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Details: Written by Peter Katsoolis Peter Katsoolis; Category: Reviews Reviews; Published: 15 November 2017 15 November 2017

HiDiamond D3 Balanced & D7 Single-Ended Interconnect & D7 Speaker Cables

Audio cable prices continue to sky rocket with statement pieces often costing as much, if not more, than the rest of a music system combined. Competing technologies continue to proliferate at a rate matched only by often garish advertising and boastful claims of patent (-ed) superiority. Cables are, of course, a crucial means of transferring those precious signals from your source to your speakers but are so system dependent that reviewing them causes me some trepidation in seeking to do so.

Details: Written by News Editor News Editor; Category: News News; Published: 13 November 2017 13 November 2017

Lumin D2 Network Music Streamer

The very successful Lumin D1 Network Music Streamer has been revamped in the new D2 which aims to upgrade several areas of the highly-acclaimed original music player.

Details: Written by News Editor News Editor; Category: News News; Published: 10 November 2017 10 November 2017

McIntosh MC1.25KW Monoblock Power Amplifier

McIntosh’s new ‘Quad Balanced’ MC1.25KW brute-force-in-a-velvet-glove monoblock amplifier is the company’s most powerful offering and reinvents the highly-acclaimed MC1.2KW with significant circuit improvements and overall refinements.

Details: Written by News Editor News Editor; Category: News News; Published: 10 November 2017 10 November 2017

Hulgich Audio Ella Mk.II Speakers

Up-and-comer Hulgich Audio has been steadily developing a concise line of quality loudspeakers and has just announced the all-new Ella Mk.II. The design’s performance and overall build quality impressed the SoundStage! Australia team at the recent Melbourne International Hi-Fi Show.

Details: Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer; Category: Features Features; Published: 08 November 2017 08 November 2017

Melbourne International Hi-Fi Show 2017 - Part Four

The Pure Music Group and Sonic Purity’s system configuration was extremely well-chosen. Analogue was fluid and musical via an all-Kuzma rig (just over AU$23K) while digital sounded equally enticing with the Antipodes Audio DX Gen 3 Music Server (AU$6900) and Playback Designs’ Merlot DAC (AU$9100). Amplification used was all Audionet in the PAM G2 Phono Stage (AU$8,500), EPX Power Supply (AU$8,500), PRE G2 preamplifier (AU$21,200) and Audionet MAX Monoblocks (AU$28,000). Speakers were the medium-sized floorstanding Gauder Akustik Cassiano Mk II in gorgeous Makassar Ebony (AU$22,700) while cabling was via Argento Flow. The massively-built Ictra Designs KEO rack from Germany looked extremely serious with a commensurate price at AU$54,900! Kii Audio KiiTHREE speakers were on static display at the time of my visit.

Details: Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer; Category: Features Features; Published: 07 November 2017 07 November 2017

Melbourne International Hi-Fi Show 2017 - Part Three

The Sound Gallery in conjunction with Absolute Hi End showed a system par excellence. A Gold Note turntable package including the PH-10 phono stage was the analogue source of choice while digital was provided via DigiBit Aria 2, Weiss DAC502 and Bel Canto. The Bel Canto Black EX amplification was cycled with the excellent new Audia Flight FLS-10 integrated while speakers were Franco Serblin’s speaker-porn Accordo and Wilson Benesch Endeavour standmounts. Tara Labs provided the wiring throughout while GigaWatt was the AC filtering of choice. A welcoming and enveloping sound in this room.

Details: Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer; Category: Features Features; Published: 06 November 2017 06 November 2017

Melbourne International Hi-Fi Show 2017 - Part Two

Sennheiser Australia had a multiple headphone display (including a showing of the new HDV 820 digital headphone amplifier) while also holding private sessions showcasing the masterpiece flagship HE 1 system.

Details: Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer; Category: Features Features; Published: 06 November 2017 06 November 2017

Melbourne International Hi-Fi Show 2017 - Part One

Now in its second year, the Melbourne International Hi-Fi Show has firmly made its mark on the audio show calendar in this country. And indeed that mark is a robust one and may become indelible; the show is efficiently organised, is well-supported by exhibitors and enjoys a wide demographic including future audio enthusiasts.

Details: Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer; Category: Reviews Reviews; Published: 01 November 2017 01 November 2017

Wilson Audio Specialties Alexia Series 2 Loudspeakers

Suddenly, as the large Advance Audio van edges up the driveway, I’m shrouded in a heavy blanket of déjà vu, my subconscious harking back to four years ago, when the same scene quenched my anxious anticipation as the Alexia speakers, then a totally new model in the Wilson Audio Specialties line up, were delivered. Subsequently, these most revealing instruments heightened this writer’s reviewing exactness while increasing my listening pleasure and enjoyment of music to levels previously unattained. Alexia plugged the gap between the Sasha W/P (the splendid reinvention of the classic WATT/Puppy) and the large scale MAXX and, as befitting its stature within the line, it employed a number of technologies, drivers and time-alignment techniques trickled down from MAXX and Alexandria XLF. Alexia became an instant hit and, even back then, challenged the market penetration of the high-selling Sasha W/P despite the considerably higher ownership cost. In fact, in the conclusion of my Alexia review for Audio Esoterica magazine I wrote “Alexia will be a landmark product for Wilson Audio, of that I have little doubt, and may even outsell the smaller and less expensive Sasha.” So, a pertinent question can understandably be posed; How to improve on such an advanced and philosophically-extended concept?

Details: Written by News Editor News Editor; Category: News News; Published: 02 November 2017 02 November 2017

McIntosh Laboratory’s First-Ever Hybrid Integrated Amplifier

As one of the longest-lived audio specialist brands, iconic American company McIntosh Laboratory has specialised in manufacturing high quality electronics and speaker systems for near-on 70 years. Now, for the first time in the company’s history, McIntosh has announced the new MA252 integrated amplifier combining the beauty of valves in its preamplification stages and the power and control of solid state design to drive the speakers.

Details: Written by Peter Katsoolis Peter Katsoolis; Category: Reviews Reviews; Published: 01 November 2017 01 November 2017

SPEC Corporation RSA-M3EX Integrated Amplifier

The first time I was called an “audio-maniac” was as I was trying to put my left shoe on my right foot at a sake restaurant after a night out in Tokyo with Junji Kimura, the master craftsman of then underground Japanese brand 47 Laboratory. It was the mid-1990s and this then student had travelled to Berlin to study, of all things, Japanese law. But yours truly had an ulterior motive: to stop over in Tokyo on the way home and, with the help of Yoshi Segoshi, the US distributor for 47 Labs, go hang out with Kimura-san and convince him to sell me a Gaincard amplifier and a Flatfish CD transport and Progression DAC at a ‘student’ discount price.

Details: Written by Josh Givorshner Josh Givorshner; Category: Features Features; Published: 01 November 2017 01 November 2017

Sonic Purity with the Pure Music Group

The showroom of an audio distributor is not what generally comes to mind when you think of ‘sonic purity’. In reality, your average audio showroom sound is frequently sullied by the reverberation of a dodgy commercial drywall partition job or by the noise of a home theatre system blaring down the hall. Combine that with the bothersome clamber of other patrons and the low-level bass blur from all the passive movement of the drivers of every unused speaker randomly crammed into the corners, and you’ve got a recipe for sonic disaster.