Hi Fi News Oct-18

Music may indeed be the food of love, but recent ‘crossmodal’ research has served to reinforce what all experienced audiophiles already know: that listening to music can influence our experience of how food tastes. And we know this because the corollary is also true: that eating, and drinking, during or even before listening can help steer our perception of how the music, and our hi-fi system, actually sounds. Now, before I get to suggesting that savouring a succulent steak or nursing an aged single malt might make for a more cost-effective upgrade than a new high-end cable, it’s worth exploring the multisensory science explained by Professor Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford [see https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bcfzxl]. ‘We have musical menus now for bitter, sweet, creamy, spicy, sour…’ says the Prof…

BARRY FOX Investigative journalist supreme, Barry is the first with news of the latest developments in hi-fi and music technologies JOHN BAMFORD JB brings huge industry experience, a penchant for massive speakers and a love of hi-res audio in all its diverse guises KEN KESSLER is a long-serving contributor, luxury goods writer and champion for the renaissance in valves and ‘vintage hi-fi’ KEITH HOWARD has written about hi-fi for 40 years, and edited Hi-Fi Answers for nine. KH performs our speaker and headphone lab tests STEVE HARRIS Former Editor of this very title from 1986 through to 2005. A lifetime in audio and a love of jazz makes Steve a goldmine ANDREW EVERARD has reviewed hi-fi for over 30 years and is still effortlessly enthusiastic about new technology, kit and discovering new music STEVE SUTHERLAND worked…

Meze Empyrean THE FIRST ‘ISODYNAMIC HYBRID ARRAY’ HEADPHONE, WITH TECH FROM RINARO Announced at July’s CanJam London headphone show, the Empyrean is a brave leap into the upper echelons of the headphone market by relative newcomer Meze. At around ten times the cost of its only current over-ear model, the 99 Classics [HFN Aug ’17], the Empyrean is the first planar magnetic design from Meze and the fruit of a development collaboration with Rinaro Isodynamics, an R&D company with origins in the USSR which has refined isodynamic technologies since 1980. What Meze and Rinaro have come up with for the Empyrean they describe as an Isodynamic Hybrid Array Driver, claimed to ‘establish a new standard in planar magnetic audio’. While details of the construction are as yet hazy the key feature is the…

Tickets On Sale Now Here’s one half of what’s surely the ultimate in high-end amplification – the ‘Relentless’ monoblock from D’Agostino. Each chassis is machined from solid aluminium and boasts a 5.5kW PSU supporting 100 power transistors in delivering 1.5kW/8ohm (6kW/2ohm). Come see and hear ‘shock and awe’ in action at the Hi-Fi Show Live EAT’s new MC features a mint green body shell made using an industrial 3D printing process and includes a nude fineline stylus and alloy cantilever. The Jo No5 is booked to sing at the Hi-Fi Show Live… Atlas Cables continues to educate and amaze visitors to the Hi-Fi Show Live by demonstrating its hand-assembly techniques in the Lancaster Lounge area. This year sees the launch of its flagship Asimi Luxe (OCC silver) speaker cable and Asimi Ultra Luxe…

Despite being an SACD-phile, I am also a realist: in my library, CDs outnumber SACDs by greater than 100-to-1. In the real world, I suspect that CD players outnumber SACD players by a higher ratio still. So, when Métronome brings out a new integrated model – the Kalista DreamPlay ONE with a price of £32,000 – CD-only capability is par for the course. Let me clarify: SACD barely exists for audiophiles outside of Japan. As Jean Marie Clauzel, Managing Partner of Métronome, explained when asked why players of this price are CD-only, ‘I like SACD, and I feel it’s a pity that this format really couldn’t increase and develop. We’re thinking about implementing SACD into Kalista products like we just did in the Métronome AQWO disc player, but this is another…

For its first fully integrated CD player in a decade, Kalista is offering all six of the 8x upsampling modes built into AKM’s ‘Velvet Sound’ AK4497 DAC. Ordinarily, we would expect the two linear-phase ‘Sharp Roll-off’ filters to have a very flat response, good stopband rejection but greater time domain distortion, and the four ‘Slow Roll-off’ filters to have an ideal time domain response but poor stopband (alias) rejection and limited treble extension. In this case, however, differences sound quality between all six filters may be less obvious because the player has an additional low-pass filter that presents a rolled-off treble in all modes! Here’s the effect: the ‘Sharp Roll-off’ and ‘Short Delay/Sharp roll-off’ filters [black traces, inset Graph] have pre/post ringing (worse in Short Delay) but a fine 99dB alias…