Sound + Image V28 #1 Dec/Jan-15

Welcome to our Special Awards Issue, the culmination of our entire year of reviewing, not only by the Sound+Image team but by our wider family of Australian Hi-Fi, Australian InCar Entertainment, Best Buys Audio & AV, and Audio Esoterica. After the listening and the debates over the shortlists and the winners and the Highly Commendeds, we engrave the crystal trophies and host a black tie evening (see p94) to which we invite the whole industry for an evening of awards, entertainment and music. We’ve been putting on this Awards evening for 26 years now — it’s an essential event in the industry calendar, and in recent years we’ve partnered with The Chester Group, organisers of the Australian Audio & AV Show (see our Show Report p16). But we’ve never turned a…

So the wireless multiroom market is now officially in full swing, with multiple brands competing for the market established by Sonos. All have in common app-based control of a range of wireless speakers together with a receiver which can connect to an existing hi-fi — some also have receivers with internal amps as a “just add speakers” solution, plus various other variations as detailed below. They all aim to stream a variety of cloud music services in addition to music stored on smart devices and home network shares, and the various units are linked either via your own home network or using a separate network created by the system itself. Noting that some brands were pushing this home network use as an advantage, Sonos recently revised its software so you can…

Qualifi has released a new Jamo Concert series — one of which, the C 109, took out a Highly Commended in our awards this issue (see p59). It’s a big name to live up to, since the Concert series was met with critical acclaim throughout the 1990s, and represented the best technologies and performance Jamo could muster, then led by Preben Jacobsen. Jamo is now under the Klipsch Group of companies, and has re-engineered the Concert concept in-house to create a range of speakers designed from the ground up. The new speakers were conceptualised by industrial designer Kieron Dunk, who crafted Danish-style enclosures, for which bespoke high-performance drive units have been engineered by Klipsch’s David Wilkes Jr. with the goal of a highly dynamic, detailed and expansive sound with deep low frequencies. The…

Sonus faber has released a new loudspeaker, the Lilium, built around the knowledge gained through the creation of the $130,000 Aida, but retailing at a mere $89,999. The artisan quality of speaker manufacture at the Italian company is clear from the stunning orthogonal, dual enclosure cabinet which houses a 3.5-way system including a massive 260mm diameter SW26 XT-08 ‘infra woofer’ designed by Sonus faber — this uses a lightweight paper composite sandwich cone driven by a 64mm diameter voice coil and operating from its own separate enclosure, which also houses a passive radiator to use the energy from its back-radiation to augment the Lilium’s low bass response. Higher up in the frequency range, Sonus faber uses three W18XTR-16 180mm-diameter bass drivers, which employ a lightweight sandwich cone structure formed by sealing…

Australia’s SGR Audio launched the remarkable ‘musicKube’ Digital Playback System at the Audio & AV Show. Not only designed but also manufactured here in Australia, it’s a high-resolution playback device for stored media, but “unlike any other, not just another PC motherboard disguised inside a fancy chassis”, says the company. The software is all its own, it can support up to 32-bit/384kHz files, indeed “every format known to man at every resolution including double DSD”, SGR’s Stuart Ralston (pictured) told Edgar Kramer at the Show. “We’ve been developing the musicKube for four years now from the ground up” he told Edgar Kramer. “It’s a hardware and software solution with a complete software package designed and developed in-house. The operating system is a very streamlined version of Linux. We cut out everything that…

The organisers of the Australian Audio & AV Show gave their own awards this year for Best Sound at Show, as well as awards for Best Marketing (before the event) and Best Presented Room. And their winners were: • Best Marketing: YAMAHA MUSIC AUSTRALIA• Best Presented Room: CONVOY INTERNATIONAL• Best Sound of the Show: KYRON AUDIO and TELOS AUDIO DISTRIBUTION (joint winners) You can see pictures of these rooms (and nearly all the others) in our Show Report starting on p16.…