten times more accurate than those in the individual chassis. The crystal reference oscillators are selected for long-term stability and heat-treated before final calibration to ensure a more consistent performance.

Having heard the full system several times at Chris’s house and at the dCS factory, I feel compelled to add some short comment on my personal impressions. Conscious at first of the immense amount of processing going on, I realised that as a result of this my brain was having to do less work in order for the music to reach inside and work on an emotional level. This was CD stripped of all the mechanical artefacts that strangle musical communication, and I found that I had to make little or no effort to concentrate on what I was hearing.

As a recording engineer I spend a considerable amount of time in studios dealing with events further up the line, which does sometimes influence my expectations when listening to music for enjoyment. But I have to say that this is the most fulfilling digital replay I’ve ever experienced in a domestic environment.

dCS – From 1990 To Vivaldi
by Chris Thomas

When Data Conversion Systems (dCS) was founded in Cambridge back in 1990, it was to build very high quality digital converters for military applications.  But it wasn’t until 1997 that dCS released the Elgar, its first product for public consumption, having thoroughly tested the audio waters with a string of professional converters that were used throughout Europe in recording studios.

The Ring DAC, so central to the dCS philosophy, was invented in 1987 to provide conversion from digital to analogue and the latest version, identical in principle but vastly improved technically, is to be found in the Vivaldi DAC.  The entry into the professional market came and dCS then developed the world’s first 24-bit converters intended for music playback that became a huge success due to their precision, linearity and reliability.  It soon became apparent that the digital recording industry and the markets they offered were well suited to the particular skill set of the engineers in Cambridge.

Studios from Abbey Road, the BBC, Bob Ludwig, Cheskey, Denon Records, Panasonic the US Library Of Congress, Sony Classics and even Walt Disney Imagineering, as well as many, many others still employ dCS converters every day in their work.

The emphasis these days is strictly on domestic high-end audio and dCS components have achieved an enviable reputation worldwide. The company does have its own way of doing things and it is certainly technology based. It also has a sound of its own, which could be loosely termed high-resolution, common across its scope of digital products from CD transports to DACs, Upsamplers and clocks, all hand assembled in their new premises outside Cambridge.

When I asked MD David Steven what were the first steps on the road to the remarkable Vivaldi system, he said that he had asked the engineers to take the Ring DAC as far as they could with no compromises. What followed sounds like a domino effect development program, where one breakthrough was quickly followed by another as new boards were needed and designed to realise the huge Ring DAC improvements. The rest, as they say, is history – and that is what makes dCS a true British success story.

dCS Vivaldi price structure

Price information:
dCS Vivaldi Master Clock: £9,699
dCS Vivaldi Upsampler: £12,499

Price information from last issue:

dCS Vivaldi CD/SACD transport: £24,999

dCS Vivaldi DAC: £19,999

dCS Vivaldi complete system: £67,196

Manufactured by: Data Conversion Systems Ltd

URL: www.dcsltd.co.uk

Tel: +44(0)1954 233950

Back to reviews https://hifiplus.com/reviews

ELAC AIR-X

The wireless system for an audiophile future

One concept, one wish, one solution: With the new AIR-X system, ELAC unveils a product family whose combination of wireless functionality and superlative playback quality is without precedent.

The system consists of active loudspeakers, which are equipped with the AIR-X AMP amplifier unit, and the AIR-X BASE base station. The BASE acts as the central control unit to which a wide variety of sources and output signals can be connected. Whether analog or digital – every type of connection is catered for. Audio signals are losslessly transmitted at 24-bit resolution with a sampling rate of 48 kHz.

The AIR-X AMP offers a range of special features, but employs a Class A/B amplifier design. Three amplifiers with a combined output of 225 W pack a powerful punch even in multi-way loudspeakers, while internal DSP functions allow for comprehensive and extremely precise adjustments to the sound. The loudspeaker’s character can thus be perfectly tailored to its surroundings. Balanced and unbalanced analog inputs on the amplifier unit also enable the connection of playback equipment in situations where wireless transmission is not desired.

The new technology makes its debut in the award-winning Line 400 loudspeakers. The AIR-X 403 and AIR-X 407 loudspeaker models provide impressive evidence of the new system’s capabilities. An AIR-X system can also include numerous loudspeakers, all of which can be controlled by one or more AIR-X BASE units. Play the same signal throughout the house or different signals in every room – one BASE unit can control up to three zones, offering the kind of flexibility that is a joy to hear!

The AIR-X 403 and AIR-X 407 models will be available from specialist dealers starting in November 2013. 

24 bits of Christmas, with love from Linn

From the Linn Records press release:

Enjoy the gift of free high-resolution music this Christmas

Award-winning record label and high quality music systems manufacturer, Linn, have announced their special gift to music lovers this Christmas. They will be giving away a different free Studio Master track every day in December until Christmas Day, available to download from Sunday 1st December at http://www.linn.co.uk/christmas.

A Studio Master, or 24-bit download, is the highest quality music file available. It allows the listener to hear music exactly as it was recorded, before it was altered to fit on a CD or squashed down to MP3 size.

With 24 days of new top-quality music, this is a really exciting opportunity. Everything that is distributed by Linn is quality controlled to the highest standard. Only once they’ve listened, approved and enjoyed it, does an album become available via their online music store,http://www.linn.co.uk.

Linn are very proud of their eclectic music library and this Christmas gift will allow listeners the chance to explore and expand their musical tastes, introducing up-coming musicians, new genres and a few well-known favourites.

There’ll be something for everyone to enjoy including the award-winning Sir Charles Mackerras and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Britain’s First Lady of Jazz Claire Martin, electronica legend Jean-Michel Jarre, popular Scottish indie-rock band Admiral Fallow and much, much more.

With this unique gift from Linn, every music lover can build an extra special playlist this Christmas, enjoying unrivalled Studio Master sound.

Crowdfunding – not just for Geeks?

The world of traditional audio is sometimes not exactly at the cutting edge of modern life. It’s kind of understandable – a lot of it is entirely Boomer on Boomer action and, while we might not care to admit it publicly, our orthodoxies harden as fast as our arteries in our golden years. If we look beyond out little bubble, the world has changed, in ways we didn’t expect. Yes, of course that means significant changes in technology, but those changes have drastically shaped the way commerce happens today, and it’s only now that the effects of those changes are beginning to be felt in the audio field. And perhaps surprisingly, the outcome is a positive one.

Baby Boomers are no strangers to kickstarters; they were on those classic chopped Harleys and ‘ton up’ Triumphs that some of us rode while many more of us dreamed of owning. But to anyone under about 40, Kickstarter is the crowdfunding website that sprung up in the wake of the financial crisis. After 2007, entrepreneurs seeking seed-capital for start-up projects found investment was hard to come by. Starting in 2009, Kickstarter provided a platform for projects to be developed through public investment. Initially US only, Kickstarter has grown to accept projects from Canada, the UK and recently Australia. It divides projects into 13 categories, and although more than half the money raised on Kickstarter has been for Film & Video, Music and Games, there have been some notably successful projects funded through Kickstarter, including the Pebble smartwatch. Other crowdfunding sites – such as indiegogo – have followed suit.

Crowdfunding isn’t venture capitalism, and people invest in projects they want for themselves, rather than in something that might give them a return on their investment. That creates a distinct price ceiling to Kickstarter projects; if a project is not designed to appeal to the crowd, it won’t get crowdfunded. This is not meant as criticism in either direction, but it means if your project is a low-cost, high-performance device that is of interest to the general public, there will likely be enough potential buyers from within that crowd to succeed. Something of specialist interest that delivers outstanding performance at a high price is likely to fail, no matter how legitimate and justifiable the interest, performance or price may be.

But regardless, crowdfunded audio projects are relatively thin on the ground. Yes, there are plenty of innovative – but mostly pointless – audio-related projects, but things that are genuinely useful for the audio enthusiast are rare. It’s not as if the interest is lacking – U-Turn Audio hoped for $60,000 for its low-cost Orbit turntable, and got pledges of $233,940, from more than 1,100 backers, who are now beginning to receive their $150 turn-key turntables. It’s just that somehow, traditional audio appears immune to the crowdfunding revolution. But this is changing.

 

Crowdfunding is something the people at Light Harmonic understand perfectly. The company’s DaVinci range of DACs and Lightspeed USB cable are considered among the best examples of their respective kinds, but are ‘friskily’ priced. Light Harmonic qua Light Harmonic is a maker of hyper-expensive, super high quality digital products that have pushed the high-end computer audio revolution. However, Light Harmonic as ‘LH Labs’ is a high-tech company leveraging the skill set developed to create that high-end computer audio revolution, and putting it into £199 portable computer headphone ‘awesomifiers’ called the Geek Out and a matching desktop device (with line or balanced outputs) called the Geek Pulse.

The products are not marketed in anything even close to the traditional way we work in audio. Technobabble is banned. Deep product specs are irrelevant compared to the quality of the idea. Purple prose… forget it!  These are the kind of products people buy because they like the idea of them and that the performance moves things up a notch or three for the listeners (which, given the background of the LH Labs team, is pretty much guaranteed). The expectation is that the devices simply do what they are supposed to do, and do it well. The geeky bit of knowing what brand of chip goes inside… that’s for obsessives.

When the Orbit turntable was first crowdfunded, the audiophile retort was one of dismissal, missing the point in the process. A quick look at the stats on Geek Out shows such a dismissal to be ill-founded; it achieved its $28,000 funding goal in just ten and a half hours and went on to raise more than $300,000. Geek Pulse is proving just as popular; with a little over a month down and 22 days to go in its funding campaign, LH Labs has already reached its goal of raising $38,000 for the project… plus (at the time of writing) an additional $338,420. Or, almost 10x the original goal raised in 32 days.

The Geek Pulse project has also made this a little more like a computer game, in that there are additional goals that get ‘unlocked’ as the funding increased. The first of these ‘stretch goals’ – the Lightspeed Jr. USB cable has been achieved, and the funding required for an extended warranty should be added soon, leaving just the additional digital output option waiting for funding to hit $500,000. Right now, that sounds like a distinct possibility.

Crowdfunded projects are an exciting new aspect of our little world. Not only is it a way to help fund a project, allowing start-ups with genuinely exciting products to find a faster way to market at the outset, it also acts as an indicator of potential interest and – perhaps more importantly – potential success of a project. Which invites the obvious question – why aren’t there more audio companies raising their profiles and funding new projects this way?

For the moment, forget prices – the success of audio components like Geek Out on crowdfunding sites exposes the plot holes in the “good audio dies with the Baby Boomers” myth. It also shows that we are getting a lot of things dead wrong, by overcomplicating things that need to be easy (and fun) to use. Reinserting price back in the equation, this also shows that the overcomplicated audio system is intrinsically – and for many, unnecessarily – expensive. Yes, it’s great to have deluxe products in a proletarian world, but products like the Geek Out and Geek Pulse (among others) show not only is there interest in high-quality, low-cost products that aren’t pungent with the rich aroma of audiophile snobbery, but if you build it, they will come.

http://mustgeekout.com

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/geek-pulse-a-digital-audio-awesomifier-for-your-desktop/?ref=mustgeekout

GoldenEar Technology Triton Seven loudspeakers

I enjoy über-high-end audio equipment as much as the next fellow, but I nevertheless have an abiding fondness for overachieving products that deliver high levels of performance for reasonable sums of money. I suppose this has to do with my conviction that the enjoyment of music is (or in an ideal world should be) something for all to enjoy—not just for an elite, well-heeled few. In turn, then, my wish is that high-end audio could be less of a ‘rich man’s game’ and more a sport for the common man. Happily, at least a few worthy high-end audio manufacturers share my vision in the matter and accordingly have developed products that are affordable yet offer compelling and, in the best cases, downright brilliant sound quality. One such product is the GoldenEar Technology Triton Seven floorstanding loudspeaker (£1,400/pair) that is the subject of this review.

Let me begin by supplying a bit of background. GoldenEar Technology is a US based loudspeaker manufacturer founded several years ago by Sandy Gross, who was also the founder of Definitive Technology and co-founder of Polk Audio. Mr. Gross enjoys a well-deserved reputation as a serious, dyed in- the-wool, high-end audiophile of the first rank, but what has made him a legend is his unflagging commitment to producing speakers that offer audiophile-worthy sound quality at down-to-earth prices (a hallmark of each of the speaker companies Gross helped create). Thus far, GoldenEar has offered several ranges of products, many of which have gone on to win critical acclaim and numerous industry awards.

In view of Sandy Gross’ enviable track record over the years, you might expect that that Triton Sevens would simply be chips off the old block and in some senses they are. The Triton Sevens stand, at present, as the smallest and least expensive of GoldenEar’s Triton-series floorstanders and a casual stroll through technical specifications pages at the GoldenEar web site conveys the impression that, while Triton Sevens share some design features with the large Triton Twos and Threes, they are in essence ‘Triton Lites.’ This impression, however, is misleading because somewhere between the preparation of the specifications page and the creation of the actual product a wonderful thing happened: namely, the Triton Sevens wound up sounding different from and better than their bigger siblings in many of the ways likely to matter most to audiophiles. Let’s get this straight: The Triton Sevens are smaller, less complex, and less expensive than their stable mates, yet actually sound all the better for it. How can this be?

In trying to assess what makes the Triton Sevens superior performers, I reflected on a line attributed to the late, great British sports car designer Colin Chapman. When asked how to make racing cars go faster on a consistent basis, Chapman is said to have quipped, “Simplicate, and add lightness.” Well, if asked what makes his new Triton Sevens sound so very good, Sandy Gross might smile and say that they, “Simplify and add (sonic) transparency”—and we are speaking, here, of transparency delivered by the bucket full. As a result, the Triton Seven sounds remarkably open, articulate, and revealing—ridiculously so for its modest price.

At first glance, the Triton Seven seems disarmingly simple. It is a compact tower type speaker that stands just over a metre tall and that sports just three active drive elements: a small Heil-type HVFR (High Velocity Folded Ribbon) tweeter flanked by two wide-bandwidth, high-excursion 133mm mid/bass drivers. To provide necessary low-frequency reinforcement the Triton Seven also sports a pair of sidefiring 200mm ‘planar sub-bass radiators’ (i.e., passive radiators). The speaker is housed in a svelte, gently swept-back, black fabric-clad enclosure that sports a gloss black trim cap on top and a matching black floor plinth embossed with a soft gold-coloured GoldenEar logo. If this capsule description seems a little underwhelming at first, it helps to bear in mind that with the Triton Seven, as with so many other great loudspeakers, the genius is in the details.

As I suggested above, the Triton Seven combines several difficult-to-meld sonic virtues: It is quite detailed, offers plenty of resolution, high degrees of transparency, and demonstrates impressive transient quickness, yet also sounds smooth. GoldenEar achieved this result by carefully doing its homework in terms of melding the output of its lightning fast Heil-type HVFR tweeters with the output of its also very fast, wide-bandwidth piston-type mid-bass drivers. The result may well be the most accomplished hybrid mix of Heil-type plus piston type drivers that I have yet heard in any loudspeaker, regardless of price. GoldenEar has succeeded where many other have tried and failed, partly by banishing apparent speed and textural discontinuities between the disparate driver types, but also—more importantly—by getting them to sing with one coherent voice.

What is more, GoldenEar has fitted the production version Triton Sevens with all-new, long-throw, 133mm mid-bass drivers—ones that dramatically up the performance ante vis-à-vis the firm’s previous mid-bass drivers. Audio journalists and dealers who heard the prototype Triton Sevens at CES 2013 are in for a real surprise, because the difference these new mid-bass drivers make is a large one. They offer audibly higher resolution and quicker transient response than GoldenEar’s previous mid-bass drivers did, which is saying a mouthful given that the original drivers were already quite good.

 

Second, the mid-bass drivers also offer superior dynamic performance across the board, not just in the sense of being able to play more loudly (although they certainly can do that), but also in the sense of revealing far subtler shadings of dynamic expression.

Third, the new drivers have significantly higher excursion limits than their precursors did, which means they not only play gracefully at higher output levels but also offer much more extended bass response than before. Unbelievable though this may seem, when augmented by the Triton Seven’s passive radiators, those little mid-bass drivers produce authoritative (and I mean really authoritative) low-end response that extends well down into the 30Hz range.

Finally, the Triton Seven enclosure is special, too. The slender towers are designed to provide the desirable damping characteristics of a transmission line enclosure with the low-end weight, power, and efficiency of a sophisticated passive radiator-equipped system. To this end, GoldenEar strategically positions what are said to be very effective though costly damping materials directly behind the twin mid-bass drivers in the upper part of the tower. The damping materials give the speaker excellent driver control through the midrange, upper bass, and mid-bass regions. But, as frequencies descend, the damping materials allow the towers to ‘open up,’ permitting back-wave energy from the mid-bass drivers to couple with their associated passive radiators in an extremely efficient way. The result is bass that is taut, tuneful, and rhythmically correct, yet offers the kind of low-frequency weight and slam typically associated with much bigger speakers. Not a bad day’s work for a pair of 133mm mid-bass drivers, eh? (Hint: You can probably win wagers amongst audiophile friends by daring them to guess the size of the Triton Sevens’ “woofers”).

Put all of these factors together and you get what I think is—pound for pound, dollar for dollar and euro for euro —the finest affordable high-end loudspeaker I’ve yet heard (and I say this from the perspective of being an enthusiastic user of Magnepan 1.7 planar magnetic loudspeakers, which many of my American compatriots consider the greatest single bargain in all of high-end audio). Let me offer some observations based on real-world listening experiences to help support that statement.

One of best qualities of the Triton Seven is the almost eerie sense of focus it affords. This became clear for me as I listened to a series of tracks from Anne Bisson’s Portraits & Perfumes [Camilio Records]. Ms. Bisson has a distinctive voice that is light and breathy yet fully of underlying richness and full of hints of wry humour just waiting to be released. If you have ever heard Ms. Bisson speak or sing, you might agree that her voice is unforgettable. When I played Portraits & Perfumes through the Triton Sevens there was that voice— sounding palpable, present, richly textured, and real—looming between the loudspeakers and positioned just a few feet behind them. One might expect (or at least hope for) such moments of realism from loudspeakers carrying steep price tags, but it is a real rarity to hear them served up by speakers selling for just £1,400/pair. But with the Triton Sevens, moments of realism seem to occur early and often, which is good news for us all.

Next, the Triton Sevens offered remarkably good imaging and three dimensionality thanks, in large part, to their ability to retrieve very low-level textural and transient details and to capture subtle spatial cues in the music. To hear these qualities in action, try Jamey Haddad, Lenny White, and Mark Sherman’s Explorations in Time and Space [Chesky, Binaural+ series recording], which was recorded without compression or equalization from the interior of the Hirsch Center for the Performing Arts (formerly St. Elias’ Catholic Church) in Brooklyn, NY. The album features a series of highly inventive interchanges between three master percussionists, who perform on an impressive array of instruments. On ‘Explorations’, the GoldenEars generated exceptionally wide, deep, and precise soundstages, revealing the exact locations of each of the percussionists (and their various instruments) onstage. Even sounds emanating from the far rear corners of the soundstage remained beautifully focused, stable in their positions, and dynamically alive.

Finally, the Triton Sevens proved to be remarkably dynamically expressive—much more so than their size or configuration would lead you to expect. A good example would be the Gerard Schwarz/ Royal Liverpool Philharmonic performance of Alan Hovhaness’s Mount St. Helens Symphony [Alan Hovhaness, Mysterious Mountains, Telarc. SACD]—a piece thatpaints a vivid symphonic picture of the events leading up to the violent eruption of the Mount St. Helens volcano. When heard under ideal circumstances, this recording offers up moments of delicate beauty juxtaposed against majestic but at times quite explosive dynamic mood swings. Frankly, many speakers turn the composition into a compressed dynamic muddle, but the Triton Sevens did not. Instead, they effortlessly captured the depth and breadth of the orchestra sections arrayed upon the stage, rendering quieter passages with deft dynamic shadings. Yet when the eruption passage came along, the Sevens shifted dynamic gears instantly, showing the full, fierce, percussion and brass blast used to represent the sheer power of the volcano’s eruption. If I hadn’t experienced this with my own two ears, I would never have thought speakers fitted with just two 133mm mid-bass drivers and a Heil-type tweeter could ever convey so much weight and grandeur. Who knew? Maybe less really is more.

Are there downsides here? Well, for those who want speakers that can serve double-duty in music and home theatre systems, or that can play rock or other forms of “power” music at high volume levels, GoldenEar’s larger Triton Two and Three towers might be a better choice than the Sevens—largely because they feature built-in powered subwoofers that extend bass depth and clout whilst making the speakers easier to drive. I would also say that for those who prize uncanny top-to-bottom coherency and realistic image height and scale, the Magnepan 1.7s (or the new Magnepan Super MMG system) might be a better choice. But on the whole, the Triton Sevens can easily go toe-to-toe with any like-priced competitors and can also handily outperform any number of higher priced speakers. One last thought I will offer is that a “downside” of the Triton Seven is that it will make you want to acquire the best associated electronics and source components you can afford (but then, that’s always been the way of things with truly great loudspeakers).

Here’s the bottom line: If you want to find out just how much high-end goodness £1,400 can buy in a pair of loudspeakers, then you absolutely must audition the Triton Sevens. I consider this speaker a masterpiece of value oriented audio engineering—one that sets a performance standard that will not easily be matched or surpassed.

Technical Specifications

Type: Two-way, three-driver

floorstanding speaker with passive

radiators

Driver complement: One Heil-type HVFR

(high velocity folded ribbon) tweeter, two

133mm cast-basket mid-bass drivers, two

200mm planar passive radiators

Frequency response: 29Hz – 35kHz

Sensitivity: 89 dB

Dimensions: Tower (H x W x D): 101 x

18.3 x 29.9cm. Plinth (W x D): 26.5 x

36.9cm

Weight: 15kg

Price: £1,400/pair

Manufacturer: GoldenEar Technology

URL: www.goldenear.com

Distributor: Karma AV

URL: www.karma-av.co.uk

Tel: +44 (0) 1423 358846

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ATC CA2/P1 Pre/Power Amplifier (Hi-Fi+ 75)

ATC has an enviable reputation in the pro audio world for its active monitors. These are often substantial speakers that combine classic but refined technologies to produce highly revealing and neutral results. The sort of results that professionals are happy to rely on. What is less obvious is the remarkable value the company appears to offer given its size. It may be Stroud’s finest manufacturer of audio equipment but it’s a small business in the general scheme of things. Yet it manages to produce a 150 watt pre/power combo for just over two and a half grand, what–you might ask–gives?

Having probed this point for some time it would seem that it’s a case of keeping margins down across the board. ATC doesn’t make a lot from each sale and nor do its dealers, which is why you don’t see its kit as often as you should. But fortunately there are still some retailers who are into it for more than the money, people who are willing to forego a bit of profit in order to provide great value to their customers. An approach that hopefully nets them loyalty, which is something that ATC seems to have in the pro world. We are told that the company is so busy with custom jobs for studios and concert halls that it isn’t too concerned about how well or otherwise its equipment does in the hi-fi world. However, this doesn’t tally with products like the pre/power combo here. After all, ATC already makes a preamp and power amp called SCA2/SPA2-150, there’s even an integrated (SIA2-150) so why bother making a more affordable one, a much more affordable one at that? The CA2/P1 cost about the same as an SIA2-150 and has the same power; in fact, all the ATC amplifiers are 150 watt designs built to the same design, but with greater refinement through higher quality parts etc in the top model. That probably helps keep the price down as well.

The CA2 is a very nicely executed preamplifier, with a solid 12.7mm thick brushed aluminium fascia. This is inlaid with black bars either side and held on with four discreet fixings that look like buttons. In fact, only the two inner domes are buttons, for power and tape monitor, the rotary knobs, also domed, control volume and input selection. The latter takes a bit of getting used to as it moves the LED across the various inputs named in the centre rather than pointing to inputs around its perimeter, but even I was able to master this peccadillo.

What foxed me however is the way that the phono input is named on the back panel. As it’s an either/or input that can be configured for line or phono sources the script by the sockets and on the front panel reads ‘Aux 2’. You’d probably be told whether it had a phono stage onboard if you bought it or you might even read the manual. But as I didn’t have the latter, somewhat inevitably I chose this input to connect a CD player to and this may be why the phono stage failed to work as desired when I finally got around to trying it with a turntable?

You can change it from an MM to an MC stage internally, but figuring out how to do so proved a little tricky as the labelling on the board is pretty obtuse and the instructions not significantly clearer. However, a little trial and error produced a result that worked with my van den Hul Condor moving coil. You can adjust sensitivity for cartridges with between 0.7mV and 10mV output with five increments in between and choose either 100 ohms or 47k ohms impedance. This is the degree of flexibility you get with a good phono stage, but it’s pretty rare in a preamplifier.

Input socketry is all single ended RCA phono, but there is an XLR output alongside the phonos as well as outputs for a subwoofer and tape. It has a headphone output on the back should you need to do a bit of discreet listening. Inside the box is a low noise circuit with fully regulated power supplies for each channel, ATC avoids ICs in the signal path because it feels they can distort phase and uses discrete gain blocks to provide amplification. Bandwidth is quoted as DC to greater than 200kHz and THD as bettering 110dB, the SCA2 at about four times the price gives you another 300k bandwidth and four extra decibels of ‘quiet’ between signal and noise. It is however fully balanced which is useful. Control can be achieved with a rather unglamorous but totally practical remote handset which also provides basic controls for a CD player using the popular Philips RC5 protocol.

The P1 power amplifier has matching metalwork to the CA2, but I wouldn’t suggest you stack the pre on top of the power for obvious thermal reasons. It weighs in at a respectable 23kg (50lbs) thanks to a 300 VA transformer for each channel. This is a true dual mono, class A/B power amp, which lives up to its output rating if independent tests are to be believed. Power is delivered by two pairs of MOSFETs per channel through a single pair of small but strong speaker terminals that will accept spade or banana connectors, or even bare wire if you feel the urge. Input socketry is in both flavours and there are link connections for each channel that can pass the signal onto another power amp. Unusually for a power amp, it can be powered up/down with the remote but the option exists to defeat this mode.

I started out by substituting the P1 for a Gamut D200 MkIII in a system with Bowers & Wilkins 802D speakers doing the transducing, and this revealed a matter of fact, no pussy footing character that is definite about what’s going on. It is also very solid and grounded so there is plenty of control and weight in the bottom end which provides a firm anchor with which to tether the soundstage in the room. You can hear the not insubstantial drop in price between the Gamut and the ATC, but the latter does little that gets in the way of the music. In fact, the quality of timing is so good that the musical flow is totally unhampered, free to go where it wants to with a strong sense of purpose.

In detail terms, the P1 is as refined as you’d expect at the price. It’s not unduly revealing, but neither does it veil details that are important when it comes to understanding how recordings have been put together. Despite having a slightly lower power rating than the Gamut, it has stronger bass. This underpins records like Antonio Forcione’s Tears of Joy to great effect, revealing more about the space he’s playing in than other amps if not elaborating on the more romantic aspects of his playing. The mid for instance is a little short on sparkle, but the overall result is very strong on musical engagement and that should be a fundamental goal for any audio component.

Using the CA2 preamp with a pair of ATC SCM150ASL Pro active speakers in place of an Audiozone Pre-1 TVC the result is once again strong on power. Kick drums have real energy and become more lifelike and visceral. Likewise, all electric instruments are far more real. It’s a bit of an apples and pears comparison though, the passive controller is cleaner but lacks dynamics which makes the powered nature of the CA2 more apparent. It in turn sounds distinctly electric by comparison, but does a rather better job at delivering the power of the music. In short, you either like Marmite or you don’t! I prefer listening to music. More useful perhaps is comparing the CA2 with another active preamp namely the Class? CP-700, once again the result was a notable increase in bass weight alongside a tighter, snappier presentation that gives the music far more get up and go. The flipside of this is that it’s less relaxed and there is a shortfall in fine detail of the sort that reveals the tonal shading of each note and the decay that goes with it. But remember that the Class? is also a rather more expensive beast and I would happily trade some of its finesse for a bit more zip.

Using both CA2 and P1 together through the 802Ds provided a full scale, full power experience that brings dynamic recordings to life. Muddy Waters’ Folk Singer is a high energy recording with some occasionally savage mic abuse, the ATCs let it deliver all of its energy thanks to the ability that these amps have to unleash controlled power just when it’s needed. Keith Jarrett’s Carnegie Hall performance is not short of meat on the bone either, the tempo is strong and the piano bodacious. This pairing concentrates on the fundamentals and gets them spot on, so the timing is locked down and the headroom allows the instrument’s dynamics to ebb and flow in realistic fashion.

There are lower powered amplifiers that can deliver more of the harmonics and tonal richness from a recording but they don’t usually back it up with the dynamics on offer here. At this price point there are always compromises to be made and ATC has focused on making an amplifier that delivers the core elements of the music in realistic and timely fashion. Leema’s Tucana II (?3,425) Integrated for instance has a more open midband in the context of a relaxed and revealing presentation, albeit one that can’t compete with the P1’s sheer grunt. Arcam’s A38 (?1,450) on the other hand is a bit more frenetic than the ATC pairing, which produced a more fleshed out sound that is itself relatively relaxed. I didn’t have anything more closely matched price wise but you can see that the ATCs fit into the scheme of things in terms of detail but rise above their station when it comes to power and timing.

ATC kindly supplied a second CA2 with a fully intact phono stage which gave me the opportunity to put this particular input through its paces. With an MM cartridge it did the same trick as the rest of the amplifier by beefing up the bottom end and this gives the sound a greater sense of solidity overall. More significant however is the way it can pull realistic sound out of a modest turntable, I had a Rega RP1 in for review and this sounded pretty crisp and timely with a Trichord Dino phono stage but going directly into the phono stage resulted in the nature of percussion instruments being made more clear at the cost of a reduction in zing from the acoustic steel string. The outboard stage was inevitably combined with an interconnect which is an extra barrier but this was nonetheless a good result for the preamp. Impressively it even worked well with a low output MC (van den Hul Colibri), in my experience few onboard MC stages to cope with such things very well.

This pairing doesn’t have some of the features that the competition is beginning to add such as digital and USB inputs, instead what it gives you is solid engineering and build quality for the money. The sound is reminiscent of pro audio, it delivers the fundamentals in a remarkably coherent and down to earth way. If you are looking for cavernous soundstages or inky black backgrounds you will have to pay rather more for it, but if you want to hear the important musical detail presented in a coherent, clear-cut fashion this pairing has remarkably little competition in the two box arena. There are a few integrateds around which give them a run for their money in one respect or another but nothing comes to mind which seems like a better overall package.

SPECS & PRICING

CA2 Specifications
Input sensitivity 300mV
Input impedance 12 kohms
Dimensions (HxWxD) 90x445x330mm
Weight 7kg
6 year warranty
Price £1,058 

P1 Specifications
Rated power 150 watts per channel into 8 ohms
Input sensitivity 2V
Input impedance 10 kohms/leg
Dimensions (HxWxD) 135 x 435 x 350mm
Weight 23kg
6 year warranty
Price £1,566

ATC Loudspeaker Technology Ltd,
Gypsy Lane, Aston Down, Stroud, Glos GL6 8HR
www.atc.gb.net
+44(0)1285 760561

 

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Gradient Helsinki 1.5 Loudspeaker

Hi-fi keeps getting better, but even the best falls foul of a fundamental limitation – the room. Our rectangular living spaces can mess up the sound of many a wonderful system; bass booms and reflections from the walls, floor and ceiling all undermine the performance.

We can help reduce these problems using either DSP or room acoustic treatments. Both can transform an audio system, but come with ‘baggage’. DSP systems vary; some great, some not so great, and a lot comes down to installation. Room treatments can also work wonders, but in a small room, they can be intrusive; it’s bad enough to have a floor full of audio gear, ice forms on the long-haired general’s upper slopes when your hobby takes up the walls and corners too.

A more consistent and domestically chummy arrangement would be to design a product that overcomes many of the intrinsic problems with using a loudspeaker in a room. And that’s where the Gradient Helsinki 1.5 comes in. That distinctive shape isn’t only for decoration; it’s designed to make the speaker room ‘independent’ (the reality is ‘less dependent’ rather than truly ‘independent’… but that’s enough to make a big difference).

It may look like a designer chair for a hobbit, but the Finnish Helsinki 1.5 is actually an open-baffle design, made with sustainable woods and a large clear glass spine and base, using conventional ‘cone and dome’ drive units. Each drive unit has its own unique construction methodology; the tweeter sits in a moulded polyurethane wave-guide ‘donut’, the midrange unit sits in a cardioid baffle (it’s another rounded, 7cm thick recessed moulded polyurethane pod filled with absorbent material) and the bass driver is sitting effectively an open baffle, at 90° to the listener.

That means the listener sits on the null point of the bass driver’s dipole’s radiation pattern. In theory, that makes it the worst placement possible, but that’s kind of the point of what Gradient calls ‘controlled directivity’. The trick is instead of trying to eliminate the first reflection from side walls for the bass, the Helsinki 1.5 makes a feature of it, while effectively eliminating the first reflection from above and below. In many rooms, you have the magnets pointing toward one another (so the bass cones pointing outward) and give the speakers a sharp toe-in; the bass effectively relies on those side walls. How sharp a toe-in? Think 45°, which puts you sitting in the near field. In very small rooms, the speakers are swapped over so the bass units fire at each other, with the speakers pointing directly down the room; this cuts down a lot of bass, but not enough bass is rarely a problem in a small room.

Frequencies above 200Hz are handled very differently. The placement (particularly the angles) of the midrange and treble drivers are designed specifically to minimise first reflection issues. The tweeter is a perfect example of this; the back-swept pod is not just time alignment and styling, it means the first reflection point on the ceiling is actually behind the listener. That makes a huge difference to the sound. There’s also the incredibly tight tolerance in the speakers meaning the pair matching is excellent and the speaker is flat to within a decibel from 200Hz-20kHz. That’s almost unheard of in domestic speaker designs.

This combination would make measurement on and off axis very difficult to get right. You have a treble and midrange that will deliver incredibly accurate on and off-axis performance, coupled to a bass that only really works off axis.

The review pair of speakers were supplied with a set of DNM speaker cables, in part because the Helsinkis are internally wired with DNM and in part because the speakers use the pro-grade Speakon terminal and DNM was first to step up to the task.

The big question is whether the Helsinki 1.5 achieves the goal it sets, eliminating (or at least substantially reducing) the effects of the room on the speakers. The answer – for frequencies of 200Hz and above is a resounding ‘yes’. There’s none of the blurring and blooming of random frequencies bounced off the side walls and ceiling. Instead, the Gradient design seems to give you all the precision and dynamic range of a good dynamic speaker with all the directness of a good pair of headphones… in the free field.

The Helsinki is almost perfectly designed for ‘problem’ rooms. Beastly concessions to architecture unwilling to make compromises for audio are effectively dialled out of the sound. Furniture in inopportune places, alcoves, fireplaces, TV sets, coffee tables, marauding wives patrolling the room… none of these things make the slightest difference. As a consequence, speaker position both is and isn’t critical; the need for the loudspeakers to be equidistant from the rear and side walls is minimised, although your position relative to the loudspeakers is completely vital if the bass is to give of its best. You can experiment with toe-in up to a point – a less powerful toe-in gives a more uniform sound for more listeners, but the tonal balance changes slightly, as if using a tilt control from an old Quad preamp – either treble down and bass up or bass down and treble up. Ultimately, there’s a sweet spot for the room, and the user.

Its sound is both astonishing and a little bit disturbing for many listeners. Unless you’ve spent a great deal of time in well-engineered studios or listening rooms that have been very carefully corrected (with mechanical methods, rather than DSP), you’ll be used to hearing your loudspeakers, plus the singalong from the walls and ceilings. Simply removing that singalong is like injecting sound direct into the ears. Soundstaging opens out, instruments have their natural tone and ambient information is portrayed with uncanny accuracy.

That’s astonishing because so much ‘disappearance’ of loudspeaker box is usually a function of panel designs, but the Helsinki is more dynamic than any panel. But, short of a few dipole designs (Jamo, Lyngdorf, Linkwitz kits), you won’t find a set of dynamic drivers without some (even residual) box coloration. The absence of box coloration is disturbing because we’re used to it.

The result is a remarkably accurate sound, most unlike the sort of ‘hi-fi’ reproduction we have come to expect from most audio equipment. In particular, the presentation of stereo is beyond reproach. Your recordings are replayed with precisely the same stereo information they had in the control room. Large, ambient recordings are just that, close mic’d recordings are pushed in front of you and anything in between is, well, somewhere in between. This is the ‘disturbing’ part; when you remove the room and the speaker from the equation, you need to spend some time getting used to the sound.

You might also need time to adjust to box speakers afterward. This is the clincher whether the Gradient Helsinki 1.5 is for you or not. Spend a few hours (ideally a longer term) in front of them and then go back to your box loudspeakers. If the immediate reaction is “isn’t this artificial sounding?”, Helsinki has got its hooks in you.

The big downside is the bottom end. Or rather, the lack of it; there’s not a lot of energy below 50Hz. In musical terms, this is equivalent to the last couple of notes of the ‘first octave’ (40-80Hz), and all of the bottom octave (rumbles, thunder rolls and deep organ pipes). In perception terms, this underpins the sound and gives music its force. The roll-off is smooth and clean enough to allow for a subwoofer to fill in the blanks at the bottom end of things. Those who see the charms of the loudspeaker for what it is will see no problems in moving to 2.1 channels. In addition, as the speaker was designed for rooms up to about 400 sq ft and to be use a foot or so from the wall, a sub might not be necessary (because the loudspeaker behaves so different from the norm, we’ve broken with Hi-Fi+ tradition and included comments by Tim Ryan of SimpliFi Audio on this important design).

Eagle-eyed readers might notice an almost complete absence of references to pieces of music in this review. This is because pieces of music are generally used to highlight good points and bad in a component. That’s not relevant here because the Helsinki 1.5’s sound is relevant to all music. If you like how it sounds, you like how it sounds on all music.

The Gradient Helsinki 1.5 is a remarkable and successful way of virtually removing the loudspeaker box and the room from the sound. This makes it ideal for those who have decided to call time on box coloration but can’t use or bring themselves to learn to love panels. While some will demand more bottom end, this still doesn’t stop recommending what is one of the most exciting and realistic-sounding loudspeakers money can buy.

______

SIDEBAR: The Helsinki Speaker Topology

The speaker was designed for rooms around 300-400 sq ft (30-44sq metres) and to be within a foot or so of either the front or side walls. This set-up typically gives adequate bass without a sub-woofer; if the speaker is far from the room boundaries then a subwoofer becomes more beneficial.

One can consider the speaker as divided in two parts; the bass below 250Hz is handled by a open-baffle 300mm driver, which has the classic ‘figure-of-eight’ radiation pattern, while the midrange and HF have cardioid (heart shaped) radiation patterns, with almost no energy going behind the drivers/toward the back wall.

The first thing to note about this topology is the lack of the typical speaker cabinet/ported box colorations as there is no box! The second observation is how the midrange and tweeter drivers are
tilted up. This dials out the first reflection point from the floor. In addition, the upward drivers provide excellent imaging whether the listener is sitting or standing.

______

SIDEBAR: In-Room Bass

Similar to organ pipes, a room 28ft long produces a resonance/room mode at 20Hz, a room width of 14ft produces a mode at 40hz and a room 7ft high produces a mode at 80Hz, The most audible of these room modes is the one due to shortest room dimension (typically the room height) and has harmonics at twice and three times the fundamental frequency (in our example at 160 and 240Hz, which is right up in the lower bass/midrange).

A characteristic of dipole bass is the ‘figure-of-eight’ radiation pattern. If one puts a microphone on-axis with the bass driver you will measure maximum bass. However at 90° to the driver you will measure a null. Likewise directly above the speaker you will also have a null – the speaker is not sending bass to the ceiling and therefore exciting the most audibly damaging room height mode.

With the speaker perpendicular to the front wall, the in-room bass is primarily a function of the room width. Rotating the speaker through 45 degrees excites both the room width and length modes. In this way, rotating the speaker is like using a tone control; minimum bass is achieved with the speaker perpendicular to the front wall, maximum at 45 degrees.

On the other hand, a dome tweeter and cone midrange have different geometries and hence very different dispersion patterns. As the Helsinki is designed to give both drivers the same cardioid radiation pattern, one can think of them as headlights of a car with strong output +/- 30° and very little energy outside this area. As such, the speaker is sending very little energy to adjacent surfaces such as the side walls.

The Helsinki has a flat on-axis response of +/- 1 db from 200Hz-20kHz, so if you want to hear precisely what was laid down in the mastering session one should listen on axis. However, as one goes off axis, the extreme HF diminishes and gives a softer presentation.

SPECS & PRICING

Gradient Helsinki 1.5  Three-way loudspeaker
Tweeter: 19mm SEAS aluminium dome in wave-guide housing
Midrange: 125mm paper cone in cardioid housing
Bass: 300mm paper cone on side-firing open baffle
Impedance: Nominal 6 ohms (minimum above 4 ohms )
Sensitivity: 85 dB/2.83V / 1 meter
Connections: Speakon connector, bi-wirable
Amplifier recommendation: 50-250W
Dimensions (WxHxD): 35×92x50cm
Weight: 23kg
Speaker body available in Birch, oiled walnut, oiled oak and Matt black and white
Midrange and HF modules are available in matt black and white (special finishes on request)

Price: £4,500 per pair

Manufacturer:
GRADIENT
URL: www.gradient.fi

Distributor:
SIMPLIFI AUDIO
Tel: + (001) 724 712 0899
URL: www.simplifiaudio.com

 

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Avalon Time Loudspeaker (HI-FI+)

Avalon’s has long held a reputation for delivering astonishingly low levels of distortion with commensurate neutrality, but the emergence of the flagship Isis (and the budget NP 2.0) signaled a new mastery of the time domain. The Isis was a stunning achievement, but it was simply too big or too expensive for many UK homes. The new Time, on the other hand, fits right in…

The Time inhabits a cabinet that is a few inches taller but otherwise virtually identical to the company’s various Eidolon models. But remove that grille and you’ll reveal yet another familiar view, a large diameter diamond tweeter being paired with a 120mm ceramic bowl midrange driver and a pair of the 275mm Nomex/Kevlar bass units, although in this case it’s a case of hybrid DNA, the 25mm concave tweeter and twin bass driver configuration being drawn from the Isis, while the bass and mid drivers themselves come from the Eidolon Diamond. The bass drivers are reflex loaded by a downward firing port that is enclosed by the U-shaped plinth with its rear-facing opening – again, an Avalon trademark. The whole configuration that hints at the Time’s dynamic potential and bandwidth.

The Time was happy with anything from a good 100 Watts up. Amps used for the review included the Gamut M250i monos, the Bernings and even the Hovland RADIA, whose modest rated output underlined the fact that in this instance it is subtlety and quality that count. Audiofreaks supplied Cardas Clear interconnects and Clear Beyond speaker cables along with the Times and these proved a good match, delivering a coherent and holistic sound, big on acoustic space and presence.

The alacrity with which the Time tells you all about early reflections and asymmetries in the listening room (and its acoustics), coupled to its bass power and resulting ability to excite a room’s low frequency resonances, make this a speaker that’s easy to set up (in the sense that you clearly hear the benefit – or otherwise – of every shift in position) but also one that will dictate its placement literally to a matter of millimeters, along with most of the things around it.

That set up process is also going to tell you an awful lot about these speakers, simply because it goes straight to the question of low-frequency performance, fluidity and communication – which in turn goes straight to the heart of music itself, everything resting as it does on those lower registers. Yes, the bulk of the usable information is in the mid-band, but it’s the bottom end that tells you where it should all go, when it should get there and whether or not it’s right. I’ve never heard a speaker yet in which that relationship is quite so obviously apparent. Indeed, bigger speakers – like the Isis or Focal Grande EM, that exceed the Time in overall achievement, seem to make this close coupling less obvious; or to put it another way, you can hear that it’s not quite right – you just can’t necessarily say why. The Time on the other hand, once you start adjusting it, leaves you in doubt at all about both the what and the why of optimum set up. In the process it also demonstrates just what an uncannily natural and evocative performer it can be.

An example: one of my key set up discs is the Analogue Productions re-issue of Duke Ellington and Ray Brown’s This One’s For Blanton. Sparse to the point of ascetism, the upright bass/piano combination is incredibly demanding, both instruments individually presenting any hi-fi system with a stern test, in combination they are ruinously critical. Not only dose the system have to deal with the depth, power and independence of the bass, it has to let that instrument breathe, which means dealing with its almost contradictory sense of attack and decay, along with its physical volume and layered harmonics. Then throw in the sheer range and complexity of the piano, the need to reproduce its percussive quality without it becoming harsh or strident and you can begin to see the problem. Add the fact that there’s no rhythm section per se, filling in the background and mapping out the steps, that the two instruments operate for so much of the time at opposite ends of the frequency range, and that with so little inherent structure, reproduction of the time domain is absolutely crucial if you are to avoid the whole thing collapsing into meaningless (and frankly, irritating) noise, and this recording’s value as an almost instant litmus test for bass alignment, linearity and rhythmic integrity soon becomes apparent.

With the Times, roughly positioned and happily playing away to bed them in, I’d been really rather enjoying the results. But when the time came to go to work and really dial them in I was in for a shock. Sure enough, cueing up track one of the Blanton, the problems with the set up were all too starkly highlighted, Ray Brown’s bass sounding small, wooly and muffled – as well as limp and well off the pace. At the same time, Ellington’s right hand sounded horribly glassy and exposed – a bit like a poorly tuned pub upright. This was definitely not correct! And so the odyssey began – and along the way, quite an education as to just why this album has proved so invaluable over the years.

Painstaking adjustments, fore and aft (with a little sideways thrown in for good measure) and then again with the cones in place, wrought dramatic changes in the musical integrity and sense of performance*. In comparison, the minimal degree of toe in required to snap the image into focus was simplicity itself. But the educational aspect of the process is all to do with the way the music’s presentation changes and evolves. From that unpromising start, a half-centimeter grid movement quickly established a position that was forward and wider, the speaker clearly telling you when you were moving in the right direction – and when you weren’t. Final placement ended up about 40mm further apart and 60mm further forward than my original speculative positioning – along with considerable care taken ensuring symmetry relative to rear and side walls and the positioning of the first reflection pads. It might not sound like much, but when you are working in 5mm steps to start with, and as small a step as you can manage to finalize things, that’s quite a trip, and each step of the way was marked by progressive changes in the integration and projection of the music and instruments.

*Just to put this in perspective, the final position on the cones was around 20mm further forward than without – and with this speaker that’s a BIG difference.

From its diminished and detached beginnings, Ray Brown’s bass grew in stature and physical volume. First you heard the body, gradually growing in front of you, then the strings, their length developing as the speaker zeroed in. This isn’t about imaging as such – although that clearly benefits – but the scale and sense of the instrument, the particular and instantly recognizable way it shapes notes and drives energy into the room. Listen to live jazz (or classical music) and you never have any problem hearing what the bass is playing, or the way it’s being played. Listen to jazz on most hi-fi systems and the same instrument is often indistinct and barely audible. Here, the Times deliver the poise and shape of Brown’s intricate lines with effortless clarity. The contrast between pluck and release, the physical difficulty of some of his runs, are beautifully captured and projected, the notes floating clear of the floor as he picks and places them. Meanwhile, Ellington’s piano has fallen into tune. No more cracked upper register or thuddy left hand: as the speakers approach their sweet spot the harmonic complexity and percussive clarity allow Ellington’s delicacy and touch to open like a flower, the precisely placed chords blooming in the body of the instrument, anchored by a new authority and sonority that has come to the instrument.

But the emergence of instrumental character is only a part of the story. The really impressive think is the developing relationship between the instruments – and with the space they occupy. As the positioning locks in, so does the music, the performance drawing you in, the almost telepathic relationship between these two master musicians reflected in the way they pass the initiative back and forth. Suddenly you are listening to instruments and people, in space, to what the musicians are doing and saying – their conversation on a note-by-note, phrase-by-phrase basis. The speakers, the driving system – they’ve effectively disappeared, leaving just the music. Yes – it is a small and undemanding recording (at least in terms of absolute dynamics and scale) but the two instruments involved are far from easy to reproduce, placing deeply conflicting leading-edge and timing demands on a loudspeaker, while the stark simplicity exposes any shortcomings in timing or tonality with ruthless efficiency. I’ve heard two speakers do a better job than the Time with this disc: the Isis and the Focal Grande. One costs three times as much and the other needs at least three times the power. And I’m not sure that either gets quite as deeply into the groove as the Time…

It’s all about chemistry, that strange fusion reaction that turns noise into music and musicians into a band. Let’s talk about bass of a different kind and a bit of Elvis – Costello that is, Live At The El Mocambo and in his pomp on the My Aim Is True tour: Set closer ‘Pump It Up’ depends on the deep, deep, driving patterns played by Pete Thomas’s bass, and even given the space of a slow build up and Elvis toying with the crowd, the propulsive energy in the playing is both present and correct. Even under the combined assault of keyboards, drums and guitar, you never lose track of the track, and the track never loses its sense of purpose and direction. Switch back from this murky live recording to the de luxe Edition re-issue of the album and it’s a case of “Wow!” The comparison tells you just what a great job the speaker did of sorting out the densely packed and dirty bottom-end of the live disc, it also tells you just what an awesomely driven and energetic recording the original is, the re-mastered CD finally capturing the sheer life and intensity of the analogue original. But playing the live disc also reveals two other things about the Time: it has that ability to reach out and include the listener in the soundfield of the recording, making for a much more immersive and involving listening experience. Ohhh… and it likes to play loud. In fact, it positively invites it. Whereas older Avalon models would certainly play loud, it was hard to escape the feeling that they did so with a slight frown of disapproval. The Aspect tore up that particular set of rules – the Time stomps on the shreds; “enthusiastic” barely covers the willingness with which it embraces the more energetic musical offerings… and no – we’re not talking Bach here.

One night – long, long ago – and in a club – far, far away – I saw, heard and felt the power of Steve Earle in overdrive. Recorded for a BBC live session the tape has finally seen a CD release – and playing it on the Times carries me right back to the overheated, sweaty, smoky fug of the Town and Country, effortlessly capturing the excitement, the sticky floor underfoot, of a band (and an audience) that knows it’s on a roll. From Earle’s nasal drawl, rough round the edges from too much abuse and too many loud nights, to the sheer enthusiasm of a band feeding on crowd frenzy, the Avalons put you there – right in the middle of the whole, heaving, hyper event. You see, it’s not just about the bass (although that’s critical to the whole question) but the way the low frequencies are integrated with the rest of the range – and the overall coherence that results.

In this respect it is just like a Symphony Orchestra; it is not enough for all the bass instruments to play at once – that’s just loud. Real impact and drama comes from them all playing at exactly the same moment and just the right moment as defined by the rest of the instruments. That way a massive, monumental work like Shostokovich’s 11th Symphony (from the fabulous new Vasily Petrenko cycle on Naxos) can build tension and drama, contrast light and shade by the measured application of instrumental force, the long, reflective passages of the first movement never meandering but building with wonderful inevitability towards the shattering crescendo. It’s a masterfully controlled and directed performance, with the Times retaining and delivering every last ounce of that musical intent, right up to the sonorous chimes of the cataclysmic finale.

It is this connected quality, the directness with which they present the musical event that makes the Time such a special speaker. The way it delivers musical energy, the immediacy and suddenness of instrumental transients has something of the best horns about it, but coupled to the uncannily even and extended bandwidth, the tonal and spatial honesty that’s always been an Avalon hallmark. It certainly invests the speaker with the ability to excite, but it also opens the palette of intimacy and delicacy too. Back to the Blanton, let’s appreciate the deftness with which Ellington balances and weights his playing to build off of or in support of Brown’s bass. Shawn Colvin’s ‘Shotgun Down The Avalanche” has all its familiar intimacy and “she is here” immediacy, but it also has a more solid, rooted quality than I’m used to, a bigger sound without losing any of that fragile detail and intricacy.

Which sums up the Time’s achievement quite nicely. It manages to present its musical information in the right place and at the right time, irrespective of pitch or power required. This temporal accuracy is no coincidence (it’s not called the Time for nothing) and the result is an almost preternatural quality that makes recordings astonishingly accessible and engaging. This inner balance, built from the heart of the performance outwards, extends across enough of the range to produce remarkably convincing results, almost irrespective of recording quality. They dredge the music, whole and intact, from the murk of the worst discs you own, while the best will be simply breathtaking. The Time can’t match the really big speakers I’ve already mentioned, or a speaker like the GamuT S9, for sheer scale or ultimate loudness, but it does more than enough in this regard that most of us will never feel the lack (either quantitatively or qualitatively). It doesn’t float the massed basses of a well recorded orchestra, or establish the acoustic space quite as well as the Isis, but it gets awfully close and brings its own special qualities to the party instead. It’s easier to accommodate and much easier to drive, which means that more listeners are going to actually realize more of its performance potential out there in the real world. Musically forgiving it also brings the best from partnering equipment. Don’t think that makes it unfussy; you’ll still need stellar equipment to extract all of the performance this speaker is capable of, but the range of options that embraces is now wider than ever before.

Which brings us, finally, to a parting shot. We’ve just enjoyed a purple patch when it comes to advances in speaker performance. Not so much when it comes to technology, you’ll note, which has merely evolved or been refined, with new materials rather than revolutionary new approaches, but more what we do with it. It has resulted in new levels of musical coherence, less intrusive transducers and greater access to recordings. It has also started to realign the focus of audio attention, away from front-end heavy approaches to a more system-orientated understanding, built back from the speaker. The Avalon Time represents the pinnacle of that progress, embodying the musically communicative sensibilities that have finally, significantly advanced the state of the art in loudspeakers – and doing it in a manageable and deliverable package.

What the Time stands for is more music for more people. Undeniably expensive it may be, but it is still cheap at the price, simply because musical performance like this was almost unattainable at any price before it arrived. By mixing a distinctly real world practicality with superb musical performance, the Time establishes a significant new benchmark for competitors (and customers) to aim for. Of course, some will already be closer than others, but pole position has to rest with all those Eidolon owners out there: you’ve got the system; you’ve got the space; all you need now is the cash.

SPECS & PRICING

Type: Three-way loudspeaker
Driver Complement:
1×25mm concave diamond tweeter
1×120 ceramic bowl midrange
2×275mm Kevlar/Nomex bass drivers
Bandwidth: 20Hz – 20kHz ±3dB
Sensitivity: 89dB
Impedance: 4 Ohms
Dimensions (WxHxD): 30×117 x 48cm
Weight: 75kg
Finishes: Quilted Cherry, Curly Maple and Figured Walnut Optional wood finish (at extra cost): Birdseye Maple, Walnut Cluster Burl, Myrtle Cluster Burl
Price: £47,995/pair (standard finish)

AVALON ACOUSTICS
www.avalonacoustics.com
Distributed by: Audiofreaks UK
www.audiofreaks.co.uk
Tel: +44(0)20 8948 4153

FOCAL ELECTRA 1027S LOUDSPEAKER

Focal are famous for their tweeters. As an OEM driver manufacturer, their justly famous titanium inverted domes have graced many loudspeakers from high-end manufacturers, notably Wilson Audio. More recently, Focal’s own loudspeakers have come from nowhere, making significant inroads into the market with a range of mind-boggling breadth and depth, starting at under £300 and extending to beyond £50k. The conventional hi-fi ranges include the Chorus 700 and 800 series, an overlapping (in cost and performance) range of smaller standmount and floorstanding loudspeakers at domestically realistic prices; the Profiles, a good-looking part-AV, part-lifestyle range pitched above the Chorus; the high-end Electras and the super high-end Utopias. The Electras benefit greatly from trickle-down technology from the no-holds-barred Utopias, including the application of the extraordinary beryllium tweeter, designated by “Be” in the nomenclature. Clearly, though, somebody at Focal woke up in a sweat late one night, having discovered a market niche they didn’t cover comprehensively enough, hence the introduction of the Electra S models, similar to the Electra Bes but without the beryllium tweeter and offered at a significant saving. To be fair, the price gap between the top of the Chorus 800 series and the lower reaches of the Electra Be’s represented quite a stretch, a gap neatly narrowed by these newcomers.

At present, the Electra S range consists of a single standmount, the Electra 1007S, and a largish floorstander, the 1027S reviewed here (plus the obligatory AV add-ons) each considerably less expensive than the corresponding Be models. Interestingly, there is still a trickle-down effect at work,in that the technology developed to manufacture the beryllium tweeter has also permitted a new generation of aluminium-magnesium alloy tweeters to be formed using the same process, offering a level of performance beyond that of the previous generation of Al/Mg tweeters, still in use in the Chorus and Profile ranges. The remainder of the driver complement here is the same as the equivalent Be model, a 6.5 inch “W” sandwich polymer midrange, and paired 6.5” “W” sandwich polymer bass units but there are other changes, too: the cabinet of the 1027S loses the downwardfiring bass-reflex port of the 1027Be (and the pontoonlike feet which serve to vent the port) in favour of a conventional rear-firing flared port; the crossovers are changed and the cabinets are finished in a smart, satin lacquer with a plain top, rather than the high-gloss, slightly sparkly finish and glass topplate of the 1027Be. Personal taste plays a part here, of course, but I found the understated sheen of the 1027S more appealing. The review samples are finished with side-cheeks in Macassar ebony, a boldly-grained wood which I also liked greatly. My wife however assures me that in this, I am sorely mistaken. To be fair, it probably suits more contemporary décor rather better.

Here’s a tip: don’t audition these if they are factory fresh. The Electra S models seem to require a fair few hours of running-in, more than the –Be variants. If they sound hard, aggressive and shouty, they still have a way to go. Once that is achieved, however, they blossom into something rather fine. It is odd, isn’t it, how expectations can be coloured by specifications? The Be variants quote an upper frequency roll-off (-3dB) of 40kHz. The S versions go to a ‘mere’ 30kHz, so immediately you start listening for topend harshness or fizz, forgetting that until quite recently, even the sweetest tweeters rarely extended much above 20kHz and, using a CD source, I’m unlikely to seriously challenge the top octave anyway. So let’s forget the psycho-acoustic tomfoolery and just play some music. There is great topto- toe coherence in these loudspeakers, bass goes deep while remaining tuneful and agile all the way down, midrange is expressive and natural, and the top end is clear and utterly unforced or stressed. I listened mostly using my faithful NVA 60 Watt integrated and never felt that this either hobbled the loudspeakers, or embarrassed the amp. On the contrary, the pairing produced some very satisfying music. In this, they differ from the similarly-priced and otherwise excellent Elac FS210 Anniversary, which really need a very good and powerful amplifier to give of their best, most particularly in the region of bass control. The Electras, in contrast, will not unduly tax even quite modest amplification, though they will amply reward quality. When I’m getting a feel for a new piece of kit, I often just take an amble through my music collection, letting my next choice of track be suggested by the last. This can be instructive because if you find yourself favouring one genre over another, it may tell you something subtle but important about what that equipment is doing with the music. In the case of the 1027S, my first listening session took me on a trip through the pop, rock and jazz end of my collection, clearly this is a loudspeaker that thrives on energy and enthusiasm and has the ability to convey that through sheer drive and élan. There is a freshness and fleet-footedness about this loudspeaker which threatens to turn any listening session into a party, and an all-nighter at that. The word here is “fun” and it is a word used more than once by other people who’ve heard them at my place. Make no mistake, however, this is no mere bouncy, bassy speaker for upbeat, modern music. I turned my attention to more serious matters and the 1027S rewarded me with scale, depth, subtlety and vibrant tonal colour. For orchestral and choral music, they are easily able to portray mass and drama, while still allowing subtle interplay and fine detail to be freely expressed. At one point, I put on Sibelius’ Karelia Suite (Mackerras, RPO, TRP013) and I confess, I usually skip the middle movement, in favour of the bold and brassy first and last; nobody does brass quite like Sibelius. This time, however, something about the way the speaker portrayed the opening Intermezzo stayed my hand and I listened to the whole suite including the rather more atmospheric Ballade. And when you do that, the closing Alla Marcia makes much more sense, picking up from the second movement it is clearly very much more than just a bombastic set-piece. Oops, silly me, missing the point. Sibelius 1: Dickinson 0, a lesson taught to me by what was quickly turning out to be a rather fine allrounder.

They do calm and sophistication too: more Sibelius, this time Valse Triste, and the 1027S’ phrasing, the ebb and flow of the orchestra carries you along effortlessly. Putting on Gershwin’s ‘I got rhythm’ variations for piano & orchestra (Virgin Classics 7243 5 6147829), the 1027S encourages not merely foot-tapping, but I’m embarrassed to recall a certain amount of arm waving, nodding and pointing as well. Music through the 1027S is a very interactive experience, the conveying of musicianship, and the aim of creating an emotional connection from performer to listener, is expertly and convincingly achieved.

It would be a serious mistake to consider the 1027S as simply a ‘budget’ 1027Be. That demeans the quite remarkable performance achievable from the new model. The two speakers both perform impressively at their respective prices and I can see the market for the 1027S coming equally from somebody moving up from a £2k loudspeaker as from providing a solution for somebody whose budget won’t stretch to the £4k 1027Be. Having heard both, the beryllium betweetered version offers not only an elegant and silken top-end but, counterintuitively, the tweeter (and revised crossover) elevates bass performance beyond that available in the S, a performance as unobtrusive as it is effective. The S’s bass doesn’t exactly draw attention to itself, although in a bass-heavy or largescale piece the Be is a little more circumspect, as befits its seniority. Honestly, though, I wouldn’t argue with anybody who said they preferred the former over the latter.

Apart from the sophisticated tweeter technology, Focal designs also feature phase-linear crossovers, something I have come to properly appreciate while also using the Electras with the Accuphase 213 integrated amp. Accuphase (name, clue, ok?) also expound the benefits of phase linearity and the results, manifested most obviously in superior imaging and soundstaging qualities, bear out this viewpoint handsomely. If you already like what the Electras do, try to hear them working with a phase-linear amplifier if you can; the 1027S will repay the effort with interest, proving that as easy going as this speaker is, it definitely rewards audiophile ambitions. When Focal introduced the 1027Be they brought genuinely high-end musical performance down in price; with the 1027S (Berylium tweeter or not) they’ve done it again.

Denon DCD-1500AE SACD Player

Unlike many manufacturers Denon still makes at least some of its hardware in Japan, a fact that certainly separates the company from almost all of its competition in the budget audio sector. It’s remarkable that it can build such competitive products without relying on cheap labour from the PRC. But the DCD- 1500AE is a £500 player with “Made in Japan” written on both box and product – let’s hope it’s not just a case of ‘assembled in’ as can be found with some ‘Made in England’ products. Denon is part of a Japanese conglomerate called D&M Holdings, which also owns Marantz and McIntosh alongside Snell and Boston Acoustics. Being part of something so big must give it opportunities to keep costs down, but given the nature of the organisation profitability is still fundamental. However, despite that reality, this player still cares enough about performance to claim a UK-tuned sound.

Todays DCD-1500AE is an SACD/CD player, but it’s a product designation that many readers will remember from the halcyon days as being a benchmark among mid-market CD players, one of the first 16bit 4x o/s machines and the most affordable player to make serious music. Back then if you couldn’t afford a Meridian 207 it was the DCD- 1500 you aimed for. It even had a variable output option, encouraging early experiments with direct connection to power amps. I have to admit that it’s a name that I had forgotten but a quick search revealed its 1985 vintage and the fondness with which it is regarded is reflected in the fact that people are still using and tinkering with them today. Perhaps oddly it is not referred to on the Denon website which mentions 1982’s DCD-2000 as ‘the world’s first consumer use CD player’, something that Philips and Sony might have difficulty agreeing with! That original DCD-1500 also cemented Denon’s reputation for build quality with its battleship construction. A MkII version was released in 1987 which featured Lambda processing, a pre-cursor to the Alpha processing still in use today so perhaps the nomenclature isn’t as fanciful as it seems.

The new DCD-1500AE is still a fairly chunky machine given its asking price, if not quite as hefty as its namesake. It has a shaped aluminium facia and the sort of folded steel chassis that you find on most affordable electronics these days, along with the usual selection of socketry for digital and analogue outputs. Operationally it is very smooth; you’ll not hear this drawer mechanism clunking about as you do with many smaller brands at far more elevated prices. This seems to be an area where the Japanese excel, giving their machines a reassuring sense of solid quality that the rest of the world struggles to match unless it purchases Japanese mechanisms. But from what one hears you have to be talking big numbers or big money to do this, so a lot of European brands end up with clunky Philips mechs which leave a lot to be desired in the swishyness department. I notice Cyrus has gone over to slot drives now, which is one way of alleviating the problem.

It can’t hurt that Denon makes a surprisingly wide range of CD players, considering that it also goes large on home cinema amplification and sources. With six models in the range it must have more than just about any other brand.

The DCD-1500AE sits two down from the top of this group and offers two-channel only SACD playback from a 24-bit/192kHz Burr Brown PCM1791 converter. Arguably less relevant are various Denon specific features that include SVH (or Supress Vibration Hybrid, which despite sounding like something has been lost in translation indicates some means of stopping the chassis from resonating at the wrong frequencies) and AL24 processing, which according to the Denon glossary “supports multi-channel DVD-Audio for all channels” (which doesn’t really help as in this case it clearly doesn’t but we will assume that it is some form of DSP that’s intended to improve resolution; that’s usually the plan anyway). Foibles include text display for SACD only and a ‘Pure Audio’ option that leaves the machine looking dormant as all illumination is extinguished. What no flashing lights!

More importantly, and rather like its historical precursor, this Denon represents something of a sonic benchmark and is the best I’ve heard at its price point; possessing significantly more spirit and vitality than the competition it definitely warrants some attention. It doesn’t compete with players at four times the price, but then only the real optimists amongst you would expect it to. What it does is deliver a musically engaging and revealing result for less than the price of a single speed hardtail (one of the sillier variations on the mountain bike theme, for all you non-cyclists out there). Or to give you an easier analogy, it costs less than a half decent moving-coil cartridge. It is not, unfortunately, a giant slayer but you will have to spend around twice as much to get a worthwhile upgrade. Press the ‘Pure Audio’ button, which as well as defeating the display also kills the digital output, and its qualities become apparent. These include impressive finesse thanks to the smooth clean nature of the presentation; so much so that it gives the impression of digging deeper into the detail than is actually the case, which is both clever and odd. A more expensive player will reveal quite a lot more about the instruments and voices in the mix but this delivers them with such apparent calm that you think you are hearing right into the music. It also does a decent job in the timing department, pulling a groove along in a steady, consistent fashion thanks to a nimbleness in the bass and decent definition of leading edges. Pioneer’s PDD6 (£400) is a more relaxed player which will suit some tastes or music better but as a result it falls short in the temporal department with upbeat music. The Denon also betters it with SACD where its skills in producing good solid imagery come to the fore.

For many listeners, the ability to play SACDs will be a little extra icing on the cake, a nice freebie rather than a major reason to choose the DCD- 1500AE over the CD-only competition. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t investigate the possibilities offered by these discs. The Denon might not do so much with the more refined format that you will feel compelled to search out the high definition discs at every opportunity, but it does enough to quietly and clearly reveal their relative strengths compared to CD. And it does so as well as the likes of Pioneer’s new PD-D9 at £600. That machine has better build quality and arguably nicer (or at least more “high-end”) looks, but it is so close in character to the Denon that you can’t really split them without resorting to minutiae, while the extra £100 you’ll still have in your wallet/account/credit limit can make a serious difference to overall system quality if carefully spent. Being a relatively affordable piece of equipment the DCD-1500AE does inevitably have its shortcomings but these should not be too obvious in an appropriately priced system. Specifically, the high frequencies are not as solid and pure as dearer players and inevitably the dynamics are limited in absolute terms. That said it is a more dynamic machine than its rivals and this was one area in which it clearly distinguished itself, something that is quite likely to be related to the UK tuning factor. Pure Japanese Denons tend to be a little too refined, for my UK tastes at least, but this avoids that particular trap.

This incarnation of the DCD- 1500, despite the aforementioned tuning, is also more refined sounding than its UK designed competitors. Cambridge’s popular Azur 740C at the same price point has a considerably more gritty and forward character, which might make it more appealing with less transparent systems so long as they are not too bright. Even in an unsuitably high-end system the Cambridge might have an edge with quieter, more relaxed music, but as soon as things get heavier, more complex or more lively, especially with material that you want to play at full bore, then the Denon’s smooth, relaxed character and musical versatility is the tool for the job.

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