Hi Fi News February 2016

By the time many of you are reading this, the festive season will have faded into memory and the New Year’s celebrations perhaps inspired a resolution or two. So while the diet food industry is winding its marketing engine up to full speed I thought Hi-Fi News might offer some life-affirming suggestions of our own. I was fortunate enough to spend the period with the new iteration of Clearaudio’s Statement turntable – all 400kg of it – and was motivated to dig out more than a few old LPs and compare them with rather more regularly-played ‘hi-res’ versions stored on the server. In almost every instance while the difference in presentation between LP and download was ‘technically’ obvious, my musical engagement with each and every album was undimmed. Good music is good…

D’AGOSTINO UPDATE In addition to introducing its ‘entrylevel’ Master Power range [see p32], D’Agostino has announced a major upgrade to the company’s flagship Momentum monaural amplifier. Dubbed the Momentum M400, this new version of the amplifier is rated at 400W instead of the original’s 300W. The backbone of the power increase is a new ultra-quiet 1800VA transformer – 20% up on the original – and a new output stage design that includes a number of major enhancements. Existing owners will be offered an upgrade path. www.dandagostino.com. SENNHEISER HD 800 S This is the month for updated highend headphones [see Beyerdynamic T1, adjacent] as Sennheiser joins the club with an enhanced ‘S’ version of its HD 800 flagship. With improvements to its 56mm ring radiator driver and a new ‘absorber technology’ claimed to mitigate…

MA’s precious metal MONITOR AUDIO’S FLAGSHIP PLATINUM LOUDSPEAKER RANGE IS REVAMPED AND RELAUNCHED Described as the ‘most accurate and beautiful loudspeakers Monitor Audio has ever made’, the new Platinum II series benefits from refinements to their electrical, mechanical, magnetic and acoustic systems. In addition to the improved tolerance of the metallised polypropylene capacitors and air-cored inductors used in the speakers’ crossovers, Monitor Audio has also ushered in a new series of drivers. An improved composite is used for the ‘RDTII’ bass and midrange drivers which now employ a very lightweight but rigid sandwich of C-CAM (a ceramic-deposited alloy) and woven carbon fibre with a honeycomb Nomex filling. These new diaphragms offer a shallower but smoothly continuous profile without a centre hole or dust cap. Improved excursion, reduced distortion and a wider passband are…

Sights and sounds from around the globe Held mid-November at the Holiday Inn in Belgrade, the annual Hi-Fi les Show sees exhibitors and audiophiles from Serbia and the surrounding region gather to share their passion for exceptional sound. Hosted by Hi-fi les magazine, in true tradition the event was dominated by highend hi-fi and home theatre systems, though this year saw an increase in the number of TV, video and imaging products, with notable presentations of some of the latest equipment from LG, Panasonic and Nikon. Companies with a global presence, such as Naim, Yamaha and MBL, were out in force but local manufacturers of fine audio enjoyed a fair share of the audience too. Most of the exhibitors opted for streaming and network sources for their demos, the noteworthy exceptions being…

Central Europe’s largest consumer electronics exhibition was held in Budapest in mid-November where, besides premium local and globallyproduced high-end hi-fi , the products that took gongs in the 2015-2016 EISA Awards were also on show. This was the 16th year of what is an annual event and saw 30 exhibitors introduce the very latest audio and home theatre equipment to more than 2500 visitors over two days. Products from German company Heco have proved hugely popular in Hungary. This year the brand’s local importer Hi-Fi Station was excited to have Heco’s latest speaker on show – the Direkt. Seen here in a white finish these two-way bass reflex floorstanders feature an 11in woofer/midrange driver and 1.2in dome tweeter. www.heco-audio.de Dali is rightfully regarded as a premium brand by Hungarian audiophiles, so local importer…

If one judges a show by the calibre of its launches, then the Festival Son & Image 2015 held at the Novotel Tour Eiffel in October was world-class. Sonus faber unveiled the Cremonese and its new Pryma headphones in Paris, Audio Research stunned everyone with the new REF 6 preamplifier before both were unveiled in New York in November, Elipson joined the ranks of the turntable manufacturers – all this before the usual launch pad called CES. As in previous years, Paris’ show caters evenly to highend, mid-fi, the headphone cult and home cinema. Local lads Micromega and Focal/JM Labs dominated the entrance to the event with a co-operative stand that exploited something very French: a display featuring a Micromega M1 and a pair of Focal speakers in the famous orange…