Hi Fi News September 2016

Hi-fi, just like consumer electronics in general, is an industry that both develops and feeds off emerging technologies. But it’s also a hobby that’s very ‘self aware’, so while we’re witnessing a plethora of new network and streaming-enabled high-res music players being launched, we’re also welcoming a raft of new turntables, arms and pickups to support the growing army of revivalist vinylistas. Similarly, while the audiophile arm of the music-loving fraternity is necessarily purist, we’re also pluralists that welcome every route to sonic heaven, whether the ‘carriage’ is digital or analogue in design. We’re an adaptable lot, to be sure. So turntables ruled the roost right up until CD achieved its critical mass in the mid-1980s, before all but perishing completely in the 1990s. But the know-how was never lost and, today,…

Described as ‘the most advanced and musically refined single-enclosure loudspeaker in Wilson’s history’, the new Yvette floorstander is relatively compact at just over 1m tall but the mix of proprietary X-Material (bass and treble baffles) and S-Material (midrange baffle) ensures it remains a massy 80kg. The Yvette is the fifth new loudspeaker to emerge from Wilson Audio’s Utah facility in as many years and its design is clearly informed by the latest Sasha Series 2, the Alexia and flagship Alexx floorstanders. The Yvette’s ‘curves’ are reminiscent of both the Sasha and Sabrina models as, once again, the bass, midrange and treble drivers are all offset and mounted at slight angles to one another by way of optimising their time-alignment. The Yvette is a three-way design, with resistor-tuning of its top-end response, comprising…

Next month Hi-Fi News reports from the new AV Expo, Hong Kong…

While there’s no shortage of hardware designed to make ripping music as simple as slipping a CD into a slot then waiting for it to pop out some minutes later, you can do the job just as well with a basic computer. Much of my CD ripping is done with my office Mac mini, off which hangs a Samsung USB CD/DVD reader/writer. If memory serves, it cost me all of £30 or so and, with the free X Lossless Decoder software I have loaded on the Mac, seems to do a very good job of copying CDs to the computer. Which software and hardware you use will depend on personal preferences and the computer you favour. I outlined some of the ripping software options last month, and my Mac has a…

AUDIO FILE Floorstanding three-way loudspeaker Manufactured by: Focal-JMlab, France Supplied by: Focal-JMlab UK Ltd, Salisbury Telephone: 0845 660 2680 Web: www.focal.com Price: £15,750 When Focal unveiled the third model in its Sopra range – not surprisingly called the No3 – at the Munich High End show a few months back, I wondered whether the company had put the wrong speakers in the demonstration room. Despite selling for over 60% more than the 2015-16 EISA Award-winning Sopra No2 speakers [HFN Sep ’15], the £15,750 No3 doesn’t exactly dwarf the smaller speakers in the range. Indeed, unless you see the two models side by side – in any of the four vibrant colours available or a mix of black and veneer – it’s hard to tell them apart, at least until you notice that the bass drivers are closer together…

AUDIO FILE Belt-driven turntable with electronic speed control Made by: Stella Inc., Tokyo, Japan Supplied by: Absolute Sounds Ltd Telephone: 0208 971 3909 Web: www.techdas.jp; www.absolutesounds.com Price: £18,998 However crass it seems to open a review of a high-end product with the matter of price – surely the preserve of writing about budget kit, where bargains matter and cost is a real issue – it is inescapable when dealing with TechDAS’s Air Force III. True to its word, the company has halved prices with each new model since the Air Force One [HFN Jun ’13] so this third in the series sells for (deep sigh of relief) £18,998. This is simply staggering value for a deck delivering 90% of the performance of a sibling that leaves little change from £100,000. It goes even further. Unlike the dearer AF…