Features
Factory Tour – Focal, Part 2 – A Driver’s Perspective
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- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 17 February 2020 17 February 2020
Saint Étienne
It’s become lore that one of Focal founder Jacques Mahul’s motivations for designing loudspeakers was his fervent desire to listen to quality music ‘dans la voiture’. It was that budding kernel – spawning a high quality car audio driver – that later flowered into JM-lab, a full-blown international transducer-producing concern, then further blossoming into the giant loudspeaker manufacturer Focal is today. Mahul’s self-mandated mission was to create the very best drivers that technology allowed at the time.
Factory Tour – Focal, Part 1 – Respect for Wood
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- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 15 February 2020 15 February 2020
Bourbon-Lancy
Fly to Switzerland in order to get to France. But that was the plan prior to touch down. To make the best time ex-Geneva tout suite to Focal’s Franco factory duo in Bourbon-Lancy et Saint Étienne. That way, going Franco-side is an easy 2-hour coach ride from UN-HQ to stop 1 in B-L.
Naim & Focal Luxury Audio Event at Bentley Motors Melbourne
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- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 06 December 2019 06 December 2019
For many audio enthusiasts, luxury cars and high-end audio are symbiotic… like Astaire and Rogers, or Lennon and Mc Cartney, Fripp and Eno. Like the almost interdependent association between the auto and the audio, others also stretch these relationships to cameras, watches and even high-end writing utensils. However, think unrivalled luxury in the auto industry and the name Bentley draws gasps of awe and lustful admiration. The über luxury brand has had an association with Naim Audio for round about 10 years now, with the quintessential British brand supplying bespoke electronics for Bentley Motors’ top models. BusiSoft AV, Australian distributor for Naim Audio and Focal among many other high-end brands, staged an event at Melbourne’s Bentley showroom to showcase Naim’s Statement preamplifier and power amplifier masterpiece to dealers and their selected customers and also to introduce these flagship products to an affluent new audience.
Halcro Eclipse Monoblock Amplifiers Sydney Launch
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- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 25 November 2019 25 November 2019
After a near-ten-year hiatus, which saw the highly-acclaimed and headline-grabbing Halcro marque going into slumber, the Australian company’s recent relaunch has the potential to revive audiophile fervour around the world.
Nordost Event at Audio Connection Australia
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- Written by Peter Katsoolis Peter Katsoolis
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 30 October 2019 30 October 2019
Who’s up for a bit of Hi-Fi dominance and submission? On 15 October, at Audio Connection in Sydney, attendees got to experience exactly that in the form of the latest Nordost QRT devices, the QPoint Resonance Synchronizer and QSource Linear Power Supply. First introduced at Munich earlier this year, the devices have already garnered a number of awards for their ability to “synchronize” the performance of individual system components. The indefatigable Björn Bengtsson of the Nordost design team was on hand, en-route to the Melbourne Hi-Fi Show 2019, to demonstrate the rather obvious improvements these products bring to even the highest calibre of audio systems.
StereoNET Hi-Fi Show Melbourne 2019 – Part 2
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- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 24 October 2019 24 October 2019
Chris Murphy from Hi-Fi Collective at the tune-spinning is usually synonymous with wisely-chosen music that avoids audio show clichés. In a lengthy audition (by audio show standards), Murphy spun a variety of music with a common theme: beautiful song writing. Lucinda Williams and Bruce ‘The Boss’ Springsteen among others were delightfully and quite captivatingly rendered via the new and very, umm…
StereoNET Hi-Fi Show Melbourne 2019 – Part 1
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- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 24 October 2019 24 October 2019
Contrasting last year’s marathon which had me landing from a Linn event in Bangkok, directly uber-ing from Tullamarine airport to the show and hard-clutching high-gear for reporting, my preparations for attending the newly-named StereoNET Hi-Fi Show were rather less feverishly frenzied. Arriving in Melbourne a few days early allowed some R&R, highlights of which were the excellent Melbourne Museum and the guided tour of Parliament House. Ditto for savouring the excellence of this wonderful city’s culinary delights climaxing with the discovery of the institution that is Pellegrini’s for the absolutely best coffee you’ll have outside of Rome’s finest. That morsel of recreational respite aside, Friday October 18 saw me arriving at the Pullman Mercure Hotel Albert Park ready to rock.
Rotel Resurrects Revered Michi High-End Brand
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- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 09 October 2019 09 October 2019
In the early 1990s Rotel, already a 20-plus year old company with a rich audio history, announced the release of an all-out attack on the high-end audio space. It launched the now-iconic Michi brand with a limited range of super high quality products featuring advanced circuit designs born from astute engineering and bearing a distinctive Japanese styling (the gorgeous redwood side panels enhanced the elegant lines) married to superb build quality. Now, 30-odd years on, we again see the emergence of the Michi brand with an aim to revive the glory of the nascent products of yesteryear.
Interview – DEQX’s Kim Ryrie & Alan Langford
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- Written by Barry Jones Barry Jones
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 22 September 2019 22 September 2019
Reviewer Barry Jones recently spent some time at DEQX’s Sydney headquarters where he met with Founder Kim Ryrie and General Manager Alan Langford to discuss the company’s rich history, its proprietary digital technologies and highly advanced processors. DEQX’s unique and refined products has seen the digital specialist grow into a powerful force in the digital signal manipulation field.
“The Best Seat in the House” – Music Night at Sturmans Audio Visual
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- Written by Peter Katsoolis Peter Katsoolis
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 17 September 2019 17 September 2019
Bricks and mortar Hi-Fi stores, and the personalised customer service and experience they bring, are increasingly under threat from direct from manufacturer sales, ‘net only marketers and lounge room ‘distributors’ who often have neither the resources nor the know-how to support either the customer or the product. The latter might be big on Facebook but when it comes to crucial issues like component selection, system matching, installation, and tuning, the value of an ongoing face to face relationship for the consumer (and for the manufacturer too) cannot be overestimated. This was ably demonstrated at an event held by Sturmans AV in Wollongong recently.
MrSpeakers Re-Launch Event in Sydney
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- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 21 August 2019 21 August 2019
As much as the headphone space in the low-to-mid price levels is somewhat oversaturated with products from around the world, the high-end echelons are a freer, more open space, where a few companies are able to stretch the boundaries of technology to create special products. MrSpeakers is one of the latter and from the company’s entry points, right up to the flagship electrostatic headphones, there is umm… loud and clear evidence of very clever engineering.
Naim & Focal ‘Reloaded’ in Australia
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- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Features Features
- Published: 05 August 2019 05 August 2019
At a trendy corporate functions venue in hip downtown Melbourne, Naim and Focal reaffirmed their powerful presence in the local market via a new partnership with major Australian distributor BusiSoft AV.
