Best Buys Home Theatre (Summer 2011) by nextmedia Pty Ltd

2011

SPECIAL BUMPER REVIEW ISSUE FROM Summer 2011 $8.95

N.Z. $9.90 (inc. GST)

30 THE BIG PICTURE

PRODUCT TESTS

Digital audio run from your iPhone or iPad

TOP BRANDS

9 780725 523374

iPAD CONTROL

BIGSCREEN HIGH-DEF TV HDTV PVRs  AV RECEIVERS Hi-fi stereo SPEAKERS FULL system solutions DIGITAL MEDIA  BLU-RAY PLAYERS SURROUND SOUND speaker packs

Top high-def entertainment and audio systems

REVIEWED & RATED

ARCAM•B&W•DENON•KRIX•MARANTZ•ONKYO•PIONEER•YAMAHA

DIGITAL AUDIO PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 4POPT .VMUJ 3PPN 4ZTUFN

SINGLE-BOX SOLUTION OF THE YEAR 4POPT ;POF1MBZFS 4

THE HI–FI HEADLINES NEWSLETTER No. 192

Once again we have had a very busy month at Len Wallis Audio. Tons of new products, plus some great deals, many courtesy of the strong Aussie Dollar.

Certainly the best deal we have at the moment is from Yamaha. They are in the process of releasing a new range of stereo amplifiers and receivers, and we have purchased a considerable quantity of the outgoing models at excellent prices. There are five models in total: • RX797 100 watt/channel receiver (RRP $949) • RX497 75 watt/channel receiver (RRP $799) • RX397 50 watt/channel receiver (RRP $599) • AX497 85 watt/channel integrated amp (RRP $749). • AX397 50 watt/channel integrated amp (RRP $599).

Sell $599 Sell $499 Sell $399

Another great buy is the Bryston BDA-1 Digital-to-Analogue converter. Initially priced at $3,249, this has been reduced to $2,469. This is a great DAC, and now offers incredible value. Our best DAC, the Berkeley Alpha, has also been reduced to $5,999.

Sell $499 Sell $399

An increasing number of distributors are reacting to the current strength of the A$, and one of the most impressive reductions has been from Krell – particularly on their excellent KRS300i integrated amplifier, which has been reduced from $4,999 to $3,499. Their new KRS350a CD player has also been reduced to the same price. We have another good buy from Sennheiser. Following the success of the HD650’s, which we are still selling for $499 (down from $899), we have a limited number of HD595 headphones for $299. These have a retail price of $399 a pair, and have long been considered to be good value at this. The other great buy from Sennheiser is on their stunning HD800 headphones. These have been very popular at $1,999, but at the moment they are offering a Lehmann Rhinelander headphone amplifier, valued at $799, free of charge. If you are into headphones it doesn’t get much better than this. (Don’t forget that we still ship anywhere in Australia for $10 a carton.)

One of the new speaker releases over the last month has been from Australian manufacturer Orpheus. They have had tremendous success with their Aurora 3 range, but the costs of manufacturing their rounded cabinet design have been pushing the prices up. They have spent some time designing a new series in a more conventional cabinet shape, which has resulted in some considerable savings. As a sweetener we have just struck a deal with Orpheus where all of the new models will be wired internally with QED Silver Anniversary speaker cable at no extra cost – this is a Len Wallis Audio exclusive. Finally – we were proud to receive the Sound+Image Custom Installation ‘Highly Commended’ award for a distributed A/V and automation project that we recently completed. (Our congratulations go to Queensland based ‘Electronic Interiors’ who deservedly received ‘Installation of the Year’). We have had a good history at the Sound+Image awards, having previously collected the ‘Installation of the Year’ in 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005, and the ‘Highly Commended’ award in 2002, 2001 and 1999.

64 Burns Bay Road Lane Cove NSW 2066 • Ph (02) 9427 6755 Fx (02) 9427 2490 • ABN 40 001 592 383 • sales@lenwallisaudio.com.au

www.lenwallisaudio.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

CONTENTS systems & single-product solutions Krell S-300i/S350a CD player & integrated amplifier Sonos Multi-room Music System Sangean DPR-17 digital radio with SD card Rotel RCX-1500 CD network receiver Onkyo CS-1045 CD/DAB+ Hi-Fi mini system

22 24 50 60 94

TVs/displays Baumann Meyer Symmetry Slim SL55AC100 LED TV Runco Q-750i AV LED projector Loewe Individual Series product focus Mitsubishi HC4000 AV projector Sanus flatscreen TV mounts product focus InFocus SP8600 AV projector

12 26 54 56 62 86

sources Marantz NA7004 Network Audio Player Bryston BDP-1 digital player

14 38

Strong SRT 5495A HD personal video recorder Arcam FMJ BDP100 Blu-ray player Cambridge Audio Azur 650BD Blu-ray player

48 58 92

amps/receivers Yamaha RX-A1000 AV receiver Onkyo TX-NR5008 AV receiver Creek Audio Evolution 5350 stereo amplifier Denon AVR-1911 AV receiver Pioneer SC-LX83 AV receiver Marantz SR5005 AV receiver Onkyo TX-NR1008 AV receiver Marantz SR7005 AV receiver

17 33 40 43 65 72 81 96

loudspeakers & speaker packages Richter Dragon 5.1-channel speaker package MartinLogan Ethos stereo speakers VAF Research Signature i90/MPB SW4 compact loudspeaker /dual subwoofer speaker package Krix Tektonix subwoofer Whatmough P33i Signature Series stereo speakers Polk Audio SurroundBar 6000 IHT Paradigm SUB 2 subwoofer Aaron HMF-600MKII stereo speakers B&W Panorama integrated A/V sound system Cabasse Eole 2 5.1-channel subwoofer/satellite package Klipsch Palladium P-37F 5.1-channel speaker package Boston Acoustics VS Series 5.1-channel loudspeaker package

20 29 36 46 52 60 68 70 74 77 89 98

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best buys home theatre Summer 2011

2011

SPECIAL BUMPER REVIEW ISSUE FROM SUMMER 2011 $8.95

N.Z. $9.90 (INC. GST)

ALPHABETICAL REVIEW INDEX

+ 30 THE BIG PICTURE PRODUCT TESTS

Digital audio run from your iPhone or iPad

iPAD CONTROL TOP BRANDS

REVIEWED & RATED

BIGSCREEN HIGH-DEF TV HDTV PVRS  AV RECEIVERS HI-FI STEREO SPEAKERS FULL SYSTEM SOLUTIONS DIGITAL MEDIA  BLU-RAY PLAYERS SURROUND SOUND SPEAKER PACKS

9 780725 523374

Top high-def entertainment and audio systems

ARCAM•B&W•DENON•KRIX•MARANTZ•ONKYO•PIONEER•YAMAHA

FC bbht_summer2011.indd 1

15/12/2010 2:37:52 PM

Aaron HMF-600MKII stereo speakers Arcam FMJ BDP100 Blu-ray player

70 58

B&W Panorama integrated A/V sound system Baumann Meyer Symmetry Slim SL55AC100 LED TV Boston Acoustics VS Series 5.1-channel loudspeaker package Bryston BDP-1 digital player

74 12 98 38

Cabasse Eole 2 5.1-channel subwoofer/satellite package

Cambridge Audio Azur 650BD Blu-ray player Creek Audio Evolution 5350 stereo amplifier

92 40

Denon AVR-1911 AV receiver

InFocus SP8600 AV projector

Klipsch Palladium P-37F 5.1-channel speaker package Krell S-300i CD player Krell S350a integrated amplifier Krix Tektonix subwoofer

89 22 22 46

Loewe Individual Series product focus

Marantz NA7004 Network Audio Player Marantz SR5005 AV receiver Marantz SR7005 AV receiver MartinLogan Ethos stereo speakers Mitsubishi HC4000 AV projector

14 72 96 29 56

Onkyo CS-1045 CD/DAB+ Hi-Fi mini system Onkyo TX-NR1008 AV receiver Onkyo TX-NR5008 AV receiver

94 81 33

Paradigm SUB 2 subwoofer Pioneer SC-LX83 AV receiver Polk Audio SurroundBar 6000 IHT

68 65 60

Richter Dragon 5.1-channel speaker package Rotel RCX-1500 CD network receiver Runco Q-750i AV LED projector

20 60 26

Sangean DPR-17 digital radio with SD card

Sanus flatscreen TV mounts product focus Sonos Multi-room Music System Strong SRT 5495A HD personal video recorder

62 24 48

VAF Research Signature i90/MPB SW4 compact loudspeaker/dual subwoofer speaker package

Whatmough P33i Signature Series stereo speakers

Yamaha RX-A1000 AV receiver

Art Director Kristian Hagen Production Editor Edgar Kramer Contributing Editor Greg Borrowman Contributors Greg Borrowman, Stephen Dawson, Edgar Kramer, Jez Ford, Nic Tatham Advertising Sales Manager Lewis Preece Advertising Traffic Di Preece Divisional Manager & National Advertising Sales Manager Jim Preece jpreece@next.com.au Production Manager Peter Ryman Circulation Director Carole Jones

Locked Bag 5555, St Leonards, NSW 1590 Ph: 02 9901 6100 Fax: 02 9901 6198 www.nextmedia.com.au Chief Executive Officer David Gardiner Commercial Director Bruce Duncan COVER IMAGE from Season of the Witch, courtesy Village Roadshow Limited; images p12.13 from ‘Legend of the Guardians - The Owls of Ga’Hoole’ courtesy Roadshow Publicity/Village Roadshow Pictures Best Buys Home Theatre is published twice a year by nextmedia Pty Ltd, ACN: 128 805 970, Level 6, 207 Pacific Highway, St Leonards, NSW, 2065 © 2011. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the prior permission of the publisher. Printed by CaxtonWeb, distributed in Australia by Network Services. The publisher will not accept responsibility or any liability for the correctness of information or opinions expressed in the publication. All material submitted is at the owner’s risk and, while every care will be taken, nextmedia does not accept liability for loss or damage, nor for loss or damage to material or products submitted for editorial review, advertising or any other purpose. Equipment or material supplied to this company should be covered by an insurance policy for the period that the item/s may be in transit to us, in our possession and in transit back to you or your warehouse. The submission of product or material for editorial inclusion in this publication signifies acceptance of the above mentioned conditions. The hidden word is “quandong”. While articles and advertisements on recording techniques may appear in Sound+Image magazine, readers should not construe this as authorising or inciting them to make recordings of copyright material. In all cases we suggest you contact the manufacturer and/or supplier of the recording to request permission to record material. Privacy Policy: We value the integrity of your personal information. If you provide personal information through your participation in any competitions, surveys or offers featured in this issue of Best Buys Home Theatre, this will be used to provide the products or services that you have requested and to improve the content of our magazines. Your details may be provided to third parties who assist us in this purpose. In the event of organisations providing prizes or offers to our readers, we may pass your details on to them. From time to time, we may use the information you provide us to inform you of other products, services and events our company has to offer. We may also give your information to other organisations which may use it to inform you about their products, services and events, unless you tell us not to do so. You are welcome to access the information that we hold about you by getting in touch with our Privacy Officer, who can be contacted at nextmedia, Locked Bay 5555, St Leonards, NSW 1590.

www.avhub.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

EDITORIAL

Tap here for a new world

e call it “new media” when we’re talking about the replay of digital files, but of course most of us have been downloading or streaming or ripping for years now — we’ve had iPods since 1999, after all. But while mainstream hi-fi manufacturers have been genuflecting in the general direction of digital files for a few years, now we’re seeing equipment arrive that puts the reproduction of digital files right at the heart of things. Why has it taken so long? Well, remember that digital music started with the MP3. And not the variable bit-rate 320k MP3s that you might be almost justified in embracing today; no, we started with the frighteningly low-fi 128k MP3.

And any regular readers — anyone remotely connected with hi-fi — will be well aware that the entire audio industry vilified MP3 as the work of Beelzebub. There was a terrible fear that it would become the new default standard for music, that it signified the death of hi-fi. I was never quite so concerned. I would think of Moore’s Law; things would get better fast, I hoped. Our capacity to download and store larger files would see file sizes grow gradually until we were back at CD quality. Indeed with digital files there was nothing to stop us progressing up the ladder and achieving qualities far beyond CD, and (whisper it quiet) undeniably better than vinyl in terms of information content, if not analogue continuity. And so it has proven. Not only that, the abundance of MP3s and AACs, together with the success of the iPod, has brought millions back to music listening in a way that we haven’t seen (or rather heard) since the 1970s. And as we never tire of emphasising, hi-fi is not about hi-fi; hi-fi is about the music. With the rise of the iPod came a resurgence in stereo. Hoo-bloody-rah for that. And now the iPad. The rise of the App is, in fact, in danger of putting music into the background again, but the rise of the iPad is bringing about a revolution in control. One reason traditional hi-fi has been slow to link

with digital files has been the difficulty of networking, and in particular controlling large lists of artists and songs via the traditional remote control and the small screens on hi-fi equipment. But add an iPad App, and it all changes. There are several digitally-orientated products in these pages; I myself played with Bryston’s Digital Player (p38) and the Marantz NA7004 Network Audio Player (p14). The Marantz is a great example — you can just about navigate everything via its knobs and menus, but fire up the company’s Wizz App on your iPad, and it’s another world. Not quite as slick as Apple’s Remote App, but the NA7004 will shortly gain Apple Airplay (for a somewhat outrageous $50 fee, mind you), after which it’ll show up as a device in Remote, and then, wahey, I’m never getting off the couch again. Tap here for a new world. Cheers, Jez Ford, Editor www.twitter.com/jezford

Award-Winning Décor Top of Its Class In Sound & Looks Aaron Décor loudspeakers are the result of a no compromise approach to building loudspeakers from a heritage and passion that stretches back more than 30 years. The Aaron Décor range is the perfect adaptation for today’s discerning lifestyle - a truly superb sound in a beautifully versatile package. Décor loudspeakers can be wall mounted next to the LCD or Plasm TV panel, stood on a low-boy beside the stand-mounted TV or even floor-standing – if it suits. For compact and neat wall mounting, we offer grills and side panels cut to size so the TV panel, main and centre speakers form one neat rectangle wall arrangement.

HOME THEATRE SPEAKER SYSTEM OF THE YEAR UNDER $2500 AARON DÉCOR SERIES D-400 / D-200

“A unique solution that not only sounds good, it addresses décor issues both through low-profile speaker design and by doing away with the need for a conventional centre speaker.”

Aaron Loudspeakers Phone: 02 6686 0277 Email: speakers@aaronhifi.com.au

www.aaronhifi.com

Winner

Home Cinema Speaker System under $3000 HOME CINEMA SPEAKER SYSTEM UNDER $3000 DALI STILE $2980

Dali Stile

www.dali.com.au

a breath of fresh air

Rust resistant Adjustable Virtual Axis™ FollowThru™ in-arm cable management QuickConnect™ easy installation system ProSet™ height and levelling adjustments

The latest addition to the Sanus Visionmount family, the VXF220 has a special rust-resistant coating and stainless steel hardware and was made to withstand all types of conditions – it can be used indoors or outdoors. Fits 42" (106cm) to 75" (190 cm) TVs. See this and many more innovative ideas at www.sanus.com.au

Sanus. Safety is everything.

Proudly distributed by Home Theatre Group Unit 6/96 Gardens Drive WILLAWONG QLD 4110 Telephone 07 3276 1355 Fax 07 3276 1366 www.htgroup.com.au

Underwriter’s Laboratory Safety Standard

PLATINUM SPONSOR

safety couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be simpler

Reduced tipping risk Secure connection Universal design All hardware included Easy installation

The new ELM701 anti-tip strap reduces the risk of TVs or furniture accidentally tipping, making your home instantly safer. The durable polypropylene strap securely connects in four places: to the wall, the back of furniture and twice to the back of the TV. Works with TVs up to 150cm. See this and other products for making your home safer at www.sanus.com.au

Sanus. Safety is everything.

PLATINUM SPONSOR

Underwriterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Laboratory Safety Standard

Proudly distributed by Home Theatre Group Unit 6/96 Gardens Drive WILLAWONG QLD 4110 Telephone 07 3276 1355 Fax 07 3276 1366 www.htgroup.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

TVs/displays

Baumann Meyer Symmetry Slim SL55AC100 LED TV

he Baumann-Meyer SL55AC100 continues the company’s advance into the real premium category of TVs. It reeks of style and offers some upto-date performance enhancements. Indeed, it is explicitly aimed at taking on the German makers, at a price some 30 per cent below that typical for them.

Equipment The price is a little premium too, at $6999. And the TV looks like much of that price has been lavished on build quality, with not the slightest bit of plastic in sight. What this very large 140cm (55 inch) TV presents is a thin brushed aluminium band across the top, only a centimetre or so wide, with another, somewhat taller, band stretching across the bottom. When the TV is switched off, all that is between the two is an almost featureless sheet of black glass, except for the simple brand name.

The aluminium — somewhat more workmanlike in these areas, is also used near the edges of the back, while the whole rear panel is a sturdy metal plate (steel we guess), all held together with screws. The TV measures 1330mm wide, 820mm tall and 40mm deep, and weighs 35 kilograms. It actually looks rather thinner, thanks in part to the large size of the screen, but also the way the edges are only 7mm thick for a centimetre or more, beyond which the case tapers out to the full thickness. We were also supplied the desktop stand for the unit (you can choose either this or a wall mount — either will cost you an extra $299). The desktop stand was very attractive, with a thick sheet of glass constituting the base (with silicon feet rests underneath, and a circular silvery grey column showing underneath the TV). The LCD panel of course offers full high-definition

resolution, and is LED Edge-Lit for good black levels and low power consumption. It has an eight-layer anti-reflective coating. The company rates the brightness of the panel at 450cd/sq metre and its native contrast ratio at 6000:1. The cables all connect to the range of inputs at the right-hand side of the back of the TV. These are all inset, with more than half actually concealed under a removable metal plate. All the sockets run parallel to the panel, so there are no chunky cables interfering with the close fit of the TV to a wall. It has four HDMI (version 1.3) sockets, one set of component video inputs and one composite video, plus a D-SUB15 analogue computer socket. Two sets of stereo RCA sockets are provided for audio, plus one 3.5mm socket associated with the computer video input. There are also a composite video, stereo analogue audio, coaxial digital audio, optical digital audio and 3.5mm headphone outputs. An RJ45 socket allows system integration. The TV has both analogue and digital TV tuners built in. The latter supports MPEG4 — in other words, whatever happens in the future. The TV is not 3D-compatible, nor does it support the Audio Return Channel provided in the HDMI 1.4 spec. Video processing is provided by a new 10-bit engine from the company, which it calls QIA (for Quantum Interpolation Algorithm). This

www.avhub.com.au

TVs/displays TVs/displays implements 100 (or 120) hertz processing, including frame interpolation.

Performance Setting up the TV requires you to manually start the digital and analogue TV station scans. Few Australians will feel the need to bother with the latter these days, but just in case, we had a look. It worked reasonably well, looking far better than analogue TV has any right to look on a huge LCD TV. The TV doesn’t have an aspect ratio key, requiring the use of eight keystrokes just to get to the right menu item to change it. But once we’d set the aspect, it remained in place for that input unless explicitly changed. Baumann Meyer says that the TV consumes less than two watts in standby mode (about half a watt according to my power meter) and up to 195 watts when operating, and it specifies the TV as having a five-star energy rating and an annual standardised consumption of 548kWh per year. Our own measurements suggested an easy six stars, nearly 6.5 (the star rating is rounded down to the nearest 0.5 and we scored it 6.46) for an annual consumption of 488kWh. In everyday use, the power meter tended to sit around 131 watts with external HDMI inputs, varying only a couple of watts around that, and bumped up by another five watts using the digital TV tuner. That was with the default backlight setting of 55 and the Auto Backlight set to the default of ‘Off ’.

“When the TV is switched off, all that is between the two is an almost featureless sheet of black glass...” The latter setting is required by the testing protocol, but we felt that leaving it off was the best setting. In a dark room, it ramped down the brightness too aggressively for our taste (halving power consumption), and left the picture looking not just dull, but low in contrast as though being viewed through a translucent sheet. This is in stark, ahem, contrast to the TV with its default settings (or with those settings tweaked a little using a set-up disc). The picture quality was excellent when fed with a high quality progressive signal. It also looked excellent on the majority of broadcast TV, although on rare occasions some deinterlacing artefacts were apparent. The reason for this became clear when we ran our test DVDs and Blu-ray discs into the TV at native resolution. It seems that the TV always uses a high-quality motion adaptive technique for progressive scan conversion. It did not seem to attempt to identify natively progressive sections of the video to weave together, so there were instances with 576i/50 and 1080i/50 film-sourced material with unnecessary artefacts: jittery nearhorizontals, moire patterns on finely spaced lines and grids, and the breakup of fine detail. But the TV also incorporates a ‘Judder’ control feature. This generates intermediate frames for a 100Hz picture (it also works for Blu-ray, running the picture at 120Hz). Aside from quite effectively smoothing motion, this also tended to suppress some of the fine detail damage. Nonetheless, for really high quality DVD and Blu-ray viewing, we’d suggest a high quality player with excellent progressive scan output. The colour was excellent and the mapping of brightness levels from the signal to the screen was equally good, providing beautifully smooth colour graduations. The black levels were very good... for an LCD TV that does not have a backlight that responds actively to the picture content. In normal viewing the black levels were excellent. In a darkened room, without making any picture adjustments, there was a slight mottling of the black levels in almost completely black scenes. However we found that if we turned down the backlight from its default of 55 (on Standard) to about 35, even in our dark room the results were very satisfying. We saved this setting in the ‘Custom’ preset to make it readily accessible.

The default ‘Judder’ setting of ‘Low’ did a nice job of smoothing motion without any visible artefacts. Higher levels made things even smoother, but with an evident heat haze effect. We also turned the default ‘Sharpness’ setting of 75 down to 30 to produce a much smoother picture. The sound from the TV’s own speakers is surprisingly good given that they fire downwards through small round holes. But of course the main purpose would be for watching the news, not proper movie viewing. Baumann Meyer describes them as ‘full range’ and they are each provided with ten watts of power. The TV sticks with the input selection paradigm that the company has been using for several years, and while not especially pretty, it is more efficient than most. Just hit the ‘Input List’ key on the remote, and then the digit next to the input that you are after. There is also a direct ‘DTV’ key and a ‘HDMI’ key that cycles through those inputs (plus the computer one). The TV doesn’t have USB or network connectivity, but it has a feature that is becoming increasingly rare: a proper Picture-in-Picture function (or side-by-side if you prefer). This allows you to have one (but not both analogue and digital) TV tuner and HDMI or AV, or one HDMI and a TV tuner or AV.

Conclusion The Baumann Meyer Symmetry Slim SL55AC100 LED-LCD TV is a fine television that looks extremely classy and produces a very good picture on a massive screen. You won’t get some of the gadgets available on some TVs, but you get all you need for fine TV viewing — hence its recent highly commended award from Sound+Image.

Baumann Meyer Symmetry Slim SL55AC100 LED TV Price: $6999 Warranty: Three years Panel: ‘Super Slim LED Edge Lit Panel’, 10 Bit, 100Hz, Full HD Processing: Baumann Meyer Proprietary 10-bit 100Hz Full HD Processor with Quantum Interpolation Algorithm Technology (QIA) Tuners: 1 MPEG4 digital, 1 analogue IR Control: Full discrete hex code operation IR flash: IR input flasher with or without carrier RS232 Control: Bidirectional Calibration: ISF calibration ready • • •

Very good picture quality and black levels Very attractive styling Easy station and input navigation

•

Less than optimal deinterlacing of 576i/50 and 1080i/50

CONTACT: LCD TV Pty Ltd 02 9977 6001 www.baumannmeyer.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

Sources

Marantz NA7004 Network Audio Player

source component for the new age, from a company with a hi-fi heritage prouder than most. And the NA7004 has the lot.

Sans network They call it a Network Audio Player, but it does a whole heck of a lot without even considering the Ethernet networking cable plugged into its rear end. Starting with the traditional, there is FM and AM radio, with the usual string and plastic antennas provided. Impressively there is also DAB+ digital radio, still a rare build-in for major products like this; another strip antenna comes for this with a BNC-type antenna socket (if you plug all three up, things get pretty tangly back there). There’s a USB socket on the front — plug in your normal iPod cable, and you can play songs controlled either from the iPod/iPhone itself, or from the main remote control. A little plastic iPod stand comes included. Or you can plug a USB stick or drive of tracks into the USB and play those. This is more friendly to users of PCs than Macs (perhaps surprising, given this is one of the world’s first Apple Airplayequipped products, see below). It played nearly all of our suite of test files, including FLAC, but not AIFF, Apple Lossless or AAC protected; it also showed up the ‘shadow’ files PCs see from Macs. The next major use of the NA7004 is as a DAC for other devices. It has coaxial and optical digital inputs capable up to 24-bit 192kHz; we fed the Marantz the optical output from Apple TV (which is a strangely constant 48kHz) and then had the delight of controlling our whole collection via iPad’s Remote App, or via the Apple TV remote with onscreen display. The Marantz’s DAC is the capable Cirrus CS4398 Delta-Sigma design, and the sound from the subsequent output stage shows the company’s usual attention to audio quality, which extends to a double-reinforced chassis and the company’s HDAMSA-2 amp modules. Pleasingly Marantz puts sound quality at the top of its list of main features, and we wouldn’t argue with that. If your computer is close enough, you can run a USB from the Marantz’s rear USB-B socket and have the NA7004 as your sound output device, controlled straight from the computer — Mac and PC worked fine for this plug’n’play solution. And there’s a socket for the company’s optional $199 RX101 Bluetooth module, which would allow you to stream in stereo from any A2DPequipped phone (which is most of them).

Networked So all that without connecting the Ethernet. Click in that little blue cable, and you’re connected to your network, and hence to the world! The NA7004 automatically networks, finding any DNLA media shares (most likely your Windows Media Player) and playing from those, though there are the usual control issues given the limited display size on the machine itself; anyone with a large music collection might consider trying to get Marantz’s Wizz iPhone App working (see below). On to the internet radio section, which is wonderful, lacking only RealAudio support for BBC Listen Again content but compensating by embedding podcasts within the normal station search. There’s not enough made of the brilliance of internet radio — pretty much every radio station in the world worth its salt available both for streaming live and with many also offering podcast highlights. It’s a free resource of online music and talk as powerful as any subscription service like Napster and Last.FM (see below) and the vast majority sounded great through the NA7004 (bad ones can be tamed by the otherwise-best-avoided M-DAX2 EQ circuits). A marvellously-intuitive tweaked vTuner interface here offers a useful folder of Australian stations above the usual location and genre browsing. Up to this point we had been controlling everything through the well-proportioned remote and the NA7004’s own small display. But this seems a little olde worlde for such a new-age device, and we were pleased to see a note on Marantz’s US website (nothing on the local one) that an online firmware upgrade would make the NA7004 operable with Marantz’ enthusiasticallynamed Wizz app for the NA7004. The update worked (it took 20 minutes), and we loaded Wizz on our iPad (it’s an iPhone app, so you hit the double-size button). But it couldn’t ‘find’ the NR7004 and worked in demo mode only. We also tried the “browser interface” hidden away on p28 of the manual; you type the NR7004’s IP address into your computer browser to get a mighty primitive interface, from which we couldn’t achieve any kind of artist search. Only seven hours later did Wizz suddenly ‘find’ the NA7004 (luckily we had opened it again to take screenshots). Suddenly we had full touchscreen control, even album art, for browsing media servers, internet radio, changing inputs, everything. This made such a difference that we’d say it’s an absolute essential part of the product.

Loadsastuff, then, though we can’t avoid mentioning those things that didn’t work. We had no online music — LastFM returned “Not available in your country” (we’re told it should work here with a premium subscription; US$3 a month); Napster returned “Invalid username/ password” presumably because it’s not available here either (we have a US account we use via VPN for, er, test purposes). And check compatibility carefully if you plan to use the iPod input — it worked with a 4th-gen nano but not with either our iPad or a first-gen nano (they could be controlled, but there was no audio output). We so wanted to try Apple AirPlay, even if they do charge you $50 US for the privilege of streaming your own music files from your own computer to your own Marantz. This you activate by navigating the menus to “Add new feature”, but this disappointingly returned “No new feature”. Apparently it’s not ready yet (Apple’s delay). It may be running by the time you read this. We can’t blame Marantz, either, for Napster and free Last.FM not working here. Though we could blame them for leaving them as major inputs on the device in Australia; are we too small for local firmware?

Conclusion A huge range of digital sources in one box with sound priorities kept to the fore — we love the concept of the NA7004. We may have got this review sample too early in its lifecycle to enjoy some of the functions at their best (like Apple’s Airplay), and we’d say an Apple device (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch) is an essential for controlling it easily. But it’s surely the future of music in the home. Marantz NA7004 Network Audio Pl

ayer

Price: $1499 Warranty: Three years • • •

Does about 100 things (or in Australia, a few less) Solid audio quality Excellent menu systems

• • •

No Napster/ free LastFM in Oz Couldn’t try AirPlay (Apple’s delay) Firmware not localised

Contact: Qualifi 03 8542 1111 www.qualifi.com.au

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BREAK GLASS IF IT ALL BECOMES TOO REAL.

Onkyoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s latest line up of AV receivers not only boast pristine HD Audio, they are now compatible with the dynamic new 3D video format. Onkyo 3D, as real as it gets. To find out more visit ambertech.com.au

IMAGINATIVE SIGHT & SOUND

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AMPS/RECEIvERS

Yamaha RX-A1000 AV receiver

aving had a chance to play around extensively with Yamaha’s new Aventage RX-A3000 AV receiver for our sister magazine Sound+Image, we suspected that we might be less overwhelmed by the Aventage RX-A1000. Two models and $700 down, such thoughts may have been reasonable as a matter of theory. But in practice, the $1799 Yamaha Aventage RX-A1000 proved to be an excellent AV receiver in its own right.

Equipment The first thing that we noticed is that it really looks like a premium home theatre receiver. In fact its styling and size is pretty much identical to the more expensive model. It weighs a little less, since it doesn’t enjoy some of the extra structural elements of the large unit, and presumably can get by with a slightly smaller transformer. But you couldn’t tell by looking. Like the big one it gets the damped fold-down cover to hide the more fiddly controls and inputs on the front panel, and a fifth leg in the middle of the base for increased support and rigidity. The receiver scores a healthy 105 watts from each channel (two channels driven at a time) into eight-ohm loads across the full audio bandwidth at a claimed 0.06% total harmonic distortion. The power amplifiers can be redirected to all kinds of different purposes, which we’ve described below. All the Blu-ray audio formats are supported, of course. The receiver employs 192kHz,

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24-bit Burr-Brown digitalto-analogue decoders on all channels, to ensure absolutely accurate performance for all sampling frequencies up to 192kHz. That covers anything supported by PCM or any of the new Blu-ray formats. It also supports the Direct Stream Digital format from SACD. There are stacks of inputs, and so far Yamaha has resisted the temptation to abandon any of the older formats (some companies are dropping S-Video). Indeed, it has even included a phono input so your vinyl collection is still ready to run. At the other end of the scale, there are eight HDMI inputs (one on the front panel, under the cover), an Ethernet socket and a USB port, with much of the wider media support that those imply. Yamaha also bundles with the receiver its YDS-12 iPod dock. This plugs into a proprietary port on the rear of the unit and supports the iPhone as well.

Performance We largely availed ourselves of the automatic YMAO setup function, which uses an included microphone and some test tones to set the speaker sizes, distances and levels, as well as generate EQ curves which can be applied to the speakers. The unit apparently applies individual bass crossover frequencies to each of the speakers it judges to be ‘Small’, as appropriate for their performance. If you want to perform the setup manually, you are stuck with a global setting (which can be adjusted to as high as 200Hz, suitable for use with a subwoofer/ satellite system). One part of the manual speaker configuration — should you choose to use it — lets you allocate the output amplifiers to various functions. The implementation of this option is always a bit

tricky for receiver makers. It is an inherently complicated concept, and setting out on-screen selection tables in which various boxes can be ticked can, for some users, push the demands of understanding just that step too far. Yamaha has approached this quite cleverly by providing four simple presets from which you can choose. These are clearly described and illustrated on screen. Four may sound limiting but for two of those the actual speaker allocation switches automatically according to the sound mode. So if you choose ‘7ch Normal’, you can wire up both surround back and front height speakers (the latter are used for some of Yamaha’s DSP modes, not Dolby Pro Logic IIz, which isn’t implemented). Then depending on the playback mode you select from moment to moment, either the front height or surround back channels will be selected. ‘7ch + 1ZONE’ switches between surround back and Zone 2, as required. If you don’t have surround back speakers, this fact will of course be detected in the automatic YMAO setup. The other two choices are for bi-amping the front speakers. One is just for straight 5.1 channels, while the other also supports surround back for 7.1 channel playback, except that you have to add your own external power amplifier (or just use powered speakers). If you have the receiver connected to an internet-enabled network, it will check for firmware updates. You can see for yourself if one is available by going to the Information/System menu. One did in fact become available during the review period, so we installed it. This was a more complicated process than other networkupdatable devices. Not that it was hard. We just had to restart the unit in the ‘Advanced Setup’ mode and use the front panel controls according to the instructions. You can do an upgrade from USB or directly from the internet. Most of this

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AMPS/RECEIvERS

review was actually conducted with the newer version 2.05 Firmware. The sound quality was simply excellent. The receiver’s automatic setup made a couple of choices that the more pedantic among us considered inappropriate, at least in theory. But the actual listening results were first-class, with great imaging all around and perfect balance between the main channels and the subwoofer. The new-media support was also top-notch — so long as you understand that it is all about audio, not video or photos. The only test tracks on our test USB thumb drive that the unit would not play were those in WMA lossless format. But it did play regular WMA, MP3, WAV and FLAC. The Ethernet facility provides access to music made available by a DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) server on the network, and also to internet radio stations and Podcasts. Of this internet content there was an amount far too large to count. Certainly in the thousands. Rest assured, you would require singular tastes indeed not to be able to find something that you like. As with the iPod on the supplied dock, the network and USB features all provide fast navigation through lists, allowing you to scroll one or ten pages at a time. The video processing is provided with few options. It won’t adjust colour or sharpness or anything, nor add any video noise reduction — something that is probably redundant since so many displays and sources have similar processing built it. But you do get the choice to switch off the video conversion (by default it was switched on for analogue sources, and off for HDMI ones). If you have it on, you can leave the output resolution on ‘Automatic’, or have the unit

perform progressive-scan conversion and scaling to your choice of resolution, up to 1080p for some sources. For Australian DVDs supplied by HDMI in their original 576i/50 video format, we switched the video processing on, with the output resolution set to 1080p. The results were generally pretty impressive. The circuitry clearly examined the video content and made a judgement about whether it came from some interlaced source, such as a video camera, or was progressive in nature, and with all but very ambiguous content the judgement was correct, producing excellent picture quality. The progressive-scan conversion for videocamera style content also received high-quality motion adaptive treatment, maximising picture resolution on the big screen. However the video processor isn’t quite the high-end unit incorporated in the RX-V3000. It will not perform progressive-scan conversion on 1080i content, nor scale 720p up to 1080p. Instead it just passes these through. But whether passing things through or not, the receiver has the rare ability to overlay all content with its on-screen graphical user interface. This is attractively designed, and pops up readily. It will even overlay Blu-ray 3D signals cleanly (seeming to hover in front of the action when you’re wearing the 3D eyewear). The GUI is well structured, so that finding whatever you want to do becomes quite easy.

Conclusion The Yamaha Aventage RX-A1000 AV receiver is an excellent mid-priced unit, with support for all the latest stuff — including the audio return channel from TVs, and 3D video signals. It offers a good

power output, suitable for all but the least efficient of loudspeakers, excellent sound, and excellent support for digital audio from USB and network sources. And all that at a very good price. Definitely worth a look if this is your price category. Yamaha RX-A10 00 AV receiver Price: $1799 Warranty: Four years Rated power: 7 x 105 watts, 8 ohms, 20-20,000Hz, 0.06% THD (two channels driven) Inputs: 8 x HDMI, 4 x component video, 5 x S-Video, 5 x composite video, 9 x analogue stereo, 1 x phono, 1 x 7.1 analogue, 2 x HDMI, 4 x optical digital, 3 x coaxial digital, 1 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x proprietary iPod dock port Outputs: 1 x component video, 2 x S-Video, 2 x composite video, 1 x analogue stereo, 1 x 7.1 pre-out, 1 x optical digital audio, 1 x 6.5mm headphone Zone: 2 x stereo audio, assignable amplifiers, main component, S-Video and composite video switchable to zone Other: 2 x IR I/O, 2 x trigger out, 1 x RS-232C, 1 x setup mic Dimensions (mm): 435w x 182h x 430d Weight: 14.7kg • • •

Excellent audio performance Excellent digital audio support from new media sources Excellent usability, thanks to GUI overlay

•

Some limitations on manual set-up

Contact: Yamaha Music Australia 1300 739 411 www.yamahamusic.com.au

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best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

ABOVE: this ‘mixed’ system shows a variety of the available finishes

Richter Dragon

315 × 430mm footprint. They need to be large because the Dragon uses three large cone drivers (two for the bass, one for the midrange) that have single-piece cast alloy baskets and triple-layer composite cones that are ‘embossed’ to minimise distortion and standing waves. Two of the drivers also have bulletshaped rubber pole-piece extensions to control phase. The tweeter is also fairly new for Richter: it’s a new, state-of-the-art electromagnetic induction (EI) tweeter that first appeared on the Wizard MkIV and is now used on all Richter models. The Unicorn centre channel has a pair of the same cone drivers used in the Dragons (always a good thing) and, of course, the same EI tweeter. Richter has sensibly given the Unicorn a completely flat base, so it will be easy to seat this centre-channel speaker on a shelf underneath or in front of your screen, though you won’t be able to put your screen directly on top of the Unicorn because its top surface is curved.

5.1-channel speaker package

ichter’s famous Wizard speakers (said to be the best-selling loudspeaker in Australia) garner so much interest from the press (and hi-fi dealers who want to stock them) that Richter’s many other excellent — and in some cases, better-sounding! — models tend to get overlooked. That’s certainly the case when it comes to Richter’s Dragon, which is not only the company’s flagship model, but also the largest in its range. Here we have the Dragons as the front main speakers with a Unicorn Centre, Hydra surrounds and a Thor IV subwoofer.

Equipment The Dragons won’t be for the faint-hearted, as they stand a little over a metre high and lean back on a

Richter’s Hydra rear/surround speakers have been getting shallower over the years but maintaining their cabinet volume by growing progressively wider. The new MkIV version is now only 130mm deep, so if you hang them on a wall using the supplied keyhole mount, they’ll barely protrude, which is great if you don’t want (or can’t make) holes in your walls. Each Hydra sports a single 165mm driver and that same EI tweeter.

Richter Dragon 5.1-channel speaker packag e Price: $4896 Warranty: Five years • •

Lovely sound field Impressive bass

•

Surrounds & sub not available in Jarrah

Contact: Richter Loudspeakers 02 9981 1844 www.richter.com.au

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Deep bass is delivered by the Thor MkIV active subwoofer, which features a 300mm (12-inch) cone driven by a classic Class-AB amplifier rated at 200-watts continuous. Richter’s largest and most impressive subwoofer, the Thor MkIV is 440mm wide, 470mm deep and 510mm high and ported at the front to allow super-easy room placement. In order to keep costs down, Richter makes its front and centre speakers in two finishes only; a lovely West Australian Jarra and a lustrous Black Tasmanian Oak. Both are real wood veneers. However, Richter’s surround speakers and subwoofers are available only in one finish: Black Oak.

Performance

www.nad.com.au

Superb Performance. Elegant Design.

Setting up this system (all the components of which are available separately, so you can buy as many — or as few — as you need), we realised that the Dragons’ low frequency response was so extended that we wondered if we’d need to hook up the Thor IV subwoofer at all. We did, but ended up winding the low-pass filter ‘way back down to 35Hz, so the Thor was only delivering the lowest octave (20–40Hz). This extra octave made all the difference when listening to movie soundtracks with their low-frequency effects, but music has very little information below about 30Hz. Cohesive sound-staging is critical when watching movies, because although most of the dialogue, for example, comes exclusively from the centre-channel speaker, you need the tone of the dialogue to remain the same when the sound is in either of the left or right channels. The Dragon/ Unicorn combo worked in almost perfect unison to deliver an intensely realistic soundstage, and the clarity of the dialogue was exceptionally good. And unlike smaller centre-channels, the dynamic range of the Unicorn was excellent — it didn’t wimp out when called on to deliver sudden, highvolume sounds at the correct replay level, or when playing at elevated levels. We were also impressed by the performance of the Hydras, particularly given their incredibly small size — they sound so good that we can see some people using them as main front speakers in a small stereo system!

VISO FIVE SYSTEM

Conclusion This is a seriously impressive — dare we say ‘fire-breathing?’ — system that will deliver better-than-cinema-quality sound in your own home. So why not rent a new-release DVD, invite your friends around and charge them admission… you’ll have it paid off in no time.

5.1 DVD/CD Surround Sound Receiver with VISO TWENTY + THIRTY SPEAKERS From the Red Dot Award winning designer behind the stunning VISO DVD Systems, comes two matching speaker systems specifically tuned to these world class audio components. The two speaker and subwoofer VISO TWENTY, and the matching rear-and-centre package of VISO THIRTY, complete your VISO experience, with superb sound to match the already stunning style.

Richter makes its front and centre speakers in two finishes only; a lovely West Australian Jarra and a lustrous Black Tasmanian Oak.

Also available VISO TWO DVD/CD Stereo Receiver.

FOR YOUR NEAREST DEALER: Australia: Call 1300 13 44 00 or visit www.nad.com.au New Zealand: Call 0800 111 450 or visit www.nad.co.nz

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

Systems & Single product solutions

Krell S-300i and S350a integrated amplifier and CD player

rell… the name brings with it visions of mammoth armour-plated coffee table-sized amplifiers lined with razorsharp heatsinks used to cool down core-of-the-earth Class-A running temperatures. The company built its reputation based on such products as the KSA-50 (one of its first creations), a 50-watt monster, now a highly sought-after classic that still commands remarkably high second-hand prices 30 years on. Product evolution

led to generations of superbly-engineered amplifiers, predominantly of Class-A or variable high-bias design, that have defined high-end Americana. Amusingly, one of the most significant highend companies of the last two decades or so of the 20th century was named after a mysterious race of super-intelligent beings from the film Forbidden Planet. The Krell race built a machine that was able to turn their thoughts into reality. Company founder and chief designer Dan D’Agostino’s lofty aspirations paralleled the Krell’s mythical machine… to build extraordinary amplification products able to reproduce recorded music with such fidelity that it would approach the actual event.

Equipment Krell’s S-Series products are the company’s entrylevel offerings. Not that you’d pick that from the build quality on offer. Both the S-350a and S-300i are superbly built and assembled.

The fascias are smartly-brushed aluminium and all buttonry is metal — no plastic in sight. The components come with their respective remote controls, which are almost identical full-function solid aluminium units replete with buttons… keep a quick keen eye to press the desired function. The S-350a CD player uses a TEAC drawerless loading ‘mech’ which, although very neat in terms of its minimalist visual impact on the neat fascia, we found a tad quirky in use and slower than usual to load. The disc is not always clamped on the first insertion and also needs pushing almost entirely before it’s grabbed by the mech and taken into the player’s innards. Controls are by way of small metal buttons and include the usual playback controls plus a separate cluster with four-way navigation controls surrounding a central menu button. The LCD display can be dimmed or turned off, and a variety of track/disc time options are available to choose from. All functions are duplicated on the solid remote which adds direct track access. Round back we have single-ended RCA and balanced XLR connecting options, as well as two digital inputs and two digital outputs (both limited to 96kHz), Toslink and coaxial, so the S-350a can serve as somewhat of a hub for external digital sources. Additionally, there’s a 12V DC trigger and an RC-5 connection for remote control system integration. Krell uses its own discrete Class-A ‘Krell Current Mode’ analog stages, and has chosen matched Burr-Brown 24-bit 192kHz digital-to-

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Systems & Single product solutions

analog converters for each channel for a fully balanced circuit. The S-350a is also available as an S-350av (at additional cost), which adds DVD playback capability with HDMI output at 1080p and additional component and S-Video connectivity. The S-300i integrated’s slim design belies its considerable weight (19kg). It features what is obviously a hefty transformer; in fact, it’s a mother of a 750VA tranny. The connecting options are comprehensive, and feature three single-ended RCA inputs, an RCA preamp output, a balanced XLR input, 12V DC triggers (in/out), RS-232 9-pin D coms, good quality plastic-sheathed WBT

“The Krell house sound has obviously been evolving over the years in terms of refinement but generally, talk Krell and you’ll be soon talking powerful, solid and class-leading bass...”

speaker binding posts, theatre pass-through, and an on/off button (supplemented by a standby button on the front) that sits above the IEC input. An easy-to-read LCD display that visually matches the one on the S-350a keeps the user informed on volume level, left/right balance position and the chosen input. We also liked the large central chrome volume control. Unusually, and kudos to Krell for its inclusion, there’s an iPod connection of the 30-pin type (cable included) that pulls audio from the fully differential output included in the internal DACs of iPods/iPhones therefore “maintaining a balanced signal throughout the circuitry”. iPod control is provided via the hefty remote control — we tried our iPhone 4 and iPod nano and the system worked flawlessly. Typically Krell, the preamp stage is Class-A, direct coupled and fully balanced. The S-300i is capable of 150 watts into 8-ohms, which doubles up into 300 watts for a 4-ohm load providing adequate current for driving hungry speakers. Input impedances are, of course, a non-issue if used with the S-350a, but are of importance with other brands, quoted as 95-kohm balanced and 47.5-kohm single-ended. Finally it must be stressed once again that these units are in no way reflective of an entrylevel product; the build quality is superb and most companies would be proud of such standards in their flagship offerings.

Performance The Krell house sound has obviously been evolving over the years in terms of refinement but generally, talk Krell and you’ll be soon talking powerful, solid and class-leading bass. Well these S-Series components keep the legacy alive… but in a more subtle 21st-century way. What we mean is that both components produce stunning bass with punch, transient speed and detail — but in a balanced way that blends in with the rest of the frequency range. And really, the word balance can sum up these components’ sonic capabilities. The music just flows without pulling your listening attention to any one area of performance. Provided your speakers are up to it the Krells can throw a big lateral soundstage with superb image focus. This focus phenomenon is actually quite remarkable at this price-point; play a small ensemble and you’ll revel in identifying where each player is positioned; vocalist dead centre with bass player to the left, piano behind to the right and drummer central and further back (but not too far) in Temptation, Holly Cole’s cover release of Tom Wait’s works. Each image solid and discrete. Another outstanding quality is both the player’s and integrated’s resolving power. These guys just cruise along when given the most complex of

material. And the sound is fast-paced and nimble with great rhythmic propulsion. The Renaud Garcia-Fons trio can play a world/jazz fusion storm in Arcoluz. Generally all three players let it rip in virtuosic unison with acoustic five string bass, percussion and acoustic guitar; the S-350a and S-300i provide superb separation with extraordinary amounts of detail revealing finer nuances in instruments’ tone and in the individual players’ technique. A fortuitous by-product of this is a heightened involvement in the musical event. In the context of our very revealing system the Krell combo was never brash or bright. Even poor recordings fared well… the fact that such productions are below par still showed but the sound was never unbearable or unlistenable. It just made you wonder what the producers and engineers were on at the time of recording. Switch to the iPhone/iPod and the S-300i retains most of its qualities but at a reduced level of overall performance. There’s just a tad less dynamic range and a minor compression in the highs and lows but most of the resolution of timbres and detail remain. Nitpicking would reveal a slightly foreshortened stage depth perspective and, in the case of the amplifier, a lack of tonal beauty — some say coloration — that valve amplification can impart. In fact, the S-300i is dead neutral. But the combo covers most of the bases in terms of technology and sonic reproduction.

Conclusion These Krell components just get out of the way of the music and allow the listener to sit back — with all the remote control convenience — and enjoy. What’s more you’re safe in the knowledge that the S-350a and S-300i are superbly built and engineered components that should last a long time and come from a company that is a high-end icon. Best buy indeed.

Krell S-350a CD player and S-300i integrated amplifier Price: $3499 each Warranty: Five years (amp), two years (CD) • • •

Great balanced and neutral sound Excellent build quality Feature packed

• •

CD loading slow Small identical buttons on remote may confuse!

Contact: Audio Marketing 02 9982 3877 www.audiomarketing.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

Systems & Single product solutions

Sonos

Multi-Room Music System

t’s the most successful multiroom music system in the world, and we’ll tell you why. Or rather, we’ll tell you why others aren’t. Firstly, nearly all other multiroom systems either need permanent wiring put in, or use your potentially congested home Wi-Fi. Sonos instead creates its own wireless mesh network which extends its coverage with each box you add. Also, most systems we’ve tried nearly cack themselves trying to access Apple-based iTunes music collections. Sonos can do this in its sleep. Finally, most rival systems (in fact there are few real rivals) struggle to stream anything except internet radio, marvellous though that maybe. The Sonos system opens the doors to a wide world of free and subscription music services. These are already hugely successful in the States (Rhapsody, Pandora, Last.FM etc.), and we’re told 2011 will be the year we get such streaming joy sorted in our poor Australian backwater. And Sonos will undoubtedly lead the way, such is the power of the

company’s hardware and software engineering, and so widely well-regarded is its equipment.

Equipment So multiroom music is what you get, but what equipment does it actually involve? Thanks to the introduction of the S5 ZonePlayer this year, you could start with just one of those. It’s a marvellous standalone speaker system, an iPod dock without a dock, if you like. The S5 sounds great — Sound+Image has given it the Single-Box Solution of the Year award (a bit ironic given it is really part of an expandable system). The S5 (the black unit pictured above, also available in white) links with your system to access music files on your PC or Mac; it also reaches out to the network for internet radio and all the subscription and free music we mentioned earlier. And what a starting point for expanding your system. The real idea behind Sonos is that you can add a ZonePlayer in each room or area you want music — up to 32 zones. Each ZonePlayer can be used independently, accessing a different choice or source of music. Or you can link up ZonePlayers to play in unison, even having the whole house synchronised. There are three types of Sonos ZonePlayer. There’s the S5, with

its own amps and speakers (five Class-D-driven drivers). And last year Sonos introduced (in one of the recent free firmware updates which Sonos users enjoy from time to time) the ability to split a pair of S5s, one playing left channel and the other right — et voila, rather nice and powerful stereo. So you put a S5 ZonePlayer in each room? Possibly. More likely some areas will be better suited to one of the smaller ZonePlayers that have been the mainstay of the Sonos range until the more recent arrival of the S5. These other ZonePlayers come in two flavours. The ZP120 has internal amplifiers, so you just add a pair of stereo hi-fi speakers of your choice to get an operational zone up and running. The ZP90 is simpler still, a receiver unit that provides just analogue line or digital outputs which you then feed into an existing amplifier or receiver… indeed anything with a suitable input. So the ZP90 solution is the ideal addition for a room with an existing hi-fi or AV system that has an auxiliary input. Install a ZP90 and plug it into your amplifier — either a normal analogue input or a digital one (the ZonePlayers have optical and coaxial digital outputs), and select it like any other source. The aforementioned Sonos ‘mesh’ network (called SonosNet) is one of the key reasons Sonos works so well. Only one box (any ZonePlayer, or a dedicated ZoneBridge specially for the purpose) needs to be connected to your computer network with an Ethernet cable into your modem/router. From this it will access all the music on your system, plus the internet for radio and additional

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Systems & Single product solutions iPad, iPhone control Sonos was one of the very first companies to offer control from iPhone, iPod touch and now iPad, as a free app for anyone that has a Sonos system. Even without one of those touchscreen devices you can control Sonos for free from any PC or Mac on the network, via an excellent onscreen interface (see panel below). That’s a bit of a bonus given that the company’s own CR200 controller has quite an RRP attached — although it’s a beautifully sleek device and a joy to use. Another addition to the Sonos camp last year was an iPod/iPhone Wireless Dock. While most docks need cables in order to connect to the an or receiver, the Sonos dock simply links with the Sonos mesh network so it can sit anywhere, just requiring mains power. Better still, it takes the signal digitally from your iPod or iPhone, and makes it available to every ZonePlayer on the network. You could have several of them, each available across the network as separate sources; you can even set Autoplay to begin in any zone as soon as you dock your Pod. It also charges, of course, and includes Apple’s 1Amp charging specifications for a far more rapid recharge than is available from, say, a computer USB port.

Extra inputs, extra Ethernet goodies. And it will transmit all this to the other ZonePlayers wirelessly via the SonosNet. Adding zones from the first connection is simplicity itself. Go elsewhere in your home with a second ZonePlayer, plug it in to the mains, then press the button on the front to add it to your Sonos system. Now the second ZonePlayer can also access everything on your system wirelessly. Although many custom installation companies install Sonos equipment, we reckon pretty much anyone could do it. It is, as they say, not rocket science.

Each ZonePlayer also has an auxiliary input, into which you can plug any additional local audio source. And those local sources are also sent across the Sonos network so any other ZonePlayer can play any auxiliary input! Not only that, each ZonePlayer (including the S5) has a pair of Ethernet sockets on the back, and we were stunned to discover that you can use both of these to link other devices into your home data network (and through to the internet), via the SonosNet. Sonos barely promotes this, for fear of overwhelming potential buyers with technicalities.

It’s an incredibly useful bonus in these days where every other piece of electronics requires linking up to the network. And finally you end up like us, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, scrolling through your touchscreen, which handles long lists of artists and or albums with an ease unknown to most similar systems thanks to a rapid-access alphabetical scroll on the right-hand edge of the touchscreen. Select tracks or iTunes playlists, add songs to the queue; you can even search through your network by folder, through which we discovered that Sonos even plays FLAC files with glee (and has since the beginning, while most systems are only now adding FLAC to their arsenal). Crossfade playback has recently been added, so you can have nonstop party music; there is also now Chinese and Japanese language support. The only gap we could find was a Real Audio capability to access BBC Listen Again content.

Conclusion If we’ve done nothing but gush about the Sonos system, that’s because we love it, so why complain? Want us to pick some nits? The internal DACs in the ZP90 and ZP120 can be improved upon — for good hi-fi systems many people use the digital output and add an external DAC. Also, if you’re going to stream a lot of internet radio or music services, remember to watch your ISP data allowance (with heavy use you might pull 3-4GB a month, so make sure you have a plan to suit). And er, that’s it. Really. If you’re looking for multi-room music, start here. Even if you just want a speaker dock (and can get an Ethernet socket to it), check out the S5 — why fiddle with a docked iPod when you can access your whole computer-based music collection, internet radio and so much more, and have the ability to expand slowly to a full-on multiroom system, blessed with free regular updates and new services?

CONTROL BY iP AD, iPHONE, iPod TOUCH, CR200, PC, MAC, ANDR OID... There’s not much in the way of buttonry on the ZonePlayers themselves — just volume and mute, in fact. So you need a controller. You could buy the Sonos handheld CR200 (far left), a beautiful touchscreen marvel. But Sonos also gives away its App for iPhone, iPod touch (left) or iPad (opposite), and is working on an Android version for early in 2011. Further, any PC or Mac on your network can be used to control the whole system as well, simply by loading the free Desktop Controller software with its marvellously intuitive interface (centre). Any and all of these can control not only your local zone, but a whole house of ZonePlayers, whether playing separately or all together.

Sonos Multi-Room Music System Price: Sonos ZonePlayer S5 $699 ZonePlayer ZP120 $899 ZonePlayer ZP90 $599 Controller CR200 $599 Wireless Dock $199 Warranty: One year

• Untouchably fine multi-room operation • iPhone/iPad operation • Watch your broadband data cap if streaming Contact: Playback Systems 03 9874 0800 www.playback.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AV PROJECTORS

Runco Q-750i AV LED projector

his is a time of innovation for Runco, being first to market with this LEDbased projector (already the world’s top-selling of its ilk, we gather), and having just released a twin-lens 3D projector that requires only passive glasses (like in the cinema) rather than the bothersome flickery active-shutter glasses required for 3D TVs.

Equipment Being a Runco projector, this is no run-of-the-mill lamp-lit big-screen bit of kit. Indeed the particular and special thing here is the lamp. It doesn’t use any kind of filament-based lamp, but rather light emitting diodes, which it calls RGB InfiniLight LEDs. This clearly has a number of advantages — and one potential disadvantage — compared with conventional lighting technology. Let us quickly dispose of the disadvantage: the output is relatively low. No, nothing like CRT projector low, but still considerably lower than run-of-the-mill DLP and LCD projectors. Runco likes to use strict and defensible specification criteria, which give it a 450 ANSI Lumens output figure or, using the same sloppy test processes as everyone else, 700 ANSI Lumens. This is actually plenty of output for an AV room in which light is well-controlled, though not so good for rooms with higher ambient light levels. And the advantages? The main one is that the LED lamp doesn’t wear out like a regular lamp. Oh, it will probably go off a little over the course of years, but you will be thinking of upgrading the projector (assuming technology continues to improve at the current rate) long before there is any need to replace the lamp. One of the configuration options for the full system integration options is a trigger invoking a 2.35:1 anamorphic lens, which the projector supports by an appropriately-shaped aspect ratio option. The standard lens has a zoom range of 1.3:1. For a 100-inch (2.54-metre) 16:9 screen, the projector needs to be at a range of between 4.1 and 5.3 metres. The projector also has a lens shift feature — both horizontal and vertical. The projector comes in a housing fit for a battleship, constructed from hefty rolled steel.

Performance The LED lamp reduces some of the complexity of a DLP projector. Being a single-chip DLP projector, the colours must be shown in sequence. With normal DLP projectors, this is managed by using a spinning colour wheel. This projector doesn’t need this, because it simply switches on its red, green and

blue elements as required. LEDs respond extremely rapidly, so they can easily keep up with the tiny mirrors on the digital micromirror device. In addition, the output of the LEDs can be controlled by the projector’s circuitry, so colour intensity isn’t a function only of what proportion of the time the mirrors permit it to reflect, but also of the levels of brightness produced by the relevant LEDs. That allows finer graduations, and deeper blacks (since the LED brightness is modulated as required). That in turn allows an excellent contrast ratio. In fact little of such fine tuning is required; by default it looked glorious and highly accurate. Runco offers something it calls ‘Quantum Colour’ which (a little confusingly) is actually the ‘native’ colour gamut for this projector, rather than the REC709 normally used for high-definition video. Though reluctant to vary from the standards, we thought this offered a subtle but real additional richness in colour, without detracting from the exceptional naturalness. The blacks were immensely deep, and the whites were pure and untainted by any colour shift. Grey-scale graduations were smooth with no evidence of banding. The black and near-black end of the grey-scale ramp was especially interesting. Sometimes with a DLP projector, as you move close to the screen you can see speckles of flashing dots, caused by the dithering (flashing on and off in predefined proportions) of the pixels at the borderline between full black and a discrete almost-black. The mirrors of a DLP projector typically flicker at about a thousand times per second, so at extreme near-blacks, they need to flash on just occasionally, allowing these speckles to appear. With the control of LED levels, this seemed to be a far less significant (read: non-existent!) effect with this projector. The projector does not offer any manual control at all over deinterlacing. Clearly it is quite confident of its abilities on this front. And it is nearly right to do so. Of our PAL test clips fed to the projector via HDMI at 576i, only one caused any problems, and even then only for the briefest of instants. On 1080i/50 video from Blu-ray, the errors were a little more frequent, with some picture break-up on fine detail. As always, a ‘Force Film Mode’ option in the Q750i’s video processing options

would be handy. But in its absence, the automatic circuitry is perhaps the best yet. The projector is rated to draw a quite modest 140W in normal use. This is largely due to the relative efficiency of the LED lamp. Nonetheless, the projector was not noticeably quieter than other ‘normal’ projectors — not intrusive, but would largely passive cooling be a possibility, with the fan reserved for occasions when the projector is used in environments with high ambient temperatures? Clearly the lamp generated far less heat than conventional lamps, since the cooling fan switches off only a second or so after you’ve switched off the unit. Contrary to some reports, the projector does not offer an ‘Instant On’ feature. It typically took about 28 seconds before presenting its picture.

Conclusion The Runco Q-750i is a truly high-end AV projector, with superb colour, black levels and other aspects of performance. Of course, its price is a high one for most purchasers. But that’s how new technology makes its way into the world of wide accessibility. It starts limited and expensive, allowing the risk-taking well-heeled early-adopters to sort out the bugs (very few in this case) and provide financing for the next round of development. The result is that in a few years, the rest of us also will be able to enjoy high-quality projection without having to worry about it sucking the life out of a conventional lamp. Meanwhile, if the mid-to-high 20s (in thousands) is within your budget, do yourself a favour and check out this projector.

Runco Q-750i LED projector Price: $26,995 Warranty: Two years • • •

Superb blacks and colour No more limits to lamp life Very good scaling and de-interlacing

•

No force film mode option

Contact: Network Audio Visual Telephone: 02 9011 8082 Web: www.networkav.com.au

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iPOD SPEAKER DOCK OF THE YEAR AKTIMATE MINI

epoz.com.au aktimate.com

The AktiMate Mini is a 2-way active louspeaker system (one active speaker, one passive) with a concealed iPod dock set into the top of the active speaker. Additional inputs on the rear panel include one RCA phono two-channel and a 3.5mm mini-jack. There is also RCA stereo audio out, ideal for the addition of a subwoofer or for linking multiple pairs of AktiMates. A composite video output transfers images from an iPod to an external screen (only for iPods to Version 5 and Nano Version 2) and finally there is a USB power socket to charge an MP3 player. The Maxi is even smarter and like the Mini is a 2-way active speaker system with a concealed iPod dock in the top of the active speaker. It includes a Reciva media module providing direct access to internet radio together with the ability to stream from any Windows or UPnP shared network

on your computer - either wirelessly or via the ethernet connection on the rear panel. We recommend that you investigate Asset™ UPnP as an option for your streaming requirements. (www.dbpoweramp.com) There is an FM radio as well and the Maxi has three auxiliary inputs (two RCA phono pairs and a 3.5mm mini-jack) plus audio outputs. The USB host socket allows replay of music files from memory sticks or MP3 players. MAXI “ They take the original Wow factor of the original Aktimate and make it large while adding today’s technology to open the doors to network streaming and internet radio.”

Sound+Image Magazine Australia

MINI “ … this is about as good as your iPod can sound” What Hi-Fi Magazine UK

To find out more information call Epoz Pty Ltd on (02) 9450 0789 or visit our website

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

MartinLogan Ethos stereo loudspeakers

f ever there was a speaker line with ultimate Spouse Acceptance Factor (SAP) the MartinLogan range of electrostatics would take the prize. Such is their aesthetic beauty that MartinLogan speakers have appeared in many films and TV series – their outstanding looks and unusual design making them suitable visual fodder for art directors. But looks alone ain’t what this is about, right? We’re about sonics, aren’t we? Well, the US company can proudly boast of having been awarded numerous awards for sonic prowess too; MartinLogan engineers some of the best-sounding speakers available.

Equipment The electrostatic principle has been around since the 1950s with the Quad ESL 57 being the granddaddy of the genre. There have been a number of other companies that took on the idea and produced electrostatic speakers that ranged from the moderately successful to the revered, albeit obscure. MartinLogan, however, has been steadily producing ever-evolving examples of the genre since the early 1980s, predominantly based on a design that attempts to address a couple of

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the electrostatic inherent weaknesses; namely dispersion and bass extension. MartinLogan has tackled these issues by engineering electrostatic panels that vary in size, depending on the model, but share a slightly curved profile (Curvilinear Line source or CLS as used on many-a-model nomenclature), therefore dealing with the dispersion issue. By mating these 30-degree dispersion pattern panels with dynamic bass drivers in appropriate enclosures MartinLogan speakers efficiently resolve the question of extension to the bottom octaves. MartinLogan has developed a number of proprietary technologies it uses in both the electrostatic panel and, in the last few generations, in the active bass section. The technologies are complex and provide superbly thought-out engineering solutions to issues it considers crucial to the advancement of its designs. There is little room to outline these in the context of this review, barring

to once again stress that MartinLogan invests serious resources into R&D. The resulting designs are thoroughly engineered. Ergo the brand spanking new model from the company’s top tier Reserve Series and the subject of this Best Buys review; the MartinLogan Ethos. The Ethos is a tall see-through tower of electrostatic elegance sitting atop a small real wood-veneered enclosure (available in a variety of finishes) housing two bass drivers and the crossover and amplification electronics. The Ethos’ XStat CLS panel (a direct derivative of the flagship CLX speaker) is a 22cm by 112cm line-source driver with a 30-degree dispersion pattern. The panel sits atop the bass enclosure and is slightly angled back to improve its vertical dispersion. The lower enclosure houses a ‘PoweredForce’ 8-inch (203mm) front-firing aluminium high-travel woofer powered by its own 200 watt Class-D amplifier which uses a ‘Vojtko’ 24-bit DSP engine. A further 203mm polypropylene driver down-fires and is wired as a passive bass augmentation device.

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

A ‘Vojtko’ crossover, using a design topology said to be trickled down from the flagship CLX, is said to remarkably enhance overall sonic performance, and uses high-quality crossover parts including air-cored inductors and audiophile-grade polypropylene capacitors. The panels feature their own custom-wound toroidal audio transformer. MartinLogan quotes the frequency response as being 34Hz to 23kHz ±3dB with a sensitivity of 92dBSPL/W/m. The woofers cross over to the panel at 375Hz. The impedance is quoted as being 4Ω but with the typical dip in the high frequencies; in this case down to 0.8Ω at 20kHz. The Ethos takes a standard speaker-level input from your amplifier – by way of very nice and easy-to-hand-tighten binding posts – and there’s provision for some bass tailoring via a ±10dB level control that operates below 100Hz. Aside from the bass enclosure, the box-less design means the Ethos is a relatively light speaker, weighing in at 19kg, making it an easy shuffle around the room. The speakers dimensions of 151×27×46cm make it a manageable size too. The Ethos comes with rubber feet for tiled or wooden floors and with beautifully-machined steel spikes for carpeted surfaces. Also worth noting is the very well written and comprehensive manual; it’s packed full of set-up suggestions.

Performance We hooked up the Ethos first with a high-powered Krell integrated and then with flagship NuForce amplification. Both designs drove the Ethos effortlessly, a testament to the relative insignificance of that high frequency impedance dip given quality amplification. We also found that even in our large auditioning room (approximately 5.5m by 11m) the Ethos produced oodles of bass power and depth

at the ‘0’ position on the bass dial – no need for extra bass level, but it’s there if you’re a bass-head. While we’re on the subject… the Ethos is a bass bully. This is fun, fat bass that rocks. And that bass dial is there to give you more if you want it... up to 10dB more. Stick on a percussion or acoustic bass track, such as any on Mino Cinelu’s self-titled CD, and be prepared to be walloped with bass drums that are big and bold that, although not the last word in transient attack, have surprising depth and power. Ditto with Renaud Garcia-Fons Trio’s Arcoluz CD. GarciaFons is a virtuosic bass maestro who bows, plucks and pulls on strings to create soundscapes that could pass for a number of instruments other than the acoustic bass. The Ethos delivered bass aplenty in a textured and muscular way that had our room shaking. But the bass lagged just a tad in terms of overall speed and definition when compared to that glorious electrostatic panel – albeit to a far lesser extent than in previous generations we’ve heard. Especially in the lower bass where there was plenty of oomph belying the 37Hz spec (it felt far deeper), utter detail and resolution were a rung or two below the upper bass, never mind the electrostat. And oh yes, that panel is a cracker. Put on a vocal track, be it the Waifs’ splendid sisters’ ethereal voices or Chris Jones’ cigarette and whisky-stained tone, and the Ethos rewards with a life-like presence that stuns. And not just voices but also instruments sound incredibly real, mostly because of the panels’ utterly accurate timbre, overall balanced tonality and exact resolution. There’s a silence between the notes and a lightning-fast reaction to musical signals that starkly defines transients and carries musical ebb and flow. And this also translates to an ease and effortlessness that is always enjoyable and never, ever brash or bright. The Ethos is smooth and natural to a fault. Notably, the soundstage the speakers can throw is well outside the speakers laterally, is cavernously deep, and with a wide sweet spot, all correlating to the intelligent curvilinear design. Even more surprising, however, is the Ethos’ ability to focus quite competently – if not extraordinarily – images within the large soundstage; a trait at which that electrostatic designs haven’t been traditionally strong. Bells, cymbals and all manner of top-end musical content were beautifully rendered. To varying degrees, some speakers tend to exaggerate the extension of the top octaves to create a slightly artificial

sense of ambience and ‘air’; not the Ethos. High frequencies are delicate, fast and utterly natural.

Conclusion MartinLogan’s concerted efforts in introducing novel technologies has paid off in terms of addressing the electrostatic design’s inherent Achilles’ heels. For starters, the speaker certainly excels at explosive bass crescendos; the ample in-built power and good quality drivers see to that. The panel is not the equal of the bass section in explosiveness but is on par with dynamic-design speakers in its price range. Great looks, advanced engineering, beautiful fabrication by craftsmen in the US, reasonably priced and musically beguiling would be descriptive of the MartinLogan Ethos speakers. Over what felt like an all-too-short a stay (deadlines were pressing) the Ethos had us listening to a hell-of-a-lot of music. And frankly, that’s what this is all about, right? Enthusiastically endorsed.

MartinLogan Etho s stereo loudspea kers Price: $9999 Warranty: 12 months • • • •

Superb sound Extremely pleasing looks Outstanding design and build Bass can be tailored

•

Low bass not the ultimate in definition

Contact: Kedcorp Pty Ltd 02 9561 0799 www.kedcorp.com.au

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;The 683 is a remarkably revealing speaker for itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s price. You can clearly hear into the mix, with fine details easily picked out.â&#x20AC;? HiFi Choice, UK

Designed for studios. Heard in living rooms. 600 Series. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d never guess it from the price tag. But behind the grille of a 600 Series speaker there are advanced technologies normally reserved for audiophile-standard speakers. Like KevlarÂŽ cones, or FSTâ&#x201E;˘ drivers for outstanding midrange resolution. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the same technology we use in our 800 Series reference speakers, like the ones at Abbey Road. And now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s coming to a living room near you. Listen and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see.

For more information about the award winning 600 Series call 1800 817 787 or visit www.bowers-wilkins.com.au

+20( 7+($75( 63($.(5 6<67(0 2) 7+( <($5 29(5 % : 7KHDWUH 6\VWHP

Tired of plastic sound?

Discover the Polk Audio RTi Range. Real Wood + Real Hi Fi + Real hi fi specialist = An authentic listening experience We can all tell when something is genuine. When something is built down to a price, the compromise can sometimes (but not always) be just as obvious on the outside as it is on the inside. Excellence on the other hand requires a bit more understanding, like what kind of sound quality from affordable loudspeakers can be created by America’s leading specialist speaker brand and the holder of over 65 patents in loudspeaker technology.

With the Polk Audio RTi range, not only is the timber finish on the outside real but the sound quality is also authentic.This range is specifically created for genuine hi fi specialists, authorised dealers that stand for genuine sound quality and who would only partner such loudspeakers with electronics of comparable quality. What makes the range even more compelling, however, is how good it sounds for the money. So make the effort, it’s worth it.

AVAILABLE FROM: ACT • Kingston Kingston Hi Fi 6295 7896 • NSW • Armidale Armidale Retravision 6772 5077 • Bondi Junction Ordio 9369 3600 • Coffs Harbour Park Beach Music 6652 3725 • East Gosford McLeans Smarter Home Entertainment 1300 995 448 • Liverpool Pacific Hi Fi 9600 6655 • Mona Vale Sydney Hi Fi 9880 2111 • Parramatta North Lifestyle Store 9683 7222 • QLD • Bundaberg Bundaberg Retravision 4153 4411 • Caboolture Living Entertainment Caboolture 5499 3744 • Cairns Targa Hi Fi 4041 0422 • Indooroopilly Ron Handley Retravision 3878 5044 • North Mackay Mackay Stereo Sales 4942 8777 • Southport Gold Coast Hi Fi & Video Centre 5571 1055 • Toowoomba The Hi Fi Mart 4638 2490 • SA • Prospect Challenge Hi Fi 8269 7333 • TAS • Launceston Wills 6331 5688 • Sandy Bay eHome AV 6224 4910 • VIC • Bundoora Big Picture People 9470 8444 • Hoppers Crossing Big Picture People 9931 0211 • Horsham Chisholm Hi Fi 5382 4343 • Mildura Teletune Electronics Pty Ltd 5021 3666 • Narre Warren Big Picture People 9704 6044 • Richmond Encel Stereo 9428 3761 • Shepparton Simmons Audio Visual 5822 1083 • Taylors Lakes Big Picture People 9449 4833 • Wantirna South Big Picture People 9801 5700 • Wendouree Big Picture People 5339 2299 • WA • Rockingham West Coast Hi Fi 9527 7474 • Subiaco Simply Hi Fi & HomeTheatre 9388 2709

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AMPS/RECEIvERS

Onkyo TX-NR5008 AV receiver

f you’ve been following this industry for a few years, you will recall how AV receivers used to have five power amplifiers... even after 6.1/7.1 audio formats became available. Now, of course, nearly all of them offer seven power amplifiers, but new audio formats seem to be calling for more than seven channels.

Equipment Onkyo comes to the rescue here. Like many others, the Onkyo TX-NR5008 receiver supports the new Dolby Pro Logic IIz system, which adds two ‘front height’ channels to the surround options. It also supports the Audyssey DSX system, which adds ‘Front Width’ channels. Now some receivers have dealt with these new channel options by forcing you to make a choice: for example, Dolby Pro Logic IIx (i.e. with surround rear channels in addition to regular

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surround channels) or Dolby Pro Logic IIz (i.e. with front height channels), but not both at the same time. More recently, some have offered to power two of the channels (surround rear or front height), and support the other two only if you can add external amplification for them. This receiver instead provides nine power amplifiers. It can give you surround rear and front height at the same time. Or surround rear and front width. Or front width and height (abandoning surround rear). There are other options of course, such as bi-amping the front speakers, or driving a second set of front speakers or ‘B’ front speakers. Or powering a second zone. Or, indeed, powering both a second and a third zone, while still retaining 5.1 channels in the main room! And there are eleven sets of loudspeaker binding posts so that you have the flexibility to keep a couple

of different configurations installed and simply switch between them. And each of these various speakers gets a massive 145 watts, full audio bandwidth, into a proper loudspeaker impedance of eight ohms, at just 0.05% distortion. It just about goes without saying that the receiver supports all the current digital audio standards available from discs, including Direct Stream Digital from SACD. The receiver has a ‘Direct’ mode for this which we understand sidesteps the conversion to PCM digital, which is how most receivers handle it, but which is actually against what you might call the philosophy of DSD. This digital format was specifically designed for easy and clean digital to analogue conversion without the complexities of that required for PCM. You get eight HDMI inputs — with one on the front panel — to handle all these signals. In keeping with this audiophile approach to incoming signals, two of the sets of analogue stereo inputs on the rear panel are more widely spaced than the others. Like the others they are gold plated, but they are clearly of a more robust and high quality build than the rest. One set is for phono, while the other is labelled TV/CD. At the other end of the scale from analogue are the new forms of digital audio, piped in from the internet via an Ethernet connection to computers or other servers on a network. There are also two USB sockets. Many, many receivers have a USB socket, designed for playback of audio from mass storage devices. And almost universally these are conveniently installed on the front panel, so you can just plug in a thumb drive. But an equally valid use, in our view, is to plug in a terabyte USB hard-disk drive. This turns the receiver into a jukebox — a very high quality

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AMPS/ RECEIvERS one if you avoid lossy compression and stick with either uncompressed or losslessly compressed formats. But leaving its cable plugged into a front panel is unsightly, especially since it requires the front cover to be lowered. No problems with this one: just use the rear USB socket for that, and have the front one free for ad hoc use. This receiver is THX Ultra 2 certified, so you can be confident that most important aspects of home theatre sound are fully catered for by it.

Performance We would like to say that we had a sufficiently large set of high quality loudspeakers installed to make full use of all those channels, but in fact we didn’t. In fact, we expect that most people will use the spare channels for extra zones and the like. Of course we wired up a full set of speakers of varying qualities to check out the various options, and indeed they worked as advertised, but we stuck with our main 5.1 set of very high quality speakers for most of the testing. We felt that this receiver deserved the best, so that’s what we gave it. In return, it gave us sound as good as the very best we’ve experienced in our room. The automatic calibration by the Audyssey system

“Some listeners swear that for the best stereo music you need stereo audio equipment. We’re not so sure about this, and we suggest that if an audiophile were placed blindfolded in a room with this system, he or she would be eminently satisfied.”

worked very nicely. This receiver incorporates the MultEQ XT32 room equalisation system, and the result left the whole loudspeaker/room system at reference levels of performance. Loud sections of losslessly compressed surround sound from Blu-ray? Not a problem. The imaging was excellent, as was the punch and dynamism. Some listeners swear that for the best stereo music you need stereo audio equipment. We’re not so sure about this, and we suggest that if an audiophile were placed blindfolded in a room with this system, he or she would be eminently satisfied. The receiver offers excellent support for digital audio formats from network and USB media. Of course it provides MP3 music support. And of course it delivers regular Windows Media. And naturally it supports uncompressed WAV audio. But it also supports one of the rising standards of high quality audio: FLAC (free lossless audio codec). Rarer even than this, it supports the lossless version of Windows Media Audio. The advantage of this is that while working your way into FLAC can be a bit tricky, since you have to find software to use it, WMA Lossless is built into the Windows Media Player of most recent Windows computers, and can be easily specified as a rip format. Furthermore, you can plug an iPod into one of the USB sockets using a standard iPod cable. This gives all the performance that you’d get from a full iPod dock, barring only the lack of video for photos and video content. But you get the menus and track information. The network streaming from connected computers worked without a hitch, using Windows Media Player 11 as the DLNA server. Most importantly, Onkyo has made it work fast. When presented with a long selection list (687 items on ‘All Artists’ from our main computer, for example), we found that we just needed to hold down the arrow keys for a few seconds. The first two pages of entries were traversed one line at a time, and then the unit jumped twenty items at a time, with each jump taking only a second or so. We found ourselves content to wait until the Vs and Ws appeared. This same navigation speed applied to the iPod, USB and network playback. You also get internet radio, provided through the vTuner portal. This seemed initially to be lacking any Podcasts, but you can add these by

logging onto the portal’s web page. The receiver’s instructions explain how. As we write, there were 16,222 radio stations and 8285 Podcasts available. The receiver incorporates first-class video conversion and processing circuitry: HQV Reon VX. You don’t get much better than this. It even includes the ability to set the processing for progressive-scan conversion to auto, video or an extremely good film-bias mode. Unfortunately, using it was a real problem. You need to drill down through the menu system to set the output resolution. If you leave it on 1080p, then 24 frames per second material is converted to a jerky 60 frames per second. If you leave it on 1080p/24, then 50 hertz material (including DVDs) is converted to a jerky 24 frames per second. Every video processor should have the capability to change the picture geometry while leaving the frame rate unchanged. Unfortunately this one doesn’t. Making these changes manually is a very slow process because they involve going through the setup menu, which is always displayed at 576p and therefore forces your TV to resync. We ended up leaving this on ‘Through’, avoiding the video processor entirely.

Conclusion So forget about video processing with this receiver. Revel, instead, in its all-round superb audio performance and audio signal processing capabilities. That’s its great strength.

Onkyo TX-NR500 8 AV receiver Price: $5499 Warranty: Three years Rated power: 9 x 145W, 8 ohms, 20-20,000Hz, 0.05% THD (two channels driven) Inputs: 8 x HDMI, 3 x component video, 4 x SVideo, 5 x composite video, 1 x D-SUB15 computer, 8 x analogue stereo, 1 x phono, 1 x 7.1 analogue, 4 x optical digital, 3 x coaxial digital, 2 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x Onkyo Universal port Outputs: 2 x HDMI, 1 x component video, 2 x S-Video, 2 x composite video, 2 x analogue stereo, 1 x 9.2 pre-out, 1 x 6.5mm headphone Zone: 2 x stereo audio, assignable amplifiers, 1 x composite video Other: 1 x IR I/O, 2 x trigger out, 1 x RS-232C, 1 x R1 remote control, 1 x setup mic Dimensions (whd): 435 x 199 x 464mm Weight: 25.0kg • • • • • •

Excellent audio performance with complete, 100% support for latest multichannel formats Two HDMI outputs for convenient use of projector and direct view TV Supports Blu-ray 3D signals High quality video circuitry difficult to use properly Setup menu has fixed res and replaces underlying video On screen ‘Mute’ indicator is fixed and could ‘burn in’ to plasma displays

Contact: Amber Technology 1800 251 367 www.ambertech.com.au

DANKE

After 25 years of manufacturing quality loudspeakers in Germany, Audio Physic have released a limited edition of the Tempo and Virgo models. These 25th Anniversary models are our way of saying “Thank you” to our loyal customers for 25 years of support. We also hope to meet new loyal customers. Maybe you should have a listen….

No loss of fine detail

www.audiophysic.de

For more information and the location of your nearest dealer please contact Absolute Audio Vision www.absoluteaudiovision.com.au Ph 02 9764 5092

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

VAF Research Signature i90/MPB SW4 compact loudspeaker/ dual-sub speaker package

AF Research’s new i90 compact loudspeakers are the entry-level products for its top-level ‘Signature’ range. As compact speakers, they don’t really plumb the depths of the audio spectrum, so VAF has come up with a 5.2-channel speaker system offering exceptional value — you buy five of the i90 speakers and you get two subwoofers included in the package.

Equipment The i90 speakers are properly termed ‘compact’. They are 200mm cubes (a little deeper at 212mm thanks to the removable grille), yet each still sports a 170mm bass/midrange driver and a 25mm tweeter. Fitting these onto the small baffle might seem difficult, but they are concentric drivers, overcoming the space issues. Indeed, the dome of the tweeter emerges from a hole in the centre of the larger driver, where a dust cap would normally reside. This means that dispersion is even in all directions, and completely eliminates the frequency response combing that can be produced when listeners sit off-centre from a conventional centre-channel speaker. Obviously, all are tonally matched since all are identical. Around the back each cube has a pair of what appear to be gold-plated binding posts. But they are in fact gold-plated spring clips. Don’t worry, they offer wide movement and large holes for the insertion of good cable, even for banana plugs. The enclosures are fully sealed. VAF Research rates their frequency response at 65-20,000Hz ±2.5dB and their impedance at six ohms. It does not indicate sensitivity, nor power handling. VAF kinda likes the idea of two subwoofers in order to smooth room excitation modes. So you get two of the MPB SW4 subwoofers. Each of these is fairly compact (between 340 and 400mm on their various dimensions), but still weighs a substantial 22 kilograms. Each carries a bass reflex loaded 254mm subwoofer and a 180 watt (continuous) amplifier. VAF puts their frequency response at 23 to 170Hz ±2.5dB, and says that they will reach as low as 19Hz.

Performance Where to put two subwoofers is an interesting question. We are strong supporters of corner

placement, since our measurements reveal that this gives the smoothest and most powerful performance in our room. However VAF suggests two separate physical locations, so we went with one in each of the front corners of our listening room. Both subwoofers received the same signal via a simple RCA splitter. The subwoofers were very quiet, with no transformer hum or hiss. The automatic calibration system of our AV receiver decided to put the crossover frequency between the speakers and the subwoofer at 110Hz for the front pair, and 160Hz for the rest. As VAF says, the lower the better (within the capabilities of the system, of course), so we reset the crossover to 100Hz all around and recalibrated based on this. We ran a range of movie and music through the speaker system, both stereo and surround, and found ourselves really quite impressed. We did find ourselves advancing the volume control on our receiver more than we normally do, and after a while determined that there were two quite different causes for this. First, the speakers themselves were a little less sensitive than the average. This is to be expected in acoustic suspension loudspeakers such as these; we measured their sensitivity to be between 85 and 86dB for 2.83V of 500-2000Hz pink noise. The other reason was that they were so very clean and free from distortion and coloration that they didn’t seem quite as loud as they truly were. Accurate performance often does that. For these reasons, we’d suggest that your AV receiver be capable of delivering decent output power levels, or you might find it imposing its own distortion. The imaging from these speakers — both stereo and surround — was very precise, and the ‘pan around the room’ spoken voice from our test disc was delivered with excellent smoothness during its progression, with no jumps and leaps. The tonal balance was also excellent, with fine merging of the i90 output with that from the subwoofers. There was an interesting dynamism

in their performance, too, that added a degree of liveliness to percussion in particular. The bass from the subwoofers was easily powerful enough to keep up with the i90s in terms of level, and it was also surprisingly extended. Running the opening of Titan A.E. we were surprised at a couple of points with a visceral response some thunderously deep stuff, suggesting that they really do plumb the near-20Hz region rather effectively.

Conclusion If you’re after high quality in a small package — and if your AV system is liberally equipped with high quality watts — you won’t go wrong with the VAF Research Signature i90/MPB SW4 system.

VAF Research Sig MPB SW4 comp nature i90/ dual-sub speakeact loudspeaker/ r package Price: $4995 ($999 each, 2 x SW4 included) Warranty: 10 years (3 years on subwoofer) • • •

High quality sound Plentiful and well extended bass Twin subwoofer flexibility to deal with difficult room issues

• •

Lowish sensitivity demands plenty of power Two subwoofers add setup complexity

Contact: VAF Research 1800 818 882 www.vaf.com.au

www.avhub.com.au

Transform your living room into a night at the cinema, with Mitsubishi Electric’s range of full HD home theatre projectors. With stylish black designs and employing cutting-edge HD components, the range of home theatre projectors from Mitsubishi Electric take home theatre enjoyment to new heights. Unique technology such as the “Diamond Black Iris” and “Original Contrast Control” allow these projectors to deliver amazing contrast levels, for the deepest

HC7000

blacks, brightest whites, and most stunningly vivid colours in between. Top of the line image processors, such as the Reon-VX with HQV™ (Hollywood Quality Video) technology, ensure image reproduction is second to none, even when displaying video from standard DVD players. Whisper quiet performance, and some of the longest lamp lives available in the home theatre market (up to an astonishing 5000 hours), mean you can always be assured of distraction-free performance for months on end.

HC6800

HC3900|HC4000 To see our complete range visit www.mitsubishielectric.com.au. Mitsubishi Electric Australia Pty Ltd. 348 Victoria Rd, Rydalmere NSW 2116

Tel: (02) 9684 7777

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

Sources Sources

Bryston BDP-1 digital player

Tested with BDA-1 DAC

SB sockets appear on a wide assortment of products these days. TVs, receivers, PVRs, media players — they all encourage you to whack a few files on a stick and enjoy convenient replay straight into the machine. For the Bryston BDP-1, however, this USB replay is its sole purpose, and for music files only. And for CD-quality and above (preferably above) only. It doesn’t even turn them into an analogue output, it just takes them from a stick (or USB hard drive) and sends them on to a digital output. So one might accuse the Bryston Digital Player of being a $3k+ box that does nothing much. But one would be wrong.

the usual methods of digital replay (computer to external DAC to amp) as “a very easy solution for someone who is looking for ease of use”, we might point out that this is even more simple in many ways. You can tricksy things up by plugging in an Ethernet cable, but don’t be expecting any networking nonsense like streaming from your NAS drive or PC or Mac. The network connection is purely to provide control of the BDP-1 from a web browser or Apple App (on iPhone, iPad or iPod touch). This is unusually proletarian for Bryston, but essential if you’re not to spend your life stooped over the player, since there’s no remote provided.

Equipment

Performance

Bryston builds things solid. On some of the company’s equipment, you get a 20-year guarantee. The BDP-1 matches the highly-acclaimed BDA-1 DAC in smooth styling, design and width, pairing up nicely on your rack. It has a pair of USB slots on the front, along with fairly conventional transport controls, while around the rear the output emerges from a high performance dedicated AESEBU balanced XLR output or BNC/COAX (SPDIF) connector — we used the latter, with an MIT digital cable on to Bryston’s BDA-1 DAC. And that’s kinda it. Given iPad control via mPod: that Bryston messy (bottom) unless you makes a point of properly folder your files (top) �� sneering at

Bryston includes a USB stick with a selection of 96kHz recordings, all wide-open jazzy stuff that presents a softly-brightly-etched vocal hanging in the sort of audiophile-empty acoustic that is only possible with this kind of noise floor; any hiss you hear here was there in the studio, baby. If you’re coming off a $500 or even $2000 DAC, let alone anything less, this is the kind of shift in presentation that creates hi-fi converts, igniting non-believers through powerful direct experience. It also confirms the validity of the source-first philosophy — you can hear the quality through even unsuitably lowerend electronics, while it positively sparkles through the superior hi-fi equipment and massive speakers to which it deserves attachment. We were entirely transported by its presentation here; it can do yer 24/96 jazz with inky-black realism. What of CD-quality fare, of the great lossless codecs of our time? It’s good for 16-bit and 24-bit files with sample rates from 44.1kHz through 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz and 176.4kHz to 192kHz, stored as FLAC, WAV, AIFF, Apple Lossless, WMP and even, gasp, MP3. So we loaded a big ol’ stick and plugged up all our favourite dem tracks. The more tracks on your stick, the longer the BDP-1 takes to prepare for play; this delay was repeated each time we powered it down and up (longer in fact, since it also initialises), so we’d suggest you either never power it down, or develop some patience. We also set up an iPod dock alongside, playing the same tracks from a nano as simultaneously as possible through the same amp and speakers, so we could switch between the two and hear the upgrade.

It was quite scary, very much a full scale and polish of every element. Brian Wilson’s vocal on Midnight’s Another Day moved from being shy and mumbled to quite cleanly-cut; the higher details were far more evident, and one string part was revealed as doubled up rather than a single instrument. That’s powerful clarification, and speaks to impeccable timing and edge resolution, the bedrock of imaging, detail and the reproduction of a captured three-dimensional acoustic. On we played, and on. And on. We absolutely adored it. We tried both the browser control system and the mPod app (on our iPad); they’re effective, if nowhere near as slick as iTunes Remote. And you must store tracks in artist and album folders, otherwise you see only the filenames (e.g. 03_midnightsanotherday.wav) in a big un-navigable heap. Any issues? Well, if we say ‘It doesn’t work with iTunes’, Bryston will presumably laugh in our face and say it isn’t supposed to. This is intended to be very much its own system. And that’s fine; entirely Bryston’s choice to ignore the world’s 500 million iTunes users if they wish, despite the percentage of them that would consider this reasonable expenditure for superb audiophile-quality playback. Just sayin’.

Conclusion The App interface lacks pizzazz. It doesn’t network or stream. You have to organise your files, carry them over to the player and plug them in like in the last century. But �� it sounds better than any digital replay system we’ve ever heard, to the extent of melting hearts and improving lives by injecting happiness. Can’t put a price on that. Bryston BDP-1 digital player Price: $3249 Warranty: Five years • •

Makes you high iPhone/iPad/browser control

•

No networking

Contact: Syntec international 1800 648 628 www.syntec.com.au

www.avhub.com.au

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Stream music from any Bl uet oot h® ena ble d sma rt pho ne or PC .

Connect to a home network and listen to internet radio.

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best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AMPS/RECEIvERS

Creek Audio

Evolution 5350 stereo amplifier f you are a stereo music lover who also wants a kick-arse home cinema audio system, you have a dilemma. It’s common for the two types of systems to be ‘tuned’ rather differently — pure and direct for stereo music, punchy and bass-boosted for action movie soundtracks. But Creek’s gorgeous Evolution 5350 integrated amp has an elegant solution.

power amps. This caters for people who are more than happy with their AV solution, but not happy with the stereo option. You can run an interconnect cable from your receiver’s front pre-amp output to the Creek’s AV Direct input, which becomes a standalone power amplifier for front speaker use in a 5.1 system, under volume control of the receiver). Other stereo music components can plug straight into the Creek’s other inputs to maintain the maximum purity of path.

Equipment

Performance

Mike Creek has a long history of conjuring astonishing performance from non-descript black boxes, as well as a reputation for designing superb but economical amplifier circuits both for his own companies and others. So we’re always up for a play with his latest, particularly when the Evolution 5350 is proudly the most powerful integrated amp ever to emerge from the doors of Creek Audio, rated at a power output of 120 watts per channel into eight ohms, and more than 200 watts into four ohms. And 4Ω is fine — the 5350 claims a special penchant for driving low-impedance speakers, with Creek employing specially-developed high-current power amp modules using high-current bipolar output transistors bolted to 18-fin heatsinks. Together with the sizeable power supply (using a 350W toroidal transformer) and the two massive heatsinks, this makes for one very heavy (10.5kg) amplifier that is able, according to Creek, to make the most of today’s high-resolution dynamic music. The cunning solution for AV systems is to include an ‘AV Direct’ input which bypasses the pre-amp stage entirely and goes straight to the

Visually the 5350 presents (initially) as a traditional enough integrated amplifier, with the usual 170mm rack width, unexceptional 90mm height, selector knob on the left and volume knob on the right. But that’s no ordinary selector knob — it doesn’t click between inputs, rather rotating continuously between high-current gold-plated relays to select between your five inputs (phono stage optional; there’s also a tape loop), with your selection indicated only by the legend appearing on the bluelit vacuum fluorescent display. All input and output sockets are gold-plated, and there are two sets of solid gold-plated binding posts. Keen to gain from current penchant for fourohm speakers, we paired the Evolution 5350 with T+A’s excellent Criterion 450 standmounters, specified as four ohm-ers with a sensitivity of 86dBSPL/W/m — a bit lower than average. Even straight from the box things were driving powerfully and enjoyably. George Thorogood’s It Wasn’t Me rollicked forth — we don’t remember ever hearing the centre-right guitar combining with the rollicking bass to sound quite so correctly dirty. Clarity of positioning and soundstaging

was a particular strength, making it easy to focus on individual performances within the musical whole. Any Led Zeppelin performance is, of course, ideal for this — on the remastered The Song Remains The Same we could lock onto Bonham’s massive drum sound, or Jonesy’s everchanging basslines, each part riveting on its own while combining to drive proudly and powerfully together. The amp obviously enjoyed this as well, rising to significant temperatures on a hot Australian day — we’d make sure you have this amp well-ventilated for optimum performance. More delicate fare was handled with the same requisite attention to detail; we fed the amp some digitised Peggy Lee via a Lehmannaudio DAC, and the lady sounded silky-smooth, with the edges of her pronunciation hanging in studio space. The more we played, the more we enjoyed it. We had some difficulty getting used to that rotary selector — there’s no resistance, and no end stop, so if you mistakenly flick it instead of the volume, you switch inputs all too easily. The press-buttons for speaker selection and mute, on the other hand, work admirably. And most people will use the remote control for all this anyway.

Conclusion This amp will drive average and above-average sensitivity speakers thrillingly, with plenty of power available, and plenty of heat produced! We loved its masterful presentation of all genres of audio, especially its ability to present individual elements while rocking out as a whole. And bonus marks for offering a hi-fi stereo soul within a surround set-up. Creek Audio Evol ution 5350 stereo amplifier Price: $2250 Warranty: Two years • • •

Great performance Works well in a surround system Top build quality

• •

Runs hot Rotary input selector

Contact: Epoz Australia 02 9450 0789 www.epoz.com.au

www.avhub.com.au

Setting a new benchmark in AV Receivers. Experience today.

Superior Audio With Yamaha’s 5th leg, a reinforced chassis, optimised power amplifier design and superior components, the AVENTAGE receivers will provide unparalelled audio performance.

RX-A3000

Superior Video Using the latest HQV® Vida Chipset and best in class cinematic processors, Yamaha’s AVENTAGE range ensures sharp, accurate video reproduction.

RX-A2000

Intuitive Control Intuitive control of your AVENTAGE receiver is achieved through integrated touch-screen controllers, or via the built-in web browser control through an iPad or iPhone.

RX-A1000

4 YEA EAR WARR RANT TY

For more information on Yamaha products visit www.yamahamusic.com.au/av www.yamahamusic.com.au/blog

facebook.com.au/yamahaAVau

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AMPS/RECEIvERS

Denon AVR-1911 AV receiver

ith its AVR-1911 AV receiver, Denon appears to be leading the way in moving from older forms of connection to HDMI dominance. This is an excellent way of saving money — or, rather, redirecting money from that which isn’t needed to that which is.

Equipment You can most obviously tell this from its back panel, which is unusually sparsely populated. Aside from the speaker terminals, it’s dominated by the HDMI connections. These are version 1.4 (though be wary; 1.4 is coming in a variety of partial implementations) and here support both Blu-ray 3D and HDMI’s new Audio Return Channel. With the HDMI all in place, there is only one set of component video connections. In former days, and until very recently at this price level, you would need at least two sets — one set in, one set out. But not here. Instead the receiver converts the component video signals to HDMI and outputs them that way. The same for S-Video.

We love Denon’s $1099 receiver — it makes sensible decisions to provide outstanding abilities and impressive performance at the price. www.avhub.com.au

There is a composite video output, something that may never be used by anyone for actually watching stuff, but is a good old reliable standby, for debugging and menu setting if nothing else. Such economy of socketry strikes us as eminently sensible if the saving on inputs allows strong performance elsewhere. And that seems to be the case, with the seven power amplifiers each rated at 90W across the full audio bandwidth into eight ohms at just 0.08% THD — a proper way to quote power. This Denon doesn’t have the 6/8 ohms switch used by the Yamaha, so you would expect more power to be available for lower impedance loudspeakers. But it doesn’t give official permission to use four-ohm speakers for the front stereo pair either, so be cautious with your speaker selection. And it doesn’t have 7.1-channel preamplifier outputs (nor inputs), so no upgrading is possible; you are stuck with the available power output of the receiver. To drive those seven channels, the receiver has the usual full set of Dolby and DTS decoders, including all those required for Blu-ray. It also offers Dolby Pro Logic IIz with its two front height channels, but in exchange you have to abandon the surround back channels. The DSD one-bit audio stream from Super Audio CDs isn’t accepted by the receiver, but players capable of delivering that are also capable of decoding the signal themselves to PCM, which the receiver does indeed accept. Despite the paucity of connections on the rear panel, the receiver actually does support a second

zone, though only by re-assigning the surround back amplifiers to perform this task. Since the same speaker binding posts must be used, this is pretty much a long-term decision, unless you don’t mind changing speaker cable connections on a regular basis. A surprise on the front panel was the inclusion of a USB socket. This turns out to be suitable for playing back content from an iPod or iPhone, and also from mass USB storage. The remote is cleanly laid out and has hundreds of preprogrammed codes to allow it to be used with other equipment. In fact, judging by the keys on the remote for functions which are not implemented on the receiver, it appears to be shared with a higher model.

Performance The auto set-up procedure uses the Audyssey MultEQ system. We run across many of these during the course of reviews, but every time the implementation seems to be subtly different. This time around there was no obvious difference in the test tones or the menu structure, but the results were significantly altered: Audyssey has long had a penchant for declaring our 70kg 1.5-metre front stereo speakers to be ‘Small’, and our centre channel (competent though it is, it isn’t designed for super deep bass) as ‘Large’. This one correctly reversed that (although it did say that the now ‘Small’ centre-channel speaker would be crossed over to the subwoofer at 40Hz). The usual weakness of many of these systems remains — you can’t recalibrate while making your own decisions on such matters as speaker sizes and crossovers. We needed to protect my speakers, so once we’d pushed the crossover of the centre channel up to 80Hz, there was no guarantee that the EQ would be quite as effective. (Some might argue that few discs have much bass content in the centre channel, so why bother. But we have at least one

AMPS/ RECEIvERS

of them: the DVD Audio version of Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery, which has gobs of bass in the centre channel, enough to bottom out the bass driver if the crossover is too low.) Post calibration, the system sounded lovely. Once again we cheated on speaker impedance and used our 4Ω front speakers (6Ω for the rest), and it seemed to cope with the load admirably. No output protection circuitry was tripped, although we didn’t push the unit quite to the extremes we do with higher priced receivers. We’d still recommend higher-than-average sensitivity loudspeakers of a sensible six ohms or more. The on-screen display was pretty basic, and text-based. It didn’t overlay whatever video was playing, but replaced it. According to the manual the receiver was supposed to display volume on the screen and the input selection when these were changed. Indeed, there was even a setting in one of the menus for whether this display was to be on the bottom or top of the screen, or switched off. It simply would not display for us, at least when we were using external HDMI inputs with 576i and 1080i and 1080p/24 signals. It only worked when we were using a source for which the receiver itself manufactured the display picture, such as the USB, iPod or AM/FM tuner. You can use the front USB socket for connecting an iPod with a standard iPod USB cable. The receiver displays the menu lists of the iPod so you can control everything using the receiver remote. Navigating long lists is assisted a bit by the ability to switch to ‘Page’ mode, which jumps a screen of items at a time. In addition to iPhone/iPod support, you can plug a USB memory device into the front-panel USB socket and play back music files. MP3, and standard (i.e. lossy) WMA and AAC formats are

supported. It’s unfortunate that WAV or some other lossless format isn’t supported, since a lowcost hard-disk drive could transform the unit into a huge, high-quality jukebox. After all, at least seven PCM decoders are built into the receiver! The video processing on this receiver is a bit strange when it comes to 50Hz material. Strange in the sense that with most material it is simply brilliant, while with other material it is rather inadequate. The brilliance comes with Australian DVDs. If you feed these into the unit via HDMI at 576i, the progressive scan conversion is OK, manfully trying to pick whether or not the content is video or film sourced, and mostly getting it right — except on our tricky test film clips (which are deliberately ambiguous). But if you dig down in the set-up menu (Input Setup, Video, ‘Progre.Mode’) you can choose between ‘Auto’, ‘Video1’ and ‘Video2’. Running DVD clips through these three different states revealed that while ‘Auto’ switches automatically between film mode and motion-adaptive videomode deinterlacing as best it can, ‘Video1’ forces video mode and ‘Video2’ forces film mode. Choose ‘Video2’ and you will get brilliant playback on the great majority of Australian DVDs when delivered to this receiver at 576i. The inadequacy comes with some Australian Blu-ray discs and, by extension, with some Australian HDTV. With 1080i/50 signals there was no difference at all between the three ‘Progre. Mode’ settings, and on film-sourced content this led to artefacts being generated. Indeed, it looked like the unit was stuck in high quality but nonetheless often inappropriate motion adaptive video mode through all this content. To get around this you could use a Blu-ray player with the highest quality progressive scan conversion, or

switch off the HDMI video processing altogether and allow the 1080i signal to go through to your display, which may do a better job of it.

Conclusion That last issue aside, we love Denon’s $1099 receiver — it makes sensible decisions to provide outstanding abilites and impressive performance at the price. So much, indeed, that Sound+Image just honoured it with its award for AV Receiver of the Year under $2000.

Denon AVR-1911 AV receiver Price: $1099 Warranty: Three years Quoted power: 7 x 90W into 8 ohms @ 0.08% THD, 20-20,000Hz I/O: 4 HDMI in, 1 HDMI out, 3 x composite in, 1 composite out, 1 S-Video in, 2 x digital inputs (optical/electrical), 1 x iPod Dock control, calibration microphone input, headphone out Multiroom: Zone 2: assignable amplifiers only HDMI: 1.4 with 3D support and Audio Return Channel Dimensions (whd): 434 x 171 x 381mm Weight: 10.2kg • • •

Good sound when auto calibrated Superb 576i/50 progressive scan conversion S-Video support

• •

Can’t upgrade the power amps Issues with 1080i/50 progressive scan conversion Can’t force size/crossover on auto calibration

•

Contact: Audio Products Group 1300 134 400 www.audioproducts.com.au

www.avhub.com.au

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best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

Krix Tektonix subwoofer

rix’s new Tektonix is fundamentally a Seismix 3 Mk5 upgraded with a brand-new 450-watt Class-D amplifier module. However, on the user-control side, it sports the superb new user digital interface that debuted on the company’s award-winning Volcanix. This module (and the new, higherpowered amp) make the Tektonix so radically different to the Seismix 3 Mk5 that Krix has opted to keep both subs in its range.

Equipment The Tektonix’s 450-watt Class-D amplifier (which Krix calls a Krix Digital Switching Amplifier or ‘KDSA’ module) gives this sub some serious grunt. (Indeed it’s exactly the same module that’s used in the higher-priced Volcanix.) It has extremely low power consumption, and generates no heat, so you’ll never have to worry about pets or children coming into contact with hot external heatsinks… indeed the Tektonix runs so cool it has no external heatsinking at all! To handle the power of the new KDSA module, the Tektonix sports a 275mm front-firing cone driver which has a doped paper pulp cone and a rubber roll surround. The cone is driven by a 50mm-diameter copper voice-coil wound around a Kapton former and a large magnet assembly with a central rear vent. Almost immediately adjacent to the cone is the bass reflex port. Also on the front panel (where it’s very easy to get at) of the Tektonix is Krix’s new operating control, a small panel that sports three buttons (a ‘Menu’ rocker-switch, and ‘+’ and ‘–’ pushbuttons) along with a two-line blue-coloured LCD display. Pressing one side or the other of the ‘Menu’ rocker cycles through the many control options that are fitted to the Tektonix and that can be adjusted by the owner. These are: Volume; Low Pass (Filter Frequency); High Pass Filter Q; Phase (0 or 180°); Power Mode; Auto Sensitivity, Display Contrast, Restore Defaults and Menu Lock. The ‘High Pass Filter Q’ option doesn’t control the frequency of the built-in 20Hz filter. This is fixed. What it controls is the ‘Q’ of this filter, which is adjustable between 0.5 and 1.0. The idea is to limit cone excursion below 20Hz to protect the cone—pretty important when you’re driving it with an amplifier rated at 450-watts! Almost all subwoofer manufacturers have such filters, but few tell you they exist, and even fewer give you any control over it! RRPs for the Tektonix start at $1645 (for a woodgrain vinyl finish) but if you pay a little more

you’ll get a real timber veneer, or a little more again for a high-gloss paint finish (your choice of colour). The Tektonix is quite small—around the size of a standard plastic milk crate, or, to be precise, it’s 450mm high (including feet), 360mm wide and 410mm deep, which gives an internal volume of around 43 litres. It weighs 18kg.

Performance There are several advantages of providing digital control over a subwoofer, not the least of which is that you can very accurately set the various operating parameters. This is important because the best settings for listening to music will rarely be the same you’d use when watching a movie (unless it is a musical!), so being able to set the volume to an accuracy level of just a single dB (the volume is adjustable from –50dB to 00dB), and the low pass filter with an accuracy of 5Hz (anywhere from 50Hz up to 195Hz) will make a huge difference to your listening experience. We do think a couple of preset memories might have been handy though… In all our sessions with the Krix Tektonix it delivered tight, solid bass at all times, and it was bass that stayed tuneful at all volume levels, from ‘barely audible’ to ‘deafen the neighbours’. Despite the power on tap we couldn’t overdrive the woofer cone, so Krix obviously has some smart protection inside, which means reliable long-term performance. When partnered with very small front-main speakers, we turned the crossover right up to 195Hz and were well-pleased with the

integration — the Tektonix’s stiff woofer is easily capable of stretching up into the higher octaves while still retaining excellent musicality. Likewise, with the LP filter wound right back to 50Hz when partnered with large floor-standers, the Tektonix extended the low frequencies by about an octaveand-a-half to give a solid foundation that worked with all kinds of music… and brought a new level of realism to home cinema.

Conclusion Krix has introduced high-tech to the ‘small’ subwoofer category. You’re paying a small premium for this high-tech, but who can argue with that… especially when the Tektonix performs so well?

Krix Tektonix subwoofer Price: $1645 Warranty: Five years • • •

Excellent deep bass Compact size Marvellous user interface

• • •

No remote control Lacks preset settings No AV/Music modes

Contact: Krix Loudspeakers 08 8384 3433 www.krix.com.au

www.avhub.com.au

Hearing is believing... Soul moving sound from really tiny speakers has always been a dream. Laws of physics mean to sound really good, speakers have always had to be much bigger than we’d really like. But today everything changes... A true object of desire, Minx is a speaker system of staggeringly small proportions with a simple mission; to revolutionise the way you experience music, movies and TV.

Your Minx audition awaits... You need to hear Minx for yourself to understand how amazing it sounds! Visit a Cambridge Audio dealer for a demonstration and you could also win an amazing Minx system or exclusive Minx merchandise in our amazing giveaway. Visit www.synergyaudio.com to find your nearest Cambridge Audio specialist Cambridge Audio Minx is a trademark of Cambridge Audio.

“They’re smaller, and sound infinitely better than their famous rivals...”

“To say we were impressed is a gross understatement.”

Your music + our passion

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

Sources

Strong SRT 5495A

switched on, you can invoke the timeshift by pressing the pause key on the remote. Reception reliability was excellent, as was the reliability of the recording timers. These can be manually programmed or by selection from the EPG. You can set record padding periods for all recordings to ensure that the unit doesn’t fail to capture the end of a show. A maximum of 15 minutes of padding is provided. One useful enhancement would be some work on the EPG, which doesn’t have a display format showing programs for multiple stations, nor jump keys for advancing through the program list to several days in the future. During playback you can fast forward or rewind at up to 32x speed. But there are also jump keys and you can bring up a progress bar and add bookmarks. These persist through turn-off/turn-on cycles, and so can be quite useful. There is also an editing facility, but this doesn’t actually remove the deleted parts of the video, so it releases no space on the hard disk. Not that we think space is a problem. If you think the 500GB might not be enough for you, well just plug a bigger USB hard drive into the unit and set it as the recording drive. The unit also extends beyond the usual limitation of two recordings at a time. It will record three different programs at once, so long as two of them are from channels on the same station. For example, you can record something on Nine, on 2 and on 24 at the same time. And while that’s happening, you can watch something else on a channel associated with Nine, such as GO! or GEM! Or you can play back a different recording. We recorded a couple of clips directly from a DVD player using both the composite video and the component video inputs. It turned out that the latter supported only standard definition content: either 480i or 576i. The picture quality delivered via composite was mediocre, due to the limitations of that format. But our test clip with component video was rendered with very good accuracy (as MPEG2). One killer feature of this unit is something that shouldn’t be regarded as a feature at all, but we do because it is so rare: the unit offers good picture quality from standard-definition stations over its HDMI output. For progressive scan conversion,

HD personal video recorder

he Strong SRT 5495A is the company’s current premium highdefinition personal video recorder, offering a number of higher-end features and a large hard-drive. Despite this, it is still remarkably affordable.

Equipment For slightly under $500 the Strong SRT 5495A gives two high-definition digital TV tuners and a 500GB hard-disk drive for recording. That is enough space to record over 70 hours of the most bit-hungry HD station (One HD), and 200 to 250 hours of the various SD stations. The front panel has a fairly-detailed LED front-panel display, showing station number and name, along with various status markers. Of course it offers the usual outputs, including HDMI and component video. There are also composite and S-Video. The aerial is fed by two inputs. Normally you’d leave the supplied jumper in place from one of the aerial outputs to the second input, but this arrangement gives enough flexibility to allow you to use two separate antennas if necessary. It also has the excellent bonus of external inputs — component video, composite video and stereo audio — with built-in analogue-to-digital video and audio converters. This allows you to use the unit as a recorder for, say, your Foxtel box, or digitise old recordings from a VCR. You can even program timer recordings for the external inputs.

Performance Setting up the unit was pretty straightforward using the set-up wizard. The unit’s station scan was effective, getting everything in our area... and beyond. By default the automatic time-shift facility wasn’t switched on, so we’d recommend that you go back into the menu system and make sure that is on. That way the unit will buffer up to the last couple of hours of the station you are currently watching, so you can rewind if you like. If it isn’t

otherwise known as deinterlacing, the unit employs a decent motion adaptive processor, with none of the horrible repeated line artefacts often delivered by HD boxes when receiving SD stations. Indeed, we ended up setting the output to 1080p and just leaving it be. The results were pretty respectable most of the time. This PVR can also be used to transfer content between the unit and a computer on your network. If you’re brave! The process is outlined in the manual, and uses a program on your Windows computer that turns a specified folder into a ‘drive’ accessible to the Strong unit. Then you need to key in the IP address of your computer to the Strong (better fix that IP address,then) to add your computer to the list of devices on the left side of the screen. Then you can copy recordings across, though they are listed here not by name but by the channel, time and date, with *.trp files inside the folder (sometimes several, since the unit uses a maximum of 2GB per file). This isn’t actually any more difficult than file transfer from any other settop box; it just seems a little counter intuitive. The unit also supports display of JPEG photos and playback of MP3 music from USB devices, or from an SD card inserted into the unit. It also plays video, showing our MPEG and AVI clips, but not recognising a DivX one.

Conclusion The Strong SRT 5495A is a solid, flexible twintuner HD PVR that is such excellent value for money that Sound+Image has made it PVR of the Year. Perhaps its menus could be prettier and some functions a little easier, but given what you get for the dollars, who can complain? Strong SRT 5495 A HD personal vid eo recorder Price: $499 Warranty: 12 months • • •

Good picture quality, including with SDTV Very good value for money Network/IceTV support

• •

EPG a bit limited Using some functions a little complicated

Contact: Strong Technologies Pty Ltd 03 8795 7990 www.strong.com.au

www.avhub.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

Systems & Single product solutions

Sangean DPR-17 digital radio with SD card

igital radio is well past its first year on the air — how’s it going? Pretty well, it seems, advancing quietly. Surveys show that most urban Australians are aware they can receive their local radio via DAB+ transmission; fewer people are now confusing it with internet radio; and many can even identify the key advantages of digital radio — hiss-free digital reception, former AM stations sounding clean and bright, extra channels above those available on FM and AM. Many say they’re planning to buy into DAB+ next time they purchase a radio. There was one other selling point much mentioned around the original launch of digital radio — the ability to pause and rewind live radio. Yet we haven’t seen much of that; very few models have included the ability. But Sangean’s DPR-17 is one that does.

Equipment The number of DAB+ radio brands on the market has mushroomed far beyond the few companies that put great efforts into the original launch, one of which was Sangean. Sangean is the world’s largest and longest-established specialist manufacturer of digital and analogue radios, with major offices in Taiwan, the US and the Netherlands. Its designs are, by and large, modern ones — there’s none of the clash of retro styling with modern technology that has become common, nor do they get carried away with wild extravagance. The range is stylish, clean and, in our experience, excellent in terms of performance. Take the DPR-17. It’s a good-size mains or battery-powered design, 22cm wide and 13.5cm high, a fairly slim 5cm deep, with nice flared edges. It’s not advertised as being splashproof,

but it seems at least robust in that regard — it’s designed to be portable, the front three-inch speaker is sealed, and there are a few key bits of practical sorbothane rubber, on the feet, the lovely chunky tuning dial on the right-hand side, and a cover on the top over the SD card slot. SD card slot? Yep, this is the big bonus on the DPR-17. Pop an SD card into the top slot and you can not only pause and rewind live radio stations, you can also use the radio to play back files you’ve loaded onto the card.

Performance You could easily use the DPR-17 solely on mains power — it’s a great design for kitchen or study, or bedroom, though it lacks alarms. For portable use it also takes four ‘D’ (R20) batteries, either alkalines or, handily, rechargeables. (The DPR-17 doesn’t come with any, so a set of rechargeables is an additional investment, but you don’t need a charger unit or a spare set, because the DPR-17 includes its own rapid recharge system.) Anyone fearing DAB+ and digital radio might be technically complicated to set up should try this radio. As soon as you power it up it launches into a search for your local DAB+ broadcasts, and within seconds it’s delivering a solid portable sound; nothing much down low, given the single three-inch fullrange speaker, but things have been well-balanced towards always a friendly radio sound, never peaky or shrieky. The maximum volume (30 on its digital scale) is not particularly high, as if Sangean’s engineers prefer to keep it in the safe zone to avoid abuse or unpleasant distortion creeping in; we have no argument with that. The volume level is controlled by a pair of pleasingly obvious and large press-buttons on the radio’s right.

You don’t ‘tune’ digital radios like ye olde analogue ones; you just scroll through the list of stations the Sangean stored at start-up, using the rubber knob on the right — this has a ‘press’ function to select. The same rubber button tunes through FM conventionally, and a bit slowly — it took 55 seconds and the risk of RSI to get from one end of the FM band to the other. Thank heavens for the presets — not exactly profligate at five apiece for DAB+ and FM, but enough for your main favourites. The display read-out is how all digital radios should be. Some try to cram in multiple lines of information, because digital radio can provide so much of it — the station name, the names of songs, signal strength, all manner of arcane multiplex and transmission data. Sangean correctly chooses clarity — two lines each a nicely visible centimetre high, backlit in the company’s trademark orange, the top line showing DAB or FM, the second line showing the station name. Then you can use the ‘Advanced Info’ button to shuttle through everything else. (To be honest, you hardly need to know you’re on DAB all the time; it would be even better with station name on top and your choice of info below.) Holding the same button brings another set of menus, which allows you to change the order in which stations are displayed, to rescan for new stations, and many more one-off functions. And that would be about it, except for that SD card slot on the top. This adds an extra level of functionality to this radio. Firstly you can record stuff by pressing and holding the tuning knob. DAB and FM recordings are stored in separate folders on the SD card, the FM ones as WAV files (with an associated .rds file, remarkably), the DAB+ ones as .m4a AAC files. These can play back on the Sangean or on a computer. You can also go the other way, loading files onto an SD card from computer and playing them on the Sangean. Warning — they play notably louder than either radio source! We tried our test pile of formats — it ducked on Apple Lossless and FLAC formats, but all manner of MP3, AAC, WMA and WAV all worked fine,

Conclusion The DPR-17 does everything right — good reception, agreeable sound, fabulous ergonomics, and all the promise of digital radio fulfilled, including pause and record.

Sangean DPR-17 + portable digital radio Price: $269 Warranty: one year • • •

Well-designed digital radio Pause, rewind, record or play with SD card Mains or battery use; includes charger

•

Nothing

Contact: Canohm 1800 636 026 www.sangean.com.au

www.avhub.com.au

Now also available in black.

Exceptional quality. No Exceptions. Rotel’s new 15 Series home theatre components revel in the details. From the softest whisperings of an intimate love scene, to the explosive pyrotechnics of an action movie, it is all about delivering an exceptional experience through attention to detail. At Rotel, we know a little about details. We have been researching, designing, and manufacturing high performance audio/video components for nearly 50 years. Our meticulous attention to what truly matters has won us critical acclaim and countless die-hard Rotel fans around the globe. We believe our new 15 Series is simply the best yet, but you be the judge. Hear them at your local dealer. www.rotel.com

International Dynamics Australia • 1800 456 393

International Dynamics New Zealand • 0800 456 393

www.internationaldynamics.com.au

www.internationaldynamics.co.nz

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

Whatmough P33i Signature Series stereo loudspeakers

hatmough’s original P33 loudspeaker won a Sound & Image Magazine award for ‘Best Loudspeaker’ when it was released and went on to become one of the best-selling models in Whatmough’s range. So the announcement of a new, improved Signature version was always going to create interest. And when we say ‘improved’, it’s so improved that there’s only one component in the P33i that was in the original P33, and that’s the ScanSpeak ring radiator tweeter. Everything else is different: the cabinet, the bass drivers, the midrange driver… even the capacitors in the crossover network have been upgraded.

Equipment Rather than do some kind of ‘new vs. old’ comparison in this review we decided to treat the P33i as if it were an entirely new speaker so, if you’re interested in the origins of the design, search out the original P33 review [www.avhub.com.au.] Before reading on, be warned that the P33i is not a small speaker. It stands 1.2 metres high. Even its other dimensions are not modest: 260mm wide and 430mm deep. Obviously, it’s also heavy: 45kg! It comes in two finishes: real wood (Bubinga) or a metallic duco (graphite). Our review samples were graphite, and looked absolutely superb. Indeed, thanks to the substantial height, the multiple curves and the graphite finish, when they’re positioned in a room, the speakers end up looking more like modern sculptures than they do loudspeakers. Although in our picture you can probably see four drivers on the front panel, including the tweeter, the P33i is a true three-way design, with two 180mm long-throw bass drivers operating together to deliver the bass, a single 120mm diameter driver for the midrange driver, and a 35mm dual concentric ring radiator tweeter. To ensure that the voicing is maintained across the range, all three cone drivers use cones made from the same cellulose fibre. The ring radiator tweeter is made in Denmark by ScanSpeak especially for Whatmough, and is exactly the same one Whatmough uses in its flagship Paragon loudspeakers. Around the back of the P33i you’ll find something surprising: not one set of speaker terminals, or even two sets, but THREE. Not only is the P33i a three-way design, you can also amplify each section individually if you like

(a tri-amped system). The terminals are not ordinary either; they’re made from rhodium-plated copper, which is a much better conductor than the brass used in most speaker terminals. And once the audio signal is inside the speakers, it’s delivered to the drivers not by ordinary wire, but by Cardas Litz cables.

Performance There is a tendency for speaker designers who build speakers with large cabinets to run the bass a little ‘hot’—in other words they make the bass regions a little louder than they should really be—to emphasise to buyers that they’re getting ‘more bass’ with a larger speaker. That isn’t the case with the P33i. Instead, the bass is exactly where it should be: not forward, not recessed, yet playing its full part in the music-making. In our listening sessions, we found that this ideal balance made it even easier to fully appreciate the superb midrange delivery of these Whatmough Signature models. Their articulation is so precise that even the slurriest of vocals is made more audible, while those vocalists who make the effort at correct pronunciation are rewarded with a reproduction that is amazing to hear. Listen to Cleo Laine, for example, and you can visualise the way she’s shaping her lips and exactly where she’s placing her tongue to get such perfect ‘t’ and ‘s’ sounds. Yet for all this midrange precision and articulation there is never any sense of the sound being clinical—it’s always warm and completely natural. These same highly-desirable characteristics are also in evidence at high frequencies, thanks to that ring radiator, which takes performance ‘way higher than the human ear can appreciate, and with incredible fidelity. But the toughest test for any speaker is whether it can reproduce grand piano across a range of different volume levels, and the P33i performed miracles reproducing the Carl Rönisch and Steinway grands that Larry Sitsky plays on his disc ‘Russian Rarities’ (Move MD3328) and also dramatically highlights the tonal differences between the two instruments.

Conclusion Whatmough Monitors has combed the world for the finest individual components, from speaker wire through to drivers, and then built the P33i Signatures in its Australian factory under the personal supervision of the designer, Colin Whatmough. These are not just superb loudspeakers: they also represent outstanding value for money. Audition them up against imports at two or three times the price and you’ll instantly hear why.

Whatmough P33i Signature Series Stereo lo udspeakers Price: $9500 Warranty: Five years • • •

Superbly extended highs Super-flat midrange Sculptural appearance

•

Cabinet size

Contact: Whatmough Monitors 03 9764 2111 www.whatmough.com

www.avhub.com.au

IMAGINATIVE SIGHT & SOUND

BRING EVERYTHING YOU LOVE TOGETHER.

A fond memory to be re-lived, a moment captured in a single frame, the sound track to your life or your favourite movie in stunning 3D can all be a touch of a button away with the range of digital network receivers from Onkyo. To bring all the elements of your life together for you to enjoy visit ambertech.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

TVs/displays

Product Focus

Loewe

Individual Series

f you haven’t yet caught up with Loewe’s range of slimline televisions, be prepared to be wowed. The German premium brand was originally slow to make the shift to flatpanel screens, perhaps aware that its CRT TVs were almost unanimously regarded as the best in the world. From a slow start, however, Loewe is now bringing to market flat-panel designs as beautiful in both style and performance as anything it ever produced in the days of the tube.

Individual series Take the Individual series. The exterior of this range of slimline TVs was created by Stuttgart design firm Phoenix Design, using a minimalist approach in anodised aluminium, available in black, silver, or high-gloss white — they can even be tailored to your own personal taste with interchangeable insets from various materials. There are two variations in the design, firstly the ‘Selection’ with a high-gloss front frame, and secondly the ‘Compose’, which has a glass contrast filter screen. There’s also a wide variety of floor stands, wall-mounting options and elegant racks — Loewe claims more than a million combination options covering specifications, design and set-up! The point of all this variety is that, together with your dealer, you can actually create the ideal customised solution for your living space, hence the name of the series, ‘Individual’.

The tech There’s nothing minimalist about the technology inside, however (Loewe calls them “more than just a television”). The individual models range from 32-inch up to 55-inch, all with LED-edgelit LCD panels, the best technology for combining slimness with image performance from LCD, while also reducing energy use — as with most German companies, Loewe is deeply dedicated to eco-friendliness! Compose models of 40-inches and above have 400Hz operation for even greater precision of movement, and intelligent backlight control for improved contrast and blacks. Beyond the panel performance, Loewe is leading the market in terms of connectivity, with what it calls “Media+”. As standard with the Compose series and optional on the Selection sets, there’s wireless networking that allows access to computers in the home, and entertainment from beyond! The Loewe MediaHome section streams images, music and videos from home collections

(you can also plug stuff into the USB socket), while MediaNet accesses internet-based content. This varies from country to country, but includes internet radio and various web TV offerings. Online connection also allows Loewe to push out firmware updates that potentially bring new functions and future-proof owners against changes in content and standards. Sound is often poor on slimline TVs, because there’s little room for decent-sized speakers. Loewe has upped the ante by designing a high quality stereo speaker system that attaches below the screen (see picture), again with options that can be configured according to preferences. You can replace the usual sound module with the Sound Projector, a slim one-box solution capable of delivering up to 7.1-channels of virtual surround sound, or upgrade to the Individual Stand Speaker SL – an electrostatic speaker system that aims to deliver audiophile sound quality. Paired with an active subwoofer to handle the low frequencies,

this is an extraordinary system to be offered as part of a television package.

Pricing Prices for Loewe’s premium televisions range from $4499 up to $9999, according to which of the million-plus configuration options you select! As always, we recommend the services of a specialist dealer so you can audition the Individual range before purchase, and get expert advice on which options will suit you best. Loewe individua l Series LED-edgelit tele visions Price: $4499 to $9999 Warranty: Three years (five years with online registration) Contact: Audio Products Group 02 9669 3477 www.loewe-au.com

www.avhub.com.au

Grande Utopia EM

Since 1979, Focal has excelled as one of the world leaders of high-end acoustic loudspeaker design. 30 years fighting for our values, to keep our production in France and to stand up for the idea of luxury “a la Francaise”. Innovation, tradition - to be the world’s best in everything we create for your pleasure. That is our philosophy: “The Spirit of Sound”

Focal® is distributed by Audio Marketing - T. 02 9882 3877 - F. 02 9882 3944 - E. info@audiomarketing.com.au - www.audiomarketing.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AV PROJECTORS

Mitsubishi HC4000 AV projector

hile most of the Mitsubishi projectors that we have reviewed here at Best Buys in recent years have been LCD models, just six months ago in our last issue we looked at a DLP one, the Mitsubishi HC3900. And we suggested that perhaps purchasers would do better to stick with the company’s LCD models. So now we have the HC4000, a newer DLP model. And now we change our advice because in all the important ways it is profound improvement on the last year’s HC3900.

Equipment The new model delivers far better blacks and richer colours, it is quieter in operation, it has almost none of the rainbow effects that afflicted the older projector, and it is very much lower in cost. In many other ways that don’t matter much it is very similar: the same compact dimensions (345×129×270mm whd) and weight (3.6 kg). In reviewing that older projector we hypothesised that it used the DarkChip3 digital micromirror device. We we were wrong; it actually used the DarkChip2, however, we can confirm that this projector most definitely uses the 16.5mm version of the DarkChip3, which offers superior performance on a number of fronts, including black levels and light transmission efficiencies thanks to reduced mirror border gaps. The projector uses a 10-bit video processor to provide plenty of level graduations both in grey and the different colours. It supports 1080p/24 signals, of course, and all the other usual kinds, supplied to its HDMI input. It does not have a frame interpolation motion smoothing system. The projector also has component video, S-Video, composite video and D-SUB15 computer video inputs. One feature unusual on such a low-cost projector is an aspect ratio designed to support anamorphic lenses, which allow a 2.35:1 film to be vertically expanded so the active parts of the picture make use of the entire vertical resolution of the projector (the lens stretches the picture sideways to restore the correct aspect ratio).

Performance Setting up the projector was a slightly fiddly affair simply because of the lack of a lens-shift feature, so you should measure carefully before installation. The projector does include keystone correction, but this should always be avoided; it reduces projector resolution. The �� 1.5:1 zoom �� range was decent enough, requiring for a 100-inch (254cm) screen a projector distance of 3.1 to 4.6 metres.

We have recently used a three LCD projector which, unfortunately, had received bit of a battering, and consequently suffered a little in convergence. The main affect of this in everyday use was that greys tended to be slightly different in colour depending where on the screen they appeared. The single panel of this projector was incapable of anything but perfect convergence. Once we’d focused the lens, even single-pixel white dots at the edges of the display showed as wellfocused white dots, without coloured shadows. All producers of AV equipment are, of course, full of engineers; otherwise they would likely have no products at all to sell, and certainly no worthwhile ones. But companies vary in their level of dominance by marketing types. In Mitsubishi’s case, we suspect, the marketing department is one elderly gentleman parked well out of the way in a rarely visited corner of the company headquarters. How else to explain the extraordinary honesty of the contrast ratio specification? Mitsubishi claims 3600:1. Furthermore, its brochure boasts that it does not employ a dynamic iris, so there is no separate ‘dynamic’ contrast ratio specification. Now 3600:1 doesn’t look very good when various display technologies almost routinely give figures of 100,000:1, 1,000,000:1, even 5,000,000:1. Or, we should say, doesn’t look very good on paper. On the screen it is a different matter. We ran the projector exclusively in the lamp-life-extending low mode, and the black levels were really quite impressive. Not as low as we have ever seen, but perfectly good enough to allow excellent detail in low-light scenes, and with almost no sense of ‘dark grey’ rather than ‘black’. Not once did we ever feel that there was any deficiency in the blacks. This then provided an excellent underpinning for a rich colour performance. One clear weakness was the progressive-scan conversion. With both 576i/50 DVD content fed to the projector in its original format, and 1080i/50 content from Blu-ray, it was clear that the ‘Video’ setting implemented decent motion adaptive video style processing, but that both ‘Auto’ and ‘Film’ were reluctant to adopt the simple weave form deinterlacing that gives the best results with progressive content. On 567i/50 from DVD it seemed, if anything, worse. On a test clip we use from the movie eXistenZ, there were clear artefacts from inappropriate deinterlacing, including jaggies on moving diagonals.

The lesson is simple: use a high-quality Blu-ray player which does a good job of progressive-scan conversion or, even better, an AV receiver with top-notch video processing, because this will also care for content from digital TV, because the display of 1080p/24 and 1080p/50 material was routinely excellent. There was a little light leakage from both sides of the unit, where there were substantial vents. We couldn’t see the lamp directly, of course, but there were internal surfaces visible which were themselves seemingly directly illuminated by the lamp. In our testing room, which is really very dark during our critical watching, there was no visible splash from this light onto our screen. But if you are concerned, in a permanent installation a couple of dark panels either side of the projector should eliminate any stray light. Leave sufficient space for air flow. The fan noise levels were quite low, especially run (as most would be wise to do) in the low lamp mode.

Conclusion Well, we ended up being quite surprised. As far as we’re concerned, the Mitsubishi HC4000 AV projector is a compact unit capable of producing very high quality picture at a very reasonable price. You pay a small price in terms of it requiring considered setup, since it lacks lens shift, but given the brightness and the excellent accuracy of the picture this projector provides, that strikes us as a very small price to pay.

Mitsubishi HC40 00 AV projector Price: $3299 Warranty: Three years (Lamp: the first of 500 hours of use or twelve months of ownership) • • •

Highly accurate picture performance Good black levels Excellent value for money

• •

Poor progressive-scan conversion Some inflexibility in installation

Contact: Mitsubishi Electric Australia 1800 652 216 www.mitsubishielectric.com.au

www.avhub.com.au

. . . a new Vision in great Sound

Home Cinema Speaker over $6000 Boston Acoustics VS Series

Boston VS Series loudspeakersâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;our best performing, best looking products deliver superior audio; whether part of your home theatre or stereo experience. Innovative driver and cabinet designs yield exceptional sonic characteristics. Each VS Series model is voiced to blend with the others so they can be combined to deliver the best performance in any configuration. Product of the Year at the Sound+Image Awards 2011 for best Home Cinema Speaker System over $6000. Great sound has a whole new look Proudly distributed in Australia by Hi Fi & Video Marketing Pty Ltd. Please contact us on (02) 9319 6877 for your nearest stockist. Email: info@hfvm.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

Sources

Arcam FMJ BDP100 Blu-ray player

rcam is a UK company noted for producing very high quality home theatre equipment. While it focuses on producing gloriously high-quality analogue sections in its products, we’ve been impressed in previous issues of Best Buys with how well it has also developed their digital interface and control elements. So it isn’t surprising to see it come up with its own high-end Blu-ray player.

Equipment In a sense this is two devices in one — an audiophile CD player and a Blu-ray player. Oh, certainly any old Blu-ray player can also play CDs. But few indeed incorporate the high-end Wolfson 8741 digital-to-analogue converter. The unit also reclocks the CD signal to eliminate jitter, and uses separate power regulation circuits on the board for the DAC, and on the board for the audio stage, to provide greater isolation from all the other things the device is getting up to. All relevant signal paths are shielded to eliminate further possible sources of signal interference. Note: all this is obviously to optimise analogue output sound quality, and this support is provided only for two channels — i.e. stereo — not for multichannel. For surround sound from Blu-ray

and DVD you use the usual HDMI connection or, if necessary, optical or coaxial digital audio. Coming back to the analogue output, there are actually two sets. The main pair stand clear of the other outputs and Arcam recommends use of high-quality cables. The other set is bunched up with the video and digital audio outputs and is labelled ‘Zone 2’. Arcam suggests this be used, of course, for connecting to the second zone of your home theatre system, or to a headphone amplifier or recorder. But of course, this unit is a Blu-ray and DVD player. It has both component video (up to 1080i) and HDMI output. It has internal decoders for the new audio formats and can ‘re-encode’ sound into DTS which can be delivered via one of the digital audio outputs to older receivers. It supports BonusView and BD-Live. The unit features a solid build, weighing 6.3 kilograms by our scales. Its remote control is a sort-of universal model. It will control only Arcam AV receivers, but can be set to control lots of different TVs, VCRs, DVD players and so on.

Performance When we first receive Blu-ray players, we like to plug them in and inspect their set-up menus first

“Any old Blu-ray player can also play CDs. But few indeed incorporate the highend Wolfson 8741 digital-to-analogue converter…” thing, because this usually tells us what to expect. The reason is that some of the specialist companies don’t have the resources to develop their own players, so they often base their own-brand players on units from other brands. There have been infamous cases where little more than the casing and the brand name on the splash screen (and the selling price!) has been amended from the original unit. But most reputable brands spend a bit of time tweaking the units to work best with their own equipment. So we were surprised to find that the menu system for this unit was completely new to us. It seemed a little lairy, with colourful icons over a bright blue background upon which beams of light radiate upwards from the bottom left corner. Other equipment from Arcam’s range with which we are familiar tends to be attractively staid. But if this unit is based on any other brand, it is either one that has escaped our notice so far, or the unit has been enormously modified. The BDP100 doesn’t run a set-up wizard or such, which is reasonable. This is a bit of kit for the enthusiast, not the buy-it-cheap make-it-easy

www.avhub.com.au

Sources

crowd. That said, there were some default settings which were a little disconcerting. For example, the unit defaults to downconverting 96kHz PCM to 48kHz, and having 24 frames per second video switched off. Take a couple of minutes to go through the menu and set everything appropriately. There is one default that you probably shouldn’t change, though. In the ‘Display’ section, you can fiddle with those video output settings, and you certainly do want to set the 24 frames per second output to ‘On’. But for Resolution, in most cases it’s best to leave it on ‘HDMI Auto’. We’ll explain why a bit further down. Also, don’t forget to actually pop a thumb drive (1GB or more) into the USB socket on the back. This is necessary for BonusView and BD-Live compliance. The usability of the unit as a disc spinner was fine. It wasn’t especially fast (it took about 35 seconds to start our two test discs; the current

record is less than 15), but neither is it irritatingly slow. Playback was reliable. More than reliable, actually. We used our two deliberately problematic Blu-ray discs, one with a cloudy surface and the other with a nasty tangential scratch, and it played both of these without the slightest hint of a glitch. Clearly Arcam has used a high-quality disc transport mechanism. One other nice feature — one which is far too rare — is that the unit clearly buffers ahead the content of DVDs as it’s playing. When it got to the layer change of our normal test disc, it played straight through without the slightest pause or break. As for transport controls, we did miss the ability to step frame by frame. Slow motion (forwards only was available) is accessible only by using a two-key combination on the remote. The sound quality from CDs, using the unit’s main analogue audio outputs, was excellent. Indeed, as good as we have heard. When playing multichannel sources, these outputs (and the Zone 2 ones as well) offer a straight stereo downmix of the surround. The rear channels are included, but aren’t processed into the Lt/Rt format able to be decoded by a Dolby Pro Logic decoder. The decoding to multichannel PCM was mostly fine, except that the unit couldn’t cope with the 24-bit, 192kHz Dolby TrueHD on the Akira Blu-ray, converting it to 192kHz stereo PCM. Of course, if you have a Blu-ray player like this, you are also likely to have a high quality up-to-date AV receiver, so just pipe out the Dolby TrueHD bitstream and all will be fine. Now back to the output resolution. It’s our habit when setting up Blu-ray players to switch the HDMI output to 1080p. The main reason is that we know we will be assessing the quality of the player’s progressive scan conversion and scaling. But with this unit, that turned out not to be a good idea. All was well with the 1080p/24 content we played. The 576i/50 DVD content that we played was handled rather well by the player in scaling and deinterlacing, with good-quality cadence detection generally applying the correct form of processing to optimise picture quality. With the 1080i/50 from some Australian Blu-ray discs, things weren’t so good, because the player tended to assume that the content was mostly or entirely interlaced in origin, so it produced noticeable artefacts all too frequently. However when we ran a 1080i/60 Blu-ray, things went quite strange. The picture

was extremely jerky. We soon found that the player was converting it to 1080p/50. Turning 60 interlaced frames into 50 progressive ones is not something that proceeds smoothly, and isn’t necessary anyway. We soon found that within the ‘Display’ menu is a setting for ‘TV Type’, which can be set to either PAL or NTSC. It turned out that when set to PAL, having the resolution also set to ‘1080p’ or ‘1080i’, all 60 hertz content was converted to into 50 hertz (but the 24 hertz stuff was left alone). Changing it to NTSC made all 50 hertz content turn into 60 hertz, with equivalent problems. There is no ‘Through’ or ‘All’ setting for ‘TV Type’, so explicitly specifying the output resolution should be avoided, unless you want to manually set ‘PAL’ or ‘NTSC’ for whatever you’re watching. Fortunately, you can leave the resolution setting on ‘HDMI Auto’. This asks the TV what it would prefer and sets itself to that. But in this case, it only paid attention to the actual resolution and not the frame rate (one of the displays we used has 1080p/50 as its native resolution, while another had 1080p/60). With this output setting, all content was converted to progressive scan and scaled, if necessary, to 1080p, but left at its correct frame rate: 24, 50 or 60 as appropriate.

CONCLUSION The Arcam FMJ BDP100 obviously isn’t for everyone. But if you want a single unit to act both as a Blu-ray player and an audiophile-class CD player, it is a very good place to start.

Arcam FMJ BDP1 00 Blu-ray player Price: $1998 Warranty: 2 years (plus 3 years, except for laser mechanism, when registered) Outputs: 1 x HDMI, 1 x component video, 1 x composite video, 1 x optical digital audio, 1 x coaxial digital audio, 2 x stereo analogue audio Other: Ethernet, 1 x RS-232C, 1 x Remote In, 1 x 12 trigger in Dimensions (whd): 430 x 100 x 400mm Weight: 6.2kg Test firmware: IP.L029B092, dated 20100712 • • • • • •

Superb stereo audio performance using audiophile DAC Seamless layer changes on dual-layer DVDs Excellent playback of even damaged discs Some video output settings could do with work No frame stepping No Blu-ray-3D support

Contact: Absolute Audio Vision 02 9764 5092 www.absoluteaudiovision.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

Polk Audio

SurroundBar 6000 IHT

urround bars, sound bars, call ’em what you like, but they probably wouldn’t even exist today were it not for flat-panel TVs. One product has definitely led to the prolification of the other, and in this case, screen and speaker go together superbly. Minimum hardware and fewer wires tend to promote domestic bliss.

Equipment If Polk Audio can’t lay sole claim to pioneering this particular loudspeaker category, it did have a big hand in developing sub/sat speaker technology, the closest cousin to soundbars and the like. It’s also done its own thing with the design and technology that goes into all of its sound bars — something it calls SDA Surround. The SurroundBar 6000 IHT (Instant Home Theatre) is one of four bars from Polk and, at 89cm long, is roughly the same width as your average 32-inch LCD screen. It’s perfectly suitable for use with bigger screens, though, and at just 5cm deep it’ll match today’s slimmer profiles. The bar is partnered with a small, wireless subwoofer, and the only other hardware is a tiny credit-card style remote. Using four 7cm

polypropyleneconed drivers, the bar will do stereo as well as surround sound and as it generates no real bass of its own, the downward-firing, seveninch (180mm) subwoofer provides what’s missing from the lower registers. Despite the fact that sound/surround bars aren’t exactly ‘proper’ home theatre loudspeakers, they certainly have their place and provide far superior sound quality than flat-panel TV speakers. Outwardly, there doesn’t seem much to this Polk duo — there’s no display, just a few lights to indicate that it’s active, plus inputs limited to three sources (one optical, two analogue line-level) — there’s no HDMI connection at all. Some may miss this installation flexibility, but as the Polk doesn’t handle any video (unlike some other soundbars), it’s not really necessary. What it does mean is that your TV will need an optical digital output in order for the Polk to decode multichannel audio from digital TV broadcasts, say. Otherwise, you’d feed it a PCM audio stream from a DVD or Blu-ray player. The jiggery pokery here is the SDA (Stereo Dimensional Array) Surround, a patented technology that Polk goes in to great length about in a white paper published on its website. The condensed explanation describes it as not relying on room acoustics or placement, as with other sound bars. Rather cheekily, Mr. Polk describes it as “a mixture of acoustical engineering, psychoacoustic principles and a little magic.” Okey dokey. Really though, the fundamental principles are solid — it’s all basically about how soundwaves reach your ears, how your brain deciphers them and, going back to the source, how surround

Polk Audio SurroundBar 60 00 IHT Price: $899.00 Warranty: Three years parts and labour, one year electronics Drivers: 4 x 7cm dynamic balance polypropylene composite cone drivers with neodymium magnets (SurroundBar); 1 x 17.78cm dynamic balance composite cone driver (subwoofer) Power: 280W total; 160W SurroundBar; 120W subwoofer Frequency response: 50Hz–16kHz (-3dB) Inputs: 1 x Toslink optical, 2 x analogue (3.5mm socket) Dimensions 9.53 x 88.9 x 5.08cm (SurroundBar); 27.94 x 26.04 x 30.48cm (subwoofer) Weight: 2.15kg (SurroundBar), 4.54kg (subwoofer) • • •

Fast, simple pseudo surround Huge upgrade from TV sound Good movie and music audio quality

• •

Limited connectivity Not surround like a true 5.1 speaker system

Contact: International Dynamics 03 9426 3600 www.internationaldynamics.com.au

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sound recordings are made to be heard in the first place. Read more about it on the website... All the cables you’ll need are supplied, including a decent length of optical fibre, and analogue leads. Both the surround bar and subwoofer are hooked up to the mains, but there’s no cable between the pair. Finally, the bar can be used freestanding, directly wall-mounted or with the optional TV bracket that’s available. Your TV’s volume and mute controls can be learned, so you only need use the one remote; the basic (well, all of them actually) controls are also accessible from touch-sensitive buttons on the bar itself.

Simplify your life! D-N7 Network CD Receiver

Performance Polk claims the 6000 can be installed and running in around five minutes. We did it in four. Simplicity itself; there’s no calibration required and this has to be one of the quickest and easiest home theatre speaker installations. The sub and bar had no problems immediately finding each other — everything just worked right from the off, a rarity with wireless loudspeakers, it has to be said. Not only were we pleasantly surprised at how quickly the 6000 goes together, when we clapped ears on the system an equally warm feeling started spreading from our brain down various nerve endings. First glance has you thinking ‘this ain’t going to amount to much’; a couple of minutes later you’re reminding yourself how wrong you were. Firstly, let’s talk about the bar itself. Beneath a 42-inch plasma, it fitted in well, but the surprise comes in the form of a wide and dispersed soundfield. The first thing we chucked on was a surround sound smorgasbord — a Blu-ray of The Chronicles of Riddick. Effects start flying pretty much from the word go, and the Polk greeted us with a big, loud audio presentation with bags of presence. It was immediately clear that the Polk handled dialogue and other centrally-placed effects really well, which is vital for any surround sound system. There was a definite sense of surround as the Necromonger’s huge army invaded the planet of Helion Prime. As spacecraft swept from back to front, the Polks will have your ears (and a few nanoseconds later, your brain) believe that they’ve just flown overhead. The rear placement effects aren’t that convincing to make you involuntarily duck, but you definitely get the idea. There’s no real substitute for having a pair of rear effect speakers (especially bi or dipoles) to provide true surround, but Polk’s SDA trickery does a convincing pseudo job. The front soundstage is also generated with ample space. A conventional front pair of speakers has plenty of space between them to soundstage, image and produce stereo depth, but the Polk has none of this in physical terms, yet it manages to recreate the same sense of space, making big action flicks sound exactly that. The subwoofer well and truly plays its part here, and for such a compact unit it doesn’t half pack a punch. Bass was low, tight and plentiful. The pair don’t mind making some noise either, and although you’re not going to push the volume boundary up to reference level (115dB, or nearly as loud as a 747 taking off ), the system’s more than capable of filling even a larger room with oodles of movie audio. A weakness of some soundbars is music, but Polk’s got that covered also. Although not primarily designed to hold a tune, the 6000 is quite happy to provide quality background music. It’s a peppy performer with rock and dance — the subwoofer provides plenty of bass drive and, like movie soundtracks, there’s loads of punch. Playing some well recorded female vocals, like Dido’s Safe Trip Home, the simple vocals and sparse instrumentation of the track The Day Before The Day sounded surprisingly detailed; Dido’s voice had real presence.

The Denon D-N7 combines the best of modern design with modern functionality, offering you simplicity in your hectic life. With a choice of AM/FM radio, internet radio, PC music streaming, online music services, MP3/WMA and a built in iPhone/iPod dock you will never be limited again. The Denon D-N7 connects wirelessly to all your networked devices in your home via WIFI, and can be controlled via your iphone/ipod using Denon’s dedicated app. So you can in no time fill your space with your favourite music or program. *iPod not included.

Conclusion For a simple, straightforward soundbar solution, Polk’s latest offering is an ideal example of how to make home theatre instant. It’ll far eclipse any flatpanel TV speakers and does a convincing job that there’s a bunch of speakers in the room. Given its somewhat limited connectivity, it’s not going to suit more complex system integration, but if you’re after less hardware and plan on hooking up the basics, it’s perfect.

FOR YOUR NEAREST DEALER: Australia: Call 1300 13 44 00 or visit www.denon.com.au New Zealand: Call 0800 111 450 or visit www.denon.co.nz

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

TVs/displays

Product Focus

Sanus

flatscreen TV mounts

he problem with flatscreen TVs is that they are flat. So they look great hanging on the wall — any time you see pictures of a beautiful home with an impeccably interior-designed lounge, chances are the television will be up there on the wall, flat as the proverbial pancake. So what’s the problem? Viewing angle. You may have heard that with hi-fi loudspeakers, you should sit with your ears at exactly the height of the tweeters. Otherwise you lose high frequencies, soundstaging, all the things that are best about great hi-fi. It’s exactly the same with a TV. If you were to draw a line from your eyes to the TV, it should be precisely perpendicular to the screen. Hang it on the wall and you have two potential misalignments. Are you below the level of the TV? Then it should be tilted slightly down towards you. Are you seated to one side or other? Then it should be pivoted slightly towards you. Otherwise what? What do you lose by having the wrong viewing angle?

of the merits of its tilting and pivoting mounts, but the arguments in the paper are perfectly valid, and important to understand. The company has identified common dissatisfaction from consumers who get their TVs home to find that, despite splashing out on the latest dynamic-backlit LED design, things just don’t look as good at home as they did in the shop. The fault, says Sanus, commonly lies in the geometry of the home: “LCD TVs may display awe-inspiring images when viewed front and centre, but sit a few feet to the left or right and there is a noticeable loss of picture brightness as well as change in colour. In fact, recent studies suggest the viewing range for seeing the most vivid picture on an LCD TV is merely one person wide. While TV manufacturers have taken small steps to address this issue in recent years, the most current Consumer Reports TV ratings indicate that over half the TVs tested received only a fair or good viewing angle score — well below the excellent score that most tube-style TVs were rated at in past years.”

Sanus on viewing angles

There are two important points here. The first is that the report concentrates on the problems with LCD TVs (which includes those called ‘LED’ — those are still LCD panels, but with LED

Sanus has produced a white paper on exactly this subject. Of course the company, being a leader in TV mounts, has a vested interest in persuading you

backlighting). Plasma screens, on the other hand, tend to be far better for off-angle viewing, because of the way they emit light rather than transmitting it. But even with plasmas, extreme angles will have a serious effect on brightness and contrast ratio. Not that you’d know any of this from manufacturers’ specifications. Nearly all manufacturers quote a viewing angle of close to 90 degrees, as if you can stand right to one side of the TV and still enjoy watching a movie. This is obvious nonsense; they can only be quoting the point at which the picture disappears entirely, rather than the point at which the image degrades. As the Sanus report highlights, the true viewing angle is far less wide.

Contrast ratio The report quotes results from research conducted in 2009 by Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies, a US company which provides test standards used by over 200 computer and video publications in 50 countries. For an article published in Widescreen Review (a series beginning in Issue 144, November 2009), Soneira tested picture performances of 2008-model plasma and LCD TVs, measuring the contrast ratio values of a Panasonic plasma, Samsung LCD, Sharp LCD and Sony LCD at 0 degrees (straight on) and at a 45-degree viewing angle. Soneira found

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Sanus mounts

Sanus produces everything from straightforward flat-mounts to those that pivot, tilt and include clever cable management — even mounts suitable for wet areas, assuming your TV allows such use.

TVs/displays TVs/displays

VisionMount VXF220

The VXF220 is one such indoor or outdoor mount; built to withstand all types of conditions. It has a special rust-resistant coating and stainless steel hardware, yet still includes all the main features of the Visionmount series, being a full-motion mount that extends, tilts and swivels to get your screen in the right place. The company’s adjustable ‘Virtual Axis’ allows tilting under what the company calls “fingertip control”, and there’s FollowThru in-arm cable management, which conceals and protects cables even through the elbow joint. There are height and levelling adjustments that allow the TV to be nudged into position after hanging, and QuickConnect, which drops your TV easily into position.

the more field of view the TV takes up, and the more of your peripheral vision is included, the more immersive the experience). Sit far off-axis and the 3D is less effective. Some systems also exhibit colour changes and 3D crosstalk if you tilt your head even slightly sideways.

Get a mount

VisionMount VMPL50A

Don’t need swivel or extension? There’s a wide range of more simple mounts, such as this tilting wall mount for 32-inch right up to enormous 60-inch flat-panel TVs, again using the Virtual Axis tilting system and lateral shift to allow perfect TV placement, even with off-centre wall studs.

VisionMount VML10B

If you take the trouble to get your TV in the perfect viewing position, and just want the most elegant way of getting it absolutely flat to the wall, the VML10 is a “Super Slim” low-profile mount that puts the TV just 1.7cm from the wall (see main image, left), making the latest slimline LED edgelit designs seem as if they’re just floating. The difficulty of cable access in such a small space is ameliorated by Sanus’ ClickStand technology, which holds the bottom of the TV away from the wall without removing the TV from the mount. This mount fits TVs from 26-inch to 42-inch, and a weight up to 36kg.

that plasma TV contrast ratio was down 9% at 45-degrees — significant, but perhaps not a deal breaker. On all three LCD TVs, however, contrast ratio dropped by over 50%. On some, noticeable picture degradation was found at a viewing angle as low as 10 degrees.

quoting Dr Soneira’s results (see graph, below right). And this accuracy decreased exponentially beyond 30 degrees off-axis. Again the plasma panel performed better, exceptionally so for colour, with no noticeable deterioration even beyond a 45-degree viewing angle.

Colour difference

3D TVs

In many ways the effect on colour reproduction was still more pronounced. “All three LCD TVs that were tested showed noticeable degradation in colour accuracy at a viewing angle of just 15 degrees” says Sanus,

We can add to this our own findings on 3D TVs. The rules for effective 3D are to have low ambient light in the room, to sit as close to the centre of the screen as possible (i.e. a viewing angle of zero), and to have as wide a viewing arc as possible (i.e.

So knowing all this, the obvious solution is to consider carefully where and how you hang your TV. Ideally you should aim to keep the centre of the screen at eye-level, but unfortunately this can look strangely low in aesthetic terms, so that most people hang their TVs too high on the wall for a direct perpendicular eye-line. As Sanus is keen to point out, the answer is to use a mount that allows sufficient flexibility to adjust your TV screen for ideal viewing conditions. This doesn’t mean you need a mount that can be pulled every which way and turn somersaults; you just need one that adjusts to correct the screen from whatever mounting position your living arrangements dictate. So, to repeat the advice at the start of this article, if you are positioned below the level of the TV, then you need a mount that can tilt it slightly down towards you. Are the key seating positions all to one side or other of the TV? Then get a mount that can be pivoted sideways towards them. There are other advantages of a good mount — the ability to tilt the screen slightly to avoid reflections from lights or glare from windows, as well as the obvious saving of space that made you want to wallmount the TV in the first place. We always recommend readers use a brandname mount that is specified to carry the size and weight of your TV (ideally slightly above in terms of weight, though we know the main manu-facturers allow plenty of spare tolerance). The right mount, correctly positioned, will ensure that you get the best available performance from your flatscreen TV; it’s as simple as that. 10

90º

80º

70º

60º

50º 40º

50º 30º

20º

10º

0º

10º

20º 30º

40º

9 Visually Detectable Color Difference Threshold = 1

90º

Samsung LCD

7 6 Sony LCD

5 Sharp LCD

4 3 2 Just Noticable Color Difference

Panasonic Plasma

0 0

Viewing Angle, Degrees DisplayMate Technologies

ABOVE LEFT: Manufacturers often claim ‘viewing angles’ close to an absurd 90 degrees, yet with LCD televisions, contrast ratio and colour reproduction (see graph above) can suffer drastically when viewed from as little as 15 degrees off-axis. (Graph: DisplayMate Technologies, 2008 U.S. models tested)

Hear & record your favourite radio programs in clear digital stereo* sound. #

DPR-34+ $189 RRP DAB+ / FM Personal Digital Pocket Radio Receiver with Stereo Headphones & Built-In Speaker / Rechargeable iPod not included

DDR-33+ $369 RRP DAB+ / FM / iPod™ Dock / Stereo Table Top - Clock Radio with Remote

DPR-17+ $269 RRP DAB+/FM Portable Digital Radio with Digital Recording via SD Card MP3/WMA playback from SD card/Rechargeable Facility (Also in Black)

DPR-69+ $189 RRP DAB+ / FM Compact Portable Digital Radio Receiver / Rechargeable Facility

DPR-25+ $299 RRP DAB+ / FM Portable Stereo Digital Radio with Aux-In for iPod™ Playback / Rechargeable Facility (Also in White)

Enquiries call: 1800 636 026 Recording facility only available on DPR-17+ * Using stereo headphones on most models. #

www.sangean.com.au

3/200 Turner Street, Port Melbourne Victoria 3207 Email sales@canohm.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AMPS/RECEIvERS

Pioneer SC-LX83 AV receiver

ioneer’s SC-LX83 AV receiver comes from its premium range — and by golly it looks like it. Standing an imposing 200mm tall, its lines are kept clean by a large folding panel that normally covers all the fiddly stuff. But �� it needs all that space to fit in all its capabilities.

Equipment At the centre of the beast are the seven power amplifiers, each rated at 140 watts per channel, two channels driven at a time, on hi-fi criteria. That these are good is proved by the THX Ultra2 Plus

certification the unit has. It �� decodes all modern audio formats, of course, including the Direct Stream Digital from SACD, and of course the new lossless formats on Blu-ray. It also supports Dolby Pro Logic IIx (which adds surround rear channels) and IIz (height). Two of the power amplifiers can be redirected to other functions, such as driving a second zone or biamplifying the front speakers. Both of the extra two zones are provided composite video support, and one of them gets component video as well. The system is heavily endowed with system integration features, including triggers, IR inputs and outputs and an

RS-232C socket. We discuss this last more below, but in short you get lots of functions that are extra-cost options in much equipment. One surprise, possibly unpleasant for some, is that the receiver does not have a single S-Video socket. Pioneer must figure that we’ve all moved on, but if you still have (as some of us do) a beloved Pioneer DVD recorder, the loss of SVideo is lamentable. But it covers everything else thoroughly, from six HDMI inputs through to full 7.1-channel analogue inputs and outputs. It has Ethernet so that you can access the wide world of the internet, or merely the local world of your home network, plus a USB socket on the front panel. This works with normal USB memory, but also with an iPod, using the included cable. Some of us here at Best Buys tend to be, well, utilitarian. While we like a nice-looking bit of kit, we’re mostly interested in how things sound, how reliable they are, how well they work. Consequently we may have failed in the past to note a feature of Pioneer equipment that has been displayed in recent years — how pretty are its menus. They aren’t complicated or over-busy, and are mostly just white text, black backgrounds and blue selection bars. But here and there a section of the menu has this really pretty brushed aluminium look. This is consistent across Pioneer’s range of equipment and adds a touch of class as great as anything in the actual metal of the physical unit itself.

Performance The automatic room and speaker calibration system is called Auto MCACC and is proprietary to Pioneer. There are two things we note about it.

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AMPS/ RECEIvERS First, because the receiver has THX certification (at the highest level Ultra2 Plus, no less), you can be confident that the speaker balance is correctly performed. And indeed, the bass level, which with some systems can be problematic, sounded absolutely spot on. The second thing we noticed was that the unit deployed a lot more test tones of a greater variety than is the norm from other systems. Whether this results in improved performance was not entirely obvious. But what was clear was that it did a fine job in its own right, producing a clean, well-focused and well-balanced sound across all the movies and music we used. Indeed, the sound was very solid throughout. Clearly there was no shortage of power, regardless of the speaker system we used. The unit can be controlled in several different ways. Obviously it has its own remote control, and by default this works using standard infrared line-of-sight techniques. But it can also operate wirelessly using RF. Making it do this takes a bit of effort, though, so open the manual and work through the steps one by one. You get all the bits you need for it, including the RF receiver, which plugs into the unit’s RS-232C system integration socket. Incidentally, the RF receiver has two IR blaster outputs (and the blasters are provided), so once you’ve worked through all this, and programmed the remote to operate your other devices, you can slip everything into a cupboard and have full RF control over it all. It can also be controlled by means of a web browser on the same network. Just

key in the IP address and you get a panel which allows you to set the volume and choose the input of all three zones, and set the surround mode for the main one. This is a bit limited compared to some implementations, but provides the basics. Or it can be controlled with an iPod Touch or iPhone if your network supports Wi-Fi. Install the Pioneer control app (pictured below) and you get the ability to adjust volume, surround mode, and input from its screen. There are also fancier 360-degree balance and emphasis features, adjusted by tilting the iGadget. One particularly cute feature is that the system communicates back to the app system information such as the audio and video signals being received by the unit, along with its video output. Speaking of which, the unit defaulted to passing video through unaltered, but has a built-in scaler and progressive-scan conversion. What can we say about this, other than that it is brilliant! The progressive-scan conversion can be set to three different modes (set PureCinema to On, Off or Auto). The Auto function did a decent job of cadence detection and applied film or video mode as appropriate, although it was occasionally tricked by some 576i/50 and 1080i/50 content. ‘On’ forces film mode and ‘Off ’ forces video mode, and so can be set to ensure perfect performance. Of course, 3D content is passed through untouched. Making these adjustments left us a little ambivalent about the unit’s menu structure, despite its lovely looks as we mentioned above. That menu is basically for system-wide setup, not for on-the-fly adjustments to picture and audio. Just about all the video settings are accessible via a single dedicated remote control key, and likewise for most of the audio settings (eg. delay, EQ on/off, etc) with their own key. You hit the relevant key, and then arrow up and down through the options on the unit’s own front panel. This is good in that it provides fast and convenient access to the most commonly-used features, while ensuring that the picture won’t be interfered with by any overlay from the receiver. But it also means that the advantage of the RF remote — allowing you to stick the receiver in a cupboard and even control other items using the supplied IR blasters — is somewhat negated. While the remote doesn’t need line of sight, you most certainly do. And if your room is large, you also need pretty good eyesight. The multimedia support was very broad, if a little frustrating. We were surprised, for example, to see that FLAC (a popular free lossless compression format) files on our test USB device LEFT: The LX83 can be controlled with an iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad if your network supports Wi-Fi. Install the Pioneer control app and you get the ability to adjust volume, surround mode and input from your touch screen device

were invisible. It was surprising, because the unit does actually supports replay of FLAC files... but only via the Home Media Gallery access via the network. USB playback is restricted to MP3, WMA (lossy only) and WAV, but it also allowed the display of photos. The HMG, however, gave support to a wider range of music, but not to photos. Both with USB and network content, scrolling through long lists was a slow and tedious affair with no jump keys that we could find. In addition to music servers available on the network, you can choose from internet radio or Neural Music Direct. The former works in the usual way common to many systems, and Pioneer’s portal delivered a wealth of stations, plus lots of Podcasts. Neural Music Direct is like internet radio, but consisted of four ‘stations’ running the sound in ‘DTS Neural’ surround format at 128kbps. The options were of the easy listening kind — classical, 80s, classic hits and vineyard. It sounded okay, but on the classical at least the tracks weren’t identified and at the end of each piece of music a male voice would abruptly make a station announcement at a disconcerting level.

Conclusion In the SC-LX83 Pioneer has provided a powerful AV receiver, both in terms of audio performance and features. The price is reasonable, and the video conversion capabilities are as good as you can get. You have iPod support out of the box, and network content. And, of course, 3D support. This one must be on the short list of anyone looking in this price range. Pioneer SC-LX8 3 AV receiver Price: $3499 Warranty: Three years Rated power: 7 x 140 watts, 8 ohms, 2020,000Hz, 0.08% THD (two channels driven) Inputs: 3 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 5 x composite video, 6 x analogue stereo, 1 x phono, 1 x 7.1 analogue, 3 x optical digital, 3 x coaxial digital, 6 x HDMI, 1 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x proprietary expansion port Outputs: 1 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 2 x composite video, 2 x analogue stereo, 1 x 7.1 pre-out, 1 x optical digital audio, 2 x HDMI, 1 x 6.5mm headphone Zone: 1 x component video, 2 x composite video, 2 x stereo audio, assignable amplifiers Other: 2 x IR in, 1 x IR out, 2 x trigger, 1 x 5V power supply out, 1 x Pioneer control I/O, 1 x RS-232C, 1 x setup mic Dimensions (whd): 420 x 200 x 460mm Weight: 18.5kg • • •

Excellent audio performance THX Ultra2 Plus certification Superb video processing

• • •

No S-Video Somewhat disjointed menus No FLAC on USB input

Contact: Pioneer Electronics Australia 1800 060 852 www.pioneer.com.au

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Krix brings the cinema to your home Enter the KX-5920 3-way professional loudspeaker from Australia’s premier speaker manufacturer Krix. The KX-5920 is part of a suite of new generation professionally-inspired high-end speakers aimed at the very best in home cinema entertainment. These superb loudspeakers encompass Krix’s considerable experience gained from providing more than 50% of Australia’s cinemas over 30 years, as well as cinemas across 32 countries. The KX-5920 is a testament to Krix’s extraordinary engineering and manufacturing expertise. If you love the big screen, you’ve probably already experienced Krix quality sound. So if you’re building an Xtreme Home Cinema of your own – the choice IS Krix.

w w w. k r i x . c o m

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

Paradigm SUB 2 subwoofer

ave you ever wanted to peer into the unknown? Employ a telescope to extend your senses beyond what mere eyes can achieve? To see or hear what others will never experience? Well, then, if that is you, and you have plenty of money on hand, consider the Paradigm Signature Series SUB 2, for it will bring into your home certain material that you have never heard before; indeed, that very few others have ever heard before. But beware; you may be in for trouble from your neighbours...

Equipment Paradigm immodestly describes its subwoofer as: ‘The Best Subwoofer in the World, Period.’ That is a bold claim that is clearly wrong. After all, we once read of a custom home theatre in which a horn-loaded sub was built into the floor. It had to be. The horn was so long that it was formed by a folded pipe constructed from brick and concrete. We don’t know for sure, but we strongly suspect that that subwoofer would be better than the Paradigm SUB 2. But if you are talking about an off-the-shelf product, available for no more than the price of a small car, then, yep, this is likely the best subwoofer in the world.

Which suggests that we should consider the criteria for ‘best’. We’d say that the best subwoofer needs to produce considerable bass extension, needs to do bass frequencies at high levels, and needs to be as low as possible in distortion. Now a home-theatre-in-a-box type subwoofer will generally manage to whip up some sound in the mid-bass range down to perhaps 50Hz or so. A typical home theatre subwoofer selling for a thousand dollars or so is generally pretty good down to close to 30Hz. And as it happens, movie theatre speaker systems are designed to deliver down to 30Hz and no deeper. Isolation between adjacent cinemas

becomes too difficult below that point. But the standard ‘audible’ frequency range is put at the bottom end as far down as 20Hz. For a subwoofer that can properly (ie. at the same level as the other bass) reproduce this, you’re generally nudging $2000 or so. The very best subwoofers we’ve seen go even further. One of our reference subwoofers, for example, can deliver 16Hz at good levels, and retails for a good deal more than $2000. At this reach, this subwoofer can do something the $1000 ones simply can’t: transfer infrasonic acoustic energy at sufficient intensities to create a sense of your body shuddering in sympathy.

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So where does this ‘Best’ subwoofer in the world sit on this scale? Well, below it. Paradigm says that this subwoofer will reproduce a shocking 7Hz at a trifling three decibels below reference level in a typical listening room. We have never before seen anyone claim such a thing. Sometimes in subwoofer design there is a tradeoff between bass extension and bass output. One comes at the expense of the other. Well not here, apparently. Paradigm says that this unit can deliver 126dBSPL at 60Hz, and manage a ridiculous level of 112dBSPL at just 10Hz. Remember, there are very few subwoofers that can produce any output at all at 10Hz! How is this accomplished Why, with lots of drivers. The Paradigm SUB2 packs six 254mm diameter (ten inch) drivers into its rather heavily built enclosure. The drivers are arranged as three stacks of two, on three of the sides of the hexagonally shaped enclosure. Thus the movement of each of their cones, and the air in front of them, is cancelled by the movement of two more on the other side. With a sufficiently rigid enclosure, this ensures no movement of the enclosure, nor loss of impact due to small movements of the whole subwoofer. Paradigm describes the drivers as having mineral-filled co-polymer polypropylene cones, high temperature formers, dual spiders, a central heatsink and an apparent available cone excursion of 76mm, front to back. The magnet for each of the drivers weighs 10.5 kilograms. Remember, there are six drivers, so we have more than 60 kilograms of magnets alone. The whole subwoofer weighs a back-breaking 106 kilograms. We went to Bunnings and bought a trolley simply to move the subwoofer some ten metres from storage to its performance space. It’s pretty big too: nearly 600mm tall and roughly 600mm on side to side and fore to aft.

The enclosure is sealed. To move those six cones at such low frequencies in a sealed enclosure means doing a great deal of work. Here is where we get just a trifle uncomfortable. Paradigm says that it has employed a Class-D amplifier (popularly and approximately considered to be digital amplifiers) to push all these drivers. Weirdly, it gives very strange figures for its power output: 9000 watts dynamic peak, 4500 watts ‘RMS Continuous’. It’s unwise to draw more than 2400 watts from an Australian power point, and the subwoofer makes no special arrangements for using multiple power points to overcome the ten amp limit. So quite aside from ‘RMS’ being inappropriate, 4500 watts continuous doesn’t ring true. Which is a pity, because the subwoofer certainly does ring true.

Performance The unit comes with the Paradigm Bass Kit, a rather elaborate EQ system. This consists of a microphone with a stand and a cast iron base! Plus a calibration microphone with a USB socket and a suitable cable. You plug a USB socket on the subwoofer into one USB port on your computer, and the microphone into another. You run the software supplied on a CD (beware, the instructions give a site to obtain the latest software version: this site produced an Error 404 (Page Missing) message. You will need to search Paradigm’s site for the update). The software runs five sets of test tones, for five different microphone positions (you can set it to measure up to ten), generates a room EQ curve and then re-programs the DSP in the subwoofer to set the EQ. Having done that, we set up our speaker system as usual. Sometimes we speak in magazines such as this of components being particularly revealing. Well, this subwoofer is most definitely that: it reveals what no other subwoofer in our experience has ever revealed, and we speak as people who regularly use a 16Hz-capable one. What this subwoofer reveals is that on the Earth-destruction scene in the animated Titan A.E., the whole-body rumbling of infrasonics of the sound track (the level is higher at 13Hz than it is at 220Hz!) doesn’t fade in and out as it does with our regular subwoofer. It is sustained and overpowering. What it reveals is that the 16Hz bottom-C pipe of the Telarc recording of Bach’s ‘Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor’ really is astonishingly thrilling. What this subwoofer reveals is stuff that, like the unsuspected things a telescope or microscope may reveal, were previously hidden by the inadequacies of the previous apparatus. We

listened to episode 270 of a Podcast using our system with this subwoofer. We have previously listened to the other 269 episodes. Never once in those 269 times did we suspect what this subwoofer made us thunderingly aware of in our 270th excursion: the introduction has some five seconds of insanely loud spurious noise. It’s a full 18dB above the average energy level in the 40Hz–1kHz band and peaks at 11.5Hz! Which leads us to the conclusion: having a such a tremendously revealing subwoofer in your system isn’t always a comfortable thing. It reveals not just all the excellent stuff on a disc, but also all the mistakes. The kicked microphone stands in some bits of music will make you jump. The rumble of traffic past otherwise soundproofed music studios will be apparent. But with this subwoofer, you will also miss nothing of the signal that is supposed to be there. Be warned: if you use this subwoofer with some high impact content late at night you will receive a knock on the door from the local constabulary. With the doors to our listening room firmly shut, we found that even fifty metres away the super deep stuff was clearly noticable.

Conclusion No doubt you could engage a firm to build you a better subwoofer if you were prepared to throw tens of thousands of dollars at it. But as far as subwoofers capable of being purchased in a shop and delivered to your home, are concerned, we think this one really is the best subwoofer in the world. Paradigm Signat ure Series SUB 2 subwoofe r Price: $10,999 Warranty: 5 years (2 years on electronics) Drivers: 6 x 254mm long-throw bass drivers Rated power: 4500 watts ‘RMS Continuous’, 9000 watts ‘Dynamic Peak’ Low frequency extension: 7Hz at -3dB (in room) Inputs: 2 x RCA analogue audio RCA, 1 x XLR balanced analogue audio Other: 1 x mini-USB, 1 x trigger in Dimensions (mm): 622w x 578h x 604d Weight: 106kg

• • •

The deepest bass extension ever The most powerful bass performance ever Calibration kit included

• •

Must have strong floor Can reveal previously unexpected spurious bass content May lead to complaints from neighbours

•

Contact: Audio Active Australia Pty Ltd 03 9699 8900 www.audioactive.net.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

Aaron HMF-600MkII stereo loudspeakers

assion causes people to behave strangely, as many a Shakespearean play reveals. Hume L’Estrange’s passion is loudspeaker design, and it’s a passion he’s been indulging for 30 years, during which time he has slowly built Betetec Industries – and its most famous loudspeaker brand, Aaron – into one of Australia’s best-selling brand of loudspeakers. In all that time, he’d managed to suppress the urge to build a ‘no holds barred’ loudspeaker system, preferring to concentrate on building a stable of affordable loudspeakers to best-suit the budgets of ordinary Australians. But around five years ago, he decided to start on his most expansive, most ambitious design project ever, designing from the ground up – literally – a range of high-end loudspeakers. And with these HMF-600 MkIIs, they enter a second phase. The advantage of being an Australian speaker designer (and owing your own company!) is that you can tour around all your dealers personally to get one-on-one feedback about your designs, and after the original Hyperboloid range had some runs on the board, this is precisely what L’Estrange did… only to discover something he found truly surprising. He discovered that his dealers were not only demonstrating and selling his HMF-600s as stand-alone two-channel speakers, but that they were also selling complete ‘Hyperboloid’ home theatre systems without a subwoofer, because the HMF-600s had ‘plenty of bass’ and it meant a lower system price, with fewer ‘boxes’ in the room. The result of this revelation on his dealer tour was that L’Estrange headed straight back to Ballina and to his drawing board (well… his computer and anechoic chamber, actually…) and re-designed the bass drivers, re-tuned the cabinet, and re-jigged the crossover network to produce a brand new version of the HMF-600 with even deeper, even more-extended bass than the original… the HMF-600MkII.

Equipment Aaron’s HMF-600MkII is a four-driver, three-way floor-standing bass reflex design. The two 168mmdiameter bass drivers have hyperboloid diaphragms (so they’re not really ‘cones’) because this particular diaphragm profile not only eliminates standing waves, but also means that L’Estrange is able to eliminate the need for a troublesome and weighty dust cap, thus reducing mass. Speaking of which, the diaphragm itself is already extraordinarily low in mass, being made from a carbon-coated laminated paper. Also, unlike most drivers, the voice coil is not fixed to the cone at its centre. Instead L’Estrange uses something like a ‘miniature cone’ beneath the hyperboloid diaphragm so the voice coil ends up driving the hyperboloid diaphragm at one third of its circumference rather than at the centre, like normal designs. This system makes the driver diaphragm exceptionally rigid, so cone motion is almost perfectly piston-like at low-frequencies, which is the Holy Grail for all driver designers. At 300Hz, the two bass drivers are crossed to the single 132mm midrange driver which, like the bass drivers, also has a hyperboloid cone and the same voice-coil/cone coupling system. This driver, in turn, is crossed over at 5kHz to a 25mm Vifa XT25 dual ring radiator tweeter, with its characteristic centre wave-guide. Unlike many ‘look-alike’ tweeters which use neodymium magnets, Vifa’s XT25 uses a Y35 ferrite magnet (made by TDK), so there’s plenty of surface area to dissipate heat. The crossover network is substantial, yet it’s a minimum-loss design to ensure that the maximum possible power from your amplifier ends up in the voice coils of the four drivers. The network comprises seven air-cored inductors, six capacitors (five of which are electrolytic), and five 10-watt wire-wound resistors (three components more than in the original HMF-600). Each of the HMF600MkIIs stands 960mm high and is 230mm

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wide and 405mm deep – the same dimensions as the original model. The cabinets are not made from the usual ‘budget’ MDF used by most speaker manufacturers. Recognising Australia’s unique climatic conditions, Betetec ensures that all its cabinets are made from variable density fibreboard (VDFB). This material’s density changes through its thickness, which prevents resonances and minimises sound transfer. Unlike ordinary MDF, it’s also water resistant. Aaron attaches its veneers with long-lasting epoxy glues, so they’ll never delaminate. Internally, cabinets are assembled using PVA glues, rather than the UV-cure glues used by many speaker manufacturers. Using PVA means it takes much longer to make each cabinet, but L’Estrange says the end result is a better, stronger cabinet.

Performance Positioning the HMF-600MkIIs in your room will be quite straight-forward, except that you’ll need to leave a bit of space behind them so that huge bass reflex port can breathe freely and… of course… they’re not exactly the smallest speakers around! Because the speakers are so tall, and have a relatively small ‘footprint’ (particularly if you use them with the optional spikes that are provided, which makes the ‘footprint’ even smaller) they’re a bit top-heavy – or, if you prefer, they have a relatively high centre of gravity. The high-frequency dispersion of the HMF600’s tweeter is excellent – so good that there were only the tiniest differences in the high-frequency response when the speakers were facing directly up the room, versus having them angled to aim directly at the listening position. Of the two positions, we preferred the (very slightly) off-axis position, but there’s not a lot in it. Speaking of the high frequency performance, it was superb. Obviously very clean and more than sufficiently extended, it trod that fine line between ‘soft’ and ‘etched’ that’s so difficult to get right. ‘Soft’ highs are usually the result of the designer deliberately rolling off the very highest frequencies in order to deliver a ‘pleasing’ sound quality no matter what type of music is being played, and irrespective of the recording quality. ‘Etched’ highs usually come about when a tweeter has a resonance around 20kHz that means output level increases at higher frequencies. This gives a ‘bright’ sound that is impressive in the dealer’s showroom, because it tends to ‘etch’ the individual instruments so they’re clearly audible. However with such a speaker, once you start listening for extended periods, as you would at home, it gradually becomes obvious that there’s too much high frequency information, and you start reaching for the treble tone control (if you have one!). L’Estrange seems to have got the balance exactly right—treading that fine line to get an

accurate, real-to-life treble response. Importantly, the response stays this way even after extended listening at high volume, so the tweeter isn’t fazed by being driven hard. Midrange sound, too, was excellent, and the bass was even stronger – in all senses of the word. Pace was excellent, and timing equally so, with never any sense that the bass was lagging behind in the beat, probably because the HMF600MkII’s pair of light-coned bass drivers (which are operated in parallel) are incredibly fast and precise and their low-frequency extension – if not actually subterranean – is still very impressive. The most important low-bass region, between 30Hz and 100Hz, which is the area of the spectrum where nearly all ‘bass’ musical instruments deliver their maximum energy, was not only delivered at ‘reference’ level, but was also perfectly balanced against the mids and highs. Stereo imaging was very good, with all performers placed precisely where they should be, and the image had realistic depth and more than a dollop of height as well – helped in no small way by the physical height of the cabinets themselves, which ensures a good vertical aural ‘spread.’

Conclusion The new Aaron HMF-600MkIIs are not only the best-sounding loudspeakers Hume L’Estrange has ever built, but also among the best we’ve ever heard at this price point… or beyond it. The flagship models in Aaron’s range, this new HMF-600MkII design offers not only amazing sound quality, but also represents amazingly good value for money.

Aaron HMF-600M kII stereo loudspea kers Price: $4499 Warranty: Five Years Drivers: 25mm tweeter, 132mm midrange, 2 x 168mm woofers Sensitivity: 89dBSPL/W/m Nominal impedance: 6 ohms) Biwirable: Yes Dimensions (whd): 230 x 960 x 396mm Weight: 30kg Colour: Black, Jarrah or Beech • • •

Fabulous bass Superb imaging True-to-life midrange

• •

High centre of gravity Space required for rear-firing reflex port

Contact: Betetec Industries Pty Ltd 02 6686 0277 www.aaronhifi.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AMPS/RECEIvERS

Marantz SR5005 AV receiver

he Marantz SR5005 is one of the first in that company’s range of AV receivers to add the all-important new feature for 2011: support for Blu-ray 3D signals.

Equipment But first, the basics. This receiver offers seven amplifier channels each rated at 100 watts into eight ohms across the full audio bandwidth at just 0.08% total harmonic distortion. The measurement is, we gather, with two channels running. These channels can be reallocated in the usual ways: by default to provide regular 5.1-channel sound plus two centre back channels. The receiver can cope with the various 6.1- and 7.1-channel delivery formats from Dolby and DTS, and includes Dolby Pro Logic IIx for generating surround rear from the other channels. Or you can set them to drive the front height speakers

supported by the Dolby Pro Logic IIz processing, which is included. Or a set of Zone 2 speakers (stereo audio line out sockets are also provided for Zone 2). Four HDMI (version 1.4) sockets are provided along with good support for older connection standards (except for S-Video and phono, for which no sockets are in place). One of the three optical digital audio inputs is on the front panel. The receiver will make system integrators happy, too, because it has an RS-232C socket for control systems, a 12 volt trigger output and Marantz’s own remote control in/out sockets. Also fitted is Marantz’s proprietary M-XPORT, into which you can plug Marantz’s $199 RX101 Bluetooth module. Using that you can stream music from a Bluetooth enabled mobile phone, or an iPhone/iPod Touch, from up to ten metres away. A rare feature provided by this receiver is Dolby Headphone. Based on signal-

processing science performed in Australia by Lake Technology, this is one of the best systems for creating a realistic surround sound experience with regular headphones. The remote control has a convenient backlight for all its keys, invoked by an easily-found button on its side.

Performance A few years ago Denon and Marantz came under common ownership. Both continue to produce their own independent product line-ups, with their devices largely true to their respective companies’ traditions. But perhaps it isn’t surprising that finally we are starting to see some shared technology. It is pretty clear, for example, that this receiver shares the same setup menu as some Denon models, amended of course for functions specific to this receiver. Up to and including the models available in the first half of this year, the Marantz

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menu system had changed only in detail since the chunky white-text-on-blue-screen used on the Marantz SR-18, from way back in 2000. It is also clear that similar, if not identical, video processing circuitry is employed, with the same settings. But certain Marantz ways of doing things have been preserved. For example, to select an input you still have to press the input key on the remote control twice, and then press the ‘Amp’ key if you want to return the remote back to primarily operating the amplifier rather than the source device. The receiver is equipped with the Audyssey MultEQ automatic calibration system. Also included is Audyssey’s Dynamic Volume and Dynamic EQ processors. The Audyssey system is one of those that insists on adjusting everything, giving you no say in the matter. Inevitably it doesn’t get everything right, and while you can go and change the settings manually, you then lose some of the benefit of the excellent Audyssey EQ system. It would be nice if you could set those aspects yourself, and then have Audyssey do the rest of its stuff based on that setting. The system allows (but doesn’t force) you to run it with the supplied microphone in multiple

sitting positions to optimise room and speaker performance for a larger listening area. Once completed, it gave excellent results, with the net result being plenty of power, plenty of volume, and a beautifully balanced tone. The surround and stereo imaging were precise and accurate. It also looked great — the video side of things — with some content, depending on the settings chosen for the video. Within the setup menu — which replaces the main video and is displayed in SD, or SD chunkily upscaled to HD depending on your settings — you can set the video handling individually for each source device. So you can have the receiver simply leave HDMI video untouched (this seemed to be the default), or switch on the ‘i/p Scaler’ if you prefer. Once you enable this, you can choose the output resolution and the method of conducting the progressive scan conversion. The options for the latter are ‘Auto’, ‘Video1’ and ‘Video2’. As mentioned above, this proved to be like a DNA code identifying this receiver’s video processor as coming from the same family as Denon’s, because the performance was almost identical. With 576i/50 film DVDs, Auto was adequate but not excellent at detecting film-sourced material to weave, but the ‘Video2’ mode forced a weave, producing superb picture quality. ‘Video1’ forced video mode deinterlacing. With 1080i/50 film-sourced Blu-ray discs, the progressive scan converter seemed stuck in video mode, regardless of the setting. Fact is, we’d be inclined just to leave ‘i/p Scaler’ switched off and use high-quality source or display devices. But if you’re prepared to go to the trouble of switching it on and setting the ‘Video2’ mode, you won’t find significantly better PAL DVD performance anywhere. Regardless of these settings, the receiver happily passed through Blu-ray 3D signals to a suitable TV. The unit also proved to support the audio return channel from TVs. Whenever the TV was switched from HDMI input to its own internal

tuner, the receiver automatically switched to ‘TV’ input, and took its audio from the HDMI cable through which it normally provides video to the TV. The receiver doesn’t provide network access, but under the fold-down front panel there is a USB socket. This is very useful. You can, of course, use it for audio (and only audio) on a flash memory card. In this mode it supports lossy WMA, MP3, AAC and uncompressed WAV. The unit also supports externally powered USB hard disk drives, which would make uncompressed WAV (up to 16 bit, 48kHz) feasible, allowing an effective high quality jukebox arrangement. Or you can just plug your iPod or iPhone into the unit, using a standard iPod/iPhone USB cable. Do that and you get a content menu for the device. As with other USB devices, you can scoot through long Artist or Album lists reasonably quickly by hitting the ‘Search’ key on the remote control, and then arrowing through the list a page at a time.

Conclusion It’s not the most feature-packed receiver on the market, and it won’t correct problems with other devices in your system, but for its solid home theatre performance and support for your iPod/ iPhone, the Marantz SR5005 won itself a Highly Commended in the Sound+Image 2011 awards.

Marantz SR5005 AV receiver Price: $1699 Warranty: Three years Power: 7 x 100 watts, 8 ohms, 20-20,000kHz, 0.08% THD (two channels driven) Inputs: 3 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 5 x composite video, 6 x analogue stereo, 1 x 7.1 analogue, 3 x optical digital, 2 x coaxial digital, 4 x HDMI, 1 x USB, M-XPORT proprietary expansion socket Outputs: 1 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 2 x composite video, 2 x analogue stereo, 1 x 7.1 pre-out, 1 x optical digital audio, 1 x HDMI Zone: Stereo audio, assignable amplifiers Other: 1 x IR in, 1 x trigger, 2 x Marantz RC I/O, 1 x RS-232C Dimensions (mm): 440w x 161h x 389d Weight: 11.6kg • • •

Strong audio performance Good iPod support Full support for Blu-ray 3D and ARC

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Lacks advanced connectivity No on-screen overlay

Contact: QualiFi Pty Ltd 1800 24 24 26 www.qualifi.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

B&W Panorama

integrated A/V sound system

he soundbar concept has been with us a good few years now, pioneered by Polk and Yamaha in particular, but becoming more widespread as more people realise that they like the idea of surround sound, but not the sometimes impractical requirements of five, six, seven or more speaker boxes stuffing every corner of the lounge. And cables, don’t get the missus started. Of course you can hide speakers and cable in walls, subwoofers in corners. But how much better if you could get a result without them. The worst of the soundbar breed are just big speakers which certainly give you a boost in level and impact over TV speakers, but may not even be using the real surround soundtracks to generate your audio. But the best soundbars use genuine multichannel signals and incorporate cunning processing to create a solid centre, powerful left/right, and an attempt at producing surround sound from the front, usually making use of side walls to ‘bounce’ the sound around you.

Equipment We’re delighted to say that B&W’s Panorama is not only one of the latter, ‘proper’ soundbar designs — it is a quite spectacular one, especially at the recently reduced RRP of $1999.

It’s remarkable for its visual presentation alone. It follows the same aesthetic as B&W’s Zeppelin, the iPod dock that shocked the audio world not only by its price but by the way it justified its price with thrilling design, all curves and chrome, not to mention a pretty darned fine sound from your choice of poddage. The Panorama shares its stainless steel backside, here punctuated by twin ports and a rubber-covered connection bay, while from the front it presents as a sleek 110cm-long lozenge of smiling black-mesh speaker grille, beneath which lie just one 25mm metal-domed tweeter, a pair of 75mm midrange woofers, and four more 75mm woofers for surround. Finally there’s a pair of 90mm “subwoofers”; those get an unspecified (but hopefully hi-fi, being B&W) 50W, with another 5 x 25W internal amplification for the other, er, seven drive units. The richness in presentation extends to the supplied cabling, with the box including not one but two optical cables, a coax digital cable, a normal analogue RCA pair, plus a wall-mounting kit. We found the figure-of-eight mains cable a fiddle to get in — it needed childsized fingers to drive it home — but everything else was a breeze so sweet that anyone accustomed to connecting home cinema equipment may pass out with joy at the simplicity of it. We ran one digital optical cable direct from a PlayStation 3, and one from the back of our TV, clicked them home through a little cable-tidying system on the Panorama connections bay and — oh, that was it. You could equally connect an AV receiver, but since this is designed to replace the complexity of such a system, that’s a less likely configuration. More likely you would connect one or two separate sources, and take the rest from the back of your telly. The Panorama doesn’t extend to decoding of the latest lossless surround formats from Blu-ray, but Dolby Digital, DTS and Dolby Pro-Logic II are all covered.

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LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES Performance Kaboom. One of the first things we played was one of the best soundtracks around, Wall-E on Blu-ray, and even before the movie began, the Disney Bluray ident launched its fireworks so forcefully and fully that we physically fell backwards. Good start! The Panorama has three modes — ‘stereo’, ‘wide’, and ‘surround’. Comparison between them makes it immediately obvious that when you select ‘surround’ on your little black’n’steel egg remote (specially designed to slip perfectly down the back of a sofa), a whole extra level of bass is engaged compared with either ‘stereo’ or ‘wide’ modes, while centre-channel speech has excellent clarity. (You can peak this up a bit using a ‘voice’ button for extra clarity, but we never needed it.) If you’re watching a movie, surround is the mode you’ll want. With Wall-E the Panorama picked up the DTS surround soundtrack instantly and presented a deliciously rich presentation of this finest of created soundscapes, with impeccable detail and width of soundstaging, from the filigreed HF clittering of Wall-E’s cockroach friend to the slamming gutsy impact of Eva’s pot-shots during their first encounter. You can run a subwoofer off the Panorama, but we’d suggest not, unless you prefer to be more shaken than stirred; there’s plenty here for the medium-sized rooms in which the Panorama is likely to be used. (B&W quotes a ±6dB response from 36Hz to a skyhigh 50kHz.) The real treat comes as you advance the volume. Up. And up. By the time we hit 30 on the 40-high scale, the audio was genuinely cinematic, and we praise also the Panorama’s ability to throw effects sideways — no fake phasing here, the sounds really do get behind you. It’s not an accurate organic placement — give it a walk-around-the-room dem track and things are fairly vague, but bring in a jet from rear left, or put some atmospheric computer noises back right, and the success rate is high, especially when you’re running at what might be termed ‘reference-level’ volumes. As with all surroundbars, the best surround results come when the bar can fire its angled surround speakers off parallel side walls, or from a corner to a listening position in an opposite corner. If you have, say, a wall on the left and open space on the right, inevitably there’s a slight pulling to the left. Set-up allows some tweakage of this, including settings for hard and soft walls (brick vs curtains, say), but even when we put it in some unfriendly situations things still sounded good, if not absolutely optimal. How about the stereo setting? As we noted earlier, there’s a huge drop in the low-end when you switch back to stereo — deliberately so, we were informed by the company when we queried this, as the bass emphasis applied for movies would tire your ears in stereo.

And that’s spot on. Play stereo music in surround mode and the bass thumps overindulgently. Indeed, this can also be true of many TV shows where sound mixes have been roughly hewn. Survivor, with its high production values, sounded great in surround, while sad old SD The Amazing Race came through with its background soundtrack rather too pumped and thumpy. Ads can be far too much, but hopefully you have a PVR by now, and don’t watch them any more. Switch to stereo for a music source, then, and it sounds bass light at first. But you get used to it, and the louder you play it (20 upwards from our digital source) the better it sounds, perfectly enjoyable — quite like the Zeppelin in fact — with reasonable bass content and nothing to criticise other than it being quite a way from what a good stereo system at this price could deliver. B&W did actually suggest the compromise ‘wide’ setting for music, but this seemed to remove air and shimmer at the top end and muddle up the midrange, though it did add a little bass. Though if you’re a dance fan who loves a bit of thump, hey, feel free to play music in the surround mode. Your call.

Conclusion Ultimately, though, this isn’t designed as a stereo speaker — on the manual B&W subtitles it an “Integrated A/V Sound System”, and that’s where it achieves superb results, bringing high-impact highdetail cinematic sound without the box count. If your family is likely to say “Ooh, turn it down”, it’s probably not for you. B&W’s Panorama just loves you to crank stuff up. And so do we. High five.

B&W Panorama integrated A/V so un

d system

Price: $1999 Warranty: Two years Drivers: 2 x 90mm, 2 x 75mm, 4 x 75mm (surround), 1 x 25mm metal-domed tweeter Internal power: 1 x 50W, 5 x 25W Inputs: 2 x optical digital, 1 x electrical digital RCA, 2 x analogue RCA phono; 1 x minijack stereo, RS232 service connector Outputs: subwoofer preout (12-150Hz) Dimensions: 1100 x 125 x 181mm Weight: 14.1kg • • •

Stunning looks Stunning sound Does front surround well

• • •

Not so much for music Best loud Reflective top

Contact: Convoy International 02 9700 0111 www.ehifi.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

Cabasse Eole 2

5.1-channel subwoofer/ satellite package

n principle, there is no reason why a subwoofer/satellite speaker system shouldn’t outperform a system comprising of floorstanding loudspeakers. But they rarely if ever do. One principle reason is their modest sensitivity. That means they simply won’t produce volume levels as high as larger speakers. But, as we said, there’s no reason for this in principle. And, at least on paper, the Cabasse Eole 2 subwoofer/satellite speaker system promises to perform at least as well as large systems.

Equipment But, first: Cabasse. Perhaps not especially familiar to Australian hi-fi fans, this is a French loudspeaker company established 60 years ago. Over the past 20 or so years its particular focus has been on loudspeakers with a coaxial driver arrangements in order to achieve point-source sound and coherent wave fronts. This culminated in 2009 in the Cabasse La Sphere, a... well, spherical... loudspeaker with four drivers in a coaxial arrangement. With the bass driver at 550mm and a price nudging $200,000 per pair, these aren’t really for everyone. But the concept is carried through into its Eole 2 satellites. These also are spheres, if only 130mm in diameter. Their coaxial drivers are a 100mm midrange and a 29mm tweeter. We use the word ‘midrange’ advisedly. Cabasse doesn’t fudge on this issue and claim it as a bass/midrange driver. The Eole 2 satellites are designed to work with a subwoofer, so midrange is what they are called. The company specifies their bass response down to only 170Hz (it puts their upper end at 22,000Hz, without indicating decibel limits). We can only speculate, but doing it this way, the satellites can be optimised to deliver midrange and treble, as though they were part of a large speaker with a dedicated woofer. This shows in the power handling and sensitivity figures. The company says that they can cope with 70 watts of power. It adds a claimed ‘Peak’ power handling of 490 watts. We mention this as a curiosity only, since ‘peak’ can be defined just about any way you like, and to warn against ever attempting to approach that kind of power level into these, or any other, loudspeaker. Now 70 watts of midrange and treble power is a lot, suggesting that these satellites ought to be able to go nicely loud. Also suggesting that is

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the claimed sensitivity of 91dB SPL, measured at one metre with one watt of power supplied. That’s two or three decibels above the average for floorstanders, and has the same practical effect as increasing the power output of your system by 60 to 100%. Of course, that does necessitate a subwoofer, and the system indeed is provided with one. The Cabasse Santorin 21 subwoofer includes a downward firing 210mm driver, with a slot port at the back of the enclosure and a 250 watt amplifier (750 watts peak, Cabasse says). It has both high and low level inputs and outputs. Without clearly saying so, the instruction manual for the system implies that the high level outputs at least are high pass filtered, suggesting that if used with a stereo system, rather than a home theatre receiver with a separate subwoofer output, the subwoofer will protect the front two satellites from deep bass. You can add more channels by purchasing more of the satellites ($499 each), and bump up the bass by

adding another subwoofer ($1199). Versions of the satellites intended for ceiling installation are available for $999 per pair.

Performance Included with the system were five desktop stands, and two slim floor stands that raise two of the satellites to just over a metre in height. Atop the stands are the rests for the satellites. Each satellite has a short length of slim speaker cable emerging from a grommet. This can be fed through a hole in the chosen stand and attached to a terminal block to which binding posts are already attached. Unique in our experience is the system used to hold each satellite in place in the concave cup on its stand. In each case, this is a pentagon of five magnets. This may seem rather insecure, but we

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

found that while we could shake a satellite from its stand, it was only with a lot of effort. The magnets easily supported the full weight of the satellites, even with a bit of shaking. We used the system with two different home theatre receivers. We often find it instructive to see what the automatic calibration systems in receivers will make of loudspeaker systems. For this one, they largely agreed: the satellites were set to ‘Small’ by both, with the crossovers at 150 or 200Hz for one of them, and 200Hz all around for the other. We were pretty comfortable with the latter setting. At no point did we feel any sense of limitation with the satellite speakers’ volume levels. We listened to half a dozen movies (oh, and watched them as well), and played a wide range of music, covering the gamut from sweet to headbanging. Even stereo music, with just two of the satellites running (supported by the subwoofer, of course), gave appropriate levels. Appropriate even for mild headbanging, although not quite rock concert levels. So we thought we ought to check the sensitivity specification. We used pink noise, limited to a two octave band centred on 1kHz. With an average 2.83 volts (ie. one watt into eight ohms), we measured an average output at one metre of 90.5dB. That’s as close as spit to the 91dB specification. Even with floorstanders that’s an impressively high figure. But for satellites — which tend to measure more around 85 or 86dB — that’s incredible. With all that performance available from the satellites, the subwoofer was called upon to do a big job. It largely stepped up to the mark. We would have liked maybe a little more bass extension, but that probably would have limited its ability to produce the necessary levels to keep up with the satellites. Only at the real extremes was there any suggestion of stress. One other improvement that we wouldn’t have minded

would be for the auto-switch-on to work more quickly. It normally took ten or more seconds. With music it nicely encompassed the bottom end of normal instruments (i.e. not including some subwoofer and pipe organ bass). In particular, it was a pleasure to follow bass guitar on this system, with the upper harmonics produced by the satellites nicely melding with the fundamental and lower harmonics from the subwoofer. The result was a beautifully coherent whole. The stereo and surround imaging was nigh on perfect, and the ‘sweet spot’ was broad and encompassing, perhaps due to the point source nature of the satellites. Occasionally there was a broadening of the virtual image of particular sounds, especially musical instruments, making them sound more rounded and three dimensional in a most attractive way. Yet the precision of the sound locations remained excellent, and there was significant depth, and even a sense of height, when called for by the signal. Because all the bass was farmed off to the subbie, even without any EQ there was virtually no room-induced tonal variation as we sent a pink noise signal on a journey, circumnavigating our listening room. We did our listening both with the receiver’s EQ on and off to get a sense of both how the speakers worked in a modern system, and what they did with the processing kept to a minimum. In both cases, the quality was excellent, and remarkably similar. They were perhaps a little more forward in the upper midrange in their natural state than after adjustment, but cleanly and without any significant coloration. Just as we were about to put this review to bed, the kindly postman arrived with a long-awaited delivery from Amazon: King Crimson’s album ‘Red’ on DVD Audio. If you are at all familiar with this ,aterial, you will know that the fact we didn’t hesitate to have our first listen through this

speaker system tells you all you need to know; no compromises here.

Conclusion And so we must agree with Cabasse’s claim regarding the sensitivity of its Eole 2 satellite speakers, and agree that at last the in-principle possibility has been achieved. You can have a compact system that sounds as good as a full sized system. Indeed, we’d say that this one comes very close to sounding as good as any full-sized comparably-priced system. And that is a real achievement.

Cabasse Eole2 5. 1-channel subwoofer/satel lite package Price: $2499 Warranty: Five years (two years on electronics) Satellite drivers: 2-way coaxial with 100mm midrange and 29mm tweeter, 4000Hz crossover Satellite frequency response: 170-22,000Hz Satellite impedance: 8 ohms Satellite sensitivity: 91dB/W/m Satellite power handling: 70 watts Satellite dimensions (whd): 130 x 130 x 130mm Weight: 1.3kg Subwoofer driver: 1 x 210mm Subwoofer frequency response: 35-200Hz Subwoofer power output: 250 watts (750 watts peak) Subwoofer dimensions (whd): 330 x 330 x 360mm Weight: 11.5kg • • •

Excellent sound quality Amazing sensitivity from satellites Flexible setup

•

We would have liked a bit more power and extension in subwoofer Subwoofer slow to switch on

•

Contact: International Dynamics 03 9429 0822 www.internationaldynamics.com.au

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best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AMPS/RECEIvERS

Onkyo TX-NR1008 AV receiver

lsewhere in this issue of Best Buys we relate the time we spent with Onkyo’s mighty TX-NR5008 home theatre receiver. Here we have the TX-NR1008 receiver. You’d think from the model numbers that this one must be some kind of entry-level model, but if so you’d be entirely wrong. For the Onkyo TX-NR1008 is itself clearly a premium AV receiver.

Equipment For example, no home theatre receiver offering nine power amplifiers could be considered anything other than premium. And each of those nine channels is rated at an impressive 135 watts, across the full audio bandwidth. While you can use these nine channels to give you the standard 7.1 (including surround rear) plus Dolby Pro Logic IIz (for front height) or Audyssey DSX (for front width) surround processing, you get an excellent range of alternative options for four of the amplifiers. You can drive the front stereo pair in biamplified mode, or drive two additional zones at the same time as the rest of the system is dealing with the main zone. All standard inputs are supported, generously in the case of HDMI, of which there are seven inputs, including one on the front panel. You also get phono inputs for that old analogue goodness, and that new digital goodness in the form of a USB socket on the front panel, and an Ethernet port on the rear. Onkyo’s own ‘Universal’ port

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is provided. You can purchase a separate Onkyo DAB+ tuner that plugs into this and integrates quite nicely into its operation. One additional input that Onkyo alone seems to offer is a D-SUB15 analogue computer video socket. The HDMI inputs all carry the 1.4a version number and fully support both Blu-ray 3D video passthrough and the return audio channel. This receiver is a large one, weighing nearly 19 kilograms. It keeps most of the fussy stuff beneath a drop-down panel that covers the bottom of the front panel. The unit is THX Select 2 certified.

Performance The receiver uses the Audyssey system for speaker set-up, including MultEQ for tonal adjustment. This worked in the usual way, but did require at least three different positions to be measured. Once this was done, we gave the settings a quick check and they were pretty close to what we would have chosen, except that we would have had a higher crossover frequency for the centre channel (it chose 40Hz). Then we listened. In fact, we ran this receiver virtually non-stop for a week, and loved every moment of it. It delivered excellent performance with both our regular speakers, and with a sub/sat system we were testing (of course, we calibrated for that purpose). There was a slightly forward articulation in the centre channel compared to our normal experience, due we assume to the

Audyssey calibration. This gave movie dialogue a higher level of coherence than is normally the case, although it did tend with some TV shows to make apparent the little clicks and pops with which the spoken human voice is often accompanied. Surround and stereo imaging was nicely done, with clean, three dimensional imaging in all directions. We normally use 5.1 speakers, but having on hand some high quality — but very different to our regular system — small speakers, we decided to experiment with 7.1 sound by installing them as surround rear. The Audyssey calibration did an excellent job of ironing out the different voices of the speakers so that surround imaging was just as coherent, despite the speakers’ different native characteristics. As with other Onkyo receiver’s we’ve looked at lately, the main menu system is attractively designed and sensibly laid out, but it does not overlay whatever video happens to be playing: it replaces it. Its resolution is fixed at 576p50, regardless of the output resolution you have set for incoming video signals. Still, even with a front projector and a large screen, the fonts and graphics are fairly smooth, so it still looks nice. If, however, you have a display that takes a while to resync from one picture resolution to another, the anticipated delay can act as an impediment to one lightly invoking the setup menu to tweak this or that on the spur of the moment. And it is perfectly clear that making this menu work as an overlay is simply a matter of programming. Why? Because lots of other onscreen items act as overlays. If, for example, you adjust the volume, then a semi-transparent grey bar will appear across the bottom of the screen, with both a bar and numerical indication of the volume level displayed in blue text.

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AMPS/ RECEIvERS

Or at any time you can hit the ‘Display’ key at the top right of the remote to show a semitransparent box with the audio and video input signals the unit is receiving, along with how they are being output. If you’re adjusting the video settings within the setup menu then a simple press of the ‘Enter’ key on the remote drops you out of the menu and back into the picture, with an overlaid bar containing the adjustable item so that you can see what it’s doing. But let’s face it, few are as inclined as us to venture into the setup menu on a regular basis, so at worst this is a minor irritation, and it should be balanced against the other aspects of video processing. These are provided by the Faroudja DCDi Cinema system, and we’ve got to say that they’re the best we’ve yet seen from that company, and that they are at least as good as competing circuits from the likes of HQV and Anchor Bay Technology. Indeed, if video processing is important to you, this receiver is far more useful than its big brother, the TX-NR5008. For one thing, the progressive scan conversion for 1080i50 material from Blu-ray was very, very close indeed to perfect, if not quite achieving that exalted status. We run three segments of the ‘Miss Potter’ 1080i50 Blu-ray disc to check this performance. Segment one: perfect. Unusually so, it is very rare that a device can manage this without even one wobble. Segment three: perfect, although this is by no means uncommon. Segment two had the unit produce artefacts due to inappropriately dropping from film mode to video mode deinterlacing, but this happened twice for less than one second each time, which is better than the norm. The performance with DVDs was equally impressive. We fed our nastiest 576i50 test clips into one of the receiver’s HDMI inputs, and its

1080p50 output was just about perfect, except for two wobbles on the two brief bits that always cause the worst problems. The wobbling line appeared for just a second on one, and the moire pattern appeared for a couple of seconds on the second. And that was it. You can actually set the ‘Film Mode’ manually to ‘Auto’, ‘Video’, ‘3:2’ or ‘2:2’. This last is sometimes a synonym for forcing film-mode deinterlacing. That wasn’t the case here: as far as we could see, its results were identical to those from ‘Auto’. Fortunately ‘Auto’ was extremely good. A brief note is warranted on our claim that this receiver is better than the TX-NR5008 on video processing. The problem with that unit was that if you wanted to force 1080p output, you had to choose between ‘1080p’ or ‘1080p/24’. The first converted 24 frames per second material from Blu-ray to a jerky 60fps, while the second converted 50fps content to a jerky 24fps. With this receiver, you can choose output resolutions from 480p/576p up to 1080p. There is no explicit 1080p24 setting. Instead, 1080p24, if received, is put straight through without being turned into something else. Which is precisely as it should be. The USB and Ethernet functions were excellent, with strong support for lossless audio formats in addition to the usual lossy ones. There were many thousands of Internet radio stations and Podcasts available through the vTuner portal. We plugged an iPod Touch (so it also works with the iPhone) into the front USB using a standard iPod cable, and the receiver made all its music content available through the on screen menu. And all media menus had an acceleration system built into the scrolling, so getting through long lists was perfectly feasible.

Conclusion We kind of fell for the Onkyo TX-NR1008 receiver. Its price is good and its mix of features excellent. Perhaps the extra two channels are overkill, and it would be nice if the menu system could pop up over the underlying video, but these are minor issues. Because it was simply excellent on just about every criterion.

Onkyo TX-NR100 8 AV receiver Price: $3499 Warranty: Three years Rated power: 9 x 135 watts, 8 ohms, 20-20,000Hz, 0.08% THD (two channels driven) Inputs: 7 x HDMI, 2 x component video, 4 x SVideo, 5 x composite video, 1 x D-SUB15 computer, 6 x analogue stereo, 1 x phono, 1 x 7.1 analogue, 3 x optical digital, 3 x coaxial digital, 1 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x Onkyo Universal port Outputs: 2 x HDMI, 1 x component video, 2 x S-Video, 2 x composite video, 1 x analogue stereo, 1 x 9.2 pre-out, 1 x 6.5mm headphone Zone: 2 x stereo audio, assignable amplifiers Other: 1 x IR I/O, 2 x trigger out, 1 x RS-232C, 1 x R1 remote control, 1 x setup mic Dimensions (whd): 435 x 199 x 434mm Weight: 18.7kg • • •

Excellent audio performance Excellent video performance Excellent new audio media support

•

Main menu fixed at 576p, replaces image on screen

Contact: Amber Technology 1800 251 367 www.ambertech.com.au

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Golden Ear

Bryston is honoured to be the recipient of three prestigious Absolute sound, Golden Ear Awards.

Bryston BDP-1 Digital Audio Player Bryston BDP-1: A digital audio player that plays music from a USB hard drive or thumb-drive. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s designed specifically for playing high-resolution two channel music. The music is stored, organized and arranged on the USB drive that the user chooses to access. Music can be stored and accessed from up to four different USB drive devices at any one time. It then converts the computer audio files into digital audio for output to a D/A converter via either AES-EBU or SPIDF (BNC) digital signal formats. The BDP-1 can be controlled directly from the front panel controls, a Bryston remote, or a computer using a web-browser (Firefox, Chrome and Safari). Additionally it can be controlled by an iPhoneâ&#x201E;˘, iPod touchâ&#x201E;˘, iPadâ&#x201E;˘ (Using MPod or Bryston MINI) BDP-1 audio file specs. s 0LAYABLE lLES !)&& 7!6 &,!# -0 - ! 7-! s 3AMPLING FREQUENCIES +(Z +(Z +(Z +(Z +(Z +(Z s "IT DEPTHS B B

Data can be simply accessed from a traditional hard-drive or thumb drive

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best buys home theatre Summer 2011

Systems & Single product solutions

Rotel RCX-1500

CD network receiver

raditional hi-fi companies are fast learning that they need to ‘get with it’. Rotel is no exception, and whereas it still embraces its predominantly two-channel and old-school past, the company has realised it needs to tempt the techno-savvy with some audio gear that’s a little more 21st century.

Equipment Enter the RCX-1500, which is, according to Rotel, “the most versatile component it’s ever offered”. We won’t argue with that; up until very recently,

Rotel has only dabbled its little toe in the modernday technology pool, but with this bit of kit, it’s slipped in gracefully, albeit not fully submerged, but definitely up to the neck and shoulders. The RCX-1500 is a single-box solution — all you need add is a pair of loudspeakers. Within its rather nice-looking silver casework lurks quite a collection of hi-fi componentry. It’s a CD player, it has DAB+ and FM tuners, internet radio, plus it’ll stream audio either wirelessly or via an Ethernet connection. The streaming support is via UpnP, which is specifically ‘optimised’ for use

with Microsoft’s Media Players 11 and 12. This technology is apparently ‘plug-and-play’ with automatic client and network address recognition (being ever sceptical about all things wireless, we shall see if this is actually the case). Continuing with the connectivity theme, there’s RS-232 control for bi-directional feedback and multiroom system integration. And, of course, it contains amplification, boasting two channels of 100 watts, using a Class-D configuration. Outwardly, the RCX-1500 looks like a lot of Rotel’s AV receivers, except for the slim CD slot beneath the central four-line display. It shares the usual high-quality build and finish we’ve come to expect from Rotel over many years, and it weighs in at a reassuringly heftyish 8.2kg. A rather basic and fiddly remote seems a bit out of place with the rest of the high quality package, but it gets the job done. (We found the buttons too small for our liking, especially the volume controls, which are stuck up in the top right-hand corner). Internally, Rotel has used much of the knowhow it incorporates in its other hi-fi components. The CD player is largely based on the popular RCD-1520 model (itself a $1500 machine), using the same slot-loading mechanism and Wolfson 24-bit/192 kHz DAC. The Class-D switching amplification design has been used by Rotel for a few years now and it works well — heat build-up is reduced, the full frequency spectrum is well and truly covered and generally; it’s a far more efficient form of amplification. And since 100 watts is a fairly common figure these days for integrated amplifier design, we thought we’d put this to the usual test with a trio of different speaker loads.

Performance Twenty or so years ago, Rotel gear was a safe bet. Sure, its styling hardly sent a tingle down your

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Systems & Single product solutions

spine, but it was no-nonsense, solid, reliable and consistent. That’s not a bad reputation to have, and it’s nice to know that Rotel has maintained it over the years, as well as adding a little pizzazz to liven some products up a bit. This being one of them. The easiest listening option for the RCX-1500 straight out of the box is to chuck a CD in the slot, which is precisely what we did. A Ministry of Sound covers compilation was on top of the pile, so in it went, and the pleasant rendition of Live And Let Die by Welsh songstress, Duffy proved a great track to highlight the player’s female vocal handling; the Rotel sounded sweet and sophisticated. As our playing progressed, it soon became clear that rather than sounding like a combination of distinct sonic elements, the Rotel brings things together nicely, whether it be simple acoustics and solo female vocals, or the big bass and drum sound of Aussie rockers Pendulum. In fact, it made a good stab at a wide variety of music, with fine pace and plenty of detail retrieval. We liked the way the player switched between two very different musical styles so effortlessly, delivering high levels of ambience with finely-

recorded female vocals, while rock and pop was served up with a good sense of drive and pace. To try the Rotel’s wireless streaming we first had to upgrade our PC’s media player to version 11 — and you definitely need to be somewhat techno-savvy to get this sort of feature up and running; it’s not nearly as plug-and-play as we’d like. (It seems nothing wireless is particularly simple to configure.) In ‘network’ mode, the Rotel starts up and searches for any network devices in range. We were using a Telstra Bigpond router and it took a bit of effort for the pair to find each other, although the trouble lay at the PC and router’s end, not the Rotel’s. So, with that little networking glitch overcome, we were able to stream our music library and hook up to internet radio as well, both key features of this networked receiver. Once ‘online’ the Rotel is pretty logical to use, and you simply scroll through the various menu options as they applicably pop up on the display. There are 30 presets at your disposal to store favourites from the 16,000-or-so internet radio stations available, or you can simply browse away by genre or location — it’s a great way to waste time! Unfortunately we couldn’t test the DAB+ abilities from our test location in NSW Central Coast (there’s a big coastal hill blocking the Sydney transmissions), but there’s every reason to expect a more than satisfactory digital radio implementation from Rotel. We couldn’t get a Sony Walkman to play via the front USB input, but an iPod Touch (via USB cable) and thumbdrive MP3 player both had no problem. We were pleasantly surprised with compressed audio via the Rotel; it made the most of 320kps recorded material and even lower bit-rates sounded listenable. There’s very little of the commonly discernible midband veiling

experienced on MP3 audio replay via decent hi-fi equipment. Of course it largely depends on the quality of the source material, but this Rotel does a good job of extracting the positives of this music medium. It had no problems driving our various speaker loads either, from super-efficient hybrid ribbons to stubborn little standmounters. We never had to push the amplifier too hard to produce decent, room-filling decibels and, due to its Class-D design, there were no problems with excessive heat — quite the opposite, in fact; the RCX-150 runs nice and cool.

Conclusion Rotel’s RXC-1500 provides ample audio quality across a broad musical spectrum in an attractive package. We won’t say it’s the most sophisticated of network devices; rather it’s got that added capability for those who value it, while those who place audio quality over just networking convenience are well served. There’s no iPod dock, the remote control isn’t the best and we wouldn’t say its hassle-free plug-and-play either. But for one-box CD-playing with all the other networking/DAB/internet radio elements, for the price, Rotel has certainly met its design brief with this particular product. Rotel RCX-1500 CD network rece

iver

Price: $1999 Power: 100 watts continuous/channel (20Hz20kHz, <0.05% THD, 8 ohms) THD: <0.05% at rated power Intermodulation distortion: <0.05% at rated power Wi-Fi standards: 802.11g, 802.11b (2.4 GHz) Inputs: 1 x RCA auxiliary stereo, 1 x digital (Toslink/coaxial), USB front (iPhone/iPod compatible), USB rear Outputs: 1 x RCA; RJ-45 Ethernet, RS-232 bi-directional, Crestron module available CD: slot-loading, plays CDs/MP3 CDs Dimensions (whd): 391 x 144 x 311mm Weight: 8.2kg • • •

One box with separates sound quality Solid attractive build/finish Windows and MAC support

• •

No iPod dock Poor remote

Contact: International Dynamics 03 9426 3600 www.internationaldynamics.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AV PROJECTORS

InFocus SP8600

AV projector

S projector maker InFocus has been bringing DLP home theatre projectors into our lounge rooms for many years now. With its SP8600 it has a compact projector, offering full high definition resolution, at a very attractive price.

Equipment That price is just $3500, and by compact we are not kidding. It is only 335mm wide, 254mm deep and 102mm tall. Indeed, it looks like a luggable business projector. And it offers a powerhouse of brightness output of up to a claimed 1800 lumens. The digital micromirror device is described as using ‘DarkChip’ technology, without specifying which version, and it eschews such things as a dynamic iris to stretch subjective contrast ratio levels. A six-segment colour wheel is used, and InFocus says that this allows the unit to display some 1.07 billion unique colours. The lens does not include a shifting capability, so it’s important to locate the projector accurately according to the geometry of your room and screen. The usual inputs are provided, along with the full set of control connections, including an RS-232C port and a USB socket. It also has very unusual connections for a home cinema projector: two stereo audio inputs (one is a pair of RCA sockets, the other a 3.5mm stereo jack). Turns out it has a three watt amplifier and a small speaker. We ignored that for the purpose of this review! Oddly no battery is provided for the remote control, and it’s a CR2025 3V lithium cell, which you’re unlikely to have sitting around in your kitchen drawer. Be warned.

Performance Setting up this projector was, as we mentioned, an exercise in being careful. The trick was to consult the manual (which is on a CD) and get the location correct. The 1.2:1 zoom range was also fairly restrictive. Still, �� once installed, making the adjustments (focus and zoom) was easy using the manual lens controls. It has excellent default settings. Unlike many display devices, the ‘Sharpness’ setting and others, such as noise reduction, defaulted to zero. In other words, no artificial sharpening was applied, and consequently there were none of the image-damaging effects of such processing, such as ringing around the edges of objects. The projector also defaulted to having ‘Overscan’ switched off, ensuring full 1:1 pixel mapping with 1080p content.

The black levels were generally good, if not quite leading edge for a DLP projector. The unit doesn’t use a dynamic iris (which clamps down on light output from the lamp during darker scenes, allowing for a greater stretch between light and dark scenes), so it has a relatively modest 5000:1 contrast ratio specification. On normal content in which the picture contains both light and dark parts, this was sufficient to ensure that any blacks seemed, subjectively, perfectly black. In dark scenes, so long as there was still some visible picture content, the picture was neutral, dark, and with good low-light detail. However, when showing a full black screen, there was a little more light coming through to the screen than we are used to. It also seemed to have a very slightly bluish character. That’s pretty nitpicky, though, because the black levels are on a par with the best of current model plasma displays. There are very high brightness levels available from this projector — we spent almost all our time with it set to ‘Standard’, the 190 watt setting which extends the lamp life to a useful 4000 hours (from the full power’s 2500 hours). The other setting is called ‘Boost’ and kicks the lamp up to 230 watts and a claimed 1800 lumens. If you ever need to fight ambient light and are prepared to take a hit on lamp life, this ability is worth having. But the best results are still with a properly darkened room and the lamp output set to ‘Standard’. The projector does not include a motion smoothing circuit. On balance, we prefer not to use these, so it wouldn’t trouble us in the slightest. (We think that they often reduce the fidelity of the picture in their attempt to ‘correct’ the picture.) One thing that surprised us was that the menu system had no settings at all for controlling progressive-scan conversion. InFocus’ brochure doesn’t talk about this either, so we can only go on how the unit actually performed. Of course, we focused on 50Hz material, since that dominates in Australia (aside from Blu-ray’s 1080p/24, which needs no conversion). Using 576i/50 content from our test DVD, we clearly established that the projector employs some form of cadence detection before applying video processing. That is, it looks at the content and decides whether it is naturally progressive, and consequently can

have its fields ‘weaved’ together, or whether it is inherently interlaced and therefore requires more extreme processing. Not only did it do this, it did it extremely well. It tilted towards the former, and with only the briefest of blips at the start of one of our test clips, it handled all our most difficult film-sourced stuff absolutely perfectly. So we fed it some interlaced material and this, also worked perfectly. With video-mode deinterlacing, it employed a motion adaptive system to provide the highest possible resolution in the static parts of the picture. Unfortunately, this did not work for 1080i/50 material. Indeed, the projector treated all of this as though it were interlaced, regardless of whether or not it was. So our test Blu-ray actually looked a little soft, in addition to having unnecessary processing artefacts appearing on the screen. (Of course, this did not affect the majority of Blu-ray discs with their 1080p/24 content.) We strongly suggest that your Blu-ray player, at least, should include high quality progressive scan conversion for 1080i/50 discs. But since few HDTV receivers feature 1080p output, you may be stuck with the video processing for some HD movie broadcasts.

Conclusion The InFocus SP8600 is a fine, compact projector that also constitutes very good value for money. It also has strong warranty support. Just make sure that you try to feed it high-quality 1080p content to get the very best from it. InFocus SP8600 AV projector Price: $3499 Warranty: 5 years parts (limited exclusions for colour wheel, light tunnel etc.), 3 years labour, 1 year Lamp unconditional • • •

Very good picture quality Very high brightness levels available Good lamp lifespan

• •

Poor 1080i/50 deinterlacing No remote-control battery!

Contact: Revolution Technologies Pty Ltd 07 3902 8051 www.revolutiontechnologies.com.au

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best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

Klipsch Palladium P-37F 5.1-channel speaker package

he late Paul Wilbur Klipsch, who founded the company that still bears his name—and is still owned by his cousin, Fred and his wife Judy — was one of the first speaker designers inducted into the US ‘Audio Hall of Fame’ and Klipsch home theatre speakers are renowned the world over. For this review, we’ve assembled models from the Palladium series into a 5.1-channel system, though all are available for separate purchase.

Equipment For the front-main channels, we selected the Klipsch Palladium P-37F speakers ($15,990 per pair) which have ‘Tractrix’ horn-loaded midrange drivers and tweeters. The three 178mm diameter bass drivers in each channel have hybrid multilayer dish-profile cones with inverse rubber suspension. The three layers of the cone are aluminium, Rohacell and Kevlar. The midrange is actually identical to that in Klipsch’s top-line P-39F (which retails for $39,900). It’s a 90×60° modified Tractrix horn design with a 4:1 highcompression phase plug. The word ‘Tractrix’ sounds high-tech, but it is just a name used to describe the geometrical shape of the curve of a horn: it’s a shape that in engineering terms would be known as ‘equi-tangential’. The way a Tractrix horn spreads the sound in a room is more suitable for home theatre applications than the speakers used by most other manufacturers. The

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P-37F is 1180mm high, 248mm wide and 500mm deep. The centre channel in this system is the Klipsch P-27C ($7,915), which is an ideal match for the P-37F floorstanders. It uses exactly the same drivers, which is a prerequisite for any centre-channel in a properly set-up home theatre system. Although we wanted to use Klipsch P-17B speakers in the surround channels, they weren’t available at the time, so we instead used Klipsch’s slim-line P-27S speakers ($7,995). These speakers couple a pair of 178mm-diameter cone drivers (the same as used in the P-37F) with a pair of high-compression Tractrix tweeters. This means that the two cone drivers are actually working as bass/midrange drivers, rather than as exclusively bass drivers, as they are in the main and centrechannel designs. These worked very well, but be aware the P-17Bs are an alternative. The Klipsch P-312W ($7,995) subwoofer is so large — and so awkwardly-shaped — that it’ll be a tough sell in the ‘wife acceptance factor’ stakes, but its features and performance are such that you should persevere! It houses a single actively-driven 300mm-diameter bass driver and two passivelydriven 305mm-diameter drone cones and features automatic Adaptive Room Correction (ARC) that will calibrate its performance to suit your room. Power is supplied by a BASH amplifier rated with an output of 1,000-watts continuous.

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

Performance We ‘warmed up’ the Klipsch Palladium System with that great disaster flick 2012 (on Blu-ray), which has enough low-frequency energy and enough overdramatic sound effects to send any home theatre buff into thrall. The bass was so absolutely awesome that not once did we ever find it wanting, even at excessively high volume. Indeed the panel opined that the bass was rather too awesome, and further investigation revealed the ARC had dialled in a little more bass than we’d considered ‘natural’—an enthusiasm easily corrected by a couple of deft touches on the subwoofer’s electronic control panel. The sound recordists who did the foley on 2012 have engineered lots of information into the surround channels, and with the bass moderated we then thought that this over-engineering, in combination with the dual tweeters in the P-27Ss, also made the rear channels sound a little too-powerful at high frequencies—though the level of this effect will vary depending on the reflectivity of the rear wall in your home cinema listening room, on account of the fact that the second of the tweeters fires backwards, away from the listening position. The seamless soundstage across the front channels is testament to Klipsch’s foresight in designing the P-27C to exactly match the P-37F. When actors move across the screen, or vehicles or planes (or fault-lines, in the case of the 2012 movie!) track across the screen horizontally, the tone of the sound remains identical the entire way across, delivering the ultimate in realistic sound. Having established the Palladium’s Home Theatre system’s credentials beyond any shadow of a doubt, we were interested in seeing how the P-37Fs would perform as a plain ol’ stereo pair, so accordingly set them up for pure two-channel

listening. Right from the very first track two performance plusses leapt to the fore. The first was that even without the able and enthusiast assistance of the subwoofer, the bass from the P-37Fs is impressively extended, hugely powerful and superbly tight. These speakers really kick! We confirmed the deep bass using a recording of the organ in the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, and that city’s Oratorio Choir. Not only were the low frequencies reproduced impeccably, but higher up in the midrange frequencies, the diction and enunciation of the choristers was crisp and accurate. The second highlight was the incredible imaging of the P-37Fs — it’s so good that it’s almost a complete facsimile of reality, making it possible to focus the exact location of any performer on the stage with pinpoint accuracy, and the additional information—height and depth—is perfectly integrated with this location. The clarity the Tractrix horns afford the mid and high-frequency sound was clearly evidenced when we listened to the track Freedom from Greg Devine’s CD ‘Highway One Revisited’ which has a brilliantly-recorded flute sound. The Klipsch P-37F not only delivered the crisp, clean sound of the flute, but also articulated the natural breath sounds of the flautist with an intricately high level of detail. That said, we’d be remiss if we didn’t note that we thought we heard a slight prominence in the 4–6kHz region, but it is minor, and is probably a contributing factor in the clarity of the dialogue delivery. There is only one qualification we’d make to the foregoing, which is that to hear this high level of performance you need to have the midrange horn throats positioned at ear level or slightly higher — if the throats are below ear level, a lot of the high-frequency ‘air’ disappears, and with it some of the staging focus. Piano sound is a great leveller of loudspeakers, but the Klipsch P-37Fs stepped up to the plate when it came to delivering Glenn Gould’s 1982 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which they were was able to do at realistically high playback levels without overload or excessive distortion, no doubt due to the high efficiency of the drivers, as well as the high power-handling capacity of the speaker system as a whole. The speakers were able to separate out Gould’s vocalise from the

piano sound, as well as deliver the percussive reality of the keyboard itself, while still filling the audition room with a perfectly re-created sense of the acoustic in which the piece was recorded. Even better, there was no harmonic inter-ference from any of the drivers to affect the underlying harmonic interactions of the piano itself.

Conclusion Looking at Klipsch’s pricing, we’d have to say the P-37F floor-standers are without a doubt the ‘Best Buy’ in the range of three floorstanders, because the only difference between them and the top-line P-39F is that the cabinet and bass drivers are slightly larger, plus a slightly larger Tractrix horn throat, which hardly seems sufficient to account for a $24,000 difference in price. The P-37F floorstanders are also the ‘best fit’ with the centre and surround speakers in the Palladium range, due to the use of identical drivers, which is not the case if the P-38F or P-39F models are used as front channels. In other words, if you’re putting together a home theatre system, you are better off — acoustically and financially — buying the smaller, lessexpensive P-37Fs… though we’d recommend the P-39Fs for use in a stereo-only system. If you’re lucky enough to be in the market for a true, high-performance, high-end home theatre speaker system — or you just want to experience what’s possible with modern technology — you should have listen to the Klipsch Palladium P-37F System. Klipsch Palladium P-37F 5.1-channel spea ker package Price: $39,895 Warranty: Five years • • •

Stupendous bass Midrange articulation Imaging and spread of image

• • •

Very large and bulky Expensive Slight prominence in mids

Contact: Klipsch Group Australia 03 9358 5999 www.powermove.com.au

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best buys home theatre Summer 2011

Sources

Cambridge Audio Azur 650BD Blu-ray player

ambridge Audio, as its name implies, began as a British business making audio equipment. And over the years it has developed somewhat of a reputation for producing high quality gear at reasonable prices. In recent years it has kept up with the times, expanding into home theatre with its respected ‘Azur’ range. This has previously included home theatre receivers and DVD players, and now adds the 650BD Blu-ray player.

Equipment This is a largish player compared with some and heavily built as befits a premium model. At 4.5

kilograms, it’s a welcome departure from the sub2kg lightweights becoming increasingly common. It performs, of course, all the tasks that are required of a current Blu-ray player, aside from supporting Blu-ray 3D, but few specialised units yet do that. What it does support is BonusView PIP operation, and full BD-Live. Plug it into your home network and you will get everything a Blu-ray disc has to offer. And you don’t even have to purchase any flash memory, because it has the full 1GB of persistent storage built in. There is a USB socket on the front, however, plus one on the back, which you can use to add additional storage if you wish, or for multimedia file playback.

Around the back the player sports 7.1-channel analogue audio outputs. These aren’t likely to be used if you’re assembling a whole new system, but you might have a high-quality multichannel receiver from a few years ago (by Cambridge Audio perhaps?) which you still rather enjoy. Such a receiver’s lack of HDMI inputs won’t be a problem audio-quality wise, because you can just use analogue connections. The unit’s internal audio decoders support full DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD as well as the more mundane stuff. Basic speaker set-up is included so you can change it to support 5.1 channel or even stereo systems. But most people will use the HDMI output, and this supports multichannel audio decoded by the player, or bitstream passthrough of the original audio for decoding by a receiver. The player also handles DVD Audio and SACD, and it can provide the output from these discs as multichannel PCM or, in the case of SACD, in the original Direct Stream Digital format, which can be decoded by some receivers. There were clearly similarities between this unit and the units from the US firm Oppo Digital — menu structure, feature set, similar competence at handling physical disc problems. Cambridge Audio says that these similarities have to do with the use of a similar chipset.

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Sources

Performance In any case, those similarities were, for the most part, things to be applauded. For example, not only was the menu structure similar to that in the Oppo, the same invaluable ability to pop the set-up menu up over the playing content made for huge convenience. How much convenience? Like most (but not all) Blu-ray players, the unit has excellent built-in audio decoders for the high resolution Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio formats, but (as is common) it seems unable to use them on content which also has secondary audio in BonusView PIP content, at least when Secondary Audio is switched ‘On’ in the menu, even if the PIP material is not being played. So it’s best to generally leave this switched to ‘Off ’. With lesser players, if you notice a disc has this content, you then have to stop playback to switch the secondary audio on. On nearly all BonusView Blu-ray discs, that means that the disc then has to start again from the beginning. With this player, you just hit the Setup key while the movie is still playing, make the changes, and you’re right to go. You can also change output resolution using the dedicated remote key. This is also useful, as we shall see. The picture quality with normal 1080p/24 Blu-ray discs was excellent. If for some reason you find the colour or other elements of the picture need adjustment, then there is a set of five basic picture adjustments available in the player’s set-up menu. But you may not need them, because the

“This is a largish player compared with some and heavily built as befits a premium model.”

picture at the default ‘0’ settings for all of these seemed very accurate. Rather surprisingly, given that the homeland of Cambridge Audio is Britain, one weakness was with PAL DVDs; when set to 1080p/50 output, the automatic cadence detector of the deinterlacer worked well enough on most scenes, but was quite readily tricked into flipping from film over to video mode by ambiguous scenes. But where the material wasn’t too confusing, the deinterlacer switched rapidly from video to film mode as appropriate. It was again a little inconsistent with 1080i/50 Blu-ray content. Fortunately there was that ever-so-useful output resolution control. Using that — or just leaving the resolution set to ‘Source Direct’ — the native output could be passed through and processed by any AV receiver, screen or projector capable of better results.

The audio outputs were also excellent — quite indistinguishable from the high-end receiver through which we ran it most of the time via digital output. And the capability of playing SACDs and DVD Audio discs will make it very welcome for anyone who treasures those high-res audio formats. It also did a good job on many different multimedia files on USB stick, scaling JPEG and PNG photos to its full resolution, supporting MP3 and regular WMA playback, though none of the lossless formats such as WAV, WMA Lossless or FLAC. It worked well with an AVI and both SD and HD MPEG2. All the transport features were fully available on both DVD and Blu-ray (and most of them on multimedia video files as well): frame stepping in both directions, slow motion in both directions, Chapter, Title and A-B repeats, skip directly to time, Chapter or Title (disc constraints permitting) are all available. While not the fastest player with all its functions, it is among those in the first tier, so it won’t keep you waiting, except for leaving gaps on DVD layer changes. Otherwise disc handling was excellent, even playing both the defective

Blu-ray discs we use to test such things (one with a scratch, one with a cloudy surface). And you can get it region free (and switching between regions is easier than with some other region-free players). Of course, region modifications of Blu-ray players are a grey area. We are informed by the distributor that for the standard RRP of $999, the unit comes locked to Region B for Blu-ray, but is region-free for DVD. It will install the after-market Blu-ray region code modification device for $200, which actually includes the two-year warranty continuing to be honoured.

Conclusion Aside from the occasional issues deinterlacing PAL DVDs, which can in many cases be overcome, the Cambridge Audio Azur 650BD is a fine Blu-ray player that simply reeks of quality.

Cambridge Audi o Azur 650BD Blu-ray player Price: $999 Warranty: Two years Test firmware: 650BD-06-1104 Outputs: 1 x HDMI, 1 x component video, 1 x composite video, 1 x S-Video, 1 x optical digital audio, 1 x coaxial digital audio, 1 x 7.1 channel analogue audio Other: 1 x Ethernet port, 2 x USB (1 on front) Dimensions (whd): 430 x 85 x 312mm Weight: 4.5kg • • •

Able to change parameters/resolution on-the-fly SACD and DVD-Audio support Multi-region (see text)

• •

Imperfect with 576i/50 and 1080i/50 No seamless DVD layer change

Contact: Synergy Audio Visual 03 9459 7474 www.synergyaudio.com

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

Systems & Single product solutions

Onkyo CS-1045 CD/DAB+ hi-fi mini system

ini systems were long vilified by respectable audio publications. Built to a budget, often spending on flashy lights rather than audio quality, with no mix-n-matching of components.

Equipment Then came the “mini separates” revolution, and we had to stop our moaning. Here Onkyo has applied all the attention usually lavished on separates components, but with the boxes smaller, friendlier, some would say more attractive. Hence Onkyo’s CS-1045 has two units each 27cm-wide, one of them a CD player, the other an impressively weighty receiver with two channels

Onkyo has applied all the attention usually lavished on separates components, but with the boxes smaller, friendlier, some would say more attractive... 94

of amplification rated at 70W (though not at full hi-fi spec), and a three-band tuner — the usual FM and AM, plus the joys of DAB+ digital radio. So three different antennas are supplied; quite a tangle challenge if you plug them all up! You can run a supplied digital cable between the two units (Onkyo presumably rates the receiver’s Burr-Brown DAC over the Wolfson in the CD player) plus a control cable to link the two for the single nicely-styled full-size remote control. There are plenty of other inputs on the receiver to expand the system, with a phono stage for a turntable, three auxiliary inputs (one with what we would once have called a ‘tape out’), plus both optical and electrical digital inputs (the latter used for the CD player, but you could always switch that to analogue and use the electrical digital for something else). There’s also a subwoofer preoutput, should you wish to beef up your bottom.

Performance Be careful with those bare-wire speaker cables — we twice created a short to the chassis which caused the Onkyo to shut down shortly after start-up. That sorted, and a night of out-of-phase blasting to warm everything through, we were

greeted with a clear sound, digital radio faring best through the pair of gloss plastic-finished 28cmhigh speakers. The bottom octave of bass is absent (there’s always the subwoofer option), particularly notable from CD, which we found tended to sound rather peaky in the midrange when pushed to any level of loudness; linking to the receiver via analogue phonos calmed it just a tad. There’s the now-ubiquitous USB socket on the front for iPod/iPhone connection (control works via the remote or from the iPod, which is also charged). You can also plug in a stick with MP3, WMA and AAC files; this all worked fine.

Conclusion The speakers seem the weak link in this chain, and currently you can’t buy the system without them. Otherwise the Onkyo CS-1045 is wellbuilt, versatile, and performs well in small rooms. Onkyo CS-1045 CD/DAB+ hi-fi m

ini system

Price: $1999 Warranty: Three years • • •

Digital radio and iPod playback Nice styling & simple operation Separates build quality

• •

Speakers are a weak link Lacking the bottom bass octave

Contact: Amber Technology 1800 251 367 www.ambertech.com.au

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DISCOVER THE BEST BIG SCREEN LCD TV IN AUSTRALIA* TODAY. No other TV at this size offers you the future proof upgradeable modular circuitry unique to Metz or the same level of photographic realism and threedimensional credibility evident on demonstration. Colours are natural, movement is fluid, details are precise and you enjoy a genuine sense of dimension. You’ll also find the Primus 55 is the only television at this screen size manufactured in Germany, where for the last 70 years Metz has proudly upheld the German traditions of impeccable engineering, precision in manufacture and durability by design. Starting out with the latest 200Hz LED backlit panel, picture performance is taken to a higher plane with exclusive Metz engineering. Connectivity is also exceptional and includes RS232. Twin HD MPEG4 tuners cleverly allow for future changes to the broadcast system and the added convenience of an inbuilt 500 GB hard drive recorder completes the picture. A generous five years warranty is afforded to all owners who register. Your tailored purchase options include floor stand, table stand and monitor only. By consistently creating products like this it’s really little wonder Metz has been hailed as the best in the business by German AV specialists for the last nineteen years in a row. Most Australians spend two to three times as long with their television as they do in their car, so a decision to own the best TV is not only far more affordable than the best quality car, but in time terms much more rewarding.

“For its black levels alone I instantly fell in love with this TV. And also for its colour handling. Supremely natural and smooth, completely engaging. ” – Sound & Image (Australia)

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For the location of your nearest Metz dealer visit www.internationaldynamics.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

AMPS/ RECEIvERS

Marantz SR7005 AV receiver

arantz’s high-end SR7005 AV receiver takes the company into the field of top-notch video processing and new media compatibility.

Equipment It’s a full seven-channel receiver, with 125 watts available from each of the channels at full highfidelity levels of performance. The receiver includes the full complement of decoders for modern digital audio, except for SACD. It also includes support for additional channels: the ‘front height’ channels generated by Dolby Pro Logic IIz, and the ‘front width’ channels created by Audyssey DSX processing. Usefully, the receiver includes Dolby Headphone processing, which does a creditable job of generating convincing surround sound with regular headphones. The receiver is striking in appearance. At first glance it appears underendowed in the front-panel display department, offering only a single small round display (with a softly illuminated blue ring surrounding it), showing just the input source and the volume level, but below this is a flap that hides lots of controls, extra front panel inputs, and an LCD display showing a lot more information. The receiver has six HDMI inputs (one on the front), via which it supports Blu-ray 3D signals and the Audio Return Channel from suitably equipped TVs. There is a good number of analogue inputs, except that S-Video has been entirely abandoned. And yes, you get a proper phono input. The unit also features good system integration connections, including RS-232C. A rear-panel Ethernet socket and a front-panel USB socket are included. The former allows the receiver to play music and display photos from computers on the network via the use of DLNA protocols, with access to many thousands of radio stations and Podcasts via the vTuner portal. The USB socket can be used to read a regular flash memory drive, or a USB hard drive. But it also supports an iPod/iPhone plugged in with a standard cable… so no need for an iPod dock.

Performance After acceding to its request to update its firmware, we returned to its Audyssey automatic calibration, which proved disappointing. Using a high-quality subwoofer/satellite system, we settled in to watch some TV from a PVR immediately after the auto calibration, and to our collective ears, the male voices seemed remarkably chesty.

When we sat nearer the rear wall, the bass level was so great that it seemed disconnected from the rest of the sound. We did some tests and found that in stereo mode, playing test tracks from stereo CD, the bass was a good 9–10dB too high compared with the rest of the sound. Switching to Dolby Pro Logic II Movie mode, the imbalance was only 2dB: still far too loud. We �� had opted for just one measurement position with the auto calibration, so we repeated the process, but with three different listening positions. The results were the same. We then checked the levels with two different multichannel test discs, and the receiver had the LFE channel from both of these about 10dB too high, so the problem was actually the level at which the receiver had set the subwoofer. Fixing this was easy enough: we just put a bass test tone on a loop and used our SPL meter to guide us as we turned down the subwoofer’s level control by 10dB. That brought everything nicely back into balance. But still we felt that the sound had a strangely disjointed feel, and eventually discovered that Audyssey Dynamic EQ had been engaged. The moment we switched it off, the sound pulled together into proper coherence, seeming just like it ought to. Note, we have read testimonials lauding Audyssey Dynamic EQ, so you may differ from us on this. We just prefer our music and movies delivered straight. Audyssey Dynamic EQ differs from the Audyssey MultEQ that the receiver also calculated and applied during the setup. Dynamic EQ is intended to correct the way our hearing works. MultEQ is designed to correct problems caused by non-linear speakers and other non-linearities imposed by listening rooms. In other words, MultEQ is supposed to make the sound closer to ‘straight’ and this (aside from that high subwoofer level, which may have been caused by some other process) it did very nicely. The receiver also offers Audyssey Dynamic Volume, which is designed to smooth volume variations and reduce dynamic range. It offers this as something you can set after the automatic calibration process. This actually does seem like a useful feature, such as for late night viewing, and can be easily invoked (as can Dynamic EQ) using a dedicated key on the remote control. Many higher-end home theatre receivers offer support for network and USB media, but most restrict it to audio. This one includes still photos, but this needs work, since the images are stretched wide, forcing their subjects all out of shape.

The media support includes MP3, WMA, WAV and FLAC. These last two provide the highest possible quality. On the subject of video handling, we really have only one word to summarise matters: Bravo! The receiver uses the Anchor Bay Technologies ABT2015 chipset, a solid performer. So solid that when we set it to scale up (where necessary) and deinterlace video from both Australian DVDs (576i/50 content) and some Australian Blu-ray discs (with 1080i/50 content), it did so quite well, rarely applying the incorrect form of progressive scan conversion. But on the same setup screen page as you use to set the output resolution, you can choose whether you want ‘Auto’, ‘Video1’ or ‘Video2’ style progressive scan conversion. The first does a decent job of selecting between video and film-style deinterlacing. The second forces motion-adaptive techniques which provide high performance with content that is inherently interlaced, such as that from video cameras. The third forces film-mode ‘weave’ deinterlacing. Select this last, and the progressive-scan conversion was absolutely perfect on the most difficult of our test material. These settings were buried a fair way down in the receiver’s setup menu, but since you can pop up its menu as a translucent overlay, you get quick response and no changes of video standards. That made it definitely worth the effort.

Conclusion Just make sure you check that subwoofer level adjustment and consider switching off the EQ and you will find this receiver simply excellent in every other respect. This is the best yet from Marantz.

Marantz SR7005 AV receiver Price: $3199 Warranty: Three years • • •

Excellent sound quality Superb video support Excellent new audio media support

• •

Need to manually tweak subwoofer level Defaults to Audyssey Dynamic EQ on

Contact: QualiFi 1800 242 426 www.qualifi.com.au

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e c n a m for ant S ty g e l E PERFORMANCE FEATURES ERGONOMICS VALUE

e c n a m r o f r e P r e e t l t e y t B S t n a g Ele

Runco LS-5 DLP Projector

A BETTER LOOKING PROJECTOR ALL ROUND Elegant and electrifying, the LightStyle™ LS-5 is Runco’s first-ever 1080p DLP™ projector designed for both performance and aesthetics. Where sleek design encompasses incredible performance, this stylish combination of legendary Runco engineering and elegant design delivers a bar raising powerhouse for affordable home theatre projection. Totally designed and engineered by Runco’s award-winning team, the Runco LightStyle LS-5 projector combines a 1080p native resolution DLP light engine featuring Runco’s powerful SuperOnyx™ technology with ConstantContrast™ for bright, pristine, high definition images with deep black levels and significant contrast. This Runco HD projector ensures a

perfect fit in any room at any time because it incorporates ISF™ (Imaging Science Foundation) calibration suite for optimal performance in various rooms and lighting conditions. These calibration tools feature day and night calibration memory settings, individual sharpness and noise reduction controls, programmable image memory selection keys, built-in test patterns and a dark room-optimized remote. Runco’s advanced ViVix™ digital video processing enhances the LS-5 1080p projector’s picture quality and provides artefact-free scaling. Rounding out this impressive projector are discrete input source, aspect ratio and power on/off, as well as an RS-232 interface for seamless integration with automation control systems.

sales@networkav.com.au Ph 02 9949 9349 www.networkav.com.au

best buys home theatre Summer 2011

LOUDSpEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

Boston Acoustics VS Series 5.1-channel loudspeaker package

his Vista series from Boston is a fine example of what the company does best — high quality loudspeakers at a reasonable price.

Equipment We were supplied with a full 5.1-channel system: a pair of VS 336 floorstanders, a VS 325C centrechannel, a pair of VS 240 surround speakers and a VPS 210 subwoofer. The first thing you notice with this system is the sheer weight, while the second is the quality of the finish, which is immaculate. We were supplied speakers with a piano-gloss-style cherry applied to the end panels of all the speakers including the subwoofer (front and back in that case), while piano-gloss black was applied to the larger surfaces (all four sides, including the baffle behind the grille). The front and centre speakers are both three-way units. The front has three 165mm bass drivers, crossing over at 250Hz to a 114mm midrange, which in turn crosses over to a 25mm ‘Super Wide Bandwidth’ tweeter at 2.5kHz. The cabinet is bass reflex loaded with a rear-firing port and supports bi-wiring. Boston Acoustics says that its sensitivity is 87dBSPL, its impedance eight ohms and its frequency response 35Hz to 35kHz ±3dB. Their price is $4999 per pair. The centre-channel VS 325C speaker sells for $1299. This uses two 133mm bass drivers conventionally deployed, but these only need deal with frequencies up to 350Hz. Above that a centremounted 76mm midrange takes over, handing over at 2.4kHz to the 25mm tweeter above it. The company says that it has a higher sensitivity of 90dBSPL, an eight ohm impedance and frequency response of 65–35,000Hz ±3dB. Surround was delivered by a pair of VS 240 speakers ($1299 the pair) only 240mm tall. Each packs a 114mm bass/midrange, crossing over at 2kHz to the ubiquitous 25mm dome tweeter. Sensitivity is 86dBSPL, impedance eight ohms, and frequency response quoted at 70 to 35,000Hz ±3dB. Bass was handled by the VPS 210 subwoofer ($2699), a medium-sized unit carrying an active 254mm driver on one face and tuned by means of a 254mm passive radiator on the opposite face, while the sides are again clad in the gorgeous gloss cherry finish. Connections to the sub are all via

sockets on the underside (no tuned ports here, that’s the passive radiator’s job), while most of the controls lie under a neat covering panel on the top. Boston Acoustics says that the amplifier built into this unit is capable of producing 500W ‘RMS’, by which I take it they mean continuous. It specifies the unit’s response at a very impressive 22–150Hz.

Performance As usual, we started off with stereo material, inserting Fragile by Yes, and playing the acoustic guitar solo at the opening of Mood for a Day, captured ‘way back in 1971 but sounding as though it could have been recorded last year on the very best digital audio gear. The individual notes danced between the speakers and up and down, with immaculate precision and perfect tonal balance. The front stereo speakers were really quite inefficient, by which we mean they can deliver plenty of volume, but only when supplied with plenty of watts. Happily, with a couple of hundred watts on tap for each channel, clean volume aplenty was available for testing. We’d say high quality amplification is a virtual necessity (we’d hope purchasers would partner such beautiful loudspeakers properly). Moving to Baroque, the portrayal of Henry Purcell’s Strike the Viol with twin recorder accompaniment to the soprano vocals again reinforced the impression of clean balance, precision, and detail. Nothing was getting away from these speakers, including flaws in the recording. On to surround, starting with music — the SACD version of Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms, with a proper 5.1-channel surround mix. It isn’t lairy, with the surround usually limited to

enhancing sound-field depth. On boppier tracks (So Far Away and especially Money for Nothing) the punchiness was excellent thanks to the superb timing between all the speakers and the subwoofer. On to high-definition losslessly compressed sound. Wanted is not the best of movies, but it offers the best of sound. The music mix and the extremely immersive surround action tests most systems, and this system handled it all with ease, keeping (often shouted) dialogue coherent through car chases, gun battles, rooftop train rides, and despite frequent insertion of heart-pounding (literally!) effects.

Conclusion The Boston Acoustics VS series of speakers, as befits a reputable company’s top-of-the-line range, turned out to be both beautiful to look at and thrilling to hear, and was recently awarded Sound+Image’s top award in its price category. Boston Acoustic s VS Series 5.1-chan nel speaker packag e Price: $10,296 Warranty: Five years (two for subwoofer) • • •

Excellent sound quality Glorious build and finish Powerful extended sub

• •

Needs plenty of power Could go deeper

Contact: Hi-Fi & Video Marketing 02 9319 6877 www.hifivideomarketing.com.au

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YOU WONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T BELIEVE YOUR EYES OR EARS

Heighten your senses with the Integra 3D receiver range. The heart of every fine multi-room installation. This is home entertainment that needs seeing to be believed. For more information about our range of stunning AV receivers visit AMBERTECH.COM.AU