Australian HiFi July - August 2021

digital facts (not)

There are facts and there are facts. Or, as the Kellyanne Conway would have said, ‘alternative facts.’ Oh no, wait, she did actually specifically state that there were such things as alternative facts.) And there are words and there are words, as Lewis Carroll pointed out in his book Alice in Wonderland. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” These are all thoughts that came immediately to mind when I read a list (on the internet, of course) that purported to identify ‘Ten facts about digital’. I say ‘purported’ because if you google the phrase and discover the particular list I ran across, you will discover that several of the ten…

sound bites

ESTELON XB DIAMOND MKII The Mk II models of German manufacturer Estalon’s high-end X Diamond Series loudspeakers are now available in Australia. To look at the X Diamond Mk II you’d see no difference between it and its predecessor, because externally, it’s the same gorgeously sculpted exterior, so graceful one would hesitate to call it an ‘enclosure’. Internally, however, it has a new ultra-hard diamond inverted dome tweeter and a new crossover network with improved components for wider dynamic range and transparency and new cabling (Kubala-Sosna Pure Copper) to connect that network with the drivers and the rear terminals. The bass driver of the X Diamond Mk II is a 280mm ceramic sandwich coned transducer made by Accuton. The midrange driver, which is also made by Accuton, has a pure ceramic cone that’s…

audiosolutions o305f

LOUDSPEAKERS The new AudioSolutions O305F is a bit like a Russian doll, despite being made in Lithuania, because it has two cabinets, one inside the other, in what founder and lead design engineer Gediminas Gaidelis calls a ‘box in a box’ design. It’s also the forerunner of a whole new series for AudioSolutions which sees all the previous O2xx designs replaced by O3xx designs, so the O305F reviewed here replaces the old O205F. That the design is completely new is no better illustrated by fact that whereas the old O205F was a five-driver, three-way design the new O305F is, as you can see, a four-driver, three-way design. EQUIPMENT The tweeter is a 25mm silk dome type custom-made for AudioSolutions by Swedish manufacturer SEAS. It’s fitted with what AudioSolutions calls a ‘mini-horn’ that has…

laboratory test report

Readers interested in a full technical appraisal of the performance of the AudioSolutions O305F Loudspeakers should continue on and read the LABORATORY REPORT published on the following pages. Readers should note that the results mentioned in the report, tabulated in performance charts and/or displayed using graphs and/or photographs should be construed as applying only to the specific sample tested. Newport Test Labs evaluated the overall frequency response of the AudioSolutions O305F loudspeakers by combining an in-room low-frequency measurement with a gated (anechoic) measurement and the result is shown in Graph 1. You can see that the response remains very comfortably within an 8dB envelope from 44Hz up to 34kHz, which is excellent, so the normalised frequency response measured by the lab was 44Hz to 34kHz ±4dB. This represents excellent frequency extension…

electrocompaniet eci 6 dx mkii integrated amplifier/dac/streamer

It was only after I pressed that golden power button in the centre of the EC’s front panel and saw the stylised ‘E’ that is Electrocompaniet’s logo flash into being in the display that I realised exactly how similar it is to the symbol that is used to represent the currency of the European Union: the Euro (€). This could hardly be deliberate, since the Norwegian manufacturer was building amplifiers twenty years before the EU came into being. But it is bemusing, because Norway is still not a member of the EU, so the country’s currency remains the Krone, as it has since 1875. EQUIPMENT As the product name suggests, the Electro-companiet ECI 6 DX MkII has it all! It’s not only a hugely competent integrated amplifier with a rated output of…

laboratory test report

Newport Test Labs’ measurements of the power output of the ECI 6 DX MkII show that Electrocompaniet is either flying very close to the wind with its specifications or has supreme confidence in its quality control procedures. Rated by Electrocompaniet with a power output of 125-watts per channel into 8Ω, Newport Test Labs reported that its test sample delivered exactly this output at a test frequency of 20kHz, and just a little more (128-watts per channel) at a test frequency of 20Hz, when both channels were driven. At a test frequency of 1kHz, the ECI 6 DX MkII maxxed out at 132-watts per channel, both channels driven into 8Ω. When only a single channel was driven, output crept up to more than 130-watts right across the frequency band. Into 2Ω loads,…