Recently an old friend came in for a listening session and bought a rather special UHQR Mobile Fidelity recording of Cat Stevens in with him.

He had been given this in Hollywood 10 years ago and it was still sealed in its original wrapping … for people who love this type of music and High Fidelity this is the equivalent of opening that bottle of Penfolds Grange Hermitage that you have been saving.

We had the particular advantage of being able to use the Carlton Audio Visual reference system for this audition: Sonus faber Aida loudspeakers with Audio Research electronics and Chord Sarum cabling …

The record was beautiful, and it is a measure of the enjoyment that a really good recording allied to some of the planets better replay equipment in that it offers a tangible life experience that certainly lies alongside both the most refined and the depraved of quality human activities … but without any of the moral, physical, or fiscal hangovers of those.

Having Yusuf Islam come into your living room and give a personal performance is what I’m talking about here. Were one able to arrange the actuality of that event, I would suspect that you would have to be more than simply a billionaire oligarch but would probably have to be, for example, the President of the United States … and not just any President …

Even then you wouldn’t be hearing him at his unfettered 22 year old peak of youth and creativity in the way that the record we listened to did. Therein lies another facet of our relationship to music, it is a form of time travel that returns us in time and space to … the way we were at the point in our lives when we met that music.

It’s not just the simple sum of our senses of sound, vision, smell, and touch of that time. Music will momentarily recreate that self that we were when first inculcated with a particular piece. It will effectively replay our soul to ourselves from when we first started that relationship with the piece of music.

This soul travel through music is generally associated with adolescence however, it actually extends across the spectrum of our lives and is not always rose tinted. There are bad times that we all have to travel through as well the good, and the music that we listen to becomes the mistress of our poignancies.

For me Tea for the Tillerman is actually a double barrelled bitter-sweet association. Firstly, as a dark time as a teenager being despatched to a Gothically sinister Manchester boarding school after my mother died. But then as a terrifically positive time in my late twenties in Australia rediscovering it in my new wife’s record collection and it becoming part of our family life.

The listening session offered another opportunity in that my friend also had an Ultradisc Original Master CD AAD recording of the same album. With an Audio Research CD9SE to hand … about $30K worth of CD Player and fabulous … it was a great opportunity to try the competing replay formats.

In brief the CD in isolation was still excellent. However it was immediately brash and artificial by comparison with the natural and fatigue free rendition of the Vinyl version.

When playing the record there was an effortless sense of sharing the room with Mr Stevens (as he was known then). The backing instruments and his guitar were just … there …

The CD by contrast seemed to be forcing the instruments into our perception. Mr Stevens was now brash and almost metallic by comparison and although the sense of space was portrayed it felt as though the performance had been moved out of an intimate prepared studio into a linoleum floored lunchroom. The instruments were easy to find on the CD but they were garishly presented by comparison.

Now let’s be clear … the Vinyl replay equipment we were using is more than a bit special: Acoustic Signature Ascona II turntable with TA9000 tonearm and Van Den Hul Stradivari Crimson cartridge through an Audio Research Ref 9 phono stage. I don’t want to talk about it’s price but it’s more than three times the Audio Research CD player, so yes there may well be an unfair advantage here.

It’s always been the case for our purveyance activity though that the shortest way to creating an emotional engagement with a potential client has been to play them a record. Frankly I have been amazed at how bad the condition of some of the records I have played to people have been and yet they still love the music produced enough to purchase the kit being demonstrated. It goes to show that it is the raw content of the music that matters in the end rather than how well it measures.

During the nineties in Carlton Audio Visual we always kept a Rega Planar 3 going with a ratty copy of Dark Side of the Moon. People would hear the music through the hiss and pop and wonder why they were enjoying it so much.

These days I keep a new 180 gram version of Dark Side and also have a rare SACD version that I will play in the Yamaha 5000 series room. The SACD is actually fantastic but prone to jumping and skipping like a scratched record, while the 180 gram recent vinyl I feel isn’t actually as enjoyable as the abused 1973 floppy pressing I had.

It is a worry that Vinyl’s resurgence is perhaps leading to people paying for 180 gram type recordings that aren’t as good as the over pressed eighties originals. Perhaps the recordings have been “cleaned up” and consequently sanitised of their soulfulness.

Enjoy the music.

When we heard in March that we were going to be shut down as part of the Covid19 lockdown I confess that my wife and I crept home and cried for a while. At that moment it seemed that we would probably be faced with the shutdown of cashflow along with the immediate need to pay off our liabilities. The companies that insured our trade creditors accounts had withdrawn their cover with the advent of lockdown and balances were due immediately. All the normal outgoings still had to be paid. That was a brick wall that seemed too high to jump on that day.

We had begun the year with the bushfires taking away five of our people with family interests in affected areas to help with the fire fighting and look after refugeed relatives. This had already had a very negative bearing on our January and February business and we were just getting up and going again when the Covid crisis began in late March.

We began the process of letting our family and key colleagues know that in a worst case scenario this could be a fatal blow to a business and that we had better prepare ourselves for a potential scenario where assets might have to be rapidly be liquidated in order to fulfill liabilities in abeyance of an ability to trade.

Fortunately it didn’t go that badly …

We were still allowed to trade via the phone and internet, and in the initial stages of lockdown allowed to have minimal people in store. We were able to adapt the business with people working from home and keep some of our techs working on construction sites.

Our suppliers gave us time to pay down our trade balances, we gave our colleagues holidays or they worked from home. Customers somehow kept ringing up and buying things and the internet worked hard for us.

The initial lockdown left the store being manned by two redoubtable Scotsmen … always a good ethnic group when the going gets really tough. Darren and Chris worked really hard at getting things packed and sent and transacting via the phone and internet.

After a brief hiatus where we thought maybe business as usual Melbourne suddenly peaked at 725 cases in a day in July and the iteration of full Stage 4 lockdown meant only immediate family were left behind the closed doors to take care of business.

I suspect that I will look back upon those lockdown days with the insular rose tinted glasses of The Blitz in London. The enforced intimacy undistracted by the normal physical flow of customers but with the continual phone and web interaction was a bit of a family holiday for us.

Small business people have more than money invested in their operations. My partner and I have our family members and best friends working with us. Some of our most valued relationships in life are with our suppliers and clients quite outside the financial and marketplace boundaries. Conventional employment proffers a fundamental secularity of family, friends, and work. In Carlton Audio Visual there has been a general abandonment of the normal western Industrial hierarchy by deliberate infusion of new Australian SME values.

The two edged sword here is that although it makes for a rugged and adaptable small organisation with high levels of job satisfaction it means that there is a lot more than mere money to lose in the event of failure. Within our small specialist marketplace in Victoria I know three business owners who have taken their own lives in the last two decades …

A very positive consequence for potential clients for a business of our nature is that we take every transaction very seriously and personally. In a “normal” CE business you will deal with someone who when the going gets tough can simply leave and go home with no accountability beyond their commission. For people like us we will lose sleep and gain anxiety over the slightest issue of client dissatisfaction.

Some of you reading this may have been aware of our advertising on Facebook with an image of a masked Dan Andrews saying "Stay Safe and Stay Home" as per the header of this article that we ran while we were under lockdown.

We are accustomed to attracting a certain amount of vitriol when we use images of Trump or Hanson or similar for satire in our advertising. The right wing of politics readily lends itself to satire as they tend to use the foundation of the ludicrous as policy and work their down from there. The image of Dan Andrews was not intended as a political statement, it was simply a message online that we were shut pending Covid 19 lockdown … however the hostile response to this image was unlike anything else in we have experienced in recent years.

In brief the post attracted a broad spectrum of conspiracists ranging from Reclaim Australia racists through a peak of Anti Vaxxer Covid deniers right through to genuine Flat Earthers. The conflation of misery was all the more surprising in that they were gathered around the posts of a small business in Melbourne with no conceivable leverage on public or political opinion.

For a while I let them gather with their, sometimes abusive, commentary on our facebook Page as much as to turn that stone over for the normal and nice people who normally visit us. As time went on their tone become more strident and vitriolic so I eventually took delight in deleting and banning them en masse.

In my humble opinion these are people too stupid to enjoy good music and High Fidelity so removing them from our demographic reach forever seems like a good option to take …

I adhere to that theory that people who listen to music and read are made endemically more interesting than those of us who simply act as receivers of material that is broadcast. Thus blocking and banning the thousand or "Covid is a hoax like climate change and Dan is a Dictator" postees was something I did with relish and confidence that it would not affect our client base.

The first week of opening was a simple succession of people bringing in their old record players for resuscitation, friendly and fertile territory that always leads to positive transactional relationships further down the road.

We are now back in the groove of our normal retailing instore ... almost ...

Stock is in short supply and people are fiscally nervous. The Black Friday scene in our local speciality marketplace has been severely blunted as most of our peers have very little stock to spare to burn up in cost price offerings. We have officially disavowed Black Friday and have run a "Red November" promotion instead .. with an image of a victorious Dan Andrew and Joe Biden as satire the promotion seemed most effective ... in bringing out the tinfoil hat brigade all over again ...

This time they were claiming that Trump actually won the electuon and that Dan Andrews is a Chinese puppet or some version thereof. Perhaps we have taken "Fanatics Welcome" a little too far and should just go back to "buy it now because it is good and we sell it" advertising. 

However one of the minor freedoms of a small business is the opportunty to purvey ones culture alongside ones wares, and I think this is especially relevant when it comes to offering that equipmental interface of people with their music.

No one who listens to music enthusiastically for its own sake I would contend is free of its intellectual and emotional developmental influence. One of the simple joys of working at Carlton Audio Visual is just how damned nice and interesting the clients are who come in to meet us. It is an immense privilege to work with these people.

Redemption is the key and dirty mains power is the sin ... to get your free stuff after the fact of purchase click here  

We are immensely pleased that we are able to open again on Wednesday the 28th October ... it's been a long haul.

During the period of our lockdown we kept trading via the telephone and interweb. We ran a Facebook post with an image of Dan Andrews in a mask staying "Stay Safe änd see you soon" that I didn't actually intend to be controversial, however it attracted more Troll Vitriol and right wing crudity than anything a small business çould possibly be worth.

The negative content came from various apparent sources: Anti Maskers, Anti Vaxxers, Flat Earthers, Soveriegn Citizens, Australian Patriots, Reclaim Australia, etc etc. Much of it appeared to be inspired by a combination of NewsCorp and fringe US websites. There was some internal debate about how we should handle the hundreds of negative comments. For a while we left them on there only deleting the prolific use of foul language and obscene imagery, in order that these people be visible in their risibility.

However it became clear that they were attracting each other to our post'like flies to a cowpat, so we took to deleting and banning them permanently from our page. Rather like a virus it became apparent that the groups of people infecting our Facebook post were themselves suffering a memic contagion of conspiracy theories derived from overseas sources.

Fundamentally I believe that people who hold views that are blatantly anti-science and common sense and motivated by anger and disenfranchisement are probably never going to invest any part of their lives in good music and cinema.

The people who I meet who love music and the art that is good cinema are universally compassionate, intelligent, and tolerant. As such they have a built in immunity to the spread of disinformation and divisiveness. That's why I love our customers ...

The Pole House is a distinctive part of the landscape on the Great Ocean Road here in Victoria. One of Australia's smartest people bought it when it finally came up for sale by the original pylon engineer who had built it initially in the 1960s. Like many people who actually do something really useful for society this gentleman is incredibly modest and unassuming but has an unbridled love for good music and video.

We were called in at the early stages to conceptualise and iterate the audio visual systems and automation. Peculiar to this residence is the fact that the Pole House itself is available for lease to holidaymakers and needs to be able to operate both independantly and contiguously with the new primary residence that has been constructed on the hillside behind it.

Additionally the Audio Visual had to be of a standard that was up to the demands of one of Australia's most discerning audiophiles and the automation had to be up to the requirements of a T1- T4 type paraplegiac. The home systems are operated via Control4, this automation product that Carlton Audio Visual has been purveying and installing since 2004 is now Australia's leading home integration system for combining all of your lighting, AV control, HVAC and other functions with elegance and simple accesability.

The project was very nearly derailed in its early stages by what can only be described as vindictive and vexatious litigation by local political forces who tried to claim that the run down fibro bungalow on the concrete pole was worthy of architectural heritage listing. Fortunately reason prevailed, however at great stress, delay, and needless expense to the new owners, and they were able to create something absolutely beautiful.

If you ever have the opportunity to go to Fairhaven and stay at the Pole House you must take it. It is one of the worlds unique residential experiences.

We all have that seminal piece of music that strikes us at a certain age and stays with us forever as part of the epiphany of adulthood.

Sure I went through playing Black Sabbath at max volume when I was 14 … but that music never really stuck, it was a glandular experience rather than an education.

For me that piece of music had to wait until 19 years of age in my second year at university … along with a number of other significant life experiences …

Al Stewart’s album Past Present and Future was an accidental purchase that introduced my friends and myself to Nostrodamus and his multifarious predictions.

However the track that completely struck me was the musical story of a soldier in Stalin’s army as the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. It is actually derived from the experiences of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and is relatively epic eight minutes long piece of intricate acoustic guitar work interspersed with dynamic crescendos of great weight and presence.

I loved it … not only for it's music, but also it's visual narrative and the insight into the Great Patriotic War that it provided. This was an aspect of WWII that was not taught in English schools in the seventies, we all knew Winston Churchill beat Hitler in the skies over Kent and on the beaches of Normandy … however Russians have a quite different understanding of who won the war in Europe.

That piece of vinyl was played to death for three years, and not on classy equipment. It was transported irreverently with its playback device tied to the back of a BSA motorcycle even more primitive than the HMV Model 2025 semi portable Stereogram. The speakers would attach to the top and the whole thing would become a suitcase that never actually broke down and saw hundreds of dark smokey evenings ... unlike the BSA C15 that broke down continually and usually caused dark smokey evenings as yet another set of piston rings worked their way to an inevitable seizure

Post Uni the record was committed to cassette tape and put in storage in an attic when I left the UK. It finally followed me to Australia in a metal trunk when my father passed away and the attic was cleared out.

In my own small personal universe rediscovering this particular piece of vinyl is akin to getting hold of the gold record on Pioneer 10 which left Earth at about the same time.

This ancient piece of plastic … sounds fantastic.

Decades later I’m playing it on a Rega Planar 9 with an Ortofon 2M Black. I know it was abused by the chisel-like sapphire styli on the BSR ceramic cartridge and oft treated like a piece of kitchen ware by my friends and housemates. However there is none of the anticipated surface noise or worn groove distortion. The music simply fills the room with a sense of intimacy with this most considered of Al Stewart’s performances. There are few things that actually get better with age but this property of a 21st century record player to recover the raw performance of the music from so far away in time is unmatched by the world of digital in my experience.

I would have found it inconceivable in the seventies that such a wealth of musical information would be retained within the microscopic grooves of this record to be replayed so cleanly and dynamically in 2013.

Meanwhile in Moscow … they love hi-fi in the post Soviet economy, this one town is actually the largest market for several of our best known brands of European audio and is vying with Berlin to be the consumer electronics capital of the continent. The generation that had viewed the world through the hatch of a T34 has passed on and the new Russians are just getting into gear. My bet is that in the next ten years we will purveying good hi-fi with Cyrillic writing on it …

And here is "Roads to Moscow" by Songfacts with video.

Sadly in the last seven plus years since I firts posted wrote this article the only tech that Mother Russia seems to be interesting in exporting is weapons and hacking ... 

I these days have a Rega Planar 10 with Atheta Cartridge to play back the old album on ... and for very special days there is the Acoustic Signature Ascona Mk2 Turntable with Van Den Hul Stradivari Crimson cartridge, omigod it's good.

The record is held in veneration along with a number of other survivors of my misspent youth ... oddly they have survived generally better than the Cd's I bought during my misspent forties. 

Although we have had fully matured baby boomers in tears in the shop after hearing how good vinyl sounds ten years after they gave away their record collection in the nineties with the full advent of compact disc.

The best tears are very special. they happen when you just get that combination of kit, mood, and music right in a demo and the potential client becomes lachrymose.

I remember my first time I made someone cry. We played her Gershwin though a pair of Mordaunt Short MS300 loudspeakers and a Rega turntable. I was actually incredibly worried that I had done something terribly wrong and had incurred a minor psychotic episode or that she was having something awful happen in her life outside of my small interaction.

It transpired that she was simply moved sufficiently by the music that it led to an immediate and direct emotional response. They weren't tears of joy exactly but they certainly weren't conventional sadness.

We became good friends after that. There is a special sensitivity of a person who can shed tears appropriately.

Good music has a fundamental relationship with our humanity. It seems likely that before there was complex language there was rhythm and soul. Music combined with narrative and emotional events always spells a significant piece of our lives. For a healthy human a piece of music is an effective form of time travel more accessible than a Tardis.

I have a problem with streaming ... all the sound appears to be there, there is frequency and bandwidth and tonality and timbre and octave separation etc etc. But it doesn't seem to be able to make our clients cry ...

I continually harangue my millennial colleagues not to put the tablet with Tidal or Deezer in the prospective clients hand but to please play them an appropriate CD or LP. not because I can measure the difference in sound but because I can measure the difference in sales. To make a sale we have to be able to find that emotional G Spot that makes the client fall in love with the kit.

When the first iPods appeared and people were bringing them in to audition prospective kit we found it was terrible for sales. The iPods tended to bring all the good kit down to the lowest common demoninator and simply werent able to engage the clients emotionally to bring them across the line for buying good Hi Fi to play them through. The iPod made everything feel the same, and boring. They lacked the soul.

There was a later period during the ascendancy of online music when we were selling several D to A Converters a day. These were being purchased by explorers of the new streaming and download formats as part of their process of embedding the new access to music in their listening habitue.

For a brief while the NAD M51 was king claiming 392 Khz decoding for $999.  Cambridge Audio and Bryston all made hay in the marketplace of our small shop at the same time. PS Audio introduced the Directstream in its first version which to this day remains one of the accomplished DACs .

The trouble is that most of these clients kept coming back for more devices related to the new music. Streamers, digital transports, software upgrades, cables, circuit boards, subscriptions to new servers, USB transports and LAN devices. A whole new product category was being created, unfortunately some of it was suffering a very short lifespan.

It became apparent that the promise of sunlit uplands of musical satisfaction at home for this most critical of consumers who were making these choices was not being fullfilled by the new post CD digital realms. Not only was there this intrinsic dissatisfaction but there was also the continual imposition of new formats and hardware required to access it beyond the basic level of such as Sonos.

At this time people stated returning to the store and being played records ... we had our perrenial Rega Planar 3 on display and were discovering the pleasure and pain of dealing with the awesome Michell Gyrodec. This was the time when many a grown man would cry ... alas not just from the inspiration of the music but often from the realisation that the old records he had given away were actually an important part of his life story.

Now we have a situation where nearly every system we sell includes a turntable as the primary source. Without any apparent marketing intervention by the hungry tier one crocodile brands vinyl has selfsumed it's way to the primary source for a new High Fidelity system in a home. 

No doubt there is a fashion driven association with this rebirth but in essence we have always found the most compelling arguement for vinyl has simply been how much people like the music when we play it to them in that format.

A couple of people whose thoughts I respect most in the world have written and lectured eloquently on the connection of music with our humanity. One is Ivor Tiefenbraun the founder of Linn and the man responsible for the iconic LP12. Ivor connects the very first pre-cambrian organisms as found in the remarquable Burgess shale deposits with the evolution of the notochord, and the contemporary ability of birds to sing and humans to express complex concept,s together with the omnipresent sense of rhythm and mathematics of which our universe is made.

Then there is our dearly and sadly departed Terry Pratchett and his book from the Discworld series "Soul Music". Even if you have never read any other Pratchett ... and your life is a slightly grimmer and more miserable event if you haven't ... then please read Soul Music for it's insight into how there is a tune that all life dances to. 

So if you come in to Carlton Audio Visual for a demonstration and we try and make you cry ... don't worry ... it's not the intrinsic sadism of a Harvey's style commission salesperson, it's the empathy of the musician audiophile finding common ground in humanity.

Thirty six suburbs are in lockdown to the North and West of us. Look it's quite a gentle process. The army isn't threatening to shoot people of they cross the street between West and East Brunswick. No more Zombies are stalking the streets of South Carlton other than the usual array of souls lost to addiction and homelessness. We are still doing tech work in all suburbs and are equipped with PPE and alcohol and have the health Nazi management of Cameron and Angela to keep us in line.

However it has been it has been a unique three months. Wev'e had fires floods and riots and literally hundreds of minor acts of thefts and violence around our business here in Carlton but none of them have affected the local landscape as much as this.

Lygon St has been devastated as a commercial strip by the Covid crisis. Many restaurants and cafes have been put over the brink by their forced closure and the premises are now vacant with for lease signs. In fact I am minded of the streets of South east London in the eighties depression when I left the UK, fortunately we haven’t had the National Front marching the streets like Camberwell and Peckham had … yet.

We kept trading in a reduced fashion through the lockdown. The Custom Install side of the business kept going and otherwise my colleagues were working from home or taking holidays that were due. We are slightly reduced but haven’t lost any staff I’m pleased to say. Some suppliers and clients were very supportive and really helped us through … thanks guys.

With the ascending numbers of cases in Victoria we are now likely to go back to full lockdown procedures this week. The weekend has seen Lygon St bars and clubs open again with people clustering in the park opposite the shop at 2am on Sunday morning. We are back to watching the score on www.covid19data.com.au and hoping that we wont be visited by Mr Corona.

Generically bookshelf speakers are those medium sized transducers between 20 and 40 cm high that are designed generally to be mounted with their tweeters at ear level.

There is an optimum size of loudspeaker where the various parameters of efficiency, frequency response, bass performance, cabinet neutrality, peak sound pressure level meet.

There are other more subjective less easily quantifiable facets of loudspeaker performance often referred to in critical reviews as characteristics such as “brightness” “imageing quality” “richness” “speed” “depth” “detail” “air” ... that are all linked to the raw design parameters of the speaker.

Speakers using cone and dome moving coil technology cannot be below a certain size without one of the basic performance characteristics being compromised. Typically that would be the sensitivity and the bass response.

There have been examples of extremely small loudspeakers unsupplemented by subwoofers that still perform very well up to a point. Proac Tablettes or Celestion SL6 come to mind. These were expensive designs that gave a good semblance of bass however they brutally compromised the efficiency and reactive load characteristics... meaning that they needed massive power amplifiers to drive and even then they were not capable of a very high Sound Pressure Level.

Unsurprisingly it is the Brits that first made mass market small form factor speakers a workable reality. Wharfedale with the Diamond and Mordaunt Short with the MS10 produced ultra compact 20 x 25 x 25cm boxes that made a semblance of real bass and were driveable by the new crop of high current output stage amplifiers of the eighties.

I sold the Mordaunt Short MS10 in particular and it was a lot of fun ... however the reality was it was quite inefficient and ran out of bass depth rapidly with higher SPL. The somewhat unscrupulous retail chain I worked for at the time made great mileage of the Mordaunt Shorts rated power of 300 watts courtesy of their Positec electrochemical clipping protection.

Do I need to say that power is the least relevant specification of a loudspeaker? Probably...

The way you will damage your loudspeaker is not with too much power. It is nearly always a clipped waveform from an overdriven amplifier that will cause damage to the voice coil of a speaker drive unit. In other words you are more likely to damage your speakers with a small amplifier being driven hard than with a large amplifier being driven gently.

The greatest gains in volume ... aka peak undistorted sound pressure level ... do not come about by using a very high powered amplifier, but rather through selecting speakers that are appropriately efficient for your intended use. A 3db difference in spl is subjectively double the volume, to achieve a 3db gain through wattage one needs ten times the power. It is a logarithmic relationship between power and volume.

There is a reason why we have so many speakers of the bookshelf category at Carlton Audio Visual, in fact I know visiting us for the first time can be a bemusing experience for the uninitiated the first time. I recall retailers with different purveyance philosophies visiting us and expostulating loudly at our range of loudspeakers ( I note sadly that we are still here and they are long dissolved)

Number one reason is that we love them.

These bookshelf speakers are so diverse and represent some of the best of design, style, and sonic accomplishments for the money being asked.

Number two is that the relevant technologies of drive units, materials, and cabinet design meet in a box that’s about thirty to thirty five centimetres high and twenty five wide and thirty deep with a two way drive unit configuration ...

This is not quite fashionable, fashion in speakers, aka “Lifestyle product” would usually entail either something spectacularly slim a la Bang and Olufsen or something small and plastic supplemented by a subwoofer a la Bose.

Neither of those physical extremes is functionally the best for making a good loudspeaker that actually performs well for all types of music.

In fact these designs where form has overridden function often have to be electronically equalised and processed to make them even partially sonically acceptable.

So the result of this for Carlton Audio Visual is that we sell bookshelf speakers from $300 through to $30,000 with a huge brand diversity.

So here’s a few of our current fanatics choice of bookshelf speakers:

 Q Acoustic 3010i .. $449

almost a Mordaunt short MS10 but with thirty years of development.

The Monitor Audio Bronze 2 … $590

An outstandingly versatile all-rounder. For many people this is all the loudspeaker you will ever need … which for us as a purveyor is disappointing as we would really like you to buy something more expensive from us…

These have been our budget mainstay since 2015 and the new version is coming soon , it had better be good.

Dynaudio Emit 10 $999

The entry point Dynaudio loudspeaker that manages to encapsulate all the Dyne virtues of tonal neutrality and cohesive presentation. It is unnaturally cheap for a Dynaudio as the distributor desperately keeps it to the magic $999 price point.

Legend Joey $1199

A beautifully voiced and ridiculously solid speaker made by the Australian Maestro designer Dr Rod Crawford.

Krix Acoustix  $1395

D’Appolito configuration two way that is an Australian made and designed product that is good at almost everything. Particularly good at genuine bookshelf positioning surrounded by a library …

Acoustic Energy AE500 $2499

Uses its small footprint to generate a huge holographic while conveying a sense of scale that is remarquable.

PMC Twenty5.22 $3995

Made by hand in Luton but much better than a Vauxhall ever was. This transmission line parallelogram is an end run for many audiophile seekers of musical truth.

Klipsch Heresy $5599

A throwback from 1947 but still a thing … and ok it’s not quite a bookshelf speaker but it’s not quite a floorstanding speaker either. What it is though is a fully horn loaded three way with 99db sensitivity. These rock like a fresh baby boomer back from the Eighth Airforce setting up home in middle America …

Dynaudio Confidence 20 $17,995

This is perfect … possibly the most technically accurate moving coil loudspeaker you can procure.

Sonus faber Guarneri Tradition $21,999

A loudspeaker physically so beautiful that it would be enough to have them disconnected as a work of static art. When you play music through them from an Audio Research system its enough to make one think of leaving your job and family just to own a pair …

In a very real sense our own small business in Carlton was founded upon the existence of this product category. In 1990 when we opened the king of the hill in Hi Fi retail was the Yamaha AV receiver and this was part of our intended foundation when we wrote the business plan. Pro Logic was the word and Top Gun was the demo.

My children were at primary school at the time and when they were left to sit in the shop after school the laser disc of Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer on repeat was the perpetual indoctrinative background. To this day every word and nuance of that movies remains traumatically imprinted in their psyches.

As is not unusual in the course of small business the Yamaha component of our plan failed to come together but the Knight in shining armour for us was the Denon AVR2000:

This had main amplification quality that was immediately audibly superior to the other brands of AVR on the market at the time and actually had demonstrably good decoding of a cinema sound track of the day. The standard of pro logic to be clear was restricted bandwidth mono rear channel and centre channel of 15 watts …

There are many surround systems out there in Melbourne still being faithfully powered by these early Denon cinema amplifiers … but then came Dolby digital and then HDMI …

Herein lies the problem. Buying a good Hi Fi should be akin to buying a musical instrument, something you can buy carefully and then keep for many years of ownership satisfaction. However the advent of competing audio encodation formats and then rapidly changing HDMI hardware protocols led to an enforced obsolescence in surround sound amplifiers that has killed residual values and ultimately perhaps caused consumers to mistrust them as a product category.

There is a lot of stuff inside a surround amplifier. They have output stages for multiple channels of speakers, preamplification for analogue and digital inputs, video switching and processing circuitry in multiple formats, Digital to analogue conversion circuitry, and power supplies that can accommodate all these circuitry demands.

To retain quality in audio and video reproduction electronic secularity is a requirement. The aforesaid first generation Denon AVR2000 offered internal shielding between its operational sections so as to prevent cointerference and crosstalk.

To make current models of surround receiver affordable and competitive there has been a steady degradation of internal engineering quality alongside an inflation of brochured specifications.

So you can now buy a $399 Theatre Receiver that claims 150 watts per channel across seven speakers. Sadly if you lift the lid you are likely to find a single chip output stage with a fan on it to stop it self-destructing and that the power output is the Peak Music Power fantasy of the brands advertising agency … to my knowledge no company has ever been pulled up before advertising standards for making inflated numerical claims of their audio products power output. In fact you will find better quality in a 1970s Ghetto Blaster than in some sub $1000 Home Cinema receivers. Thus an entry point surround amplifier has a typical domestic churn of four to five years, which is also the target churn rate of most contemporary Television manufacturers. This four year period of ownership is perhaps the realistic minimum that consumer electronics manufacturers can expect to attain from consumers before they … give up buying things entirely …

It makes it difficult for the quality surround products available to keep their heads above the marketplace swamp. Denon remains the king of overbuilt amplifiers for Home Cinema and their flagship is the thirteen channel AVC8500:

This is classic secular internal design with the thirteen visibly discrete channels attached to a high quality alloy heatsink and a shielded EL transformer isolated as much as possible in the centre of the unit. This is how far one has to go to retain the quality and remain relevant in a potential customers home for as long as possible … unless you go to the next level and are able to purchase separate pre and power amplifiers.

The Denon 8500 retails at $6199 and is therefore not a casual purchase … typically it would be acquired by an enthusiast with a dedicated room who has already had lesser surround amplifiers and is looking at settling in with a carefully researched and embedded cinema system.

https://www.carltonaudiovisual.com.au/denon-avc-x8500-thirteen-channel-flagship-surround-amplifier-a-very-long-affair.html

So should you buy a surround amplifier? There was a period pre peak-vinyl where people were only buying surround amplifiers as the mass market wisdom was that you would use this for all reproduction purposes in the home. The result was that people were looking for a surround system when they only wanted to play stereo music. Basically the format was being drastically oversold, as a specialist store it was our mission to convert these potential buyers to good stereo kit.

For comparison with the state of art Denon AVCX8500H internals here is an equivalently priced roughly Marantz stereo amplifier the PM14Ki:

So instead of thirteen channels of amplification with layers of PCBs carrying the different functionalities this has two really good channels and very high quality low noise analogue circuitry in the two shielded copper rectangles either side of the toroidal power supply.

This Marantz stereo amplifier is a fundamentally ageless bit of kit. The raw physics of quality high fidelity mean that it will still be relevant in thirty years time (barring the apocalypse of course).

The price of this technical volatility and overselling of surround amplifiers is their market share. Consumers who would otherwise be happy to have a decent bit of Hi fi surround in their home have been abandoning the entire concept and buying Soundbars in droves. We expect 20 million Soundbars to be sold in 2020 with $3.8 billion in consequent revenue. AV Receivers will be down to 2.5 million continuing down from for example 3 million in 2015. FYI the real growth in this CE industry in the last five years has been Wi Fi loudspeakers … from 7 million in 2015 to 54 million in 2020 …

In Carlton Audio Visual we have seen our AV Receiver inventory basically start with Denon and Marantz in the nineties and then become profuse during the noughties and has now gone back to our roots with Denon and Marantz with a couple of single unit Anthem and Rotel niche products.

Between them Denon and Marantz now sell 35% of the world’s AV Receivers and in fact they are both owned by the same holding company being Sound United. Interestingly Sound United nearly just bought Pioneer and Onkyo … possibly as a catch and kill type manoeuvre … These AV Receiver  products have in reality now become an Audiophile niche and therefore remain really appropriate for a business like ours.

So forget the sub $1000 stuff, musically unsatisfactory and doomed to be in the bin in five years time …

The best devices just now in my opinion:

Right now the Marantz SR5013 at around $1500 go-price has excellent internal quality … it’s good at music with a decent phono stage and has excellent Heos streaming built in:

https://www.carltonaudiovisual.com.au/home-theatre/surround-receivers/marantx-sr5013-7-2-channel-atmos-receiver.html

Now if you really want to have your cake and eat it then you can use the front channel pre out of this amplifier and hook it up to one of our favourite stereo amplifiers with a home theatre bypass. A Cyrus One or Rega Elicit comes to mind ...

https://www.carltonaudiovisual.com.au/rega-elicit-r.html

A Denon AVRX2600 or above is an excellent home entertainment music and video core. To fully utilise one of these set it up as a multi room multi zone streaming amplifier with extra Heos speakers around the home. This will leave a Sonos or other type of wireless speaker system dead in its tracks when it comes to potential audio quality and is a must-consider for a renovation or new build.

At the top of the single box Cinema Amplifier hill there is the Marantz SR8012 and the aforesaid Denon AVCX8500H. The Marantz wins on musicality while the Denon has its thirteen channel and tonal neutrality to commend it.

As ever those who can spend more end up saving money in the long run and getting better performance and the Marantz Preamplifier Processor AV8805 is my favourite. Stick this piece of awesome in a rack with a stack of power amplification and you have effectively stepped off the treadmill of obsolescence.

To complete the circle I am so very pleased that Top Gun II is being released next year ... the preview looks awesome. All I need now is some Grandchildren to inculcate in the 4K UHDR Atmos room and I think we will have put down a proper generational business succession plan.

StereoNet have written a piece after attending the public release of the premises:

Carlton Audio Visuals new high end mecca

This is the primary system of Aida 2 speakers with Audio Research Reference series electronics

We have the extremely rare Sonus faber SF16 system on display

The Audio Research electronics have ultimate provenance and cred within our industry

A Rega RP10 Turntable is there ... this has the uncannily machined ceramic platter

Sonny the Papillon is our store mascot and companion and can hear to 40 KHz 

The full Sonus faber Homage series is on demonstration

There are occasional gramaphones around ... this one is actually a fake ... as featured in the recent Meerkats TV ad

The wiring is all no compromise Chord Sarum

Real mantelpieces are a delight

A few of the guests for the first public release

The Aida 2 loudspeakers are things of enormous sculptural beauty

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We also have the Sonus faber Il Cremonese on demonstration

This father and son Familari are living icons of the Melbourne high fidelity scene, we are very proud to have Nick working with us

Photos courtesy of Marc Rushton of Stereonet.

This is very much high end audio without the obvious design eccentricity that characterises so much of that field. In that mischevious tend of the high end there often lies the seed of it's own undoing. There is nothing so unfortunate to a buyers experience of a product that is musically gorgeous and aesthetically pleasing if it turns out to be buggy and unreliable and hard to service.

The Yamaha 5000 series might appear to be retro but in fact it has retained the absolute practicality of the seventies and eighties and is using that as a vessel to make one of the most carefully crafted combinations of high fidelity kit available.

It is a testament to the Lexus like virtues of this 5000 series that we have had buyers who are coming from more expensive and esoteric product with which they have had a gamut of tech issues to purchase this as a blessed relief.

There is a prize for a fortunate person if you visit our room ... an actual first run GT5000 Turntable worth $12,995 ... come to us to get an entry card.

This is probably the first PL10 on display in a store in Australia. It is gorgeous. Less is more for Rega, less noise, less vibration, less play in the bearings, less mass to store harmful resonance energy, and less ownership dissatisfaction ...

This is the new very top of the range of Dynaudio now coming online for demonstration at Carlton Audio Visual. They are the very best engineered speakers that this Danish icon has yet made. Yes the Confidence 60's are better than the Evidence and Consequence ...

Incidentally the microphones are Bruell & Kjaer worth 1000 Euros each except for the middle one that is worth 2000 Euros ...

Everything in this facility is custom built, they use Matlab analysis software for mid and treble and Kippel for below 80Hz. The chamber is deliberately not entirely anechoic so that certain frequencies are damped to emulate a real world listening environment.

Roland can literally talk all day about bass drivers .... this one he is holding shows the classic cast basket construction with the domed inner radius that are the hallmarks of Dyne bass driver design. These days the cones are manufatured from a unique magnesium silicate compound that has the most precisely governed thickness and rigidity. Interestingly Roland showed us what happens to a Kevlar drive unit from a competitor product under load and the damn thing just folded when driven hard ....

The car drive units are considered the best ICE drivers available. There was a lot of places in the factory ,,, in fact most ... where photography was not allowed as a large part of their drive unit business is supplying speakers to German car manufacturers who specifically forbid any pictorial information to be disseminated that might give away production techniques to competitors. 

Note the three metal 0.25mm thick triangulation rods that are part of the voice coil clearance setting in these drive units under construction. Dynaudio claim that they are able to acheive half the clearance of competitor drive unit designs through their painstaking production techniques.

The painstaking attention to precision and detail is evident everywhere in the factory, everything is clean and people are unhurried and ... extremely careful .... Roland is holding a classic Dynaudio Esotar tweeter, long considered to be the best moving coil tweeter available. The new Confidence range has a high frequency driver that exceeds the performance of this iconic transducer.

These are the previous high end of the range being the Evidence and Consequence. The Consequence is notable for its excessive use of Drive Units and its appalling 82db sensitivity. The new Confidence range is said to be substantially better than either of these. 

The new Confidence range below is what I was there to try; they are of superlative construction with unmatched clarity of reproduction. Dynaudio have a motto of authentic fidelity that these epitomise.

This will not be an inexpensive range of loudspeakers, however the technical proficiency that is on offer here is unmatched by any other transducer manufacturer. Dynaudio claim we will be getting better than Evidence level performance from a loudspeaker that is forty per cent less expensive.

Roland is holding the front baffle moulding of a Confidence 50 that is exquisitely shaped for optimum dispersion characteristics. This is a loudspeaker that must meet the standards of those most analytical and discerning clients who might otherwise buy a B&W or Magico and still be beautiful visually enough to pass the partner aesthetic sensibility exam. 

Dynaudio are a no compromise business and are going to be here for a very long time. I came away away from the visit absolutely impressed by their clarity of direction. It is one of those places where one could imagine it would be nice to work at on the production line or in their admin department. It is so very far removed from some of the Dark satanic mills that I have seen making loudspeakers in China or engines of aristocratic proletariat exploitation of the eighties UK industry. These are nice people with purpose and vision, they have come a long way since the Vikings it seems ...

Help me Rhonda ,,, these are good projectors ...

We have been hovering around this brand for a few years … they have always been the fringe solution for us in the past rather than the go to recommendation for a Home Theatre client,

They were prolific but perhaps a bit confusing and frankly the name connotations made them suspect … I mean BenQ  … like what sort of nouveau Asian Invasion Brand is that anyway … what is this pretentious usurper into our Sony and Sim2 landscape?

So I got taken away to Sydney a little while ago and locked into a dark room where I was made to see the error of my ways …

It turns out that BenQ is an Acronym where this Taiwanese high tech conglomerate is trying to sound all friendly and family … oh god our industry is so riddled with them. This is rather an odd one though:

Bringing enjoyment ‘n Quality to L.i.f.e … (the L.I.F.E is a silent acronym … Living better.  Increasing efficiency. Feeling healthier. Enhancing learning …)

I guess this is how a country like Taiwan that so straddles the worlds cultures develops its own culture ....

It transpires as well that BenQ are enormous in the world of projectors. For 10 years they have been the number one maker of DLP projectors in the world and are by far the largest supplier of 4K projectors in the Asia Pacific region with 34% of total supplied in 2018.

It turns out as well that they have a quite remarkable litany of media awards in this category from the critical industry and enthusiast publications.

So although they are a market leader in DLP 4K tech this new range of projectors for the home theatre enthusiast is really about the quality of their products colour rendition. To this they have trademarked “Cinematic Color” with the addition of Long Lasting as a dig against the relative half-life performance of DLP and LCD projectors.

While in the Sydney dark room I was plentifully bombarded with endorsements for BenQ from Filmmakers in the local industry scene. Jake Pollack was on hand to express his cinematographic delight at using BenQ for his production.

This facility for these new Ht projectors is based around their colour gamut reproduction capabilities with W5700 being entirely DCI-P3 compliant to enable proper UHDR compatibility. This is 25% improved on the prevailing Rec709 specification.

This all getting very acronymic I’m afraid but the W5700 supports the high dynamic range (HDR) content designed both for Blu Ray and the Live Broadcast HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma) that has been developed by the BBC and NHK. You will see this on the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games for example.

Mainstream HLG content is coming from YouTube, BBC iPlayer, and DirecTV amongst others.

The BenQ W5700 is the main thrust of their new theatre range. At $4000 its right in the heart of the price point for a high quality middle Australia home theatre set up.

Physically the W5700 is in the black rectangle with in vent and out vent central lens configuration that was first promulgated by the original triangular Sharp Z90 projector in the early noughties. This form factor is shared by most of the serious HT projectors now because … it works …

A couple of nice points … the finish is a cinematic matt black deliberately designed for low reflectivity in a screen environment. There is a protruding lip one the lens edge like a 1960’s Holden headlight that is very simply and cleverly there to catch dust that would otherwise gather on the lens when ceiling mounted.

The lensing is cool… there is a lot of plastic around on the market at this price range. The W5700 is a six group, eleven element glass array mounted in a metal barrel manufactured with extreme precision and coated with an optical low dispersion material. You don’t get a sharp long lasting picture without this basic piece of good optical technology that is often the last thing that the sales blurb on projectors talks about at this market level.

Another minor piece of ante upmanship on the W5700 is the use of a dynamic iris that can auto optimise the image via content detection for high brightness or high contrast performance.

Like it’s competitors from Sony and particularly the Epson this BenQ has very reasonable setup flexibility that make this generation of projectors a joy to install in comparison with erstwhile designs. It tends to the long throw situation for a dedicated room with the projector mounted at the back of the cinema space out of sight line of the users.

As a final point on the W5700 each one is ISF calibrated for exact out of the box colour reference.

The w2700 is the entry point 4K DLP model with a sell price of $2499. This designed as an upgrade for the enormously successful W1700 1080P model and as such is rather targeted at those more compact households where they would be inclined to pull out the projector for a special film night, sit it on a table and put a sport event or special movie or … very much its heart and soul … a video game …

This retains 95% of the DCI-P3 specification and is a very bright running machine. It doesn’t have that ultimate fierce clarity that the W5700 possesses but is very easy to set up. A shorter throw device than the W5700 it still has a glass lens array rather than the plastic of its contemporaries. Befitting its potential tabletop application the 2700 has speakers and the ability to play USB files, a very nice touch when you look at it closely is the half lens cover that prevents light reflection issues from a table top or near ceiling installation.

The USB port by the way is 3.0 spec with full range media capabilities and also serves as a firmware upgrade.

It turns out that Rising Sun Pictures who are the Australian CGI producers for much of the Marvel Comics type movies and are completely nuts about their colour and definition requirements for displays have actually chosen BenQs as being the best performing projectors for client show and tells and in their editing rooms.

They actually use W2700’s in their review rooms connected to Linux and Mac workstations. Apparently and unsurprisingly for this type of work there is a whole lot of gaming done in downtime along with 4K Netflix Streaming that the little W2700s also get fully worked on. The W2700 comes factory calibarated to Rec709 colour space and closely matches the Visual FX colour output calibration requirements.

They played us a piece of Alitia Battle Angel in 4K HDR … I can’t wait to see this movie.

The last one of this new trio of home cinema devices is the fabulous XVZ12000H

This is a hallmark projector … not cheap at $10K but it is cheap in comparison to devices that may have preceded it with this level of performance and utility and longevity.

So the 12000 is LED based rather than powered by a halogen globe. This not only gives magnificent dynamic range and colour purity but means that there is no globe replacement, the device runs vastly cooler and quieter, the luminosity half life issues and ongoing linear degradation of the globe based products are completely obviated. Allied to the DLP technology that remains the industry standard for longevity and durability this projector represents a big step off the conventional treadmill of obsolescence and limited product life that plague much of this product category.

The 12000 is not for the those who don’t appreciate the value of a good cinema, however if you have already owned a projector and are ready for the next level you really need to come and have a go on this THX specification Cinema device.

Suffice to say we liked it so much that we were able to replace another product that retailed at over twice its price in our store demonstration line up.

This range is completely re-engineered and essentially gets into that territory hitherto occupied by the Platinum range. The micro pleated diaphragm tweeter is just exceptional, it is essentially amongst the lowest mass high frequenct transducers made and as such is capable of reproducing the air and space of a recorded performance with rather breathtaking exactitude.

We now have the full range on demonstration ... if you love a Stradivari violin being played then you really need to try these ... 

I would put a pair of good loudspeakers on the podium of consumerism above the ownership of a car, house, or kitchen.

There are few things in life that one can procure that will give such genuine pleasure for such a long period of time.

In the west we tend to obsess over our motor cars. Lygon St at times seems to be inhabited by a veritable parade of German and Italian luxury vehicles. I really wonder at the user satisfaction after the initial acquisitional honeymoon glow has worn off.

Cars are intrinsically functional devices that mostly take us on our daily grind. A Ferrari in a traffic jam is just a hot cramped and expensive way to be late for work.

In fact a good set of speakers in your car is a great way of mitigating the caged stress and boredom of your urban driving experience. 

My normal riposte when I show a novitiate potential customer a pair of loudspeakers worth tens of thousands dollars and they say “you can buy a car for that!” is to point out the sheer long term boredom, frustration, financial loss, and planetry burden of the normal car ownership experience.

By contrast a good set of speakers will make you feel good every time you see them in your room and even better when you play music through them.

People generally go through an evolution of loudspeakers. Typically their first pair may be a large boxy bassy thing that plays loud without finesse but is useful fuel for parties and general carousing. Traditionally this would have entailed a lot of AC/DC and a pair of house brand speakers with go louder fins from a chain store. Think the “Dominator X1” from the movie Ruthless People.

 This may be followed as they move out of their shared accommodation or parent’s house into a steady relationship with a pair of good quality bookshelf speakers that are more refined with good fidelity and imaging and may have been purchased carefully through audition from a specialist Hi Fi business.

Speakers like these are our bread and butter and they often have a client life cycle of decades. You might think that is a bit of a downer for repeat business if a client doesn’t need to replace their product for thirty years, however at least in Melbourne we have found that there have been more ladders rather than snakes in the Rakes progress of the urban Hi Fi and music fan.

 If the aforesaid consumer is lucky enough to pass through young children and a mortgage with some life and funding to spare, they often come back to us for the third stage of loudspeaker acquisition. This is the good one. This is where they are looking to get the loudspeaker that is up to the task of encompassing all of their life track musical experiences and potentially being their main entertainment partner for the rest of their time on this earth.

 By this time in this hypothetical individual’s life their music will not simply be something they have on in the background while waiting for the next episode of “Days Of Our Lives”. Their music will be diverse and will certainly be embedded in their persona in a number of significant ways; let’s be very clear here, music is much of our past, present, and future.

When that significant other dumped you as a teenager it will be hearing that music of the day that prompts the bittersweet schadenfreude time travel when you are older. The foreign trip, the friends you knew, the successes and the failures, the loves you have won and lost are encapsulated in the music you were listening to at the time and one can be returned to that experience, and most importantly the person you were then, by the stimulus of the music.

I will take the argument a bit further as to why you should be a third generation loudspeaker purchaser …

If your life is one of work and television without dedicated music time you are making a dreadful mistake. While work is the burden of civilisation Television has become the Orwellian nipple at which we suckle to feed us opinions and mercenary cultural idioms.

Once were Punks and Rockers and Sharpies and oh so many mayfly cults of youth inspired by a genre of music that not only predicated the fashion sense but also the relationships and general societal attitude of a generation of youth. Much of this has been degraded by the digital commoditisation of music making it actually harder for an artist to break the glass ceiling of fame with original content that carries a social message.

Rap and Trap music are a powerful force in the youth of the west it seems but alas any message of redemption it may once have carried in its mainstream seems to have been obscured by the hip of bling and cars and women as objects.

I hope I’m wrong by the way. I hope there are forces of music that have a qualitative improvement on the awareness of our youth in the same way as it had for Americans during the Vietnam war and Punk had for Britain in the Thatcherite era.

In Australia we have the wonderful institution of JJJ that bypasses government and commercial forces of censorship and control and feeds new music to our youth. As such it is unanimously hated by those Alt.right politicians who see it as undermining their own messages of simple ugly solutions to complex social issues.

And this is the point … Music makes us think. It has always been the friend of intellectuals and revolutionaries and the enemy of autocrats and despots. The more music you have in your life the more interesting a person you will become and the closer to your proper self you will become.

And lest we forget ... Music is about sex as well. Music has evolved in its own right as an important part of the human courtship ritual. It is part of our transition into adulthood and it is irrevocably entwined with our romantic lives.

And that’s why you need to get the third generation of loudspeakers in your life.  Not because your friends and neighbours will be impressed by your consumerism, not because it will make your home look like one of those in the glossy magazines. But because it will improve your emotional and intellectual life and make you a better person.

America is often thought of as being the home of mass production, it was actually Adam Smith of Scotland who introduced the concept of of specialisation and division of labour in order to better utilise the limited artisanship available in the 1770s.  Empowered by wars and the thirst of consumers for goods the factories spread across the landscape and the traditional artisans left their workshops and joined the lines.

In the Twentieth century the production lines of America became places where humans were fed to machines in an escalating feedback cycle of production and consumption that would eventually lead to the betrayal of the middle class, rust belt economies, and Donald Trump.

In a few rare places artisanship has survived. Where those exquisite products are made that push the boundaries of quality and longevity only hand manufacture will do.

Audio Research is one of the oldest High End stereo manufacturers, It was started in 1970 by a retailer William Johnson who, against the prevailing mass market wisdom of the time, was convinced that a high quality valve based amplifier product simply sounded more realistic than the transistorised solid state products that had taken over the marketplace during the 1960's.

There is a fine crop of his early designs on display in the factory, they are actually very valuable now and it may be hard for us to appreciate how Heretical Mr Johnson was seen as being in an environment where high wattage and low THD (total harmonic distortion) were being advertised as king.

The problem for the competition was that as soon as somebody actually listened to one of these early Audio Research hand made components, they were clearly superior and closer to the original music than any other type of amplifier available.

The simple truth that William Johnson was exploiting is that a good valve product offers an intrinsically minimal signal path that keeps the integrity of the source without processing or corrupting or deviding it. In the same way that a good violin is a thing of undisputed beauty whose form is dictated by its musical functionality, a good valve like the KT150s that Audio Research use in their latest amplifiers are things of physical and engineering beauty where art meets the music in the purest electronic form available. 

Audio Research is made entirely by hand from beginning to end with the aim of producing the best possible music. There are no solder-wave machines because the type of solder and it's manner of application is critical to the sound.

There are no surface mount devices because the circuit board itself is part of the Acoustic nature of the product. All the craftsmanship of the factory is concentrated into a single piece at a time that will take 7-10 days to make.

Each component is run for up to 48 hours and power cycled multiply upon completion and then individually tested in a purpose built room.

Every piece manufactured is individually auditioned by Warren. Warren is a physically slightly terrifying person who would make an effective stand in for Jason Momoa, his special power is a remarkable Acoustic memory and an innate sensitivity for the significant minutiae of music and audio.

In a previous life Warren worked on the Acoustic stealth properties of Trident nuclear submarines. (He really is Aquaman ...) His attention to detail in terms of the resonance occurring within a component under his development is outstanding. He is the literal ears of Audio Research and he attacks the chassis and components with tuning dots and constructional artifice to perfectly tune each model.

The listening room is fantastic and the formal process with which an assay of audio quality is carried out goes down to the last screw and nut of the component being tested. Some concern was expressed by the visiting Australian dealers that the process seemed so dependant on one man. What happens if he sickens or leaves? Apparently and unsurprisingly this small company of artisans has a remarkable staff retention rate and Warren is in unnaturally good health. 

By the way the cables are not just randomly arranged ... we all recognised the basic principles of the room, this is their brand new premises and the obssesive detail that pervades the audio quality of this brand was edified by the lengths they are going to in the room to make for a clean listening space free of resonant and electromagnetic corruptions.

Of course, all the capacitors are specifically made for AR and must pass through Warren before they are acceptable. He can actually hear the difference of whether there is print on the custom made caps which is why the critical big whites and golds are unmarked ...

Even the FETs are sometimes embedded in a silicon capsule when it will affect the sound. The degree of care and attention with which each and every part of an Audio Research component is designed, built, and listened to again and again with each minor alteration before it reaches the end user has to be seen to be believed. I dont thing there is another Audio manufacturer like this ... ever.

And then there are the valves, they are Russian Sovtek that are graded with extreme care and are grouped into particular values and tolerances. To make one Ref750SE requires no less than 300 valves to be sorted with a 48 hour burn in for each one. Greg is their valve guy in his fifties who has worked there since he left school and his whole job is valves and their qualatative parameters.

Every piece of Audio Research valve equipment ever manufactured can still be repaired and the company has a fabulous inventory of old parts to maintain this capability. In an era and product category where so much of what we purchase is essentially considered to be ultimately disposable this philosophy is more than reassuring. It also marks the ineffable agelessness of the raw design concepts used. 

It is worth noting the detail with which an old Audio Research component is treated when undergoing service. Each service item will be tested and then auditioned by Warren on completion.

The factory described two types of service client being the "obsessive" and the "neglectful". The former is someone who worries over a minor hiss or crackle or scratch and the latter is the one who comes in in a panic after fifteen years of ownership because it has stopped working ... "what you mean I have to put new valves in it sometimes?" ... in each case their Audio Research is their baby that they have a unique and lasting long term relationship with.

If you are fortunate enough to own an Audio Research Hi-Fi component you are joining that small club of of brands that includes Steinway Pianos and Purdy & Sons Shotguns. In the world of High Fidelity there is almost nothing else that is so carefully executed and yet so simple to live with.

So much good Hi Fi has come out of Britain.

Much of the Hi Fi that we know and love has actually been produced by that crop of young UK post WWII baby boomers that diverted from their predestined careers in science and industry and decided to venture into this business of music reproduction.

There are so many brand names that we in the small world of Hi Fi freakery know.

Audiolab, Arcam, Creek, Mission, Quad, Tannoy, Wharfedale, Cambridge, Castle, Linn, Musical Fidelity, Naim, Rega, Cyrus and many more.

There are a number of factors that helped these companies come into being. Generally they were founded by a technically creative individual with a great love of music and the entrepreneurship to be prepared to risk their livelihood and career in a manufacturing enterprise.

I think the British educational opportunity had a lot to do with it, in the era when people in the UK had grants to go to university and an excellent scientific and technical education was available to all it empowered those motivated by music and electronics to be able pursue their own path independent of the conventional institutions of employ.

Another side of the rise of the UK Hi Fi scene was a very active and engaged culture of journalism that created the critical review. “Which?” magazine started in the late fifties was the first critical advocacy publication that allowed the consumer to discover the truth of the products that hitherto they would have been reliant for information about through advertising.

This culture of passion induced manufacturing mettled by critical feedback created crops of products that were genuinely musical and individual.

While the American and Asian companies pursued the false values of wattage and THD the Brit manufacturers listened fanatically to both their products and their customers.

Then the eighties came with Thatcher and economic rationalism. For a while the Hi Fi companies put on corporate clothing and rebuilt themselves in shiny new factories in science parks. A new management class started wearing dark suits and driving black BMWs. By the late nineties the muck in together scene of tweed jackets and the blitz had been replaced by a triple tier of owners, techs, and workers comfortably segregated by tearooms and expense accounts.

When I started visiting these companies in the late nineties many of them were in the process of amalgamation or sale. The male owners and CEOs were driving me around as a foreign visitor in their black German cars boasting of their assets and mistresses.

The white coated technical designers were kept in their labs and would be allowed to talk to me carefully. Rows of shift workers would be on the small production lines. Whilst I stood close to them and watched their work I could feel the distance between them as units of labour and ourselves as a briefly privileged visitor.

This was how much things had changed in twenty years, no longer comrades in a venture, but workers, managers, and owners.

Predictably in the noughties these companies were then systematically betrayed by their owners. The assets, such as were left after being stripped out and turned into nice houses in the Home Counties, were duly packaged up and sent overseas to line the walls as trophies in Shenzen. The workers and managers were sent home to be retrained as Baristas and Uber Drivers in the new economy. By 2008 the British Hi Fi industry had completed its ritual disembowelment …

Except for a few oases of individuality that is .... 

We have very good reason to love our English Hi-Fi Brands that have survived Thatcher, New Labour, and post 2008 Austerity.

Rega, Cyrus, and PMC in particular have never sacrificed their UK Manufacturing base and their ideals of making the best possible music packaged into the most appealing and long lasting of engineered components.

These companies are typical of these survivors of rationalism with clear and self-determined private ownership committed to their customers and employees that have seen terrific growth in the last few years.

They have a new challenge now very near, the idiot sandwich of Brexit sponsored by people with no idea of its consequences and no plan of how to iterate it.

When I visited the UK last year and attended those same aforesaid factories of Rega, PMC, and Cyrus, it was obviously enough one of my leading questions.

To my surprise I was expecting doom and gloom, but actually found quite the opposite. The owners of these companies were either unfazed by it or looking forward to the freedom from EU trading restrictions. They saw the EU as being a cold dead hand of beauracracy that tended to prevent their own highly innovative and agile companies from gaining ground in external markets on the one hand while dragging them back to a common lower ground within the circumspects of EU regulation and protectionism on the other.

Like all good businessmen these companies see the opportunity rather than just the adversity.

I came away from my visits and interviews refreshed and assured that for those British companies that had survived “Greed is Good” of the Nineties and Austerity of the Noughties that making the most of Brexit would be walk in the park.

That is not to say they didnt see the negative ... one partner said "well we're fu..ed if we stay in and 90% fu..ed if we leave".

Phil from Rega has the view that the EU is less of an open skies trading partner but rather a cartel that forces countries to trade inwardly. From the vesicular viewpoint of Rega who sell 45,000 turntables around the world annually the EU has never been particularly benevolent, and as they source their materials locally they are not suffering the rise in external costs issue that is causing other UK manufacturers prices to rise.

Cyrus have been producing their unique electronics since 1983. Mike Payne their sales amd marketing Director is of the personal opinion that Brexit is clearly mad, but they have seen their own business radically improve in the new environment with a 180% rise in orders last year. Cyrus has a definite future with a particular musical signature and terrific loyalty from its customers.

PMC have also seen their business grow since Brexit was anounced with a 50% rise in business last year. Their business into Europe is 20% of their sales but they are seeing enormous growth in the USA. This company makes such a charismatric product so linked to the heart and soul of music and video through their monitoring background that I personally believe they will be immune to Article 50. 

Pictured below is a rather nice all-British combination ... A Rega Planar 3 Turntable with a Cyrus One HD Amplifier and a pair of PMC twenty5.22 Loudspeakers. It is wired with Chord cables and set upon an Atacama Hi Fi rack. 

However amongst that group that loves music and engaging with with the best way of reproducing it in their own homes (aka "Hi-Fi Freaks?") this is a preeminent brand. They may not spend a lot on advertising but while their design and engineering is more McLaren than Hyundai they are priced like the latter. 

Carlton Audio Visual has had the longest affiliation with Monitor Audio in Victoria and we can demonstrate the Silver Series with music and video in a way that will sometimes make a grown person cry. 

So often when I am discussing a potential acquisition of Hi Fi with someone instore and I am suggesting they might look at something better than their stated level of interest they come back with this as a rejoinder.

I can nearly always show them the difference in ten seconds or less.

Often the reason they are in denial is due to age or some kind of hearing related infirmity.

Oddly my actual experience is that people acquire increasing discrimination with age and experience.

Indeed we may respond less well to the classic audiometric hearing frequency sweep test, however there is a remarkable plasticity and adaptability that the brain possesses in processing audio signals that enables often even greater discrimination within what may well be a more restricted bandwidth of operation.

So even if the our conscious response to the rising frequency tone of a hearing test stops at 5KHz rather than a youthful 19KHz it transpires that the developed acuity within that bandwidth is actually greater than that of their younger self.

This came to a head recently for me when I had an old friend come in to assay UHD Blu Ray Players. Marc is of a certain age that he remembers V1s flying overhead in south East England when he was a child and has recently taken up a cruiser motorcycle as regular transport ...

As such he felt that he probably only needed the basic Oppo UDP203 and that the heavy duty audiophile Digital to Analogue conversion on the UDP205 would be wasted on him. (Warning, these fabulous Oppo Players are now a diminishing resource …)

It took him not even five seconds to hear the difference using his own USB recording of something daunting and classical.

Marc is a person of excessive self-analysis who also records concerts for fun (with the full permission and consent of the performers of course) and amongst other things has contributed a 96 page paper to the body of knowledge on hearing aid algorithms and music compression interactions.

Interestingly amongst the sometimes excessive technicalities of his topic the paper comments that 81% of the hearing aid using respondents in their approx median seventies age group said that sound quality of the music recording was extremely important to their experience.

I have a copy of the paper available for those who may be interested. It is a very detailed investigation of the effects of hearing aids and consequent qualitative factors of musical appreciation.

Now Marc is an example of someone who frankly knows too much and has been trained to analyse rather than simply enjoy …

In this sense he is representative of many High Fidelity customers who listen to the equipment rather than the music. The classic example being when we come across that person on their tenth upgrade who … only has five CDs …

Then there is the (usually male) “professional” Hi Fi purchaser who comes into the store with their partner (usually female) and is desperately searching for the differences in bass and treble response on a component with their approved test track whilst their listening “inexperienced” partner simply responds to the change with: “that’s much better, get that one”

Invariably after another two hours of patient listening and analysis by the pro listener, the novitiate partner will be proved to be right …

I suppose what I am fundamentally alluding to here is that there is a lot of our response to music that doesn’t lend itself to superficial analysis of an audio spectrum. The paper I referred to earlier took the approach of analysing the response of the listener to their experience rather than measuring an audio characteristic under the assumption that it was relevant to the listening experience.

Herein lies that fundamental fallacy in much of the marketing around audio and visual consumer products.

We are bombarded with a snake oil numerology of statistics that are brandished by the marketers as indicators of the superiority of their products. A few examples:

Wattage

Frequency response

Total Harmonic Distortion

Signal to noise ratio

Brightness

Contrast Ratio

Refresh Rate

None of these “specifications” relates to the actual listening / viewing experience by the consumer or if they are relevant the actual format and parameters of the measurement used are invariably inappropriately applied.

The other side of this coin is that there are pundits who claim that because they can’t measure a difference in a component then obviously any differences that people hear are illusory or an induced fantasy.

This is particularly prevalent in those discussions around the veracity of loudspeaker cable and other less tangible accessories for improving audio quality.

The common argument against loudspeaker cable is that as the differences in resistance and capacitance between two particular cables may not be measureable then any differences that people hear are self-delusional. This is the engineer vs the artist …

I am the first to grant that the background explanatory material behind the design of some fringe cables and audio accessory products would not even pass muster at a Kanye West Flat Earth Society meeting.

However to denigrate brands such as Chord and Nordost in the same breath is to simply ignore the fantastic subjective musical qualitative results these cables and associated products can produce and also ignores the very real engineering prowess and science that has gone into their design and construction.

It seems to me that the fundamental issue here is not how to measure the music but how to measure its effect on us as humans.

I would contend that music is related to our humanity. It is part of what makes us communicative and compassionate and can connect us to our greater selves in time and space. Not for nothing is the musical experience part of our religious rituals.

Indeed it is a sign of the reprobate Orwellian evil that lurks outside proper humanity when a group starts banning a type of music or claiming that it and other art forms are degenerate and corrupting.

The enjoyment of music is one the basic attributes of our humanity. It is a particular privilege to be able to work at something that helps people enjoy it more …

(Cartoons are from Charles Rodrigues work in "Stereo Review" from the 1980's, he was hilarious and biting)

This is the reincarnation for Yamaha into the high end audio scene, and they really mean it.

There is a very distinct tonality and presentation that the 5000 series offers, and it is totally complicit with their long time "Natural Sound" moniker. This amplifier and loudspeaker combination has a huge performance envelope, from late night study space meditation through to live music sound pressure levels this offers a very compelling sense of the original musical performance.

There have been times at the Hi Fi Shows where we have been playing this system at acoustic performance levels in a room of 40 people in a fashion where normal high end audio would have been in danger of bursting into flames or driven into clipping destruction of loudspeaker drive units.The NS5000 loudspeakers and pre and power amplifier remained unflappable.

This kit is a gauntlet being thrown down by this Japanese company to show us what they can really do when their massive musical engineering R&D resource is thrown behind the products. They are beautiful.

Herewith the system that we had on display at the last Stereonet Melbourne Hi Fi Show, yes it won some formal recognition ...

And here is a typical roomfull of Melbourne Hi Fi show visitors, we could happily play Otmar Liebert Flamenco at live levels even with all this passive womble flesh acting as a sound absorbent medium ...

And here is a typical roomfull of Melbourne Hi Fi show visitors, we could happily play Otmar Liebert Flamenco at live levels even with all this passive womble flesh acting as a sound absorbent medium ...

And here is a closeup of the Yamaha tonearm that is entirely differentiated on operation and geometry ...

Perhaps because I'm British by background I lack the cultural cringe displayed by Australian dealers to their product made here. Coming from the home of so many good brands of Hi-Fi in Cambridge it is easy for me to recognise the innate quality and value of these terrific Australian products like Ambience, Krix, and Legend. These are not expensive esoteric brands but are affordable and lie alongside the entry level of  tier one imports like B&W and Bose in price point.

I guess its also true that the typical Australian dealer will take the path of least resistance to purvey to the typical Australian consumer. That means that it is easier to make a quick sale on a known and marketed B&W or Bose rather than take the time and effort to demonstrate the superiority of something that the client won't have heard of unless they are a well read enthusiast.

Pictured we have from left to right an Electra Power and Pre Amplifier made by by Arthur Rappos in Hawthorn.

The Redgum I35 Integrated Amplifier made by Ian Robinson.

The Ambience Ribbon Speakers made by Tony Moore in Gippsland.

The Legend Acoustics Kama Loudspeakers made by Dr Rod Crawford from Tasmania.

And the Krix Neuphonix Mk2 Loudspeakers made by Scott Krix in Hackham SA.

I have commented before on music being time travel in the hippocampus and this Lennon song is one of the most powerful trips that I take … I think that is partly due to the intrinsic atonality of Lennon’s music, allied to the antihero nature of the lyrics and Phil Spector’s use of mandolin style riffs and a human choir as an underlying chorus. In a morass of chintzy Christmas hits designed to decorate the pockets of record executives with dollars, John Lennon’s song stands out as something with hope and meaning … it was released during the end run of the Vietnam War at time when social and cultural messages were still largely absent from UK music.

For myself Happy Xmas War Is Over rendered the grimoire of a dislocated Mancunian bedsit Christmas into something that was altogether cosier and rose tinted. My Christmas present was my first music system, a GE Radio Cassette recorder that would see me through to University. It’s possible I may have also started using tobacco alcohol and marijuana during that same Christmas holiday … no doubt contributing to the rose tinted emotional memories.

The General Electric was not my first choice … I had been reading the English “Which” magazine reviews that had recommended the ITT cassette player as being the best, however when I went to the local shops I was demonstrated the units comparatively and the GE sounded better … cleaner and louder.  In this way my relationship with impression managed Hi Fi demonstrations and product reviews began … 

It is worth noting that the “Five Red Star Review” system that has become the unacknowledged currency of product quality determinism in this millennial world was actually started by the U.K “What Hi-Fi?” magazine. They really should put a retroactive plagiarism claim into the likes of Google and Uber.

 In the eighties and nineties in UK Hi Fi stores if a piece of kit got Five Stars it was a guarantee that it would sell through, in fact there were many consumers who would only buy something if it had Five Stars. Nothing has changed really, a typical contemporary millennial client will seek review corroboration of a prospective purchase online and as ever will hear any negatives way above accolades. Regardless of whether they might like that device personally they will often be swayed to or from a purchase by the online poll of herd opinion.

But I digress from the point of this blog which was our Christmas season just gone …

We diluted our traditional Australian Christmas business model this year and followed the Americans I’m afraid. Black Friday is now a thing in Australia and I have to say that I like it. From both a purchaser and a purveyor point of view having a sale with targeted deals on demand items a fortnight before Christmas is surely a better deal than having to slog your way out of food coma on Boxing Day and come to work or come to buy.

We were able to offer some very cool entry point record players and stereo components courtesy of our friends at ProJect and Cambridge Audio that got excellent traction for the Black Friday scene. I found that the client audience was completely receptive to the Black Friday Sale timing and event culture.  Our own version of Black Friday instore used dead celebrities as a backdrop so as to avoid confusion with bushfire events ….

We note that Amazon Australia had intended to launch on Black but had failed to iterate to timetable.

How do I feel about Amazon? As a very specialist retailer my technical sense is that they probably won’t affect our business much … they are very much in the JB Hi Fi/Harvey Norman/Kogan space. I hear that JB Hi Fi has said to some of its suppliers “if you allow Amazon to sell that product then it won’t be on display in our stores”. I really see their point, if JB has a TV on display and demonstration that Amazon has online, then Amazon is using JB as their showroom …

However I have other ideological based aversion to Amazon, I think they are an effin evil inhuman machine that offer no social benevolence whatsoever.  They are the Skynet of retailing whose algorithmic mission is to undercut and destroy every other retail entity and treats its employees as machine things whilst avoiding tax in their country of operation …

Amazon employees are treated as things ….

“Timed toilet breaks, impossible targets and workers falling asleep on feet: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/timed-toilet-breaks-impossible-targets-11587888

Jeff Bezos is not noted for his philanthropy either … although there is hope that that may change …

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-31/for-bezos-now-world-s-richest-philanthropy-is-saved-for-later

( Edit ... today I read that Mr Bezos is about to set up $33m worth of educational scholarships for young illegal immigrants in USA)

There is a particular pleasure to client interactions around the Christmas period, it is a pure form of Hi Fi retailing unencumbered by the other complex work we do involving Home Automation and Integration that stops entirely for those two or three weeks around Christmas and the New Year when all the projects shut down.

All one has to do is to meet clients and try and sell them things … there is something about the imperative of people who are interested in listening to music in a better than basic way that acts as a particular filter to the benefit of the meet and greet and get to know process.

I really can’t recall the last time I met someone instore whose cultural viewpoint leaned towards that of Hanson or similar right wing deplorable. You really do meet the nicest people in a Hi Fi shop.

Not All Fanatics welcome ...

I come from that bygone Hi Fi retailing scene in the UK where people would walk into our tiny upstairs single room store in Cambridge and be played one of six pairs of speakers hooked up to a comparator through an NAD 3020 amplifier.

The only record we had to play was Fleetwood Mac Rumours … every nuance and note of that track 'Dreams' is etched into the fibre of my mortal soul, yet I can still play it today and be transported back to that time and space.

As ever with the rose tinted imbue of time travel by music it’s a mixed bag. On the one hand the record recalls the sweetness of my friends and relationships of those days of seeming simplicity in Cambridge in the early eighties ...

But then when I listen more carefully to the music and myself responding, I am assailed by those doubts and fears of a young man in his early twenties conflicted by the uncertainties over his career and selfsame relationships in the November bleakness of Thatcherite England. Music is powerful like that …

Loudspeakers are important ...

More than anything else in the Hi Fi scene they are the device that acquire the gravitas of cult branding over and above their physical reality. The US brands in particular with the wonderful gullible strength of their home market have created an aura around their prime loudspeaker products that empowers into a synergy with the culture of their music.

In the eighties on the corner of Market Sq in Cambridge we sold AR, Kef, and Mordaunt Short. Occasionally the sale of a pair of exalted Quad Electrostatics would pass through the store, but the business never had the space or money to actually stock and demonstrate them.

So when I came to Australia and found work in a local Hi Fi business it was a shock to discover that the speakers were perhaps the least important brand of that particular business exercise. The speciality of the house was a brand called DDK that were literally glued together out of cheap components locally and sold to match the cabinet that the systems were stacked in.

This was the 'White Van scam' combined with 'Hi Fi as furniture sold' to a non-enthusiast largely new Australian demographic in Northern suburban Melbourne. Sansui rack systems with multiple equalisers or Marantz Gold were the mainstream with Yamaha “Natural Sound” the top end … always with DDK loudspeakers. Unsurprisingly the speakers had a 90% gross profit at retail and the primary options were whether or not to have a glass inlay. The 1.5m tall DDK FS120 was the “Dominator X1” of the shop floor.

The commissions at 8% of gross profit were occasionally spectacular …

However the business was doomed to fail … and it did repeatedly … it only took a customer one glance in a Hi Fi magazine, one step inside a real Hi Fi business, or one listen to a friends proper combination of kit for a customer of those speakers to realise something was rotten in their state of audio.

In my time at that retailer it went from selling DDK cabinet speakers almost solus to purveying Mordaunt Short and Yamaha NS1000M’s …

The business is still extant in Melbourne under a derivative name and after several different fiscal iterations. In a real sense it is testament to the tenacity, grit, and adaptability of the owner that it has passed through the decades with such continuity.

Carlton Audio Visual is a very different type of company. We have been here since 1991 and … love loudspeakers …

Any one who visits us and gets past the first three areas into the myriad of spaces that dot the block here in Lygon St will realise that we have a deep seated obsession that goes beyond the norm of sensible retail practice into that territory where principles and passion coincide to lead us to stock  ... by Australian standards ... an unprecedented range of loudspeakers.

That dosn't mean we are internally consistent by the way, we each who work here have our own preferences and if asked what we like will give a number of quite different answers. But that's the point .. we want our potential clients to choose what they like not simply force sell them on a product monoculture.

I am often in that situation where a Hi Fi business proprietor visits us and comments … sometimes the commentary is adversarial and to other people … sometimes it is to my face.

Very few people get the guided tour … and only one or two literally have ever had the full Monty of all our places of niches and crannies and byways and highways …

Carlton Audio Visual is an absolute rabbit warren … we actually have twelve working demonstration areas across five premises. We have an equal number of storage areas offices and workshops. I have jocularly suggested to erstwhile competitors that after I have had them killed that I will have no problems hiding the bodies in our nooks and walls.

The thing that always gets to them is just how many loudspeakers we have …

Very occasionally some of them will love it and will launch into technical anecdotes of their prior relationships with those speakers. Mostly they look at me with a garnering horror of just how much capital is tied up in these things.

To me loudspeakers are the star stuff of a Hi Fi shops very raison d’étre. Without loudspeakers there is only a fraction of a good reason for a Hi Fi shop to exist at all.

There is a prevailing view that actually offering choice of this nature to your hard earned potential clients is destructive to the end game of making a sale … the theory is that what you should is to concentrate all of your efforts into just one or two brands and “sell the shite” out of them.

This theory pertains to the impression managed demonstration of a loudspeaker as being a single point episode to match a particular price point, and that all you need to do is to have a “good’, “better”, and “best” demonstration to sway a client to transactional completion. Thus by a business like ours having such a choice we actually confuse and disable what should be a one stop process.

You may recognise the Bose business model in this style of purveyance. Or The Big Picture People in a Melbourne context …

We believe that it is our mission on the other hand to bring as many quality options to the table of our client’s choice as we can afford to show, thus they have that proper opportunity to experience and select something that will suit their own proclivity.

That doesn’t mean we bombard a potential buyer with hundreds of arbitrary transducers. It means we listen to them very carefully and qualify their preferences and then proffer an appropriate demonstration.

If we can provide them with caffeine … or alcohol or pot as required … (no that’s illegal isn’t it?) to aid their choice then only too good.

Fundamental to being able to sell many brands of loudspeaker is having this innate love for them. If you don’t have some music in your soul and a way of really seeing into the hearts of your clients own musical appreciation you won’t ever be in the game of dealing with loudspeakers at this level.

(Thanks to the wonderful Charles Rodrigues for the cartoon header to this blog ... his wickedly biting satire graced the pages of "Stereo Review" from 1958 through to 1999 ... Julian Hirsch wrote excellent technical reviews in that publication that I followed avidly from 1961 until 1998. It lives on as the New York based "Sound and Vision" magazine that remains an excellent critical reference for enthusiasts: www.soundandvision.com )

Here is the link to the original Weekend Notes review ...

And this is the copy from "Blackman" (being his nome de plume online):

"By now you have probably noticed that I will really will only write about stuff that should be spoken about - not hated on, it seems the internet is filled with how people have had such a bad experience here or there, not enough people who love things are vocal about them.

I spent various weekends looking for speakers for my house, soon to realise that I needed amps, wiring etc etc etc. My experience was over a few years, but finally I can safely come to a conclusion. I will tell you why Rab and his crew at Carlton Audio Visual are the best hifi guys in Melbourne. 

I have always loved sound, great quality sound, however sound is one of those technologies that you simply just cannot measure that easily and it is very hard to benchmark, it's not an iPhone where fashion prevails over sensible technology and you pick the white one over the red one and it also is not a technology where a higher price does not always mean a lot better; a higher digital spec also does not always mean a better sound. 

Buying speakers based on specs would be like buying a car based on specs. I mean you would not buy a car, without touching it, hearing it, smelling it, feeling it – driving it. Still some people buy computers by just digital specs on paper, if that was how technology was measured you could buy a macbook spec equivalent machine for $500 in a PC and technically be happy with the hardware you just bought as a $500 PC does have what a $1300 Mac has.

So sound must be heard, and it must be complimented and matched up with the individual components correctly.

Now try this at JB, and you will fail, not only has the speaker range disappeared, so have all the people that used to know stuff. The people working at these mass large format retailers are box readers, they don't love what they sell or know anything about it, plus you can get their prices anywhere as well nowadays. I don't want to go on about how bad the others were, but would rather talk about Rab and his crew and what they did and you can decide yourself.

Rab, upon hearing my set-up said, how about I come out? I said sure, after an hour there, he was pretty clear and certain about what was needed, while he was respectful of my budget, he made sure he didn't blow my money in the wrong places.

I was having problems with the progress of the build so I left it there. To save some money, my sparkie agreed to do the wiring for me, based on Rab's quick wiring guidelines, I bought the cables from him, and they were not more than anywhere else in price, just better. The gauging was perfect. The layout was given. Normally Carlton Audio Visual will do all of this stuff for you, however they were more keen on getting me up and going rather than anything else.

Fast forward two years (yes it took this long) I still did the audio rounds going from place to place looking at speakers. The situation at the "others" had only gotten worse. I knew my last stop would be Carlton Audio Visual. I thought, let's do this. The guys recognised me, which was incredible and the next few hours were a ball. 

We played around with speakers, in some of these offset side showrooms which are separated by a restaurant, I needed around 10 speakers, a projector, screen amps etc. Rab was honest, rather than make me spend $500 on a pair of speakers he showed and advised on speakers half the price, saving me thousands in total. All of this was backed with working proof and samples. 

I was even treated to listen to a pair of $120,000 speakers, for the life of me however I could not tell, see or understand why they were so special, but hey, that's audio.

I dropped my money, got my speakers, they are now installed and sensational, I was recommended these Aaron speakers which are made by a local Australian company, hats off too those blokes as well. Aaron apparently are a mid to high end local manufacturer that works with boutique dealers. I like.
I need new amps and a projector and will be returning shortly the guys on Lygon. 

While we were waiting for the stuff to come out to the front, we grabbed some lunch at the Thai Lemongrass restaurant next door. Let's just leave it at that, I will keep true to my blogging promise and not review places not worth mentioning. 

I was helped to the car, given loads more advice and discounts, and even a free set of speakers to try.

Thank you to the best audio crew in Melbourne, go past if you want some mid to high end equipment, you will not be disappointed."

Some gorgeous loudspeakers that can justifiably claim to have the most refined moving coil drive units in the world.

Now invigorated by a massive transfusion of Chinese capital this company is also born again in Australia.

It’s worth pointing out that the brand our other loudspeaker manufacturers seem to perhaps be most chagrined at our purveying is Dynaudio in their latest distributor partnership in Australia …

The new Dynaudio range excels in their wireless offering by the way. The Xeo 2’s at $1995 are an exceptional quality offering in a very compact form factor.  

As ever though a properly purchased loudspeaker is a personal subjective choice on the part of the consumer and Dynaudio are another option for our clients to try in comparison.

It turns out that we at Carlton Audio Visual are responsible at times for 50 -60% of Rega sales in Australia so it seems that we have a very strong working relationship …

The sheer Britishness of Rega and its independent ownership during a time when most UK Hi Fi companies were being bought and sold and bought and sold and ending up as badges on a piece of characterless kit produced in Shenzen has been a battle standard for good Hi Fi manufacturing.

This is a simply extraordinary company. Their product and reputation is very well known and there is a lovely book about them … I particularly like the stories of Roy Gandy’s early encounters with motorcycles and the creation and sustainment thereof.

When he was a teenager he was given a box of rusty bits and told that if he could put it back together and make it work then it would be his. So Roy at sixteen worked for a year and created a beautiful James 150cc Café Racer that these days would be a masterpiece of hipsterdom. Alas he learnt a valuable lesson when the older boy saw it and remembered that this now new and gleaming motorcycle was actually his and took it back …

Rebuilding a motorcycle is a fundamental basic exercise of engineering with a built in provision that you are betting your life on the results of your labours. A mechanical failure on two wheels is kindred to that of an aeroplane in capacity for personal death and injury. It acutely sharpens your understanding of the engineering involved …

Roy’s other great love and one more sustainable to health is Guitars … his house and workplace … which are kind of the same … are littered with various guitars that my partner Paul would no doubt have salivated over appropriately.

Between motorcycles and guitars there is a synergy of engineering of music, vibration, and friction that makes for an excellent grounding in the raw principles of music reproduction equipment.

Rega’s product is well known. There is a simple truth of all their devices. They are a bargain in music reproduction.

From the Planar 1 Turntable to the P10, from the Brio to the Osiris amplifier, there are no superfluous add ons with these products … everything is distilled down its absolute minimum and as such becomes incredibly straightforward to live with.

I would offer a side observation here that the single thing that the high end residential clients ask for when they are consulting us for home audio visual design and automation is simplicity of use. Time and time again they have been frustrated by their ongoing encounters with music and video replay from tier one brand AV product where even something as simple as listening to the radio requires microprocessor control intervention and a graphic user interface.

I love to play these clients a Rega system. They are uniformly devastated by how good the music sounds and how utterly simple and easy it is to use. They are often of that age where they have a record collection from yore that has been squirrelled away and it can be a delight to see their faces when exposed to decent LP music after they have had years of being force fed digital by Apple Bose and B&O.

A Rega amplifier, turntable, and a pair of appropriate speakers is a wonderful musical complement to a new residence that will last more than a generation in the household.

Back to the factory visit … there is a quite uncommon bonne homme pervading the facility. People are cheerful and focused, everything is brightly lit and finished in a particular lime green that is reminiscent of Kawasaki team colours from the nineteen seventies. Everything that Rega do is carefully researched, even the company colour was chosen after a lengthy process to determine the optimum part of the visible spectrum for labouring within.

There are 120 employees in the factory, up from 40 or so ten years ago. The place is a model of efficiency of spatial utilisation … there is no room to spare in any of the four dimensions, and people work comfortably elbow to elbow without rancour or complaint. As a visitor I was unrestricted in my photography or access to the employees. [Although not everyone likes having their photo taken and I was politely asked not to use their image on an occasion]

That period of expansion in the last decade has led to them forsaking their previous premises in the old mill and moving into this new purpose designed facility. They have now acquired another building adjacent and are preparing to spread into the new place, and they have a need.

Now this isn’t Apple or Samsung we are talking about … but there are some very distinctive characteristics of Rega that make them unique.

They owe no money … everything has been paid for out of retained profits accumulated over the last forty years.

More than ninety per cent of the content is British, that means that all the subassemblies that are normally contracted out to SE Asia are sourced locally. For a small company they have a remarkably diverse range of inhouse manufacture including circuit board population, coil winding, and speaker drive units.

As Phil Freeman the managing partner recants … “if we run short of something why would we want to wait two months and have to order massively when we can get in a car and run down the road to procure it.”

Phil has some singular views. Naturally I questioned them first about Brexit as this is a sword of Damocles hanging over some of the other small high tech UK manufacturers.

Phil has the view that the EU is less of an open skies trading partner but rather a cartel that forces countries to trade inwardly. From the vesicular viewpoint of Rega who sell 45,000 turntables around the world the EU has never been particularly benevolent, and as they source their materials locally they are not suffering the rise in external costs issue that is causing other UK Hi Fi manufacturers prices to rise.

Phil and Roy lack that typical secularity of the workplace expected particularly within the unwritten severe hierarchy of typical UK small medium enterprises of my experience, wherein a directorship is treated as a ticket into the next level of the class structure and the inevitable separation of boss, management, and workforce. They know exactly each task of production, they know everyone’s name and life story, they would happily take a seat in one of the production areas if required by demands for a product line or absence through illness.

Roy tells of a recent new colleague acquisition with a pride that is a mixture of the professional and paternal. A young American graduate with high honours in both electronic and mechanical engineering had written to them saying it was his greatest wish to join their company as he simply loved their products. He could have procured a position in the USA in a high end corporation with far better money and a much longer title however he was happy to start on the shop floor at Rega. They gave him a go and he is now working there as designer and living in a shared house in Southend with son of the Sue the Sales and is happy as Larry. The new Atlas stylus gauge is his first product.

The Atlas is incidentally a very special little device … originally built to enable the precise calibration of the suspension of the Rega cartridges it is so sensitive that they had to detune it so as to stop it acting as seismometer measuring vibrations from lorries parking outside. It is expensive but is the only stylus gauge you will ever need.

There is such a lot one can write about this small company and its unique product portfolio. Primarily they are obsessed with minimising vibration and developing frictionless mechanical read devices for analogue music. Their manufactured devices all reflect this, the functional minimalism results in consumer devices that are aesthetically pleasing, simple to use, and very long lasting.

There is one last thing that I think that expresses the core values of the company and that is Roy Gandy’s succession plan. The intent is simply to leave the company to its employees so that they can keep on making beautiful things for their customers.

I'm playing the vinyl today for the first time in ... actually years.

Of course I always play Bowie, it's on Deezer and I have that many boxed sets of CDs that it's just silly. But today I'm playing the album, in fact it's the same piece that of vinyl that I bought in 1972 with my limited allowance. I pulled it off the shelf yesterday as my sister from Brisbane was in town and I thought it would be cute to play her the selfsame black disc that so pervaded my sense of self when we were a familial denucleated pair of siblings left alone in the house after our mother died and our father was working overseas.

It was her sixteenth birthday party that comes to mind first. I suppose I was thirteen and the party was truly out of hand. The cars of all the strangers that we had invited and all the strangers they had invited blocked the little street of Kings Grove in Barton and went all the way around the corner. The pot smoke was so thick that you couldn't see your way through the rooms or the back garden.

Side two of Ziggy Stardust was being played at the maximum register on the Bakelite knob of the HMV record player with optional stereo speaker.

Then the police came, in five black Mariahs with potentially hostile intent as the neighbours battened down and rang for help.

Thus my first negotiation with authority was as the young teenage householder with the very glittery uniformed and respectable senior constable who came to the door to assess wether to forcibly close down the proceedings ... my elder sister having become incapacitated. He was very polite and ... sensible. I was overtly cooperative and not at all encouraging of a confrontation. He chose to wait outside with his squadron of cars and constables while there was a hurried exodus from the house.

As the people left they divested themselves of packages of silver foil and curious pipes into the roses and over the fences into the neighbours gardens. As " Hang on to yourself" played a wave of Ford Cortinas and BSA Bantams left our street and headed off into the night leaving a diehard group of fifty or so in the house who were too wasted to care wether the police took them away or not.

It was too much for me, when the police cars then left in the wake of the major group of party goers I needed to go and find somewhere alone to have an anxiety attack.

Suffragette city was playing full loud still when the kindly neighbour walking his dog came across me lying down on a grass path in a field behind the house on the dark night. It was very hard to explain what I was doing there.

The party people in the home became gradually immobile in piles of tangled limbs and I trod amongst them until daylight vainly trying to rescue things of value.

Sunrise showed a wreckaged childhood home and very unfortunate odours. Our wonderfully solicitous neighbour had gathered together all the packages and paraphernalia and presented it to me over the fence "in case the owners came back for them" and searching the trampled rose garden kept our hippy friends stoned for weeks.

The really remarkable thing about this album I'm playing now is how simply brilliant it sounds. I'm using a spindleless Roksan Xerxes turntable with an Ortofon Cadenza Black Moving Coil cartridge through a Rega IOS Phono Stage.

There is a PS Audio BHK pre and power Amplifier into a pair of Monitor Audio Platinum PL500 loudspeakers, and yes, this system is a McClaren F1 by comparison to the Austin A35-like HMV autoloader gramophone with 78rpm option that gouged the record that night in 1972. But the presence, the actual absence of surface noise, and the feeling of a glam Bowie singing in my room and echoing across the ages is is simply amazing. A journey in music, time, and space.

Playing Sufragette City though ... I am once again lying on the ground on a path in an field trying to control my breathing and bursting anxieties of bedrugged adolescence as the neighbours dog finds me. I'm not sure listening to it like this is helping me move on ... but it is amazing ...

 A.J.Vand Den Hul is one of the creative bedrock personalities of the music reproduction industry. We recently had that most particular privelige of him coming to Carlton Audio Visual and building a cartridge from scratch for us. Here he is at Munich Hi End holding court to his followers.

 The VAC room in blue light with Palm trees.

 Nagra Equipment is gorgeous and expensive. Playing here through the Wilson Alexandria XLF loudspeakers ...

 Popsicles ... or a forest of horns??.

 A pair of horns that were particularly warm sounding and very and detailed as well. These are the Gran Sphera horns from Azzolina Audio hooked up to showcase soome new Elrog tubes. Looovvveelly.

 More horns from Avant Garde. The large structure in the middle is a bass horn ... the materiale in front of that is for the production of aural distortion ...

 Nordost always have a simply excellent and informative display. They were very big on the importance of grounding this year. They are the industry standard for engineering of quality cables and accessories.

 These are the QKORE Grounding Isolation units that provide for artificial passive electronic and mechanical grounding for Hi Fi components.

 Small thing of acoustic isolation beauty.

 A turntable that supports the platter through magnetic levitation. With a Project Carbon Tonearm and an Ortofon OM cartridge its not aiming very high ... one wonders what the magnetic field will do to the cartridge sensitivity ...

 Dietrich Brakemeir's Apolyt turntable is one of the finest and probably the most expensive LP reproduction device made to date. Apparently you can cut the cord to this machine and a week later the platter will only have lost 5% of its momentum!.

 Reidun with The Ascendo Subwoofer ... she is six feet tall so this is a truly massive device ... and utterly captivating ... want ... Back To The Future is today.

 Paul trying out the Sennheiser HA1 headphones. The new Orpheus. This is Paul's contented, happy place, face.

 The headphone amplifier that makes up the secod half of the HA1 Headphones.

 The Kharma Enigma Veyron EV4D loudspeakers are some of the more expensive transducers available in the world ... and they are running off four of the Kharma Exquisite MP1000 power amplifiers. Normally Kharma make the best sound at the Munich show ...

 The wall treatment of grass and flowers in the Kharma room is very special. Those are humble Elegance 7's on the left that we have on dem in Carlton Audio Visual.

 Kharma used a rather nice Clearaudio statement Turntable as a source.

 B1 and B2 sound a treat these days, these are the big boys in yellow from Vivid Audio , the G1 Spirits.

 Were you looking for a speaker or something to hide in a Birch Forest?

 After the revolution, we will all have a pair of PMC BB5's in our living rooms.

 Cambridge Audio provided an appropriate means of transport this year, last year it was a London Taxi. Day out with Cliff Richard anyone? Paul used them as a source of Nicotine and Caffeine rather than carriage ...

We have had a long relationship with this brand … we are now on our third distributor of the product in Australia ,,,

PMC stands for the Professional Monitor Company … they are the transducer darling of the UK studio scene and have an amazing list of notable clients.

 The outstanding feature of their design is the use of advanced transmission line technology. in the construction that utilizes a complex folded and damped labyrinth behind the bass driver that optimises the performance  in terms of frequency response and phase accuracy. Some of the earlier versions as used by  TDL and IMF gave very deep bass but had a very slow and ponderous character. PMC use 21^st Century CAD techniques with excellent science partners to invoke a bass quality in their loudspeakers that is uniquely deep fast and articulate.

PMC was bought into our business fifteen years ago by our esteemed ex-employee Joe Blair who had been purveying them from the Cornflake Shop in Windmill St in central London. Istill remember the physical surprise I felt when I listened to an all too familiar piece of test music (Jeff Buckley Hallelujah) on a pair of PMC FB1 two way floorstanding speakers and heard a bass line that I had never experienced before on even vastly more expensive devices. 

We gradually built up our inventory of the product and these days carry the astounding MB2SE on demonstration … the speakers that can make a grown man cry …. 

I don’t think PMC are an easy company to deal with at a distributor level … perhaps that fact that Peter Thomas was apparently separated at birth from Ozzy Osborn colours their distributor relationship cycle …

 We had almost given them up last year due to distribution conflicts and it was with a sense of schadenfreude that I discovered they were releasing the brilliant Twenty Five series at the Munich Hi Fi show.  

However a couple of days into the show I spotted a couple of our favourite Australian Distributors conferring with PMC Reps in that cone of whispered exchange that suggested dealings were afoot. They are now in the hands of Interdyne one of Australia’s oldest and most respected high end CE distributors owned by the Encel family.

https://www.interdyn.com.au/brands/pmc/

 The Twenty Five series fills in the gaps of the performance of the prior ranges with a deeper smoother nature while retaining the remarkable insightive qualities that make the brand so engaging. Physically the wood finishes are gorgeous and unique to the brand. The Walnut in particular has found great favour in Melbourne.

https://pmc-speakers.com/reviews

There was a glorious epoch in the early 2000s where we had on display simultaneously Plasma Televisions from Pioneer, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, and Marantz along with the first Generation Sharp Aquos consumer LCD panels.

This Fujitsu Plasmavision 63 inch was state of the art for a while in the 2000's ... I suspect it produced more CO2 emissions from the brown coal in Gippsland used to produce its prodigiious electrical requiremnt than a tuned Range Rover being raced on Lygon St ...

When I unlocked the shop in the morning when we were at our peak of selling these Plasma brands after they had been left on at night a blast of heated ozone laden air would surge by me onto Lygon St. These Plasma TVs were power hungry high voltage devices and vengefully dissipated their waste heat into the confined space of our store.

The pre-eminence of the specialist retailer as the purveyor of new technology flat screens didn’t last long. By 2005 the price points and brand availability was moving firmly downstream into the bulk stores. By 2010 most of the above brands were out of Television manufacture as part of the Great Financial Crisis and the ever diminishing Return On Investment on panel manufacture.

With Sony wearing losses of the order of Australia’s GNP and the recent demise of Sharp as an independent high quality consumer panel manufacturer it looked like Television brands in Australia were reduced to an effective Korean monoculture of Samsung and LG underpinned by the Chinese supercheaps such as Hisense and Kogan with upmarket niche European high end of Loewe and B&O.

 The last few years have been characterised in the TV scene by reduced margins for retailers and reduced choice for consumers. Returns on sales for the bulk store and department store purveyors in Australia have become so thin that manufacturers have had to effectively rent space in the major retailer showrooms to get their inventory on display.

The consumer has been periodically bombarded with a new technical feature … HD, 3D, 4K etc … that is presented as game changing but in fact has little or no relevance to the viewing experience and is really part of a desperate manufacturers conspiracy to keep the wheels of their industry churning by giving people reasons to buy new TVs.

 In the meantime the duty cycle of mainstream Televisions has been reduced to within an inch of fulfilling their minimum necessary legal obligation to their customers. This ilk of mass market Televisions are not repairable, they are essentially “printed” products that are sold on brand name, features, and screen size to achieve a price point that proffers an advantage amidst the cut throat scene of the High St and shopping centre retailer.

Most of the vision products distributed by the tier one visuals into Australia are designed for selling into that high volume demographic where screen size and catch phrase features are sold against to the lowest possible price. Factors like build quality, longevity, and absolute picture quality, are not materially relevant to either the professional mass merchandise buyers or their customers whose main aim is to make the precious dollars stretch further into more market share and a larger screen.

Thus it's hard for a very specialist high end store to countenance a mass market Television brand. All too often the distribution of brands like Sony and Samsung in Australia are entirely beholden to the main stream retailers and there is no opportunity for niche purveyor to be price and range competitive. 

At the very top end of the market there is the German made Loewe that we consistently sell to those prepared to pay AMG level money for the best looking image and chassis one can get. However the realistic truth is that the most likely new Loewe TV purchaser is someone who already has owned and is aware of their advantages ... and can afford to pay the difference...

Customers are now on their second or even third generation flat panel purchase. The incidence of CRTs being left on the roadside is greatly reduced. In a recent Loewe promotion that we participated in, the factory was supporting Trade In rebates against customers old Television sets. It was a very successful campaign for this beautiful range of  Televisions, interestingly nearly all the trade ins were early model plasma screens rather than the otherwise anticipated CRT screens.

It appears then that the market has peaked … the feeding frenzy for large and flat is over and manufacturers are coming back into the market with higher quality Television products that offer genuine qualitative differentiation rather than an acronym and bigger screen size.

And so to a new opportunity for us to sell in the high end mainstream TV market …

We have just put on display two new LED displays, the Sony Z9 65 inch and the Philips 7000 series 75 inch. These are the extreme performance competition to the highly featured Samsung and LG offerings and offer point for point price parity with those brands.

The Z9 Sony is a game changer in the current LCD vs OLED war ... The Z series takes local panel backlight dimming to its logical conclusion: every LED in its backlight can be dimmed individually, discrete from its neighbors. Doing so should further reduce the amount of blooming, or stray illumination, that plagues local dimming TVs that rely on groups of LED dimming to acheive partial ultra contrast blacks. Alongside this the Z9 series is claiming 1600 Nits plus illumination level that is right up there with the Pro CAD tool panels.

The peak brightness level from the Z9 is really astounding. When that momentary burst of Netflix white comes on screen or there is a touch of thermonuclear on one of our habitual Science Fiction movies that form the background of Carlton Audio Visual … the burst of light is sufficient to flashlight style leave a retinal after image and stop conversation on the showroom floor

The Z9 offers a full Android based smart interface with Voice Search and Google Cast, and features prominent Netflix with 4K streaming capability. For that enthusiast who spends ... too much of the time probably ... viewing or, particularly for this set, gaming, on a large screen; this is a sure candidate for your living space.

This is the Lexus of Televisions ... high end Japanese with a lifetime of features and space age looks to leave people waking up fantasizing about owning one ...

The Philips TVs are back in Australia and really getting some traction. I love the Ambilight, it statically or dynamically back lights the image to provide a proper contrast and dynamic colour range while lowering eye fatigue. Philips have always offered this on their better TVs but its hard to get across to customers unless they see it for themselves.

The Philips TVs score well on bang for buck with the 75inch at $6999 and the 65 at $3399, these are very competitive prices against the Samsung/LG market majors.

They are full Android kitted and play ridiculously intense 4K streams from their built in Netflix facilities.

Of course this industry is a Shark that forever must keep moving or it will suffocate and die. Todays handshake is tomorrows betrayal and there is always the pressure of market share acquisition and the need of numbers. As the demand slackens the need to produce something new that can ... maybe ... tease new sales in a low growth environment becomes paramount.

There is already discussion of 8K and 16K resolution Televisions ...

This below is the Loewe OLED Television coming out in January with a loudspeaker that slides into place when in use.

 At $16,000 plus the Loewe OLED wil be our top of the range series for those people who can afford the severe teutonic elegance and the very best engineering ... form an orderly qeue in your S-Class please ...

We have been thoroughly enamoured of the Monitor Audio Platinum Speakers since they were released in 2009. These top of the range UK loudspeakers are in the class of B&W 800 series or Kef Blades but without the punitive monetary imposition of those brands marketing efforts.

The hallmark of this series has been the integration of state of art moving coil bass drivers with ribbon technology tweeters. The new Platinum II series use a novel pleated MPD tweeter that gives amazing transients with its virtually massless design while still having eight times the area of a dome tweeter.

Often in loudspeakers that combine transducer technologies there is an obvious separation of character by frequency but the Platinum’s’ integrate them seamlessly. So there is a massive “thwack” and depth provided by the hammer like response of the low frequency CCAm/Carbon Fibre bass drivers that is perfectly balanced by the air and space generated by the treble drivers.

Physically the Platinum series is beautiful. That combination of high mass burnished and curved wood finish cabinetry offset by the rich Strathspey leather baffle frontage is a unique aesthetic that also smells good. Often these highly engineered loudspeakers can be intimidating for a home but the Platinums have an Aston Martin aura that complements a nice room and can help swing the important domestic partner permissioning for such an acquisition.

Then there is the Pl500II. Other loudspeakers of this engineering level such as the Dynaudio Evidence can cost in excess of $100,000, so I guess that makes these cheap at $35,000. I love them in an unbridled come-home-with-me-forever type of way that has me playing old records on them at inappropriate times of night. Their physical presence is outstanding but offers a sculptural physical presence that grows on one.

Currently the PL500’s are set up with a PS Audio Pre and Power amplifier and they are wonderful. One can only recommend that you come for an audition.

Monitor Audio Platinum PL500II Homepage

A simple answer is that Loewe Televisions are to other brands the in the same relationshop that BMW and Mercedes are to Hyundai and Great Wall. The reality is that there are actually greater differences in technological quality between a Loewe and those others than is evident in the automobile analogy.

Most Televisions are now disposable, they have been deliberately manufactured to acheive the same type of duty cycle and longevity as you might expect from a typical smart phone, so their designed consuner churn is typically 2 - 4 years. This duty cycle ensures that a factory will still have a marketplace for its new product and the numerology of the marketing engine is targeted to a two year innovation cycle that will hopefully proffer enough rationalisations to a consumer to buy anew every four years.

Loewe has very distinctively jumped off this merry go round. On any close inspection based on a common sense engineering viewpoint they are self evidently better made than brand leading Samsungs and LGs by an order of magnitude. the quality of fit and finish, the materials of construction, the precision of the LCD panel.

Look carefully at the televisions under bright light when they are both on and off. The Loewe is far less reflective in a bright room; in conditions where there is a dark scened footage in a brightly lit room you will see even the entry point Loewe Art series to have far less mirroring than an Asian manufactured Television. 

With the Television actually powered down in a well lit room a Loewe TV remains a slickly finished piece of elegance where the alternative products are exposed as glossy crudities of not even Mattel quality in their screen finishing. The cheap high gloss finish of the Asian screens helps to make them poppy for bright colourful animation material played in a darkened section of a showroom but fails in basic real world video performance in a domestic living room.

The ultimate Loewe Television is the Reference Series. These are other worldly in their beauty even when they are switched off. The UV polarising gorilla glass not only protects the Television from an errant  childs projectiles but also proffers an inky black non reflective depth in the resting condition that leads the Television to most nearly resemble the Monolith from the iconic science fiction film 2001. The remaining chassis of a Reference is hand finished in an anodised alloy of exquisite precision.

Loewe Televisions are built to be serviced. In a marketplace where those other brand products are essentialy printed Loewe has circuit boards that can be pulled out military aviation style and replaced and upgraded. To complement this serviceability they mantain a repertoire of the best technicians in Australia who can come to your home in the event of an issue. Fundamentally though these are Televisions that are built for a ten year plus duty cycle rather than three ...

I must mention two more things about the Loewe sets ... though I could go on for a few thousand words ...

One the sound quality of these TV's is excellent. Where the competing designs are marginal on quality and shaved to within an inch to acheive their price points they have also nearly entirely neglected the quality of their internal amplifier and speakers. Loewe televisions have multi channel amplifiers with separate woofers, midranges, and tweeters in acoustic chambers.

Two is the video processing. There is four times the power and mass of processing circuitry in a Loewe TV dedicated to converting the digital dots from the video feed into an image that we can see. They look better. This is a fundamental thing. We spend an unseemly portion of our lives glued to these things, much more than we do for example driving our expensive motor vehicles. We absolutely owe it to owe ourselves to watch the best picture possible on these machines, Loewe enables this to happen. 

Loewe Australia homepage

Launched in Hampshire in 2001, IsoTek is a leading English brand of power management products for hi-fi and home cinema use. Its product range includes high-performance mains cables and connectors, plus a range of performance-enhancing power conditioners focused on the specific requirements of individual systems. IsoTek have earned numerous accolades from specialist audio and AV publications worldwide. A number of third-party manufacturers use IsoTek products for development and/or demonstration purposes, including Arcam, Denon, Genesis, Marantz, Monitor Audio, Nordost, Pioneer, PMC, Roksan and TEAC Esoteric. Click here to view Isotek’s website.

 All IsoTek products are designed for purpose, manufactured in Europe and built to last.

• “IsoTek treats mains-related problems with a seriousness that has to be seen and heard to be believed” Hi-Fi World
• “IsoTek is the leader in mains conditioning products” Hi-Fi News
• “IsoTek is the UK’s biggest name in mains filtration” Hi-Fi Choice
• “IsoTek gets (understands) power, so it’s logical that IsoTek is the go-to company for power” Hi-Fi+

Video

The official video, giving an insight into the background of this multi-award winning, power conditioning specialist company.

Increasingly for the Hi Fi enthusiasts we deal with there has been a rising demand for products that filter the mains electricity. Once upon a time our main purveyance in this area was the locally made Ear Science PF1 that is the very effective passive mains filter manufactured by local audio guru Gary Cawsey.

The Ear Science PF1 is essentially a Kambrook attached to a box full of passive mains filtration devices that smacks of cultivism until you try one. At one stage our own store and the other business in Melbourne that was our most effective competition for enthusiast clients (Secher Audio in Camberwell …) had all of our dem systems connected via Mr Cawsey’s mains boxes. 

 We still sell the PF1s at $499 and retain a number of them on our demo racks but the stakes have moved on somewhat. For one thing the quality and experience of both our clientele and our competition has improved and there has also been an industry wide recognition of the importance of the electricity supply in getting the best quality out of an audio visual system.

There is a legendary Viking figure in the international industry … Bjorn Bengtsson from Nordost who is an amazing advocate for his product. He is the chap who can spend an evening with your staff and will have them utterly convinced after an hour that the most important thing to appreciate the music from a Hi-Fi system is the interconnect and speaker cables.

There was that particular example three years ago when we set up a representative midrange system prior to his arrival, it was a $4500 arrangement of Rega CD Player with Arcam Amplifier and a pair of PMC TB2+ speakers … not too flash but nice kit and musical.

Bjorn very carefully fettled the system before starting the demonstration. He checked the screws on the loudspeaker drivers and the connection terminals on the components. He made sure they were clean and uncorroded and that there were no native buzzes and issues with casing integrity, etc … effectively he was doing the equivalent of a pilots walk around on an aircraft.

Bjorn then proceeded to work his way up the Nordost range of loudspeaker and interconnect cables after starting with the basic Avico RCA and 24 strand OFC (Oxygen Free Copper) that is ubiquitous in hi fi shops. He started with a $400 pair of White Lightning cables and stepped us up through $900 Blue Heaven and eventually we landed at the glorious $20,000 of Valhalla. By the end of this we were certain of the value of the mega dollar cable even in this system context. However when I asked him what the most significant single difference we could make to a client’s system with a single cable he surprised me.

The answer was not what I expected after such a demonstration being the interconnect, but actually he replied “The power cable” … “That last metre of connection with the mains power is the single greatest effector to the overall system quality” … “The quality of the electricity is such an enemy of the Hi Fi set” 

 Most recently Bjorn has been back with the Nordost power products. The unusual QV2 at $595 is a power conditioner that plugs directly into a mains socket. It has two chipsets that create electronic bursts calculated from the AC waveform to introduce harmonic frequencies in the 0 – 150 Hz area back into the mains. It is partnered with a range of products that include the QB4 and 8 grounding boards and the exceptional QX 2 Field generator line conditioner. The QX 2 is not cheap at $2795 but in combination with the other devices will lower the noise floor and improve the dynamic range of the music.

Bjorn demonstrated the power devices using Nick Cave “Push the Sky Away” and Melody Gardot on Piano. These subtle and atmospheric tracks were greatly enhanced using the conditioners. The difference was that the piano was bought into the room rather than being a merely 2D representation.

Another product that is very much on the rise is the British Isotek that has been very ably demonstrated to us by their International Director Keith Martin. Isotek take a very systematic approach to the issues of power recognising the problems Differential noise for the AV components that are created by anything with a power supply and Common mode noise that is RFI noise from Digital devices.

Differential noise is obvious and common when it is removed and is generated by all sorts of devices that are plugged into a power supply. Sometimes the worst cases come from unexpected causes … yesterday I was consulting to an electrical firm whose client was an agency that had very point critical AV presentations that were being mysteriously glitched at inappropriate times.

In the end they found the guilty culprit was a coffee machine, not even on the same power board as the AV gear, but with a thermostat that was generating enough EMI to cause synchronisation issues on the HDMI boards in the AV Receiver and projector.

Common mode noise is more subtle generally but is very prevalent now that we have digital devices operating at high frequencies attached to everything. We are basking in a veritable sea of common mode noise and all the normal cables and power supplies are vulnerable to its effects.

Devices like the Isotek Titan and the amazing Mosaic ($10,995 ...) are seeming expensive until you try them on a good system. We have been shown their efficacy with Katie Melua singing “Piece by Piece” and Boris Blank from Yello. The sound stage is finally resolved and the instruments and voices are properly resolved with the conditioners attached. 

Another approach to power conditioning is taken by the USA brand PS Audio. Their top of the range device is the P10 that actually completely regenerates the AC mains. These are fun if you suffer the type of geekism that enjoys watching the sine wave pattern. In fact it hooks up to the internet and lets you monitor the status of your power online … very effective though at mains purity within its 1500 watt limit and currently on special at $5995 … 

 In the end it is our customers that give the credentials to these devices ... as the gentleman who took home an Isotek Mosaic said to me the other day in an effusive phone call after having had it at home for a couple of days …

”Your customers haven’t heard their Hi-Fi systems properly unless they put one of these on them ...”

Then I started hearing of this new American headphone brand on the grapevine ... something different … something that could appeal to the most sensitive Hi Fi freak and at the same time making inroads into the studio market but without the bitter fatiguing presentation of the traditional Sennheiser and AKG products. Thus Audeze entered our small sphere of influence.

These Audeze LCD series are beautiful and carefully presented devices. Clearly something to be bought out on a special occasion and not simply bandied about on the morning commute. Unlike our beloved and incredibly good Oppo headphones the LCD series stand out with their wood and bamboo cases. It would be frankly pretentious to wear LCDs on the morning commute, indeed these bamboo and wood LCD 2 and LCD 3 are such good transducers that it seems churlish not to make a special time and a place to listen to them with a good wine to complement the experience.

Where the Oppo PM1 is pure and supremely accurate the LCD 2 is warm and bass full. Where the Oppo is manufactured with fanatic perfection the Audeze feels like a hand hewn product. Both headphones are fantastic and you can come to us and try them in a newly dedicated space at the back of the store in the 164 Lygon St premises. Alcohol, caffeine, and small dogs with hearing to 40Khz are available to complement the experience.

One of the beauties of a turntable is that they are readily serviced with a few specialist tools and parts and reward a bit of TLC with far better sound and many years of life. In this fashion they are far more kindred to a good guitar or piano rather than a piece of consumer disposable electronics.

We have manufacturer trained reps onsite from Project, Rega, Linn, and Ortofon. Should alas your old vinyl spinner be beyond reincarnation we are offering $100 minimum Trade In on Rega Rp1/Project Carbon and above replacements.

These fellows will be able to check your stylus for wear, check and replace belts, adjust tracking and VTA. Check speed accuarcy and rumble, check for earth leaks and connection issues. Check cartridge performance. Check isolation level and feedback propogation. Check platter accuarcy and trueness. Check compliance compatibility of cartridge and tonearm. Provide opinion on performance and remaining duty cycle and repair viability of an older turntable.

EAT Turntables

Isotek Power Conditioning

van den Hul Cartridges and cables

The founder Tomoki Tachikawa is 91 years old and still visits the Factory from Japan regularly. It transpires that he is a lifelong friend of Alex Encel and Interdyne of Australia is by far the longest distributor relationship with a fifty year marriage. These days the company is run by Mr Tachikawa's grandson Peter Kao pictured here holding a newborn Rotel amplifier circuit.

In the late seventies the company moved 80% of its production to Taiwan, then in 1995 to Shenzhen in China. The family knew that they had to acquire their own factory and became one of the first to buy premises in the new Zhuhai economic zone near Macau with a 10,000 sq metre 450 staff factory. The factory was built by Rotel on land that, unfortunately, they were neglected to be informed that it was reclaimed swamp land. It took 6 years to build as the foundations were sinking as the construction progressed … it was unoccupied for two years while things were stabilised and it became a study in how to build on reclaimed land. Now the factory is solid and stable and the land around is sinking …

Uniquely in amplifier manufacturers almost everything of a Rotel product is built in house. They are very proud to have their own SMT (surface mount technology) facility which was a massive investment but allows absolute control over circuit build quality of a basic component that is very vulnerable to QC issues if outsourced. Rotel also have their own toroidal transformer production line.

As part of their “Balanced Design Concept” they made the decision a long time ago that they didn’t have the confidence in outside suppliers to make power supplies. These are wound by hand in house on machinery that looks like it was used for making Mitsubishi Zeros in WWII … they are genuinely fanatical about their quality in very minor and very major details. The copper they use for their winding has to be a particular copper of exacting chemical constitution and they are assembled to exacting tolerances then put in a hot oil pressure bath and baked for 48 hours and finally kiln dried. These are very expensive items to make but are critical to the performance of an amplifier which is why so much effort and passion is expended in their production.

I was very struck by the internal culture of the factory. This is no sweat shop or Foxconn. Peter Kao walked the floor with the accustomed intimacy of a farmer on his family land and handled the fruits of his labour with that same touch that I have seen between mother and child. I understand that when the factory first opened 10 years ago the workers would generally arrive on bicycles, now they all have motor cars. They have food provided and accomodation if required, they are well dressed and polite and seem to be content. Everything is clean and neat and smells good. There is a tangible sense of optimism and purpose that prevails the organisation.

Even the basic Rotel RA10 amplifier uses one of these hand wound copper doughnuts that is completely free of buzz, hum, or rattle. Another example of the attention to detail in passive component quality is in Rotel’s use of slit foil capacitors.

 In fact all Rotel amplifiers are built around the same basic principles. Independent voltage regulators, bulk storage capacitors and star grounding techniques provide for an ultra low noise power supply. Sensitive power circuits are placed away from transformers for a lower noise floor. Mirror imaged left and right channel circuits are used for stable stereo imaging. Short circuit paths minimise mutual interaction and crosstalk and ensure minimal signal degradation.

Their engineers are given absolute autonomy to source component parts to achieve the best acoustic result and go all over the world to get the best quality. Each sample is fully bench tested for two days before listening room trials are undertaken. Minor differences in parts and materials make a significant difference to the sound quality. Acoustic and Audio tuning is actually carried out in the UK by a team of dedicated Hi Fi engineers and I had the particular experience of spending time with their chief technical officer Daren Orth in the Zhuhai facility.

The new RC1590 is the preamplifier that the engineers wanted to build, without any regard to cost considerations. The volume IC used on this is $37US … triple the cost of the next model down. It uses an AKM DAC that brings out the expression of the music and supports DSD. It has separate Analogue and Digital transformers and is Bluetooth APT X for those phones that will support it. We have the RC1590 preamplifier ($2699) on demo along with a pair of the superlative 500 Watt RMS RB1581 Mono Power Amplifiers ($2999 each) … the grip and depth they can exert on a loudspeaker is astounding. The soundstage is pulled completely out of the loudspeaker box and hung in space for inspection by the listener.

Historically Carlton Audio Visual have had a very mixed relationship with this brand. When the store first opened in 1991 we were actually granted a Rotel account by the distributors and I was able to purchase a small amount of floorstock and expected to go forwards purveying this and Loewe Televisions. At the time they were highly desirable brands for a specialist retailer.

Then we were sacked. Never really found out why. Possibly it was a retail manager with influence in the distributors Richmond Store that felt we were too close for comfort. Or perhaps another retailer with an established relationship that may have branded us a competitive threat. Possibly we were too small a business when we opened for anyone in the distributor to care. It was a serious kick in the stomach to a start up to suddenly lose both its planned TV brand and it’s lynch pin mid fi stereo product.

This turned out to be one of several incidents around product access to the then new business. Promised supply arrangements with tier one brands were pulled from beneath our pen just before it touched contract on other occasions. I came to realise that this was par for the course in an industry of blokes on blokes who spent a lot of time together drunkenly talking football and prostitutes in evening dealer meetings.

It took over twenty years for Rotel and Carlton Audio Visual to come back together. For that time Rotel was a highly effective brand competitor to our products, quite often our customers for speakers would buy a Rotel amplifier .. oh the pain. These days we have a growing and mutually nurtured relationship with the Rotel distributor that reflects a strongly comingled interest and passion for our particular industry. This time we really are looking forward to some sunlit uplands with this brand.

 Nobody’s perfect … and we can certainly exemplify that principle.

 In this world of the anonymous click to buy we are exactly the opposite of that. 

 I wonder if that makes people frightened of our potentially undue familiarity. Perhaps the friendliness is sometimes construed as inappropriate by people who are unaccustomed to this particular specialist retail environment. Indeed it’s plausible that they may see it as being a type of manipulative CIA style fakery designed to imbue an artificial sense of comfort and confidence.

 We aren’t that clever actually.

 We do really like our customers though. And that’s no accident.

 There is a particular type of person who is led by a love of music and the machinery thereof to seek out a store such as ours. Those people are invariably more interesting and diverse in character and preferences than someone who simply shops for a brand name.

 Indeed I cont amongst my very best friends people whom I have met through them being customers of Carlton Audio Visual.

 Likewise my colleagues both in Carlton Audio Visual are not simple hirelings but are largely connected by a long term family or friend.

 Suppliers who try and deal with us conventionally … fail. We are simply intolerant of the besuited tier one CE representative with their targets and incentives. We love those people who love their product and purveyance relationships for their own sake.

Our most effective distributor dealings are with people connected by community and relationships who are motivated by more than the mere sale.

 It is of particular concern to me as a proprietor that we need to be able to offer a path for personal development within the small company that justifies the very high potential of the people that I work with. (Because the bitter truth is that they could get higher pay by jumping ship and utilising their acquired talents in a larger company …) To some degree we have succeeded in this staff nurturation through sponsoring a high tech talent base by allowing individuals to pursue their own compatible passions within the company.

 Consequently we have a fairly unique range of in-house competencies across high end audio and cinema, home automation and network development and integration, and Linn LP12 upgrades …

 Needless to say I remember most particularly the clients that we spent time with and with whom we started the empathic building purveyance process but who for one reason or another didn’t consummate the relationship by purchase. In this business there are no neutral encounters.

 I suspect that some of our failures in client relationships are due to people actually being uncomfortable with our high consultation and impression management process. I can quite understand people who just want to buy a brand without the complications and expectations of assay or the exposure to the wider variegations and depth of the marketplace.

 Our business type is designed to attract high research enthusiast consumers … “Fanatics Welcome” … and also those clients who are more experienced and savvy and can recognise purveyance values other than those force fed by mass marketers and tier one brand messages. There are a lot of these people around and they are now tending to purchase Record Players …

 When I had real jobs ... Working at a university or as a professional manager of someone else's company ... I always maintained that essential secularity of employ and domestic. I didn't socialise with my colleagues beyond the institutional events and the concept of having out of boundary dealings with clients never even entered my thoughts.

In the UK it was always expected by my teachers and family that my future would be some form of subsumption to an institution. In my case that was expected to be a university possibly followed by a chemical multinational.

Indeed studying management at RMIT in the late eighties on of the many mantras of the time was to avoid intra organisational entanglements and to keep an absolute separation of family from your employ. This was partly no doubt that one’s family was meant to be an oasis from the anticipated executive stresses of the thrusting career minded ladder climber, perhaps also that it enabled one as a manager to iterate changes to ones subordinate's terms and conditions of employment that would have been incompatible with normal human values of friendship, family, and decency.

Opening Carlton Audio Visual was in some ways a rebellion against the values of self sacrifice to an institution that I had been steadily ingrained with through secondary and tertiary education.

It was coming to Australia in the eighties and meeting “New Australians”, some of whom had been refugees, whose idea of work was to set up a business of some kind, any kind, and then go forth and multiply their family and community, that broke my British institutional paradigm.

So this has culminated in our boxing day sale just gone by, when we not only had the most delightful rush of customers through the doors in what has become a most important sacrificial day of retail, but it was a day where my wife and I worked with our son and daughter and my Partner with his son along with the son of one of my oldest friends. Many of the customers who came in were people we had known for decades.

The till draw rang happily and boxes of lovely hi fi were taken away to new homes in the suburbs. It was bliss.

To think I could have ended up working for a multinational chemical company …

Chord's Hugo re-defined what one could expect from a portable DAC/Headphone amp. Now it's little sibling is here to blow minds in a smaller chassis.

More info from Chord here.

Chord Hugo for scale.

Severed hand not included.

When you activate a Phantom by placing your hand on it the bass pulse transducers on the sides move in and out with an impression of coming to life rather than merely being turned on ...

It's not often that we give floorspace to fancy merchandising stands ... when we saw the Phantom being fully iterated at the Munich Hi Fi Show in May we knew it was going to be a new category audio product.

The first dems were done in a multi function room. After that we gave a pair a room of their own. The low frequency output capability is simply prodigious, in this first demo room which was hitherto a medium high spl surround and stereo dem area a pair of Phantoms was finding room reverberations as though we had a couple of kilowatt plus 18 inch subwoofers going ...

Digital Audio Review on the Phantom with an honourable mention for CAV

Devialet Phantom Official site

Devialet gave rethought acoustic transducer technology with these 16Hz capable spheroidal bass drivers formed from aluminium and carbon fibre and massive reserves of amplification. One should consider this a form of weaponisation of the loudspeaker that will possibly cause the United States to invade France in order to preserve their own failing loudspeaker industry.

The new Monitor Audio Bronze 5’s have just arrived in the store and although they have yet to be run in, the immediate impression is that these will be significantly better than the BX5’s they replace. Playing Gotye through the Rega Brio R and Apollo R and it’s obvious that the bass is more extended as well as being more controlled than the BX5’s – which is no mean feat. The mid-range is also sounding more open and transparent – it will be interesting to see how much further they improve with some hours on them.

The new Bronze 1’s and Bronze 2’s have now arrived as well ... by George they have a tough act to follow. Initial impressions are of a sonically more rounded design with refinement in the mid and treble approaching that of the Silver series ... time will tell if they have also lost the zest of timimg and pace that helped make the BX2's so very popular.

Apparently not ... here is the first review from What Hi Fi? ... straight to the top of the class ...

"What Hi-Fi?" on the Bronze 2's August 2015

The Elex R is made in the English Rega factory and is one of the best buys available for a real stereo amp that one would justifiably expect to last a generation or two in a family. In this business we get to make snap product judgments on the way a device feels in our hands when we take it out of the box. The particular first impression I got from the Elex was a sense of Deja Vu that put me back in the Imperial War Museum and being given a slab of 40mm armour from a Tiger Tank. It is quite remarkably solid and in fact on the hi-fi component inertia scale is possibly the highest scoring item ever ....

This is the big brother the Rega Brio-R, which while not entirely flipping the entire hi-fi industry on its head, has been making waves and dominating in the mid-market and threatening amps at many times its price. Rega have done the logical thing, and effectively strapped two together and put them in one case to create this exceptional Elex-R amplifier..

"The Ear" review on the Elex-R

"What Hi-Fi?" on the Elex-R

The Elex offers all that smooth analogue goodness that the Brio does, beefing it up with more power, a better pre-amp stage and a few lessons from the Elicit’s phono stage. It’s got all that beautiful weight and presence in sound we’ve come to expect from Rega. There’s lots of bass control and a superb smoothness in the top end without sacrificing detail.

One would reccomend you put this amplifier with a set of Sonus faber Chameleons or Monitor Audio Gold 50s.

Rega official site for the Elex-R

The lastest and greatest from the new Q-acoustics 3000 series is here! We can't wait to start playing these 'speakers to customers, because we think that we've got a real hit on our hands here. The Q's are famous for a laidback sound - plenty of detail on offer, but without any harshness typically associated with budget speakers.

We're already liking what we hear - but we think that with a few hours under their belts, then we are going to have a serious competitor. Maybe the forthcoming Monitor Audio bronze will be usurped?

Here's a video of the new range. It is in Russian, but what can you do?

We've been lucky to work on projects for some of Melbourne's finest residences. This Kew residence was very carefully appointed with the best in Audio Visual and Control Systems. A complete automation job featuring lighting control, whole home audio distribution, intercom integration and an exquisite theatre, we worked closely with the owners for over a year to deliver the project to their specifications. You can read more about the record sale price it recently achieved here.

It's that time. Your old speakers have had a good run. They sung sweet songs for you, they've seen you through some good times, some bad times, and they've never judged you about that thing you did once. Nothing lasts forever though. Sometimes you've just got to scratch that upgrade itch and shed your old equipment like a butterfly sheds its cocoon. PMC are giving you the opportunity to emerge from your audio pupation with a beautiful set of British built transmission line speakers for wings, and live off the nectar of your vinyl collection... actually I think this metaphor is going south rather quickly.

What we're trying to say is that PMC are offering some amazing trade-in deals on their even more amazing Twenty and Fact range of speakers. It's never been cheaper to heighten the Hi in your Fi with the goose-bump-enduing detail and rhythm that PMC produce. The deal is a limited time offer, so call in or call up and see just how good a big wooden box can sound.

PMC Twenty.21 -RRP $3395 – After Trade In $2395

PMC Twenty.22 -RRP $4495 – After Trade In $2995

PMC Twenty.23 -RRP $5295 – After Trade In $3495

PMC Twenty.24 -RRP $7795 – After Trade In $4995

PMC Twenty.26 -RRP $12995 – After Trade In $8995

PMC Fact.8-RRP $13695 – After Trade In $9695

Conditions, as always, apply.

The new Monitor Audio Bronze 5’s have just arrived in the store and although they have yet to be run in, the immediate impression is that these will be significantly better than the BX5’s they replace.

Playing Gotye through the Rega Brio R and Apollo R and it’s obvious that the bass is more extended as well as being more controlled than the BX5’s – which is no mean feat. The mid-range is also sounding more open and transparent – it will be interesting to see how much further they improve with some hours on them. 

If you’re hanging out for the new Bronze 1’s and Bronze 2’s then you will have to cool your boots for a few more weeks; keep an eye on our twitter feed – we’ll announce their arrival the moment they hit the store. 

If you can’t wait we still have stock of the wonderful BX2’s…

We are proud to present once again on demo the Michell Gyrodec, arguably the most iconic of all hifi components. Its form and function rivals anything from the Eames stable, its appearance undeniably mid-century modern. Its creator, the late J.A. Michell, founded an engineering company that provided services to the film industry in the 60s, including the design of space crafts for Stanley Kubrick's 2001 - A Space Odyssey. No doubt this was why the GyroDec appeared in "A Clockwork Orange" by Kubrick.

The continued worldwide success of Gyrodec is another indication that The Vinyl Revolution continues. Join the revolution.

Many years ago I bought a Sonic Impact T-amp on a lark (probably to debate it's merits with Mr Brett...). This thing was a thirty dollar 8 watt a side amp made of plastic. It looked like a kids toy and ran on AA batteries. It's based on a tripath chip amp, and the thing sounded really good. Stupidly good really. The fact it worked at all for that price should have been a miracle, but here was this toy that was actually competitive with amps that we were selling. Sure, it was under 10 watts and had to run with highly efficient speakers, but none the less, it was an engaging listen. But at the end of the day, we just couldn't take it seriously. The horrible plastic case and cheap spring clips meant we ended up tossing it in a drawer and writing it off. Sonic impact must of realised this too, as the Mk2 version came in an extruded aluminium chassis, with nice hardware on the back panel.

I think as I get older, the finish of a product has definitely become more important for me. I do care about how a speaker looks as well as sounds. I wouldn't buy a cheaply made amplifier. The sound is still the most important aspect of a Hi-Fi product, but it has to hit a certain standard in finish to be on my shortlist.

What do you think? You can post your thoughts on our forum at stereo.net.au by clicking here

Under the knife.

Factory Tour!

The bit what makes it spin.

Super secret turntable voodoo

Hopefully this makes it back through customs...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Juz4W9yEYA&feature=kp

I recognise that It is not that they are necessarily ignorant or ill educated, it may be that within their particular socio cultural niche they just have never happened to come across those passionate individuals who love music and film and who are prepared to physically iterate the available technical quality of reproduction into their lifestyles in a manner that many of our existing clients do.

In truth we are force fed consumptive models from an early age, there are the normal male dominated Freudian substitutes of motor vehicles and fashion … fashion for males to attract females and for females to attract males that is. Lately the mere brand names themselves have come to acquire a perceived measure of social value so as to make them desirable of ownership quite regardless of the products functionally additive value. This indeed is the professional marketers ideal … create such an air of Kudos around a brand that consumers will purchase it even though it will not assist their existence in any normally quantifiable manner.

Pundits might argue that being the owner of a new pair of Nikes or the latest Prada might give that individual a competitive edge in the merry go round of human reproductive behavior. I would contend that any beneficial effect in that regard is simply the by-product of a sustained advertising campaign. Flowers and the ability to prepare food remain the best aphrodisiacal courtship behaviors for human primates in my humble opinion.

This all being said, why should anyone need to buy a quality audio video system? Is it going to help you breed or eat?

Lets remind ourselves where music comes from and why it works ...

There is a very good argument that music and rhythm actually preceded the development of a language able to convey complex communication, that the endemic structure of our linguistic capability is in fact derived from our brains sense of rhythm and timbre.

This musicality is a far reaching built in sense that humans possess; I recall an experiment where the unassisted rendition of a piece of music by a quartet choir was so time accurate that when used as a means of actual experiment timing for Newtonian physics experiments the singers were exactly able to match the timing accuracy if the best mechanical clocks.

As it happens our auditory cortex is laid out like a piano keyboard, in pitch order connected to different hair sensors.When we look at the pattern of stimulation in a brain of someone listening to music, is not just one part that lights up though, the whole organ goes off in a veritable firework show of activity.

When a piece of music moves you it is literally having an intimate and in depth effect on your thought patterns. Music has a great power to influence us individually and en masse. In fact music plays us as though our mind and body were the instrument.

The youth cult phenomena of the post war world invariably have as a binding agent a new musical style that is expressed not just as a blip in record sales, but have also served to introduce new social memes into our young people. Where would all the youth movements be without their individual musical backgrounds?

For better or worse this is a very powerful effector in the ongoing development of our cultures, one notes that those most reactionary and fanatical religious movements embedded in semi literate pre medieval thought patterns instinctively decry new musical influences as being evil for their ability to cause their followers to stray from the written path. Every tyrant and dictatorship at some time attempts to limit the access of its populace from new and invidious music that may cause them to think outside their particular narrow terms of reference.

The oldest known crafted instruments are bone flutes dating back to c 35,000 years, and it has been suggested that this may have been a difference between homo sapiens and homo neanderthalis. Neanderthals are much berated and underrated by traditional anthropology, I prefer the view that they were into music of a percussive nature, the drummers of prehistory ...

I note that Charles Darwin made a strong case for music as being important to human sexual selection ...

To bring my argument home, it would seem that the really misguided consumers therefore are not the ones who choose to enrich their lives with good quality music and the breadth of sensory stimulation and cultural opportunities so offered; but are rather those who chase the false gods of consumerism as represented by the advertised aspirations of motor vehicles, houses, and fashion.

In summary therefore to really improve your quality of life and breeding potential you actually need an excellent Hi Fi system above all else ...

And further to this the BBC has published a nice little article on the 23rd April agreeing that music actually is about sex...

I also took the opportunity to replace the bi-wire bridging bars on the speakers. These shipped with the speakers and are just a bit of bent brass plate to bridge the highs and lows if you’re not bi-wiring. I was probably so excited to get the speakers playing when I got them that I never got around to replacing those bars with some speaker cable. I simply lopped off a few more centimetres of speaker cable and fitted that in its place. Make sure you do up the terminals nice and tight.

As a last measure, I tightened up the drive units. Speakers and their drivers produce vibrations, and over time, this vibration can slightly loosen the fixings that hold them in place. I’m not talking about shaking the driver loose; it’s a subtle little movement. This means that the basket of the driver is moving a tiny bit with the driver, which can muddy the sound a fraction. By tightening up the drivers, they can produce the vibration they are supposed to. Take care with this step – you don’t want to over-tighten anything – you could damage the cabinet, or crack a driver basket. Just give them a quarter turn of so – enough to firm the drivers up. I also tightened up the speaker terminal plate. You can also take this time to tighten up spikes on floor standers.

With everything done, I sat back and had a listen. Sure enough, the bass had tightened up a bit, and the top end had a touch more focus, with more space between the vocals and the instruments. The changes aren’t mind-blowing – the differences are subtle, but it’s certainly an improvement, and one that will only cost you a little bit of time. And as card carrying audiophiles, aren’t we trying to wring every last drop of performance from out system?

Chord has a pretty awesome reputation in the world of digital to analogue conversion. The DAC64 was a truly remarkable product, the kind of thing you could drop into a system and watch as peoples jaws would hit the floor. It was so good, you could tell the difference in our cramped office when it was being used in an adjoining dem room. So we're pleased to report that the Hugo is a fine addition to that pantheon.

So how does it sound? In a word, stunning. It's a crime to consider this thing just a portable accessory, as it's a true bit of hifi kit - it just happens to run off battery too. Perhaps it's something to do with the batteries decoupling the unit from the mains - please note I am not a Doctor(of electical engineering) - but the unit sounds amazingly transparent.

Naturally, the press have fallen in love with this thing, showering if with stars and gongs or whatever metric they use to let you know they've gone bonkers for it. Here's an interview with Chord head honcho John Franks talking about what makes this thing so darned special:

Terry Bateman has published a very nice piece about how the Brio R design was achieved:

The Ear.Net August 2012 .

The obvious changes are the move to a half sized component and the inclusion of a remote.

Remote ... now included and it does the CD Player as well ... it wouldn't kill you to get off the couch to change the volume but I must confess it had sometimes been a dealbreaker with the previous model.

The Brio R definitely proffers a weightier sonic presence than it's predecessor. Mr Gandy cares neither for specifications or for advertising but does quote a conservative 50 watts per channel for this amp...

There is more than that going on though. The amp has more authority and presence fresh out of the box. Really good control and articulation down low and Johnny Cash's baritone tunes come through with depth and power.

You should try the Brio-R with the Sonus Faber Toy bookshelves and Johnny Cash's American III-Solitary Man. Wicked combination.

The first review appeared from the French Magazine Haute Fidelitie written by Dominique Mafrand ...

Here is their conclusion ... in French ... they think it's brilliant ... it got five stars for everything.

"Voici un appareil qui ne va laisser personne indifférent. Le Rega Brio-R est un intégré diablement musical à l’éventail de qualités subjectives extrêmement large et proposé à un tarif qui va provoquer une toux compulsive chez les concurrents. En un mot comme en cent, il n’y a à notre connaissance pas de rivaux sérieux prêts à en découdre dans cette tranche de prix. Mieux,les prestations musicales et techniques du Brio-R, qui offre une entrée phono MM de qualité, vont sans aucun doute piétiner les plates-bandes de machines de plus grande envergure. Un best-seller en puissance."

Google translate: "Here is a device that will leave no one indifferent. The Rega Brio integrated-R is a damn musical range of the extremely broad and subjective qualities offered at a price that will cause compulsive coughing among competitors. In a nutshell, to our knowledge there are no serious rivals ready to fight in this price range. Best, musical performances and technical Brio-R, which offers a MM phono input quality will undoubtedly trample the flower beds of larger machines. A bestseller in power. "

And here's a copy of the review by Tone Audio magazine:

Tone Audio 2012.

And here is the link to the official Brio-R website.

Rega Brio-R Integrated Amplifier .

This probably is a postcode 3068 phenomena, and this inner Northern area of Melbourne is indeed becoming dangerously hipster. The born again Vinyl scene has caught the eye of academic institutions; we had RMIT in here the other day filming a documentary piece of research on the rise of the LP record. Brett made sure Magic the Papillon put in an appearance on an otherwise human dominated video ...

The BBC has been watching record sales and have gone so far as to categorise the different types of new gen record lovers into eight different types of collector.

The one thing that is lacking from this scene is large scale directed commercial exploitation ...

Increasingly we have seen the new era of media connectivity on the internet via social media and forums et al to be a fertile ground for astro-turfing and classical disinformation bombardment. Astute organisations of sufficient resource have been utilising this to mold public opinion in the cause of their own ideology and or marketing aims often unconstrained by sensible criteria of coherence and consistency.

So in this world of institutional media contrivance Coca Cola is a healthy socially contributive source of natural goodness, plain cigarette packaging is bad for the small business man on the street, the mining tax will cripple the Australian economy, climate change is not anthropogenic, Obama is Hitler, and Tony Abbott has become our prime minister ...

The resurgence of vinyl sales didn't happen because the buying population was told to do it, it didn't happen by the contrivance of an ingenious guerrilla marketing campaign, it didn't happen either by social media or by blue sky technocrats redefining our media ecosystem for the second decade of century twentyone ...

In fact other than a few musicians, studios, small shops, and old fashioned Hi-Fi manufacturers, there is no one making a significant commercial benefit from vinyls rebirth as a primary source of quality recording for the music enthusiast.

One has no doubt that in fairly short order marketing organisations will attempt to ride the back of this wave ... it may though that they have found it hard to find reins to steer it with though, as it seems to be derived from a powerful undercurrent of real disenchantment with how not only music, but also musicians have been treated by the digital dissemination of their product. Also I would argue that these particular very intelligent and high information level consumers that are choosing vinyl are amongst the most intrinsically resistant to the tactics of those aforesaid marketing organisations.

As a minor parallel I note that the newly resurgent cafe racer scene that was contemporary with vinyls rise and was an expression of disgust at the formulaic and dysfunctional chopper that had become a creature of Reality TV and bad American taste ... think Orange County Choppers ... now the Cafe Racers have themselves begun to appear on Reality TV shows and have been taken up as a motif for a new wave of fashionable retro clothing. See Bullshit Hipster Bike Videos for examples of how this otherwise worthy and creative endeavor has been perverted for the purposes of selling things we don't need.

As yet then the Vinyl movement not been overtly infiltrated by any marketing institutions and it remains a pure example of a consumer directed anti marketing phenomena. Perhaps the whole thing is just too damn geek for any advertising slickster to understand. That is why it leads me to a sense of optimism that not all things of our commercial acquaintance are being controlled by the lower moral authority of high end social marketing techniques.

I do note though that records and players are showing up with regularity in a place on the mainstream where ten years ago it would have been completely unlikely. So in both the Sci Fi blockbusters of Oblivion with Tom Cruise and the latest Star Trek "into Darkness" the default manner of music playback in hundreds of years time is ... the LP Record.

Listening to Vinyl makes you better people ... Spoof

Some of our work on one of Victoria's premier residences was recently featured on Better Homes and Gardens. The iconic pole house in Fairhaven is a landmark for anyone who has ever driven along the Great Ocean Road, with the distinct building soaring over the seascape. The adjoining residence was also highlighted, with our Cinema installation being singled out as one of the buildings most impressive features. We also specified and provided the comprehensive home automation systems for the residence fulfilling a unique brief by the owners.

Martin Liedtke our general manager is responsible for the development of this and our other high end residential projects. He claims to be too busy to post a portfolio of his works however Better Homes and Gardens did a nice show on The Pole House recently and we have linked to it below.

This amp transports one back to an earlier, fresher, time in the 1970's when $500 would buy a piece of Hi Fi kit that would be really useful and still around thirty years later. Love the speaker A and B switching. Fantastic value.

What Hifi? gave it 5 stars and the 2012 product of the year. Need we say more? Ok, sure: It's a tidy little integrated, focusing on doing what it does really well. 40 Watts a side is more than enough to get most speakers up and dancing. Its got a headphone socket and even packs a decent MM phono stage. Oh yeah - it's awesome value for money. It packs a real punch and is a must audition at the price point.

"What Hi-Fi?" on the Rotel RA-10

"There is occasionally much to be said in favour of stripping back to the fundamentals, and the RA-10 is definitely one of those occasions. The RA-10 offers 40 Watts per channel, four analogue line level inputs, a phono input and traditional integrated amplifier controls that will feel comfortable and intuitive to every user.

The RA-10 is no lightweight however. It is a serious high performer that benefits from all our efforts dedicated towards optimising audio electronics for the reproduction of music. The RA-10 brings a clarity and effortless dynamism to music that belies both its modest ambitions and modest price."

The Rotel RA-10 official Australian website

I personally am glad the glamour has gone from basic surround sound systems. Fundamentally people who listen to music are much more interesting than people who watch TV. There is a whole section of our retail marketplace in Australia that is devoted entry point surround sound systems where the basic sound quality has been lost but the brand names are preserved. The very typical formula is a tier one brand receiver with American brand floorstanding loudspeakers from a chain store. We find in our specialist business that we now either sell someone a NAD T748 Receiver or a Sonos Playbar system for that application. I will always try to steer a client into a Bookshelf based surround system at the entry point rather than a floorstander. Increasingly they are buying instead a stereo amp with bookshelf speakers running a Turntable and a Sonos Connect with just the stereo audio output from the TV or Blu Ray Player/Apple TV for movies.

Dominic and his resurrected Planar 2

Since 1999 Monitor Audio has had various incarnations of their Silver series. Through various model changes and evolutions, it has always remained a paragon of awesome HiFi. It occupies a very comfortable place on the cost vs quality graph, being a very reasonable speaker range with fantastic performance. All this and it manages to look damn good at the same time. Ditching superfluous "RX" letters in the model name, the new Silver 6 lives up to it's legacy with improvements in almost all areas. Come, listen, enjoy.

Review by "Soundstage" Magazine

Official Monitor Audio Page

When an Audio Research VSi60 integrated amp and a Reference 75 power amp love each other very much, some times you end up with a wonderful combination in a VSi75. It's 75 buttery smooth watts driven out of the famous KT120 tubes, showing it's Ref75 parentage. The open chassis and upgraded pre-amp stage are everything the VSIi60 is, and more.

The natural partner for this in our store is the new Sonus faber Olympica III loudspeakers. The first VSi75 in Australia was actually sold by us with a pair of Sonus faber Cremonas and a Linn Sondek LP12 Turntable. A tricky system to set up but incredibly rewarding when when sorted ... there really nothing as good for the money. The particular young couple who bought that system will still have it well into their dotage.

Spiv in consumer electronic parlance in Australia stands for "special incentive" ... it is a gratuity given directly by a manufacturer or distributor to an individual salesman to reward them for selling a particular product. This means that the product will be preferentially purveyed over other devices in the store regardless of its vices and virtues or its appropriateness to the client ...

Recently in Melbourne we are told that the proprietor of a well known Hi Fi store discovered by accident that his staff were receiving spivs from a distributor without his prior acquiescence. This meant that they were selling product uncountenanced by the normal culture of the business in the face of other brands that may well have been better for both the business and the client.

Carlton Audio neither pays an individual commission nor does it allow manufacturers to spiv their products. We have a group based renumeration plan based on turnover that encourages the staff to be mutually supportive and promotes ethical long term client relationships.

We believe that properly motivated staff can give good enthusiastic sales service without the internally competitive carrot and stick of margin based commissions and that properly researched clients would prefer to deal with people who are not simply motivated by their individual gross profit per customer results.

I have always felt that allowing spivs in the store would break a fundamental ethos of our operation and corrupt the basic representation of our products in a way that would undermine the relationship with an intelligent client.

Jim was with Carlton Audio Visual at our inception as an installation technician. Never one to be tethered by formal arrangements such as employment or contracts his involvement waxed and waned with his own pursuits. In recent years Jim ran a successful independent home installation business and would supply us with some innovative wiring and mounting products.

Jim was one of my first friends in Australia. He was taken from us suddenly yesterday morning. I grieve for the years that I will not see him in the future.

From "The New Yorker" 1950

Excellent stuff.

Although I've just been told by a gentleman who follows these things very closely that the melancholic nature of this piece reflects a very negative cancer prognosis ...

As I mentioned, I’m writing this from my freshly installed NBN connection. As someone who does most of their work via the internet, the NBN has been a long time in coming for me. The promise of low latency and high speeds will improve my ability to get work done. A big part of that is high upload speeds. being able to maintain a high quality video conference or upload files to a server quickly will be a big boost.

I’ve opted for 50/20 plan, meaning there is still room to upgrade when I feel I need the extra speed. Here’s a line speed test:

Pretty saucy. After the initial thrill of the connection had worn off, I started thinking about what it will mean to me. I’ve already noticed a difference - spotify tracks start straight away through sonos. AppleTV previews are much quicker. Uploading images takes no time at all. In short, things are faster, but nothing is life changing so far. But I now have a thoroughly modern piece of communications infrastructure for applications of the future. My university research into remote physiotherapy systems is the kind of service that the NBN will enable. Without getting too political, its also the kind of infrastructure that will allow regional areas such as Launceston to increase productivity and diversify the economy. Projects like this should help - Launceston Catalyst project.

So what did I want to announce? We’ve been working on a new website! Before Rab starts hyperventilating, we are not replacing carltonaudiovisual.com.au . Rab is strangely attached to this site (probably because it’s so old, updates are done with a typewriter), so we’re not replacing this site (yet). Instead we will be launching a brand new website - Fanatics Choice!

Fanatics choice will be our e-commerce site. You may have noticed we’ve started selling select items from this site. That’s been a bit of a dry run for us as we get the new site setup. We’re happy to report that everything has been a success and we’re looking forward to launching our new site soon.

Fanatics Choice is not going to be offering every products we sell - its going to best a curated collection of our finest, along with amazing monthly specials on hot products. In addition we’ll have a range of popular accessories and Hi-Fi bling. It will be another place for you to visit to view our specials and snap up a bargain.

We’re hoping to launch very soon, and will of course keep you up to date when it launches. In the meantime, feel free to email me at troy@carltonaudiovisual.com.au if you have any thoughts or suggestions.

Cheers!

Fanny Cochrane Smith singing in 1903 from the Australian Government archives

Radio National on The Spirit of Things

For some time NASA has been working on ways of reducing the ground shockwave effects of supersonic aircraft and have demonstrated a severely modified Northrop F5 that was effectively a Quiet Supersonic Aircraft.

As a child in the UK there was a brief glorious period when the countryside was regularly shaken with supersonic booms as RAF Lightnings passed overhead at thirty thousand feet to prepare people for Concorde ... I loved it.

Unfortunately it seemed the rest of the world didn't feel the same way effectively dooming supersonic travel and leaving us in the hands of Boeing.

NASA listening for the boom and rattle

Occasionally I am reminded of the old Ivor Tiefenbraun of Linn fame philosophy that he used to create the charisma of the original Linn Sondek LP12 turntable in the UK in the late seventies.

Ivor pointed out that a HiFi system was only as good as the weakest link in the reproduction chain. He would use his magnificent turntable to show how an inexpensive amplifier and loudspeakers worth 50 quid each would bloom when fed with a signal from his 500 pounds worth of analogue engineering. Traditional wisdom was to split a 600 pound budget along the lines of 200 each for source amp and speaker, or less for the front end and spend most on the speakers 'cos after all they are what make the sound …

Ivor demonstrated to an industry that the greatest gains per dollar for a consumer seeking better quality through an upgrade were to be found in adding a higher quality source to the system. Putting an LP12 on a budget amp and speakers would realise so much more information and detail in the music signal than any other path of upgrade.

Now when I first wrote a version of this blog in 2003 and I commented then how long ago it seemed that we were in a position to purvey high end vinyl based systems and that our emphasis on source was all CD.
Actually now with the upsurge of Vinyl awareness and our recent acquisition of Linn LP12 as a product to purvey I can see client circumstances where I will be once again recommending Ivors’ classic recipe for Audio Nirvana with the most expensive component being the record player.

In the digital world our best source on display in Carlton Audio Visual is undoubtedly the DCS Puccini Cd / SACD Dac and clocking mechanism (click here for details) worth about $25,000 and able to make your hair stand on end. On an SACD recording through an Audio Research Pre and Power and a pair of Sonus faber Stradiveri playing Pink Floyd will take your breath away … DCS have since produced the amazing Vivaldi multi box CD player that sells for approx $120,000 ...

By contrast yesterday I was able to sell a delightfully well balanced system for $2000 comprising a pair of Monitor Audio RX1 with a NAD C326 Amplifier and a NAD C546 CD Player. Playing Johnny Cash “One” from his 2003 American Pie Album really bought his rich emotional presence into the room. This is an immensely satisfying high value audio system to purvey at a very reasonable cost, and one that I know the client is still likely to be enjoying in twenty five years time.

I note that when I first wrote this Joy of Source blog eight years ago the client for the minor system was concerned about its performance on his proud new iPod device … yesterday however the client of similar age was most concerned about how the system was going to perform on his new and most important music acquisition, that he had even bought before the rest of the kit … being his Project Debut Carbon record player ...

Thus the essence of the old argument was reminded to me in this now post digital age. Rather than the chap being concerned for the quality of the sound card in his computer, or the compression ratio of his recordings, he would be paying particular attention to the quality of the Phono stage and the cartridge for the Vinyl reproduction chain.

We have a few sources that stand out in our inventory at the moment…

I hate consumer electronic powerpoint presentations with a fervour, mostly manufacturers know not to invite me to them as I will have tendancy to be either acoustically disruptive or possibly unconscious in short order. Or even worse noisily and conspicuously photograph every frame so that I can actually do something useful with the information portrayed like show the important bits to my colleagues.

The tier one brands often seem to think that the intellectual copyright of their orderly microsoft style presentations is really precious ... when in fact if its a Pioneer or Bose then its really about trying to get people who are possibly functionally illiterate beyond their commission percentage to remember this weeks PMPO rating for a surround receiver while reducing their forebrains even further with free alcohol and colourful ties to overlay the nervous presenters three piece saville row uniforms.

Thankfully the Sonos chaps did none of this with the Playbar release. Small Hotel room, jeans and shirt, concise product show and tell with a bottle of water and Jaffas being the only distractions.

Physically the Playbar is a 900 mm wide slim black bar with silver trims that is an immediate aesthetic match for contemporary TV panels. the raw device consists of nine drive units at a 45 degree angle aranged in theree groups of double woofer and tweeter. When setting it up it rather cleverly senses its attitude and will nominate left and right channels accordingly wether it is above or below the screen.

The Playbar connects to the TV via a single fibre optic cable ... at a stroke ommitting the myriad pitfalls of attempting any type of HDMI connection and acknowledging that 95 per cent of televisions sold in the last five years have a fibre optic output.

As part of its exceptional simplicity of operation the Playbar has auto on sensing, ie: when you turn the TV on it will turn on, and it has IR pass through to enable control of other components in a cabinet and such.

You can set it up so that if there are other Sonos components around the house the TV sound can be retransmitted to them as well, useful no doubt for the typical Australian Football viewer and staggerer about the houser after a few too many Carltons ...

The first piece that was played was on this initial demonstration was the much overused demo from House of FlyingDaggers wherein the bowl of stones is bounced around the drums for the blind dancer to emulate. On its own the Playbar demonstrated adequate timbre and depth, certainly the equal of or better than a non subwoofer assisted soundbar from a typical brand major. With music the vocals are shown as being slightly brassy but immediate with an interesting but effective spacious relationship to the screen courtesy of the 45 degree speaker placement and the 24 million calculations a second that the Playbar carries out as part of its digital proccessing.

When they played Pink Floyd "Time" from Dark Side of the Moon it was exactly suited to this device with the clock bells pealing with terrific presence and the chiming positioned above the Bar cospatial with the screen in an enjoyable and fun musical presentation. Bass was present but clipped within the physical limitations of the Bar.

Adding the Sonos subwoofer to the system revealed its true power as a visual system with terrific albeit mono octave bass presence ... oh that's it ... it sounds like a giant Bose system ... but with better midrange ... and much less expensive ... and better made ... and capable of doing so much more with different types of music media ...

Playing the latest Star Trek movie when the Enterprise cavalry charges out of the gas cloud to save the world from Eric Bana it was clear that all the Sonos Phasers are set to kill in the marketplace.

There is a night mode by the way on the Playbar so as to enable movies without the peaks and troughs and therefore to keep down neighbourhood litigation and visits from your local constabulary ...

There is a speech enhancement mode for dialogue cleanup ... and that's it ... no 24 DSP surround modes with multiple channel offset and infinitely adjustable parameters. When you do the full system with a pair of Play Threes at the rear channels wirelessly connected it is such fun with full Dolby Digital AC3 available straight out of the box when encoded in the original signal, otherwise the device processes with Dolby Pro logic style on two channel or other material. During set up of the Play Threes as rears you put in the distances of the speaker and it sets up the delays accordingly, very thoughtfully there is a lip sync adjustment within the settings as well to allow for those transmisions downloads or discs that don't speak in time to the video ...

One of the very clever innovations on the Playbar is the way they allow its basic function as a TV system to run once set up from ... any remote control ...

What that means is that during set up you can nominate a remote, it could be your Television or your Foxtel or whatever, point it at the Playbar and it will control the Sonos device volume as though it were part of the TV.very uniquely if the Playbar dosnt have the IR coding of your particular remote control stored in it to recognise it you can learn any remotes volume up, volume down, and mute, into it to The Cloud.

In the hotel room this evening there was an unknown Iban brand remote that was easily learned by the unit.
Every existing Sonos client who has their multi room audio is going to love this as an add-on to their Tvs. Other people who can no longer understand what the newsreader is saying in their unintelligable late model Flatscreen will love what this can do and then buy more Sonos for their residences when they discover how much music Sonos can get around your house from so many places to so many places.

This is not say that the Playbar is a universal panacea for surround sound ... lets be very clear that it dosnt do high definition surround audio or high quality stereo. It dosnt do multiple HDMI inputs and retransmit that elsewhere in your house.

But it will certainly effect entry point Receiver sales and will probably take a very large piece out of Bose TV sales ...

To be frank there is a dearth of very good Blu Ray Players ... The high water mark of the Denon DVD A1 and the Marantz UD9400 has not been achieved by the newer products. Rather the market place peaks out at about $1000 with very few to choose from above that.

In some ways this represents a qualitative delineation that is the limiting factor of Blu Ray and it also is indicative of the volatility of the format that the manufacturers are unwilling to invest in it above a certain quality level.

That being said the Oppo BD105D is on the top of the current pile, with it's excellent weighty chassis well equipped with outputs including balanced out stereo pair, comprehensive video boards and excellent build, this is the flagship of this brand that has cut a swathe through the Blu Ray player market.

"Hi Fi World" reviews the BDP 105D.

Oppo BDP105D specification in full.

Herewith his Obituary from the LA Times.

The other is that its the fiftieth anniversary of the Rolling Stones first gig ...

And incidentally its the twentieth anniversary of the official opening of Carlton Audio Visual.

This is the incredible hulk of surround amplifiers. Our chaps not only complained because here is another serious product that we have to find space and time for, but because it weighs 30 kg packed ...

This is NAD's ultimate single box surround receiver. It is built to a much higher standard than previous NAD surround products, they claim to emulate that paragon of production quality being Denon with this Seven Series range whilst mantaining that characteristic harmony and drive that is the hallmark of the brand.

This is the first surround amplifier that has two toroidal transformers ... expect massive grip and authority without brutality and with exceptional presence. You should be considering this if you have a no compromise speaker system such as Ambience Ribbons or Sonus faber Cremonas that would normally be beyond the ken of a single box surround amp as being too dreadfully critical of the stereo reproductive quality ...

NAD T787 official site

And now we have a copy of the first review of the T787 from the American "Home Theater Review" magazine:

"Home Theater Review" August 2012, Volume 19, No 8

Note that: Americans can't spell "Theatre", and that the US sell price is US$4000 ... NAD is rapidly becoming noted as the product with the best Australian price point by a huge margin relative to any other CE brand. The UK sell price is 3000 Pounds Sterling which equates to Aus$5000 (a thousand dollars more than here)... this alone to the cognoscenti makes this range of surround amplifiers just fantastic value in Australia, never mind that they sound fantastic as well ...

The local distributors have done a terrific direct deal with the manufacturer resulting in the Aus sell price being excellent value for the local consumer. NAD were the first specialist CE manufacturer to adopt the offshore manufacturing model in 1979 and now they appear to be certainly the first in Australia with truly competitive global pricing.

Another online review from SoundStage Xperience:

SoundStage January 2013

And Home Theatre Magazine names it Top Receiver of The Year:

Home Theater January 15th 2013

Click here for the official NAD T787 brochure

Recently a single bit of digital information was stored on just 12 atoms, remarkable as this is it means that we are approaching a practical limit of one atom per bit.

To get around this storage limitation it has been proposed that phase change materials that can switch between an amorphous and a crystalline state be used to switch between many more than just the two binary states. Phase change material (PCM) memory can already write and retrieve data 100 times faster than flash memory that is used in many consumer devices and computers.

Whereas flash memory is generally limited to 3000 read-writes PCM based memory can be used at least 10 million times. Samsung in fact have developed a new 8Gb phase change memory chip recently that is promising a number of new applications and will be released at the ISSCC solid state tech conference in San Francisco this month.

Now a gentleman in Zurich by the name of Evangelos Eleftheriou who works for IBM is proposing that PCM’s true potential lies not in using just its binary state capability with a single bit per cell but to control the current and create states in between fully crystallised and fully amorphous. In fact a researcher at the University of Essex has demonstrated no less than 512 distinct states in a single 20 nanometre cell as used in the Samsung chip.
Obviously this storage tech is a long way from iteration but the industry has a way of incepting useful innovations like this at a rate that even exceeds Moore’s predictions.

The potential for media storage at unprecedented levels of resolution with this type of retrievable capacity at hand is fantastic. Think Star Trek Holo Pit with full interactivity …the ability to for example take a fully interactive tour in real time from a room with screens floor wall and ceiling and visit the world’s most interesting places in real time.

I am reminded of some of Arthur C Clarke’s speculations that seemed thoroughly wild at the time that are now almost amongst us.

Grand fun.

So now we Audiophiles who spend hours tweaking speakers have a new laser-based tool to help perfect the setup. One of the fundamentals to an excellent sounding hi-fi is avoiding dead spots, the points at which sound waves overlap and cancel each other out through destructive waveform interference. These can be caused by incorrect speaker placement, but they also occur when a single speaker plays mid-range frequencies and sound from the woofer and tweeter interact.

Speaker manufacturers as in the aforementioned Celestion have been detecting these dead spots in their designs by performing microphone tests in the space around the speaker, which is a time-consuming process, or computer simulations, which can prove inaccurate. Now, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London, UK has come up with this rather neat alternative that takes advantage of the way light changes as it passes through sound waves.

Researchers at NPL shone a laser vibrometer, which measures tiny vibrations, past the front of a speaker and then bounced the light back with a reflecting surface. Light waves change their phase when reflected and interacting with sound waves can affect this change because light travels faster in lower-pressure air. The laser vibrometer can pick up the differences, letting the researchers map out the sound waves and track down the dead spots. In the above YouTube clip you can see the process being enacted on a Genelec monitor in an anechoic chamber in the U.K.

3D was always going to be flat and nobody who believes in Smart TV can be clever.

And within the fiscal hell of CE manufacturing brighter and more energetic and clearer visual displays are struggling to emerge, dogged by longevity of the blues and screen burn issues though.

"They" say the future is flexible OLED with 4K plus resolution ...

Unroll a giant sreen in your garden that you could watch in sunlight ...
It may take a while.

In truth there is a mass extinction of screen purveyance happening.

Like Trilobites rotting on the beach enclaves of TV sales at all levels are falling before the plough of change. Think of Ava

Gardner and Gregory Peck in post Northern nuke Melbourne from the Neville Shute book and you will catch the mood in some quarters of the CE industry.

Sony apparently lost 30 Billion dollars and Sharp $4.6Bn last year ...
Allied to those fundamental losses from the TV mainstream Pioneer, Fujitsu, and NEC displays along with locally Clive Peeters, Dick Smith, Wow Sight And Sound, retailers are all finished or for grabs.

With Television at the moment the only real earner is the installation if it's on wall with cables. Most TV's are now being purveyed at a retail margin below a reasonable ROI from static monies ... so they are no longer paying the costs of their purveyance in their retail resell.

It seems inevitable that the majority of TVs will be sold effectively directly to the consumer from the manufacturer. Only the fittest will survive.

As the consumer market moves into this very digital age, few products stand out as high quality and reliable as the Kaleidescape server. It is a premium product, no doubt, but for the avid collector of DVD & Blu-Ray discs it offered the best option for storing your movie collection in an accessible manner without breaking any laws due to the method of storage (bit for bit, encrypted, licensed etc.)

Until Monday 12 March that is...

A judgement of permanent injunction against the sale and support of the Kaleidescape servers is now in place. As explained in the article from CEPro "...The far-reaching injunction touches not just Kaleidescape, but its agents, franchisees and "those acting in concert with them or at their direction," all of which are “permanently restrained and enjoined from directly or indirectly making, having made, selling, offering to sell, marketing, importing or otherwise transferring any DVD Playback Product” that does not have a physical disk present during playback, the court ordered."

As part of the injunction, Kaleidescape can no longer offer technical support for products that are already in the field, meaning existing servers can receive no updates or repairs..."

Kaleidescape CEO Michael Malcolm issued the following statement "For the past 8 years, we've been baffled about why this lawsuit ever happened, since our products don't encourage piracy, but do increase sales of movies. Maybe it's because the large CE companies in Japan and the big computer companies in the USA, on the board of the DVD CCA, are afraid that Kaleidescape is building a better way to enjoy DVDs and Blu-ray Discs than they are. Imagine a world where Apple wasn't allowed to build the iPod because Sony wanted a 'level playing field' for the Walkman."

This example of ignorance from the 'copyright holders' aka movie studio execs displays a failing to recognise the needs of consumers and open themselves to a ready market. Imagine a business model where the content holders provided a legal and affordable means of accessing your entertainment media... iTunes, Netflix, Rhapsody do spring to mind.

CEPro Kaleidescape article

A very relevant comment from a poster on Slashdot.org

Look at those fat capacitors.

And a real transformer! None of that switch mode business.

www.starav.com.au

This was a black tie event that the likes of Paul and myself would normally have waited outside of to either panhandle or mug the aristocratic attendees as they left but some suppliers invited us in so as not to end up compromised themselves in one of Melbourne's dark alleyways ...

Pleasingly a number of our prime products collared this top of the pile local accreditation.

The new Aktimate Micro won the best "Desktop speaker" and Mr Creek's designs also won with his excellent Epos Epic 5 floorstanding loudspeakers.

The Epsilon Music Centre was adjudged the best lifestyle system of the year.

Sennheiser HD800's were unsurprisingly chosen as the best headphones available.

Possibly for its sheer sex appeal the Thorens TD309 took the award for turntables. nobody in 1986 would have expected vinyl to be on such ascendancy 25 years later.

In the very competitive projector section it was the Sharp XVZ17000 that took the honours.

And finally the Denon AVR3312 surround receiver of course picked up the prize for Receivers under $2000 ...

This is the CERN data centre. We will all live again in one of these ...

It looks like a major paradigm shift in the user interface(UI), closely matching up with what microsoft have been doing with their phone platform. Its all based around the concept of tiles, which I liked on the phone and think it will make for a different user experience. This is obviously very influenced by touch technology and certainly by tablets. It looks like Microsoft are trying enable a uniform version of windows to coexist on multiple platforms.

I was a shade disappointed when the UI flipped back to what still looks like Windows 7 running in the background. Make no mistake about it, this is a UI layer over the top of the regular operating system, much like using media center currently. They haven't used this as an opportunity to ditch the old UI altogether, but I guess then you probably shouldn't call it windows anymore...

I do like that you still have full access to the file system, something that definitely bother me about iOS. Whilst its great that it hides what is essentially un-necessary for the bulk of users, I grew up with DOS, and I like to know where my files actually are!

Obviously its still a bit rough and will have some work to go. Still, you think that microsoft coul ave sprung for a microphone for the first official preview video (unless the UI team has gone rogue...)

Apple will (supposedly) be unveiling their next iterations of OSX (10.7, or Lion to its friends...) and iOS 5 next Monday (Tuesday Australian time). Although OSX has been pretty widely spoiled due to developer versions, what apple are going to unveil for iOS 5 is anyones guess. The original iPhone OS was absolutely groundbreaking, and it looks like many features from it will be heading to OSX. But it was first unveiled four years ago, so are we about to see another new paradigm, or are we in for another evolution of what is a very mature operating system?

Morel on the other hand has got better and less expensive. It has been taken up by a number of ex-Bose dealers.
It is strongly possible that the Bose product was attempting to componsate for it's lack of constructional expense through advertising. If so they did a really good job.
They are at their best in Myers David Jones and their own brand stores.

There can be no prisoners when  Bose and Morel satellite are placed side by side. The morel is metal where the Bose is plastic. The Morel is coaxial two way in the satellite where the Bose is a single cone. The Morel has excellent sound designed to be ultra competitive in a comparative audition environment
There can be only one speaker brand in a Bose store ...

Bose is broadening it's own brand stores and soon to be offering it's own TV in Australia. Their power in the general marketplace will no doubt be substantially enhanced and further separated from specialist brands like Morel.

This is a sign of the times perhaps ... that they see a dwindling consumer support base for large single box surround amps. This means that the nine channel 4311 will be the effective top of the range after the 4810 and AVPA1HD/POA are sold out. Personally I think this is a great shame as the sound quality imbued by that unstoppable behemoth single box Receiver series such as the 4810 has always been absolutely world class, iron hand in velvet glove type of thing.
No doubt there is a similiar trend in place from other manufacturers in the East.

One would postulate that the continuing series of minor changes in the HDMI specification have perhaps made it increasingly difficult to keep manufacturing massive amplification in a single chassis with the fashion volatile HDMI switching, forcing an undue model turnover on a market sector cant support it.

One would also suggest that a causal factor may be the proliferation of grey import amplifiers that have been tempting consumers to purchase offshore at reduced pricing. Whilst they have rarely had a satisfactory purchasing experience these consumers have often haunted specialist retailers before purchasing independantly. The result being that the aforesaid retailers choose no longer to stock and promote the product, thus the very source of product inspiration for the consumers is actually removed and ... they stop buying it at all.

In the meantime ARCAM have just released the AVR400 that fits very nicely above the Denon 4311 in price point and musical performance. Plus the new Anthem Receivers from Canada are starting to generate interest.
By the way it has already been suggested that the tragic earthquake in Japan will prevent supply for some time of the higher end tier one brand product.

Regards
Rab Turner

In proper association with Winston in the above picture are three very British stacks of kit being Creek, Cambridge, and Musical Fidelity.

The Creek stack includes the Destiny amplifier ($3600) that has just had a damn fine review from "Hi Fi Choice" magazine ... Michael Creek is one of our favourite amplifier designers and will actually talk non stop for three days about his amplifiers until the need for food and drink makes him take a break. He is married to a gorgeous and highly effective Australian lady with a long track record in Hi Fi distribution that gives us Aussies a status with the factory beyond our mere numbers of units sold. The second one up from the bottom on the left is actually the new Creek Evolution 5350 amplifier($2250) that is olde worlde smooth with new gen dynamics and detail. Yet to take its proper place in the hierarchy of reviewed products I expect this amplifier will take some awards from the critical press.

The middle stack is Cambridge Audio gear, an interesting brand whose only current association with Cambridge is that of a Richer Sounds branch on Hills Road near the station who sell it. The brand is actually owned by an English Company called Audio Partnership that was instigated by Julian Richer ... the owner of the aforesaid set of retail outlets.

Audio Partnership is a very industrious and effective audio design house based near Tower Bridge in london that was one of the first European CE companies to adopt the currently prevailing model of licensed Chinese manufacture of their products some 10 years ago. They rapidly over came the initial production QC issues and the current Cambridge product demonstrates tier one reliability with excellent sound quality in traditional packaging. The latest Azur 50 series that you see here in the stack is particularly well made and has been making worthwhile progress in the cut and thrust of store demonstrations. Often sold with Monitor Audio or Q Acoustic loudspeakers ...

The right hand pile in the above photo is of Musical Fidelity including the M1 DAC ($799)that is a very popular add on for the the new generation of computer music listeners. They have found this to be particularly effective for getting the best out of the music through a digital out on the PC. Above the M1 DAC is the Class A M1HPA Headphone amplifier with RCA and USB input that at $999 is an excellent add on for a high quality system. We have a couple of X Can V8 left at $699 for a bargain hunter.

These are the Vienna Acoustics Beethoven Baby Grand speakers ($5999), a new brand to the store, solid like granite in the cabinet and sweet like a mandarin in the treble. Try them with a Cyrus 6 amp and CD Player (Currently available for $3500 together) and they create a really attractive, dynamic and listenable sound. I note if they are left playing in a dem room the sound will invariably draw a consumer ... like a trout to a fly ...

This pearlescent vinyl transducer is the Marantz TT15($2699)... and if you think it looks like a much more expensive Clearaudio thats because it is ... the chassis is mounted on massive alloy feet and the platter runs on a ceramic bearing in a polished sinter bronze cap. Actually this is a very good shortcut to esoteric vinyl at a mid fi price and should be considered by anyone who is looking to permanently capatalise on a record collection. One should remind the reader that this format has been going from strength to strength in sales largely fuelled by Generation Y purchasers.

PMC speakers ... to be precise two pairs of GB1i's($3850) and a pair of FB1i's ($5350) ... not for nothing is this the most owned loudspeaker by the people who work here and also ... the speaker most used by the studios that make and produce the music we listen to.

The first time I heard a pair of PMCs was actually the original FB1. Our then new colleague Joe Blair fresh from the UK harangued into making what was forus at the time a very expensive stock purchase of a five thousand dollar loudspeaker and fully loaded with listener fatigue and cynicism I sat down one evening after hours to listen to them properly through a Cyrus amplifier and CD Player. It was Geoff Buckley that came to hand and it only took a couple of bars of Hallelujah to absolutely catch my attention ... that rare moment for me when I suddenly am revealed an extra layer of music within the music that completely engaged my attention for the rest of the album.

It wasnt like I'd had a life before then bereft of listening to really expensive Hi Fi but these mid price transmission line speakers were able to reach into the performance and inject straight into my emotional appreciation centre. That sudden physical shock of hearing the bass octaves separated properly in our listening room for the first time has stayed with me and is still currently and correctly articulated by the PMC range like no other.

These days we have a pair of MB2i's ($25000) on display and they have been able to literally bring our hardest edged colleagues to tears on first acquaintance. Actually its rather embarassing when a potential client cries when you play them something but we are discreetly able to leave them alone in the room with a box of tissues...

Now there are some cool things in this view of the back room playback wall. Note the Tannoy Definition Series Dual Concentrics ($7999), the Dynaudio S3.4's ($9000), and the PMC OB1's ($9200) ... not a bad little trio of speakers to have on demo at any one time and actually completely different from each other whilst being fantastic in their own right. I suppose to characterise them you would say that the Tannoy is one extreme with a hugely fun bright sound and a great blooming bass that just makes a certain type of person want to play them louder and louder all the time. The Dynaudio is the other extreme for people who are terminally afraid of ragged edges in the sonic presentation and are seeking somthing absolutely uncoloured and fatigue free. The PMC's are needless to say in the middle of these two but capable of both imparting the energetic extremes of the music along with those moments of absolute delicacy and subtle nuances ... especially if they are attached to a Bryston 4B SST power amplifier.

There are some interesting amplifiers in this frame ... note the Rega Osiris amp and Isis CD Player ($12000 ea) on the bottom shelf ... manufactured as though from a solid billet of steel they are that sort of kit that the lucky ones amongst us buy just once in their lives.

Above them on the middle shelf in silver alloy is the Leema Acoustics Tucana II Amplifier ($8500) and Antilla Cd Player ($6995). These are the products of Wales via some ex BBC engineers determined to produce the best in single piece Hi Fi components and they have won us many customers through the intense musicality of their performance.

The large Black Amplifier on the top shelf is a Unison Research Unico 100 Valve Mosfet Hybrid 180 watt per channel pure Class A input stage 25 Kg integrated amplifier ($7999). This piece of Italian is breathtakingly delicate in its rendition and we are captivated by its sound just now ... must try it through the Tannoys ...

The small wooden speakers on the stands in the foreground are PMC DB1i's ... one particular type of audio nirvana can be acheived with these small point source speakers on a huge amplifier ... think Proac and Audio Research. The cabinet by the way is an English Quadraspire that is a visually minimalist but acoustically optimised glass or wood on metal frame design ... five shelf is typically $1400 ..

The PMC AML loudspeaker is the perfect synergy of Bryston amplifiers and crafted construction in a transmission line enclosure ... possibly the ultimate computer loudspeaker, occasionally we get people in asking if we sell "computer speakers" and whilst I fully understand that they are mostly looking for a pair of plastic $29 Altec add ons I show them these and explain the price so as to observe the physical symptoms of shock and disbelief on their faces as they carefully back out of the store ... then I direct them to the Computer shop around the corner. AML1's are $9000, AML2's are $13,750 ...

This mutant and rather fuzzy green Kambrook is actually an Ear Science PF1 ... a Melbourne manufactured power filter made by the immutable Gary Cawsey and used on all of our good systems on display in the store. We would reccomend that you borrow one to try at home in your own kit to see if it works, mostly people buy them when they do this ...

More speakers ... the white thin ones nearest the camera are Monitor Audio R270HD's ... lifestyle audio with slimness and constructional cred ... $1550 ...

To their right the tall wooden edged skinny speakers are Ambience 1600 Ultra Slims the Australian Ribbon Speaker and a personal favourite. We have six different models of Ambience on display.

The Grey Floorstanding speakers with silver drive units are the Mordaunt Short Performance 6 and therefore Audio Partnerships statement loudspeaker. That company again ... I must put these on the Cambridge Audio 840 pre and power that we have here and see if there is an extra synergy in the mix. Traditionally these big Mordaunt Short's are played with a Marantz amp and CD Player ...

The small white speaker on the stand to the right of the Mordaunt is the Monitor Audio Apex 10, basically the shrunken head of a Gold Series GS10, maximum intelligence in a loudspeaker into the smallest possible space therefore ...not cheap. A full set of Apex costs the same as floorstanding Silver Series 5.1 system

Last on the right in front of the acoustic foam on the wall (Auralex) is the Dynaudio DM3/7 ($2499}, a very practical loudspeaker...

On this wall in our dem room are the Monitor Audio finest ... the Bookshelf speakers on the white stands are the MA BX2 ... $599 of bookshelf that we sometimes think are as good as anything one would ever need ...

They are often sold as part of an 5.1 AV package ... they have some of the best rears and subwoofers to include in that package, The Bronze BXLCR Centre ($450) is the one immediately under the TV. You can see how the Silver RXLCR Centre Channel speaker ($899) that it's sitting on is bigger and more tech.

The floorstanding three elemnt speaker behind the Bronze series sub on the lkeft is the Silver RX6 ($2099) and the four element RX8 ($2750) is visible on the right. If you are somebody who is sophisticated ... but like heavy undt trance come and hear the RX8 on a good amplifier.

The three subwoofers are left to right Bronze ($1100) Silver RXW12 ($1999) and Apex ($2099)....

Thats a PMC TB2 centre channel by the way in nlight wood colour below the Monitor Audio centres and the TV is a Sharp Quattron 52 inch. The little rectangles on each bottom corner of the TV are actually a Cambridge Audio Minx Min20 pair of Satellites ($229 each).

The Musical Fidelity M3 ($1995) and M6 ($4995) amplifiers are dead good and contemporary here.

You might note that we have a one off for the right person here ... an MF XT100 with CD Player and Power supply. This unique trio was built so the the amp and CD player had no power supplies of their own ... the PSU is held completely aprt from the Cd and Amp and supplied with hardwired dedicated industrial sheilded cables to hook the three up with ... love it and if somebody dosnt buy it I will take it home for myself ... POA

The BX5 ... every company needs a champion ... if you dont have a speaker in the thousand dollar bracket that is floorstanding and really good ... I mean really good , so a customer hears it and immediately knows its better than anything else he's heard around town to date in anything like that money ... then you as a retailer should shut shop and go home ... that speaker that is the Heath Ledger Knights Tale in this market is the BX5 Monitor Audio.

Go ahead and die B&W eight series , shrivel Wharfedale , melt Jamo , leave Klipsch to Palin voters . The Monitor Audio BX5 is better than you.

They say an Englishmans home is his Castle. The only Castle Ive been in lately is the one where the owners and British designers and their guests live in as part of the manufacturing facility that is IAG in Shenzhen in China.

These guys really mean it. They are not going to sit in idle imitation of old brands. The brands that they have acquired are incidental in many ways to their ability to design and produce. They are able to hire whoever they like from the world of Hi Fi designers and have brilliant manufacturing organisation. It is sad but true that the reality is that these oft ill managed UK brands could not have come to a better home than IAG.

So the first speaker nearest the camera is a Castle Knight 3 ($999) ... a floorstanding 2 way with excellent warmth and trad sonic values. Not as glitzy on the sound as a BX5 but absolutely good for serious classical stereo systems. Try them with an NAD amplifier.

The gloss black floorstanding speaker next along with the bass driver above the tweeter is actually a Rega RS5 that is still made in England by George... I suspect we are the only company in Victoria where you can hear these at the moment.

Regards

Rab Turner

These are a beautiful sculptured and slim obelisk of hand made exotic wood finish.

At a star studded event in the UK (musicians I hope rather than Reality TV Stars) PMC's Peter Thomas received the highest accolade for a high end loudspeaker from HiFi Choice Editor, Dan George.

The Fact.8 was painstakingly tested, retested and then finally chosen as the very best loudspeaker available in the 'High End' £2000+ category. The exceptionally experienced judging panel concluded that the Fact.8 was the complete performer and included the following comments:

• It is capable of a great performance, with superb bass extension, good tonality and sensitivity and some intelligent well thought out tuning controls.
• This is then presented in one of the most handsome cabinets we have seen in a while. Virtues that take it to the top of the class

The Loudspeaker of the Year simply adds to the vast array of accolades which are being attributed to this phenomenally successful and groundbreaking design.

A review of the Fact.8's from Paul Messenger.

What Hi-Fi and the Fact.8.

An excellent review of the Fact.8's from "Soundstage" online magazine.

This is the 21st Century recreation of the original NAD 3020 amplifier from the seventies that provided an outlet for thousands of young people on the hunt for real HiFi.

When I was purveying audio in Cambridge in 1979 the NAD 3020 was a sudden revolutionary product that empowered a whole generation of young HiFi buffs with at last a reliable good quality amplifier that was a massive leap ahead of anything else that was available at the time at anything like the money.(89 pounds sterling at the time)

Exceptional power and smoothness for the money and with ridiculous headroom for party animal opportunes.

NAD has an enviable reputation for creating some of the best performing budget amplifiers of all time. The lineage is impressive, all the way from the 3020 of 1978 to the current C325BEE, with many “Best Amp” awards and 5 Star reviews along the way. As loudspeaker quality and performance has continued to improve, especially at modest price points, NAD felt that there was room for a lower cost amp that could take advantage of these speakers; creating a new entry point for serious musical performance.

The NAD Design Team faced a difficult challenge: to maintain the same performance specification as our more expensive amplifiers while removing cost. Cost is usually removed by reducing features, power, and performance.

While not quite as full featured as our own C325BEE, the C316BEE is far from a “stripped down” product. With 6 line level inputs, full IR remote control, defeatable tone controls and a front panel input for a portable MP3 player, the C316BEE is fully equipped to be the control center for a high performance music system.

Continuous power is a conservative 40 watts, and dynamic power (more important for music listening) is impressively rated at 90 watts into 8 Ohms! This is far more usable power on tap than other amps at this price. And this power is available across the entire audible band at a class leading 0.02% rated distortion!

Official spec of C316.

• Settings that don\'t explain what they do, such as \'advanced film mode\'
• Useless technologies that don\'t enhance but infact degrade the picture, such as \'600 Hz technology\'
• Lack of the right buttons on remote controls, such as discrete buttons to select each input

Luckily there are solutions out there, and this is something that Carlton Audio Visual has been doing for years. Control systems allow you to take hold of your television and operate it the way you want it to operate. Remote controls can be customised to the users liking and any superflous buttons can be removed. Macros can be programmed so a single button can setup the telvision to watch a DVD or setup a recording.

Obviously this will depend on the television as to how much control we can get out of it, but with a good quality set we can take control of it via serial and make it operate the way you like. Carlton Audio Visual has been douing this for many years now and are well versed at taming the savage television beast.

Now although we are geographically challenged out here in the farther reaches of the commonwealth, but we\'d be more than happy to help, Prince Philip. We would start with a consultative approach, determine exactly how you would like the television to operate and from there we can try to make a television that works the way you want it to. I\'ll admit, its not going to be cheap, but I reckon you and the missus can afford it.

So if your frustration gets the better of you, then please feel free to make contact with us and we can help make your TV watching a pleasant experience. We\'re even happy to help out any non-royals too.

The second one is less well known but very prolific brand that appears under many other brand name guises around the planet. Sadly this is typical of much of the HDMI marketing being carried out at the moment. The soldering is clearly of a quality that only could result in shorts and leakage ... god forbid if this level of construction quality ever gets into our automobiles and aeroplanes ...

There is just no way that these cables are going to work as advertised. The workmanship is completely sloppy. Mostly these cables are being sold as profit lines through chain stores and franchises where the sales people have no personal liability for installation issues or poor audio video performance but whose only real accountability is to their weekly commision payouts.

A true specialist store could not get away with purveying cables of this construction quality, they would be mired in complaints ... Alas these are the cables that the bulk of consumers are being presented with as an add on suggestion sell post the major decision of flat panel purchase in order to raise the store operating margin in a competitive environment where retailers profits have been eliminated from the sale of the Television itself.

"Multichannel signals will be output over the player’s dual HDMI outputs, as well as over 7.1-channel audio jacks. In addition, the player offers the option of outputting SACD signals natively in DSD format over a new proprietary Denon Link 4 HDMI connection for decoding by a compatible Denon pre-amp or receiver. Alternatively, the multichannel signals can be transcoded to PCM with full bass management over HDMI, as Sony’s PlayStation3 unit does now.

The fourth edition of the Denon Link HDMI connection adds a new “Denon Flow Control” feature, which takes over the master clock and jitter control in Denon’s current flagship pre-amp and upcoming Denon A/V receivers.

Jeff Talmadge, Denon’s product development and systems integration director, told the trade consumer publication TWICE that the Flow Control function in the Denon Link system will enable digital signals from optical discs to be transmitted “virtually jitter-free” and will support “the world's first fully-balanced two-channel transmission for analog signals.”

Denon is positioning the component as the third piece in its flagship home-entertainment system that also includes the AVP-A1HDCI A/V preamplifier and the POA-A1HDCI 10-channel power amplifier. The latter two began shipping last February. All can be connected and interoperated via the aforementioned Denon Link 4 HDMI transmission technology.

The Denon Link 4 system will be backward compatible with earlier Denon Link components, but will be limited to the capabilities of those earlier models, the company said. Denon Link 4 is based on the HDMI-CEC standard and should also be compatible with most other HDMI-CEC enabled devices.

Denon said it plans to announce a firmware update for the AVP-A1HDCI and AVR-5308CI models to support the Denon Link 4 system shortly.

The DVD-A1UCDI will also be Denon’s first “BD-Live ready” player, meaning that it will have the full Blu-ray Profile 2.0 feature specifications following a firmware update. Denon said it plans to make that update available over an Ethernet connection shortly after the player hits the market.

The player will have 1GB of built-in memory to support the BD-Live functionality with no additional memory required; however, it will also include a built-in SD card slot for any additional memory that may be desired and to play digital music and photo files.

For internal video processing, the DVD-A1UDCI includes Silicon Optix’s 10-bit Realta HQV chipset with up-conversion and IP scaling via HDMI to 1080p. In addition, Denon’s Pixel Image Correction (DPIC), which is an original Denon video-enhancement technology for correcting high-definition images, uses 10-bit processing to further improve detection and precision in the curvature correction of images, the company said.

Denon said this will enable detection and processing of the image at the pixel level in the vertical, horizontal and diagonal direction, and is applied to standard images from DVD as well as HD images from Blu-ray discs.

In addition, the player is equipped with a 14-bit Analog Devices digital-to-analog video converter.

In developing the player, Denon said it has also re-engineered its original Advanced S.V.H. mechanism that will support, among other things, advanced networking functionality. Denon said the scheduled BD-Live firmware update will also offer “a host of unprecedented 21st century networking facilities.”

For audio, the DVD-A1UDCI includes Advanced AL32 processing that will allow digital upsampling of 16-bit and 24-bit signals to 32 bits. The player offers full onboard HD Audio decoding from the DDSC-HD circuitry, and will allow for bit stream bypass to HDMI for Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio, and DTS-HD Master Audio digital transmission to the AVR/AVP for decoding.

The player uses a solid direct mechanical ground construction to "virtually eliminate vibration," the company said. The unit’s structure was designed with a low center of gravity for maximum vibration resistance and quiet operation.

The cabinet is composed of a heavy-duty, dual-layer, steel top cover; clamper cover; zinc die-cast mechanism case; newly developed floating dampers; and a thin aluminum die-cast tray.

The power transformer is placed near the ground and immediately above the insulators to allow direct release to the ground and thoroughly prevent the propagation of unwanted vibration or noise.

The 7.1-channel analog output contacts are made of gold-plated brass. The onboard Ethernet port allows for Internet connectivity, for firmware updates, BD Live interactivity and IP control.

The dual HDMI outputs are fully assignable to allow sending separate audio and video streams to two separate systems or running a program’s HDMI audio signal to a processor while the video is sent to a projector.

As with all Denon CI products, third-party control systems can be managed via the RS-232C port.

The HDMI 1.3a connection will also support Deep Color signal sources.

Denon said it will make the DVD-A1UDCI available to authorized Denon CI dealers along with the matching flag-ship pre-amp and 10-channel amp.

Denon said that while music labels in recent years have stepped back somewhat in supporting the DVD-Audio and SACD formats with new releases, “there are still a few labels out there supporting SACD.”

Joe Stinziano, Denon sales and marketing senior VP, said the company hopes that as users become aware of the additional benefits of multichannel sound from the advanced codecs offered in the Blu-ray Disc format, they will begin to seek out the multichannel music discs that are still available.

In addition, a lot of the target customers for the player are expected to already have DVD-Audio and SACD music libraries and will use the new player to update and consolidate older DVD-Audio and SACD equipment with a unit offering Blu-ray compatibility."

Source - Twice Magazine and Denon
http://www.twice.com/article/CA6619561.html
http://www.denon.co.jp/

This is the much anticapated upgrade of the AVR3808 that has been one of Rab's favourite surround amp for ages ... it incorporates the new Denon link 4th edition that works in conjunction with the HDMI connection of a similiarly equipped source to reclock the digital signal beetween the two devices.

Denon official specification chart on the AVR4310.

"The Age" 18th August 2009 "Executive style".

There are some rumblings from our friends at Rega, usually so famous for their excellent turn tables, about a new reference class CD player coming very soon. Moving away from a naming convention of heavenly bodies (and hence Roman deities) we have something distinctly more Egyptian in the Isis.

According to Rega, this superb new unit will be based around the blue print of the already fantastic Saturn CD player with each and every component and stage upgraded to the highest degree, with major improvements to the optical amplifier, digital signal processing core, motor power supply and master clock to name but a few. Interestingly, the internal voltage/current handling is based around amplifier technology developed for the spectacular Ios phono amplifier, making this CD machine a very high tech bit of kit. Not wanting to limit all of this to great gear to mere CD playback the Isis will also sport a USB input so that one can use the D to A stage for a PC output.

With Rega's commitment to longevity of their products, when each Isis is made, 3 matched laser mechanisms will be produced. One will be installed into the machine, the other 2 will be stamped with the corresponding serial number and stored at the Rega factory to ensure that should the laser wear out, exact replacements are on hand to keep the unit at exact spec.

All of this and the unit is shipped in a lovely custom wooden crate. Classy.

rab's opinion · administer

This range of TVs I confess has been a humbling experience. They are just so much better than South East Asian devices, the image that greets me on oh so familiar demo material is immediately outstanding. They do that trick of adding depth to a two dimensional image and are seemingly free of all those processing artefacts that one desparately tries to ignore after youve noticed them for the first time. Oh and they look ... just gorgeous.

Find out more at the Loewe Website or go to the the product pages via the links below.

Loewe Individual Compose 52
Loewe Individual Compose 40
Loewe Art 47 SL

If you're building or renovating, then now is the time to bring in your plans to discuss the possibilities. From high quality stereo or home theatre to multi-room audio visual and complete home automation, Carlton Audio Visuals custom installation team is able to guide you through the complete process.

We like to take a consultative approach to your building project. Everyone's needs are different so we will work with you to design an entertainment system for your lifestyle. Sit down and have a cup of coffee and our design team can help you cut through the jargon and work out the right system for you. Based on our obligation free consultation we can move to design or quotation.

Our CEDIA qualified installers can work with your builder to install all cabling during construction, concealing cabling for a minimum of intrusion upon your living spaces. We also have lots of of experience in retro-fit work, working on heritage homes to achieve concealed audio visual solutions.

To make a time to sit down with one of our designers give us a call on (03)96392737 or send us and email at cavmail@carltonaudiovisual.com.au .

If you've got the spare (US)$10 to spare, and have a half decent set of speakers on your PC, download it on Steam and give it a crack. If nothing else it'll give you a different perspective on your music.

troy's opinion · administer

The other day I was able to attend one of those unusual industry meetings where a manufacturer had their new TV range presented not by a suit and a power point but rather by a geeky tech young chap in a large space where the competitor products were all lined up with identical source material.

The other TVs had their brand badges discreetely taped over which made no difference whatsoever to this particular audience of retailers and integrators.

Let me say upfront that the purpose of this demo was to show off the outright superiority of this range of LCD, they did this very effectively. The tests used the David Attenborough "Planet Earth" Blu Ray from the BBC as one of their sources.

The new model P******** Plasma was just plain blurry on the forest scenes. Its ability to handle panning was woeful ... when the camera cut across the landscape scenes the image juddered hopelessly. Diagonal and vertical panning was terrible on the plasmas whilst the new model P.....s 100HZ LCD handled them flawlessly.

Particularly incriminating for the display TVs including the S...y and S.....g was a scene from "Sniper" where the the camera panned across a city scape of tall buildings as the swat team sought out the rifleman. Again the new model Ph..... was flawless in it's rendition whilst the processing fell to bits on the other TVs causing severe judder and aliasing.

Having said all that my personal favourite TV at the moment is the Sharp Aquos LC52D83X that we have set up in the Drummond St rooms. As soon as I got back I ran the demo material that had been used and I am pleased to say that this state of art 100HZ panel performs flawlessly on the same tests that the new LCD TV that was demonstrated to us. Come and see it playing the Planet Earth Blu Ray and you will see what Im talking about.

Thankyou to Qualifi for the demonstration of their new range of TV's, definetly a contender.


Carlton Audio Visual's website for the 52 inch 100Hz Sharp

Chord HDMI Silver Plus cables

www.channelnews.com.au

www.smarthouse.com.au

The www.mycause page for this event to donate is here: Rab's mycause.com PeterMac donation page

As soon as I get the chance I'm going to hook it up with a Dynaudio Confidence speaker set and see if I can properly ruin my self for all other surround systems...

The system and its human interface was particularly challenging as it combined the needs of the lady partner who simply wanted the TV, sound, and lighting to be instantly accessible anywhere in the residence with those of the gentleman client who is of that minority whose knowledge and expectation of visual and acoustic performance and media availability is of the Ferrari plus level.

We have the Platinum series set up currently on a Denon PMASI and DCDS1and my god it goes thwack with supreme presence.

The PL300 floorstander images just fantastically, a true out of box, out of body experience. Playing my favourite Nils Lofgren test track I was immediately exposed to a wealth of staging detail that did that particular trick of revealing new nuances hitherto veiled in this intimately known piece. There was more live stage feel than I have ever heard before on Mr Lofgren's performance. The depth and detail is really astounding and there is a seamless integration of this ribbon tweeter and its CCAM moving coil compatriots.

The centre channel is ... huge ... to the extent that it has so dwarfed the 37inch Pro monitor in the reference room that it is now incumbent upon me to emplace a new 52inch 100 Hz LCD into the room to keep an appropriate sense of scale, oh the sacrifices one must make ...

Check out the leather front covering on this range ... Village People delight really ...

Platinum Series Microsite

Ricardo interview

Our initial trials of their stereo kit show a particular niche in conjunction with some of our current speaker inventory. A C352 amplifier and a C542 CD player in conjunction with a pair of our Monitor Audio BR2 loudspeakers at about $1800 makes for a stunning piece of quality music reproduction on a narrow budget. You will see more of this product on these pages in the future... NAD official website

Sharp have an interesting website promoting the benefits and manufacturing advantages of their new TVs just here: "More To See"

Sharp will be strongly promoting the virtues of their unique manufacturing facility, green and clean and built to emplace the company in an unassailable position of dominance in large screen LCD manufacture.

Their construction is simply outstanding, not nesceccarily aesthetically but certainly acoustically, they weigh almost double anything else at their price point and their crossover components had Brett frothing with unrequited desire. When you see the top of the range Dancers...well you will suddenly start thinking as we did that spending $16000 on a loudspeaker makes sound economic sense...

The Dancers offer a quite ruthless exposure of the recording, they can in fact be unkind to an occasional sacred cow (we had a U2 experience with a friend with the Dancers where they shot the recording down in flames...think Gary Powers and SA2s)but with appropriate material they give that breathless insight into the space and time of the music that leaves one gasping for more.

http://www.usheraudio.com/

Sharp claim that its new LCD TV technology has a higher resolution than plasma's and comparable contrast and colours. This 108-inch LCD screen, which measures 93.9-inches high by 52.9-inches wide, features a Black Advanced Super View Full-Spec HD LCD panel manufactured at Sharp's Kameyama Plant No. 2, the first plant in the world to use 8th generation glass substrates. With this development, Sharp has demonstrated that it is possible to produce LCD TVs in sizes ranging from 13-inches to super-large sizes like the 108-inch, and that LCD is the predominant display device in the flat-panel television market, which is forecast to grow dramatically in the future.

Since developing the world's first 14-inch color TFT LCD TV in 1988, Sharp has consistently led the industry with larger screen sizes, introducing the first 45-inch model in 2004 and the first 65-inch LCD TV. In addition to leading the movement toward larger screen sizes, Sharp has met the demand for superior image quality by achieving a resolution that is four times higher than that of current HD (4096 x 2160), the world's highest contrast ratio (1,000,000:1) and the ultimate in fast-motion image processing with 120 Hz frame rate conversion and an incredible pixel response time of 4ms.

Consumers have rated LCD TVs highly in terms of image quality, environmental performance and design. Sharp is confident that LCD TVs will remain a steadily increasing percentage of the flat-panel TVs sold.

Sharp is working to further the evolution of LCD TVs based on the success of developing the 108-inch AQUOS, and as the world's leading manufacturer of LCD TVs, will continue to develop state-of-the-art products.

Major Features Screen size: 108-inch (93.9-inches high by 52.9-inches wide; 107.8 inches on the diagonal)

Drive system: TFT (thin-film transistor) active-matrix drive

Number of pixels: 2.07 million pixels (1,920 x 1,080 pixels)

Drop me a line if you want one but dont expect much change from a reasonable Learjet.

We just had a phone call from Brett to tell us he couldn't make it to work today as he hasn't slept all night. He took home his new Gyrodec and spent the evening setting it up. One thing lead to another which resulted in a 12 hour listening session. Its a rather good thing he isn't actually rostered on today.

So our turntable guru has finally sucumbed to the pleasures of the gyrodec and he had to buy one himself. Hopefully we can get him to write down his thoughts on why this is the ultimate front end for your music system. Or we'll try to get him to do that after he stops drooling into his pillow whilst dreaming about his new toy.

For those of you who haven't heard about it, then heres a quick recap. The Wii is Nintendos latest attempt at world domination. Instead of chasing gamers who are slavishly waiting for Sony's polygon flinging box, Nintendo has taken aim at the far larger market of non-gamers. The hook with the Wii rests in its motion sensetive controller. The remote shaped 'wii-mote' senses movement in 3D space. You can swing it like a club, aim it like a gun or waving it like a lunatic. It also features online capability including a forthcoming web browser.

Other than that, the machine is a really simple console. No fancy high defintion, no digital outputs, it doesn't even play DVD's. Nintendo is keeping the entry costs down on this machine, instead making it rather affordable at $399. in contrast to Sony and Microsofts' offerings, its a bit more affordable and includes extras like a pack in game.

So after a quick bit of setup, I was swinging away at tennis with the included 'Wii-sports'. The consoles control is remarkable, very intuative and surprisingly accurate. Within half an hour I was able to apply spin to the ball and direct it around the court. When I brought it into work on thursday night, anyone who picked up the controller could return serve within a minute of two of playing. Its also very addictive, we ended up playing until 2:30 the next morning.

Its an interesting time to be playing video games. Three new consoles are vying for your attention or more importantly, your dollars. Whilst Sony and Microsoft are bashing each other about the head with media playback, high definition and more processing power than a lunar lander (actually my daughters old tamagotchi has more processing power than the landing module - Rab) , Nintendo has released a quaint little box that focuses on the enjoyment of the games.

I must go now, as Rab has just walked into the office with an X box 360...

link here to see their new home automation product

As used in the DMZ... But seriously the ubiquitous Samsung LCD panels are now one of the two main players in the world for large screen high definition 1920 x 1080 panels. The 46 inch Samsung whilst not reaching the anticapated hieghts of the forthcoming Sharps models is a steal at a street price of less than $5500...it is worth noting that Samsung are the supplier of the Sony panels and have claimed in open forums that "they keep the best for themselves"... Herewith the link for the 46 inch HD Samsung: The LA46F71 They have done a very good job of hiding the loudspeaker system in the chassis to produce a device of really surprising European looks...

How they have been able to continue the Epos legacy, improve the cabinetry and finish, expand the range to include the 'M' series and 5.1 surround packages, yet sell the product at price points far less than before is a complete mystery.

Come in for an audition and hear why Epos continues to be the choice for the discerning music lover.

How they have been able to continue the Epos legacy, improve the cabinetry and finish, expand the range to include the 'M' series and 5.1 surround packages, yet sell the product at price points far less than before is a complete mystery.

Come in for an audition and hear why Epos continues to be the choice for the discerning music lover.

Denon is in every sense a true High Fidelity manufacturer. It’s just that its focus of late has been on the home theatre side of things. From the aerospace inspired looking AVCA1XV multi-channel AV receiver ($15k) to the silly money first of its kind DVDA1XV 1080P up-scaling DVD player ($7k), Denon have been making some serious high-end kit.

And now the PMASA1 integrated amplifier ($15k) and DCDSA1 sacd/cd player ($13k) have landed. Pure two-channel high-fidelity goodness is what each represents. In the words of the esteemed Mr Brett “…no other amplifier has controlled the Dynaudio Confidence C4’s bass drivers like the big Denon has, not even the $65,000 Halcro pre/power, and I don't know why…” And the Fanatic himself, Rab, has always been a sucker for big brutish two-channel exotica from the Japanese powerhouse that is Denon.

We recommend putting your inhibitions aside for an hour or two, and come partake of these intoxicating rarities from the far-east.
Denon is in every sense a true High Fidelity manufacturer. It’s just that its focus of late has been on the home theatre side of things. From the aerospace inspired looking AVCA1XV multi-channel AV receiver ($15k) to the silly money first of its kind DVDA1XV 1080P up-scaling DVD player ($7k), Denon have been making some serious high-end kit.

Cyrus has always been one of, if not THE, premier brands here at CAV. What makes Cyrus so compelling is the modularity of their components, allowing for both affordability and extreme system upgrades. We thought it best if we left it to My Cyrus himself (aka Tim Wilkinson) to explain:

"Cyrus Audio components open a door, that once stepped through, leaves no turning back. No, this is not a trap, but instead enables your system to grow in performance over time as your budget allows. The key to it all being the way Cyrus have developed their range to be upgraded both internally and externally, which means that a conservative investment into the entry level of Cyrus 6 series components, although superb in their own right, is just the beginning of a high performance Cyrus system.

Internal upgrade options enable all products in each group to be upgraded to the highest specification available, even to the extent of the next generation in some instances, with the only limitation to this being cost effectiveness.

Externally the options are many, with potential for further amplification, the DAC X / XP, and the highly regulated power supply. While adding amplification or an external DAC is relatively straight forward in its benefits, the PSX-R power supply is the key to unlocking the full potential lurking inside these meek looking boxes. Focusing the PSX-R’s battery like power on the key components enables the connected unit to function at its highest capability, reducing the detrimental effects of the outside world. Further to this the internal power separation removes any interaction between selected sections of the connected unit, with the Cyrus 8vs2 becoming a virtual Pre / Power unit, and the CD 8x offering the properties of a separate transport and DAC."

One of the more popular pathways is to start with a Cyrus 8vs2, and eventually add a Smart Power or X Power stereo power amplifier. We currently have such a dedicated Cyrus system setup in the main stereo demo room. Six channels of Cyrus amplification in tri-amplification configuration feed a gorgeous sounding pair of 3-way Audiovector loudspeakers from Denmark. Come hear what the fuss is about. Fanatics welcome.

Paul and Troy are back from their world trip, but the blog continues!

36 Hours

Bungie jumping with Control4

Paul and Troys Excellent Adventure

To live and die at CEDIA