Sound + Image May - June 2022

EDLINES I nearly always put my LPs away immediately after playing them, but I left one out recently, and a visiting mate, seeing the neo-progressive rock band IQ on the cover, asked if that was the band for which I used to paint my ear blue when I went to their gigs in the 1980s. I said no, that was for Marillion gigs. For IQ gigs I wore a chequered suit about eight sizes too big for me. Really, it’s not something I choose to talk about these days. But that is the problem with old records. They do bring things up. A vinyl collection is inevitably also a collection of memories. That’s true for music in general, of course, but if I spent my time solely streaming from Spotify, Apple or Tidal,…

Bowers & Wilkins: new Panorama, new ownership Bowers & Wilkins has always delivered something special with its soundbars — the original Panorama in 2009 and the upgraded Panorama 2 in 2013. Now comes a complete redesign in the significantly cheaper $1599 Panorama 3, a 121cm-wide bar which again requires no supporting subwoofer. And for the first time Bowers & Wilkins has included Atmos height speakers among the 13-strong driver collection in the new bar. The new design eschews the curves and chrome of the original for a more understated (and dark-room-friendly) black bar with bulging angles and a central strip across the centre for indicators and control; these are capacitive-touch ‘hidden until lit’ buttons. The number of connections has dropped drastically from three HDMI inputs and one output on the previous version to…

EDLINES I nearly always put my LPs away immediately after playing them, but I left one out recently, and a visiting mate, seeing the neo-progressive rock band IQ on the cover, asked if that was the band for which I used to paint my ear blue when I went to their gigs in the 1980s. I said no, that was for Marillion gigs. For IQ gigs I wore a chequered suit about eight sizes too big for me. Really, it’s not something I choose to talk about these days. But that is the problem with old records. They do bring things up. A vinyl collection is inevitably also a collection of memories. That’s true for music in general, of course, but if I spent my time solely streaming from Spotify,…

THE CHALLENGE In our series of Dealer Systems, we ask a hi-fi dealer to recommend a hi-fi system. And for this vinyl-themed issue, we turned to Sydney’s Audio Connection in Leichhardt, and specifically asked them to recommend a system for spinning the black stuff. As you can see, they didn’t hold back! This is, of course, unusual freedom for a dealer. A good hi-fi store will ask their customer (you) about musical preferences, your home, the way you listen, as well as budget, so that they can help find you the perfect hi-fi for the job. In this regard our request sent Audio Connection somewhat a-flutter, not only at having to isolate a mere single system among their vast range of audio goodies at every level, but also because they may have…

BenQ X3000i UHD projector There’s an exciting first in this latest projector from BenQ, which is headlined as a ‘console gaming projector’ — part of the company’s ‘X’ gaming series — but which for our purposes at Sound+Image can also considered to be built for entertainment, coming as it does with consumer 4K resolution, HDMI inputs, built-in speakers and even an Android TV stick to give it a smart streaming interface. It also looks rather different. As with the recent roll-to-aim GV30 projector, BenQ’s product design team has worked overtime to deliver something notably novel but also practical, so that here we have a rectangular box with curved edges, rather than the usual bulging projector shape. A line of orange surrounds the black frontage from which the lens peers not centrally, but from…

TCL TS8132 soundbar + subwoofer TCL here promises a 3.1.2-channel soundbar and subwoofer package, where Atmos processing makes the combo capable of delivering genuine height information from upfiring drivers. And there’s pleasingly little apparent PR guff here: the channel count is genuine, TCL doesn’t make outrageous claims, and it has a good few useful extras given the price of $699 (and we’ve seen it going for $500). It can, for example, be linked with Google Home and thereby stream music via Chromecast. It can be set up as an AirPlay speaker and stream from Apple devices that way. And there’s Bluetooth. So in these ways it’s offering to double up as a system for your music, as well as fulfilling the fundamental soundbar purpose of delivering television and movie sound to a level…