Hi Fi News July 2017

We all love a good story, and stories about new audio formats are ready fodder for debate among fellow hi-fienthusiasts. Those of you who were part of our community in the early ’80s will remember the furore surrounding the launch of Compact Disc. On the one hand we were promised ‘perfect sound forever’ while others claimed we were being deluded into buying a lemon Predictably, digital audio didn’t die and even the most citrus-phobic of brands eventually embraced the fruit of this technology. Fast forward to today and audiophiles are being asked to entertain a new digital paradigm where the encoding of musical information focuses on ‘temporal resolution, noise stability and analogue blur’ instead of escalating sample rates or bit depth. This is MQA or ‘Master Quality Authenticated’. MQA is an end-to-end…

dCS Vivaldi One FLAGSHIP ALL-IN-ONE MUSIC PLAYER AIMS TO RAISE THE BAR Launched to mark the company’s 30th anniversary the Vivaldi One is a comprehensively-equipped digital music player with dCS’s latest Ring DAC v2.0 technology at its heart. The processing platform not only supports conversion of files up to 384kHz/24-bit and DSD128 but also hosts MQA decoding (see p103), Roon Ready, Tidal, Apple AirPlay and Spotify Connect functionality. Digital inputs include asynchronous USB, AES/EBU and S/PDIF in addition to a wired Ethernet connection. Physical media are fully supported too, thanks to an in-built VRDS NEO transport from Esoteric for CD and SACD playback. Its engineering is typically robust, from the twin PSU transformers and upgradable firmware to the ‘aerospacegrade aluminium casework’ that’s available in three luxury finishes. In contrast to the familiar naturally anodised…

Latest from the UK’s only high-end hi-fishow If Dan D’Agostino’s Progression Monoblocks [HFN Jun ’17] whetted your appetite, then why not also audition the single-chassis Stereo model in one of Absolute Sounds’ exclusive presentations at The Hi-FiShow Live. Bruno Putzeys’ Mola-Mola brand will be singing at The Hi-FiShow Live, courtesy of the esoteric Makua pre with its programmable, app-driven inputs and phono/DAC modules, and partnering Kaluga monoblocks, the ultimate expression of his nCore amplification The exquisitely versatile phono stage built into Mark Levinson’s No526 USB DAC/preamp [HFN Dec ’16] hinted at a vinyl spinner to come. And here it is – the No515 turntable with 3D-printed arm, ready to serve up the black stuff at this year’s Hi-FiShow Live Tickets On Sale Now Seminar specials Returning to The Hi-FiShow Live, Matthias Bode from Germany’s premier hi-fimagazine,…

Sights and sounds from around the globe Taking place over the penultimate weekend in May this year, the Munich High End show once again showed itself to be one of the most important showcases for high-end hi-fi. The official numbers were both a demonstration of the organisers’ professionalism and an indictment of the USA’s inability to provide anything similar: 538 exhibitors from 44 countries, 21,412 public visitors and 8002 trade visitors from no fewer than 78 countries. As for the equipment, there was too much to list here! PMC’s first integrated amp, the reborn SME line-up, Karl-Heinz Fink loudspeakers and, selfishly, the revival of one of my all-time favourite amps... It seems everyone’s in on the analogue revival act. This is the first-ever Mark Levinson-branded turntable, the No515, which celebrates the company’s 45th…

Talk to industry stalwarts about LPs and the same questions keep coming up. Whatever happened to Nimbus – the independent thinkers and secretive doers out in the Monmouth sticks who did such fine work with vinyl, including the legendary Supercuts and 45rpm SAMs (Super Analogue Masters), before committing to CD and being swallowed up by Robert Maxwell? What is the company doing now? What happened to the special equipment it built? Could the vinyl revival lure Nimbus back into the LP business? I’ve visited the Nimbus country home on the banks of the River Wye several times over the years, so I persuaded co-founder and Technical Director Gerald Reynolds and Artistic Director Adrian Farmer to let me in again and get some answers straight from the source. REGAL BEGINNINGS Nimbus was founded in…

Two-way reflex-loaded floorstanding loudspeaker Made by: Q Acoustics (Armour Home Electronics) Supplied by: Armour Home Electronics Ltd Telephone: 01279 501111 Web: www.qacoustics.co.uk; www.armourhome.co.uk Price: £4000 Even if you hate computer audio, chances are that you listen to it – even if you exclusively play LPs cut from analogue masters – because computers play a key role in the design and development of most modern audio products, loudspeakers in particular. Computers are used for measurement, and they are used for design. Today’s computeraided design processes – in the hands of those who know how best to wield them – facilitate the creation of products which sound better, perform more consistently and more reliably, and cost less too. The Concept 500, despite the fact that at £4000 it’s the most expensive speaker Q Acoustics…