If you agree with me that optical disc replay – whatever the colour of laser it uses – is yesterday’s audio technology, there are numerous different ways to replay music from hard disk instead, some of which don’t even involve having a computer in the listening room. But if you insist on being able to play both stereo and multichannel files in hi-res then the options begin to dry up. If you’re content to use a desktop computer as your audio source then you can, of course, fit a multichannel sound card to one of its expansion slots. But if you insist on a computer that’s more compact and pleasing to the eye – something like the Mac mini, which is less aesthetically challenged than even a laptop – then you’ll need an external audio interface.
Strange as it may seem now, in the early 1990s there was a period when you could go for months without seeing a vinyl-playing product reviewed in Hi-Fi News. Here in the UK, at that time, there just weren’t any new turntables to review.
In Germany, though, things were different. Every time we visited the High End Show, which was then held every year in Frankfurt, we would see more turntables than you could shake a tonearm wand at, not just new turntable models, but enthusiastic new turntable manufacturers.
The use of ceramic materials in loudspeaker diaphragms can’t be described as novel because every anodised aluminium cone or dome has a surface layer of alumina (aluminium oxide), allowing it to be described as a ceramic-metal sandwich or similar – as at least one speaker manufacturer has indeed done. But pure ceramic diaphragms are a rarity, and loudspeakers that use them exclusively, as the Lumen White Silver Flame does, are rarer still. All five drivers in this arresting-looking three-way design have white ceramic diaphragms in the form of everted (concave) domes. As explained in the box-out, the attraction of a ceramic diaphragm material is that it can be lighter and stiffer than common metal equivalents, which promises higher bending wave velocity and hence higher breakup frequency for a given diaphragm size and shape.
Recently acquired by the Canon organisation, Cabasse of France has begun a concerted effort to have its speakers available for sale in the UK through a small network of specialist dealers. Coherent Audio Systems near Tewkesbury, Glos, a dealer that also imports and distributes high-end Oracle and Belles products, was recently appointed its marketing agent.
Readers may recall we enjoyed Cabasse’s £3400 Iroise 3 model earlier this year, which features the company’s spherical-shaped BC13 coaxial driver married to a pair of 210mm woofers in a floorstanding cabinet. The Baltic Evolution comes from Cabasse’s substantially more expensive Artis range, and features the company’s more ambitious TC23 triaxial driver, which is designed to provide a point source with an operating bandwidth from 22kHz down to around 80Hz.
When Arthur Bailey first described the transmission line loudspeaker enclosure in the pages of Wireless World in 1965, and then again in 1972, there seemed every prospect that this new alternative to the familiar sealed box or reflex cabinet would come to enjoy widespread use. Yet it never did. Instead transmission line loading has remained a relative rarity, associated with a handful of speaker makers in particular: IMF in the early years and PMC more recently, although B&W has made perhaps the cleverest use of it in the form of its inverted horn Nautilus tubes, which had their ultimate expression in the snail-shaped speaker of that name. Although the transmission line is often classified as a form of bass loading, its modus operandi actually affects a much wider frequency range, as B&W’s use of it confirms.
When John Durbridge and Ian Hanson met in 1993, both were studying electronics, and both chose to develop a hi-fi prototype as their degree project. John’s design was a two-way speaker, while Ian came up with a 100W power amplifier. Each then made a career in electronics but, with audio interests pushed into the background, John worked in industrial electronics while Ian then specialised in ultrasonics.
Of course, their interest in hi-fi had never died, and in 2005 they decided it was time to do something about it.
If you’re torn between the sheer impact of speakers in boxes and openness possible from panels, then your (hi-fi) life has inevitably been a series of compromises. If you own pairs of each, you probably swing between them, never quite satisfied – like owning solid-state and valve amps. You know your Quad 57s lack the bass of, say, big B&Ws or Tannoys. Conversely, you can’t get the openness of the Quads or Maggies out of your head.
Whether it’s bravery, a weak grasp of colloquial English or a misguided belief that some wag won’t abuse the name, Sonus faber has anointed its smallest-ever two-way with the moniker ‘Toy Speaker’. Undoubtedly, as its literature proclaims, it chose that tag because it suggests joy: ‘Toys have always been synonymous with happiness and surprise. ’ And – cynical rotters aside – the first reaction you’ll have when you see the new baby is not that the name contains an intrinsic insult, but that the product is, well, adorable.
Although deeper than an LS3/5a, it is narrower and shorter at 265x185x270mm (hwd).
Audio Research explains the role of the DAC7 thus: ‘With the growth of the iTunes culture and the increasing popularity of storing music on a hard drive, we were asked repeatedly to offer a USB DAC that could connect with Macs, PCs and servers to deliver a new benchmark in high resolution digital music playback’. It responded with a righteous solution that doesn’t pay mere lip service to iPods, servers and the like, because it’s an irresistibly musical device when used in a strictly traditional manner: fed by a CD transport.
So good was the performance when used with the Marantz CD12 transport and Quad’s CDP99 Mk II CD player that I approached the need to audition other sources grudgingly. Yes, I have a hundreds of tracks on my notebook PC and mobile phone, but the test was my son’s computer – his primary source of music.
It’s not a coincidence that the second ‘universal’ CD/SACD/DVD-A/BD disc player on the market is from Marantz, the first hailing from Denon in the form of its revolutionary DVD-A1UD [HFN, Oct ’09]. Industry watchers will already know that Denon and Marantz both come under the umbrella of D&M Holdings [see boxout, p37] and that certain core technologies are shared – but only to a point. So let’s be clear at the outset: the £5000 UD9004 is not simply one of Denon’s £4500 DVD-A1UD players housed in black Marantz livery. And what finery, Marantz relocating the litany of logos that underlines Denon’s fascia to its top surface for a more sober facade clearly modelled on its exclusive KI Pearl series [HFN, Sept ’09].
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