Search results for 'bronze 50'

The brand new AV receiver from Marantz. With 9.4 channels, yes that's right, 4 Subwoofer channels! 

To pair the 4 channels of subwoofer preouts there's a serious amount of extra processing going on to cope with the possibility of 4 subwoofers each individually matched to a separate speaker. There exists also the opportunity to have each sub output the same mono signal. Very cool!

It also boasts an upgrade to the Dirac calibration system as well as the usual Marantz Audyssey dynamic EQ system ready to go. 

A beefy amp that packs a lot into its chassis. A premium amplifier for home theatre enthusiasts.

This is the brand new slim receiver by Marantz. The Cinema 70s has 7.2 channels with a whole suite of 8K capable HDMI inputs. These will be most useful for gamers where their 4K function is amped up to 120Hz refresh rate with full pass through.

We think the new Marantz look is so so fine. But much has changed under the cover as well as on the outside.

The whole range has undergone a revamp and they are even adding some premium models for the more discerning customers.

See the Marantz US official website for more information here

Please note that the Australian version of this unit does not have a Tuner on board.

Stepping up to a triple layer of carbon for extra damping with even lower resonances. 

But extra to the TA-5000 NEO that isn't seen on the TA-2000, Acoustic SIgnature have built a complete inner tube separated from the outer tube by another layer of dampening.

The bearing design has been stepped up another notch as well. Pre-tensioned and a hybrid design using ceramic and stainless steel balls.

Lastly the internal cabling sees an upgrade over the lower models from copper to pure silver.

More detail better imaging - a quality in manufacturing and design that bears fruit in the musical experience of the listener.

Available in 12" version $13,400 (silver)

Black add $1700 (extra)

Gold add $4300 (extra)

Black and Gold Colours are special order.

The much anticipated Meze 109 Pro Headphones have arrived at Carlton Audio Visual. I first heard these in May in Munich and knew they'd be extremely popular. The headphone marketplace is missing a HiFi level headphone at the mid $1K mark and these fill those shoes.

They punch above their pricepoint and are detailed, full sounding, big soundstage type headphone. These aren't a plastic headphone that only sell because they're endorsed by some forgettable celebrity.

Meze are a relatively new (10 years old) Romanian manufacturer of headphones making big waves in the industry. They are a group of young professionals passionate about the products they make and the work they do. Having met a whole bunch of them, I get the impression they all could be off making a lot more money working in Germany or Switzerland for big corporates but they prefer to stay in their home country working with their friends and colleagues on great products.

Now on display at Carlton Audio Visual!

We have a pair of RA-6000 and DT-6000 Ex-demo to sell Ex-Demo. 

Power corrupts they say, but with an amplifier there is no substitute for current and wattage when it comes to exercising authority over a recalcitrant loudspeaker load. 

With this new Rotel Diamond series subjugation of the fine motions of the transducer to force absolute compliance to the needs of the music signal is the key to its power.

Unlike the brutal human autocrats of our contemporary experience however, the Rotel offers a deeply benign and truthful empowerment of the listening experience. 

Like all Rotel amplifiers this is destined to stay in your family for a generation or more. The internal componentry is made in house and is of quite exceptional quality with longevity as a prime directive.

Once upon a time I came to Australia and found myself suddenly mortgaged, married and in an imminent condition of fatherhood. my previous ambitions of travel and science were promptly subjugated in order to make a sensible living.

And that's where Yamaha became my bread and butter as commissioned hi Fi salesperson in early eighties Melbourne.Those Yamaha stereo systems were so solid and sweet in comparison to the competing Pioneer and Sansui rack assembelages that they were an ethical sell to the blank canvas of the Middle Australian client base of that business I was working in.'Alas the speakers that were sold as matching the height and style of the cabinet were so very awful as to largely obviate any performance advantage in the source electronics.

This Yamaha AS501 is a sensory throwback to old Yamaha eighties style . It is clean and crisp and delightfully constructed and is just obviously sensible. Good inputs, good controls, good sound, good construction, good value.

I hereby appoint the AS501 to be the evolutionary successor to the 1984 Yamaha A500 integrated ampilfier.

What Hi-Fi? on the Yamaha AS501

A high quality VInyl player from renowned brand, Musical Fidelity.

This is their 'entry' level but it offers everything you'd expect from a high-end phono stage: Moving Magnet and Moving Coil compatibility as well as selectable Gain, Impedance and Capicitance. 

Musical Fidelity have always built high quality phono stages with a detailed and, yes, musical sound. 

If you love a sense of space, lightness and refinement in your music, you can't go past the Starling cartridge from Sumiko. 

With the Starling, you get a naked cartridge body like the slightly cheaper Songbird. But here the cantilever is upgraded to Boron for faster transmission of the vibrations through the cantilever.

The micro ridge stylus of the Starling is also a step up from the Songbird rendering even more precision and detail with transparency and musicality.

350W of serious power amplification. This unit is not only a work of industrial art, it's everything and more than what you'd expect in terms of grip, control and musicality.

I've been pleasantly surprised with the new versions of Chord Electronics Pre and Power combinations. I found many of their previous models of stereo power amps harsh and brittle but this is different - this sings. 

This is a must listen if you're looking for a beefy power amplifier.

It has had some stellar reviews, unsurprisingly and it's no wonder that there were lots of Chord Power amplifiers powering speakers at the latest Munich HiFi show earlier this year.

A Solid State Headphone amplifier designed to perfectly match the Stax Earphones.

Now on demonstration at Carlton Audio Visual

Best in the world ... a limited league. Hearing Roger Waters "Amused to death" on this machine was quite simply the best LP listening experience of my highly saturated with vinyl life. it was at the last Munich Hi Fi Show in a room with a magnificent integrated valve amplifier and a pair of huge loudspeakers that I found this turntable as the source. Now Munich Hi End show is full of amazing ampz and speakers and much of the battle there for the attention of the visitors is the source. This Roger Waters album has been a steadfast demo in our business since we opened in 1990 and to say I know it intimately is an understatement. The experience of hearing it being played from the Invictus Junior will stay with me for the rest of my mortal.

The Joey bookshelf speakers have been a favourite of Carlton AUdio Visual since Dr Rod Crawford made his first set many years ago. For a speaker that is just under $1000 per pair, they have a clarity of tone and precision that is simply unrivalled.

Adding to that, these are hand crafted here in Australia and finished off with real hard wood Aussie veneers.

Rod, not only uses the best parts available in his speakers, he also knows HOW to use them. He was Linn Acoustics head speaker designer for many years and has degrees upon degrees from the best universities in the world. On top of that he has a deep passion for sound and music. You'll often catch Rod at classical music concerts up and down the East coast of Australia or chatting about the intricacies of speaker design to anyone who is interested. 

His passion results in a speaker that is much better than it's meagre price point.

You'll need a good amplifier to bring out the most of these. But when you give them the kind of power they deserve, they will reward!

 These are available in Jarrah, Light Oak and Black

The SP stands for Special Production or as we like to put it, Scottish Production as these are the sets not only specially designed with extra goodies but made in the U.K. in the Scottish factory. 

Unlike the ordinary F501s, these have the IsoFlare Drive. A dual concentric driver that delivers incredible detail and responsiveness. You can see in this driver design the influence of Tannoy where many of the designers came from. Back in the day when Tannoy was completely Scottish owned and made. Tannoy also used Dual Concentric Drivers.

Additional features over the F501s are upgraded crossovers and an aluminium sandwich plinth. All features of the pricier F700 series.

This is the recently released version of PS Audio's CD Transport. And what sets this unit apart from anything that PS Audio has done before and also anything that's been done before by any other HiFi company, is their galvanically isolated output stage. That means that the data is being transfered from the input stage to the output stage via a type of very focused short wave radio frequencies. Any vestiges of interference that inevitably occur when these stages are hardwired, are completely eliminated.

Input and output stages have their very own board and power supply to keep them completely separated as well. FPGAs (Field-Programable Gate Array; if you'd like to learn more about these very handy devices see Paul McGowan's video here) is utilised to ensure clocking and data buffering are spot on. 

The best way to use this unit and unleash its full potential is to use the I2S output or the HDMI out put to a DAC (like the PS Audio DirectStream) that can handle it. In this respect you can hear a complete Raw DSD file...and that truly is another experience. A DSD file is what makes an SACD an SACD. Instead of sampling at a determined fast rate (bit rate) the sine curve of the musical file, a DSD file samples the whole sine curve. These raw files are bigger and have to be compresesd to even push it out of a transport. But not with this unit and the I2S...full blown raw DSD files streaming into your speakers. Heaven.

Of course you can still use this unit without the I2S and it's still devastatingly good. A pair of BNC connectors will double a normal DSD output to make it DSD128 and this connection is particularly scintillating with a Chord Dave...

Read theaudiobeatnik review of the unit here (he uses the I2S connection with a non PS Audio Dac with superb results)

The PS Audio website has some extra reading on this unique product too

This will be the last of the made in England Naim amplifiers as the factory is moving to Eastern Europe. Everything made in the Salisbury factory will instantly become a classic. Stock available now while they last.

Naim Nait 5Si is the latest iteration of an amplifier 30 years in the making. Naim is an iconic british HiFi brand that continues its 40 year legacy of design and manufacture in Salisbury, U.K. The very first NAIT amplifier was built at a time when Mr. Tiefenbrun of Linn Acoustics was proclaiming that all that matters in a HiFi system is your source, namely your turntable. For the purest reconstruction of pace, rythym and timing one needed to perfect the source of the electronic signal path and then keep everything as simple as possible through the amplifier and speakers which inherently (according to Tiefenbrun) don't have much impact on the sound.

At this time, there was an effort to frame the amplifier in a marketable sense as just something that outputed current but wasn't part of the HiFi craftmanship and nuanced engineering that really created a true HiFi experience. 

Although I'm appreciative of how much of a difference fantastic source material makes to a HiFi system (I even own a Linn Sondek Turntable) my experience and those of countless other HiFi shoppers would indicate that the amplifiers and speakers control an enormous amount in terms of what one hears musically out of a system. And given in this day and age when many of us own multiple HiFi sources (Turntable, CD player and streamer), switching between them and keeping our amplifier and speakers constant, it's more important to get your amplifier and speaker combination right.

And Naim sought to redirect this discourse, marketing the NAIT as a delicate piece in the HiFi system capable of transforming your musical experience. They even went so far as to refuse to publish the output values of the amplifier in an attempt to get people to think about the musical qualities of a unit rather than merely to compare its Watts with another unit. Alas, we still cling to comparing each amplifier by its rated watts which can be a wholly unhelpful exercise - that is an essay for another time!

But I digress, we should be talking about the Nait 5Si! A faithful and timeless amplifier that it is, it delivers a crisp sound that's not full of colouration but will add excitement and a sense of immediacy to the music. 

Naim products bought from us, a genuine approved Naim dealer, include the full 2 year warranty.

Loewe started manufacturing Televisions in 1923 and actually made the first commercially available Television. After a few years of being manufactured in other European countries, they're now back being produced and headquartered in Kronach, Germany's heartland.

I visited Kronach and the Loewe factory in 2015. Kronach is a tiny town for German standards and its industry and in fact it's whole economy has been dominated by Loewe for generations. Most people who live in Kronach work or have worked in the Loewe factory. When I was there, there were multiple generations of the one family working side by side to exacting standards on the Televisions. All of this in what is a Storybook looking town with old wooden houses and a medieval castle on the hill.

Loewe Televisions, like premium German made motor vehicles, contain a workmanship and attention to detail above their Asian made counterparts. Machine engineered alloy bezels, cable management systems, intuitive remote and interface and swivel stands that come as standard are the details that don't come with other Televisions.

The Bild V is elegant, yet solid and robust to out live most of its contempories.

The picture quality, as you'd expect with a Television of this calibre, is bold and expressive without ever seeming artificial. Although it's pitched at replacing the old Bild 5 units, the Bild V has the same panel as the higher end Bild 7 and in substance is much closer in spec to those. 

Expect this Television to out perform generations of other Asian made units because of the picture and build quality. An expectional Television. 

Naim is one of the best of English HiFi brands harking from Salisbury where their design and manufacturing facilities are located. They are one of the true high-end electronic brands that make gear like their Statement Amplifiers retailing for a cool $375,000 for a set.

This little CD player is their entry level but for most people this doesn't represent your typical first-time-buyer HiFi component. It's intricately thought out, meticulously engineered, clean and musical. 

The typical comparison is with Rega and Cyrus CD players, both english and both also in our inventory. The Naim is more transparent sounding than a Rega Apollo, finding more detail and space in the music. It's closer in performance to the bigger (and more expensive) Rega Saturn. The Saturn, however, has a richer tonality to it than the Naim. A bit more 'rounded' on the treble. The Cyrus CDi, has a similar sound signature and as a half size unit it offers a convenient footprint. The slot mechanism will never be a perfectly reliable solution for a CD player though and what Naim has done with their tray and resonance reduction is really admirable.

In conclusion, this is a unit to throw into the mix from one of the best manufacturers out there. It may well be the perfect unit for you. Feel free to call us to talk more and have a read of some of its stellar reviews from well trusted HiFi institutions.

Naim products bought from us, a genuine approved Naim dealer, include the full 2 year warranty.

Read 6moons review here

Read WhatHiFi review here

Once upon a time twenty five years ago we sold a loudspeaker called the Krix Lyrix ... all Krix speakers have to end in "ix" by the way ... it's a peculiarity they are allowed after being a successful business for forty years.

The Lyrix was a fantastic D'Appolito floorstanding loudspeaker in an era of humdrum "system" speakers. When they were released most speakers purchased in Australia were essentially hollow chipboard boxes with arbitrary drive units intended as furniture for colourful system packages.

The Lyrix were a speaker that a serious enthusiast could appreciate. I recall how very good the wood finish of these speakers would smell when we unpacked them.

The Phoenix is the Lyrix evolved for the second decade of the 21st century with bass presence and detail that is outstanding in its price class. A great all rounder for medium and large room music and cinema reproduction, and they still smell good ...

 Krix Phoenix official page