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Denon HEOS Marantz M&K Sound Sunfire Thorens

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ANY TUNE. ANY ROOM. WIRELESSLY. HEOS is a family of wireless music players that allow you to fill every room with music and control it all effortlessly from your Apple or Android device. Plug in, connect to WiFi and play. Easy.

www.heos.com.au ANY ROOM OR EVERY ROOM

MULTIROOM PORTABLE PLAYER OF THE YEAR

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CONTENTS

CONTENTCONTE REVIEW HEOS BY DENON WIRELESS MULTIROOM SYSTEM from Sound+Image magazine REVIEW HEOS LINK HS2 WIRELESS PRE-AMPLIFIER from Sound+Image magazine

MARANTZ SA-14S1 CD/SACD PLAYER & PM-14S1 AMPLIFIER from Audio Esoterica magazine

INTERVIEW KEN ISHIWATA from Audio Esoterica magazine

THORENS TD 203 TURNTABLE from Best Buys Audio & AV magazine

DENON AVR-X2200W/3200W NETWORKED AV RECEIVERS from Best Buys Audio & AV magazine

REVIEW MARANTZ NR1606 NETWORKED AV RECEIVER from Best Buys Audio & AV magazine

SUNFIRE XTEQ 12 SUBWOOFER from Best Buys Audio & AV magazine

REVIEW MARANTZ PM6005 STEREO INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER from Australian Hi-Fi magazine

SUNFIRE HRS-10 SUBWOOFER from Australian Hi-Fi magazine

MARANTZ SA-14S1 CD/SACD PLAYER & PM-14S1 AMPLIFIER from Sound+Image magazine

MARANTZ PM-11S3 INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER from Australian Hi-Fi magazine

MARANTZ NA8005 NETWORK AUDIO PLAYER from Sound+Image magazine

MARANTZ NR1605 AV RECEIVER from Sound+Image magazine

DENON DHT-S514 SOUNDBAR from Sound+Image magazine

DENON AVR-X1100W AV RECEIVER from Sound+Image magazine

REVIEW

A Special Review Collection of products & technologies distributed in Australia by

DENON AVR-X7200W NETWORKED AV RECEIVER from Best Buys Audio & AV magazine

MARANTZ CD6005 CD PLAYER from Australian Hi-Fi magazine

REVIEW

www.qualifi.com.au

HEOS HOME CINEMA MULTIROOM SOUNDBAR & SUBWOOFER from Best Buys Audio & AV magazine REVIEW

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Level 6, Building A, 207 Pacific Highway, St Leonards, NSW 2065 Ph: 02 9901 6100 Fax: 02 9901 6198 www.avhub.com.au

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REVIEW MARANTZ M-CR611 WIRELESS NETWORK CD RECEIVER from Best Buys Audio & AV magazine

REVIEW

SUNFIRE XTEQ10 SUBWOOFER from Sound+Image magazine

SUNFIRE XTEQ8 SUBWOOFER from Sound+Image magazine

M&K SOUND V12 SUBWOOFER from Australian Hi-Fi magazine

REVIEW DENON DNP-730AE NETWORK AUDIO PLAYER from Sound+Image magazine

DENON AVR-X4100W NETWORKED AV RECEIVER from Sound+Image magazine

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M&K SOUND V8 SUBWOOFER from Sound+Image magazine

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HEOS by Denon Unlike some rivals, the HEOS system hasn’t changed fundamentally since our previous review, but new models and expanded music services have made this Sound+Image award-winning system even more attractive.

EOS was one of the first of the new wave of wireless multiroom systems, reassuringly backed by the audio heritage of Denon and the D&M stable, and developed in part here in Australia from the ‘Avega’ system of wireless speakers going back almost a decade. The HEOS ecosystem originally launched with three wireless speakers of rising size (numbered HEOS 3, HEOS 5 and HEOS 7; the middle unit is pictured above), plus two receiver units, one with amplification so you just add speakers (called the Amp) and one without amplification so you plug it into an input on any existing sound system (the Link). Since then the range has expanded with a soundbar and sub solution, a smaller speaker to which a portable battery pack can be added, and something unique so far among these consumer systems — the HEOS Drive, which incorporates four full zones of amplification in a single box, something which makes the HEOS system attractive to custom installers and those designing a properly cabled distributed music system. All these units are available in a white or black finish, and all of them have useful auxiliary inputs which can be shared with all other HEOS units in the home — one analogue minijack input, and one

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USB slot into which sticks or hard drives of music can be plugged, and which are then shared to other HEOS players. There is one last family member — the HEOS Extend, a unit that can usefully boost your Wi-Fi network if and where required.

Setting up — a cable is provided to make the initial connection by minijack to enter your Wi-Fi password. The HEOS app provides step-by-step instructions.

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HEOS 7 - $999 The largest of the HEOS speaker units, with a size of sound to match, and quite the physical presence with its sleek and snazzy design.

HEOS 3 - $529 Stand it up or lay it flat, the HEOS 3 is the second up of four speaker units. Note also that all four HEOS speaker units can be paired up to operate in stereo.

HEOS AMP - $899 The ‘just-add-speakers’ solution in the HEOS range, with two analogue and one optical input plus USB, all usefully shared with other HEOS units in the home.

HEOS 5 - $689 A sweetspot high performer, the second from top of the speaker units and a fine sound for the size and price.

HEOS 1 - $379 This smallest of the HEOS speakers has a special trick — add the optional ‘Go Pack’ ($179) to give it a battery pack and Bluetooth for use when away from home.

HEOS HomeCinema

he HomeCinema has full HEOS abilities, so will not only handle your TV and movie sound, it also has access to all the streaming music sources which come under control of the HEOS app for iOS and Android. HEOS is closely tied to its app — on the whole, you need a smart device to even turn on a HEOS system. But given that a soundbar might require more general use, HEOS has here included the ability to use your existing TV remote to control some of its functions. This is a very good idea indeed. Despite the potential complexity of a network-streaming app-controlled soundbar, HEOS has achieved wonderful simplicity of set-up with the HomeCinema. It is usefully compact, at just 7cm deep and 10cm high (with the smaller of its two sets of feet), and a template is included for wall-mounting. And on the back of the bar there are very wellmarked (white on black) inputs split across two separate rear patch bays, rather than one. The extra space successfully removes much of the fiddliness common behind soundbars. Connection options are straightforward enough — a minijack auxiliary analogue input, one each of optical and coaxial digital inputs, a USB slot (which can be used for a Bluetooth receiver dongle), and two HDMI sockets, one in and one out to your TV. The

HDMI output is ARC-enabled, so if your TV input is similarly equipped, you can use this connection to play other audio from your TV back to the soundbar. If you don’t have ARC (or if it doesn’t prove compatible), you can use the optical or analogue inputs for your TV sound. In the app, during set-up, you can indicate which input you’ll be using for TV, and thenceforth selecting ‘TV’ will default to your chosen path. There’s no built-in IR repeater (in case the bar blocks your TV’s IR receiver), but there is an IR blaster which you can use. The subwoofer, meanwhile, is equally compact, with a narrow front just 30cm high by 17cm wide, and 32cm deep. It ports to the rear (and the mains lead sticks out), so it’ll need a little space behind it. It connects wirelessly to the soundbar (and did so flawlessly), so it needs only the power connection. Denon has been generous with the cables — HDMI, optical, Ethernet, minijack for auxiliary analogue stereo, even an adaptor cable to turn RCA stereo phono plugs into the minijack required; all in the box. We connected our Blu-ray player to the soundbar’s HDMI input, and ran the optical connection for sound from our TV. For the smart stuff, you connect to your home network by Wi-Fi or Ethernet. On this occasion we gave the HomeCinema

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a hard Ethernet cable, which skips the simple Wi-Fi process. When we opened our HEOS app (installed during previous reviews) the unit was already connected and prompting us to install an update on our device. Alongside the various music sources are listed the different inputs available to the soundbar, and you can tidy things up by hiding any unused inputs or services. The set-up also invites you to teach the soundbar commands — initially just volume up, down and mute from your normal TV remote (without which you’d be scrambling for the app at every turn). But a longer menu (above) can also assign input selection to other learning buttons. Highly versatile. Several sound options are offered — ‘Dialogue’ to emphasise speech, ‘Night Mode’ to limit dynamics and bass, and a choice of ‘Music’ or ‘Movie’ mode. These are available only under the ‘TV’ input, but we gather the settings ‘stick’ across all inputs, so if you want them when watching, say, a Blu-ray, go first to ‘TV’, press something, then leave again.

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HEOS – the app

HEOS is thoroughly modern in focusing primarily on streaming music sources and app control. Where some systems provide physical remote controls or PC/Mac control software, the HEOS system assumes a smartphone or tablet device will always be present and available to control the system — you can’t get any music out of your HEOS system without it. This is important to understand — everyone must control it with the app; if anyone is home alone without a smart device, they simply won’t be able to use the music system. But assuming you tick the modern family smartphone-savvy box, the app is very easy to use with large button sizes friendly to smartphone operation. Of particular handiness are the three bottom buttons which take you to essential screens. Nearly always present, they assist in getting around the app faster than some rivals where you need to back up several layers.

On the HEOS app the ‘Rooms’ tab quickly accesses the section for selecting your player; ‘Music’ gets you straight to your music sources; and

More useful, and applied across the board, are the EQ controls (left), which are rather hidden away among the app settings. Where most HEOS units have bass and treble sliders, the Home Cinema has three — treble, bass, and subwoofer. So ‘bass’ here is really more a midrange control, and we were soon able to significantly improve the sound of the HomeCinema in our room, for music in particular, by nudging up both the sub and the middle slider just a couple of notches. This rounded out response without overpushing the subwoofer (we were impressed how well the sub integrated, despite it being a relatively small unit). The width of the bar also allows effective stereo, as we noted when Pandora served up ‘Hotel California’. The bass guitar was delivered with fullness across its range, the vocal well projected, and none of the spittiness on vocal sibilants that often comes from soundbars when trying to do music. If any lower midrange congestion or bloat appeared, it could be notched out with the ‘bass slider’. And Neil Finn’s ‘Twisty Bass’ showed just how much low-end the bar/sub combo could push into a room when requested.

‘Now playing’ takes you straight to the current track so you can control music, make playlists and enjoy large album artwork where it is available. There are usefully extensive settings a little hidden away in the top left of the Music screen. These include the ability to adjust bass and treble for each of your wireless speaker units, and we were delighted to find we could adjust the brightness of the tasteful glowing blue-purple lights under each unit. Set up of the various available music sources is also under these settings. These have expanded to include Tidal, Spotify Connect, Pandora, Soundcloud and TuneIn, and properly regionalised for Australia too. There is neither Apple AirPlay nor Bluetooth here, so you can’t throw other apps or use the richer interfaces of those that are offered, but you can add Bluetooth by putting a suitable dongle in the USB slot. Remember this USB slot can also be used to add hard drives or sticks of media to your system, and these are shared across all HEOS units. File support includes MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC and WAV files up to CD quality (16-bit/48kHz). There’s no support for AIFF, DSD/DXD or files above 48kHz — but we’ve heard that high-res support might be coming soon. Overall then, the HEOS app works well, its simplicity a virtue in general, and with landscape operation usefully added since last year. We’d still like to see a control program made available for Mac or PC computers.

That bass also serves movie fare, of course, and here the default EQ seemed well chosen — as the bass pumped out impressively on ‘The Lego Movie’ Blu-ray’s ‘Everything is Awesome’ we notched the subwoofer level back to its central point. And there’s a good level available — the HomeCinema doesn’t quite envelop a room like a full surround system, and

the layers were prone to break down at very high volumes, but it provided an effective and dramatic performance for movies, while not getting too in-yerface with casual TV viewing. Big movie sound, effective TV sound, no duffer at music and with all the multiroom abilities of HEOS, the HomeCinema is quite the little giant, and a great addition to HEOS. IN SUMMARY

HEOS HomeCinema

wireless soundbar + sub Price: $1499

+ Big movie sound + Also OK with music + Versatile for tweaking to preference - ‘Modes’ a bit confusing

Not entirely dissimilar to a previous award-winning Denon soundbar, the HEOS HomeCinema has become a double Sound+Image Award winner in its own right.

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HEOS 7 The top HEOS speaker unit, large in sound as well as size, exciting and lively. Scan the QR code for our full review, or visit avhub.com.au/heos7

HEOS 1 + GoPack

e were delighted by the sound quality of the little HEOS 1 speaker — the top half of its response is delightfully open and non-fizzy, and there is enough bass to deliver an enjoyable overall balance; we didn’t feel the urge to mess with EQ as we have done with larger HEOS units. Close up it delivered quite the impact, and even half a room away it was pushing Leonard Cohen’s vocal on ‘Going Home’ forth into the room out in front of the simple backing, and holding together the vocal’s bass content with the higher rasping (so easily split into different elements by lesser speakers). We sat the HEOS 1 right next to Bose’s SoundLink Mini II and flipped our Bluetooth from one to the other — the HEOS 1 delivered a slightly larger sound, and left the Bose sounding as if it pinched the mids a little thin. The Bose is cheaper of course, smaller and lacks the multiroom and app side of things, but it’s useful as a widely known reference, and good as it is, the HEOS 1 clearly sounds better, wider, broader, and a tad more relaxed.

The optional GoPack attaches neatly to the HEOS 1 — you unscrew the existing baseplate (and store it somewhere safely!) then twist on the Go Pack battery platform, which adds a couple of centimetres of height. This charges automatically whenever the HEOS 1 is plugged into the mains. That’s the power sorted, but how to stream to the HEOS 1 when you’re outside your home Wi-Fi range — there is no built-in Bluetooth in HEOS products, remember. Well, also provided is a neat combination of USB Bluetooth dongle and rubber splashguard (pictured), which can plug into the rear USB port and thereby provide a Bluetooth connection while also protecting against dirt and water ingress during travel. (It’s rated to IPX4.) Portable, compact, and sonically well-pitched, the HEOS 1 is another valuable addition to the HEOS range. IN SUMMARY

HEOS 1 + GoPack

wireless speaker with portable pack Price: $379 + $179

+ Small speaker at home, portable speaker on the go + Full HEOS abilities + Surprising sound for one so small - Portabillity an extra-cost option

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HEOS 5 A sweet-spot in the HEOS range, we gave this unit an award all of its own. Scan the QR code to read the full review, or visit avhub.com.au/heos5

OVERALL VERDICT HEOS is aimed at those who always have a smart device to hand. There’s no highresolution music playback (yet, it may come later this year), but MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC and WAV are fine, along with streaming services such as Spotify, Pandora, Tidal and internet radio, all of which are ably delivered here. The Link can add HEOS abilities to existing audio and AV systems, while the soundbar and speaker solutions spread HEOS streaming around a whole home. The app is well designed and easy to use, and all of the speaker units (the HEOS 3 being the only one we’ve not spent extensive time with) proved able performers, with the HEOS 5 a particularly enjoyable sweetspot. The Amp also proved valuable for the quality of its power and its range of handy inputs. And don’t underestimate the importance of a real audio company, Denon, behind all this.

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HEOS Link HS2 streaming preamp

Little squirt

We call them ‘squirters’ — add one to your hi-fi to inject streaming and multiroom abilities. Denon’s HEOS Link is now second-gen, adding Bluetooth and high-res streaming.

It’s all about the app — no other multiroom system is as closely tied to its app as HEOS. Happily, it’s an excellent app.

SUMMARY

HEOS Link HS2 wireless multiroom stereo preamplifier Price: $599 + High quality wireless

multiroom audio system + Now with Bluetooth + Now with high-res support - No physical remote - No AirPlay

few months back we published an article called ‘Don’t Junk Your Hi-Fi’, which tried to make the point that the new breed of wireless multiroom music systems don’t have to replace your existing hi-fi, they can augment it. The leading platforms — HEOS here, Sonos, Bluesound, MusicCast, DTS Play-Fi — each offer a relatively simple ‘receiver’ unit (we call them ‘squirters’) which has all the wireless and streaming capabilities of the platform and can deliver them into a spare input on any hi-fi system. Then the many other units — wireless speakers of various sizes — can be used to expand your music around the home, all under app control. That first choice of receiver unit, then, is an important one, as it defines how your system can expand. This HEOS Link is Denon’s version of this squirter-type receiver unit, and it comes now in ‘HS2’ (Mark II) form, bringing new abilities to HEOS.

Equipment

HEOS went a little weirdly angular with its initial designs, but has subtly tweaked the front lines for this second generation, and in the hand the weighty HS2 unit looks more businesslike than the pictures may suggest. So the new Link looks much like the old at first glance, but there are important advances. There

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is now built-in Bluetooth, which breaks HEOS out of the constrains of its own app, since with Bluetooth you can enjoy direct streaming from any app on any device. When you have multiple HEOS units around the home, the Bluetooth stream to one can be played on them all, using the HEOS party mode. The second advance with HEOS HS2 is at the other end of the quality scale — high-res audio support. You can now use the HEOS app to stream high-res files from USB or over your network via DLNA, with support for WAV, ALAC and FLAC up to 24-bit/192kHz. Support for DSD and AIFF is promised soon. That’s the new stuff, which is added to the already considerable HEOS offering. From the HEOS app you can access free online music from Pandora, TuneIn internet radio and SoundCloud, and subscription music available from Spotify, Tidal, Deezer. Of course with Bluetooth now available you can use any app to access any service offering free or subscription music. The volume and mute buttons are still on the side, and the back panel is unchanged — two analogue inputs (minijack and RCAs), one optical digital input and one USB-A slot, all of which can be shared through your home network to other HEOS units. There’s Ethernet for that network but also dual-band a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, then for outputs you have the analogue pre-outs which would go into your hi-fi system, but also digital outputs

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wireless multiroom RIGHT: HEOS app screens showing access to DLNA network servers (left), TuneIn internet radio favourites (centre) and shuffling Pandora from pre-defined artist stations (right).

on optical or coaxial if you have a DAC or digitallyequipped amplifier that you reckon might be better than the Link’s own conversion. There’s a good selection of cables included — Ethernet, two signal cables, and trigger cables and an IR emitter to assist if using the Link with Denon (or other triggerable) amps or AV receivers. Finally on the back are two small press studs, one to ‘Connect’, one for Bluetooth pairing.

Performance

We gave the Link the easiest of connections — mains power, Ethernet to the network, analogue audio into our system. By the time we had downloaded the iOS HEOS app, the Link’s front light had gone solid blue, indicating a network connection, and sure enough the app skipped any set-up and went straight to the main HEOS screen, ready to control the Link. It then offered a software update (you can leave it thereafter to auto-update) and flashed orange during the five minutes this took. The main HEOS screen (see grabs) puts everything at your fingertips. Using any of the streaming services requires you set up a HEOS account, and that account links to all your subscription accounts. As a previous HEOS user, we had only to enter our HEOS account to have all our Pandora, TuneIn and Tidal accounts and favourites up, synced and running. The beauty of the HEOS app is simplicity and clarity — we don’t know an easier app to find your way around, with all sources and inputs on the home page, sensible progression thereafter, and three buttons that remain always at the bottom (except when you’re in settings) to get you easily back home. We played with assorted music services, shuffling our many Pandora artist stations to get a continuous stream of our favourites, delving into SoundCloud to stream some of our own files as well as its everexpanding offerings of music, talk and radio. The only service that throws you out of the HEOS app is Spotify, which uses Spotify Connect, handing the streaming duties to the Link itself, rather than

through your device itself, which you then use just to control things. But this does require a premium subscription. Now that the Link has Bluetooth, you could instead use a laptop to play Spotify free and send that via Bluetooth — the downside being ads and a lower quality stream. But hey, free. For network stream you select ‘Music Server’, which shows DLNA shares on your network (it also picked up the Bose SoundTouch music server, offering a possible path to iTunes libraries, as described on p24). Through DLNA it seemed just a little slow at pulling information when browsing by folder, but was quick to play. Tracks are added to a queue, one track or an album at a time, so you can set up playlists (including tracks from different sources) — and these can be saved for later use, appearing under the ‘Playlist’ tab of the main HEOS screen And yes, all formats worked precisely as advertised — DSD and AIFF tracks shown but yielding playback errors, everything else fine, playing FLAC, WAV up to 24-bit/192kHz and Apple Lossless to 24/96. Nor did we have any streaming issues even with the highest of these, remembering we were using the Ethernet link. Wi-Fi success will depend on your network. Artwork was handled well and displayed when available. The conversion and audio circuits on the back of all this streaming sounded to be of

excellent quality, as you’d hope from an audio manufacturer of Denon’s calibre, so using the digital outputs rather than analogue is really a matter of convenience rather than need — unless you happen to have a simply superb DAC to hand. Try it and compare; you have nothing to lose. Many of the streaming sources are below CD quality, of course, but Tidal offers CD quality. If you have some preference for changing tone, there are bass and treble controls in the HEOS app, alongside track names in the Now Playing screen.

Conclusion

When we reviewed the original HEOS system, we liked it enough to make it our Sound+Image Multiroom System of the Year, noting its few omissions as being the lack of high-res audio support, no AirPlay, and being tied to the HEOS app since there was no desktop software or Bluetooth to enable the use of thirdparty sources. HEOS remains entirely dependent on the use of your smart device — there’s no physical remote control, so you can’t just come home and switch it on — but HEOS HS2 has fixed most other niggles, augmenting its ease of use and class-leading synchronisation to make the HEOS platform a leading contender for anyone looking to bring this vast world of music to their existing hi-fi, and beyond to a full home of wireless multiroom audio. Jez Ford SPECS

HEOS Link HS2

$599

Inputs: network, internet, 1 x RCA analogue, 1 x minijack analogue, USB-A, 1 x optical digital Output: RCA analogue, optical digital, coaxial digital, subwoofer, IR & trigger Dimensions (whd): 155 x 74 x 150mm Weight: 1.3kg Contact: QualiFi Telephone: 03 8542 1111 ABOVE: A lot of sockets for one so small! — the HEOS Link HS2 is a useful little preamp as well as a source in its own right, with two analogue inputs, one optical digital and a USB-A slot for sticks or a hard drive.

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Web: www.heos.com.au

THE NEW HEART OF YOUR WIRELESS NETWORK. The exceptional Denon AVR-X6300H and AVR-X4300H, now completed by HEOS network technology. Every sound, all your music, controlled effortlessly. www.denon.com.au

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MARANTZ

SA-14S1/PM-14S1 SPECIAL EDITION CD/SACD PLAYER & INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER Reviewer greg borrowman

n times past, both these new Marantz products would have been labelled ‘Ken Ishiwata Signature’ products, and carried the ‘KI Signature’ label on their front panels. That’s because both components have been ‘tweaked’ by Ishiwata. Some of these tweaks fall into the ‘classified information’ category, but others are in the public domain, such as upgraded capacitors and, in the case of the amplifier, copper plates to clamp the power transistors to the substantial internal heatsinks. Some of the tweaks are very obvious – massive aluminium top plates, high rigidity feet, specially damped chassis and superior front panel finishing. So why aren’t these ‘KI Signature’ products? Basically because Ishiwata is not putting his name on Marantz products any more, for reasons he explains in detail in our exclusive interview with him on page 46 of this issue. But if you read between the lines, the PM-14S1 SE and SA-14S1 SE are essentially ‘Signature’ products, except they’re labelled ‘SE’ , rather than with Ken Ishiwata’s ‘signature’. Indeed there’s confirmation in each of these components coming packed with a goldlettered and embossed ‘Congratulations’ card that says “This Special Edition has also been created with the insight of Ken Ishiwata”. Marantz says the Special Edition Premium 14 Series was created to celebrate 30 years since the release of its first ‘Special Edition’ component and

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ALTHOUGH NOT BEARING THE KEN ISHIWATA SIGNATURE, THESE SPECIAL EDITION PRODUCTS HAVE MOST CERTAINLY ENJOYED THE ‘KI’ TOUCH.

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MARANTZ SA-14S1/PM-14S1

CD/SACD PLAYER & INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER

is, says the company, “the first-ever system that is fine-tuned to the latest high-resolution files.”

THE SA-14S1 ACTS BOTH AS A PLAYER AND DAC VIA ITS MULTIPLE DIGITAL INPUTS. THE PM-14S1 OFFERS A MULTITUDE OF LINE INPUTS PLUS A PHONO INPUT FOR VINYL FANS.

PM-14S1 SPECIAL EDITION The PM-14S1 SE is very much a classic ‘old-school’ amplifier in terms of its appearance and controls. Indeed, were it to be magically transported back 50+ years in time, Marantz’s founder, Saul Marantz, would immediately recognise it… though he would certainly be very excited by the LCD display in the ‘port hole’ on the front panel. By ‘old-school’ we do not mean the circuitry itself: everything inside the PM-14S1 SE is modern, especially in the case of, for example, the HDAMs used in the amplifier in place of the usual operational amplifiers… a total of 24 HDAM SA2s and SA3s in point of fact. No, by ‘old school’ we mean that the amplifier has bass, treble and balance controls – which are not routinely found on modern integrated amplifiers – and that it has two record/play loops, which are almost totally extinct. It’s so old-school that we were actually surprised to find only a single set of speaker output terminals, rather than the usual traditional ‘A’ and ‘B’ pairs. It’s also ‘old-school’ in that its circuit boards (PCBs) are populated by through-hole components (i.e. not the more-modern surface mount devices), it has a linear power supply (a large encapsulated toroidal transformer and two 20,000µF capacitors) rather than one of those new-fangled (and very noisy!) switchmode power supplies, and a standard Class A/B output stage (using one pair of Sanken 2SC3284/2SA1303s per channel) rather than a Class-D (also noisy!) output stage. Good ol’ linear power supplies and Class A/B output stages are just fine with us! The rear of the amplifier is nicely laid-out, with high-quality speaker terminals that are

spaced in such a way that it will be easy to connect high-quality speaker cables, while goldplated RCA inputs are used for all the line-level inputs and the phono inputs. One interesting feature on the rear panel is the ‘Stereo/Bi-Amp’ switch. The default mode is ‘Stereo’ of course. The ‘Bi-Amp’ mode is used in conjunction with Marantz’s ‘Floating Control Bus System’ (F.C.B.S.) which allows you to link up to four PM-14S1 SEs together and have them operate as if they were a single amplifier. For example, using two PM-14S1 SEs you’d set both to ‘Bi-Amp’ and connect the left channel speaker outputs of one of them to the l.f. terminals of the left speaker, and the right channel outputs of the same amplifier to the h.f. terminals of the left speaker, then do the same with the other amplifier and speaker. You basically end up with four mono amplifiers driving a single pair of speakers. Once you’ve connected the F.C.B.S. link cables, adjusting the volume (or muting, or tone control) on one amplifier will automatically adjust the same controls on the other amplifier(s). As well as bi-amping, it also means you could use multiple PM-14S1 SEs to set up a multi-channel audio system: two for a fourchannel system, three for a 5.1-channel system or four for a 7.1-channel system. The PM-14S1 SE also has a ‘Power Amplifier Direct In’ input that bypasses the pre-amplifier stage and all associated circuitry (volume, tone controls etc). As well as being useful for multichannel systems, this is also useful in many applications, such as if you’re running a DAC/ Pre-amplifier for example. The PM-14S1 SE isn’t exactly over-endowed with inputs, not least because although it offers both MM and MC phono compatibility, the two circuits share an input, so you can only connect one phono cartridge at a time. However there is a CD input and a Line input (both via RCA terminals) and you can always use the inputs from the tape loop circuits as additional line inputs if you forgo the ‘loop’ functionality. Unlike an increasing number of amplifiers, there is no digital input, so if you don’t partner the PM-14S1 SE with its matching SACD/CD player, you’ll need an external DAC in order to play back digital music from your computer. SA-14S1 SE SACD PLAYER We were interested that Marantz refers to the SA-14S1 SE as a Super Audio CD player, rather than an ‘SACD’ player. It’s obviously read the consumer research which shows very few people know what an SACD player is at all and, perhaps more importantly don’t realise that all SACD players will play back ordinary CDs. (And if they don’t know this, it goes without saying that they

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MARANTZ SA-14S1/PM-14S1

CD/SACD PLAYER & INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER

wouldn’t know that the SA-14S1 SE will also play back home-recorded CD-R and CD-RW discs coded with either Red Book audio files or with WMA, MP3 or AAC files!) When playing back a disc the Marantz offers all the normal transport options, and playback is enhanced because the SA-14S1 SE will display CDText on discs that contain this information. These days, now that digital files always show composer/performer/track information during playback, it’s not such a surprise to find this information displayed when playing an SACD or CD, but it’s still an improvement over not showing it, as with many previous generations of CD players. Special playback modes available on the SA-14S1 SE include programmed play, where you can program up to 20 tracks for replay in any order, random play (which plays tracks at random until all tracks have been played), track repeat and all repeat. You can combine random or program play modes with the ‘all repeat’

...were it to be magically transported back 50+ years in time, Marantz’s founder, Saul Marantz, would immediately recognise it… though he would be very excited by the LCD display.

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mode to extend total playback time. Musicians may be disappointed that an A–B repeat function is not provided. (For non-musicians, it’s a function that lets you select a portion of music within a track and play it over and over: very useful for learning licks ‘n riffs.) Some of these modes can also be used with MP3 and WMA files, but not all – programmed play, for example. Internally, Marantz is using Texas Instruments’ DSD1792A monolithic CMOS integrated circuit which contains stereo 24-bit delta-sigma DACs using 8× oversampling, as well as all the support circuitry required. It can optionally provide digital attenuation (down to –120dB in 0.5dB steps), digital de-emphasis, and has two digital lowpass filter options (sharp or slow), which Marantz implements and are able to be accessed using the remote control. There are two USB inputs. The Type-A USB input on the front panel says ‘Made for iPod’ and accepts the obvious, including iPhones, as well as ordinary USB sticks containing MP3 (inc VBR), WMA, AAC or WAV (16-bit/44.1k or 48k) files. As well as being able to be used for audio, this front-panel USB connection will also charge your iDevice, even after the player has switched itself to standby (which it will do automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity unless you instruct it otherwise via the menu options). The Type-B input on the rear is for computer connection and accepts up to

MARANTZ SA-14S1/PM-14S1

SPECIFICATIONS

MARANTZ PM-14SE POWER OUTPUT: 90 watts per channel (8 ohms), 140 watts per channel (4 ohms) FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 5Hz–100kHz THD: 0.02% DAMPING FACTOR: 100 S/N RATIO: 106dB DIMENSIONS (WHD): 440 × 127 × 453mm WEIGHT: 19.1kg WARRANTY: Four years (Requires registration) PRICE: $5490

MARANTZ SA-14SE SACD SECTION FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 2Hz–50kHz DYNAMIC RANGE: 112dB S/N RATIO: 110dB THD: 0.001% SEPARATION: 102dB CD SECTION FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 2Hz–20kHz DYNAMIC RANGE: 100dB S/N RATIO: 110dB THD: 0.0015% SEPARATION: 100dB STANDBY CONSUMPTION: 0.3 watts DIMENSIONS (WHD): 440 × 127 × 419mm WEIGHT: 15.3kg Warranty: Four Years (Requires registration) PRICE: $4990 CONTACT: Qualifi on 1800 242 426 or 03 8542 1111 www.qualifi.com.au

CD/SACD PLAYER & INTEGRATED AMP

192kHz/24-bit PCM and DSD (DoP) DSD2.8/5.6. The digital inputs (coaxial and optical) accept up to 192kHz/24-bit PCM signals. Note that to be able to play back via USB from a PC you’ll need to download a dedicated driver (free) from Marantz’s website and load it onto your computer before connecting it to the SA-14S1 SE. But only for Windows machines, not if you have a Mac. The other fittings on the rear of the SA-14S1 SE are two digital audio outputs (optical and coaxial) and a remote control input/output that connects to the PM-14S1 SE, so it will receive signals from the amplifier. One important point to note is that unlike almost all mass-produced consumer electronics items, Marantz builds both the PM-14S1 SE and the SA-14S1 SE in its own factories in Japan. LISTENING SESSIONS One huge advantage of using these two components in combination is that, unlike many modern amplifiers, the PM-14S1 SE does not have an onboard DAC, so if it were not for the DAC options provided by the SA-14S1 SE, you’d have to buy an external DAC to play back digital music stored on a computer. So, essentially, because the SA-14S1 has a DAC, you’re getting three components for the price of two. Another advantage is that both components can be controlled by a single remote. We have to admit to occasionally exhibiting signs of frustration when we need to juggle two or more remote controls just to play back music. Having just one remote also makes it simple for anyone in your household who might want to control your system but lacks the required level of technical expertise if you’re not there to point out which control does what! And because each component comes with its own remote, you’ll have a spare in the event of a mishap. We briefly wondered why Marantz called its mute control an ‘ATT’ control (short for attenuation), but only until we read the instruction manual and discovered you can pre-set it for three different levels of muting: –20dB, –40dB or ‘Infinite’ (totally muted). We kicked off our listening with a stack of SACDs, starting with Tania Maria’s Come with Me,. That track was an eye-opener, with the Marantz duo delivering the difficult syncopated rhythm with absolutely perfect timing, and the jingle of the tambourine so immediate it seemed it was being shaken just above the left speaker. The difference in the projection of the soundfield into the room between the CD and SACD versions of this track was telling, with the SACD’s projection being clearly superior, plus the drum sound was depthier.

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Firing up Roxy Music’s Avalon, Bryan Ferry’s distinctive baritone as he sang the opening line “Now the Party is Over” was instantly identifiable… always the hallmark of a great audio system. The Marantz duo also reproduced the ethereal shimmering that gives real feeling to the true meaning behind the track. The duo’s ability with female vocal was amply demonstrated by the sound of Eva Cassidy’s voice on Fields of Gold, with the Marantz’s clarity also revealing the somewhat over-miked guitar sound, but at the same time exhibiting wonderfully accurate imaging. Jacintha Abisheganaden’s great cover of “Light my Fire” (on Jacintha Is Her Name) was notable not only for her voice, but also for the fabulous flute sound, plus the skin sound of the bongos (both strangely fixed firmly in the left channel in complete contrast to the bass and guitar, equally firmly fixed to the right). The Marantz duo also came up with the goods on Eleanor McEvoy’s take on the Jagger/ Richards classic “Mother’s Little Helper”, McEvoy’s voice being revealed exactly, and the kick drum sound too. One of the main reasons for buying an SACD player – even if you don’t own any SACDs – is that they play back ordinary CDs to a much higher audible standard than most CD players. That truism was proved by the Marantz SA-14SE, and nowhere better exemplified by the clarity it gave to John Cale’s amazing “Macbeth”, from Paris 1919. What can be a cacophony of sound on a lesser machine was first illuminated by the SA-14SE and then given heft and power by the PM-14S1 SE. We also checked out the system’s high-res capabilities. Winds of Change’s “Work of Art” on Soundkeeper at 24/192 was as good as we’ve ever heard it: a feat repeated on all the hi-res material we auditioned. The Marantz PM-14S1 SE amplifier handled difficult loads in its stride, extracting the best from all the speakers we tried it with, and only with one very power-hungry pair could we perhaps have wished for a tad more power… and that was only when listening at very neighbour-unfriendly volume levels. With speakers of average sensitivity or above, the Marantz will deliver ‘way higher inroom volume levels than anyone who’s not living in a palace will ever need. CONCLUSION This is a classy combo, made in Japan by one of the world’s most famous hi-fi manufacturers, tweaked by Marantz’s golden-eared guru Ken Ishiwata, and in Australia at a ‘go’ price ‘way below what you’d expect for the quality level on offer. What’s not to like?

Masters of perfection

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

The moment you encounter the new SA-14S1 SE Premium SACD player and the new PM-14S1 SE Premium integrated stereo amplifier, you know that you’re in the presence of serious, yet understated quality. We have re-engineered our famous 14 Series to specifically seize the opportunities of the new no-compromise “lossless” High Res formats. Specially selected new components and improved, reinforced cabinets all add up to a vastly more open sound stage and incredibly deeper detail than ever before.

Visit www.marantz.com.au for more information

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KEN ISHIWATA MARANTZ

Ken Ishiwata has helped design countless Marantz products over the past 40 years, including his own ‘KI Signature’ and ‘SE’ product successes. AUDIO ESOTERICA: Although you’ve been working at Marantz for more than 40 years, you’ve actually been involved with Marantz for more than 50, from the time you first heard a sound that you said changed your life? KEN ISHIWATA: A friend’s father bought a Marantz Model 7C pre-amplifier – which was at the time the best pre-amp in the world. Although my technical background was in high-frequency radio communications I was also a hi-fi enthusiast and one of my hobbies was designing, building and listening to hi-fi equipment. I’d already built several amplifiers for myself, but nothing had prepared me for the Marantz Model 7C – I could hardly believe my ears. The Marantz got right through to the emotion in the music. It was then I realised that this emotional response was what hi-fi was all about. AE: And you then made your own versions of the 7C! KI: For myself only, so I could learn more about the circuitry! But the most important lesson I learned from this experience was that technical excellence does not necessarily lead to musical excellence. Musical excellence comes only through listening. AE: Do you design all models that carry your initials? KI: No, that would be impossible. I oversee all models we make, with different teams working on different ones. When I consider there is real potential for improvement in one of these models, that’s how a model becomes a ‘KI’ version, which involves me ‘tweaking’ it by changing various components. Because it is my name and my reputation that are then at stake, it is entirely my own choice as to which models I choose to improve.

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KEN ISHIWATA

AE: Wouldn’t it be easier to just use the same internal components all the time? KI: It doesn’t work that way. When I started, other people would try to copy what I was doing, saying: ‘Ken Ishiwata used this particular capacitor, so it must be good!’ They would use the same capacitor and ruin the sound balance, because every component in a product – right down to the chassis and the screws in it – influences sound quality and imposes a distinctive character. AE: We are seeing fewer ‘KI Signature’ models recently than in past years. Why is this? KI: The first one I made, the original CD-63II KI Signature, became the best-selling CD player Marantz ever produced, and then the later KI Signature and Special Edition products I introduced were also contributing too much to our business. It’s a very dangerous position that one individual with his name on a product should influence such a high percentage of a company’s business – especially a company the size of Marantz – so I have intentionally reduced the number of KI Signature concept products in our range. AE: Now that both Marantz and Denon are owned by the same company (D&M Holdings), has this made any difference to Marantz or the products it produces? KI: Not at all. Both brands already had very strong brand identities before D&M started, and because both Marantz and Denon are premium audio brands it is vital that they keep their own identities. So not only is the creation process different: they are also produced differently. The ‘Because Music Matters’ slogan was created by me in the 1980s to describe Marantz products and this will never change. Saul B. Marantz once said: “Realistic reproduction of music is our promise.” Because of this, Marantz products will continue to be produced they way they have been, to reflect these statements.

Nothing had prepared me for the Marantz Model 7C... it got through to the emotion...it was then I realised that this emotional response was what hi-fi was all about.

AE: So in your opinion, what are the three ‘hottest’ products in Marantz’s line at the moment, and why? KI: You came up with this question at the right moment because we’re just about to release our new Reference Series SACD Player, the SA-10, which has an on-board USB DAC and external digital inputs, and the PM-10 integrated amplifier PM-10. I’m proud of

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INTERVIEW

these products: there aren’t any products like them anywhere today and they sound so much better than anything we’ve ever had before! AE: And your third pick would be… KI: The HD-DAC1, which is a part of our Music Link series. It is designed for keen headphone listeners who require the highest performance driving their favourite headphones, and it utilises a non-negative feedback output stage. The USB-DAC portion is based on our NA-11 Network Audio Player, which has two independent clocks – 44.1kHz and 48kHz – and digital isolation. AE: You are said to apply a specific philosophy called ‘Pure High Fidelity’. Can you explain? KI: Pure High Fidelity means that sonic accuracy must be at a really high level, especially for today’s high resolution music. On top of it, we may not forget tastes of people are all different and we can’t force them to accept things they are not happy with… you know everyone has different tastes for everything. For example, you may like a certain type of girl very much but she may not be my taste. We can’t change that and we have to respect everyone’s choice and preference! Three-dimensional sound staging and stereo imaging is a different story, however. This must be accurate. That’s why from the early 1980s I’ve focused so much on these areas. Saul Marantz’s original Model 7C pre-amplifier had a wonderful 3D sound stage. AE: How do you achieve this in practise? KI: I am fanatical about mirror-image circuits, about ensuring that left and right channel signals are totally separate, about using short, distortion-free signal paths, and about using custom components to produce the most musical sound, such as our Hyper Dynamic Amplifier Modules, or HDAMs, which are discrete circuit boards we developed to replace standard ICs. These perform exactly the same function as ordinary op-amps, but outperform the regular IC op-amps dramatically in terms of the slew rate and reduced noise level, resulting in a much more dynamic, accurate and detailed sound. Over the years we have developed different specific types of HDAM to improve quality and to fit to the special requirements of each particular product category. AE: You once told me that in Japan they spend more on hi-fi than any other country, and in terms of real high-end, Japan was the biggest market by far. Is this still true? KI: The Japanese spend a lot of money for high-quality products: not only in hi-fi… just look at fashion brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel and so on… their best export market is Japan! Of course China is very big as well, but considering the population, Japan is still number one. It’s in the culture and mentality of the Japanese to appreciate high quality for everything… in Japan, high quality is a way of life.

KEN ISHIWATA

INTERVIEW

THE PM7001 BASE MODEL’S POTENTIAL MOTIVATED KEN ISHIWATA TO GIVE THE AMPLIFIER HIS BATTERY OF TWEAKS AND REFINEMENTS.

AE: What countries come up second and third as big spenders on high-end equipment? KI: The USA is very big in high-end, not least because there are so many high-end manufacturers in the US whose main business is in the USA. I would say that despite the German market being down compared to what it was in the 1980s and 90s, it would still come in third.

BATTLESHIP BUILD AND CIRCUIT IMPROVEMENTS IN THE ’KI PEARL’ SACD/ CD PLAYER.

AE: These days, many high-end products have price tags that seem to bear no relation to the cost of the materials they use, the engineering or the research and development that went into their creation. KI: Hi-fi is the only category in consumer electronics where you can put on any price tag you like. This is a historical fact that stems from the two truths – that music is both very emotional and very personal, so that people are prepared to pay whatever amount of money is required in order to satisfy their desire to hear their music a certain way. In this respect, it’s just like buying art. If you love a painting, you don’t care how long it took the artist to paint, or the cost of the materials that were used. You purchase it to gain the emotional satisfaction of owning that work.

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AE: Some years ago, you said hi-fi magazine reviews skewed the market in terms of what was sold. With the rise of the Internet and on-line magazines and forums, are print magazines still as influential in skewing the market? Of course some print magazines also re-publish their reviews on their websites, so this might be a difficult question to answer …. KI: Indeed things have changed but Stereophile and What Hi-Fi? are still the most influential magazines in the world, for both online and print. Their influence on both dealers and end-users is very high. And although there are many online magazines, forums and shopping sites that influence our business, and the way we run our business has changed dramatically, I must say that both Stereophile and What Hi-Fi? have maintained their positions very well. AE: You also once complained that hi-fi reviewers were becoming disconnected with their readers, because they didn’t use today’s music when reviewing, so younger people didn’t read the reviews. Has this changed? KI: As online reviews became popular, things started to change. What Hi-Fi? magazine always uses younger reviewers so that they can be sure that their reviewers will be listening to the same music younger people listen to. On the other hand, things are different in Japan, where the typical hi-fi reviewer is over 60 years old. So over there, nothing has changed from the 1970s… at least for traditional hi-fi. Japan does have many new online magazines that focus on headphone audio, and they have much younger reviewers working for them, but it’s a completely different market… not traditional hi-fi.

KEN ISHIWATA

THE RECENT ‘KI PEARL’ SACD AND INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER COMBO RECEIVED WIDE AND HIGH ACCLAIM.

AE: One problem with using today’s music to review equipment is that it’s so processed at the recording stage that you don’t really know what the original sounded like, so you can’t be sure whether the reproduced sound is faithful to the original. Would you agree, or can you review equipment without knowing what the original sounded like? KI: I completely agree with you! That’s why I always use my own recordings for confirmation of product sound. Of course I listen to many commercial recordings and when I do I always face the problem of finding good recordings. Many people are promoting socalled ‘High Resolution’ recordings, but when I listen to them I am often disappointed by their quality… and some are not even high resolution recordings at all. But I get so excited when I find an amazing recording, because the feeling I get from such a recording is so strong… that’s why I simply can’t stop what I do! AE: Speaking of hi-res, do you have any views on the high-resolution ‘wars’ going on at present, for example PCM vs. DSD? KI: Personally I find PCM is not the right format to convert music. As you know, music changes dynamics all the time but PCM is always working in full dynamics. If the format is 192/24, then even when there is no sound at all you are still using 192/24…in other words, you’re wasting a lot of data. The number of bits should be allocated according to the dynamics of music at the highest possible sampling frequency… a floating variable bit rate with highest possible sampling frequency. DSD is simpler and works very nicely. This is why our new SA-10 SACD/CD player – which has a USB DAC and digital inputs – converts everything into DSD.

Hi-fi is the only category in consumer electronics where you can put on any price tag you like. This is a historical fact that stems from the two truths – that music is both very emotional and very personal...

INTERVIEW

AE: Your list seems very heavy on strings. Do you have a particular fondness for stringed instruments? KI: I’m surprised you didn’t know I was a violinist when I was very young! So it would be true to say that I started in hi-fi from the music side rather than the technology side. AE: Talking of your past, you have been associated with Marantz for so long that most people are not aware that before you started working for Marantz you were a fashion photographer. KI: In the early 70s I was working for a company that serviced the military market in Germany, representing such companies as Minolta, Canon, Sony and Pioneer. However in 1975 I switched careers to pursue one of my earliest interests, which is photography. My father was an awardwinning fashion photographer who inspired my love of photography, so I ended up becoming a fashion photographer. AE: That sounds like it would be a lot more fun than working with electronic equipment! KI: It was fabulous, and certainly very profitable! I was doing big-budget calendar jobs where I was able to choose the models, the locations… everything… and my budgets were often in the millions.

AE: Do you have any personal favourite tracks that you use when you are evaluating components at the design stage? KI: Yes, I do, and because I work with different engineers and product people I have a set of music they have to listen and pay attention to.

AE: So why aren’t you still a fashion photographer? KI: Lack of creative control. I would always have a very clear mental picture of the pictures I wanted, so I’d go out and shoot them then – if it was a calendar – present the client with twelve images. But many times, although the client would be happy with my shots, they also wanted to see different ones, so they would have a choice… maybe perhaps because they wanted to be seen to be making a decision. Because they sometimes chose the alternate shots, that meant my original concept was often not realised, and I didn’t like putting my name to these projects. So after three years I quit to start working for Marantz.

AE: Could you share some of those with us, please? KI: Sure! Shostakovich Symphony No 5 and No 8 from Decca with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Bernard Haitink; Pavarotti and Friends, Caruso with Lucio Dalla; Firebird Petrushka on Telarc with David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Simple Symphony for Strings Orchestra, Op. 4 II Playful Pizzicato on Decca (Britten Conducts English Music Strings); Rimsky-Korsakov: Dance of the Tumblers on Reference Recordings, Tutti Eiji Oue, Minnesota Orchestra; Ecophony Rinne, Terrasound Cosmophony AQCD 2011; Patricia Kaas Mademoiselle Chante Le Blues Live recording; and k.d. lang’s Recollection Hallelujah (New Version).

AE: No doubt this is the reason behind your fashion sense, because you are as famous in the audio industry for your clothes as you are for your electronic designs. Do you design your own clothes, or do you use a fashion designer? KI: I design my own jackets. I look for very specific Thai silks when I visit Thailand, and when I am Japan I look for buttons. I draw up how I want my jackets to be, after which they’re made up for me by my tailor. I guess I now have more than 60 jackets. I find that the inner is not easy, so here I often take Jean Paul Gaultier’s ladies’ shirts, which have very beautiful colours and materials. I love everything beautiful! Interview: greg borrowman

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Best Buys Audio & AV Issue 2016-#1

SOURCES TURNTABLE

THORENS TD 203

t’s an ongoing delight to see the resurgence of vinyl spawning new turntable designs, and here we have a new deck designed in Switzerland by Thorens as what it calls a “new reference for the entry level”. Available in black, white and the red that Thorens is making something of a trademark, the TD 203 boasts a uni-pivot arm, unusual at this price, as is the luxury of electronic speed change rather than having to manually move the belt. Best of all, this turntable offers a level of sound significantly above its price range.

EQUIPMENT

The TD 203 is a belt-driven turntable, with a flat belt around the sub-platter hidden within, rather than wrapped around the platter itself. The speed change is electronic, with a switch front left to move between 33⅓ and 45rpm, where some other decks require you to rip off the whole platter or at least don white gloves to shift the belt from one pulley to another. Electronic speed change seems such a simple thing, but it’s a luxury at this price level, and a most welcome one. Also high on its list of attractions is that unipivot bearing for the tonearm, instead of the more common gimballed bearings used at this price level. Where gimballed bearings keep an

arm locked in two dimensions, this tonearm’s unipivot bearing has a carbide tip resting in an arrangement of five tiny bearing balls. This gives it the freedom to wobble in all manner of worrying directions until stabilised by the anti-skate weight (see below), but has the advantage of performing more independently of its support. Sonically most consider this freedom of movement to allow unipivots to achieve higher levels of detail, while this type of bearing also typically enjoys less wear and reduces the possibility of arm resonances. The arm tube itself is made from rolled aluminium. Signal connections, including earth, are under the plinth at the back of the tonearm, while the mains connection goes to the box of electronics tucked front left, so the cable sticks out from the left side under the power and speed switches. The plastic lid is a bit odd, since it can only be used when the turntable is not in use, and only covers the platter, not the plinth. So whenever playing your lovely vinyl you have to put this big lump of plastic down somewhere, when it would be far more useful protecting against dust and reducing acoustic feedback from your speakers. Nor is a mat included —a cork mat is optional at $69 or rubber at $79. We didn’t like the idea of not using any mat, though this is apparently possible; we substituted a felt one from another brand.

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SETTING UP

Setting up a new turntable can vary from fairly easy to alarmingly complex, but as befitting a relatively entry-level vinyl spinner Thorens has kept things towards the simple end of that sliding scale, assisted by a good printed manual, with pictures. (It’s even better viewed online, where the pictures are colour and you can zoom in.) First you remove a transport lock (and store it somewhere safely). Next you loop the drive belt around the sub-platter and the motor pulley (on our sample, apparently fresh from its packing — this had already been done, which is most unusual on a new unit). There are two weights to slide onto the back of the tonearm. The larger of the two is the main counterweight, the position of which will determine the tracking force of the cartridge on your records, while the second is an smaller weight with its hole drilled off-centre — eccentrically, as they say. This smaller weight pushes up the tonearm close to the main weight (see image overleaf ), and with both weights in place you can use the provided plastic tracking gauge to balance things up at the suggested weight, which for the combination of TP 82 tonearm and TAS 257 moving-magnet cartridge is quoted at 2.3 grams (23mN); this proved easy to achieve.

Best Buys Audio & AV Issue 2016-#1

SOURCES

That eccentric weight can then be skewed, if desired, to adjust the azimuth to keep the cartridge exactly perpendicular to the platter surface; on our unit this was already the case. Thoren’s website confidently predicts that the TD 203 “takes no more than five minutes from opening the box to playing music from a vinyl record”. That may well be true for adepts, but we were delayed significantly by the very final stage — hanging that little bias weight to provide the required anti-skating force. The tiny weight hangs on a near-invisible thread which ends in a loop, and the loop has to be passed through a teeny-tiny eye-hole before being looped onto one of the central grooves of the bias shaft. Even in bright light and with a watchmaker’s eye-glass this was no easy task, and at some point the weight fell off the other end of the thread, shedding the tiny PVC sheath that held it in place. It’s not safe to proceed without a sheath, as any well-educated teenager will tell you, and we contacted the distributor QualiFi to beg a replacement bias weight.

PERFORMANCE

So three days, rather than five minutes, elapsed before we could enjoy vinyl on the TD 203. Happily it proved worth the wait for the weight. This turntable’s precision and ability to pull detail from vinyl grooves was immediately apparent from the first disc — a near-pristine copy of Steely Dan’s ‘The Royal Scam’. The high production values of the Dan catalogue combined with the tightness of the Thorens’ presentation to deliver the stop-on-a-sixpence bassline of ‘Sign On Stranger’, its percussive piano solo impeccably rendered. We tried this album again later when our speakers had switched from JBL 4429 Studio Monitors to the KEF Reference Ones reviewed elsewhere in this issue, and these characteristics were further enhanced, not so far as to be called clinical, but certainly a highly precise delivery with excellent imaging, tom-tom runs popping across the soundstage.

Bass was solid if not deep on this recording, so we were about to switch to a modern production, but plattered up The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’ LP on the way, and couldn’t have requested a more massive bass response than the Thorens (with the KEFs) delivered for ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ — an awesome delivery, especially given the lower effective resolution of the innermost vinyl track. ‘Hey Jude’ itself, in stereo, has become a cliché through over-exposure, but the portrayal here gave it new life — Ringo’s rolling entry right and real, his rhythm cymbal bright and alive, McCartney crooning dead centre flanked by twin guitars, and here the bass went low and melodic, just as it should. It simply doesn’t sound this analogue-rich when played from our digital collection, even the remasters. Long live vinyl. As for detail, try the way the bass resonance rattles the snare wires at the start of ‘Don’t Let Me Down’, and the delivery of McCartney’s off-mike wails at the close. We should mention that the TD 203’s drive-belt tension can be adjusted, and the speed can also be fine-tuned, though since this involves tiny screw holes on the bottom of the turntable, it’s not something you’ll be wanting to do regularly! Cartridge overhang is also adjustable, but as supplied and with the cartridge already fitted, shouldn’t be needed for those setting up from new. Praise also for the headshell fingerlift — there is a side lift control for the safest playing of your precious vinyl, but for

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those who like to needledrop, the headshell lift is thin but long, and contrasts well for visibility against the white cartridge used here. So no painful noises likely. Also on the plus side, we gather the standard two-year warranty can be extended by a year through registration with the distributor QualiFi.

CONCLUSION

With resolution, airiness and solidity beyond its price bracket, Thorens has delivered a superb turntable here for the money, and one that requires very little set-up out of the box — just enough to make it feel worthwhile. Highly recommended.

Thorens TD 203 turntable • Fine sound at the price • Unipivot arm • Electronic speed control • No mat included • Large plastic lid must be removed during play and kept somewhere Price: $1490 including arm and cartridge Drive: belt-drive (flat belt around sub-platter) Motor: servo-controlled DC Speeds: 331/3, 45 rpm Speed change: electronic Tonearm: unipivot TP 82 Cartridge: TAS 257 moving magnet Dimensions (whd): 400 x 93 x 320mm Warranty: Two years (one more on registration), one year on belt, cartridge and stylus Contact: QualiFi Pty Ltd Telephone: 1800 24 24 26 Web: www.qualifi.com.au www.avhub.com.au

AMPS/RECEIVERS NETWORKED AV RECEIVERS

DENON AVR-X2200W/AVR-X3200W

hings just won’t stand still, but Denon seems up to the challenge. Affixed to the sides of the cartons of Denon’s nifty new AVR-X2200W and AVR-X3200W networked AV receivers are stickers proclaiming these units to be ‘DTS:X ready’. ‘DTS:X’ is DTS’s answer to Dolby Atmos, providing objectlevel surround sound and a sense of height. ‘Ready’ means that a firmware update will be arriving after a while — probably by the end of 2015 — adding this feature to these receivers. Until then, we have to make do with mereDolby Atmos and Dolby Surround. Poor us!

EQUIPMENT

We are combining two reviews here, since there are many similarities between these two units, both 7.1-channel home theatre receivers with, as you’d expect, the more expensive AVR-X3200W offering somewhat higher specifications and a larger feature set than the AVR-X2200W. Which is not to say that the X2200W is particularly short-changed. For example, the ‘W’ at the end of both monikers marks the wireless network capability built into them, and along with it Bluetooth. The Bluetooth uses the SBC and AAC codecs, though not aptX for Android users who have it. The X3200W offers 105W from each of its seven channels, and the X2200W 95W — across the full audio bandwidth at 0.08% distortion into eight ohms, two channels running. Both receivers support four-ohm loudspeakers. Each has precisely seven sets of binding posts, so you can’t easily switch between a couple of different speaker set-ups. But the nominally ‘surround back’

terminals can be set to bi-amp the front speakers or to drive an additional pair of front speakers, or Zone B speakers, or five flavours of ‘height’ speakers (high on the front wall, ceiling speakers towards the front, or towards the middle, or Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers at the front or at the rear of the room). That sounds complicated, but it’s actually simpler than many Atmos-capable set-ups. Do be aware that the system supports only two height speakers. There are no line-level outputs for more, so you must choose between 7.1.0 (i.e. no height) and 5.1.2 channels. The other significant difference between the two is connectivity. The X2200W only gives you one component video input and two optical audio inputs, but no coaxial audio inputs, and no pre-outs except for the subwoofer. The X3200

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adds two coaxial audio inputs, seven channels of pre-out, and installer-friendly connections such as RS-232C, trigger and remote control. Plus one of its two HDMI outputs is for the second zone. And only for the second zone, as it turns out. You can’t use this receiver to run two main monitors (e.g. a projector backed up by a direct-view TV screen). That’s actually one way that the X2200W may be more useful in some settings. It also has two HDMI outputs, but both of these are for the main zone. Other than that they are similar. There are eight HDMI inputs, with HDCP 2.2 fully supported, along with 3D and 4K video at up to 60p with 4:4:4 colour support. So next year’s UHD Blu-ray players ought to work fine. There’s a USB socket on the front which supports both USB storage and Apple devices for playback.

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The network connectivity provides, of course, DLNA support for music from Android and Windows devices, and AirPlay for music from Apple devices and software. Both receivers have the same IR remote, and both can be controlled with the Denon Remote App on Android and iOS devices.

PERFORMANCE

The receivers have a highly detailed wizard to guide you through set-up, allowing you to skip past any bits you feel you can manage without the hand-holding. The receivers use the Audyssey MultEQ XT room calibration system, and for your convenience come with cardboard stands to hold the microphone in the right position on your couch. The auto-cal system didn’t get all our speakers right — we always recommend a check and adjustment where necessary, and here Audyssey says that its EQ adjustments remain valid if you change speaker sizes and crossovers. One thing we really like about Denon receivers is the ability to set separate crossover frequencies for each pair of ‘Small’ speakers, so we were able to set a lower crossover for our surround speakers than for the ceiling ones. The maximum crossover setting is 250Hz, so even the smallest satellites can be properly set up. You are invited to set up the network during all this. Plugging it into Ethernet is the simplest way, of course, and there are several options for Wi-Fi connection (only the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi band is supported), including shortcuts if you have an iPhone or iPad. We went the old-fashioned way and keyed in one of our Wi-Fi network passwords. As usual our ritual warning: at the conclusion of the Audyssey process you’ll have a chance to switch on Dynamic EQ and Dynamic Volume. These purport to adjust the sound to ‘correct’ for changes in our hearing sensitivity at different volumes, oblivious of the reality that our brains already do that, so doubling up externally makes things sound bad. Do make sure these are switched off. While on the subject of spoiling sound, if you use any of the music streamer functions, pop into the Setup/Audio/Restorer menu and switch the Restorer off. Such things claim to fix compressed sound, which they can’t of course, and having it apparently switched on even when playing FLAC (although not DSD) seems particularly perverse. But one nice thing about these receivers is ease of control, thanks to a clear, well-organised menu system. It just overlays the video pretty much regardless of resolution, so there’s no switching

time. You won’t find yourself hesitating before bringing up the main menu to change what you like (or to inspect General/Information to find out the details of the incoming audio and video signals, and outgoing video signal). The video handling was very strong with both receivers. In addition to passing through all manner of video, they will upscale to 4K at 60Hz if your display supports it. You can set the output resolution to preference (we’d generally recommend 1080p). The scaling and deinterlacing performance was very strong, with the automatic cadence detection (for choosing between film and video mode) doing a very good, if imperfect, job (without a manual ‘force-film’ mode, perfection is unlikely). We got the best results by feeding the receiver 1080p from our (highly controllable) Blu-ray player, and 576i and 1080i, as appropriate, from our PVR. With the PVR the receiver’s processing delivered a high quality picture to our TV. The audio delivery from both receivers was extremely good, with very little difference between them (on the specifications, the X3200W can go less than half a decibel louder than the X2200W). We used a 5.1.2 speaker set-up for a soundfield generated by Dolby Surround on both regular 5.1 and stereo movie and TV content. We’ve lately been noticing the excellent surround mixing on a number of TV productions such as ‘Daredevil’ and ‘American Horror Story’ on Netflix, and the height dimension adds a great deal to our involvement in these shows. We also watched several of our favourite Dolby Atmos moments from the 2015 movie ‘Insurgent’, one of the few with the full Atmos treatment. The location on ‘4’ as he went upstairs after the initial meeting with his mother was truly impressive. For the most part the receivers worked brilliantly with network audio. Both receivers appeared, immediately after installation, on the list of AirPlay speakers in iTunes and on our iOS devices, and on the list of Spotify Connect speakers in the Spotify app on our Windows and Mac computers and on our Android and iOS devices, and on the list of DLNA Renderers in our DLNA-capable music apps on our Android devices! For reasons we couldn’t discern it would not work as a DLNA renderer with our Windows computers, and initially we couldn’t get our favourite Android app, BubbleUPnP, to stream DSD music to the receivers, but by switching off the MIME-type check, it worked well. We take it the receivers are not communicating their full compatibility on connection. All our music was played gaplessly, and thus extremely enjoyably.

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The Wi-Fi connection was sufficiently fast to handle our DSD music. The Denon Remote App for iOS and Android has been around for a few years and was rather slow and clunky with these receivers. We’re informed that a brand new app is scheduled for release on 23 November, hopefully fixing all that.

CONCLUSION

Once again Denon has delivered receivers with a sweet combination of performance and features at a reasonable price. The Denon AVR-X3200W and AVR-X2200W receivers should most certainly be considered by anyone looking to purchase in this price range.

Denon AVR-X2200W and AVR-X3200W networked AV receivers • Strong balance of features and performance • Excellent video handling • Excellent network audio support • Control apps clunky (new app promised)

Denon AVR-X2200W

Price: $1499 Firmware: 3100-7967-3400 Power: 7 x 95W (8 ohms, 20Hz-20kHz, 0.08% THD, two channels driven) Inputs: 8 x HDMI, 1 x component video, 2 x composite video, 4 x analogue stereo, 2 x optical digital, 1 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Outputs: 2 x HDMI, 1 x 0.1 pre-out, 7 pairs speaker binding posts, 1 x 6.5mm headphone Zone: 1 x analogue stereo, assignable amplifiers Other: 1 x set-up mic Dimensions (whd): 434 x 167 x 339mm Weight: 9.4kg Warranty: Three years

Denon AVR-X3200W

Price: $1799 Firmware: 3100-7967-3400 Power: 7 x 105W (8 ohms, 20Hz-20kHz, 0.08% THD, two channels driven) Inputs: 8 x HDMI, 2 x component video, 3 x composite video, 5 x analogue stereo, 2 x optical digital, 2 x coaxial digital, 1 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Outputs: 1 x HDMI, 1 x 7.1 pre-out, 7 pairs speaker binding posts, 1 x 6.5mm headphone Zone: 1 x HDMI (dedicated), 1 x analogue stereo, assignable amplifiers Other: 1 x IR in, 1 x IR out, 1 x trigger out, 1 x RS-232C, 1 x setup mic Dimensions (whd): 434 x 167 x 388mm Weight: 11.3kg Warranty: Three years Contact: QualiFi Pty Ltd Telephone: 1800 24 24 26 Web: www.qualifi.com.au

AMPS/RECEIVERS

NETWORKED AV RECEIVER

MARANTZ NR1606

eceivers — multichannel AV amplifiers — do tend to be large units, double height, partly allowing ventilation space for all those amp channels, partly simply to fit all the required connections on the back. Marantz has offered a friendlier design for some years now, and the NR1606 is the newest version of this ‘slimline’ receiver series. At only 105mm tall (including feet but not including the two antennas) and with its curved face, it’s a far prettier unit than is the norm. So let’s dive right in and see what’s behind that attractive face.

EQUIPMENT

Examining the raw facts and figures, we see that the NR1606 isn’t disappointing. Perhaps the only marked variation from the norm in a receiver in this price category are the headline power measurements. There are seven channels, rated at up to 50W continuous each (two channels driven) at just 0.08% THD into eight ohms across the full audio bandwidth. Do keep in mind that 50W is only three decibels less than 100W. Nonetheless, clearly if you want cinema-like levels in a large home theatre room, you’d want to couple it with efficient loudspeakers to get sufficient volume. The amplifiers are rated to support speaker loads down to four ohms (a switch in the settings ensures adequate protection), so if your highsensitivity speakers are low impedance, no worries.

With seven channels the receiver will deliver proper 7.1-channel surround sound, or 5.1 channels with the two surround back channels reassigned to biamplify the front speakers, or to drive a separate pair of front speakers (Speaker B), run a different stereo signal to a second zone, or to drive two height channels (with five different location options for them). With those height channels available, the processor adds Dolby Atmos and Dolby Surround to all the usual digital audio standards, and there’s the promise of a firmware upgrade likely by year’s end also adding DTS:X. These all support the additional height channels — two only here, of course, in a 5.1.2 configuration. Dolby Atmos and DTS:X also handle new audio standards containing sound objects, which are decoded to match your speaker configuration. The rear panel doesn’t suffer much from a shortage of inputs despite its relatively small size. The range is wide; there are just fewer of the old ones than usual. So while there is a healthy collection of HDMI inputs — seven on the back and one on the front, all supporting HDCP 2.2 and 4K 4:4:4 60p video — there are only three pairs of analogue audio inputs, three composite videos, one optical digital and one coaxial digital audio. Plus two component video inputs for some reason. We can’t say that we see any of that as limiting in the great majority of systems.

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Also on the rear panel are an Ethernet socket and the aforementioned two antennas for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

PERFORMANCE

Speaking of Wi-Fi, the automatic set-up system guides one through network connection (Wi-Fi or Ethernet), in addition to setting up the speakers. Ethernet requires little more than plugging in. Wi-Fi can be set in several different ways, including by importing the settings from an iOS device either wirelessly or by plugging it into the front-panel USB socket. We really mixed up our time with this receiver. Mostly we used it for normal home theatre and stereo work in our regular place with our regular range of loudspeakers, but its size and shape was enticing enough to use it for a while to drive a pair of extremely high quality KEF LS50 speakers in stereo mode as near-field monitors, backed up by a compact Krix subwoofer. In this configuration, power simply couldn’t be an issue (unless seeking to afflict the listener with permanent damage) and instead we were able to concentrate on the sonic merits of the receiver, running as a straight stereo amplifier with minimal processing. With it in this role we discovered that selecting the ‘Pure’ or ‘Pure Direct’ audio mode eliminated not only any form of EQ or other sound tailoring processing, it also switched off the speaker con-

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figuration settings so that the internal crossover from the ‘Small’ speakers is disabled. With stereo inputs they are fed the full-range signal and the subwoofer remains silent. So we went through all the settings and made sure that every bit of signal processing was switched off except for the crossover (80Hz) to the subwoofer, and set the audio mode to ‘Stereo’. The result was superb transparency and control. We used the receiver itself as a Digital Media Renderer (audio only, of course), controlling it with an Android app, feeding music to it from our network server. Whether FLAC at standard CD resolution, or high resolution (up to 192kHz), or Direct Stream Digital at both 2.8MHz and 5.6MHz bitstreams, the music was gorgeous, rich and, dare we say it, analogue. Compulsory warning though: at the end of the set-up you will be asked whether you want Audyssey Dynamic Volume and EQ to be applied. The correct answer is ‘No’. Also, wandering through the various menus we came across an item called ‘M-DAX’ in the Audio section. This turned out to be Marantz’s version of the ubiquitous compressed audio ‘restorer’ which, says Marantz, “generates the signals eliminated upon compression”. Sadly no; it cannot do this. It is on by default for a number of audio formats and should be switched off. There’s a little indicator LED on the front panel which lights red if it’s on, so you can tell at a glance if you should be searching to switch it off. Now, on to multi-channel. The autocalibration resulted in some incorrect speaker ‘size’ assignments from the Audyssey calibration system, but this was easily fixed and we took advantage of the extremely flexible crossover possibilities. The results were impressive. We spent a few sessions with our Dolby Atmos test discs, including scenes from movies, and the two overhead channels (we have high-quality ceiling speakers for these) ‘lifted’ the general sense of envelopment. It worked equally well with Dolby Surround processing, which cleverly heightens content that would be located within the listening

area towards the ceiling, where it generally belongs. This worked well with our favourite multichannel test scenes (e.g. Marion’s arrival at Bates Motel in Gus Van Sant’s otherwise unremarkable 1998 remake of ‘Psycho’). And also with some of the modern TV shows supplied by digital TV in two channels. (Surround has come such a long way since Dolby Pro Logic offered us just one bandwidth-limited surround channel.) For most of our surround listening we used smaller speakers that were of average sensitivity — basically, 89dB for the front stereo pair, and a little less for the others, as is the way of these things. We felt that the receiver did not shortchange us for volume levels with even our loudest movies. We were using ‘Small’ speakers all the way around, though, so that relieved the receiver of the duty of supplying the more demanding lower octaves of power, that being handled by the subwoofer, and thereby releasing all its power capabilities for the sweet upper bass and above. But we also switched some large floorstanders into the front positions — rated at the same sensitivity — re-balanced and gave them a whirl. The volume levels and surround field remained impressive, although there was a sense that a little breathing space at the top of the dynamic peaks was lost. We were, really, pushing this receiver into an area for which it wasn’t intended. The video handling was strong, with decent automatic deinterlacing of both 576i/50 and 1080i/50 material from our Blu-ray player and PVR. There was no manual setting, and while very good it was imperfect, so we’d suggest using it with most PVRs, and using a high-quality Blu-ray player to do the deinterlacing for discs. The unit can upscale to 4K, but why do it, when the inbuilt scaling of any 4K display should be better optimised for the particular display? Doing it at the receiver adds unnecessary demands on your HDMI cabling. The set-up menu was clear, and displays over the top of all the video standards we tested, including 3D. The bronze and white text is a pleasant change from that on most receivers.

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We’ve touched on the network audio handling, but we’d be remiss not to mention that the unit also supports Spotify Connect and AirPlay. It popped up reliably in the speaker lists of the relevant apps for quick selection. And Bluetooth allows point-to-point streaming. There’s also a Marantz control app which seemed somewhat clunky, but we hear an updated version is coming soon.

CONCLUSION

If you have space available and no concerns about appearance, then there are higher-power AV receivers in the same price bracket. But the Marantz NR1606 seems to remain unique in offering a slimline pleasing case together with its solid and versatile performance.

Marantz NR1606 networked AV receiver • Solid and useful feature set • Very good audio performance • Attractive styling • Should choose speakers wisely Price: $1280 Tested with firmware: 2400-1167-0061 Power: 7 x 50W, (8 ohms, 20-20kHz, 0.08% THD, two channels driven) Inputs: 8 x HDMI, 2 x component video, 3 x composite video, 3 x analogue stereo, 1 x optical digital, 1 x coaxial digital, 1 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Outputs: 1 x HDMI, 1 x component video, 1 x composite video, 1 x 2.1 pre-out, 7 pairs speaker binding posts, 1 x 6.5mm headphone Zone: 1 x analogue stereo, assignable amplifiers Other: 1 x setup mic, Marantz R/C I/O, 1 x 12 volt DC out Dimensions (whd): 440 x 105 x 376mm Weight: 8.5kg Warranty: Three years Contact: QualiFi Pty Ltd Telephone: 1800 24 24 26 Web: www.qualifi.com.au

ON TEST

Marantz PM6005 INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER / DAC

ounded by Saul Marantz in the USA in 1953, Marantz has changed ownership a number of times over the years, being managed in turn by Superscope, Philips, and Marantz Japan. It now operates under the auspices of D+M Group, a company created in 2002 when Denon (Japan) merged with Marantz Japan. One thing that hasn’t changed over those years is Marantz’s commitment to manufacturing high-quality hi-fi equipment, and setting the pace in audio technology. The PM6005 is a perfect example of this focus, with some innovative circuitry on board, as well as a nice blend of ‘classic’ and ‘new’ technologies. One example of the ‘new’ is that the PM6005 has an on-board DAC, so you can directly input digital sources.

switching knob, so you can switch from one source to another manually, rather than by using a touch-screen. (And also by using the remote control, about which more later.) One thing that’s certainly ‘classic’ is the circuitry inside the PM6005, because Marantz is using a traditional passive power transformer and large-value smoothing/storage capacitors in its power supply, rather than a switch-mode supply, and its output stage is a conventional analogue Class-AB type, not one of the newer digital Class-D modules.

In many ways, the front-panel layout of the Marantz PM6005 harks back to the early days of Marantz, when all amplifiers had bass and treble tone controls and balance controls, because they’re right there on the front panel. These days, those controls are often not provided at all, or buried deep in an electronic menu. The PM6005 even has a source-

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Newport Test Labs

THE EQUIPMENT

Power Output: Single channel driven into 8-ohm and 4-ohm non-inductive loads at 20Hz, 1kHz and 20kHz. [Marantz PM6005]

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One thing that’s not ‘classic’ about the PM6005’s circuitry is that it employs current feedback—rather than voltage feedback—architecture. Although current feedback has been used in high-frequency amplifiers for many years, it was first proposed for use in audio amplifiers only in 1990 in a circuit topology invented by Mark Alexander and assigned to US semiconductor manufacturer Analog Devices in 1992 (US Patent #5097223). The reasons for its previous exclusive use in high-frequency amplifiers include the fact that current feedback has significant disadvantages at low frequencies. Alexander didn’t exactly solve these significant disadvantages, but he did come up with a novel work-around that uses current feedback at high frequencies and voltage feedback at low frequencies, effectively getting the best of both worlds. Using current feedback in an audio amplifier enables extremely wide bandwidth and an ultra-fast slew-rate. So why isn’t everyone using it? Because it’s difficult to implement. As the inventor himself noted in his ‘White Paper’ on the subject: ‘when proper attention is paid to all the details (and some of them are nontrivial indeed) current feedback amplifiers can offer superior sonic performance to all known topologies.’

ON TEST

Marantz PM6005 Integrated Amplifier

There are a few cheap ones available, the better ones being the Pro.2 DAC32 for $75 from Radio Parts, or the Matrix Audio for $69 from Noisy Motel. (If you want a really high-quality converter, another option would be a fullfledged DAC with a USB input, which will also have analogue outputs, so you could bypass the DAC inside the PM6005, but this would be expensive and kind of defeats the purpose of having a DAC inside the PM6005.) If you keep your music files on a desktop computer, another option would be to fit it with a soundcard with a coaxial digital output. The most likely reason Marantz fitted the PM6005 with a coaxial/optical digital input is so that anyone who owns an older CD player with a digital output can improve its sound quality by connecting it to the PM6005 digitally, rather than via its analogue outputs. This in itself is laudable, so Marantz should get some Brownie points for it. It should get even more Brownie points for fitting a very good DAC (Cirrus Logic’s CS4398 24/192) and putting it inside an isolated, fully-shielded cage so it can’t affect the analogue signals. The volume control on the PM6005 is motorised, but doesn’t have the ‘dead’ tactile feel when it’s manually rotated that some motorised controls have. It also doesn’t have any ‘lash-back’, so it’s very easy to set accurate playback levels. Although you can use the front panel control to adjust volume, it’s better to use the Up/Down volume buttons on the remote, because if you’ve muted the signal using the muting button, the muting circuit doesn’t cancel if you move the frontpanel volume control, whereas it does cancel if you use the remote. The remote is one made by Marantz, rather than an ‘OEM’ one, but it’s not one of the metal ones Marantz reserves for use with its top-ranked products, rather a plastic one. It’s a decent size and the buttons on it duplicate all the front-panel functions except for bass, treble and balance. It doesn’t add any features to the PM6005 that are not available on the front panel, with the exception of manual standby mode (enter/ exit), but it can also be used to control other Marantz components, for example Marantz’s matching CD6005 CD player.

Connected to a pair of large, low-efficiency floor-standing speakers, the Marantz PM6005 immediately proved itself to be capable of outstanding control over the bass drivers, because the bass was powerful and driving, but without any blurriness. The volume levels I was able to achieve without hearing any distortion whatsoever were impressive for such a low-powered amplifier, but I eventually did run into the amplifier’s limits, where I could hear the output stage go into clipping. However so long as I stayed below this level, the sound was highly dynamic, so the PM6005 obviously had some reserves of power available for transients, even at high playback levels. By way of example, I was playing the 30th anniversary reissue of Tears For Fears’ classic album ‘The Hurting’ at very high volume and on Mad World the Marantz didn’t miss a beat at the kick drum entry, reproducing it full-force and with accurate tonality. Midrange sound was completely smooth and had a nice sense of warmth to it while at the same time being completely balanced against the bass and the treble. I was also impressed by the way all sounds in the midrange were treated even-handedly, whether instrumental or vocal. So although I continued to hear a slight warmth to the sound no matter what I played, it was always the same for every sound the PM6005 reproduced… it wasn’t as if one instrument or voice type sounded warmer than any other. The detailing in the midrange was outstanding. Listening to Lisa Gerrard’s Now We Are Free, which is very complex and multilayered, I could relax and enjoy the soundscape as a whole, or instead concentrate on any one strand and hear it perfectly. I could not fault the high-frequency reproduction of the PM6005. It was clean, spacious, airy… and beautifully detailed. And whereas the high treble of some amplifiers begins to cloud over and become less transparent when the amplifier is working hard due to there being lots going on with a rhythm section, the high-frequency sound of the Marantz remained pure no matter what was going on elsewhere in the audio spectrum.

When I switched over to a smaller pair of higher-efficiency stand-mount speakers, I was gratified to hear that the although the overall sound changed due to the use of different speakers, the sound of the Marantz itself remained identical, so this is an amplifier that is quite unfussy about which loudspeakers you use with it, which will greatly increase your range of choices when buying loudspeakers. The smaller speakers had less bass response than the floor-standers, so my immediate thought was to put that bass tone control to good use. As I started to turn it, my first thought was that the circuit wasn’t working, because I didn’t hear the immediate bass lift I’m used to hearing. ‘This can’t be right’, I thought to myself. ‘Am I accidentally in Source Direct mode?’ Nope. So I tried the bass tone control again, this time listening more carefully, and the penny dropped. Yep, the bass was being boosted, but only the very lowest frequencies… and the same was true for the treble control: it too was affecting only very highest frequencies. Both controls were leaving the midrange virtually untouched. Because the midrange wasn’t being boosted, I was able to turn up the bass quite high, which lifted and extended the level of bass from the stand-mount speakers to a level I could not have done with an ordinary bass control. The action of the treble control, on the other hand, seemed fairly conventional, but since I didn’t need to use it, I left it at its detent position. (It subsequently turned out that the treble control isn’t conventional, because its boost rolls off above 15kHz rather than shelving, presumably to protect tweeters against excessive treble boost).

CONCLUSION Yes, I have expressed my disappointment at the lack of a USB input, and the lack of a 3.5mm front-panel jack, but overall I was so impressed by the performance, build quality and classy appearance that I am more than happy to forgive those slight shortcomings. Its performance as an integrated amplifier is exceptionally good, plus you’re also getting a brilliant on-board DAC into the bargain. The kicker, of course, is the price tag, which makes the Marantz PM6005 amplifier superb value for money. greg borrowman

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Marantz PM6005 Integrated Amplifier

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LABORATORY TEST RESULTS Newport Test Labs measured the power output of the Marantz PM6005 as being comfortably above specification into both 8Ω and 4Ω loads, as you can see from the results tabulated in the chart and also displayed visually in the bar-graphs. At 1kHz, the PM6005 delivered 52-watts per channel, both channels driven into 8Ω and 75-watts per channel both channels driven into 4Ω. You can see from the table and the graphs that output held up well at the frequency extremes as well, at 52-watts and 51-watts at 20Hz and 20kHz respectively into 8Ω and 70-watts at both 20Hz and 20kHz when driving a 4Ω load.

These are the figures I’d expect to see returned by an expensive highend amplifier, not one whose price tag has only three numerals... The Marantz was capable of delivering even-higher outputs when a single channel was driven (63-watts at 1kHz into 8Ω and 97-watts at 1kHz into 4Ω) indicating that the dynamic headroom is sufficient to ensure higher-than-rated output on musical peaks. There are no 2Ω results because Marantz has set the threshold level of the amplifier’s internal protection circuit such that it triggers when loudspeaker impedance drops to 2Ω. If any evidence were required of the efficacy of current feedback in extending an amplifier’s frequency response there’d be few better exemplars than the PM6005, with Newport Test Labs measuring the frequency response as being 1dB down at 280kHz and 3dB down at 553Hz. These are the figures I’d expect to see returned by an expensive high-end amplifier, not one whose price tag has only three numerals.

Australian

Newport Test Labs

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Graph 1: Total harmonic distortion (THD) at 1kHz at an output of 1-watt into an 8-ohm non-inductive load, referenced to 0dB. [Marantz PM6005 Integrated Amplifier]

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Newport Test Labs

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Graph 2: Total harmonic distortion (THD) at 1kHz at an output of 1-watt into a 4-ohm non-inductive load, referenced to 0dB. [Marantz PM6005 Integrated Amplifier]

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Graph 4: Total harmonic distortion (THD) at 1kHz at an output of 60-watts) into a 4-ohm non-inductive load, referenced to 0dB. [Marantz PM6005 Integrated Amplifier]

Graph 3: Total harmonic distortion (THD) at 1kHz at an output of 45-watts into an 8-ohm non-inductive load, referenced to 0dB. [Marantz PM6005 Integrated Amplifier]

Newport Test Labs

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Graph 5: Frequency response of line input at an output of 1-watt into an 8-ohm non-inductive load (black trace) and into a combination resistive/inductive/capacitive load representative of a typical two-way loudspeaker system (red trace). [Marantz PM6005 Integrated Amplifier]

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Graph 6: Frequency response of line input at an output of 1-watt output into an 8-ohm noninductive load with Source Direct switch on (black trace) vs off (red trace) . [Marantz PM6005]

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Graph 7: Tone control action referenced to 0dB at 1kHz. [Marantz PM6005 Int. Amplifier]

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Graph 8: Intermodulation distortion (CCIF-IMD) using test signals at 19kHz and 20kHz, at an output of 1-watt into an 8-ohm non-inductive load, referenced to 0dB. [Marantz PM6005]

Marantz PM6005 Integrated Amplifier

LAB REPORT

The dominance of the 2nd and 3rd harmonics means the PM6005 might sound a bit ‘warmer’ than one that has neither low-order nor higher-order harmonics. The PM6005’s performance as regards channel separation, on the other hand, did reflect the low price, with some fairly pedestrian figures being returned on the test bench: 51dB at 20Hz, 64dB at 1kHz and 58dB at 20kHz. These figures are nonetheless high enough to guarantee excellent separation between the two channels, as well as excellent stereo imaging. A second sample might have delivered higher figures. The same observation could be made of the channel balance, which at 0.26dB is a completely inaudible difference, but one that could be improved on. Overall THD+N was low without being exceptionally so, at 0.016% at one watt and 0.02% at rated output. The distortion spectra are shown in graphs one through four. Distortion is clearly considerably lower when driving 8Ω loads, with only the second harmonic above –90dB (0.003% THD), reaching –85dB (0.005% THD) at one watt, and reaching 82dB (0.007% THD) at rated output. Of the higherorder harmonics, the third, fourth and fifth are more than 90dB down (0.003% THD) at one watt, and everything higher is more than 100dB down (0.001% THD). When driving 4Ω loads the result was similar, except that

the sixth harmonic is also just above –100dB (0.001% THD). The dominance of the 2nd and 3rd harmonics will mean the amplifier might sound a bit ‘warmer’ than one that has neither low-order nor higher-order harmonics. When driving 4Ω loads, the levels of the ‘good-sounding’ second and third-order harmonics increased further, to around –75dB (0.01% THD) at one-watt output levels. All other harmonics also increased but by and large, it was only the even-order (goodsounding) harmonics whose levels rose over –100dB (0.001% THD) and the average level was around –90dB (0.003% THD). I would not expect these levels of distortion components to be audible. Noise levels were satisfactorily low, with Newport Test Labs measuring overall noise at 84dB A-weighted referenced to one-watt and 93dB A-weighted referenced to rated output. Those are ‘wideband’ figures and you can see from the distortion spectrograms that most of the noise is at low frequencies, caused by the power supply. Across the majority of the audio spectrum, noise is below 120dB referenced to a 1-watt output and below 135dB referenced to rated output. This is very good performance.

Marantz PM6005 Integrated Amplifier - Power Output Tests Channel

Load (Ω)

20Hz (watts)

20Hz (dBW)

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1kHz (dBW)

20kHz (watts)

20kHz (dBW)

8Ω

17.9

17.8

8Ω

17.2

17.0

4Ω

19.5

19.9

19.7

4Ω

18.5

18.8

18.5

Note: Figures in the dBW column represent output level in decibels referred to one watt output.

Marantz PM6005 Integrated Amplifier Laboratory Test Results Test

Measured Result

Frequency Response @ 1 watt o/p Frequency Response @ 1 watt o/p Channel Separation (dB) Channel Balance Interchannel Phase THD+N

Units/Comment

2Hz – 280kHz

–1dB

1Hz – 553kHz

–3dB

51dB / 64dB / 58dB 0.26 0.06 / 0.14 / 3.04 0.016% / 0.02%

(20Hz / 1kHz / 20kHz) dB @ 1kHz degrees ( 20Hz / 1kHz / 20kHz) @ 1-watt / @ rated output

Signal-to-Noise (unwghted/wghted)

76dB / 84dB

dB referred to 1-watt output

Signal-to-Noise (unwghted/wghted)

80dB / 93dB

dB referred to rated output

Input Sensitivity (CD Input) Output Impedance Damping Factor

24mV / 157mV

@1kHz

100

@1kHz

Power Consumption

0.3 / 15.33

Power Consumption

38.59 / 201.64

Mains Voltage Variation during Test

Australian

(1-watt / rated output)

0.08Ω

239 – 248

watts (Standby / On) watts at 1-watt / at rated output Minimum – Maximum

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LAB REPORT

Marantz PM6005 Integrated Amplifier

Taken as a whole, I rate the Marantz PM6005’s performance on the test bench as being truly outstanding. The in-band frequency response of the Marantz PM6005 is shown in Graph 5 for when the amplifier is driving an 8Ω non-inductive resistor (the standard audio laboratory load for this test) and when it’s driving a load that simulates that of a small two-way bass-reflex loudspeaker (the red trace). You can see that both results are excellent, at around 20Hz to 20kHz ±0.1dB. (The graphing extends from 5Hz to 40kHz, but we’re only interested in the audio band at this juncture.) The frequency response is marginally smoother into the 8Ω load but the result into the simulated loudspeaker load is still outstandingly good, even though it’s not as smooth. Graph 6 shows that there’s a substantial measureable difference in the PM6005’s frequency response depending on the position of the Source Direct switch. The flattest response is returned with the switch in the ‘On’ position. When the switch is off, the low frequencies are rolled off (though only by about 1.25dB) and there’s a small drop in output level (around 0.2dB). These differences are small, but when combined, it might be possible to hear a difference in sound between the two different switch positions, even if you leave the bass and treble controls at their detent (off) positions. As for the action of the bass and treble controls, this is shown in Graph 7, and it’s highly unusual, but very laudable.

Australian

Instead of providing the standard low-cost Baxandall implementation, Marantz’s engineers have used proper peaking equaliser circuits for both bass and the treble, which means maximum boost and cut (of about 10dB in each case) in the bass occurs at 50Hz, and in the treble at around 15kHz. The response either side of these frequencies is then rolled off quite quickly. This will give excellent audible levels of boost and cut without overloading your loudspeakers, and without detracting from the amplifier’s power output (in the case of using excessive boost). The bass boost will work particularly well at extending the low-frequency response of small bookshelf speakers, while the treble boost will allow you to boost high-frequencies yet at the same time protect your tweeter from frequencies above 20kHz, which is essential when using hi-res music sources. Intermodulation distortion (IMD) was low, as you can see from Graph 8. The peaks at 19kHz and 20kHz are the test signals—everything else is distortion. The sidebands around the test signals are sitting at around –85dB (0.005% IMD), –90dB (0.003% IMD) and –100dB (0.001% IMD). The unwanted regenerated difference signal (at 1kHz) is sitting at around –95dB, where it would be completely inaudible. Square wave performance, as shown in the four oscillograms, was excellent,

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reflecting the extended bandwidth of the PM6005, indeed the 10kHz square wave is one of the best I have ever seen from any amplifier, irrespective of price. Also excellent was the Marantz’s performance into a highly reactive load, with only a 30 per cent initial overshoot and with ringing constrained to just seven cycles. The 100Hz wave shows a little tilt, which is to be expected, but also a tiny curvature, indicating some low-frequency phase shift. The line input of the Marantz PM6005 is more sensitive than most, requiring only 24mV for an output of one-watt and just 157mV for rated output, which will mean it’s compatible with any hi-fi component I’ve come across. Output impedance was just 0.08Ω, for a damping factor (at 1kHz) of 100—twice what’s necessary to control even the largest-coned loudspeakers. Mains power consumption in standby mode meets the Australian standard and when operating at one-watt output, is only 38.59-watts, so the circuit is relatively efficient. Operated flat-out, the amplifier will still pull only a bit over 200-watts from your mains power supply. Taken as a whole, I rate the Marantz PM6005’s performance on the test bench as being truly outstanding. This is a very well-designed, well-built amplifier. Steve Holding

Best Buys Audio & AV Issue 2016-#2

SYSTEMS & SOLUTIONS

WIRELESS NETWORK CD RECEIVER

MARANTZ M-CR611

o... we’re trying to think of something that Marantz left out of this M-CR611 networked CD receiver, and we must admit that we’re coming up blank. Could this, then, be the sweet design spot for the modern equivalent of an ‘all in one’ sound system? It’s kind of looking that way.

EQUIPMENT

The idea of an ‘all-in-one’ system has changed just a little since the days when it meant a turntable, AM/FM radio and cassette recorder/player built into the one system. The modern equivalent is surely something like the Marantz M-CR611, which packs a CD player, FM/DAB+ and internet radio, network audio streaming via DLNA, Apple AirPlay and, from the internet, using Spotify Connect, plus Bluetooth with NFC for convenient connections. Missing is AM radio, but all but the most obscure of the absent stations can be heard via internet radio. It’s a clock radio too. All this is in a fairly compact box — 292mm wide by 111mm tall and 305mm deep — which weighs only 3.4kg. It is finished in a full-gloss black plastic at the sides and top, with a glassfinished white front panel (black is also available). Lights to both sides of the panel can grant it a white, blue, green or orange illumination, according to your taste and desires.

In addition to all those functions there’s a decent stereo amplifier built in, rated at 50W per channel into 6 ohms (measured at 1kHz with 0.7% THD; a higher figure of 60 watts is quoted at a less acceptable 10% THD). Actually, the amplifier configuration in this little unit is quite fascinating. We assumed that it was Class D (‘Digital’) for a couple of reasons — the kind of power ratings quoted, for example, are common among such amps; also they are rated to support speakers down to four ohms impedance, which is uncommon in mid-priced Class A/B amps. Finally, there is no obvious cooling on the unit — neither fans nor even slots for air flow, except for the bottom panel. The unit ran quite cool. So, Class D. But with a difference. There are two sets of output terminals on the rear panel, for Speakers A and B. Not so unusual. Except that when you’re running the A speakers alone, or the B speakers alone, they get the full use of the amp, but if you’re running A+B, each gets half the power of the amp separately. You can even change the volume level of the A and B speakers independently using the remote. All that would suggest that there are actually four amplifiers, and these are bridged together when the unit is used conventionally, but kept separate for A+B use, or when the bi-amping capability is used.

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We like that this unit doesn’t come with loudspeakers, you just add a pair to complete the system. Loudspeakers still tend to be the most personal of choices when it comes to music, so bundling speakers can simply be a waste if they’ll end up unused. The four-ohm support here gives you plenty of options, whether for a new pair or something you have kept for just such a mating. There is also a subwoofer output, plus analogue line-level outputs. These can be set to fixed output level or to be subject to the volume control. The volume control consists of push buttons rather than a knob (we tend to prefer the latter), and there is only one analogue input, which might be a bit limiting. That aside, all is generous, with two optical digital audio inputs, USB sockets on the front and back (A-type for connected storage or smart devices), and the ability to receive from a paired Bluetooth device. The unit supports the SBC and AAC Bluetooth codecs though not the higher Android-supported (sometimes) aptX. For networking there’s an Ethernet socket, but the unit also supports Wi-Fi using the 802.1b/g/n standards (in the 2.4GHz band only). You can set up the Wi-Fi in the usual way through scanning, selecting and entering the password, or by using the WPS method, or most conveniently by absorbing the settings from an iOS device (iOS 7 or later) either via a wired connection or wirelessly.

Best Buys Audio & AV Issue 2016-#2

SYSTEMS & SOLUTIONS

PERFORMANCE

Setting up the system — including the network — using the Quick Setup Guide proved to be very straightforward. In fact, everything was very straightforward in our time with this unit. We used a number of speaker solutions, including the little NAD speakers reviewed with the NAD D 3020 elsewhere in this issue, which showed their strengths again here. For much of our listening we used a pair of KEF LS50 two-ways supported with a Krix Seismix 1 subwoofer, but we also challenged the unit with some quality floorstanders, sans sub, to make sure the unit was happy doing the full-range job. And of course we checked out the two-speaker-pair independent level function. This worked precisely as advertised. In fact, with all the speaker combinations the sound quality was fine indeed, with excellent detail and a nice overall smoothness. Playing several of our favourite tracks from Muse’s album ‘Absolution’ through fairly sensitive full-range speakers delivered extremely satisfying levels and excellent rhythmic impact with good control of the bass. It was fun to see a kind of ‘mini’ system effectively delivering large system performance. To be fair, we felt there was a slight lack of headroom with the full range speakers when we were operating them with the independent A+B mode selected. We’d suggest switching to the specific speakers in use in normal circumstances to ensure plenty of headroom. This is easily done with a couple of pushes on a remote control key. Also, we’d suggest that bi-amping might be counterproductive with two-way speaker systems; the amp delivering the bass/midrange could well prove insufficient while the amp delivering the treble would still be delivering just a small fraction of its capacity. All that aside, we enjoyed a very wide range of music, including plenty of high resolution content. Dire Straits’ debut album delivered in DSD format from our server was delightfully full. Pearl Jam’s ‘Vitalogy’ from a 24-bit/96kHz release was in parts remarkably three-dimensional

in the soundstage, with a nice tangibility to the percussion in particular. All this streamed successfully over the Wi-Fi connection — even the 192kHz FLAC music and the DSD (which tends to be rather hungry on bandwidth). The front panel is nicely informative, showing the track title and artist, with an always visible display of the buffer level (100% is what you want) so you can see if there are any problems. An ‘Info’ key on the remote can replace the artist name with the track title or signal information. The CD player did what CD players do, spinning the physical media. The unit worked nicely with Spotify Connect, with AirPlay (both from iTunes on a Windows computer and from an iOS device) and with Bluetooth. An NFC tap from our Android phone on the marker on the top of the unit, followed by accepting the connection on the phone’s screen, had us streaming music to it within, literally, seconds. We found the network connection a touch slow to connect — it usually took around 80 seconds from being switched on to when it presented a list of servers when connected via Ethernet (for Wi-Fi it was around 105 seconds). There’s a facility to have it on even when in standby mode, and in addition to the time saving this has much to commend it. You can, for example, then wake up the unit simply by using a controller on a smart device to send music to it. However, we did find that after a few days the network connection tended to become a bit flaky if left in this mode. It seemed to need a reboot occasionally to remain in tip-top condition, so in the end we switched off the ‘always on’ capability and exercised a little patience at switch on. The unit works with Marantz’s Hi-Fi Remote app for Android and iOS. We’ve complained about this app before as flaky and slow, but over the six months since we last used it Marantz has apparently been beavering away improving its stability. It uses a ‘queue’ model, in that you add music to the present queue in order to get it to play. But it’s quite versatile, allowing you to replace the queue or push new music to the start of it. You can also set up playlists and save

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them for ready re-use. The only wobble we had was when we started jumping from iOS and Android and back again. The apps weren’t very good at retrieving the unit’s current status. Things worked better by purging the queue and starting again. (Of course, general users won’t be foolishly jumping willy-nilly from platform to platform. That’s our job.) We’re inclined to use our favourite third-party DLNA control app because we’re very familiar with it, but the advantage of using Marantz’s own app is that you can also control volume, speaker selection, tone controls and such.

CONCLUSION

Really the only thing that troubled us here was that one-analogue-input limitation — we had a couple of devices we’d have liked to use. But this is a digital age, and if the inputs and multitude of built-in services suit your needs, then Marantz has come up with a highly useful and versatile ‘all in one’ music player in the M-CR611, one that also delivers the sonic goods.

Marantz M-CR611 wireless network CD receiver • Highly versatile compact unit • Very good performance • Clever support for two pairs of speakers • Push buttons for volume • Only one analogue input Price: $1250 Power: 2 x 50W (6 ohms, 1kHz, 0.7% THD+N) Inputs: 1 x analogue stereo, 2 x optical digital, 2 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 1 x DAB+/FM antenna Outputs: 1 x 2.1 pre-out, 4 pairs speaker binding posts (A+B speakers), 1 x 3.5mm headphone Other: 1 x set-up mic, Marantz R/C I/O, 1 x 12V DC out Dimensions (whd): 292 x 111 x 305mm Weight: 3.4kg Warranty: Three years Contact: QualiFi Pty Ltd Telephone: 1800 24 24 26 Web: www.qualiﬁ.com.au www.avhub.com.au

subwoofers

group test

Standing slightly taller than its footprint in a neat black satin finish, the M&K Sound sealedbox subwoofer produced bass reminscent of the low frequencies from a pair of bass-competent floorstanders.

M&K Sound V8 By limiting the output performance of this subwoofer to the realms where it works best, M&K Sound has delivered a nicely musical subwoofer at an effective price. SUMMARY

LG Electronics LAS950M

Music Flow soundbar and subwoofer SUMMARY Price: $1299

M&K Sound V8

+ Very good audio performance subwoofer for a soundbar Price $1499 + Attractive styling Versatilemusical with Music Flow abilities ++ Pleasing

performance seem to use +- Doesn’t Good levels with LFEseveral of the built-in speakers operation Audio Return Channel +- Confusing Compact design operation App and instructions -- High distortion levels somewhat - obtuse Not effective at 20Hz

f you have always thought M&K Sound to be a US firm, you might be as surprised as we were to see the back of the M&K Sound V8 subwoofer proclaiming the firm to be Danish. Turns out that the old M&K closed in 2007 and reopened in Denmark under new ownership in 2008, bringing in some of the previous team. This M&K V8 is the entry-level model for the company’s subwoofer range. It features a 203mm (eight-inch, as the name suggests) forwards-facing driver in a compact enclosure. It adopts a nice, compact, traditional design. The enclosure is sealed. The driver includes some features from the company’s higher level X series, including shorting rings

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(as the cone nears the end of its range of travel, one or other ring enters the magnetic field and sets up a magnetic force opposing further travel, providing a ‘soft landing’). The pole piece is also machined to permit greater travel. The V8 stands 340mm high, and is otherwise less than 300mm in its dimensions. The review unit was finished in black satin, and satin white is also available. It is supplied with stick-on feet, and a glove so you can handle the unit without leaving finger marks. The unit has a simple line-level stereo input. For LFE, you just plug into the ‘Left’ input and then set the filter control to ‘Bypass’. There are also level and continuous phase controls. The latter is more a group delay control rather than for phase. Whether used in a stereo system or with the LFE output of a surround system, this can help integrate the sound from the main speakers with that of the subwoofer in the vicinity of the crossover frequency. Many modern home theatre receivers will take care of group delay on their own (by setting the distance) so in general it’s best to leave this on ‘0’ and then adjust after calibrating the system using the receiver’s routines, and only if the bass around the crossover seems deficient. There are also stereo outputs, with no indication that they are high-pass filtered, so they almost certainly aren’t.

Performance

After balancing up the levels, the M&K V8 subwoofer delivered a relaxed performance with music — tuneful and fast, keeping excellent timing with the main speakers. In fact, it sounded quite a lot like the bass produced by bass-competent floorstanding loudspeakers, rather than a subwoofer. That’s because the deeper stuff seemed to be at a lower level than the mid-bass material. For example, the bass guitar in The Police’s ‘Tea in the Sahara’ was tight and generally strong, but changed slightly in character in the

group test

subwoofers

Measurements

“a very enjoyable performance with music, if not ultimately a highly accurate one...”

lower notes, giving a great prominence to the harmonics rather than the fundamental frequency. Likewise, on the original Telarc rendition of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, the powerful bass drum strikes at around three minutes in resulted in a solid and loud thump, but without the overblown sense that subwoofers with an even delivery down to below 30Hz manage, and certainly without the reverberant bass aftermath that the best subwoofers can produce. When it came to the cannon, it only sketched the depths on offer when turned up loud, though it certainly coped without any damage. But as I wound the volume back while the music proceeded, the bass content of the cannon became more prominent in the mix. It was as though the subwoofer had limited its output to within its capabilities, and was therefore somewhat recessed in the mix at high levels, but well up to things with a reduced volume.

The sealed box here delivers a gentle slope to the bass roll-off, though the eight-inch driver works hard down low. The output of the subwoofer conformed to a kind of smooth upwards slope from 27Hz to 60Hz, rising about 8dB between those frequencies. Above that was a plateau for about 10Hz, and then a slope back downwards as the frequency continued to rise. Using my usual ±6dB envelope, the subwoofer proved rather capable, delivering from 25.6Hz to 158Hz. Thanks to the sealed box design, the below 27Hz roll-off was not as steep as some, so in

the end 20Hz was 11dB below the average output level. The laws of physics aren’t always kind. There’s no reason why a small driver can’t produce the same deep frequencies at the same levels as a large driver. However, physics demand that to do that it must move its cone further — the cone of the smaller driver undergoes a greater excursion than that of a larger driver. Greater excursions almost inevitably mean increased nonlinearities.

All that made for a very enjoyable performance with music, if not ultimately a highly accurate one. The movie performance was similar in character: no infrasonics at all, but a good mid-bass thud and crash, and a reasonable lower bass rendition. It managed to nicely fill my listening space, which is a bit larger than a typical lounge room.

And so we come to the distortion measures. For 30Hz at a 90dBSPL level at one metre, the second harmonic distortion was 10.6%, while the third was 6.3%. Higher order distortion products were less than a third of a per cent. I can’t say that these results were obvious in listening, but do remember that because the sensitivity of the ear is rolling off substantially as frequency lowers, the higher harmonics are actually more audible than the raw figures suggest.

Conclusion

While distortion was apparently significant at the extremes, I rather enjoyed the M&K Sound V8 subwoofer. It’s not for those wanting the greatest of depth, but if coupled with good satellites in a medium-sized room, it should make for a fine stereo and home theatre experience. SD

SPECS

1 1 Ins and outs The unit has a simple line-level stereo input. For LFE, you plug into the ‘Left’ input and set the filter control to ‘Bypass’. There are also stereo outputs.

M&K Sound V8 Drivers: 1 x 203mm, forwards firing Enclosure: Sealed Inputs: 1 x stereo line level, Outputs: 1 x stereo line level Low-pass crossover: 60-150Hz Quoted power: 150 watts

2 Controls The M&K has volume, crossover and continuous phase controls. The phase is more a group delay control to integrate the sound from the main speakers with that of the subwoofer in the vicinity of the crossover frequency.

Measured room response (pink noise -6dB): 25.6-158Hz Level at 20Hz: -11dB Dimensions: 340 x 260 x 290mm Weight: 10.3kg Warranty: Three years Contact: QualiFi Telephone: 1800 24 24 26 Web: www.qualifi.com.au

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$1499

subwoofers

group test

The Sunfire proved impressively weighty not only when you lift it, but in its performance as well.

Sunfire XTEQ10 Not only an impressive performer, but blessed with ease of use thanks to an effective auto-calibration system. SUMMARY

LG Electronics LAS950M

Music Flow soundbar and subwoofer SUMMARY Price: $1299

Sunfire XTEQ10 + Very good audio performance

subwoofer for a soundbar Price: $2999 + Attractive styling Versatile Flow abilities ++ Very highwith levelsMusic available

+ Excellent auto-calibration - Doesn’t system seem to use several of the speakers + built-in Extremely compact - Confusing Audio Return Channel operation - Not effective at 20Hz App harmonic and instructions somewhat -- 2nd distortion a obtuse bit high

hen the courier came, he noted that the Sunfire XTEQ10 subwoofer was startlingly heavy, even though the carton was fairly small. But this was misleading. It’s actually shockingly heavy, especially once you get it out of the carton. To do that, you slice open the top of the carton, open the four flaps. Inside you’ll see another carton. Repeat. Another carton. Repeat. Another carton. Pull this out. It holds the accessories. Invert the three nested cartons carefully and lower the subwoofer. Remove the four cardboard-protected polystyrene corner pieces. Remove the plastic bag. Remove the cloth bag. There, it’s done! What you’ve revealed is a remarkably small cube, less than one cubic foot in volume, with what appear to

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be 10-inch drivers on two sides, and a black piano gloss finish. A cube of water the same size as this subwoofer would weigh 26.5 kilograms. It weighs 24.8kg. Astonishing! Anyway, it turns out that one of the drivers is a passive radiator. Pushing either cone firmly creates only the slightest movement. The suspension is incredibly heavy, so a hefty amplifier is required to make this move. But this is Sunfire, most famous for its high efficiency, high performance, tracking downconverter power supply amps. This one is rated at no less than 2700W. The driver and the passive radiator are exposed. No grilles as such are provided, but a kind of surround is provided for each side which provides a little side-ways protection. Nonetheless, care should be taken around this subwoofer to avoid damage. The unit comes with stereo line-level inputs, plus a balanced XLR LFE input. Regular LFE connections are made to one channel of the line-level input. There’s a bypass setting on the low-pass filter control. There’s also a slave input (and output) for daisy-chaining a series of subs. The stereo input is passed on to a stereo line-level output, which can be optionally high-pass filtered at 85Hz. The usual controls are provided, but there’s a little something extra: an automatic calibration system, complete with microphone. Some of the other subs discussed here have calibration system as well, but none is as simple as this: put the microphone at the listening position, plug it in, press the ‘Start’ button and wait for a couple of minutes. This tests and adjusts the levels at 35, 49, 64 and 84Hz. You can adjust using a fairly clunky manual system at the same test frequencies if you prefer, but given the results we got, we don’t see why you’d bother.

group test

subwoofers

“authoritative, clean, fast and powerful, as though it was four times the size it actually was...”

Measurements

The power of auto-calibration — the Sunfire’s response after EQ (blue) was far smoother than without it (orange).

Performance

As usual, I started my listening with the EQ turned off in order to see what the sub would manage in a kind of native mode. To be frank, it was really quite disappointing. The deep bass was very recessed compared to the upper bass, sapping the sound of any sense of authority. Rather than pursuing that, I ran the auto EQ process — which really was as easy as outlined. That done, I tried listening again. And the subwoofer was an entirely different unit (see also our Measurements panel). It was balanced, authoritative, clean, fast and powerful. It also sounded as though it was four times the size it actually was. I kept having trouble believing that

As mentioned in the main article, the subwoofer was quite different with EQ switched off, and with the EQ automatically calibrated. In the former condition (orange line), the bass was flat and even between 27Hz and 50Hz, and then rose to a new plateau some 9dB higher commencing at 60Hz. No wonder the deep bass sounded weak. The auto EQ, though, changed that completely. When it was done (blue line), there was just one plateau, from just under 27Hz to 95Hz (±2dB).

This subwoofer produces virtually nothing in the way of infrasonics. Indeed, it looks like the DSP imposes a brick-wall filter around 26-27Hz. The output drops by 15dB well before 24Hz. There’s a bump in the response around 20Hz, but it is still down around -17dB. I think this is good design practice for a subwoofer this small. Trying to move the cones at lower frequencies means greater cone excursions, which at some point would tip over into obvious distortion

this unit was delivering the levels it was doing. The mighty rumble of the jet airlines on the tarmac during the climax of ‘Heat’ (1995) pounded out. Virtually all musically important notes were reproduced, although some exotic components were missing, such as the 16Hz fundamental on my favourite Bach pipe organ piece. However the 32Hz component of this was wonderfully full and room filling. Still, the really deep frequencies suggested by the specifications were clearly not evident.

and possible bottoming out, plus require even more thousands of watts. This subwoofer works very well in the chosen frequency range. You might expect a fair bit of distortion given the amount of work everything is required to do, pushing a big cone in a small enclosure. At my chosen 30Hz, though, the results were quite different. There was indeed a fair bit of 2nd harmonic — nearly 4% — but the third harmonic was only 0.4% and the higher orders at or below 0.05%.

One thing: the sub seemed slow to react to an input — it took eight seconds for the auto switch on.

Conclusion

The Sunfire XTEQ10 is an extraordinary device, with great performance from 27Hz and up, while the auto-calibration feature means that it can be readily optimised for just about all systems. SD SPECS

Sunfire XTEQ10 1 Control or calibration The usual controls are provided, but the automatic calibration system (using a supplied microphone) proved so effective that you most likely won’t need to do a manual set-up.

Drivers: 1 x 245mm, sideways-firing Enclosure: Passive 254mm radiator Inputs: 1 x stereo line level, 1 x XLR LFE, 1 x Slave Outputs: 1 x stereo high pass, 1 x Slave Low-pass crossover: 30-100Hz

Quoted power: 2700 watts 2 Ins and outs There are stereo line-level inputs, passed on to stereo line-level outputs, which can be optionally high-pass filtered at 85Hz. Regular LFE connections are made to one input or to a balanced XLR input. There’s also a slave input (and output) for daisy-chaining a series of subs.

Measured room response (pink noise -6dB): 25.6-119Hz Level at 20Hz: -17dB Dimensions: 290 x 315 x 290mm Weight: 24.8kg Warranty: Three years Contact: QualiFi Telephone: 1800 24 24 26 Web: www.qualifi.com.au

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$2999

www.heos.com.au ANY ROOM OR EVERY ROOM

MULTIROOM PORTABLE PLAYER OF THE YEAR

HEOS 1

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ON TEST

SUNFIRE XTEQ 8 SUBWOOFER

any audiophiles, for reasons of domestic harmony, are obliged to listen to smaller loudspeakers than they’d like, which means that although they can usually enjoy superb midrange and treble, they miss out partially—or almost completely—on deep bass. Those same audiophiles, again for reasons of domestic harmony, are also unable to add a large subwoofer in order to deliver that bass. If this sounds like your situation, help is at hand, because for US manufacturer Sunfire has come to the rescue with its XTEQ 8 subwoofer, which is so tiny that you’ll be able to sneak it into the room under your jumper, install it by hiding it from sight under a chair or behind your equipment rack and then

Australian Hi-Fi

simultaneously rejoice in the sudden addition of deep bass to your music and the continuance of domestic harmony.

THE EQUIPMENT Sunfire is able to claim an amplifier power rating of 1,800 watts for the tiny XTEQ 8 subwoofer—far more power than would be possible if it used a conventional ClassAB amplifier—and quite possibly, even a Class-D amplifier—because it uses an unusual tracking down-converter amplifier developed by the famous US designer Bob Carver, who founded Sunfire. But why would you want a 1,800-watt amplifier inside a subwoofer? The answer to that is partly physics and partly marketing. In order to extract good low-frequency extension, low distortion, and high volume levels from a subwoofer, you need a large enclosure. The problem is that very few consumers

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want large enclosures in their living spaces. So manufacturers build enclosures that are smaller than optimum, and whenever they do this, they have to compromise by making a choice between reducing low-frequency extension, increasing distortion, or lowering maximum volume levels: in other words, ‘something’s gotta give!’ However, there is a ‘work-around’ to getting bass out of a small cabinet, and it’s one that hinges around the fact that one reason the volume drops off when a cone is mounted in a small enclosure is that the amplifier has to work harder to push that cone, which requires more power… lots more power. In the past, it was not practical to include a sufficiently high-powered amplifier in small subwoofers—they simply cost too much to build. But Carver’s tracking down-converter amplifier was the first one to break the rules: it could deliver enormous amounts of power

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Sunfire XTEQ 8 Subwoofer

very cost-effectively, and it was this that enabled Sunfire to build such small subwoofers… and this new Sunfire XTEQ 8 is certainly small… indeed at just 267×315×270mm (HWD) it’s the smallest model in the XTEQ range. (There are two larger models, the XTEQ 10 and XTEQ 12.) As with all products Sunfire builds, the model numbers of the XTEQ 8 actually mean something. The ‘XT’ stands for eXtended

at it from the front) is actually a passive radiator—that is, although it has a cone and suspension, it does not have a voice coil or a magnet: its motion comes about entirely in response to air pressure variations inside the cabinet caused by the movement of the other side-firing bass driver: which is the reason some people call passive radiators ‘drone cones’. (They’re also known as auxiliary bass radiators, or ABRs). Whatever you decide to call them, Sunfire is at least honest enough to point out that it is a passive radiator: Some manufacturers don’t mention it at all, presumably hoping you’ll think you’re getting multiple drivers. The rear panel of the Sunfire XTEQ 8 has both unbalanced (via RCA) and balanced (via XLR) inputs as well as two line-level outputs. The line-level outputs can be a simple pass-through (unaffected by any of the subwoofer’s settings) or high-passed through an 85Hz high-pass filter, using a switch located between the left and right output terminals. There’s also ‘Slave Input’ and ‘Slave Output’ terminals, which allow you to link multiple XTEQ 8 subwoofers together. By using the ‘Slave’ links to do this, all the settings you make on the ‘Master’ subwoofer will be replicated on the ‘Slave’ subwoofers, which greatly simpli-

The circuit will automatically adjust the frequency response of the subwoofer for the best performance in your room

Throw, because the roll-surrounds fitted to the drivers in these models have Sunfire’s so-called ‘Asymmetrical Cardioid Surround’ geometry, which the company says: ‘enables them to travel over a very long throw without distorting.’ The ‘EQ’ stands for Equalisation, except that in this case, the equalisation is automated. Each subwoofer comes with its own microphone and has a signal generator and measurement circuitry built in that can be used to measure the output of the subwoofer in your room, after which it can then automatically adjust the frequency response of the subwoofer for best performance in that room. It does this at four frequencies: 35Hz, 49Hz, 64Hz and 84Hz. (And if, for any reason, you don’t like the result of the automated circuitry, you can over-ride it, and instead set the equalisation ‘by ear’.) There have been several improvements to Sunfire’s automatic equalisation circuitry over the years it’s been available, the most significant of which is to my mind that this latest iteration is by far the easiest and the fastest to use. However, another significant improvement was the switch from analogue to digital circuitry, which made the calibrations and equalisation more precise. As for the final number in the model name—the ‘8’—that’s good ol’ imperial inches, showing that the XTEQ 8 has an 8-inch (203mm) diameter bass driver. And yes, that’s driver singular… there is only the one driver, and it’s on the left side of the subwoofer as you’re looking at it from the front. The circular thing that looks like a driver on the opposite side to the woofer (that is, on the right side of the subwoofer as you’re looking

fies operation if you are using two or more subwoofers. Using dual subwoofers is a classic way to solve issues you may have with room modes, plus it’s also an easy, efficient, and cost-effective way of increasing bass levels in larger rooms. A rotary control is used to adjust crossover frequency, and is adjustable from 30Hz to 100Hz, plus there’s a ‘Bypass’ setting at the extreme clockwise setting of the control. The phase control—also rotary—is continuously adjustable between 0° and 180°. The level control is rotary, with calibration markings only for ‘Min’, ‘0dB’ and ‘Max’. There are several fittings for use with the automatic equalisation circuitry, including an EQ LED, a ‘Start’ button, an EQ on/off switch and a microphone input. The other controls are a 12V d.c. trigger for remote power switching, a power LED and a mains power switch. Although the mains power switch has only two positions (off and on) the XTEQ 8 is fitted with a signal-sensing circuit that will turn the subwoofer off after a period of time during which it does not detect an audio signal. If you then apply an audio signal, it will switch on automatically. (I prefer three-position power switches—Off, On, Auto—but for no particular reason… it’s just an idiosyncratic personal preference.)

IN USE AND PERFORMANCE When it comes to getting the ultimate performance from a subwoofer it is essential that Continued on page 56

A rotary control is used to adjust crossover frequency, and is adjustable from 30Hz to 100Hz, plus there’s a ‘Bypass’ setting at the extreme clockwise setting of the control. The phase control—also rotary—is continuously adjustable between 0° and 180°. The level control is rotary, with calibration markings only for ‘Min’, ‘0dB’ and ‘Max’. There are several fittings for use with the automatic equalisation circuitry, including an EQ LED, a ‘Start’ button, an EQ on/off switch and a microphone input. The other controls are a 12V d.c. trigger for remote power switching, a power LED and a mains power switch.

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Australian Hi-Fi

Sunfire XTEQ 8 Subwoofer

ON TEST

Continued from page 25

you position it in the optimum acoustic position in your room before you do anything else at all. Sunfire’s manual has excellent advice, but for perfect placement, follow the instructions here: www.tinyurl/subwooferplacement Sunfire’s manual also contains excellent advice about how to best set the crossover, volume and phase controls, but you’ll get far better performance if you take a more technical approach to tuning, using the system outlined here: www.avhub.com.au/sub Using the tuning approach outlined in the link will require a small financial outlay of around $30 (for an app for your phone and a test CD) but I guarantee the results will be worth it. You will also need to calibrate the XTEQ 8 using its own automated calibration routine, which is as simple as positioning the supplied microphone in the listening position, pressing the ‘EQ Start’ button and waiting around 15–18 seconds, after which the job is complete. For best performance, I would recommend running the automatic equalisation process BEFORE you do your external calibration. As is my custom, the very first thing I played was Jean Guillou playing the great organ in the St Eustache church in Paris (Dorian DOR-90134). The playback of Bach’s

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 565) proved to me that despite its small size, the Sunfire XTEQ 8 is easily the equal of many larger subwoofers, and it was able to reproduce the very lowest notes in the audible spectrum. Sure, it wasn’t able to do this at quite the same volume level as I recall being able to achieve when I reviewed the XTEQ 12, but it was still able to play the lowest notes it was able to reproduce at surprisingly high volume levels… and, thanks to the use of a passive radiator rather than a bass reflex port, there were no unwanted ‘chuffing’ sounds, as there can be when driving a bass reflex subwoofer at high volume levels. However, since almost all the bass you hear when listening to music actually falls between 30Hz and 100Hz, this is the region in which you want a subwoofer to deliver its best performance, and the Sunfire XTEQ 8 was happy to oblige in this respect, delivering a very uniform response across this frequency band, with a very pure tonality, so that the notes it reproduced had a very musical sound quality, with no unwanted harmonics or overtones. Distortion was also very low. One problem with small subwoofers is their tendency to move along your floor when they’re delivering low bass at high levels, though frankly the XTEQ 8 is so heavy (it weighs 19.4kg!) that the fact it could possibly

TECH TALK: THE TRACKING DOWN CONVERTER AMPLIFIER

move at all is testament to the power of the driver it contains. Nonetheless, to prevent this happening the four feet underneath it have what Sunfire calls an ‘Anti-Walking Tread Design.’ I have absolutely no idea how this is supposed to work, but I can say that it must, because my review sample stayed exactly where I positioned it throughout the auditioning sessions, and did so when I tried it in other rooms with different floor surfaces. (Carpet, wood and tile, if you’re interested.)

CONCLUSION Size (both cabinet volume and driver diameter) certainly helps when it comes to subwoofer performance but, as I explained at the start of this review, today’s technologies enable many workarounds that make it possible to extract big bass from small subwoofers. However, once you are using these technologies to level the playing field—as Sunfire is doing with its XTEQ series—the fact remains that the subwoofers with the larger cabinets and the bigger bass drivers will still deliver more—and deeper—bass than the smaller ones. The only thing you won’t be able to do with the big ones is hide them from sight, whereas you can do this very easily with the XTEQ 8. So my conclusion must be that if you have a smaller room and are desirous of deep bass—and domestic harmony—Sunfire’s tiny XTEQ 8 would be a great choice. greg borrowman

The tracking down converter amplifier is a variant of the Class-H amplifier topology, and to understand how Class-H works, you need to understand that in amplifiers that use conventional power supplies, the designer uses a power supply with a voltage high enough to deliver the maximum power the amplifier is capable of delivering. So, for example, if the amplifier were to be rated at 100-watts per channel into 4Ω, the power supply would need to deliver 20 volts (P=V2/R so 50 = 400/4). The problem is that when the amplifier is not operating at its maximum output, and instead is delivering, say, only 1-watt, which requires only 2 volts, the power supply will still be delivering 20 volts, so the remaining 18-volts is wasted (it’s dissipated as heat). This isn’t a problem with low-powered amplifiers, but as power output increases, the cost of building power supplies for them becomes prohibitively high, and it also becomes difficult and expensive to remove the increased heat that results from the increase in power (no matter whether you remove this heat using heat sinks, cooling fans or a combination of both). In Class-H designs the voltage of the power supply is varied depending on the power output required at any given moment, so that if you’re playing at 1-watt, it would supply only 2-volts, since this is all that’s required. Then, when you turned the volume up to 4-watts, the pow-

Readers interested in a full technical appraisal of the performance of the Sunfire XTEQ 8 Subwoofer should continue on and read the LABORATORY REPORT published on page 57.

CONTACT DETAILS Brand: Sunfire Model: XTEQ 8 Category: Powered Subwoofer RRP: $2,499 Warranty: Two Years Distributor: Qualifi Pty Ltd Address: 24 Lionel Road Mt Waverley VIC 3149

er supply voltage increases to 4-volts. At an output of 50-watts, the power supply would deliver

TF: 1800 242 426

the full 20-volts. This means there’s no waste, very little heat (so no need for heatsinks and fans)

T2: (03) 8542 1111

and importantly that the power supply can be made relatively cheaply.

E: info@qualifi.com.au

The difficulty in designing Class-H designs lies in the designer ensuring that the power supply always stays one step ahead of the output stage, otherwise it won’t be able to deliver the voltage required at the precise instant it’s required. Carver’s tracking down-converter was a innovative way of doing this inexpensively and with very few components… indeed it was sufficiently innovative that he was awarded a patent for it—US Patent #4,484,150. (Carver’s patent application cites more than thirty previous patents outlining previous similar approaches to the problem, so he didn’t ‘invent’ Class-H, but he did invent a unique and very practical implementation of it: one that’s been so successful that it’s still being used four decades later, often in preference to Class-D.) #

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W: www.qualifi.com.au •• Tiny! •• Sophisticated •• Sensational bass •• Max volume limit •• Deep bass extension •• Limited colour choice

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www.avhub.com.au

Sunfire XTEQ 8 Subwoofer

LAB REPORT

LABORATORY TEST RESULTS Graph 1 shows the in-room frequency response of the Sunfire XTEQ 8 subwoofer for four different settings of the crossover. The traces show that the response in ‘Bypass’ mode (black trace) is almost identical to the response with the crossover control set to 100Hz (red trace). In these modes, the Sunfire XTEQ 8’s response was measured as being 30Hz to 140Hz ±3dB. With the crossover set to ‘Normal’ (65Hz), shown by the blue trace, the Sunfire’s response was 28Hz to 95Hz ±3dB. With the crossover set to the minimum position (30Hz) the Sunfire’s response was measured as 27Hz to 100Hz ±3dB. These are all very close to Sunfire’s specification, which claims 22Hz – 100Hz but I can’t say how close because Sunfire doesn’t state whether the two figures in its spec represent 3dB down-points or 6dB down-points (or some other dB level entirely). Graph 2 shows the results of near-field testing on the XTEQ 8, where the outputs of the driven cone and the auxiliary bass radiator have been measured separately for the same four settings of the crossover control. All traces show an increase in bass extension over the far-field in-room responses, with the ‘Normal’ trace being –6dB at 20Hz, which shows that optimally positioning the XTEQ 8 in a room will

Figure 1. Far-field frequency response. Bypass x/o (black trace); 100Hz x/o (red trace); Normal/65Hz x/o (Blue trace); Minimum/30Hz x/o (Green trace). Sunfire XTEQ 8 Subwoofer.

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dBSPL

Newport Test Labs

105 100 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 50

10 Hz

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200

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Graph 1. Far-field frequency response. Bypass x/o (black trace); 100Hz x/o (red trace); dBSPL Normal/65Hz x/o (Blue trace); Minimum/30Hz x/o (Green trace). Sunfire XTEQ 8 110 Newport Test Labs Subwoofer.

Figure 2. Nearfield low-frequency responses. Bypass x/o Setting (Driver: Light blue solid trace; ABR dashed blue trace); Normal/65Hz x/o Setting (Driver: Black trace; ABR dashed black trace); Minimum/30Hz x/o Setting (Driver: Red trace; ABR dashed red trace). Sunfire XTEQ 8 Subwoofer.

105 100 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 50

10 Hz

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Graph 2. Nearfield low-frequency responses. Bypass x/o Setting (Driver: Light blue solid trace; ABR dashed blue trace); Normal/65Hz x/o Setting (Driver: Black trace; ABR dashed black trace); Minimum/30Hz x/o Setting (Driver: Red trace; ABR dashed red trace). Sunfire frequency Overall, the Sunfire XTEQ 8 demonstrated XTEQ extension 8 Subwoofer.

result in greater low than shown in Graph 1. The output of the auxiliary bass radiator is fairly peaky, so that it gives maximum output at around 38Hz. Its output rolls off fairly quickly below this frequency, but above it, if you choose higher settings of the crossover control, it delivers appreciable output out to around 70Hz that would help augment the output of the driver.

excellent linearity and extension in Newport Steve Holding Test Labs’ tests. Readers should note that the results mentioned in the report, tabulated in performance charts and/or displayed using graphs and/or photographs should be construed as applying only to the specific sample tested.

There are three XTEQ subwoofers in Sunfire’s range, and all are pictured here to indicate comparative cabinet and woofer sizes, with the XTEQ 8 at the far left, the XTEQ 10 in the middle and the XTEQ 12 at the right.

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Australian Hi-Fi

300

ON TEST

M&K SOUND V12 SUBWOOFER

&K Sound’s latest subwoofer has a most appropriate model number because just as in the car world you’d expect a vehicle with a V12 engine to have a ‘bit of grunt’, so too does M&K Sound’s V12 have a ‘bit of grunt’… though in this case the ‘grunt’ comes in the form of an extended low-frequency response and a high power output.

THE EQUIPMENT M&K Sound has never been a company that ‘prettied up’ its subwoofers and the company is obviously sticking with that approach with the V12, because it’s basically just a big black box. But before I go any further, I should say that switching its manufacturing to China has obviously enabled the company to do some ‘prettying-up’ without impacting on the bottom line. All the corners, which were once left sharp-edged at 90 degree angles, are now nicely rounded, for example.

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And the speaker grille, which was once fairly industrial-looking, is now a soft black fabric stretched over an MDF frame. If you look at the main photo accompanying this review, which shows the V12 without the grille fitted, you’ll see what I think is an overly-garish and fairly crudely executed ‘V12’ logo below the THX logo that indicates that the M&K Sound V12 is THX-approved. If you agree with me about its appearance, you’ll be happy to learn that when you attach the grille it covers this logo entirely, so all that’s

M&K Sound V12 Subwoofer

visible when looking at the front of the subwoofer is the very classy-looking gold-coloured ‘MK’ logo. And if you love the silvery V12 logo, just use the V12 without its grille, so it’s in plain sight. As for it being a ‘big black box’, the V12 isn’t actually very big at all, measuring only 465×360×400mm (HWD). In fact it’s the

Regular readers might also be surprised to learn that the cabinet of the M&K Sound V12 is not vented, that is, it’s not a bass reflex design. Normally this would mean that M&K Sound is sacrificing some linearity in the frequency response to gain some low end extension and achieve lower distortion than would otherwise be the case. However, because the V12 contains a Class-D amplifier rated at 300-watts (continuous into 4Ω) the company is obviously using this high power to its advantage to tailor the amplifier’s frequency response to compensate for any cabinet losses. Also in-circuit is what M&K Sound refers to as a ‘Headroom Maximizer’ which protects the bass driver from being over-driven. The controls for the internal Class-D amplifier are located on the back plate. The volume control is rotary, with a smooth action, and ten ‘dots’ are used in place of numerals to indicate volume level. When used in a THX system, the volume must be set at a specific level, so if you turn the volume

Also in-circuit is what M&K Sound refers to as a ‘Headroom Maximizer’, which protects the bass driver from being over-driven.

largest model in M&K Sound’s range of what it calls its ‘compact’ subwoofers. The company’s largest home subwoofer is the X12, which measures 440×660×460mm (and has two 305mm bass drivers, as against the single 305mm bass driver in the V12). Although I wrote earlier that the cone diameter of the V12 is 305mm, M&K Sound actually specifies it as ’12-inches’, presumably because the USA is M&K Sound’s single biggest market, and that country still uses the ‘imperial’ measurement system. But in fact, as with all loudspeaker drivers, that measurement doesn’t really mean too much at all, because different manufacturers measure driver diameters using different reference points. In the case of the driver used in the V12, the overall diameter is 310mm, somewhat larger than 305mm, and the spacing between the driver mounting holes is 295mm, somewhat smaller. As regular readers of Australian Hi-Fi Magazine will already know, the only important measurement is the Thiele/Small diameter, as this determines the cone’s effective cone area (Sd), which (along with excursion, or Xmax) dictates how much air will be moved when the cone moves (known as ‘Vd’ for volume displacement. As you’ve probably guessed, Vd=Sd×Xmax. As for the material from which the cone is made, it appears to be paper pulp—the usual choice for large cones, as a large paper cone can be both lighter and more rigid than a cone made from any other material. The dustcap appears to be made from some type of Kevlar-like material, presumably for additional rigidity.

In terms of user-control, I would have preferred it if M&K’s engineers had limited the upper crossover frequency to a 110Hz turnover and provided the THX crossover as a separately switched option, but this would obviously have resulted in increased manufacturing costs for no acoustic benefit.

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control completely counter clockwise, you’ll hear (and feel) a ‘click’ that selects the correct level for THX operation. The crossover control is also rotary, with a smooth rotational action, but it has specific frequency calibrations at 60Hz, 80Hz, 110Hz, and 150Hz plus a THX calibration at the extreme clockwise position (but no ‘click’). The phase control is also rotary, so you can adjust phase response smoothly between 0° and 180° degrees, which is rather nicer than the usual two-way phase switch, which offers either 0° or 180° with nothing in-between. There are two power switches: a main 240V switch and then a three-way toggle switch that allows you to switch between ‘off’, ‘auto’ and ‘on’. The automatic switch puts the V12 into signal-sensing mode, where it will switch on automatically when it detects a music signal and automatically switch to standby after it’s sensed that no music is playing. Setting the switch to ‘on’ forces the subwoofer to stay on 24/7. A multi-colour status LED glows red when the subwoofer is powered-up but either manually switched off or in standby mode, but then changes to glow green when it’s actually operating or out of standby mode. The M&K Sound V12 offers only line-level inputs (via gold-plated RCA terminals).

M&K Sound V12 Subwoofer

ON TEST

There are no speaker-level inputs. It also offers line-level outputs, but these are simply looped from the input to allow easy daisy-chaining if you use multiple subwoofers, so the output signal is full-range, and not filtered in any way. Using multiple subwoofers is always best practise, since a single subwoofer will rarely energise a room uniformly, because the size of the rooms in normal homes makes bass propagation problematic.

In Use and LIstenIng sessIons If you are going to use just a single subwoofer, it’s absolutely crucial that you place it in a position in your room where it will provide the correct balance of sound at the listening

floor-standing loudspeakers… which turned out to be the 60Hz (minimum) setting of the crossover control. Bach is by far and away my favourite composer, and I always like to start subwoofer evaluations with at least one Bach organ work, and this time it was the turn of his spritely ‘Gigue’ Fugue in G Major (BWV 577) even though this isn’t quite as thunderous in the bass department as the two I play more regularly in listening sessions (Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and Passacaglia in C Minor). It is, however, a lovely work, and a goodly assortment of 16-foot pipes make an appearance in the work’s finale. Importantly, being a gigue, it demonstrated to me how nimble the M&K Sound V12 could be. I heard instant response to both keyboard and pedals, and no unwanted overhang whatsoever. This is not a sluggish sub! When the pedals did come in at the end, the depth and quality of the bass was impressive. The sound was also a little more ‘pure’ than a bass reflex subwoofer, presumably from the reduction in distortion, but also perhaps because there’s only a single source of sound (the woofer) rather than two (woofer and port). Of course you don’t have to be a pipe organ aficionado to benefit from the extended bass afforded by adding a subwoofer to your system. All the lower notes of the larger orchestral instruments will be improved by using a subwoofer (percussion, harp, double-bass, cello, and so forth) and when playing rock, jazz and other popular genres, drums, bass guitar, electric guitar, and all keyboards will also benefit. One classic lowbass demonstration I always enjoy is using a subwoofer in conjunction with is Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, where the ‘heart’ on Speak To Me/Breathe beats at a frequency of 27Hz. And if you’re looking for some low bass while at a hi-fi show, eternal show favourite ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ should be in every demonstrator’s playlist, and it gets down to 35Hz on Joan of Arc. The M&K proved adept at delivering the low bass on all the tracks on both albums, with very clean reproduction, splendid clarity and no unwanted overtones. Since few people—other than audiophiles—own large, floor-standing speakers any more, I also evaluated the M&K Sound V12 with a small pair of bookshelf loudspeakers, again using the calibration procedure out-

Adept at delivering the low bass on all the tracks on both albums, with very clean reproduction, splendid clarity and no unwanted overtones

position. You can find full details of how to do that at www.tinyurl.com/subwooferplacement Be careful moving the subwoofer around because M&K Sound does not supply rubber feet, nor is the base socketed for spikes. You can buy rubber feet at any hardware store, but it’s strange they’re not included. It’s also absolutely essential that you correctly adjust the volume, phase and crossover controls to get a seamless transition to your main speakers. You can find full details of how to do that here: www.tinyurl.com/subwoofer-calibration My initial listening session didn’t go so well because when I started adjusting the volume, phase and crossover controls, using the procedure described in the link above, I heard a curious whistling sound from the subwoofer. I traced this sound to the rear of the subwoofer, where I found four small holes in the amplifier plate, from which screws had obviously been removed and not replaced. It turned out a previous reviewer had been investigating the insides of the sub and failed to completely re-install the plate. After local distributor Qualifi express-posted replacement screws and I’d fitted them (which took about three minutes) the whistling stopped and I was able to correctly set all the controls for the correct transition to my main

Australian Hi-Fi

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lined at www.tinyurl.com/subwoofer-calibration This time I found that the setting that gave the best transition between the V12 and the main front speakers was with the calibration control set about midway between the 80Hz and 110Hz positions. The fact that I was using smaller main speakers meant the V12 had to do a whole lot more work, reproducing far more of the low-frequency spectrum, but I still found its performance exceptionally good. The level of the bass was satisfyingly linear and the sound was so clean that I never had any trouble differentiating between adjacent notes when listening to electric bass or double-bass, plus pitch was instantaneously detectable, even for plucked strings. In other words, excellent performance.

ConCLUsIon It’s quite rare to find a sealed subwoofer at this price-point and equally rare to find a sealed subwoofer that’s such a room-friendly (and partner-friendly!) size. And, as you’ve no doubt gathered by now, it delivers outstanding low-frequency performance. So, if you’re in the market for a subwoofer with all these characteristics, M&K Sound’s V12 would be Gary Williams an excellent choice. Readers interested in a full technical appraisal of the performance of the M&K Sound V12 Powered Subwoofer should continue on and read the LABORATORY REPORT published on page 114.

ContaCt details Brand: M&K Sound Model: V12 Category: Powered Subwoofer RRP: $2,499 Warranty: Three Years distributor: QualiFi Pty Ltd address: 24 Lionel Road Mt Waverley VIC 3149 toll-Free: 1800 242 426 t: (03) 8542 1111 e: info@qualifi.com.au W: www.qualifi.com.au

• Tight, tuneful • Depthy bass • Loud! • Single colour option • Spike sockets • Feet Continued on page p114

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M&K Sound V12 Subwoofer

LAB REPORT Continued from page p94

Laboratory test resuLts Graph 1 shows the far-field (pink noise) frequency response measured by Newport Test Labs with the V12’s variable crossover control set to maximum/THX position (black trace); 110Hz (light blue trace) and to 60Hz (red trace). You can see that with the crossover set to maximum, the response of the M&K Sound V12 is very flat, extending almost out to 400Hz before rolling off. This is actually too extended for a subwoofer, and is only so because when the subwoofer is set to the THX position, it’s depending on the electronic crossover in the driving amplifier (or receiver) to roll off the high frequencies before they reach the V12. As measured by Newport Test Labs, the M&K Sound V12’s frequency response with the crossover control set to the THX position is 110Hz is 27Hz–550Hz ±3dB. The light blue trace on Graph 1 shows that the 110Hz calibration of the crossover control is the highest that should be used when you are using the M&K Sound V12 in a non-THX application. I say this because at this setting the V12’s response is flat to 150Hz and then rolls off at 12dB per octave, which would be ideal when the main speakers were small bookshelf models. As measured by Newport Test Labs, the M&K Sound V12’s frequency response with the crossover control set at 110Hz is 27Hz–300Hz ±3dB. The red trace on Graph 1 shows the response of the V12 with the crossover control set to its minimum calibration point (60Hz) which is the position you’d use when using large, floor-standing main front left- and right-channel loudspeakers. This would have the effect of extending the low-frequency response from 50Hz down to 24Hz (–6dB). As measured by Newport Test Labs, the M&K Sound V12’s frequency response with the crossover control set to the minimum (60Hz) position is 24Hz–90Hz ±3dB. The second graph (Graph 2) shows the near-field (swept-sine) frequency response measured by Newport Test Labs with the M&K Sound V12’s crossover control set to maximum/THX position (black trace); 150Hz (light blue trace), 110Hz (pink trace), 80Hz (green trace), and to 60Hz (red trace). You can see that no matter what setting you use, the V12’s response starts rolling off quite rapidly below 30Hz.

Australian Hi-Fi

Figure 1. Far-field (pink noise) frequency response with crossover set to maximum/ THX position (black trace); 110Hz (light blue trace) and to 60Hz (red trace). [M&K Sound V12 Subwoofer]

110

dBSPL

Newport Test Labs

105 100 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 50

Figure 2. Nearfield (swept-sine) frequency response with crossover set to maximum/ THX position (black trace); 150Hz (light blue trace), 110Hz (pink trace), 80Hz (green trace), and to 60Hz (red trace). [M&K Sound V12 Subwoofer]

10 Hz

100

200

500

900

Graph 1. Far-field (pink noise) frequency response with crossover set to dBSPL maximum/THX position (black trace); 110Hz (light blue trace) and to 60Hz (red Newport Test Labs trace). [M&K Sound V12 Subwoofer] 105 110

100 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 50

10 Hz

100

200

500

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Graph2. Near-field (swept-sine) frequency response with crossover set to maximum/THX position (black trace); 150Hz (light blue trace), 110Hz (pink trace), (greenhave trace), and to 60Hz (red trace). [M&K Sound V12 Subwoofer] In terms of user-control,80Hz I would ultimate acoustic performance of the V12,

preferred it if M&K’s engineers had limited the upper crossover frequency to a 110Hz turnover and provided the THX crossover as a separately switched option, but this would obviously have resulted in increased manufacturing costs for no acoustic benefit. However, my preference for this slightly different approach would make no difference to the

and here I have to say that M&K Sound’s engineers have done a great job. Steve Holding Readers should note that the results mentioned in the report, tabulated in performance charts and/or displayed using graphs and/or photographs should be construed as applying only to the specific sample tested.

M&K Sound BacKgrounder The initials ‘M’ and ‘K’ in the company name M&K Sound stem from a company that started up in 1974, when now-industry veteran Ken Kreisel was just a teenager, starting out in the hi-fi business. He teamed with hi-fi retailer Jonas Miller to build subwoofers and loudspeaker systems for professional music studios. The first subwoofer M&K Sound designed was one commissioned by Walter Becker, of Steely dan, to help master the band’s ‘Pretzel Logic’ album, which went on to become a million-selling ‘Top Ten’ hit and one of Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 greatest albums of all Time. Kreisel claims the subwoofer he built for Becker was the world’s first balanced dualdrive subwoofer. Kreisel and Miller then decided they needed some heavy-hitting technical expertise to expand their range, so they enlisted the aid of dr Lester Field, a former professor at both caltech and Stanford universities and a friend of Miller’s. M&K subsequently released what many claim was the world’s first powered subwoofer, the M&K Servo Volkswoofer, in 1977. Miller and Kreisel shared an extraordinarily successful partnership for more than 25 years until, following Miller’s death, M&K’s international sales manager, Lars Johansen, and M&K’s Scandinavian distributor, asger Bak, formed a partnership in denmark to run the company and moved all manufacturing to china, but retaining the company’s research and design facilities in the uSa.

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music streamer

Denon DNP-730AE network audio player

Streaming for a song Denon’s network player achieves sound quality to match streamers twice its price by omitting standalone DAC abilities. We were impressed. SUMMARY

Denon DNP-730AE network audio player Price: $849

+ Excellent sound quality + DLNA and AirPlay streaming + Good file compatibility, including DSD - No external inputs to operate as a DAC

enon’s DNP-730AE network audio player is a component-style audio source for delivering high quality digital audio to stereo systems. Perhaps the most surprising thing about it is the price — at $849 it is substantially lower in cost than many devices filling a similar space.

Equipment

The DNP-730AE sits comfortably in a home theatre or hi-fi system, thanks to its conventional shape and width. The review unit featured a good oldfashioned brushed-aluminium fascia, although black is also available. A largish blue-on-black text display shows menus on the front panel, including what’s currently playing. A control cluster to the right allows you to navigate the menus, while a button is provided for source selection. A standby/ on key is at the left, and a USB socket is also on the front panel — this can be

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used for playing back music on USB flash drives or even hard drives, but is probably most useful for the connection of iPods, iPhones and iPads. Around the back output is provided in the form of stereo analogue audio and optical digital audio. There is, of course, an Ethernet socket, and there are also two antennas for Wi-Fi, so the unit need not be in close proximity to network cabling. The unit uses the 2.4GHz band only for Wi-Fi. Unlike some of the more expensive music streaming units, this one does not have a USB-B socket, so it can’t be used as a USB Audio DAC direct from your computer. Indeed, it has no digital inputs at all, so it cannot be used as a DAC for anything other than the music it is itself streaming. So what will the unit stream? Essentially that falls under four categories: DLNA audio, AirPlay audio, Spotify Connect and internet radio. So the first covers Windows and Android-

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Measurements With 16-bit/44.1kHz (i.e. CD standard) music the frequency response was treated to a relatively gentle roll-off — at a bit above 20kHz the response was down by 0.4dB from its peak. Noise was around the theoretical minimum for 16 bits at -97.1, dBA rated. With 24-bit/96kHz signals the same relatively slow filter was employed, albeit without the brick wall slightly above 20,000 hertz. The response was down around 1.5dB at 40kHz. The noise floor was at -110.3dBA. Moving up to 24-bit/192kHz, the same response curve was maintained, except without the quickening as it nears 48kHz. The -3dB point was around 52,000 hertz, and -6dB was at 63,000 hertz. The noise performance was just about the same as at 96kHz sampling. Signal

Noise, dBA

16/44.1 24/96

24/192 -110.3

-97.1

-110.3

Dynamic range, dBA 95.8

110.5

110.3

THD %

0.0012

0.0014

0.0044

0.0018

0.0021

IMD + noise % Crosstalk dB

style households. The second covers Macs and iOS devices. The third, Spotify Connect, will require that service’s ‘Premium’ subscription (about $12 a month) and provides your choice of just about any music at fairly good quality. The fourth allows access to just about any radio station throughout the world that streams its services over the internet (that’s 36,358 of them as I write). The unit packs a Burr Brown/Texas Instruments PCM1795 32-bit 192kHz DAC. The unit supports sampling rates up to 192kHz and 24 bits, where available. The lossy formats it will handle are WMA, MP3 and AAC (including the iTunes version). For lossless it handles WAV, FLAC, ALAC (up to 96kHz

Analogue/digital outputs You have the choice of analogue or optical digital outputs — most users will likely plug the analogue ones straight into an amplifier, but the optical output gives a chance to compare a different DAC with the Denon’s.

-98.3

-106.3

-106.2

only) and AIFF. It also handles DSD with both 2.8 and 5.6MHz sampling (aka DSD64 and DSD128). A close look at the PCM1975 datasheet suggests that the DAC chip switches to a proper DSD mode when handling such signals, so DSD purists can be happy that the signal isn’t being converted to PCM along the way.

Control

An infrared remote control is provided with the unit. This is capable of controlling some other Denon equipment as

Networking For best reliability, especially if streaming high-res audio files, give the DNP-730E a wired Ethernet network connection. But it performed well on Wi-Fi.

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well, and for this purpose such things as a volume control are included. The output of the unit itself is fixed. We held out as long as possible with this review, hoping for a substantial improvement in the Denon Hi-Fi Remote app, and an update arrived just as we hit our deadlines. The good news is that it’s less bad than the previous version, in that it doesn’t seem to crash out completely. But it remains difficult and unintuitive to use, and from our experience it was buggy and slow to respond. And easily confused. I sent a

Wot, no inputs? One of the compromises that may have helped Denon hit this impressive price is the lack of physical inputs, so that you cannot use this unit as a simple external DAC.

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“the Denon is one fine bit of kit for streaming digital audio, so long as you don’t need to use it as computer DAC or standalone converter...” song from iTunes to the Denon via AirPlay. When it finished playing, I used the app on an iPad Mini to send a DSD album. It played the tracks fine, but for the first one it showed the track title as... ‘AirPlay’, even though it reported the tech details as ‘DSD 2.8224MHz’. When the next track started it showed its title properly. At the third track it kept showing the second track’s title for about 20 seconds before switching over. By the fourth track it got into stride. The Android version was even worse. Its user rating in the Play Store as we write is 2.1/5, and we reckon people are being kind. However, this needn’t put you off the DNP-730AE itself. Denon will presumably get the apps working well soon enough, and if you persevere you might even work out how to use it efficiently. Meanwhile, you can just use a different app. If you’re using an Android device there are a wealth of them — I use BubbleUPnP, but there are plenty of others, mostly free ones. For iOS you can throw any music from the device itself and other streaming apps using AirPlay, but for browsing networked content the choices are relatively limited. Most are locked into

particular brands of hardware, though there are plenty that allow you to play DLNA content on your iOS device. In the end, the Sony Audio Remote app for iOS worked well enough, allowing me to send music from some of my DLNA servers to any DLNA-capable device, including the Denon.

Connecting

The relative simplicity of connections here means you have two choices to make — how to connect to the network, and how to connect the audio output. If you have an Ethernet connection handy, you should use that rather than wireless, especially if you’re planning to stream high resolution audio. How reliably Wi-Fi will work with said audio is largely a function of your Wi-Fi environment: distance, quality of the Wi-Fi access point, how many other devices are operating. For what it’s worth, in my rather electrically busy office but with a fairly close range, 192kHz FLACs and 2.8MHz DSD seemed to stream reliably, but 5.6MHz DSD dropped out badly. I used a wired network connection almost exclusively for the tests.

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There are several ways to establish the Wi-Fi connection. I couldn’t get the one where your iOS device can find the unit wirelessly to work, and when I tried the one where you plug in your iOS device and the Denon learns its settings, the Denon complained that it wasn’t using a compatible network standard. Hmmm. I used the ‘Autoscan, select, enter password’ method on the same Wi-Fi access point and the unit connected quickly and properly. It also supports WPS and manual detail entry. As for output, you will almost certainly just want to use the analogue audio outputs. As we’ll see they offer wonderfully high quality sound, and they are compatible with just about all your stereo music. But there is one circumstance in which you might want to use the optical digital audio output instead: if you are using a home theatre receiver and if you want to play content ripped from DTS CDs. This data looks like PCM to most devices, so if you have the DNP-730AE decode it you will just get high levels of white noise. But if output via optical to a home theatre receiver it will be recognised as multichannel DTS and decoded appropriately

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music streamer The Denon’s control app proved flaky for us, sometimes too easily confused, but this will likely be addressed by updates, and there are third-party apps available for free which control streaming to the Denon more smoothly.

When your smart device isn’t handy, the Denon’s physical remote control is your saviour. This includes buttons such as volume to allow it to control a whole Denon system.

(this, incidentally, is a good test of whether a device is bit-perfect in its audio handling). The trade-off for that option would be that you can’t get DSD (or even DSD converted to PCM) from the optical output, nor any 32kHz sampled stuff.

Performance

Apart from our grave doubts about the Denon Hi-Fi Remote app, the Denon DNP-730AE performed wonderfully. The hardware and internal software worked swiftly and effectively with everything. It popped up as an AirPlay device on iTunes and iPad, and when music was sent to it via AirPlay it typically took three or four seconds to switch over. Likewise with Spotify. Most of our critical listening was with FLAC music fed via DLNA. You can use the front panel display and the remote to navigate to the music you want, but it is far more efficient to use an app... any app really,

even the Denon one. As mentioned, using BubbleUPnP to push DLNA music to the media player provided a nice mixture of convenient and reliable operation. The unit fully supports gapless playback, eliminating those nasty pauses between what are supposed to be run-on tracks, even when the music is being DLNA pushed. The sound quality was simply wonderful. I spent an extended period with this unit and had it feeding music through a wide range of electronics and loudspeakers. The results were uniformly excellent. Whatever was in the music file, that was what was delivered by the Denon DNP-730AE, no more and no less (at least within the ability of human to detect). Third-party apps generally won’t support the internet radio function, so you will need to use the Denon app for that, or the remote and the front panel. This uses the vTuner system, so unless you’re into station surfing, you’ll probably want to register the unit at radiodenon.com. There you can do some very easy searching and mark your favourite stations as, well, ‘Favorites’. There are two kinds of ‘Favorites’ in this unit. One is the list maintained within the internet radio function (which is what this process creates), available a couple of menu levels down into it. The other is built into the unit with keys on the remote. Whatever is currently playing can be added with the press of the ‘Add’ key. That can include internet radio stations,

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so it’s best to put your real favourites in that. There are 50 slots available.

Conclusion

If you find the Denon app as difficult as we did, well there are plenty of alternatives, most of them free. Otherwise the Denon DNP-730AE network media player is one fine bit of kit for streaming digital audio, so long as you don’t need to use it as a computer DAC or standalone converter, because of that lack of inputs. Its sonic performance is up there with rival units at $1500. Stephen Dawson

SPECS

Denon DNP-730AE

$849

Inputs: 1 x USB-A, 1 x Ethernet, Wi-Fi Outputs: 1 x analogue stereo (RCA), 1 x optical digital Other: 1 x IR out Frequency response: 2-96,000Hz (PCM @ 192kHz); 2-20,000Hz (PCM @ 44.1kHz); 2-50,000Hz -3dB (DSD) S/N: 115dB (PCM/DSD, Audible range) Dynamic range: 100dB (PCM, Audible range); 105dB (DSD, Audible range) Harmonic distortion: 0.002% (PCM, 1 kHz, Audible range); 0.001% (DSD, 1 kHz, Audible range) Dimensions (whd): 434 x 73 x 297mm Weight: 2.9kg Warranty: Three years Contact: QualiFi Pty Ltd Telephone: 1800 24 24 26 Web: www.qualifi.com.au

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AV receiver

High Life T With seven amps. 11 pairs of speaker outputs and 13.2 preouts, this Denon is ready for the new breed of height-enhanced surround sound, including Dolby Atmos and Auro-3D... SUMMARY

Denon AVR-X4100W AV receiver Price: $2499

+ Top notch home theatre performance + Very good video handling + Built in WiFi and Bluetooth - Some early HDMI 2.0 wobbles

he first of our two receivers this issue is Denon’s AVR-X4100W, and it’s the model which picked up a Highly Commended in this price category for our 2015 awards. While it was pipped at the post by the Yamaha receiver also in this issue, there are reasons why you may yourself prefer the Denon, or find it more suitable to your uses. But one thing they have in common is the hottest new home theatre thing in town — Dolby Atmos. As if 7.2 channels weren’t enough, Dolby Atmos is promising quite a few more, along with discrete content for those extra channels. And Denon is here to deliver it.

Equipment

The receiver has seven amplifiers, each rated at 125W output into eight ohms measured under hi-fi criteria. Each can support loudspeakers of four ohms nominal impedance (you choose 4, 6 or 8 ohms using a special set-up menu, so no additional power is available at the lower impedances). You can apply two of the amplifiers to this, that or the other thing — they can bi-amp the front speaker pair, power a second zone, mono-amp a second and third zone, and so on. They can power front height speakers for Dolby Pro Logic IIz, or a

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Denon AVR-X4100W AV receiver

pair of ceiling speakers for Dolby Atmos. There are lots of options, and 11 pairs of speaker binding posts mean that you can have more than one of the options wired in permanently. There are also 13.2 channels of preamplifier outputs. Some of the many output modes, including two of the three Dolby Atmos ones, require additional amplifiers. The .2 is justified here because there is a degree of independent support for two subwoofers. While they cannot be divided into left and right or front and back units, the receiver does allow the setting of separate distances to ensure they are time aligned. Lots of other connectivity is provided, with plenty of analogue inputs, including moving magnet phono for a turntable, and eight HDMI inputs, one on the front panel. There are two HDMI outputs for the main zone, and a third for an extra zone. There are also line audio outputs for Zones 2 and 3, and composite video and assignable component video for Zone 2. Built in are both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. You can stream audio from just about all your portable devices direct to this receiver, whether by AirPlay, DLNA or Bluetooth. For Bluetooth the SBC and AAC codecs are supported, but not aptX. There’s also a USB socket on the

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av receiver The Denon’s 4K upscaling applied a noticeable amount of picture sharpening while doing so, producing thin halos around elements of the test pattern. There seemed no way to defeat this.

And there’s more

The main ‘rival’ to Dolby Atmos is Auro-3D, and Denon’s top receivers also have an upgrade available for that — though at a price of 149 Euro. If you follow the links from www.denon.com.au you are led to an area with European pricing and notes that this is a Europe-only upgrade. Denon’s Australian distributor QualiFi explained to us that only two markets were initially supported for the Auro-3D upgrade: North America and Europe. After QualiFi contacted Denon, “requesting that we would like to offer the Auro 3D upgrade service in our market as well, as we have a fair share of high-end AV enthusiasts too”, Denon worked out a solution to enable Australia to ‘attach’ itself to the European upgrade service. The only caveat is that customers do need a PayPal account to pay for the Auro 3D upgrade; Denon is working on a more permanent local solution for our region. The Auro 3D upgrade is a user-cost upgrade in every market in the world.

SPEAKER SOCKETS 11 pairs of speaker binding posts mean you can have more than one of the amplifier options wired in permanently.

front panel. This supports mass storage devices, plus iPods and iPhones. In addition to music you can use this USB to display photos. But you won’t want to, because the picture quality from photos is terrible. AM radio is back, after being missing for some years from Denon gear. Of course, AM sounds horrible on a high quality system, but its absence left such things as talk radio inaccessible for Denon owners, except via internet radio. Dolby Atmos consists of two parts. Part relates to its internal operation, and the other part relates to its delivery. The system supports 7.1 ‘bed’ channels, just like any discrete 7.1 channel system, but adds up to 128 ‘objects’. An object might be a bullet whizzing from front left, overhead to rear right. It is held separately and is accompanied with data specifying where it ought to be located at every instant. It is only at the delivery point that this is mixed into the rest of the sound,

PRE OUTS 13.2 channels of preamplifier outputs allow additional amplification to be added for larger surround set-ups, including those for the new heightenhanced Dolby Atmos and Auro-3D.

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optimised to deliver the best sense of location with the installed speakers, whatever they may be. It’s all very clever, and will work with Blu-ray because Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus include room for ‘extensions’ which are ignored by devices that don’t understand the new format. Dolby Atmos is designed to work as well as possible in whatever the circumstances of the delivery end. What this receiver offers in terms of playback options are 5.1.2, 5.1.4 or 7.1.2 (see our Atmos feature for the full explanation of the different standards — but basically 5.1.2 is normal 5.1 plus two ceiling speakers, etc.). Denon’s bigger AVR-X5200W adds 7.1.4 and 9.1.2. Subsequent to our review, Denon has announced that the X4100W and the higher models will also be upgradeable to Atmos rival Auro-3D, though at user cost (see panel).

Performance

A wizard talks you through setting up the system. A very detailed one, if you let it, it will even tell you how to place and connect your loudspeakers. It switches off the amp output state during this part, for obvious reasons. Again, this is highly detailed (a three-step process with an animation showing you how to strip the speaker cables), but you can skip the various stages you feel you don’t need. The Audyssey MULTEQ XT 32 processing requires the use of at least

HDMI There are eight HDMI inputs (one on the front) and three outputs, including Zone 2 video and a monitor feed.

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Dropping the front flap shows the local control buttons as well as the useful ad hoc connections available there... one HDMI input, a USB slot, an old-style composite video plus audio input, the socket for the set-up[ microphone, and a headphone output.

“As for Atmos, I’d venture to suggest this is the first really worthy addition to home theatre audio since Dolby TrueHD and DTSHD Master Audio” three different measurement points in the room: the prime seat and a couple of close positions. If you have the patience, and the concern for others who might be sharing your listening room, you can add plenty more. A cardboard stand can hold the calibration microphone. The system properly detected and calibrated my speakers, setting them all to ‘Small’, although the crossovers were all over the place: 40Hz for the front, 60Hz for the centre, and 150Hz for the surround. All the speakers are similar in their bass competence. As always, check the results of the auto set-up and make appropriate adjustments. As for audio processing: hallelujah, Denon has seen the light! For some years Denon’s receivers applied Audyssey Dynamic Volume (an adaptive dynamic range processor) and Audyssey Dynamic EQ (an adaptive ‘Loudness’ control). The former might have its uses, but Denon applied them automatically. Without asking. Without telling you. Last year I was pleased to report that this model’s predecessor had changed to the extent giving you a choice about Dynamic Volume at the end of the set-up. With the present unit there was no option for Dynamic Volume, but there was one for

Audyssey Dynamic EQ. (Which I chose to leave switched off, of course.) After the set-up was finished I went straight into the Setup Menu and discovered that Dynamic Volume was also off. Hooray! That’s a win for audio quality. Look, they are there if you want them. Dynamic Volume can be, in fact, quite useful if you find yourself having to watch a movie at low volume. Dynamic EQ, though, is in my view based upon a complete misunderstanding of how the human listening mechanisms (i.e. those in the brain as well as the ears) work. The wizard also helps you through establishing a network connection. You can set up Wi-Fi the usual ways, with WPS or scanning of access points and entering passwords. Or you can plug your iOS device into the receiver’s USB and follow instructions. Or, and this is the one I used, you can use your iOS device’s settings to find the Denon receiver, select it, and then wait a moment while it transfers the settings to the receiver so it joins the same wireless access point (2.4GHz only) and then returns your iOS device to its original connection. Easy.

There is, of course, app control from smart devices available for the Denon X4100W, which simplifies many areas of receiver operation. But there’s no substitute for the traditional remote when you just need to nudge up that volume...

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One other thing (as if all that isn’t enough) about the set-up. There’s some interesting stuff buried amongst the menus. If you love stereo music, go into Speakers/Manual Setup and go the bottom of the list, called ‘2ch Playback’. There you can make adjustments to the set-up of the front stereo pair for when you’re playing stereo. Tweak the crossover frequency to the subwoofer, or the speaker distances or their respective levels. Indeed, you can get rid of the subwoofer entirely for stereo music if you like. This won’t affect them when they’re working on surround sound. What a clever idea! I’m not going to say much about the sound because, after all, we’re talking Denon. In short, it sounded first class, with excellent surround and stereo sound, utterly competent handling of crossovers and such, and fine control over the loudspeakers. I tried some full-range front stereo speakers too, since these present a greater control and power challenge to amplifiers, and again the results were wonderful. And then there’s Dolby Atmos. Unlike Dolby Pro Logic IIz with its ‘height’ speakers, Atmos doesn’t guess at the additional information — it works on actual designed signals. That requires Blu-ray discs with Atmos encoding. Those discs are only just appearing on the market — see our separate feature (p81) for details of our Atmos listening experiences. There has also been a shift with regard to Dolby Pro Logic. Nowhere in the manual is it mentioned, nor is it available in the surround option list, at least under that name. It seems that Pro Logic (the original four-channel innovation), Pro Logic II (separate, full range surround channels), Pro Logic IIx (added surround back) and Pro Logic IIz (front height) have been replaced with

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av receiver Dolby Surround. This seems to bundle all that went before into one system that uses all the speakers you have available. [From the manual: “This mode uses Dolby Surround Upmixer to extend various sources to natural and realistic multi channels for playback. Use ceiling speakers such as top middle speakers to realize a three-dimensional sound field.”] There are also a bunch of DTS processing modes and Audyssey DSX if you want to try different ways of expanding the number of original channels of sound. Denon has been pretty strong on video handling of late, and this receiver is no exception. It will scale any video input up to as high as you like, even to 4K at 50Hz or 60Hz if that’s required. Its deinterlacing is automatic, but extremely good with both 576i/50 DVDs and 1080i/50 Blu-ray (and, by extension, 1080i/50 HD TV). Very occasionally it could be tricked by my test clips for the briefest instant. So I’d prefer a force-film mode, but if you don’t want to manually intervene, you’re not going to find better than this. There were some 4K wrinkles, though. I wouldn’t recommend using the 4K upscaling capability of the receiver for the usual reasons of letting the 4K display do its own stuff, but also because this receiver applied a noticeable amount of picture sharpening while doing so, producing thin halos around elements of the test pattern I used. There was no way to defeat this. In addition a Beyonwiz T3 PVR lost audio when this receiver was plugged into the HDMI input of two different 4K TVs with 4:4:4 colour support. Also, there was no image or sound available if HDMI OUT 1 of an Oppo BDP-103AU Blu-ray player was set to deliver 4K output and the material playing had the normal frame rate of 23.976. However this didn’t apply to HDMI 2 from the Oppo, nor to output from HDMI Out 1 at 2160p/60, 2160p/50 or, indeed, 2160p/24, where the 24 was 24.000 rather than 23.976. All this had been drawn to the relevant equipment makers’ attention, and I expect that these incompatibilities will be eliminated in short order with firmware upgrades. Having Bluetooth built in makes for a better experience than a dongle. For one thing the receiver can display track information on the connected TV (although not cover art) along with the name of the device which is connected. It also provides a pop-up Option menu, from which you can choose repeat or random play, adjust the tone or set the channel levels. Two particularly useful

options there are ‘All Zone Stereo’, which sends the music to all the connected zones, and Video Select, so that you can run video from a different source while your music is playing. The Option menu does not include a switch for the ‘Restorer’ function which purports return some of the material lost in compression. That defaults to ‘Low’ for Bluetooth. But you can pop up the Setup menu (look in the Audio section of this) to switch it off. Even at ‘Low’ this feature added an unfortunate brashness to the sound. Better quality may be available via network audio or devices plugged into the USB socket, depending on the codec in which they are stored. Both the network and USB handled all my regular content — MP3, WMA, AAC, Apple Lossless (at 96kHz), and for two channels at up to 192kHz, FLAC, WAV and AIFF. It adds two-channel DSD at 2.8MHz, but not at the rarer 5.6MHz. The file support is the same from the network (though I couldn’t test DSD since my server won’t serve that).

Conclusion

The Denon AVR-X4100W is a fine home theatre receiver with excellent facilities and excellent sound quality. As for Atmos, I’d venture to suggest this is the first really worthy addition to home theatre audio since Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. Stephen Dawson

SPECS

Denon AVR-X4100W

$2499

Firmware: 5325-1581-6062-05 Power: 7 x 125W (8 ohms, 20-20,000kHz, 0.05% THD, two channels driven) Inputs: 8 x HDMI, 2 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 4 x composite video, 6 x analogue stereo, 1 x phono, 0 x 7.1 analogue, 2 x optical digital, 2 x coaxial digital, 1 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth Outputs: 2 x HDMI, 1 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 1 x composite video, 0 x analogue stereo, 1 x 13.2 pre-out, 11 pairs speaker binding posts, 1 x 6.5mm headphone Zone: 1 x HDMI (dedicated), 2 x analogue stereo, 1 x composite video, 1 x component video (assignable), assignable amplifiers Other: 1 x IR in, 1 x IR out, 2 x trigger, 1 x RS-232C, 1 x Denon Link HD, 1 x setup mic Dimensions (whd): 434 x 167 x 379mm Weight: 12.6kg Warranty: Three years Contact: QualiFi Pty Ltd Telephone: 1800 24 24 26 Web: www.qualifi.com.au

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AMPLIFIERS/RECEIVERS NETWORKED AV RECEIVER

DENON AVR-X7200W

he top-of-therange Denon AVR-X7200W is a mighty $4999 nine-channel receiver with just about everything you could possibly need, including plenty of power — 150W into eight ohms across the full audio bandwidth at vanishingly low levels of distortion.

EQUIPMENT

Nine channels provides excellent versatility, and this receiver packs a wealth of options for sending sound to speakers in other zones, or for bi-amping the front speakers, or for driving additional speakers for expanded soundfields. Most importantly, the receiver supports Dolby Atmos surround in configurations up to 5.1.4 (5.1 plus four ceiling or Atmos-enabled speakers) or 7.1.2 with its built-in amplifiers, and 7.1.4 with the addition of two external power amplifiers. All channels support six-ohm loudspeakers by default, or four-ohm speakers with the adjustment of a menu item. In addition, Denon has promised to provide a firmware upgrade for the unit later this year to support the DTS competitor format to Dolby Atmos: DTS:X. The unit is also capable of supporting Auro-3D, another surround system that supports height speakers. This can be delivered as a software add-on over the internet, but costs US$199. The receiver has eight HDMI ins, three HDMI outs. Two of those are for the main zone, while the third is dedicated to a second zone. The receiver supports 4K video, of course, and 3D. The review unit did not support HDCP 2.2, the latest copy protection system which is expected to be an unwanted attachment to the new 4K Blu-ray format. Until very recently the only chipsets supporting HDCP 2.2 were limited in the colour resolution that they could handle, and Denon has been holding out for chipsets capable of passing through full 2160p/50/60 with 4:4:4 chroma subsampling. Around July, this receiver will be upgraded to the AVR-X7200WA with full HDCP 2.2 support for 2160p50/60 and 4:4:4. It will see a price rise to $5399. If you buy before then, you will be able to have your receiver retrofitted with the necessary board for $379 at any authorised service centre.

There are plenty of analogue inputs and digital audio inputs of both varieties. Composite and component video can both be scaled up by the unit to the HDMI output. In addition to Ethernet for the network functions, two short antennas protruding from the rear of the unit evidence the inclusion of Wi-Fi and, as it turns out, Bluetooth connectivity. Wi-Fi is limited to the 2.4GHz band. There are full 7.1 analogue inputs, just in case you have some old surround processor that you still like, and full 11.2-channel pre-outs, so you can upgrade the amplifiers (or add two extra amps to make full use of the surround processing). And there’s a moving magnet level phono input. The receiver is attractively styled and clearly well built, weighing an impressive 17.8kg. The IR remote control has a small backlit LCD showing the operating mode, and it comes to life whenever the remote detects movement. It has a number of other-brand devices programmed into it, and it can learn additional remote controls. The ‘Denon Remote’ app for iOS and Android can operate the unit via the network, and indeed you can also operate the unit from any computer or other device with a web browser via its built-in webpage functions.

PERFORMANCE

The receiver sports an extremely detailed wizard to guide you through set-up. It will even tell you which speakers to wire to which terminals. Unless you’re going for a basic 5.1 system, this is probably worth going through, since things are getting complicated with all the possible surround options available! Of course, once you’ve specified

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things the system will whoop its way through the Audyssey system and room calibration. It requires you to use at least three microphone positions. A cardboard microphone holder is provided so you don’t need a mike stand. You can set up the wireless network in the usual ways, or if you have a recent-enough iOS device that’s already connected to your network, you can use this to set up the unit automatically either wirelessly or via a USB cable connection. At the end of set-up we’re happy to report that the two Audyssey processes Dynamic EQ (which is like a supercharged ‘Loudness’ control) and Dynamic Volume (a dynamic range compressor) can be set off without having to conduct a search through the menus. The one weakness of the menus (this applies across the Denon range) is that you can’t arrow up from the top item to get to the bottom item. It will be well worth your while to duck back into the set-up menus after you’ve finished the auto calibration, because there’s a killer feature (which other brands really ought to pilfer). Go to Setup, Speakers, Manual Setup. Down the bottom you’ll find an option called ‘2ch Playback’. Choose it. Change the top item from ‘Auto’ to ‘Manual’. Auto simply copies across the settings from the automatic set-up that you’ve previously run. Once in ‘Manual’ you can set the sizes, distances and levels for the front left and right speakers, plus whether or not you want the subwoofer on (and the crossover if you do). These will then be the settings used if you choose ‘Stereo’, ‘Direct’ or ‘Pure Direct’ as your sound modes. (If you choose a surround mode, the normal settings are used.)

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Why is this useful? Let’s say you have gorgeous stereo loudspeakers which are good to 40Hz. It’s probably wise to set these to ‘Small’ with a 40Hz crossover for movie watching, so all the really deep bass goes off to the subwoofer. But for stereo you want to minimise processing. ‘Direct’ and ‘Pure Direct’ switch off most things — EQ, tone controls and so on — but do not change the speaker configuration. Unless you’re playing pipe organ music, you likely don’t need the subwoofer. Anyway, that’s what we did for our music listening: had the two-channel setting to ‘large’ front left and right speakers, subwoofer off, distance and level set to the zero settings. We set the phono, media server, CD and network audio inputs to ‘Direct’ mode, while we left our set-top boxes and Blu-ray player on Dolby Surround to take advantage of its sound field. And the result was wonderful with stereo music. Truth is, we had interrupted our use of this receiver to deeply delve into an extremely high quality stereo system, and we were a little reluctant to go back after experiencing its wonders. Our hesitation proved to be silly. As a stereo amp running in direct mode, this receiver delivered a fine and musical performance, with great control over the loudspeakers, superb imaging and excellent detail. Try as we might, we could pick no audible difference between the Direct and Pure Direct modes (the latter switches off video circuitry, in addition to all the audio processing switched off by Direct). We spent way too much time immersed in beautiful music delivered to our loudspeakers by this receiver. If you have stereo loudspeakers with which you’d prefer to listen to your music au naturel, you’re going to find this receiver very satisfying. And while we’re talking sound, we should note that the surround sound performance was thunderously good. We did most of our movie listening with Dolby Surround engaged (we used a 5.1.4 speaker system, i.e. with four ceiling speakers) and it did just the right job at extracting material that appropriately belonged overhead and sending it there. For the most part this was more in the style of ambient sound, engaging us in a space that included an area above our heads in addition to around us. But occasionally there were specific sound elements clearly identifiable and properly placed in precise locations overhead. Likewise with bona fide Dolby Atmos soundtracks. These were properly detected by the receiver and it switched instantly to Atmos mode. The Atmos material we have so far is limited, but we spot-tested our three movies and ran through the Atmos Demo disc, and the receiver performed exactly as it ought to, delivering sharp images precisely to where they were supposed to be, behind, to the sides, to the front and, of course, anywhere overhead. The receiver did tend to be running rather hot at the end of a good nine-channel movie workout, so make sure you install it in a ventilated place. The network music performance was excellent. As far as we could work out there was but one

limitation: double-rate DSD (variously known as 5.6MHz DSD or DSD128) wasn’t supported, although our rather more extensive collection of regular DSD64 tracks were, as were FLAC, WAV and AIFF up to 24 bits, 192kHz and ALAC up to 24/96, and regular WMA, MP3 and AAC (including iTunes style). We used both the Denon Remote app on an iPad Mini and our favourite DLNA streaming app on a small Android tablet. Both worked well. The Denon app was compatible with all the DLNA servers in our network. Both apps provided the all-important gapless playback. The push-style DLNA one was able to grab control of the receiver and switch it away from whatever it was doing in seconds so it could start playing music as directed by the app. We soon developed plenty of confidence that the receiver would respond to the demands of the network device swiftly and cleanly. Just as it did with Apple’s AirPlay. We streamed music from the iPad Mini, from iTunes on a Windows computer, and from a Mac, with the Denon receiver readily appearing on the drop-down list under the AirPlay icon and accepting the music we sent to it. Just, indeed, as it did with Spotify from our desktop app, plus the apps on Android and iOS. Since the receiver supports Spotify Connect, rather than streaming the music from the device (like AirPlay), the receiver connects directly to Spotify’s servers. The other network streaming functions available on the receiver are Flickr (for photos) and internet radio, using the popular and effective vTuner portal. You can add ‘Favorites’ from any network function by pressing the ‘Option’ key and selecting it on the pop-up menu. With all the network audio functions, details on the currently playing content along with cover art is displayed on the TV, and also in the app if it’s in use. The 4K handling by the receiver was extremely solid and reliable. On principle we recommend that you stick with 1080p within your system and let the TV do the scaling. Having said that, if it’s plugged into a TV that supports 4K signals, the receiver delivers its own screens — for network functions and so forth — at 4K, and they did look rather nice. We had access to some 2160p/60 test material and the receiver happily passed this through to our TV, and even overlaid its on-screen display over the top of it when required. The progressive-scan conversion (HDMI scaling is off by default, so you’ll need to switch it on if you want to use it) was automatic in its detection of film- and video-sourced material. Actually, there were three settings in total: ‘Video’, ‘Auto’, and ‘Video and Film’. The first one forces video mode and should be avoided in most cases. The latter two seemed to perform the same on our tests, which was generally very well. They correctly detected the film-sourced nature of almost all the difficult material, both in 1080i/50 and 576i/50 content, flipping into video mode only reluctantly. Most receivers don’t support photos delivered via USB or the network, although Denon’s do. In this model handling has been somewhat improved:

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Control options include Denon’s app for iOS and Android, the traditional remote control, and also a web interface via browser.

their aspect ratio is now correct and when viewed from a reasonable distance they look OK. Up close it’s clear that they’ve been pushed through a lowish resolution format somewhere between the USB file and the 4K signal with which they’re delivered to the TV. And quite a few wouldn’t display at all, with the unit showing a placeholder image instead.

CONCLUSION

That’s neither here nor there. For all the important functions, it’s hard to see how the Denon AVR-X7200W (A, when it comes) receiver’s many abilities can be surpassed.

Denon AVR-X7200W networked AV receiver • Excellent audio performance • Excellent network functionality • Excellent stereo support • HDCP 2.2 an extra-cost option Price: $4999 Tested with firmware: 6745-4461-9132-06 Power: 9 x 150W (8 ohms, 20-20,000Hz, 0.05% THD, two channels driven) Inputs: 8 x HDMI, 3 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 5 x composite video, 7 x analogue stereo, 1 x phono, 1 x 7.1 analogue, 2 x optical digital, 2 x coaxial digital, 2 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth Outputs: 2 x HDMI, 1 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 1 x composite video, 0 x analogue stereo, 1 x 13.2 pre-out, 11 pairs speaker binding posts, 1 x 6.5mm headphone Zone: 1 x HDMI (dedicated), 2 x analogue stereo, 1 x composite video, 1 x component video (assignable), assignable amplifiers Other: 1 x IR in, 1 x IR out, 2 x trigger out, 1 x RS-232C, 1 x Denon Link HD, 1 x set-up mic Dimensions (whd): 434 x 196 x 427mm Weight: 17.8kg Warranty: Three years Contact: QualiFi Pty Ltd Telephone: 1800 24 24 26 Web: www.qualifi.com.au

ON TEST

Marantz CD6005 CD PLAYER

f you have not upgraded your CD player for a few years, you’re missing out on better sound from all the CDs you already own, not to mention missing out on operational features you may not have known were available! Plus, if you buy new discs, you’ll find that having them contain CD-Text as a bonus is now the rule, rather than the exception. Best of all, as you’ll discover when you read on, you can get all this without breaking the bank.

THE EQUIPMENT Marantz was one of the first manufacturers to build a CD player and is now one of the few left that’s still making them. What impresses me the most about the company is that

Australian

despite having the field largely to itself, the company is not resting on its laurels, but is still continually improving the performance of its machines and adding features, whilst at the same time maintaining features that you’ll rarely find on any other CD players, irrespective of their price, and the Marantz CD6005 is a perfect example of this. Let’s look at disc-handling first, because the Marantz CD6005 not only plays CDs, CD-Rs and CD-RW discs, but will also play discs you have created on your computer by burning MP3 and WMA files. It does this with a new tray-loading transport (eschewing the slot-loaders that are becoming more popular, possibly because Marantz makes its own transports, whereas

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most other manufacturers source their slotloading transports from Teac). I couldn’t see any visible differences from the trays I’ve seen on previous CD players from Marantz, so I had to make a telephone call to Qualifi, the Australian distributor, to find out what was new and it turns out that both the disc drive motor and the tray drive motor have been improved, along with various linkage mechanisms. When I got around to using the tray, it appears the new motors and linkages have certainly improved performance slightly, with the new tray’s open/close operations being a little quicker than I had timed the old ones at and, although I don’t keep records of the ‘noisiness’ of tray motors or drive motors

Marantz CD6005 CD Player

The Marantz CD6005 features one of my all-time favourite operational features, and one that’s super-rare to find on any CD player these days: a pitch control! (except to mention in reviews if they happen to be intrusively noisy) it seemed to me that this new tray-loader was a little quieter in operation than usual. The USB input on the front panel handles MP3, WMA, AAC, and WAV files and has sufficient current delivery to charge an iPad, even if you’ve switched the CD6005 to standby, or if it switches itself to standby, which it will do by itself automatically if you haven’t used it for a while. (The auto-standby mode is switchable, so you can disable it if you don’t want the player to switch to standby mode. When it is in standby mode, it will draw less than half a watt from your mains power supply (so long as it’s not charging an iDevice). The CD6005 uses a Cirrus Logic CS4398, which is a 24-bit/192kHz stereo DAC that uses oversampled multibit Delta-Sigma architecture, but with a shaping technology that eliminates distortion due to capacitor mismatching. (This excellent DAC has also been ‘trickled down’ to the lower-priced CD5005, presumably so Marantz—now part of D&M Holdings, which also owns Denon— can buy these DACs from Cirrus Logic in much larger quantities, and thus benefit from lower unit pricing.) Marantz makes much in its promotional literature of its use of what it calls ‘HDAMs’ and now offers them in a variety of performance grades. HDAM stands for Hyper Dynamic Amplifier Module and is a type of operational amplifier (a.k.a. ‘op-amp’). An operational amplifier is a voltage amplifier with a differential input and a single-ended output that produces an output hundreds of thousands of times larger than the potential difference between its input terminals. All CD player manufacturers use op-amps (they’re one of the most-used devices in electronics!) but most of them use standard ‘off-the-shelf’ op-amps, packaged as integrated circuits, which cost only a few cents each. Marantz’s HDAM is an op-amp that is built using proper circuit boards populated with discrete surface-mount components, with short mirror image left/right signal paths, which are then packaged before being inserted into the main printed circuit boards

(PCBs). Although Marantz’s HDAMs perform exactly the same electronic function as ordinary mass-produced op-amps, Marantz says its customised HDAMs have faster slew rates and much lower noise levels than conventional IC op-amps, to deliver improved audio performance. The front-panel is almost the same as all other Marantz CD (and SACD) players, which is great because it means there are sufficient front-panel controls to allow you to use the CD6005 without any need to reach for the remote control. So you’ll find ‘Stop’, ‘Play/ Pause’, Track Skip Forward/Reverse and FastForward/Fast Reverse are all there, either side of the disc tray drawer. All advanced features are accessed with the remote. Marantz now provides its Owners’ Manuals as interactive files on CD-ROM. You can print them out if you want, but the interactive pdf format used is simply fabulous, as everything is hyper-linked, so if, on the contents ‘page’ you click on anything you want to know more about, such as ‘Playing an iPod’, the hyperlink will take you directly to that page in the manual. There are also tabs at the top and bottom of each page that take you directly to the Contents page, or to the Index page… or wherever you want to go. Using the pdf manual is actually faster and more convenient than using a printed manual.

IN USE AND PERFORMANCE The Marantz CD6005 features one of my all-time favourite operational features, and one that’s super-rare to find on any CD player these days: a pitch control! This is exactly what its name suggests it is: a control that allows you to adjust the pitch of any CD you’re playing. What earthly use is this? If you’re a musician, you’d already know that such a control will allow you to make adjust the pitch of the CD you’re playing so that it’s exactly ‘in tune’ with the instrument you’re using to play along with the CD. Although it’s possible to re-tune stringed instruments (and most woodwinds and brass) to the correct pitch to play along with a CD, it’s obviously impossible to do with a piano (well, not impossible, but certainly impractical), it’s inconvenient,

ON TEST

because every CD you play will very likely be very slightly ‘out of tune’. It will be so because many bands tune their instruments so they’re in tune with each other, but not necessarily at what’s called ‘concert pitch’ where the frequency of the note ‘A’ above middle C is exactly 440Hz. In other cases, you may find a recording engineer has adjusted the speed of a performance to fit a particular time (very common back in the days of the LP), which also has an effect on pitch (by raising or lowering it). If you’re not a musician, you won’t know that musicians often ‘play along’ with CDs to learn musical pieces.

MARANTZ CD6005 CD PLAYER Brand: Marantz Model: CD6005 Category: CD Player RRP: $960 Warranty: Three Years Distributor: Qualifi Pty Ltd Address: 24 Lionel Road Mt Waverley VIC 3149 1800 242 426 (03) 8542 1111 info@qualifi.com.au www.qualifi.com.au • Marvellous sound • Feature-packed • Fit’ n finish

• Digital input • Rear-panel USB • Dim-ish display

LAB REPORT Readers interested in a full technical appraisal of the performance of the Marantz CD6005 CD Player should continue on and read the LABORATORY REPORT published on page 34. Readers should note that the results mentioned in the report, tabulated in performance charts and/or displayed using graphs and/or photographs should be construed as applying only to the specific sample tested.

Lab Report 059

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ON TEST

Marantz CD6005 CD Player

There’s even a CD label called ‘Music Minus One’ which sells CDs of music on which one instrument is missing, so that when you play along, you’re the one providing the ‘missing’ music. (These days, they also sell downloads and MIDI files as well. You can find the outfit here: www.musicminusone.com) Equally important for musicians is an A–B repeat function, so they can select a single musical phrase from within a song (track) and play it over and over, and this feature is also fitted to the Marantz CD6005. This, too, is a great learning tool for musicians. For ‘whole performance’ practise, the CD6005 lets you repeat a track or a whole disc (or a subset of the tracks on a disc, which you do by using the programming section). Speaking of programming, the CD6005 has a very unusual—and very useful!—version of programming, where rather than ‘adding’ tracks from a CD to your ‘playlist’, you can instead ‘delete’ the tracks you don’t want to play. The advantage of this is that because it’s likely that any CD you’ve decided to spend money on will have more tracks on it that you like than it will have tracks you don’t like, it’s much faster to tell the player the one or two tracks you don’t want to play than tell it all the tracks you don’t want it to play. (You’re not really ‘deleting’ the tracks, of course… just getting the player to skip them in the programming menu.) And if you prefer the ‘normal’ method of track programming, the good news is that the Marantz CD6005 offers that version of programming as well! Once a disc starts playing, you have a few options to improve sound quality. First, you can elect to have the two-line front panel display switched on or off. Switching it off will prolong the life of the display and potentially improve sound quality. Second, you additionally have the option of switching the player’s digital output on or off. (If you’re not actually using the digital output, it would be better to turn it off.) All these functions

The performance of the Marantz CD6005 is nothing short of miraculous! are controlled using the ‘Audio EX’ function. You can also dim the display if you like. As for the reason for there being a two-line display, the CD6005 is capable of displaying CD-Text, so if this is contained on the CD you’re playing, it will show the name of the disc being played and/or the name of the track that’s playing in the front-panel display along with all the usual information about track number, elapsed time and so on. Operationally, the Marantz CD6005 is a marvel. Other than a fairly slow disc initialisation (11 seconds) all other transport modes are blindingly fast (three seconds for a 99 track skip, for example), and the remote control offers direct track selection (press 2, then 3, to start playing track 23) rather than the usual awkward ‘press two tens plus three’ system to achieve the same end. You can skip tracks whilst maintaining the player in pause mode (a boon for radio stations and theatres), and you also can’t start play from pause by pressing pause again… yet another ‘safety’ feature that will appeal to those who know what I’m talking about. Whichever of the play options you choose, you’ll be gobsmacked by the sound quality you hear, because playing back CDs from my collection I was continually amazed not only by the high quality of the sound, but also because it was issuing from a full-featured machine built by one of the world’s most famous manufacturers, that has a recommended retail price of less than a grand. I am still in love with k. d. lang’s album ‘Hymns of the 49th Parallel’ despite having played it almost daily since its release

in 2004, so it was inevitable it’d get multiple spins on the CD6005 during the lengthy reviewing process and, yes, once again, I was captivated by the sound. Lang’s voice is reproduced accurately, along with that of the various instruments, and the emotion of the music is delivered perfectly… raw, plaintive, and heart-wrenching. For those unfortunate enough not to have heard it, Lang sings songs by Canadian songwriters (Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Cockburn, Jane Siberry et al) and some versions are definitive. (The album’s title stems from the fact that the border between Canada and the USA mostly tracks the 49th Parallel). To test piano sound, it was back to another life-long personally favourite, Glenn Gould and his second (1982) version of the Goldberg Variations, preferred over the 1955 version due to its better recording quality and my preference for the slower tempi (with exceptions for some of the variations). Again, I heard only fantastic sound quality from the Marantz CD6005 with the piano tone (unique!) reproduced beautifully, and Gould’s trademark humming pitched and placed in the soundfield exactly where it should be. I experimented with the various display on/ off and digital on/off combinations, using the first section of the Aria and the Marantz’s A–B repeat function, but although I fancied I heard infinitesimal differences between them, I certainly could not pick a ‘best’ from amongst them, so all things being equal, I’d prefer to leave the display on… but perhaps dimmed a little.

CONCLUSION The performance of the Marantz CD6005 is nothing short of miraculous. It’s an amazingly good CD player at a frankly unbelievably low price that’s just packed—overloaded even!—with features you will not find even in far higher-priced greg borrowman CD players.

LAB REPORT

Australian

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eA rvic nnou se n

i- f

nt me ce

A pu bl i

A u s t r A li A

Your local hi-fi shop is passioNaTE aBouT souNd. WhY risK Your Music WiTh aNYoNE ElsE? THe HI-FI SHOP

THe CHAIn STOre

THe InTerneT

Talk to people with years or decades of hi-fi knowledge

Talk to people with days or even weeks of hi-fi knowledge

No people

Receive reliable personal advice

Bit of a lottery on the advice front

No advice

Expect to be asked about your needs and music

Expect to be asked about your budget

No filtering questions

Listen in a room environment before you buy

Listen over a noisy shop floor if you can listen at all

No listening

Have a nice coffee

Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a coffee shop three doors down in the Mall, mate

Make your own

Purchase with pride

Purchase in ignorance

Purchase with fear

Get a full warranty with local return point

Be offered an extended warranty you probably donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need

Warranty possibly void in Australia

After-sales service

After-sales what?

Have an ongoing relationship

Rarely the same staff twice

No contact with staff

Relax and enjoy fine music

Relax and enjoy your mass-market bargain

Purchase and pray

happY scalE

uNhappY scalE

LOCAL HI-FI SHOPS. The right place for the right sound.

17 061

LAB REPORT

Marantz CD6005 CD Player

CONTINUED

LABORATORY TEST REPORT As with most CD players, the voltage at the line output terminals of the CD6005 is sufficiently high to drive any integrated amplifier or AV receiver as well as almost all power amplifiers. Newport Test Labs measured that voltage at just over 2.2 volts RMS. The voltages for the left and right channels were almost identical, resulting in a channel balance outcome of 0.0415dB, which is exceptionally good. Separation between channels was also outstanding, exceeding 100dB at almost all audio frequencies, but diminishing to 84dB at 20kHz. Channel phase was excellent, averaging around 0.02–0.03° across most of the audio band and increasing to just 0.09° at 20kHz… all errors so small they’d be totally undetectable by the human ear. Group delay came in at 180° in one direction and 5.34° in the other. Linearity error (a measurement of whether a CD player produces an exact level when replaying a signal of that level… in other words whether the player produces a signal at exactly –60dB when replaying a CD with a signal recorded at –60dB) was outstanding. As you can see, they were tiny, varying by 0.02dB to 0.06dB. So, for example, when reproducing a signal supposed to be replayed at –80.70dB referenced to rated output (2.2320 volts in this case) the Marantz played the signal back at –80.74dB, accounting for the 0.04dB error noted in the tabulated figures.

Marantz CD6005 CD Player — Laboratory Test Results Analogue Section Output Voltage

Result 2.2320 / 2.2427

Frequency Response

See Graph

Channel Separation

124 / 109 / 84

Units/Comment volts (Left Ch/ Right Ch) dB (20Hz – 20kHz) dB at 16Hz / 1kHz / 20kHz

THD+N

0.0168%

@ 1kHz @ 0dBFS

Channel Balance

0.0415dB

@ 1kHz @ 0dBFS

Channel Phase Group Delay Signal-to-Noise Ratio (No Pre-emph) De-Emphasis Error

0.03 / 0.02 / 0.09 +180 / –5.34 106 / 113 0.001 / 0.008 /0.148

degrees at 16Hz / 1kHz / 20kHz degrees (1–20kHz / 20–1kHz) dB (unweighted/weighted) at 1kHz / 4kHz / 16kHz

Linearity Error @ –60.00dB / –70.00dB

0.02 / 0.05

dB (Test Signal Not Dithered)

Linearity Error @ –80.59dB / –85.24dB

0.02 / 0.02

dB (Test Signal Not Dithered)

Linearity Error @ –89.46dB / –91.24dB

0.04 / 0.04

dB (Test Signal Not Dithered)

Linearity Error @ –80.70dB / –90.31dB

0.04 / 0.06

dB (Test Signal Dithered)

Power Consumption

0.31 / 13.58

watts (Standby / On)

Mains Voltage During Testing Digital Section

240 – 252 volts Result

Digital Carrier Amplitude

63.54mV

Digital Carrier Amplitude

830mV / 547mV

Audioband Jitter

0.9 / 0.005

Data Jitter

0.9 / 0.005

Deviation

4.4

Frame Rate

44100.195

Eye-Narrowing (Zero Cross)

0.00 / 0.00

Eye-Narrowing (200mV)

7.1 / 0.04

Absolute Phase Bit Activity at Digital O/P

Australian

Normal 16

(Minimum – Maximum) Units/Comment Audioband Differential / Common Mode nS (p–p) / UI (p–p) nS (p–p) / UI (p–p) ppm

nS (p–p) / UI (p–p) nS (p–p) / UI (p–p) Normal / Inverted Where Fitted

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This is actually a phenomenally good result. If you were to look at voltages, rather than dB ratios, this means that instead of delivering a voltage of 0.00008941 volts, the Marantz delivered 0.000089 volts, or a difference of 0.00000041 volts. Distortion was exceedingly low, even for a CD player, which is amply demonstrated in Graph 1, which shows THD for a 1kHz signal recorded at –20dB. You can see that the noise floor is sitting down at –140dB and above it is a single third-harmonic distortion component (HDL3) at a level of –121dB, or 0.0000891%. Wow! When the level of the test signal is reduced to –60dB (Graph 2) we can see a series of odd harmonics, all at around –120dB caused by converter errors due to the lack of dithering. This is also the case in Graph 3, though in this case the odd harmonic components have risen above –120dB out to the 13th, but all of them are still more than 100dB down (0.001%). Once dither is added (Graph 4), the distortion disappears, but the noise floor has risen, but since it rises to only –140dB, this isn’t an issue—technically or audibly. And in practise, since all commercially-recorded CDs are effectively ‘dithered’, what you see in Graph 4 is what you could expect to hear through your loudspeakers: no harmonically-related distortion whatsoever, even at signal levels as low as –90dB.

Marantz CD6005 CD Player The DAC in the CD6005 is excellent, with barely any unwanted sampling artefacts, as you can see in Graph 5 (a maximum level signal recorded at 20kHz) and Graph 6 (which shows CCIF IMD). In Graph 6 you can see the unwanted sidebands at 18kHz and 22kHz are more than 110dB down (0.0003%)

dBFS 0.00

Newport Test Labs

and the unwanted regenerated signal at 1kHz is nearly 120dB down. Again, outstanding performance. As you might have guessed from the level of the noise floor shown in the spectrograms, the overall wideband signal-to-noise ratios measured by Newport Test Labs were very low,

dBFS 0.00

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Newport Test Labs

-140.00 0.00 Hz

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Graph 2. THD @ 1kHz @ –60dB recorded level. [Marantz CD6005 CD Player]

Graph 1. THD @ 1kHz @ –20dB recorded level. [Marantz CD6005 CD Player]

Newport Test Labs

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Newport Test Labs

-140.00

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Graph 3. THD @ 1kHz @ –91.24dB recorded level. (No dither) [Marantz CD6005 CD Player]

dBFS 0.00

Newport Test Labs

4000.00

8000.00

12000.00

16000.00

LAB REPORT

with even the unweighted figure coming in at three figures (106dB) and the A-weighted result at 113dB. This effectively means your amplifier is going to add more noise to the audio signal than the Marantz CD6005. The frequency response of the CD6005 was ruler flat up to 3kHz, after which it rose slightly to end up being 0.047dB high at 20kHz. In the bass, the response was just 0.02dB down at 8Hz. It’s worth noting that this increase at 20kHz is only visible because of the extreme vertical scaling of the graph, which has divisions of just 0.2dB, compared to the conventional vertical scaling that’s used, of 5dB per division. Since no-one could perceive such minuscule differences in level at these frequencies—even under ideal conditions—we can regard the response as totally flat. Another version of the response (in essence) is shown in Graph 8: pretty-much perfect performance. The same may also be said of the tabulated results for the CD6005’s digital output, which are outstanding in every respect, though perhaps the result for zero-cross eye-narrowing is remarkable for being the second time any DAC has exhibited no eye-narrowing whatsoever (eye-narrowing being indicative of the total level of jitter in the signal). Overall, outstanding measured performance across the board… indeed, stateof-the-art in every respect. Steve Holding

20000.00

Graph 4. THD @ 1kHz @ –90.31dB recorded level. (With dither) [Marantz CD6005 CD Player]

dBFS 0.00

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Newport Test Labs

-140.00

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Graph 6. CCIF Distortion (Twin-Tone Intermodulation) @ 0dB using 19kHz and 20kHz test signals in 1:1 ratio. [Marantz CD6005 CD Player]

Graph 5. THD @ 20kHz @ 0dB recorded level. [Marantz CD6005 CD Player]

dBFS

Newport Test Labs

dBFS 0.00

Newport Test Labs

0.40 -20.00

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20.56 Hz

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Graph 7. Frequency Response at @ 0dB recorded level. [Marantz CD6005 CD Player]

0.00 Hz

9600.00

19200.00

28800.00

38400.00

48000.00

Graph 8. Impulse Train. (One maximum amplitude positive sample every 70 samples (630 pulses per second). [Marantz CD6005 CD Player]

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avhub.com.au

SYSTEMS & SOLUTIONS

NETWORKED SOUNDBAR + SUBWOOFER

HEOS HOMECINEMA

EOS by Denon is a full wireless multiroom system, and a fine one — two HEOS units won Sound+Image’s first ever awards for multiroom products in the 2015 awards. In addition to three sizes of speaker unit, an amp and a receiver unit, the range has recently expanded with the introduction of the HEOS 1 speaker unit (see panel), the HEOS Drive (a four-zone HEOS amp and controller), and this soundbar and subwoofer solution, the HEOS HomeCinema. And this has a headstart in our affections, since were we betting folk, we’d put money on this unit deriving a chunk of its audio prowess from another Denon soundbar, the award-winning DHT-S514. But this soundbar has full HEOS abilities, so will not only handle your TV and movie sound, it also has access to all the streaming music sources which come under control of the HEOS app for iOS and Android. HEOS is closely tied to its app — on the whole, you need a smart device to even turn on a HEOS system. But understanding that a soundbar might require more general use, HEOS has here included the ability to have your existing TV remote control some of its functions, which turned out to be a very good idea indeed.

EQUIPMENT

Despite the potential complexity of a networkstreaming app-controlled soundbar, HEOS has achieved wonderful simplicity of set-up with the HomeCinema. It is usefully compact, at just

7cm deep and 10cm high (with the smaller of its two sets of feet), and a template is included for wall-mounting. And on the back of the bar there are very well-marked (white on black) inputs split across two separate rear patch bays, rather than one. The extra space successfully removes much of the fiddliness common round the back of soundbars. The connection options are straightforward enough — a minijack auxiliary analogue input, one each of optical and coaxial digital inputs, a USB slot (which can be used for a Bluetooth receiver dongle), and two HDMI sockets, one in and one out to your TV. The HDMI output is ARC-enabled, so if your TV input is similarly equipped, you can use this connection to play other audio from your TV back to the soundbar. If you don’t have ARC (or if it doesn’t prove compatible), you can use the optical or analogue inputs for your TV sound. In the app, during set-up, you can indicate which input you’ll be using for TV, and thenceforth selecting ‘TV’ will default to your chosen path. There’s no built-in IR repeater in case the bar blocks your TV’s IR receiver, but there is an IR blaster which you can use for the same purpose. Chances are, however, that you won’t need it — the bar is so low that our TV receiver was not covered even when we put the smaller of the two sets of end feet onto the HEOS. The subwoofer, meanwhile, is equally compact, with a narrow front just 30cm high by 17cm

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wide, and 32cm deep. It ports to the rear (and the mains lead sticks out), so it’ll need a little space behind it. It connects wirelessly to the soundbar (and did so flawlessly), so it needs only the power connection. Denon has been very generous with the cables — HDMI, optical, Ethernet, minijack for auxiliary analogue stereo, even an adaptor cable to turn RCA stereo phono plugs into the minijack required; they’re all in the box.

PERFORMANCE

We connected our Blu-ray player to the soundbar’s HDMI input, and ran the optical connection for sound from our TV. For all the smart stuff, you connect to your home network by Wi-Fi or Ethernet. For Wi-Fi there is the usual HEOS procedure of connecting your smart device to the unit physically, using a supplied minijack audio cable. It’s a good system which works reliably. But on this occasion we gave the HomeCinema a hard Ethernet cable, which skips even that process. When we opened our HEOS app (installed during previous reviews) it was already connected and prompting us to install an update on our device. We do like the HEOS app user interface. It’s now rather busier than when first launched a little over a year ago, with new services added (see the screen image), and also now a horizontal layout, so you can prop up your iPad as a desktop controller.

www.avhub.com.au

Best Buys Audio & AV Issue 2016-#1

HEOS 1 ($379) and Go Pack ($179) We were delighted by the sound quality of the little HEOS 1 speaker — the top half of its response is delightfully open and non-fizzy, and there is enough bass to deliver an enjoyable overall balance; we didn’t feel the urge to mess with EQ as we have done with larger HEOS units. Close up it delivered quite the impact, and even half a room away it was pushing Leonard Cohen’s vocal on ‘Going Home’ forth into the room out in front of the simple backing, and holding together the vocal’s bass content with the higher rasping (so easily split into different elements by lesser speakers). We sat the HEOS 1 right next to Bose’s SoundLink Mini II and flipped our Bluetooth from one to the other — the HEOS 1 delivered a slightly larger sound, and left the Bose sounding as if it pinched the mids a little thin. The Bose is cheaper of course,

Alongside the various music sources are listed the different inputs available to the soundbar, and you can tidy things up by hiding any unused inputs or services. The set-up also invites you to teach the soundbar commands for volume up, down and mute from your normal TV remote — without which you’d be scrambling for the app at every turn. We were poised to become irate that input selection was not among these learned options, especially after the missus woke us up in the middle of the night hissing ‘no sound!,’ the soundbar being stuck on TV input and requiring app intervention to switch to Blu-ray. We later found in the full manual (online) that you can choose to assign input selection to other learning buttons. Problem solved, and missus happy. When you select ‘TV’ you are offered several sound options — ‘Dialogue’ to emphasise speech, ‘Night Mode’ to limit dynamics and bass, and a choice of ‘Music’ or ‘Movie’ mode. One oddity is that these are available only under the ‘TV’ input, not for, say, the HDMI input we used for Blu-ray. But we gather the settings ‘stick’ across all inputs, so select ‘TV’, press something, then leave again. More useful, and applied across the board, are the EQ controls, which are rather hidden away among the app settings. Where most HEOS units have bass and treble sliders, the Home Cinema has three — treble, bass, and subwoofer. So ‘bass’ here is really more a midrange control, and we were soon able to significantly improve the sound of the HomeCinema in our room, for music in particular, by nudging up both the sub and the

smaller and lacks the multiroom and app side of things, but it’s useful as a widely known reference, and good as it is, the HEOS 1 clearly sounds better, wider, broader, and a tad more relaxed. The optional GoPack attaches neatly to the HEOS 1 — you unscrew the existing baseplate (and store it somewhere safely!) then twist on the Go Pack battery platform, which adds a couple of centimetres of height. This will then charge automatically whenever the HEOS 1 is plugged into the mains. That’s the power sorted, but how to stream to the HEOS 1 when you’re outside your home Wi-Fi range — there is no built-in Bluetooth in HEOS products, remember. Well, also provided is a

middle slider just a couple of notches. This rounded out response without overpushing the subwoofer (we were impressed how well the sub integrated, despite it being a relatively small unit). The width of the bar also allows an effective stereo presentation, as we noted when Pandora served up ‘Hotel California’. The bass guitar here was delivered with fullness across its range, the vocal well projected, and none of the spittiness on vocal sibilants that often comes from soundbars when trying to do music. If any lower midrange congestion or bloat appeared, it could be notched out with the ‘bass slider’ (we did think the EQ could be more usefully accessed from the ‘Now Playing’ screen, rather than having to go through several layers of settings to adjust things on the fly). And Neil Finn’s ‘Twisty Bass’ showed just how much low-end the bar/sub combo could push into a room when requested. While we’re not saying it delivers the clarity of good stereo speakers, the HomeCinema is definitely a much more musical soundbar than most. That bass also serves movie fare, of course, and here the default EQ seemed well chosen — as the bass pumped out impressively on ‘The Lego Movie’ Blu-ray’s ‘Everything is Awesome’ we notched the subwoofer level back to its central point. There was clarity and atmosphere delivered for the industrial soundscapes of ‘Peaky Blinders’ via Netflix (served by an Oppo Blu-ray player through HDMI). And there’s a good level available — the HomeCinema doesn’t quite envelop a room like a full surround system,

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neat combination of USB Bluetooth dongle and rubber splashguard (pictured), which can plug into the rear USB port and thereby provide a Bluetooth connection while also protecting against dirt and water ingress during travel. (It’s rated to IPX4.) Portable, compact, and sonically well-pitched, the HEOS 1 is another valuable addition to the HEOS by Denon wireless multiroom system.

and the layers were prone to break down at very high volumes, but it provided an effective and suitably dramatic performance for movies, while not getting too in-yer-face with casual TV viewing.

CONCLUSION

Big movie sound, effective TV sound, no duffer at music and with all the multiroom abilities of HEOS, the HomeCinema is quite the little giant, and only increases the attractions of the overall HEOS wireless multiroom system.

HEOS HomeCinema soundbar + subwoofer • Good with movies and music • Full multiroom wireless abilities • All the HEOS streaming services • App control essential Price: $1499 Drivers: 2 x 20mm soft-dome tweeters, 2 x 5x12cm racetrack midwoofers, 2 x 13cm woofers (subwoofer) Inputs: minijack auxiliary analogue, optical digital, coaxial digital, USB, HDMI, HDMI out+ARC Outputs: HDMI, IR blaster Networking: Ethernet or Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n Music services: Spotify, Deezer, TuneIn internet radio, Napster, SoundCloud, Rdio, Tidal Streaming support: MP3, WMA, AAC, FLAC, WAV to 44.1/48kHz Surround support: Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital+, DTS Dimensions (hwd): 82 x 1017 x 94mm (bar); 313 x 172 x 332mm (sub) Weight: 2.8kg (bar); 6.6kg (sub) Contact: QualiFi Telephone: 1800 24 24 26 Website: www.qualifi.com.au

www.marantz.com.au www.marantz.com.au Distributed Distributed by by QualiFi QualiFi PtyPty LtdLtd

Available Available from from

24 Lionel 24 Lionel Rd Rd Mt Mt Waverley Waverley Vic Vic 3149, 3149, (03)(03) 8542 8542 1122 1122 sales@qualifi.com.au, sales@qualifi.com.au, www.qualifi.com.au www.qualifi.com.au

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Best Buys Audio & AV 2015 #2

LOUDSPEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

SUBWOOFER

SUNFIRE XTEQ 12

unfire was founded by Bob Carver, one of the most famous audio electronics designers in the USA, also responsible for inventing the symmetrical charge-coupled detector, the magnetic field coil amplifier, and the tracking down-converter amplifier — one of which is found inside the XTEQ 12.

EQUIPMENT

Indeed, it is the use of a tracking down-converter amplifier that enables Sunfire to rate the XTEQ 12 with a power rating of 3000W — far more than

“Carver’s tracking down-converter amplifier broke the rules, and enabled Sunfire to build subwoofers as small as the XTEQ 12 that still deliver high levels of performance...”

would be possible with a conventional Class-AB amplifier or, even quite possibly, with a Class-D amplifier. Carver’s tracking down-converter amplifier is a unique (and patented) variant of the Class-H amplifier topology which uses a variable voltage rail to drive its output transistors. But why does a subwoofer need a 3000W amplifier? The answer to that is that if you put a large-coned bass driver in a small cabinet, the amplifier has to work harder to push that cone, which means more power is required… much, much more power. So much more power that

067

in the past, it was simply not practical… until Carver’s tracking down-converter amplifier broke the rules, and enabled Sunfire to build subwoofers as small as the XTEQ 12 that still deliver high levels of performance. (Although the XTEQ 12 is certainly small, at 343×356×331mm, the two other models in the XTEQ range are even smaller.) The ‘XT’ in the model number stands for eXtended Throw, because the driver surrounds have Sunfire’s ‘Asymmetrical Cardioid Surround’ geometry, which the company says: “enables

Best Buys Audio & AV 2015 #2

LOUDSPEAKERS & SPEAKER PACKAGES

them to travel over a very long throw without distorting”. The ‘EQ’ stands for Equalisation, because the XTEQ 12 comes with its own microphone and has a signal generator and measurement circuitry that can be used to automatically adjust the frequency response of the subwoofer for best performance in your room. As for the final numbers in the model name, that’s good ol’ imperial inches, showing that the XTEQ 12 has a 12-inch (305mm) diameter bass driver. And yes, that’s driver singular… there is only the one driver, and it’s on the left side of the subwoofer as you’re looking at it from the front. The ‘driver’ on the opposite side to the woofer is only a passive radiator, whose motion is caused by differences in air pressure inside the cabinet created by the movement of the bass driver. The rear panel of the Sunfire XTEQ 12 has both unbalanced (via RCA) and balanced (via XLR) inputs as well as two line-level outputs. The line-level outputs can be a simple pass-through (unaffected by any of the subwoofer’s settings) or high-passed through an 85Hz high-pass filter, using a switch located between the left and right output terminals. There’s also ‘Slave Input’ and ‘Slave Output’ terminals, which allow you to link multiple XTEQ 12 subwoofers together. By using the ‘Slave’ links to do this, all the settings you make on the ‘Master’ subwoofer will be replicated on the ‘Slave’ subwoofers, which greatly simplifies operation if you are using two or more subwoofers. Using two subwoofers is a classic way to solve issues you may have with room modes, plus it’s also an easy, efficient and cost-effective way of increasing bass levels in larger rooms. A rotary control is used to adjust crossover frequency, and is adjustable from 30Hz to 100Hz. The phase control — also rotary — is continuously adjustable between 0° and 180°. The level control is rotary, with calibration markings only for ‘Min’, ‘0dB’ and ‘Max’. There are several fittings for use with the automatic equalisation circuitry, including an EQ LED, a ‘Start’ button, an EQ on/off switch and a microphone input. The other controls are a 12V d.c. trigger for remote power switching, a power LED and a mains power switch. To ensure efficiency, the XTEQ 12 has a signal-sensing circuit which turns the subwoofer on and off automatically.

PERFORMANCE

When it comes to getting the ultimate performance from a subwoofer — any subwoofer — you need to position it optimally in your room, and the fact

that the XTEQ 12 is so small means you’ll easily be able to do this, and Sunfire’s excellent manual tells you how to go about it. Once you’ve positioned the subwoofer, just use the auto-calibration system to optimise the frequency response for your particular room. To do this, you just position the microphone in the listening position, press the ‘EQ Start’ button and wait for the blue light to turn off (around 15–18 seconds). When it does, you’re done. We started off the listening sessions listening to Jean Guillou playing ‘The Great Organ of St Eustache’ in Paris, as recorded by Dorian on its CD DOR-90134. Many of the works on this CD make use of this organ’s ability to go down to 6Hz. You will only need listen to the very first track on this disc, Bach’s famous ‘Toccata and Fugue in D Minor’ (BWV 565) to confirm that the Sunfire XTEQ 12 is capable of delivering the lowest notes you’re ever going to hear (or feel) from CD or DVD — or high-res file — and is able to do so at volume levels that, for such a small subwoofer, are absolutely astounding. But the very lowest notes on this disc don’t come until the third and fourth movements of Guillou’s own ‘The Rhetoric of Fire’. These notes are so low you may not be able to hear them… but you’ll know the XTEQ 12 is reproducing them because the movement of air in your room will probably make your walls and doors start rattling. Listening to ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ (the ‘heart-beat’ that kicks off ‘Speak To Me/ Breathe’ has most of its energy centred at 27Hz, lower than the lowest note on a standard piano keyboard) also impressed us with its depth and solidity. We haven’t heard any other subwoofer of this size that was able to come close to the XTEQ 12’s performance on this track… or over

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this entire CD. Maximum volume was not, perhaps, quite as loud as we’ve ever experienced, so it would appear that — at least to some extent — Sunfire has prioritised deep bass ability over volume, but the XTEQ 12 will still play plenty loud enough for most users. Further listening sessions with a wide range of music and movie soundtracks simply confirmed the outstanding performance of the Sunfire XTEQ 12, but also showed that it performed its best in the 30–100Hz region, which was fine by us, since only three instruments (piano, organ and synth) can play below 30Hz. However the 100Hz upper frequency means that your main left and right-channel speakers will need to have a frequency response that extends down to around 80Hz in order to integrate properly with it… hardly a big ask, since there are few loudspeakers that can’t manage this.

CONCLUSION

We’ve given Sunfire’s small subwoofers rave reviews on previous occasions, yet this new XTEQ 12 still managed to amaze us, because it has once again raised the bar for subwoofer performance from small enclosures. We can guarantee that you, too, will be amazed by the depth, quality and volume of the bass it delivers.

Sunfire XTEQ 12 subwoofer • Usefully tiny size • Auto-calibration • Massive bass • Maximum volume levels Price: $3199 Drivers: 305mm active side-firing driver; 305mm side-firing passive radiator Amplifier: 3000W tracking down-converter Frequency response: 16Hz–100Hz THD: <3.0% High pass crossover: 85Hz Low pass crossover: 30Hz–100Hz + bypass Phase control: 0–180° (variable) Inputs: RCA, XLR, Slave, Mic, Trigger Outputs: Line (HPF/Bypass), Slave Dimensions (whd): 343 × 356 × 331mm Weight: 26.8kg Warranty: Two years Contact: Qualifi Pty Ltd Telephone: 1800 242 426 Web: www.qualifi.com.au

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ON TEST

Sunfire HRS-10 SUBWOOFER

’m not so sure about Sunfire’s slogan for its HRS-10 subwoofer: ‘Ten inches. Countless hours of enjoyment.’ but it certainly got my attention. It refers, of course, to the diameter of the front-firing bass driver in Sunfire’s otherwise tiny HRS-10 subwoofer. There’s also a reference to it containing a 1,000-watt amplifier, but I let that one pass through to the keeper. And when I say ‘otherwise tiny’—in Sunfire’s specification sheet, where they’re supposed to give the usual height × width × depth dimensions, the wording instead says only ‘11.5-inch cube.’ I was going to convert that into millimetres for local consumption, until I saw the unit in the flesh and then realised that it’s not quite

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a cube: it actually measures 295×295×315mm (HWD) if you include the protrusions on the rear panel (mainly its the speaker input terminals that protrude). So although it’s not quite a cube, it is definitely very small.

THE EQUIPMENT I have become rather used to ‘shoebox’ subwoofers (if I’m allowed to call them that) having multiple drivers, because in order to get high SPLs from such a small cabinet, designers nearly always harness the acoustic output from both sides of the driven cone, and use one or two passive radiators to accomplish this. So the HRS-10 is unusual for its ilk in having just a single bass driver and,

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what’s more, it’s in an infinite baffle (sealed box) enclosure—so not only are there no passive radiators to help deliver deep bass, neither is there a bass reflex port. This means that the bass driver has to work very hard indeed to rarefy the air inside the cabinet when it’s moving outward, and compress it when it’s on its inwards journey. Which is why the amplifier inside the Sunfire is rated at 1,000-watts. But how can Sunfire fit a 1000-watt amplifier inside such a small enclosure, with no external heatsinks? The answer is that the amplifier uses a circuit topology patented by Bob Carver (the founder of Sunfire), that uses what both Carver and Sunfire call ‘Tracking

Sunfire HRS-10 Subwoofer

Converter’ technology. According to Carver’s patent (US#6,104,248) for this circuit, it is an audio amplifier with a tracking power supply that uses inductive power converters to provide positive and negative amplifier operating potentials of a magnitude that exceeds the d.c. voltage available to power the amplifier. It must be said that the basic idea behind the patent is not new. Osamu Hamada, of Sony, worked on just such an idea back in 1977 and was in fact awarded a US patent for his work in that same year (prior to Carver’s patent). Hamada’s patent abstract is such wonder of brevity that it deserves to be reproduced here verbatim: ‘An amplifier circuit where the power supply voltage of an amplifier is modulated by a signal having a waveform that corresponds, at least in selective parts, to the waveform of the signal being amplified by the amplifier.’ You can see what Hamada is describing is what’s commonly known as a ‘Class-H’ amplifier, which itself is simply a variant of a standard Class-A/B amplifier except that rather than having a fixed rail voltage, a Class-H amplifier tracks the input signal and modulates the voltage on the supply rails. (Many people confuse Class-H with Class-G. In Class-G, there are multiple fixed rail voltages and the amplifier switches to the one that’s most appropriate, so the rail voltage changes, but only in discrete steps.) So far as I can see, Carver’s ‘Tracking Downconverter’ is just a slightly different way of achieving Class-H operation by using inductive power converters. Esoteric technical quibbles aside, the main advantage of Class-H operation is that there’s very little power dissipated anywhere in the circuit, either in the power supply itself or the output stages, so there’s almost no heat generated, therefore no need for heatsinks. There’s also almost no stress on any of the components because they’re only called on to work when they’re actually required to do so, whereas in a conventional amplifier—especially a Class-A design—many components are working flat-out even when there’s no signal at all. The other advantage is the possibility of very high power output levels because whereas it’s very expensive to build a conventional power supply with a rail voltage high enough to enable high power output, it’s fairly cheap to build one with a variable rail. Indeed this is one of the very reasons for using it that’s given by Carver in his ‘White Paper’ on the subject: that it ‘costs far less’ than any other design with the same power output. Understandably, because of the high

There’s very little power dissipated anywhere in the circuit: in the power supply or the output stages power capability of the amplifier, the circuit has a signal compressor that cuts in to protect the HRS-10’s bass driver from excessive power. However, if this happens, it also triggers a soft-clipping circuit, so the sound appears to be louder, even though the signal is being compressed. It’s an unusual application for a soft-clipping circuit. What of the HRS-10’s bass driver? It’s a tough-looking design with an overall diameter of 280mm but a Thiele-Small diameter of 205mm, for an Sd of 330cm². The cone appears to be made from heavy-duty paper, made even more rigid by a 110mm diameter dustcap. The surround appears to be made from high-density foam. The amplifier’s controls are quite sparse, comprising a volume control, a rotary phase control (0 – 80°) and a rotary crossover control (30 – 100Hz). According to Sunfire, the fully-clockwise position of the crossover control invokes a ‘crossover by-pass’ (for those using the HRS-10 in conjunction with a home theatre receiver with its own crossover control built in.) One problem I had with the controls was that Sunfire has used dark grey lettering on a black background to identify the controls and their settings. As a result I found it really difficult to read… but then I do have poor eyesight. There are line-level inputs and outputs (via RCA terminals) and speaker level inputs (but no speaker-level outputs). The line-level outputs are high-passed at 70Hz so if you have small bookshelf speakers, you can use the subwoofer to filter out low-frequencies so that neither the amplifier driving your bookshelf speakers, nor the speakers themselves, will have to handle deep bass—that will be delivered by the HRS-10. (This hook-up does require you to use separate pre and power amplifiers, or an integrated amplifier with pre-in/main-out terminals that can operate independently.) The mains power switch is a rocker switch that uses US-orientation (‘Up’ is ‘Power-On’ and ‘Down’ is ‘Power-Off), which is a bit confusing for us down under. When the subwoofer is switched on, its operational mode is controlled by

ON TEST

signal-sensing. It will switch on the instant it detects an audio signal at either the RCA or speaker-level inputs, then will switch itself to standby automatically around 15 minutes after it last detects an audio signal. A quick note on the packaging, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a subwoofer that’s been so well packed. The HRS-10 is supplied protected by polystyrene ‘corners’ in a box, which is protected by another box with wood pulp corners, which is protected by yet another box etc…it’s a little like a Russian doll! An equally quick note on Sunfire’s User’s Manual: it’s very good! It’s well-produced,

SUNFIRE HRS-10 SUBWOOFER

Brand: Sunfire Model: HRS-10 Category: Subwoofer RRP: $1,699 Warranty: Two Years Distributor: Qualifi Pty Ltd Address: 24 Lionel Road Mt Waverley VIC 3149 1800 242 426 (03) 8542 1111 info@qualifi.com.au www.qualifi.com.au • Amazing bass! • Tiny size • Ease of positioning

• Knobs and lettering • Needs bookshelf-size satellites • Too wife-friendly

LAB REPORT Readers interested in a full technical appraisal of the performance of the Sunfire HRS-10 Subwoofer should continue on and read the LABORATORY REPORT published on page 82. Readers should note that the results mentioned in the report, tabulated in performance charts and/or displayed using graphs and/or photographs should be construed as applying only to the specific sample tested.

Lab Report 071

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ON TEST

Sunfire HRS-10 Subwoofer

well-written, and has good diagrams showing various modes of hooking-up components and useful information about subwoofer positioning.

IN USE AND LISTENING SESSIONS After correctly positioning the subwoofer (the information in the manual is exactly what I’d recommend, but if you want some even more-detailed information, you’ll find it here: www.tinyurl.com/subwoofer-placement ), I had to set the volume, phase and crossover frequency, during which I couldn’t help but discover the fairly ordinary quality of the three rotary control knobs, plus the fact that one of them was slightly off-centred, so it scraped on the amplifier casing over part of its travel. I realise that most people will only ever use these controls just once or twice, but spending just a few cents more on superior knobs would make a better first impression. One problem with really small subwoofers like this Sunfire HRS-10 is that if you put them in the ideal sonic position in a room, and this happens to be in a trafficked area, it’s quite easy to accidentally trip over them, because they’re so small they’re not really in your eye-line. So you should always investigate a ‘second-best’ position if it’s more out-of-the-way or, alternatively, consider putting an item of furniture (such as a small side table or flower-stand) over the top of it. Remember, too, that the HRS-10 is so small it could actually be placed on a bookshelf, rather than on the floor, which increases the range of positioning options enormously. Also, so far as subwoofers are concerned, they don’t care (acoustically-speaking) whether they’re near a floor or a ceiling, so if you have a very high cupboard or bookcase, the HRS10 is so small it could easily be placed on the top of that, out of harm’s way and also out of sight! The bass from the HRS-10 subwoofer is, literally, unbelievable. And when I say ‘literally’, I mean it. Even I could not believe the depth and level of bass it was producing in my listening room. What’s more, it was tight, ‘thwacky’ bass—no rounded, plummy midrange-y overtones here! This was particularly impressive with sharp, short-duration low-frequency sounds, such as a close-miked kick drum, or plucked bass, and was equally impressive with movie sound effects. It didn’t disappoint with sustained sounds, either. Many cello masterpieces require the cellist to play notes within the HRS10’s ambit, and when I played

these, the cello tone was delivered beautifully. The same is even more true of works for pipe organ. There’s no better recording to demonstrate the bottom end of a sub than Dorian’s recording (DOR-90134) of the organ of the Church of Saint Eustache, which, with 8,000 pipes, including a 32-footer, is the largest pipe organ in France. Dorian’s recording features Jean Guillou playing some crowd favourites composed by Bach, Mozart, Liszt and Charles-Marie Widor, plus Guillou’s own, rather less well-known, Hyperion. So long as I didn’t try to play too loud (though it was very tempting to do so) the Sunfire HRS-10 reproduced the low-frequencies fabulously well all the way down to around E0, though I wasn’t quite sure about the bottom pedal note at 16Hz. What was missing entirely was the feeling of my internal organs being vibrated, which is what happened when I attended a recital at Saint Eustache when I was in Paris on holiday…but that, of course would be asking just too much from such a tiny sub. (If you’re in Paris, around Les Halles, I recommend you take the time to attend a recital or two at Saint Eustache. Although most churches in France have regular recitals, Saint Eustache’s musical programming is better than most. Its choir is above-average too!) And what happened when I did play too loudly? The Sunfire behaved very gracefully. I did not hear any real distortion, and I certainly didn’t hear any damaging voice-coil poling, and I didn’t really hear any overtlyobvious compression… though there was just a little. It seems that in marrying a compression circuit with a soft-clipping circuit Sunfire has found a perfectly musical answer to the issue of overpowering! This means that even if you make a user-error you need

have no fear of accidentally damaging your subwoofer. Speaking of which, overpowering a subwoofer is primarily a function of having chosen a subwoofer that’s just too small for your room. Room volume is always an important consideration when selecting a subwoofer, just as it is when choosing loudspeakers, and the general rule-of-thumb is that the bigger the room, the bigger the subwoofer that’s required. Sunfire says the HRS-10 is recommended for areas up to 37 square metres. If your floor area is any larger than this, or your floor area is around 37m² but you have higher-than-usual ceilings, the next step up (at least in Sunfire’s HRS range) would be the HRS-12. (And if your room is less than 14m², you could get away with the slightly less expensive HRS-8, but remember that there’s no harm in buying a subwoofer that’s technically ‘too big’ for the room it’s in.) This room volume equation applies only if you want to turn your subwoofer up really loud—at low-to-average levels, it isn’t as important to get a perfect match. (And if at some stage you do require additional volume, it’s as easy as adding a second subwoofer.) Because the range of frequencies over which the Sunfire HRS-10 delivers its best bass performance is a little restricted at the upper end of its operating range as well as the low end, you’ll need to exercise a little bit of care when matching it with your main speakers. Whereas subwoofers in large cabinets mostly roll off fairly gently and naturally usually above 150–200Hz, so you can integrate them with tiny satellite speakers, the HRS-10’s high-frequency response rolls off quite rapidly above 100Hz, so you’ll need to use bookshelf/stand-mount speakers which have bass/midrange driver diameters of around 160mm or more in order to successfully integrate them with the HRS-10.

CONCLUSION Even if you’re not in the market for a subwoofer, it would be worth dropping in on your nearest Sunfire dealer to audition the HRS-10… and maybe take a friend so that afterwards you can both chat animatedly about how amazed you were, and that you wouldn’t have believed you could get such good bass from such small enclosures. But whatever you do, don’t take the wife, otherwise she’ll know not to believe you when you tell her that in order to get great bass, you’ll just have to buy that large subwoofer you’ve been lusting after for the last few years! Jutta Dziwnik LAB REPORT

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LAB REPORT

Sunfire HRS-10 Subwoofer

CONTINUED

LABORATORY TEST REPORT

the crossover control, with the ‘Normal’ setting giving a response of 25Hz to 70Hz ±1dB, which is amazingly flat. Figure 3 shows the frequency response of the line output of the Sunfire HRS-10 and it appears that although it’s high-pass filtered as claimed, the filter is both fixed and very shallow, attenuating the signal at only 3dB per octave with around a 100Hz turnover, so response is only 6dB down at 30Hz. This means that if you use Sunfire’s recommended system of looping the audio signal through the subwoofer before going to your main speakers, those speakers will still receive appreciable levels of low-frequencies, albeit slightly attenuated. Overall, Newport Test Labs’ tests on the Sunfire HRS-10 show excellent performance across its operating range, but also that that range is narrower than that delivered by subwoofers with much larger (and sometimes multiple) drivers operating from cabinets of considerably larger internal volume (and thus external dimensions). Steve Holding

The nearfield frequency responses measured by Newport Test Labs (using a sinus test signal) show that the Sunfire HRS-10 has a very narrow pass-band. As you can see, irrespective of the setting of the crossover control, its low-frequency response rolls off rapidly below 25Hz. The high-frequency response starts rolling off gradually above 60Hz, then steeply above 100Hz, though these roll-offs are of course affected by the setting of the crossover control. It would appear that the fact that the crossover is bypassed makes no difference to the subwoofer’s response, as you can see from the similarities in the responses with the crossover control set to 100Hz (green trace) and by-pass (pink trace). Overall, as shown by this particular measurement technique, the frequency response of the HRS-10 was 22Hz to 100Hz ±5dB, this obtained with the crossover set to 100Hz. (In checking against Sunfire’s specifications, I noted that although Sunfire claims a ‘response’ of 20Hz to 100Hz for the HRS-10, it does not state dB limits, so it’s not claiming a ‘response’ at all, but instead a ‘range’ of frequencies over which the subwoofer will operate, which is technically meaningless. Figure 2 shows the Sunfire HRS-10’s response using a pink noise test signal, which means that some of the second and third-order harmonic distortion components will be included in the measurement (just as it would be with music), slightly raising the overall levels at higher frequencies, and you can see that with this test signal, Newport Test Labs’ graphing shows the frequency response of the Sunfire HRS10 as 22Hz to 100Hz ±3dB, which is marvellous. You can see from these traces that with the crossover set to 100Hz, the response is the most extended, but there’s an emphasis across the range 35–75Hz, peaking at 55Hz (this peak is more obvious on Graph 1). The responses are far ‘flatter’ below 70Hz at the 65Hz (‘Normal’) and 30Hz settings of

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Newport Test Labs 105

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The frequency response of the Sunfire HRS-10 was measured as being 22Hz to 100Hz ±3dB, which is marvellous.

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Figure 1: Nearfield frequency responses showing response of bass driver with crossover set to 30Hz (red trace), 65Hz (Blue Trace), 100Hz (green trace) and By-Pass (pink trace). 110

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Newport Test Labs

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Figure 2: Pink noise frequency responses (smoothed via post-processing) measured at 2.0 metres with crossover control at 30Hz (red trace), 65Hz (Blue Trace), 100Hz (green trace). 10

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Figure 3: Frequency response of subwoofer's line output terminals (response is same for all settings of the crossover control. [Sunfire HRS-10 Subwoofer]

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CD/SACD player + amplifier

Something special

Marantz SA-14S1 SE + PM-14S1 SE CD/SACD player + amplifier

A CD player and amplifier? How very quaint, among all the soundbars and Bluetooth streamers in this magazine. Yet we were not in the least surprised to find this Marantz pair stating a firm case — if it’s hi-fi you want, then buy hi-fi.

he Special Edition Premium 14 Series was created by Marantz to celebrate 30 years since the release of its first ‘Special Edition’ component, which is thought to be the whole audio industry’s first Special Edition product, even if it was actually labelled as Limited Edition — the CD-45LE. The story goes that this came into existence because the company had many of the 14-bit CD-45s left in the warehouse when the first 16-bit players had been released. Figuring nobody would then buy the ‘old’ technology, the marketing manager accepted a suggestion from a young Ken Ishiwata to modify them and make “the most musical CD player available — and then we’re going to sell them for 50 pounds more!” They sold out in two weeks, and Special Editions have been with us ever since. In times past, indeed, both these new Marantz products would have been labelled ‘Ken Ishiwata Signature’ products, and carried the ‘KI Signature’ label on their front panels. Both have been ‘tweaked’ by Ishiwata — upgraded capacitors and, in the case of the amplifier, copper plates to clamp the power transistors to the substantial internal heatsinks, massive aluminium top plates, high

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rigidity feet, specially damped chassis and superior front panel finishing. And other tweaks, which are ‘classified’! So the PM-14S1 SE and SA-14S1 SE are essentially ‘Signature’ products, except they’re labelled ‘SE’ . Confirmation comes in a gold-lettered and embossed ‘Congratulations’ card with each product that says “This Special Edition has also been created with the insight of Ken Ishiwata”.

PM-14S1 SE amplifier

The PM-14S1 SE is very much a classic ‘old-school’ amplifier in terms of appearance and controls. Were it to be magically transported back 50+ years in time, Marantz’s founder, Saul Marantz, would immediately recognise it… though he would certainly be very excited by the LCD display in the ‘port hole’ on the front panel. By ‘old-school’ we do not mean the circuitry itself: everything inside the PM-14S1 SE is modern, especially in the case of, for example, the HDAMs used in the amplifier in place of the usual operational amplifiers… a total of 24 HDAM SA2s and SA3s in point of fact. No, by ‘old school’ we mean that the amplifier has bass, treble and balance controls — which are not routinely found on modern integrated amplifiers — and that it has two record/play loops, which are almost totally extinct. It’s so old-school that we were actually surprised to find only a single set of speaker output terminals, rather than the usual traditional ‘A’ and ‘B’ pairs.

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CD/SACD player + amplifier It’s also ‘old-school’ in that its circuit boards (PCBs) are populated by through-hole components, not surfacemount devices. It has a linear power supply (a large encapsulated toroidal transformer and two 20,000µF capacitors) rather than one of those new-fangled (and very noisy!) switch-mode power supplies, and a standard Class A/B output stage (using one pair of Sanken 2SC3284/2SA1303s per channel) rather than a Class-D (also noisy!) output stage. The rear is nicely laid-out (see below), with high-quality speaker terminals that are spaced in such a way that it will be easy to connect high-quality speaker cables, while goldplated RCA inputs are used for all the line-level inputs and the phono inputs. One interesting feature on the rear panel is the ‘Stereo/Bi-Amp’ switch. The default mode is ‘Stereo’ of course. The ‘Bi-Amp’ mode is used in conjunction with Marantz’s ‘Floating Control Bus System’ (F.C.B.S.) which allows you to link up to four PM-14S1 SEs together and have them operate as if they were a single amplifier. For two PM-14S1 SEs you’d set both to ‘Bi-Amp’ and connect the left channel speaker outputs of one of them to the l.f. terminals of the left speaker, and the right channel outputs of the same

“In times past these would have been labelled ‘Ken Ishiwata Signature’ products — they are essentially ‘Signature’ products, except they’re labelled ‘SE’.” amplifier to the h.f. terminals of the left speaker, then do the same with the other amplifier and speaker — basically four mono amplifiers driving a single pair of speakers. Once you’ve connected the F.C.B.S. link cables, adjusting the volume (or muting, or tone control) on one amplifier will automatically adjust the same controls on the other/s. As well as bi-amping, it also means you could use multiple PM-14S1 SEs to set up a multichannel audio system: two for a four-channel system, three for a 5.1-channel system or four for a 7.1-channel system. A ‘Power Amplifier Direct In’ input bypasses the pre-amplifier stage. Useful for multi-channel systems and other applications, such as running a DAC/pre-amplifier upstream. The PM-14S1 SE isn’t exactly over-endowed with inputs, not least because although it offers both MM and MC phono compatibility, the two circuits share an input, so you can only connect one phono cartridge at a time. However there is a CD input and two line inputs via RCA terminals, and you can always use the inputs from the record loop circuits as additional line inputs if you forgo the ‘loop’ functionality. There is no digital input, so if you don’t partner the PM-14S1 SE with its matching SACD/CD player, you’ll need an external DAC in order to play back digital sources.

SA-14S1 SE SACD Player

We were interested that Marantz refers to the SA-14S1 SE as a Super Audio CD player, rather than an ‘SACD’ player. It’s obviously read the consumer research which shows very few people know what an SACD player is at all and, perhaps more importantly don’t realise that all SACD

players will play back ordinary CDs. (And if they don’t know this, it goes without saying that they wouldn’t know that the SA-14S1 SE will also play back homerecorded CD-R and CD-RW discs coded with either Red Book audio files or with WMA, MP3 or AAC files.) When playing back a disc the Marantz offers all the normal transport options, and playback is enhanced because the SA-14S1 SE will display CD-Text on discs that contain this information. Special playback modes include programmed play where you can program up to 20 tracks in any order, random play, track repeat and all repeat. You can combine random or program play modes with the ‘all repeat’ mode to extend total playback time. Musicians may be disappointed that an A–B repeat function is not provided. Some of these modes can also be used with MP3 and WMA files, but not all — programmed play, for example. Internally, Marantz is using Texas Instruments’ DSD1792A monolithic CMOS integrated circuit which contains stereo 24-bit delta-sigma DACs using 8× oversampling, as well as all the support circuitry required. It can optionally provide digital attenuation (down to –120dB in 0.5dB steps), digital de-emphasis, and has two digital low-pass filter options (sharp or slow), which Marantz implements and which can be accessed using the remote control. There are two USB inputs The type-A slot on the front is ‘Made for iPod’ (and iPhones) as well as accepting ordinary USB sticks containing MP3, WMA, AAC or WAV (16-bit/44.1k or 48k) files. This frontpanel USB connection will also charge your iDevice, even after the player has switched itself to standby (which it will do automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity unless you instruct it otherwise via the menu options). The Type-B input on the rear is for computer connection and accepts up to 192kHz/24-bit PCM and DSD (DoP)

CD/SACD and DAC All digital inputs are on the SA-14S1 SE, not on the amplifier — USB from computer plus coaxial and optical inputs, and a USB slot on the front for smart devices and sticks. Ther are both analogue and digital outputs.

Going loopy Two recorder loops are something of a throwback but offer handy additional line inputs and outputs, while the phono stage is switchable between moving magnet and moving coil profiles. The remote sockets can be linked so that a single control operates both units together.

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DSD2.8/5.6. The digital inputs (coaxial and optical) accept up to 192kHz/24-bit PCM signals. The other fittings on the rear of the SA-14S1 SE are two digital audio outputs (optical and coaxial) and a remote control input/output that connect to the PM-14S1 SE, so it will receive signals from the amplifier. One important point to note is that unlike almost all mass-produced consumer electronics items, Marantz builds both the PM-14S1 SE and the SA-14S1 SE in its own factories in Japan.

Performance

One huge advantage of using the two components as a pair is that the PM-14S1 SE does not have an onboard DAC — why duplicate the one in the SA-14S1? Bear that in mind if choosing a different source, or indeed if you have a large number of other digital sources. Another advantage is that both components can be controlled by a single remote. (And because each component comes with its own remote, you’ll have a spare!) We briefly wondered why Marantz called its mute control an ‘ATT’ control (short for attenuation), but only until we read the instruction manual and discovered you can pre-set it for three different levels of muting: –20dB, –40dB or ‘Infinite’ (totally muted). We kicked off our listening with a stack of SACDs, starting with Tania Maria’s Come with Me. That track was an eye-opener, with the Marantz duo delivering the difficult syncopated rhythm with absolutely perfect timing, and the jingle of the tambourine so immediate it seemed it was being shaken just above the left speaker. The difference in the projection of the sound-field into the room between the CD and SACD versions of this track was telling, with the SACD’s projection being clearly superior, plus the drum sound was depthier. Firing up Roxy Music’s Avalon, Bryan Ferry’s distinctive baritone as he sang the opening line “Now the party’s over” was instantly identifiable… always the hallmark of a great audio system. The Marantz duo also reproduced the ethereal shimmering that gives real feeling to the true meaning behind the track. The duo’s ability with female vocal was amply demonstrated by the

sound of Eva Cassidy’s voice on Fields of Gold, with the Marantz’s clarity also revealing the somewhat over-miked guitar sound, but at the same time exhibiting wonderfully accurate imaging. Jacintha Abisheganaden’s great cover of Light my Fire (on ‘Jacintha Is Her Name’) was notable not only for her voice but also for the fabulous flute sound, plus the skin sound of the bongos (both strangely fixed firmly in the left channel, in contrast to the bass and guitar, equally firmly fixed to the right). The Marantz duo also came up with the goods on Eleanor McEvoy’s take on the Jagger/Richards classic Mother’s Little Helper, McEvoy’s voice being revealed exactly, and the kick drum sound too. One of the main reasons for buying an SACD player — even if you don’t own any SACDs — is that they play back ordinary CDs to a much higher audible standard than most CD players. That truism was proved by the Marantz SA-14SE, nowhere better exemplified by the clarity it gave to John Cale’s amazing Macbeth, from ‘Paris 1919’. What can be a cacophony of sound on a lesser machine was first illuminated by the SA-14SE and then given heft and power by the PM-14S1 SE. We also checked out the system’s high-res capabilities. Winds of Change’s Work of Art on Soundkeeper at 24/192 was as good as we’ve ever heard it: a feat repeated on all the high-res material we auditioned. The Marantz PM-14S1 SE amplifier handled difficult loads in its stride, extracting the best from all the speakers we tried it with; only with one very power-hungry pair could we perhaps have wished for a tad more power…

076

though that was only when listening at rather neighbour-unfriendly volume levels. With speakers of average sensitivity or above, the Marantz will deliver way higher in-room volume levels than anyone who’s not living in a palace will ever need.

Conclusion

This is a classy combo, made in Japan by one of the world’s most famous hi-fi manufacturers, tweaked by Marantz’s golden-eared guru Ken Ishiwata, and in Australia at a ‘go’ price way below what you’d expect for the quality level on offer. What’s not to like? greg borrowman SPECS

Marantz PM-14S1 & SA-14S1 Special Edition $4990 / $5490 AMPLIFIER Inputs: phono input, 3 x analogue RCA in,

2 x recorder loop in, power amp direct in, remote in, FCBS in

Outputs: preout, 2 x recorder out, remote out, FCBS out, speakers out, headphone out (front) Power: 90W per channel (8 ohms), 140W per channel (4 ohms) Dimensions (whd): 440 × 127 × 453mm Weight: 19.1kg SACD/CD PLAYER Inputs: coaxial digital in, optical digital in,

USB-B in, USB-A (made for iPod); remote in

Outputs: coaxial digital out, optical digital out, analogue out, remote out

Dimensions (whd): 440 × 127 × 419mm Weight: 15.3kg Warranty: Four years with registration Contact: QualiFi Telephone: 1800 242 426 Web: www.qualifi.com.au

Masters of perfection

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Visit www.marantz.com.au for more information

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ON TEST

Marantz PM-11S3 INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER

Australian

Newport Test Labs

here’s nothing like taking a good product and making it better, and if anyone should know how to do this it’s Marantz, because Marantz has been doing this very successfully for the 61 years it has been in business (the ownership of the company has changed a few times over the six decades, but the brand is the same). The latest product to benefit from a Marantz ‘facelift’ is the long-running PM-11S amplifier design, now in its third generation (hence the ‘3’ at the end). What’s changed? One major change involves useability, because you can now use the PM-11S3 in conjunction with Marantz’s Remote App (available for both iOS and

Power Output: Single channel driven into 8-ohm, 4-ohm and 2-ohm non-inductive loads at 20Hz, 1kHz and 20kHz. [PM-11S3]

078

Android) via the Marantz control bus with Marantz’s new Network player. There’s now a power-amp direct input, new heavy-duty copper speaker terminals and, internally, updated versions of Marantz’s Current Feedback HDAM SA3 modules. What hasn’t changed? That would be the triple-stage construction (preamp, dual power amplifiers, plus phono preamp—MM/ MC), oversized toroidal power transformer, symmetrical circuit layout, Shottky diodes, choke power supply filtering and high power output capability, even into extremely lowimpedance loudspeaker loads. And you’ve got to love that copper-plated chassis, which looks absolutely superb…

Marantz PM-11S3 Integrated Amplifier

Newport Test Labs

As you can see for yourself, the front panel design of the PM-11S3 is perfectly symmetrical, perhaps reflecting the concept of the perfectly symmetrically circuit layout within… but I suspect just to satisfy someone somewhat higher-up in the corporate pecking order than the head of Marantz’s design team. (I often wonder what goes on in meetings about control layout. If the electrical engineers allocate only seven ‘user’ buttons, do the designers go back and ask them to include another circuit, so they can have eight buttons, to allow them to put four down each side? Or in a case where the engineers want nine buttons on the front panel, does the design team make them take one away or… more likely, make that function only accessible via the remote control?) In the case of the Marantz PM-11S3 I suspect I am speculating spectacularly idly, because despite the symmetrical layout,

Power Output: Both channels driven into 8-ohm, 4-ohm and 2-ohm non-inductive loads at 20Hz, 1kHz and 20kHz. [PM-11S3] there seemed to be no superfluous switches, nor any desirable controls missing… though the bass and treble tone controls—and the balance control—which are nearly always fixtures on amplifier front panels, were conspicuously absent, and instead needed to be invoked by using buttons on the remote control. The lighting is also beautiful, so a lot of thought has gone into this as well, but it’s fairly bright… presumably to make the PM11S3 stand out in a hi-fi store. There is no facility for dimming the front-panel lighting, but you can certainly turn it off if you like, by pressing and holding (for more than two seconds) the ‘Display’ button on the front panel. The fact that the PM-11S3 not only has a phono stage, but one that accommodates both moving-magnet (MM) and moving-coil (MC) phono cartridges shows that Marantz is

Newport Test Labs

THE EQUIPMENT

Power Output: Single and both channels driven into 8-ohm, 4-ohm and 2-ohm non-inductive loads at 20Hz, 1kHz and 20kHz. [PM-11S3] one of those companies that still holds the LP in high esteem as a music source. So much so that Marantz one of the few large multinational companies that is still selling turntables. Some of these are made for it by other companies (ones that specialise in building turntables) but I understand that other turntables in its range are made in Japan by Marantz itself. No doubt Marantz has also been keeping a weather eye on the turntable market, and has noted (along with everyone else!) that sales of both LPs and turntables are on the rise…to the extent that in the United Kingdom, sales of LP records in 2013 doubled that of 2012, and overall, more LPs were sold in 2013 than were sold back in 2001! Significantly, according to the British Phonograph Industry, 35.3 per cent of vinyl buyers in the UK in 2013 were under 35 years of age. No doubt the rise is also due to an excellent incentive offered by some record companies (and Amazon), whereby if you buy an LP, you get a ‘rip’ of the LP for free. Although the PM-11S has MM/MC circuitry, you should note that there’s only a single phono input, which is switched between MM and MC, so you can’t connect two turntables at the same time, with different phono cartridges, and switch between them. As noted earlier, the PM-11S3 has both ‘pre-out’ and ‘main-in’ facilities, so you can use the unit as a pre-amp and send a linelevel signal out to an external power amplifier, or you can use an external preamplifier and use the PM-11S3’s power amplifier to drive your speakers. However you cannot do both at the same time: you have to use the PM-11S3 either as an integrated amplifier only, a pre-amp only or as a power amp only. Although this is unlikely to be limiting, there are one or two (admittedly fairly esoteric!) applica-

ON TEST

tions where it would be useful to be able to separate the pre- and power sections electronically and use them individually. Perhaps on the PM-11S4? The instruction manual supplied with the PM-11S3 is high quality and the instructions are for the most part excellent, though the same cannot be said for the instruction manual’s index, where instead of Volume adjustment being under ‘V’, Tone Controls under ‘T’ and Standby under ‘S’, as you’d expect, all three are listed under ‘A’ for Adjust. Mmmm. Can we blame Microsoft’s indexing function for this, or someone at Marantz? In common with many modern hi-fi components, Marantz has built automatic standby circuitry into the PM-11S3, whereby if no music has been playing for at least 30

MARANTZ PM-11S3 INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER

Brand: Marantz Model: PM-11S3 Category: Integrated Amplifier RRP: $9,560 Warranty: Three Years Distributor: Qualifi Pty Ltd Address: 24 Lionel Road Mt Waverley VIC 3149 1800 242 426 (03) 8542 1111 info@qualifi.com.au www.qualifi.com.au • High power • Very low distortion • Bulletproof build quality

• Bright lights • Owner’s manual

LAB REPORT Readers interested in a full technical appraisal of the performance of the Marantz PM-11S3 Integrated Amplifier should continue on and read the LABORATORY REPORT published on page 48. Readers should note that the results mentioned in the report, tabulated in performance charts and/ or displayed using graphs and/or photographs should be construed as applying only to the specific sample tested.

Lab Report 079

avhub.com.au

ON TEST

Marantz PM-11S3 Integrated Amplifier

minutes, the unit will automatically turn itself off. If this is too ‘Big Brother’ for your liking, or you have a specific application in mind that requires the unit to be constantly powered-up, you can defeat this circuit by holding down the ‘Tone’ button continuously for more than five seconds. (Pressing the front panel ‘Tone’ button for briefer periods merely toggles the tone circuitry on and off… or, if you prefer, between ‘Defeat’ and ‘Active’.) As well as the automatic standby circuit, the PM-11S3 also has full-featured protection circuitry to guard against overheating, shortcircuits, dangerously low impedances, d.c. at the input and so on. However, try as I might, I could not get the protection to trigger, even when using multiple paralleled loudspeakers and playing bass-heavy riffs at very high volume levels, so I think you can be certain that the circuit will not trigger prematurely… only when you really need it to. The rear panel is a copper-plated masterpiece, with gold-plated RCA connectors used for all line-level inputs and outputs, except for the two balanced inputs which are female XLR types, but also gold plated. Even the turntable ground post is gold-plated. The speaker terminals are extremely high quality. One significant point to note is that ‘country of origin’ stamp at the bottom right of the rear panel because you’ll see that, as with all Marantz’s high-end products, the PM-11S3 is built entirely in the company’s own factory in Japan. Note also that the PM-11S3 is double-insulated: not only for your personal

Australian

safety, but also to ensure that there’s no chance of any mains hum caused by earthloop issues when you connect your other components to the amplifier.

IN USE AND LISTENING SESSIONS When I fired the Marantz PM-11S3 up, I was a little perplexed to see in the central window the letters ‘ID 0’ and wondered if I’d skipped some essential stage when setting up the amplifier. It turned out that if you use Marantz’s FCBS (Floating Control Bus System) system to link multiple PM-11S3 amplifiers together, you need to allocate each one its own unique ID number. One unit has to be designated the ‘Master’ unit (1) and the other units (known as ‘Slaves’) each have to be allocated their own ID number (IDs 2–4) so the FCBS system can distinguish between them. After you’ve set this up, you can link control operations such as input selection, volume control, muting, display status, tone control, and so on, which is particularly useful if you’re bi-amping, though the obvious application is for multi-channel sound. One very neat feature of using FCBS to connect multiple PM-11Ss is that you can switch the amplifier’s output to mono if you wish, which is great for faultfinding, room acoustics investigations and so on. However, since I was using only a single PM-11S3, I didn’t have to change the number or, in fact, do anything at all for the amplifier to operate perfectly at switch-on… and neither will you.

080

Once fired up, you select your preferred input using the left-most rotary control (the Source selector). From left to right, the source selection available is: CD, Line-1, Line-2, Rec-1, Rec-2, MM (or MC depending on the setting of the MM/MC button), and Balanced. (All these are shown via LCD in the central display window, but abbreviated to CD, L1, L2, Rec1, Rec2, MM and Bal.) I discovered what I thought was an oddity with the source selector, which is that if you have the attenuation switched on (about which more in the next paragraph), switching the source selector one ‘click’ either way does not change the source, but instead simply switches off the attenuator—the source itself does not change. I guess there’s a good reason behind this, in that it alerts you to the fact that the attenuator was active (otherwise you could accidentally ‘blast’ your speakers by switching to an active source at high volume) but it nonetheless seemed odd to me. As for the attenuation circuit (a.k.a. muting circuit) itself, it’s very clever indeed! Not only can you attenuate the signal, you can select between three levels of attenuation: 20dB (the default), 40dB and ‘Infinite.’ Interestingly, you have to use the front panel attenuation button to preset the level of attenuation, after which you use the remote control to activate or deactivate it (or the source selector, as noted). The volume control appears to be a standard rotary type, but it’s not, it’s electronic, using a 6116 IC from Micro Audio Systems in order to allow precise level adjustments to

ON TEST

Marantz PM-11S3 Integrated Amplifier

be made across the range of 0dB to –100dB in tiny (0.5dB) steps. Curiously, at minimum volume the central display first shows ‘minus infinity’, then switches to show ‘MIN’ before finally settling on showing ‘–100dB’, while at the opposite extreme, it shows ‘MAX’ before reverting to show ‘0dB.’ I can only assume the engineers had fun programming these sequences! Turn the volume control clockwise and you’ll immediately hear that the Marantz PM-11S3 is a powerhouse of an amplifier—and that’s even if your speakers are extraordinarily inefficient. The amount of amplifier power on tap is truly impressive… so impressive that I cannot imagine anyone needing any more power than the PM-11S3 can deliver, even if it’s being used in a room of well-above-average dimensions. It’s not just the overall power on tap, it’s also the fact that even if you’re playing at excessively high volume levels, the sound of the amplifier is just as dynamic as it is at whisper-quiet replay levels, in that when a transient arrives, it’s delivered perfectly, at ‘way above the average volume level, with no compression, no hesitation, and without ‘sucking out’ the musical information immediately before and after the transient. Perhaps even more impressive than the sheer power is the cleanliness and clarity of that power. There’s none of the artificial warmth of a valve amplifier, nor the artificially simulated warmth of a MOSFET amplifier, nor the ‘here and there’ sound of a Class-D amplifier, nor the steely hardness of a poorly-designed bipolar amplifier. There’s just an outpouring of clean, beautifully articulated music, as if it were bursting forth from the instruments themselves, except highly amplified. Did someone say ‘straight wire with gain’? If not, it would be a highly accurate description of what’s going on inside the Marantz PM-11S3. All this power and precision would be for naught if the amplifier were not quiet,

and the PM-11S3 is certainly this, because when the music stops, you’ll hear absolutely nothing from your speakers. No faint hiss, no background hum, not even a ‘blackness’ that might indicate a total absence of sound. Instead, you won’t hear anything except the background noise of your own listening room. No doubt it’s this silence that contributes to the dynamics, so that not only are the differences between loud and soft notes clearly delineated, but also the differences between soft notes and no notes at all. It’s a type of silence that I don’t think amplifiers with on-board DACs can equal. All of this makes the PM-11S3 a very revealing amplifier, one that will reward you beyond measure if you feed it truly hi-res source material, but one that’s superbly revealing if you feed it well-recorded 16-bit/44.1kHz fare direct from CD. One such is a favourite recording of mine, as well as a favourite of the late Chris Green, previous assistant editor—and reviewer—here at Australian Hi-Fi Magazine, who was a huge Cyndi Boste fan. I’m talking about her 2004 album ‘Scrambled Eggs’ (Rose St Sessions), mostly recorded in her own home direct to DAT by Rob Harwood, and featuring Linda and Vika Bull, Dave Steel, Tiffany Eckhart, Garrett Costigan and a clutch of other musical luminaries. Scrambled Eggs is at heart a collection of Boste’s favourite songs written by her friends, most of whom contribute to this album, and it’s a beautiful album on so many levels. The songs themselves, of course, but there’s the obvious love with which they’re played… you can hear instantly that this is truly music-making, in every sense of the words, as if they’re playing not simply to ‘make an album’ but to honour the music itself. Then there’s the recording, which is an object lesson into why music should not be overproduced: the sound on this CD is so clean and natural that the musicians could be playing in your home live, not issuing through your

speakers. Yes, there are some rough edges, some unwanted rattles and distortions (on Bridges especially), and many fluctuations in level, but if anything, these all just add to the undeniable authenticity of the sound. And wait until you hear one of the three Boste originals on this album. She does a completely new take on No Way Out (originally on her album ‘Home Truths’), and for mine, this is the definitive version, by a long shot. It’s gorgeous. (The other two tracks were recorded live at the Port Pirie folk festival, and I prefer the versions she recorded at Fatsound that can be heard on ‘Push Comes to Shove’, in terms of both sound quality and performance.) Make a point of buying Scrambled Eggs: you’ll love the singers and love their songs. Amplifier/speaker matching is a sore point with many audiophiles, particularly those who find that their newly-purchased speakers aren’t a great match for their amplifier, or that their newly-purchased amplifier doesn’t turn out to be a synergistic match with their existing loudspeakers. You won’t have to worry about amplifier/speaker matching if you buy the Marantz PM-11S3, because I found it worked perfectly with all the speakers I tried it with, and some of them were famously difficult. In essence, the amplifier’s sound was transparent to the speakers: I was hearing the intrinsic sound of the speakers themselves, not the combination of both. This is significant, because for many people, I’d bet that the PM-11S3 will be the very last amplifier they buy!

CONCLUSION This amplifier does so many things right that it’s almost as if the designers had a tick-box from an audiophile’s wish list and worked away until they’d ticked all the boxes. Yes, it has a few little quirks, but if anything, I think these actually add to the Marantz PM-11S3’s desirability. This is an amplifier that will, truly, greg borrowman ‘knock your socks off.’

LAB REPORT ON PAGE 48

Australian

081

Marantz PM-11S3 Integrated Amplifier

LAB REPORT CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24

LABORATORY TEST RESULTS As you can see from the tabulated power output figures, and the bar graphs generated using those figures, the Marantz PM-11S3 very easily exceeds its specified output of 100-watts per channel into 8Ω loads and 200-watts per channel into 4Ω load. At 1kHz, both channels driven, Newport Test Labs measured the power output of its test sample as being 153-watts per channel into 8Ω and 241-watts per channel into 4Ω. Into 2Ω (for which the PM-11S3 is not rated) it delivered 335-watts per channel. The fact that the power supply is unregulated, and will thus ensure greater ‘peak’ power figures is made obvious by the increase in power output looking at the single-channel figures, with the Marantz PM-11S3 delivering 170-watts (8Ω), 273-watts (4Ω) and 400-watts (2Ω) respectively. And unlike some amplifiers, the Marantz produces considerable power levels at the frequency extremes of 20Hz and 20kHz. Marantz has not restricted the frequency response of the PM-11S3 either, with the amplifier returning a very wideband –3dB response of 3Hz to 177kHz. The normalised response is 5Hz to 91kHz ±0.5dB. Over the audio band, the response is even flatter, as you can see from Graph 6, where the black trace showing frequency response is around 0.1dB down at 20Hz and 20kHz so, normalised, the measurement is 20Hz–20kHz

±0.05dB. Furthermore, this response is true both when the amplifier was driving a noninductive laboratory test load (the black trace on Graph 6) and when it was driving a load that simulates that of a two-way bookshelf loudspeaker (the red trace on Graph 6). Even into this real-world load, the Marantz PM11S3’s frequency response is still 20Hz–20kHz ±0.05dB. Channel separation (tabulated, but not graphed) was excellent, measuring 81dB at 20Hz, 100dB at 1kHz and 115dB at 20kHz. All three figures are above reproach, and far more than will be required to ensure adequate separation and perfect stereo imaging. The same is true of the balance between the channels (0.15dB) and the interchannel phase errors. At and below 1kHz, the phase error is tiny, while even the 1.23° error at 20kHz would never be perceptible, even with program material selected specifically to highlight it. Distortion was superlatively low, with Newport Test Labs measuring overall THD+N figures of 0.005% referred to onewatt and 0.003% referred to rated output. Basically, this is so low as to be completely imperceptible to the human ear. However, even if you could hear some of the distortion, you’d hear ‘good’ distortion because looking at the spectrum analyses of the output signal (Graphs 1 through 4), the only ‘significant’

Marantz PM-11 S3 Amplifier — Power Output Test Results Channel

Load (Ω)

20Hz (watts)

20Hz (dBW)

1kHz (watts)

1kHz (dBW)

20kHz (watts)

20kHz (dBW)

8Ω

170

22.3

170

22.3

159

22.0

8Ω

151

21.8

153

21.8

138

21.4

4Ω

256

24.1

273

24.4

256

24.1

4Ω

223

23.5

241

23.8

217

23.4

2Ω

364

25.6

400

26.0

364

25.6

2Ω

307

24.9

335

25.2

307

24.9

Note: Figures in the dBW column represent output level in decibels referred to one watt output.

Marantz PM-11S3 Integrated Amplifier — Lab Test Results Test Frequency Response @ 1 watt o/p Frequency Response @ 1 watt o/p Channel Separation (dB) Channel Balance

Measured Result 5Hz – 91kHz 3Hz – 177kHz 81dB / 100dB / 115dB 0.15

Units/Comment –1dB –3dB (20Hz / 1kHz / 20kHz) dB @ 1kHz

Interchannel Phase

0.06 / 0.06 / 1.23

degrees ( 20Hz / 1kHz / 20kHz)

THD+N

0.005% / 0.003%

@ 1-watt / @ rated output

Signal-to-Noise (unwghted/wghted)

85dB / 91dB

dB referred to 1-watt output

Signal-to-Noise (unwghted/wghted)

91dB / 97dB

dB referred to rated output

Input Sensitivity (CD Input)

25mV / 245mV

Input Sensitivity (Balanced Input)

49mV / 490mV

Output Impedance Damping Factor

(1-watt / rated output)

0.04Ω

OC =

200

@1kHz

Power Consumption

0.25 / 45.6

Power Consumption

73.2 / 428

watts (Standby / On) watts at 1-watt / at rated output

Mains Voltage Variation during Test

239 – 250

Minimum – Maximum

CONTINUED ON PAGE 62

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082

LAB REPORT

Marantz PM-11S3 Integrated Amplifier

CONTINUED

harmonic distortion component is the second harmonic (HDL²), which is ‘goodsounding’ because it’s the musical octave of the fundamental. (So instead of one ‘D’ being played, for example, it’s as if you played both the ‘D’ and the ‘D’ the octave above.) However, even though the second harmonic is the only significant distortion component, it’s still 95dB (0.0017%) down at 1-watt when driving either 8Ω or 4Ω loads, and 85dB (0.0056%) down at 100-watts when driving those same two loads. As for those higherorder harmonic distortion components you can see on these graphs (the small ‘spikes’ rising above the noise floor), these are mostly at or below either –110dB (0.0003%) or –120dB (0.0001%). Since I have mentioned the noise floor, let’s look at it in Graphs 1 and 3. You can see that it’s most sitting down around 130dB down referred to 1-watt, and nearly –140dB referred to rated output. Also note that at the extreme left of each graph, a signal (probably at 50Hz) is more than 100dB down in both cases, which is excellent. As for the wide-band noise figures, Newport Test Labs measured them at 85dB unweighted referred to one-watt output (increasing to 91dB with weighting) and 91dB unweighted referred to 100-watts, increasing to 97dB with A-weighting. These are vanishingly low levels of noise, probably helped by Marantz using choke-input filters, which are more effective at filtering out the RF noise that is now present on all mains power lines. (And the way chokes operate which means they’re continually storing energy in their magnetic fields that is slowly released to the capacitors, dBFS 0.00

Newport Test Labs

so that there is a continuous charging current, probably helped kick the power output figures along.) Tone control action was quite unusual, more like a two-band parametric equaliser, with centre frequencies at 45Hz and 30kHz, that offers boost and cut of around 8.5dB. As you can see (Graph 7) there’s no shelving at all, but there doesn’t really need to be, since the controls’ effect at very low and very high frequencies is self-limiting, so you can’t get either excessive bass boost or excessive treble boost. Overall, I’d suspect that in operation, the effect of the bass and treble controls on the music will be far more subtle than if a Baxandall contour were used. So if you’re normally hesitant about using bass and treble controls, try the ones fitted to the PM-11S3— you might be in for a pleasant surprise. On Graph 7 you can see not only the ‘reference’ frequency response with the tone controls ‘in circuit’ (the black trace) but also the frequency response when the tone controls are switched out of circuit (the red trace). dBFS 0.00

Newport Test Labs

-20.00

-40.00

-60.00

-80.00

-100.00

-120.00

-140.00 0.00 Hz

4000.00

8000.00

12000.00

16000.00

20000.00

Graph 1: Total harmonic distortion (THD) at 1kHz at an output of 1-watt into an 8-ohm non-inductive load, referenced to 0dB. [Marantz PM-11S3 Integrated Amplifier]

dBFS 0.00

Newport Test Labs

You can see there’s an overall 1.6dB increase in volume when you switch the tone controls out of circuit, which is sufficient that the sound of the amplifier will appear to ‘improve’ when the tone controls are switched out, and vice versa when they’re switched in, even if the bass and treble tone controls are set to 0dB. In reality, there’s no actual ‘improvement’ as such, it’s just a trick of human hearing, which always prefers the louder of two otherwise identical sounds. The Marantz PM-11S3 has a low output impedance (measured by Newport Test Labs as being 0.04Ω at 1kHz), which means a high damping factor (200), which in turn means that this amplifier will be able to keep a firm grip on even the most compliant bass driver, and its frequency response will not vary with variations in a loudspeaker’s impedance. Square wave testing showed the amplifier’s response does not extend to d.c. and that there’s very little phase shift at low frequencies. The 1kHz square wave is almost perfect, an excellent result, as is the 10kHz square wave, which shows a very fast rise-time and only minor rounding on the leading edge. Loaded down with a highly capacitive load (2µF paralleled with 8Ω) there is a small amount of ringing, but it’s quickly damped and always entirely under control, proving that this amplifier will be stable even into highly reactive loads… such as electrostatic speakers. Judging by the results measured by Newport Test Labs during its testing procedures, it’s my opinion that this is a very well-designed amplifier, and one where the design has also been well-executed in production. My congratulations to both teams. Steve Holding dBFS 0.00

-20.00

-40.00

-60.00

-80.00

-100.00

-120.00

-140.00

0.00 Hz

4000.00

8000.00

12000.00

16000.00

dBFS 0.00

Newport Test Labs

-140.00 0.00 Hz

20000.00

4000.00

8000.00

12000.00

16000.00

20000.00

0.00 Hz

Graph 3: Total harmonic distortion (THD) at 1kHz at rated output (100-watts) into an 8-ohm non-inductive load, referenced to 0dB. [Marantz PM-11S3 Integrated Amplifier]

Graph 2: Total harmonic distortion (THD) at 1kHz at an output of 1-watt into a 4-ohm non-inductive load, referenced to 0dB. [Marantz PM-11S3 Integrated Amplifier]

Newport Test Labs

dBr 1.00

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Graph 4: Total harmonic distortion (THD) at 1kHz at rated output (200-watts) into a 4-ohm non-inductive load, referenced to 0dB. [Marantz PM-11S3 Integrated Amplifier]

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Newport Test Labs

Newport Test Labs 8.00

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Graph 5: Intermodulation distortion (CCIF-IMD) using test signals at 19kHz and 20kHz, at an output of 1-watt into an 8-ohm non-inductive load, ref. to 0dB. [Marantz PM-11S3]

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Graph 6: Frequency response of line input at an output of 1-watt into an 8-ohm noninductive load (black trace) and into a combination resistive/inductive/capacitive load representative of a typical two-way loudspeaker system (red trace). [Marantz PM-11S3]

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Graph 7: Tone control action referenced to 0dB at 1kHz. Red trace shows increase in level when switching tone controls out of circuit. [Marantz PM-11S3 Integrated Amplifier]

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network audio player

Marantz NA8005 network audio player

Stream Dream Looking for a new-age hi-fi component to act as DAC while also bringing network and online streaming to your system? Marantz has it covered.

SUMMARY

Marantz NA8005 network audio player Price: $1450

+ Excellent network audio versatility + Excellent audio performance + Excellent build - Buggy control apps

ow this is what is truly a ‘Network Audio Player’. Very firmly an audio-only device, the NA8005 is wonderfully adept with digital audio, delivering it to your hi-fi system in either digital format or high-quality analogue audio.

Equipment

Let’s look at the details of what it does. Firstly this unit is a network streamer. That is, it will stream audio from DLNAcompatible servers on your network. It is also a USB playback unit — plug a USB stick or a hard disk into the front USB socket and you can play its musical contents. It is also an iPod/iPad/iPhone player. Plug one of these into that USB socket and it can play its music contents. It’s a digital-to-analogue converter as well. Plug in optical or coaxial digital audio and it will turn your two-channel digital signals into high quality analogue. Or plug a computer into its rear panel USB-B socket and it will behave as an audio device for your computer (if you install the appropriate driver in the case of Windows).

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It also supports streaming audio from the internet, using the vTuner system for internet radio and also supporting Spotify Connect. And you can stream direct from Apple devices (or iTunes on Windows/Mac) using Apple’s AirPlay. The unit decodes just about all popular modern formats: WAV, FLAC and AIFF up to 192kHz, ALAC up to 96kHz, MP3, WMA and AAC including the iTunes version, plus DSD in 2.8MHz and 5.6MHz varieties (see panel). For output you are provided with stereo RCA sockets, optical digital audio and coaxial digital audio. The two digital outputs have slightly limited functionality, supporting LPCM audio output up to 192kHz sampling for streaming audio, but producing no output for DSD tracks, nor in USB-DAC mode. The network connection is wired only, with no Wi-Fi option, so make sure an Ethernet connection is available wherever you plan to situate the NA8005.

Control

All this is delivered in a component-style unit with a three-line front-panel display and an IR remote control. It is all built to

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Many ways to control — apps are available for both Android and iOS (you can use the older ‘Marantz Remote App’ or the new ‘Marantz Hi-Fi Remote’), you can access it over the network from a browser, or use the remote control and front panel.

Format support As detailed in the main article, when it comes to playback of your stored music files, the Marantz NA8005 is able to decode just about all popular modern formats. If you want to get snippy you might bemoan the lack of support for some of the less common formats, such as Ogg Vorbis, even though few would recommend such formats these days. But back in the olden days when MP3 encoders were of rather indifferent quality, some people used these formats to maintain higher quality, and so may retain some music only in those formats. The easy workaround would be to convert these to FLAC or ALAC, both lossless formats that will ensure that no quality is lost in a transcode.

Analogue/digital outputs Given the DAC quality, most users will take the Marantz’s analogue outputs straight into their existing hi-fi system. There are digital outputs, but they don’t pass audio from the USB input, or for DSD music.

the high quality one has come to expect from a Marantz hi-fi product. But your interaction with this unit is mostly likely to be by using an app on an Android or iOS device, especially as the traditional remote or front-panel controls don’t allow easy scrolling through long lists (of albums or whatnot on the server, through radio stations on internet radio, and so on). A rotary control, something with a bit of heft and momentum, would be better for this. As it is, there are no acceleration keys. Holding down the arrow moves through a list at a rate of about three items per second (at least with my server). Just for artists beginning with ‘D’, that was 40 seconds. A search function works for whichever list you’re in, but doesn’t search for sub items (e.g. individual tracks when you’re in the albums list).

Inputs There are optical and coaxial digital inputs, plus USB-B for playing music from your computer. There’s also a USB slot on the front and direct streaming via the network.

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The control apps are available for both Android and iOS. You can use the older ‘Marantz Remote App’ mentioned in the manual, but when you connect, the app tells you that a new ‘Marantz Hi-Fi Remote’ is now available. This is a sleeker app, targeted more closely at this unit’s specific functions. The main purpose of it is for selecting music from your servers. You can create Playlists (these reside in the portable device, not on the Marantz unit, so they can’t be shared between different tablets/phones). There’s a search facility which is either great or useless, apparently depending on the DLNA server software you’re using. It would not work at all with the native DLNA server on my Synology NAS, but it worked absolutely brilliantly with the MinimServer DLNA software I run on the same NAS. With that I could simply

Networking There’s no Wi-Fi networking on this player, so make sure you have Ethernet available wherever the NA8005 is to be positioned.

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“Everything sounded beautiful — everything, anyway, that was recorded and encoded with sufficient quality to sound beautiful...”

select the server and type ‘Tangerine’ into the search box and within a second there was a list: the artist Tangerine Dream, the songs ‘Tangerine’ by Led Zeppelin (three different versions) and by Dave Brubeck, ‘Tangerine Puppet’ by Donovan and ‘My Tangerine Dream’ by Wolfmother. I was trying to check the functionality with Windows acting as the DLNA server, but the iOS app interface froze (although it kept playing the current queue). Oh, well. After a couple of minutes it rebooted itself and became operable again. As it happens, the search function does work on Windows-served material, but only at the current menu level. If you’re using a server compatible with MinimServer, this is the one to go for, not just for this but also because it’s compatible with DSD. The screen showing the track playing has the vital feature of showing the format and bit-rate of the current track. Many is the time I’ve selected the MP3 version of a track rather than the FLAC version by mistake. Here you can see instantly what’s playing. (And if an MP3 is encoded with a variable bit-rate, the bit-rate updates every few seconds.) Overall, I found the apps frustrating due to issues of freezing, crashing and just doing crazy stuff. For example, I was playing my DSD collection using the iOS version and tried skipping a couple of tracks. The app and the player both appeared to lock up. After trying to

The NA8005 features Marantz’s HDAM and HDAM-SA2 modules in critical circuit blocks, including the output stage and the headphone amplifier circuit.

restart the app a couple of times (it just returned to the same state) I switched off the Marantz unit using its front-panel standby key in the hope of causing some kind of reboot. Then I read the manual trying to work out what was going on — when I was startled by music playing. It was one of the other DSD tracks. The unit still looked like it was switched off, but then a few seconds later its frontpanel display came to life, showing the track that was playing. One reliable way of crashing the Android app was to have it displaying in landscape mode, and then rotate the device to put it in portrait mode. Had the apps been stable, they’d have been great. And as whenever we talk about app problems, there’s always the chance it’ll be fixed in an update. Of course, you need not use the Marantz app at all. It worked fine with any DLNA-compatible controller app on Android; I used Bubble uPnP to great effect. If you’re happy with lesser digital audio perfection, you can also stream music using Spotify Connect (Spotify subscription required), and AirPlay. The internet radio portal uses the excellent vTuner, so you can set up your favourite radio stations for relatively ready access using a web browser.

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There’s also control capability via browser, which is pretty basic, but works. You just key in the IP address of the unit. Finally, go back and use the older Marantz app. It’s stable and works just about as well. You just have to ignore the message about the new app, plus the various functions that have nothing to do with this unit.

Performance

As usual with these things, new firmware was available for installation as soon as I plugged in the unit — it notified me and I gave it permission to proceed. A couple of time estimates were displayed on the screen as it went ahead: ‘22 mins’ for the first of the two steps, then ‘13 mins’ for the second. Happily, these were extreme overestimates and the whole process took just under three minutes from me clicking ‘OK’ until the unit had rebooted, ready for action. The unit does not display the firmware version number. Aside from plugging in and downloading and installing the app, there is no setting up to be done, unless you want to use the USB-DAC input. With Mac there’s no particular setting up to be done here either, other than choosing ‘NA8005’ as your output device, and if you want to rely on the Mac’s ‘Core Audio’ engine, setting the output to a high enough sampling frequency to encompass all your content. (Better, of course, is to use music playback software

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which can take control of the output so that it can be delivered in its original format; I used the freeware VOX.) Do note that the unit seems to communicate some incorrect capabilities to the Mac, which thinks it will support 352.8kHz audio. In fact the unit will not, but it likely needs to tell the Mac this so that it will pass over double-rate DSD disguised as PCM (i.e. DoP, DSD over PCM). According to the Mac, it also supports all regular sampling frequencies from 32kHz to 192kHz. Because the USB DAC uses USB Audio 2.0, to use the unit at all with a Windows computer you will need to download and install the appropriate driver from Marantz’s website. This provides an interface to the regular Windows driver, but also allows bit-perfect transmission of audio from programs that support it. I used both Foobar2000 and MusicBee. In addition, with the former I was able to use the DoP protocol to send regular DSD music to the unit for decoding. For some reason that eluded me, 5.6MHz tracks (i.e. double-speed DSD128) barely come through, as a kind of fuzz, even though I know the test file itself is okay because when I streamed the exact same thing to the unit over the network, rather than running it through the USB DAC function, it sounded absolutely beautiful. I’m beginning to suspect some serving issue from my Windows computer. In fact, everything sounded beautiful — everything, anyway, that was recorded and encoded with sufficient quality to sound beautiful. My music, mostly in FLAC, worked perfectly at 16/44.1kHz through to 24/192kHz, the front panel indicating which (as it did

when operating as a USB DAC). The sound fed to the system via the analogue outputs was rich, detailed and complete. Also nice, FLAC music played gaplessly — that is, run-on tracks ran on properly, uninterrupted by momentary silence. Unlike some high-end DACs, the unit does not offer adjustable filtering curves for 44.1kHz content. The unit measured beautifully as well. With 24-bit audio the noise floor was typically at or below 107dB(A), and with 192kHz sampling the -3dB point for the frequency response was 50kHz. It seems that Marantz has gone for gentle roll-off filters with this and 96kHz material. A little surprisingly, there were subtle differences between the frequency response and noise performance depending on whether the audio was streamed or played using the unit as a USB DAC. In general the latter gave a very slight improvement in noise performance, while the former had the high frequency performance extended by a smidge. These small differences were totally inaudible. For 44.1kHz content Marantz has gone for a sharp filter, aided by the use of a Delta Sigma DAC. The response was perfectly flat to 20,500Hz, above which it adopted the shape of a cliff edge. The noise level of 16-bit, 44.1kHz signals was -96.2dB(A) when streaming, -97.5dB(A) when operating as a USB DAC. Good news for DSD enthusiasts: the DAC chip is a Cirrus Logic CS4398, which among other things features native Direct Stream Digital support. So your DSD music will be going straight from DSD to analogue without passing through a PCM stage. The datasheet for this chip reminds us that the DSD is

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low-pass filtered with the -3dB point at 50kHz in accordance with the original ‘Scarlet Book’ DSD/SACD specifications.

Conclusion

The Marantz NA8005 Network Audio Player is a high quality and effective way to introduce network audio into your audiophile system, along with a broader range of lesser web-streamed music. It sounds excellent, converts DSD directly to analogue audio, and is beautifully built. Marantz will surely improve the control apps, but even if it doesn’t there are plenty of alternatives. Marantz is surely on a winner here. Stephen Dawson

SPECS

Marantz NA8005

$1450

Inputs: 1 x optical digital, 1 x coaxial digital, x USB, 1 x USB-B, 1 x Ethernet Outputs: 1 x analogue stereo (RCA), 1 x optical digital, 1 x coaxial digital, 1 x 6.5mm headphone Other: Marantz R/C I/O, 1 x RC232C, 1 x IR in Frequency response: 2-50,000Hz @ -3dB for DSD/PCM @ 192kHz; 2-20,000Hz for PCM @ 44.1kHz S/N: 110dB (audible range) Dynamic range: 106dB (DSD/PCM @ 192kHz, audible range); 101dB (PCM @ 44.1kHz, audible range) Dimensions (whd): 440 x 105 x 336mm Weight: 7.2kg Warranty: Three years Distributor: QualiFi Pty Ltd Telephone: 1800 24 24 26 Web: www.qualifi.com.au

Marantz NR1605 Price: $1150

SHORT, BUT SWEET Why are AV receivers usually so darned big? Marantz continues to deliver a ‘slimline’ alternative and bagged a Sound+Image award with this seven-channel NR1605.

ere’s another receiver that won a top accolade in our recent 2015 awards — the Marantz NR1605 is our AV Receiver of the Year $1000-$2000. In fact it’s right down at the lower end of that price break, so still distinctly entry-level in its price, but not so much in its abilities. And the first thing to note is, of course, its size. Marantz calls it ‘slimline’, but it’s not so much thin as a short-arse — conventional receivers are perhaps 15cm high; this is a mere 10.5cm. That may not sound too much, but it makes the NR1605 look more like a hi-fi amp and less like a great hulking box that will dominate your lounge and frighten your family. These things can count. So why are other receivers big? Is it for sufficient rear panel space to fit all the connections? Is it a challenge to get all the internal workings of the Marantz NR1605 into its relatively slim casing? Marantz tells us yes, it has demanded considerable redesign. Well done to them, then, the NR1605 is a great success.

EQUIPMENT

So, while a standard 440mm in width, and a normal 376mm in depth, the NR1605 is just 105mm tall, including the feet, but not including the twin antennas which poke up from the rear for the built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Aside from the height, only two things mark it as significantly different from

BUYING ADVICE

bulkier models in the same price territory. One is the power rating. Marantz claims 50W per channel for each of its seven channels into eight ohms at very low distortion and across the full audio bandwidth, two channels driven. More commonly among similarlypriced receivers you might see claims of 90W. We are, of course, fans of higher power outputs, all other things being equal, since it opens up wider options with loudspeaker selection and the ability to fill a room. But we also note that the difference between 50 and 90W is only 2.5 decibels. And unlike some, the receiver is fully rated to handle four-ohm loads. You need to select in a set-up option the proper output for four, six or eight-ohm loudspeakers. Marantz doesn’t specify the power output for those lower impedances. As we found out (see panel), at four ohms, significantly more power does seem to be available. The other difference prompted by the slim lines is the restricted space on the aforementioned rear panel, and a consequent limitation of the number of connections. Not too much, though. There are still eight HDMI connections in total (one on the front), and two component video inputs. USB is on the front, Ethernet is at the back. There’s one optical and one coaxial digital input. One potentially highly useful extra is the provision of pre-outs. There’s no room for

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POWER PUSHER We don’t normally measure the power output of AV receivers because the information is really of very limited value. However I was trying to understand the effect of the impedance output settings of receivers, and used this receiver along with a very different one to see what these did. It turns out that these circuits have become quite sophisticated in recent years, and no longer simply reduce the rail voltage of the amplifier stage. I only measured one channel, and only at 1kHz, so clearly these figures aren’t representative, but they do give some insight into the quality of this receiver and confidence about the stated specifications. With that channel running into an eight-ohm load (with the output set to eight ohms) the receiver produced 83 clean watts. Into a four-ohm load with the correct setting, this increased to a bit over 120 watts. Which, really, is pretty impressive, and gives you some sense of the peaks available.

separate outputs for every channel (to allow future power upgrading of everything), but there is room for 2.1. This is much smarter than the 0.2 outputs that many others go for. If you want to focus on high quality stereo, then you can add some audiophile power amps to look after your favourite front speakers. Unfortunately there’s no provision to redirect

NETWORKED AV RECEIVER the two internal amps thereby relieved of duty to other functions, but aside from that, the amplifier assignments are reasonably flexible, with bi-amping, front height, surround back, front speaker B and zone 2 as available options. With Bluetooth and Wi-Fi built in, this is clearly a networking and streaming-friendly receiver. The functions on offer include Flickr, internet radio (using vTuner), Spotify Connect and of course streaming of local media via either Apple AirPlay or DLNA. Unlike Marantz models of the last couple of years, the tuner section now includes AM as well as FM. The HDMI connections support 3D, plus 4K at up to 60Hz. In addition to passing this through, the receiver can upscale incoming video all the way to 4K.

PERFORMANCE

The receiver fires up first time with its ‘Setup Assistant’ to guide you through connections and such. The menus and other on-screen material are presented very attractively by this receiver, with smooth graphics and a pleasing white and golden bronze colour scheme. As is Marantz’s custom, the set-up guide is extremely comprehensive, but you can skip through any bits you feel are teaching you to suck eggs. The two main elements of this, though, are the Audyssey MultEQ room and speaker calibration, and network set-up. The former proceeds in the usual way. The receiver comes with a cardboard tripod that can be assembled to assist with microphone placement. At least three measurement positions are required. At the end the receiver is left with the various ‘Dynamic’ audio processors switched off, which is as it should be. One other processor to be on the watch for is MDAX, which is Marantz’s version of an audio ‘restorer’ for compressed music. First time you play something on the network, go to the Set-up menu and make sure it’s off. The network set-up can be performed in the usual ways, but with recent iOS devices you can more easily set the unit up automatically via a wireless connection. The receiver provides all the surround support that you’d expect, short of the new Dolby Atmos system. If you put speakers in the right place you can have full 7.1-channel discrete sound from Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio, or processed 7.1 sound via Dolby Pro Logic IIx or DTS Neo:6, or some height added courtesy of Pro Logic IIz. Or stereo, of course, and Direct and Pure Direct, which progressively reduce the amount of processing and other work being done by the receiver. We spent about a fortnight with this receiver, running two quite different sets of

loudspeakers, and the results were simply excellent. Discrete multichannel sound from Blu-ray discs was delivered immaculately, with quite sufficient volume for my office, which is around the size of a largish lounge room. This may not be the receiver for a massive home theatre room designed for a dozen viewers, but for a regular room it had the goods. The Dolby Pro Logic II cinema-mode decoding was strong, too, extracting impressive levels of surround from the two-channel audio provided by free-to-air TV. The network audio worked smoothly, with quick connections and few delays. The on-screen scrolling through long lists was tolerable thanks to a page skip key, but things were better yet using the iOS or Android apps. Not much point talking about them, though, because Marantz has a new, redesigned app, coming soon, possibly by the time you read this. And you don’t actually need to use the app. You can push music to the receiver using AirPlay on any Apple iOS device, or from iTunes even on Windows computers, or using a multitude of DLNA apps and programs on Android and Windows devices. Bluetooth was very convenient, especially for use with a current model iPod nano. This is of course lacks Wi-Fi, so can’t use AirPlay, but does have Bluetooth. There’s no aptX in the Bluetooth profile here for Android users whose devices support it (no Apple devices yet support aptX). Aside from two weird HDMI incompatibilities (an Oppo BDP-103AU Blu-ray player, only when playing 23.976fps content, only from HDMI 1, only when set to 4K output; the audio of a Beyonwiz T3 PVR, only when the output of the Marantz was plugged into a 4K 4:4:4-capable HDMI input of a TV), performance was solid. Those bugs are likely to be ironed out by the various vendors, who are working on them. Which is great because in addition to the passthrough of all current video standards, the unit has a very respectable scaler and progressive-scan converter. This produced a clear and clean 4K scaled image, with no visual distortion. Despite this we’d still recommend that you let your 4K display do this, if for no other reason than HDMI cable quality isn’t

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as critical at 1080p as it is at 4K (see p34). Instead let this receiver scale your 576i/50 and 1080i/50 material to 1080p. The deinterlacing, although automatic, was rarely tricked into using the wrong strategy so the picture quality results were extremely good.

CONCLUSION

So despite its reduced dimensions, the Marantz NR1605 turned out to be a remarkably sweet unit, with lots of flexibility, inputs covering all but one of our needs (there’s no phono support for a turntable!), sufficient power for loudspeakers with reasonable sensitivity and strong network and video handling. If compromise was necessary to fit all this into the lower casework, it’s compromise that has been very well hidden. Stephen Dawson

VERDICT

Marantz NR1605 networked AV receiver Price: $1150 • Sweet-sounding and compact • Excellent network functionality • Very good video handling • Some early 4K HDMI incompatibilities TESTED WITH FIRMWARE: 3400-0310-9672 POWER: 7 x 50W (8 ohms, 20-20,000kHz, 0.08% THD, two channels driven) INPUTS: 8 x HDMI, 2 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 3 x composite video, 3 x analogue stereo, 0 x phono, 0 x 7.1 analogue, 1 x optical digital, 1 x coaxial digital, 1 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth OUTPUTS: 1 x HDMI, 1 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 1 x composite video, 0 x analogue stereo, 1 x 2.1 pre-out, 7 pairs speaker binding posts, 1 x 6.5mm headphone ZONE: 1 x analogue stereo, assignable amplifiers OTHER: 1 x set-up mic, Marantz R/C I/O, 1 x 12 volt DC out DIMENSIONS (whd): 440 x 105 x 376mm WEIGHT: 8.6kg WARRANTY: Three years CONTACT: QualiFi Pty Ltd TELEPHONE: 1800 24 24 26 WEB: www.qualifi.com.au

Denon DHT-S514 Price: $999

MOVIE & MUSIC MAKER Music and movie sound from an unobtrusive bar in front of your TV, plus a wireless subwoofer. Can Denon deliver the goods?

e were impressed a few issues back when we reviewed Denon’s sound base at $549 — now here’s the DHT-S514, a bar, not a base, at $999. Does it double the sound quality? Is it better value?

EQUIPMENT

It’s certainly solid, a metre long, built solidly and fronted with a metal grille which hides its twin 14mm tweeter and oval 51 x 127mm mid/ bass drivers, while the two sloping ends each have exit ports for the enclosure. In front of a TV it looks not insignificant at 8cm high, and higher if you add the feet which are supplied in two sizes. The larger pair of feet lifted the Denon neatly over the central pedestal of the first TV we were using, a 46-inch LG, and this allowed it to sit back quite close to the TV for a very neat look. We tried it also with the 55-inch edition of Sony’s 4K X8500B, which has a stand so low that even without feet the bar covered the very bottom of the screen. With either TV the soundbar also blocked the TV’s IR receiver. No matter, however, as Denon includes a little IR blaster which connects to a minijack at the rear and will rebroadcast anything received at the front. Problem solved. The wireless subwoofer is a little unusual in being shaped more like a conventional bookshelf speaker than the usual subwoofer cube — 30cm high, but only 17cm wide, and around 32cm deep, with twin 133mm woofers firing forward and ported to the rear, so that

bass adjustment can be made both through positioning and through the control knob on its rear. The wireless connection with the main unit was instant and, aside from level experimentation, required no attention throughout our testing. The Denon is nicely versatile in terms of connections. If your TV supports ARC (the Audio Return Channel of HDMI) and has a spare HDMI ARC socket available, then that’s your best option. There’s also an HDMI input, so you can plug, say, your Blu-ray player into the Denon soundbar by HDMI, then a second HDMI cable on to the TV — this avoids sending the audio from the Blu-ray player through the TV and out again, which can (depending on your TV) cause multichannel sound to be mixed down unpredictably, sometime all the way to mere stereo. If you don’t have ARC available but your TV has an optical audio output, that’s the second best option for getting TV sound to the soundbar — there’s also a coaxial digital input available. Lastly there’s an minijack analogue input, which should cover anyone having trouble with the digital world. There’s another important input, of course — Bluetooth, so you can stream audio direct from a smartphone, tablet or computer straight to the Denon. You can also teach the Denon to operate using commands from your TV remote —

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eight of the nine front-panel buttons can be ‘learned’ in this way, though the obviously useful ones would be volume up/down and mute. You might keep the small remote supplied with the Denon to add the day/night and surround mode processing, plus Bluetooth pairing and input switching... or you could conveniently enough operate those from the soundbar itself (or avoid them altogether) so the mini remote can most likely be put away most of the time.

PERFORMANCE

We had some initial set-up problems, which we’ll mention only in case it helps others in the same situation. After setting up the Denon soundbar and subwoofer, we could get no sound at all out of them via either the optical input or the HDMI with ARC. This can often be the result of your TV settings — is the digital audio output enabled? Is ARC enabled? Everything checked out but still no audio, except from Bluetooth, yet the optical cable worked into other equipment. Moments from packing it all up, we found reset instructions at the end of the downloadable full manual — yank the power cable, then hold the ‘volume down’ button while plugging it back in. Presto, resetting to the defaults fixed the optical input. With the LG TV the ARC option never worked (despite it having a supposedly ARC-enabled input), but when we switched to the latest Sony 4K X8500 model

SOUNDBAR everything worked as advertised. HDMI-CEC control did work throughout, so that we could use the TV remote to control the audio system without any need for teaching those remote commands manually. All this is an indication of the issues that can arise with HDMI and the vagaries of specific TV audio options getting in the way of simple set-up. But it also shows how the Denon’s versatility of connections means you’re always likely to find a way through. So our first impression was of the Denon’s optical input bursting into life with a truly big audio sound, solidly supported but not overwhelmed by bass, so that it scales impressively effectively as you nudge up the volume. For day-to-day TV viewing some may even find this ‘larger-than-TV’ sound too impressive, in which case pressing the day/night button (to engage ‘night’ mode) strips out most of the bass support and crushes the dynamics. The idea of this is to turn things up at night without booming and rumbling through the floor and walls, but it is also a useful button when you’re listening to the news while cooking, or other casual viewing without engaging the full audio benefits of the Denon’s subwoofer. But as soon as you’re sitting down for an evening’s viewing, keep it on the main defaults. The Denon’s musicality (see below) helps all manner of material, so that documentaries emerge with the voiceover kept clear and central as music spreads across the bar’s width and occasionally beyond. Watching Rockwiz we were momentarily distracted from Julia Zemiro’s magnificence by the impressively layered sound of audience reactions that were well separated from the main dialogue and spread wide across the room. The soundbar has both Dolby Digital and DTS decoding, so it can pass the real surround information from those soundtracks to its Dolby Virtual Surround processor, which then attempts to make not so much a ‘fake’ surround effect as a wide and immersing soundfield based on real surround channels. To give this its best shot (and avoid any dodgy audio processing in the TV), we ran HDMI from our Oppo Blu-ray player into the Denon soundbar, and out again via HDMI to the TV. Loading up the sixth chapter of ‘Gravity’, we sat back to enjoy the awe-striking space station destruction scene. To get the required impact for this scene, we had to dial the volume up to 80 of the maximum 100, which the bar managed without signs of stress while doing a good job of steering effects and spreading the sound without muddying the few lines of dialogue at the beginning of this scene, and of delivering the music that overlays the eerily silent explosions. The only weakness was a relatively loose bass, which softened the slam that was delivered when we switched the

audio to a pair of largish standmounters. But then again, returning to the TV’s own speakers is a joke — once you’re used to the level of the Denon, you’ll wonder how you ever heard anything without it. The other sound ‘modes’ are more complicated, especially as you have to learn the arrangement of lights on the soundbar as you cycle through the three options. These are, at least, easier than the five options on Denon’s soundbase reviewed previously, and the light displays are fairly logical — if the two centre lights are on, it’s in ‘dialogue mode’, if four middle lights are on then it’s got a bit of widening applied for ‘music’ mode, and six lights all the way across mean maximum widening for ‘movie mode’. We normally don’t like maximum wideness settings — they tend to create width at the cost of softening centre dialogue. But here the clarity and the sheer strength of sound made the Denon enjoyable in either music or movie mode, so play with these as you like. The wide movie setting certainly pushed sounds beyond the width of the soundbar. Thus impressed by TV and movie fare, we turned to Bluetooth music, so often an outright failing of soundbars. But not here — the Denon is wonderfully musical, easily the equal of a good wireless speaker at a similar price, and able to create a larger and wider sound than any localised box. With Jeff Beck’s ‘Let Me Love You’, the guitar was pushed far beyond the soundbar in the right channel, while the delicate snare on kd lang’s version of ‘The Air that I Breathe’ was also firmly out wide in the right channel. While the soundbar couldn’t resolve all the layers of detail in this recording with the openness of a proper hi-fi system, it nevertheless held its composure during the complex highs and presented a deep and spacious soundstage for the lows. These were also good tracks to experiment with those sound ‘modes’; on kd lang both ‘music’ and ‘movie’ modes did a little too much to emphasise and soften the bass guitar line, and we settled on listening in ‘dialogue’ mode. But with Jeff Beck, this mode all but removed the bass guitar, and ‘movie’ mode was by far the most effective. This variability contined — Nick Lowe needed ‘dialogue’, Kate Miller-Heidke’s vocals sounded best with dialogue but the electrobass on her latest album far more fun on one of the wider modes. So play around, and remember there is also the separate control knob on the back of the subwoofer, which we had (most of the time) slightly above its mid point. The combination of bar and sub produced some significant lows, though with a small dip between those and the midrange. We listened also to music cast from rdio and Spotify to a Chromecast plugged into

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the TV; this signal chain yielded a marginally crisper sound than did Bluetooth, though if you have an Android device with aptX Bluetooth compatibility, this may bring Bluetooth up to a similar standard. One note — when playing the soundtracks of some Blu-ray discs through the Denon’s HDMI input, the Denon delivered loud cracks coming out of FF or rewind into play; this didn’t happen when the same cable was plugged into either TV.

VERDICT

The Denon proved an excellent soundbar for sound quality, notably better than the pack for music, and able to make the most of genuine surround signals delivered by HDMI. There are rivals with even more tech jollies in their bag (see the Yamaha review in this issue), but the DHT-S514 is versatile in its connections, unobtrusive in appearance, offers useful if slightly confusing sound modes, and does a great job at presenting powerful and musical sound. It’s at the top of its league at this price. Jez Ford

VERDICT

Denon DHT-S514 soundbar Price: $999 • Big audio upgrade for TVs • Good at music as well as movies • HDMI in and out • Higher than some — check the height works for your television

SOUNDBAR

QUOTED FREQUENCY RANGE: 40Hz to 20 kHz DRIVERS: 14mm tweeters x 2, 51 x 127mm oval drivers x 2 INPUTS: HDMI, optical, analogue (minijack), Bluetooth (2.1+EDR, aptX) IR PASSTHROUGH: via blaster DIMENSIONS: 79.8 x 1004 x 78.3mm WEIGHT: 2.3kg

SUBWOOFER

DRIVERS: 2 x 133mm woofers DIMENSIONS: 313 x 171.5 x 346mm WEIGHT: 5.9kg WARRANTY: Two years (three on registration) CONTACT: QualiFi TEL: 03 8542 1111 WEB: www.qualifi.com.au

Denon AVR-X1100W Price: $899

AV HIGHS FOR $$ LOWS It’s hard to believe this is an entry-level AV receiver, such a remarkable combination of features and performance combine in Denon’s $899 AVR-X1100W.

hose who read our Awards issue will already know that we are highly impressed with Denon’s entry-level networking home theatre receiver, the AVR-X1100W — we awarded it AV Receiver of the Year Under $1000. It really doesn’t seem all that ‘entry level’ when it comes to network stuff. Nor, for that matter, with the home theatre stuff. And that’s is pretty impressive for a receiver costing well under a grand. Our awards issue included only a brief summary of its merits, so our full opinion of follows here.

EQUIPMENT

The network stuff extends rather a long way. For some reason, TVs have been building in wireless networking for years now, while most AV receivers have been stuck with Ethernetonly networking. Well the two antennas at the rear corners of this receiver announce that that is no longer the case — Wi-Fi is built in. Not only Wi-Fi, but also Bluetooth. The built-in Bluetooth does not support the higher

quality aptX codec, so if you have an Android music player and in a particular instance need quality over Bluetooth’s undoubted convenience, then you can consider either plugging your device in directly, or using Wi-Fi networking via DLNA. Apple device owners can send audio through the air using Apple’s AirPlay, which the Denon supports, or can enjoy full support when plugged in via the front USB socket. However you feed your networked device (or Spotify or internet radio) to the receiver, it receives decent audio support. The receiver is a full seven-channel unit with 80W for each, two channels driven. It supports the usual range of DTS and Dolby surround modes, including the discrete multichannel streams from Blu-ray, but also Dolby Pro Logic IIx (making use of rear surround channels) and IIz (front height speakers). If you aren’t keen on either of those, you can use the two leftover amps to bi-amplify the front stereo speakers, or provide power to a separate ‘B’ set of front speakers, or run stereo

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speakers in a second zone (this is the only zone support provided by this receiver). There are a total of six HDMI inputs. Two of the rear panel ones will pass through 4K up to 60Hz, the front panel one and the other three rear ones are all limited to 1080p pass-through (although this includes 3D). The single HDMI output supports the Audio Return Channel, so most recent TVs should be able to send the sound from broadcast TV stations back down the HDMI cable for the receiver to turn into much higher quality sound than that available from any TV. Older connections are relatively sparse: two analogue audio inputs, two optical digital audio and two composite video. Denon has included an AM tuner with the FM one, something that has been missing for a couple of years.

PERFORMANCE

As is Denon’s practice, the receiver is loaded with a wizard — called ‘Setup Assistant’ — which it fires up the first time you switch on

NETWORKED AV RECEIVER

“At this price, it is truly remarkable what levels of technology and performance the Denon AVR-X1100W can deliver. The entry level for AV receivers has never had such abilities on offer...” the unit. This is extremely detailed, showing you how to wire up the speakers, where to place them and so on. Experienced users will be able to skip over bits and pieces. At first glance, given the blocky text used, the Wizard and the set-up menu both appear somewhat retro, but it soon turns out that some of the screens employ graphics as well, so this is more of a design decision. The Audyssey MULTEQ XT room calibration system requires at least three and up to eight measurement positions in order to get the best sense of the room. As a thoughtful touch, a cardboard stand is provided to help you locate the measurement microphone in just the right positions. The results of the calibration were sort of appropriate for my speakers, but chose unusually divergent crossover frequencies which in my judgement needed to be corrected. This was simple and indicated something rather useful provided by this receiver: unlike many others, you can assign different crossover frequencies for different loudspeaker positions. If you’re buying an $899 receiver, you’re unlikely to be using a $20,000 speaker system, so more flexibility is useful. In this case you can do things like have the front

stereo speakers send the bass below 40Hz to the subwoofer, while sending the bass below 100Hz from all the other speakers. As we’ve noted elsewhere, Denon has now abandoned its approach of applying such audio processes as Audyssey Dynamic Volume and Audyssey Dynamic EQ automatically and without telling you. Instead the former, while available, is switched off by default, while you are given an option to switch the latter on at the end of the calibration. In general we’d strongly recommend leaving them both off, except when you need very quiet nighttime playback. In that case Dynamic Volume — a dynamic range compressor — could be useful. You can connect to the network by using an Ethernet cable, of course, or by using that built-in Wi-Fi. The wizard guides you through this too. In addition to the traditional ways of connecting, you can plug an iOS device into the receiver’s USB socket to transfer its Wi-Fi settings (iOS 5 or later required) or connect the iOS device wirelessly to the receiver (iOS 7). Both systems worked smoothly. At the end of network set-up the receiver connects to the internet and streams a bit of music so you can confirm that the network connection was properly made. The Wi-Fi works in the 2.4GHz band only.

Once this was done the receiver informed us that a firmware update was available. We went ahead with that, which took somewhat less than the predicted 19 minutes to complete. It would probably be unwise to couple a lower-cost receiver such as this to extremely difficult loudspeakers, nonetheless we should note that the unit does, formally, support four-ohm loudspeakers. You need to make a setting for this purpose in a kind of deeper set-up menu for such speakers (likewise for six-ohm ones). My loudspeakers were all safe six- to eight-ohm models of average sensitivity, and the receiver was happy to drive them to very high, room-filling levels. With movies the surround positioning was precise and convincing. With music, both stereo and surround, the delivery was upfront, well balanced tonally and with good control of the loudspeakers. On stereo it felt a touch short on stereo of that astonishing ‘being there’ feeling provided by the best of equipment, of course — which is why the home entertainment category doesn’t top out at this price category! But we doubt you’d get a more truthful rendition of your music from any similarly priced home theatre receiver. Video-wise, this receiver is definitely in the switcher camp. All it does with video is pass it through. If you are playing something in HD and invoke the on-screen menu, either via the ‘Options’ pop-up or by pressing the ‘Setup’ key, your video will disappear and you’ll get a menu in 576i or 720p. Much of our music listening took place with the files streaming over our network, much of it from Spotify, though you won’t find a ‘Spotify’ option among the

The two antennas indicate the built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, while the Denon offers six HDMI inputs (one on the front) and an ARC-equipped HDMI out

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TEST network options. It works with Spotify Connect, which is entirely controlled by your portable device, and which requires a premium Spotify subscription ($11.99 per month). This works by you using your phone/tablet to select the music you want to hear and then choosing this receiver as the output device. The receiver will stream it directly from Spotify, rather than via your originating device. Internet radio is provided using the vTuner system, which is extremely wide-ranging. Register your receiver and you can search with a web browser on a regular computer and set up readily accessible favourites. It includes podcasts in addition to the twenty thousand or more radio stations. There is also access to Flickr. But we recommend that you use any possible way of accessing Flickr other than using your AV receiver! Music galore will be available from anything on your network that supports DLNA/UPnP. The on-screen interface is pretty good, with jump keys on the remote allowing the rapid navigation of long lists. Better yet is using the Android and iOS apps for Denon receivers. Most of the functions offered in there are fairly basic and can be easily achieved using the regular remote, but they really come into their own with both DLNA music and USB material. The receiver feeds lists of content back through the app so you can rapidly select the things you want to play. There is a nice alphabetical jump section so you don’t even need to scroll excessively. This is firmly a two-channel system, with any surround content being ignored. That said, FLAC up to 192kHz was supported, along with WAV and AIFF, and DSD (the format used on SACD) at the normal two

LEFT: The apps that are available for today’s AV receivers make them far easier to use, especially when dealing with long lists of artists of internet radio stations

fixes. (Meanwhile, solutions: leave the Oppo on 1080p output or use HDMI 2; plug the Denon into a 1080p limited-spec 4K port on the TV for the Beyonwiz.)

CONCLUSION

channel 2.8MHz sampling rate. Lossy AAC, MP3 and WMA codecs are also supported. Bluetooth worked like the networking functions: smoothly and quickly. In addition to delivering sound, if you have your TV on you will see track information. There were a couple of wobbles with HDMI interaction. It would not pass through the output from an Oppo BDP-103AU player only in the very specific circumstance of the Oppo outputting 4K from its HDMI 1 output at 23.976 hertz. Even precisely 24 hertz was fine. In addition, when plugged into HDMI ports of two different 4K TVs, where those ports were capable of full 4:4:4 colour handling, a connected Beyonwiz T3 PVR would not produce audio. All the respective manufacturers are working on

At this price, it is truly remarkable what levels of technology and performance the Denon AVR-X1100W can deliver. The entry level for AV receivers has never had such abilities on offer. Of course, there is more on offer power-wise as you move up the price categories, and there is not, for example, the new Dolby Atmos processing onboard here which appears in the top Denon models. But this is is a fine entry-level network receiver that will satisfy most tastes, especially modern ones involving network audio. Stephen Dawson

VERDICT

Denon AVR-X1100W networked AV receiver Price: $899 • Excellent value for money • Good balance of features and performance • Built in WiFi and Bluetooth • Zone 2 at speaker level only • Some early HDMI 2.0 wobbles TESTED WITH FIRMWARE: 1400-0310-2070 POWER: 7 x 80W, 8 ohms, 20-20,000kHz, 0.08% THD (two channels driven) INPUTS: 6 x HDMI, 0 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 2 x composite video, 2 x analogue stereo, 0 x phono, 0 x 7.1 analogue, 2 x optical digital, 0 x coaxial digital, 1 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth OUTPUTS: 1 x HDMI, 0 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 1 x composite video, 0 x analogue stereo, 2 x subwoofer, 7 pairs speaker binding posts, 1 x 6.5mm headphone ZONE: Assignable power amplifiers OTHER: 1 x set-up mic DIMENSIONS (whd): 434 x 151 x 339mm WEIGHT: 8.6kg WARRANTY: Three years

The Denon supports four-ohm speakers and multiple crossover frequencies for different speakers

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CONTACT: QualiFi Pty Ltd TELEPHONE: 1800 24 24 26 WEB: www.qualifi.com.au