Hi Martin,

I have received 4/4 - an excellent issue, if I may add.

My renewal under way

Best
Cemil

Excellent magazine. I’ve stopped reading all the other mags as they’ve dumbed down and are rather formulaic.

More power to your elbow,

Stuart

Hi Martin

The magazine is fantastic: unlike others one can read it over and over because it is in such expert depth: really brilliant - I am learning a great deal. Just wish I had more dosh to make the dreams you show me a reality in my listening room!

Thanks and regards
Simon

Dear Martin,

Thank you very much for your kind advice. Next year, I will send the amps back to the distributer. I am looking forward reading (and collecting) your next review. Really like your articles because of the human approach, added value and interesting technical details.

Greetings, Sincerely, Respect,

Marcel van der Vliet

Sir,

I have very swiftly received my first copy of my 2 year subscription. To be honest it takes getting used to, but why not, no adverts apart from on your web page.. one gets so used to visual and aural contamination... finally very refreshing, but it would have been nice of you to throw a couple of past issues in with the subscription!

kind regards

Paul

I have cancelled the subscription to your magazine due solely to cost cutting. It is by far the best of all. I had been looking forward to receiving it all these years. Stan's Safari and other columns were very interesting and the reviews were in another league compared to most of your UK competition.

It's sad for me but please go ahead - you are in the right direction.

Best regards/Atentamente,

Dear HifiCritic

I really enjoy the independent stance you adopt and the thoroughness of your approach. Of most value is the MC assessment methodology which I would love to see extended and kept up to date. It may be open to criticism but if one personally benchmarks (make your own assessment against MCs assessment) you can start to develop a relative view of products in the market. This is useful and a highly valuable if somewhat dangerous I know. I have purchased issues in the past but wonder when you may offer your magazine subscription as a digital offering in its totality like your competition TAS and HiFi+. I appreciate some of the downloads of individual articles you offer but would prefer not to go down the hard copy route for the magazine?

Many thanks for your consideration
Regards
Jurek

Hi,

Just renewed the magazine subscription for one year but still haven't received the magazine. Is it on the way?

Thanks, and keep up the amazing work. The best magazine in business, by far!

Ben

Dear Martin

Thanks for the new HifiCritic – it is/was excellent reading!

Best wishes

Christoph Mijnssen

Dear Madams / Sirs,

The unique article 'Classical on PC' in the last issue reminded me that I would not like to miss your fine journal. So I checked why PayPal thought that my credit card was not valid any more. Could you please inform me now, how I can prolong my subscription?

Thank you for your attention,

Peter Löhnberg

‘April – June’ HIFICRITIC 2010 Great Issue!. Getting it in July brought back memories of the old days!! : )

I particularly like what I call the educational articles such as Stan's Safari and Peter Thompson's Hifi Myth #8. Equipment reviews are fine but at this level of high end most of us need to listen for ourselves to make equipment choices. Getting educated as to what we are listening to and what to listen for is invaluable. Comparing strengths and weaknesses of different design choice is the kind of information not easily attained elsewhere. I also enjoy reading about $$relative 'unobtainium'. I likely will never have a Continuum Caliburn or even a Criterion but learning just what design choices led to its' high level of performance gives me ideas about optimising my Basis Signature setup.

First request: I know space is limited but when showing a picture of say the Linn Uphorik I would prefer a smaller front view along with the back view; I find looking at the rear of a component very informative. (e.g. the review of the CDX2)

Second request: electronic publishing? I read Hifi plus this way on my PC and enjoy it. With the advent of inexpensive eReaders of ever increasing capability this might provide a lower cost, take it with you, alternative to the print version. HiFi Critic on the beach - that will be the day!!

Finally a word on ripping CD/LPs to the computer. Arthur Barton's article just touches the surface. I would refer the interested reader to the Computer Audio website where this is discussed in extreme detail. Sometime ago you did an review of ripping software finding EAC to FLAC and Foobar for playback to be among the best combos. Doing my own comparisons I generally agree but for most CD's I find the small to nil audible difference between this rather laborious approach and use of DBpoweramp favors the ease and power of DBp for ripping. I still use flac for playback. For ripping LPs I suggest a look at the KORG DSD recorder. Following S. Stones recommendation (a relatively recent Absolute Sound: don't have the ref handy) I purchased one of these (about 1k USD) and the performance is very good to excellent. You rip the LP to a DSD recording (output of your preamp or phono preamp to the KORG) and then convert the DSD file to whatever resolution you want from mp3 to 192/24 (or above in future) DSD provides what they term 'future proof recording' and this is worth the effort in my opinion. Given the work involved in digitalising LPs while retaining most of their sonic virtue you only want to do it once!

See you next issue....

Charles

Dear Martin,
Many thanks for sorting my subscription problem, I can now look forward to getting my fix of audio wisdom again.

Cheers, Peter Burford

Hi Martin I have now also received all the back issues from Vol 1 except Vol 1 / No1. Could you please send this to me too. HIFICRITIC is a great magazine. One of the best I have ever read. Congratulations! Please renew my one year subscription to three years. Thank you and best regards, Marc
12/06/2010 a single issues order from Bob Walters requesting every issue published, was processed by HIFICRITIC.COM
??.. I have already subscribed as well...best mag in the field - by far! thanks!

Your reviews are far and away the most thorough and authoritative. I buy other magazines to see what new products are out there but I would never trust their ridiculous hyperbolical reviews (with the exception of Keith Howard?s- you ought to sign him up!) Keep up the good work! And feel free to release these comments .

David

Hello Martin,

Thank you. I just paid the money request by PayPal.

Looking forward to a new year of interesting issues of HIFICRITIC!

Kind regards,
Jan

Hi Fi Critic = Best print media to drop through the letterbox!

I am just about to renew my next 3 years subs.

It would be interesting to compare the thoughts of reviewers who prefer transistor designs to those who prefer vac. tube designs.

Thanks a lot!, Great magazine, Ben.

Rank: HIFI Guru

Groups: Member

Posts: 231
Location: Indiana, USA
Got mine today! Another great issue. One query, Cardas Golden Reference is not listed in the recommended speaker cables despite its high test scores. Was this an oversight or was the price too high? Liked the integrated tests, have been looking at some of them as well as the Conrad Johnson CA 200, which is suppose to be a half sized 350a with line pre included. A friend of mine is deciding between the Sasha and Sophia 2, has been offered a demo pair of the former with full warranty and instillation for the list price of the latter. My initial reaction to a first reading of the Sasha test was that while it might have a little higher ultimate performance ceiling than the Sophia it looks like it would be harder to extract. The Sophia appears to be able to work with a much wider range of amps, for instance. His present amp is a very large MacIntosh with audioformers so possibly it will not be affected by the impedance curve. He currently has M-L Spires, which are not easy to drive themselves. Also the Sophia's appeared to be easier to fit into a typical room, or did I misread this? I am spared decisions on this expense level, I have considered Sophia 1s, often available over here used in good condition for $5000 but am quite happy with my current speakers. Not only is it great to read about equipment that most of us are unlikely to own or even to hear properly set up but there is always something in the issue relevant to things we do own or might consider. I have both Stax and Sennheiser headphones, one point about the former, I assume that they are still available with a passive adaptor box? All of mine are in this form as I have found them very useful in evaluating amplifiers and pre amplifiers. I suppose if I were a dedicated headphone listener I would go for the powered version. Again, very good work.

Keep up the good work with the magazine, enjoy it very much.

I've just renewed my subs for 3 years. Please ensure it runs consecutively with my original subscription, and send the back issues I have missed (most of 2008 I suppose, and all 2009). Cheers, Mark

"It has been a joy immersing myself in such a mass of back issues, having given up in despair on the paper comics and the ad driven online language manglers. I do hope Critic remains viable. I'm sure that those who make the effort to consider the cost of time wasted trawling through dross in other comics seeking their occasional nugget amidst the recycled press releases will continue to renew subscriptions even if unable to buy new gear in straitened times."

Keep up the good work,
Mark

Dear Mr Colloms

You might not wish to be reminded that my acquaintance with your work goes back 30 years e.g. the Signet MK III E cartridge review HI FI Choice 1980, and I still have both book and cartridge!. I am pleased to say that I have gained a very great deal for your published work, I suppose loudspeaker/room, cable, and latterly mains issues, as being topics which stand out as being of particular value in your lucid expositions; which has a lot to do with why the HIFICRITIC venture has my full support I much like the presentation of the journal, and appreciate the way it is developing (though 2 months is plenty long to wait between issues!!)

On the record reviewing side of things, the more (so called) 'classical' material you cover the better, esp. if the repertoire is a bit off the beaten track- '2 gongs hit' with the current issue (Holst and Lindberg : good). Glad to note more text and fewer CD cover pictures nowadays: also reasonable attention to the engineering (worth noting that this last 2 weeks has produced a good dozen 'light music /British' CDs at my residence. Some delightful stuff, a lot admirably suited to system evaluation as well as having real 'musical ' value. Very pleased to find the 4 are engineered by Tony Faulkner, which would itself have been and impulse to purchase (if Gramophone had only mentioned it!) The erstwhile 'Quality Monitor' and 'Sounds in Retrospect' columns are much missed.

I'm enjoying Mr Anderson's writing in the current issue, while hoping CB's absence is temporary, he had a wondrous knack of alighting on fascinating aspects of both music and r3ecrding. Certainly room for both and others too if feasible: but what does Mr A play them on? CB's situation, like your own is basically familiar to the enthusiast, but this can't be said of all contributors of course.

I do hope that some of the above is of interest to you and to HIFICRIIC. Thanks again for your dedicated work over the years, and best wishes for future success with the magazine. Nice to be able to get in touch with you, PM and your colleagues.

HI Folks, Just so you Know HI-Fi Critic is in my opinion... The very best HI-FI issue in the UK, if not the world. It's blatantly informative and honest.
Regards, Dave

Subj.: Two suggestions and a question

Dear Editor,
I have now read front-to-back all Hificritic issues and I am very impressed. I sincerely hope you can continue during the crisis, hence my first suggestion: Have a look at the http://www.uhfmag.com model of web-"reading room" and web selling. I prefer to read from paper, but if this is a way to continue publishing, then so be it.
Second suggestion: I was somewhat disappointed that the review of the "Transporter" did not touch on hi-resolution. One reason that people like me look at DACs with USB and "servers" with ethernet is their potential of playing back hi-res files from the computer, not the "convenience" of ripping hundreds of CDs in a NAS. Players with S/PDIF output usually (always?) truncate to 16 bit. Linn audio understood this, most others haven't. Hope your upcoming review of DACs will cover hi-res.
Finally, my question: I thought I had seen an upcoming LFD zero III review, but it does not appear there anylonger. Is it still coming?
Best Regards,
Ioannis

HIFICRITIC REPLY:
Thanks for your supportive remarks
WEB publish is an option bur is not so easy to set up , and we like real print. The LFD integrated if that is what it was, is in issue 12.
Will try to do better with Hi Res but failed with the HDX since it was not good enough to really begin the process.
Kind Regards
Martin

I've just received it! Splendid.

Thank you very much for another edition of the best magazine in business, by a wide margin.

Subject: Re: hificritic and Transparent adventures

Following your advice I bought a set of second user Transparent Music Wave Ultra through Audiogon. When I first tried them with MF F19 and KEF 107s I wasn't impressed and thought they lacked weight compared with the Kimber Monocles I had been using for years.

However, having bought a s/h MF KW preamp and KW 750 power, I decided to give them another go. You are, of course, quite right. They are excellent with a wonderful clarity and what sounds like another octave of bass.

Whilst the cables were secondhand and therefore presumably burned in, they do sound to be improving with use. Is there anything in the idea that cables like to 'settle' in a position and system after being coiled and transported from US?

Happy Christmas and continued thanks for your wisdom and knowledge over the years.

HIFICRITIC REPLIES:

I am glad the advice held true, one cannot guarantee a good result for all equipment combinations.

Yes, the cables do relax physically and electrically after being wound up for storage and transport and then used for a while.

The improvement varies but can be a noticeable several percent, rather intriguing.

The insulations materials are piezo electric and also store charge, and relaxation and electrical working with alternating music signals helps the varied distribution of charge and stress settle down. It is speculated that for conductors which can reform, some degree of recrystallisation takes place after being bent around, with a slightly clearer sound resulting.

Kind regards
Martin

I've just received it! Splendid.

Thank you very much for another edition of the best magazine in business, by a wide margin.

Subject: Re: hificritic and Transparent adventures

Following your advice I bought a set of second user Transparent Music Wave Ultra through Audiogon. When I first tried them with MF F19 and KEF 107s I wasn't impressed and thought they lacked weight compared with the Kimber Monocles I had been using for years.

However, having bought a s/h MF KW preamp and KW 750 power, I decided to give them another go. You are, of course, quite right. They are excellent with a wonderful clarity and what sounds like another octave of bass.

Whilst the cables were secondhand and therefore presumably burned in, they do sound to be improving with use. Is there anything in the idea that cables like to 'settle' in a position and system after being coiled and transported from US?

Happy Christmas and continued thanks for your wisdom and knowledge over the years.

MC replies:

I am glad the advice held true, one cannot guarantee a good result for all equipment combinations.

Yes, the cables do relax physically and electrically after being wound up for storage and transport and then used for a while.

The improvement varies but can be a noticeable several percent, rather intriguing.

The insulations materials are piezo electric and also store charge, and relaxation and electrical working with alternating music signals helps the varied distribution of charge and stress settle down. It is speculated that for conductors which can reform, some degree of recrystallisation takes place after being bent around, with a slightly clearer sound resulting.

Kind regards
Martin

Thank you for the last issue of 2008.

I will renew for 2009.

Happy holidays and long live Hifi Critic!!!

Mark

Martin,

I love your publication and want to continue the subscription.

The Rock, Pop & Other Reviews section is the main reason I have been a subscriber since the beginning! Let me explain...

I am going to use the phrase "HiFi Lover" - yes that implies emotional involvement with a HiFi, but actually music contains emotion, which the recording technicians try to preserve. The home HiFi then tries to reproduce that emotion, stirring relevant emotions in the listener.

HiFi Critic contains everything that a HiFi Lover would want to read... news on new technology, opinion on the state of the industry, reviews of ground-breaking products, comparisons of products from similar/disparate price ranges/decades, etc. However, all of these have to come back to the emotion in the music - do any of these issues mean I will get more emotion from my recordings? Or perhaps will recordings themselves become nearer to the original intentions of the artist?

So, for me, reviewing music is intrinsically part of any good HiFi magazine - because it is the very source of the emotion that we love to recreate at home. It is just as important as reviewing the hardware/ancillaries. I buy CDs far more often than I buy HiFi hardware, and I would argue that for most people this is the case.

Now, people will undoubtedly say that there are numerous music magazines that you can go to for reviews - so why clutter up a HiFi magazine? I think that at this point it is important to treat the Classical and Rock/Pop/Other (RPO) reviews in HiFi Critic separately:

Classical ReviewsI must admit, that when I reach the classical reviews section in HiFi Critic, I skip over it completely. Not because I'm not interested, but simply because the underlying subject matter is so massive, and my knowledge is almost zero, that I feel out of depth even just reading the reviews. I'm sure for an expert or a seasoned collector of classical recordings, they could happily whiz through the classical reviews, and spot some new or re- releases that are of interest. However, such a person would surely also be subscribing to a specialist magazine such as Gramophone? So, yes, I agree that classical reviews should be in a separate magazine.

RPO Reviews In contrast, I spend a long time reading the RPO reviews, even when they cover a genre that I wouldn't even want to like. In many music magazines, the albums are reviewed simply in terms of whether they are better/worse than the last album, or whether the band has changed sound/kept the same sound. However the RPO reviews in HiFi Critic go so much further, even in the limited space allowed. They talk about the skill of the musicians, the emotion, the interplay of the band - all of which is emphasised by a good HiFi.

I would argue that the classical reviews should be reduced to, say, three recordings per issue, written in a way that can be understood by a layman, whilst borrowing some of the tone of the RPO reviews. This would allow room to expand the RPO review section slightly - a section that is fundamental to the quality of the magazine.

A HiFi lover wants to get more from their system - which includes finding new acts to listen to. The RPO reviews are written by someone who so obviously appreciates the emotion and skill in the music, that they immediately make me want to rush out and buy some music, or attend gigs.

That has to be a good thing for everyone linked to this hobby/career/life of ours.

Hello Martin,

I should say that I enjoy Hificritic very much - I only regret you're going to a quarterly issue rate. No doubt I'll be renewing my subscription though.

Your review of the Watt/Puppy 8 last year gave me the courage to commit to buying. Having absorbed your writings for ~ 30 years I trust and value your knowledge and opinions.

Best wishes for 2009.

Andrew

Dear Mr Colloms,

Please forgive me for this rather long missive.

A. I have question about voltage at the wall and amplifiers: Is it possible that voltage droop below the nominal wall voltage can cause an otherwise fine-sounding amplifier to sound awry?

B. I also have a question regarding the possible need to leave an amplifier on for a considerable length of time for it to sound optimal.

Background to these questions is as follows. In the May 2004 issue of HiFi News which I have, you reviewed the Plinius 9200 integrated amplifier.

What you heard during your testing led you to give this amp a mediocre rating, to say the least.

Here is some of the content of that review, which I have in front of me. You wrote:

I found many problems with the sound judged when using the established references. The upper and mid was in my view forward and wiry in an 'old fashioned' manner while the lower mid showed a thickened almost boxy quality together with a lack of clarity in this region. The treble showed a gritty emphasis: metallic transients were exaggerated such that they jumped out of the mix while vocal sibilants were distinctly slurred.

In the bass, I felt it lacked sufficient definition and was considered soft and lacking in dynamics, this clearly pointed up by the Naim warhorse.

Image depth was plain average while a certain dryness made the reproduced acoustic sound as if lacking in richness and spaciousness. Focus was rated below average, constrained partly by the out-of-image quality to the treble. This latter effect I believe was also destructive to the sense of rhythm, where this amplifier sounded noticeably downbeat, slower-paced and with significantly below average timing.

"the sound did not hold the listener's attention, was a tad light and bright lacked gravitas and a proper foundation for bass balance Resolution of detail was just average.

There is no question in my mind that you heard what you heard, and since then there has been a polarization of viewpoint, some corroborating what you heard, others praising the 9200 for its control in the bass, clarity and body in the mid-range, and detailed, but smooth treble.

There have been 3 theories as to why the 9200 could have sounded bad to you:

1. Defective sample
2. Voltage droop at the wall leading to insufficient current supply
3. Insufficient warm-up time

1. Theory 1 has been discounted publically by Gary Morrison of Plinius:
We cannot explain the review Martin Colloms wrote, we carefully checked the amplifier before submitting it, and it meets all of its published specs in the measurements he did.

2. Theory 2 has been proposed publically by John Marks of Stereophile, who writes for Stereophile:
As far as Mr. Colloms' reaction goes, I am confident that he heard what he heard, however I also believe, based on quite a bit of experience, that it is entirely possible that the wiring in his walls was not adequate to handle the current demands of the Plinius power supply design, and there was a voltage drop, which can make those amps sound brittle and fatiguing. When your wall wiring maxes out its current carrying capacity, the voltage begins to drop and Plinius amps can get edgy (or "wiry") sounding under that particular circumstance. If Mr. Colloms lives in an older building with old wiring, I would say that cinches it. However, if he lives in a new building with new wiring, I would be surprised, but would have to seek another explanation.

In relation to another Plinius amp, Peter Thomson of Plinius said that the amp needed a clear and strong electric supply, implying that the voltage supply in the owners house at the time, always under 218 volt, with low peaks of 212 volts, was a problem. Does this make any sense to you, as an experienced reviewer with a scientific background?

On the face of it, current starvation, if it is a factor, would be more likely on US voltage of 115 V than at 240 V as in the UK. Even then, unless the music is very loud on insensitive speakers, surely the current draw of the amp would not be of consequence?

3. Insufficient warm-up time has been proposed by Gary Morrison as the reason for the Plinius 9200 sounding unpleasant:
My personal opinion is that the amp was not given sufficient warm-up time. My experience was that the 9200 I have in my system did not sound good until it had been plugged in and running (just idling) for the best part of a week. 3 days certainly wasn't enough.

The warm up issue is actually a mystery to me as well. It varies from product to product. For example we tried first a 9200 and then an M8 / SA201 combination at CES in Las Vegas this year. The 9200 didn't come near the M8/102 out of the box. We used the pre power combo because of this. I followed up back here in NZ and found the extended warmup on the 9200, and our US distributor later did comparisons between the M8/102 and 9200 after both had had ample break in and found there were only small differences in the system he was using.

It may be to do with temperature, or the application of voltage across semiconductor junctions and capacitor dielectrics over a period of time. I wish I had some useful insight.

Do you have any insight?
Here again, the question springs to mind: Why at least a week instead of 3 days? To my mind, the effect, if real as opposed to imaginary, cannot be owing to temperature. 6 hours should be sufficient for thermal steady state. Also what about diurnal ambient temperature fluctuation?

The fact that you are no doubt very busy would render me extremely grateful should you find the time to respond to my questions.

Regards,
Doug Murray Hi Doug, Nothing to forgive, thought provoking! Responding to your questions and points raised: A. If the wall voltage is low enough for the regulators for signal stages to drop out then it will go awry quite quickly. B. Good product sounds pretty good right out of the box. Poor product may get a little better on running in but never really gets fixed. Some good product may improve significantly with time. The Naim Supernait only reached its peak after about three weeks but was a relatively good performer after three hours. Electrolytic capacitors can take 100 hours before the dielectric is fully formed at the 100% sound quality level. Depending on the make electrolytics degrade with time and always need some time to reform after they are out of use. I have worked on these components and they have quite a big effect on sound quality. If an audio component is reasonably low in standing power I tend to leave it on indefinitely. Concerning the Plinius points: 1. Nothing to suggest it was defective 2. My wall voltage is 244 V at 60A with a dedicated high current spur only for audio 3. The amplifier was preconditioned and used in the lab intermittently before the three-day warm-up. I have no reason to think that it would be transformed by additional running in. Comment: We all hear different things according to different priorities. An amp really can be satisfying to one and poorly balanced and boring to another. Listeners may never agree especially when it is personal, money committed or the designer. I am neither, so without that financial commitment I can tell it how I hear it. Every product interests me; I want to know how it sounds. I how hope that when I relate what I hear it will help others find good sound. Possibly Plinius and I do not have common ground on what is important in the listening experience. My review of their phono amplifier in HIFICRITIC was similarly unpromising. Kind regards , Martin Colloms

Ciao Martin

I received the back issues. Thank you very much.

More and more I believe hificritic is a real gem.

A blend of classic style audio journalism and tasteful and competent insight into the future of the hobby.

For the first time I end up reading almost every page of the magazine.

I wish you all the success.

Congratulations on a first class magazine. The authoritative, independent reviews & open ended comparative scoring systems are most useful and save potential consumers much time & expense in choosing which components to audition.

I strongly disagree with the criticism of Paul Messenger by Mr Staton. His knowledge and expertise are immense & I enjoy reading every word he writes. More reviews by him please!

On my return from London, I was pleased to receive the July/August issue which was sent by you via Royal Mail.

I have also received the September/ October issue for which many thanks.

I congratulate you on the quality of the reviews, and look forward very much to forthcoming issues.

Dear Sirs,
I am a subscriber from the first issue.
Now, having become acquainted to your publications, I don't care I am missing other magazines and I don't need to re-subscribe there.
On the other hand I don't intend to miss any issue of hi fi critic.
Congratulations. You won me, a hardcore audiophile from 25 years !
Ciao

Sorry, my issue 11 showed up TODAY!! Guess you can see how much I look forward to it. No worries.

Just a quick note letting you know the issues arrived safe yesterday. I have been enjoying reading them. I do think your magazine is THE finest one available today!!! Also I hope you will make a review regarding some DAC USB products like ARC DAC7 and Benchmark DAC 1 Pre. Many thanks.

I wish to subscribe for a third year, but I don't know whether I've already done so. Can you please let me know? Sorry to put you to the trouble.

Great magazine!

Congratulations on a fabulous magazine which not only manages to look the part but also has the best written and most compelling content I've read in a long time. I hope you can maintain this high standard!

Best regards.

David.

Drunk with success at getting one posting I am offering a few more gems of subjective impression.

I still love HiFiCritic (toady) but am increasingly frustrated by your lack of attention to headphones and headphone amps. The little differences we all find so fascinating are most apparent over headphones. The difference between putatively top headphones are as striking as those between loudspeakers or maybe even more so because of the close proximity of the drivers and the focus which this encourages. I would love to hear the assessments from your golden eared perspectives of top phones such as AKG701; Sennheiser 650, Grado GS1000, Denon 2000 etc. The only reviewer who attempts this in Hi Fi News comes to conclusions quite different from my own. His top headphone, Audio Technica, sounds enclosed, coloured and metallic to me.

In my last entry I praised the Kimber 1030 interconnect. It has now been superseded in my system, by the Van den Hul The First Select which gives, to my ears, the most natural sound I have heard. Thank you to Martin Colloms for his advocacy of these.

In correspondence Martin also recommended a speaker cable which might improve on my Kimber Monocles as a link between Music Fidelity F9 and KEF 107.2. I managed to buy a set of Transparent Audio MusicWave Ultra (via Audiogon) from a nice lady in Seattle who was downsizing her life style. To me they were a disappointment having less bass and a harder less realistic detail presentation than the Kimbers. I will have to sell on.

So heaven at present is half Kimber half Van den Hul.

The moral of all this, well known to aficionados, is that combinations are the thing. It is not as simple as buying everything from one manufacturer even when this is possible.

Could we have more in Critic about whole systems? Synergy rules OK?

In response to R Staton : I think Paul Messenger is a guru, an ikon, a diamond geezer and probably a pseudonym for several well informed reviewers.

Great review in the digital issue, Thank whoever, pretty astounding how people are amazed with these amps, at least you have the ability to hear, clearly a lot do not.

Dear Mr. Messenger.

I just received the current issue of your magazine and three back issues.

I have to admit that I really devoured them within two days, all articles, reviews and comments.

My impression is that hificritic is the first audio magazine that meets my requirements (after 35 years) for getting more than "copy/paste" of manufacturer`s and distributor`s marketing flyer statements. Or even more than simple description of electronic components implemented in the device with garnished with a lot of close ups of printed circuit boards.

I was always searching for a magazine that is focused on the sonical/ musical quality of a new device describing the "real" innovation that overcomes known shortcoming in sound reproduction. Thus I appreciate very much your holistic approach taking into account the room interaction, power supply and system-behaviour (including cabling) - instead of a "box"-description that conceals the system and boundary conditions in which the box was implemented.

Especially vibration and resonance control (of electronic components passed through by and exited by the musical signal current) is a most neglected topic. Alfred Rudolph the designer of Acapella Audio Arts horn speakers focused very early on this aspect.

I started my investments in hifi gear ignoring the conflicting and illogical statements of the existing hifi-magazines in Germany and bought professional audio based products from Revox (fm-tuner, record player, tape recorder of the first B-Series) and paired them with a pair of Spendor BC3 (the BC1 was at that time approved by the WDR broadcast studios) - a speaker most different to the most popular "Taunus-sound" in Germany of designs such as Canton speakers. The Spendors are still in use in my brother's system.

In the end my solid state Burmester 870 mono amps were substituted by single ended triodes from Unison (Smart 850) - the decision was made within a minute.

What I miss in your serious testing and reviewing - based as I see it on expertised technical knowledge - is the aspect of "crosstalk" by the two stereo speakers - especially when it comes to sound staging/ describing the speaker performance concerning imaging.

There is a most convincing consideration on this crosstalk effect at www.ambiophonics.org by Ralph Glasgal.

And beside a simple mechanical solution to minimize crosstalk there already exists a preamplifier based solution for crosstalk cancellation by TacT Audio in their room correction processor RCS 2.2XP (XTC-function).

I had the change to listen to a system with XTC activated and found it most convincing. A real progress and not a mere virtual innovation.

I wonder why this aspects is not recognised in actual reviews.

Do you have any idea about this lack of discussion?

May I finish with congratulations for your fine magazine (even if some editorials a most difficult to read for a non-native speaker)

I have a strong complaint to make!

How dare you make all other Hi Fi mags read like tabloids compared to the broadsheet quality of Hi Fi Critic..... Seriously, well done.

Alan Shaw of Harbeth claims his speakers can reveal fine detail that other makes can not due to his bespoke material radial. Can this claim be justified.

MC replies:
The material of a cone is only a small component of the whole stack of technologies and design issues which make up a good loudspeaker.

His material is what floats his boat and inspires him to create what he does.

For others it may be pure piston ceramics, or unique near zero resonance enclosure constructions, or no cone or enclosure at all , eg a good electrostatic.

No speaker is perfect, designers try to use what they have to perfect what they know.

I subscribed to your magazine at the Manchester Hi-Fi show. I have been most impressed by it and I look forward to each bi-monthly issue

I would also like to take out a 3-year subscription, starting with the Jan/Feb issue 2009. (My existing 1-year subscription ends with the Nov/Dec 2008 issue. I have really enjoyed reading it.)

I am currently a subscriber to Hi Fi Critic, and I am writing to offer some feedback about volume 2 no. 4.

I appreciate that not having advertising frees the magazine from the pressures that advertisers may exert, though I don't know the extent of the difference that makes as I have no information about the amount of pressure advertisers put on other magazines. Actually, advertisements can be informative and useful. Certainly, if there is no advertising the attention of readers will be concentrated on the quality of the articles and reviews.

The features I am going to refer to are the three CD-related reports by Chris Bryant, and the article by Julian Musgrave.

If you read almost any issue of Hi Fi World you will find David Price telling everyone how even the most basic LP player out-performs even the best CD system. Chris Bryant takes this a step further. The DACs in most currently available CD players are not multi-bit and are therefore inferior, and after about ten years of CD production - i.e. by about 1993 - the quality of the software began to decline. As a result, "for those of us who really like music..it looks like we may have to revert to vinyl" (page 29).

I find this patronising. I enjoy listening to my LPs and my CDs. Possibly the design of my Chord DAC64 side-steps the supposed multi-bit/one bit issue. I have several older CDs, having bought my first ones in 1984, and I am not aware of a generally lower quality among those produced over the past fifteen years. I do recall the scare in about 1990 when all our CDs were supposed to be going to succumb to some sort of mould, but most of them haven't. Chris Bryant wants to improve on that by telling us that they are all no good anyway.

If I believed Chris Bryant, what could I do? To "revert to vinyl" is impractical as there are almost no newly-recorded performances on LP of music that I want to listen to. There are very few newly-recorded LPs of any kind of music. Most people under about 35 are likely to have no LPs, and very few CD's from the period when Chris Bryant is prepared to allow their quality to have been acceptable. What options does he suppose are available for them? The one they seem to be taking is to use MP3 downloads - and why not, since you get the music in a conveniently portable format, and if CDs and the equipment for playing them are so below par you will apparently be no worse off with MP3 quality. For a higher resolution system you then spend money on AV equipment where the DACs are perfectly capable of reproducing the sound of explosions and plane crashes, and no-one has yet come forward to say how much better the "micro and macro dynamics" of an earthquake would sound in multi-bit.

Chris Bryant is entitled to his opinions, but if a magazine that aspires to the highest levels of objectivity and reliability determinedly tells its readers that both the hardware and the software are in decline, there is a definite risk that people will stop buying either of them.

On a more specific note, there is some confusion on pages 28 and 29 about whether the review and test results are of Naim's CD5i or the earlier CD5i. Partly Naim's fault for using such confusing nomenclature, but the review therefore has an extra responsibility to get it right.

Moving to Julian Musgrave's article, you described this as "tongue in cheek". So where was his brain? He writes: "Imagine life without concerts, jazz clubs and raves. Without amps and speakers.." A hundred years ago they had concerts, music halls, and bandstands, and probably a higher proportion of the population than today played or sang music. They weren't less civilised without the amps and loudspeakers. Germany in the 1930s had 56 opera houses, and nineteenth-century Italy may have had even more. Were they more civilised than Britain? Julian started with a moderately amusing idea which, after drafting his article, he should have realised was not worth taking further. And therefore it wasn't worth publishing.

Peter Maguire raises an interesting point in his recent communication about equipment supports. Russ Andrews assertion that you must have very lightweight structures supported in three places only to minimise airborne induced vibration and wobble has always been contentious, although some other manufacturers have followed the same route, notably Clearlight. On the other hand many others have racks of very high mass set down on at least four support spikes.

High-end equipment is invariably heavy - tens of kg rather than a few grams - so the rack mass is surely somewhat irrelevant when a rack is fully loaded? Very heavy loads supported on only three spikes are in my experience incredibly unstable and much more prone to lateral movement when disturbed. Nor is it true to suggest that there are always redundancies in four or more spiked-leg support systems, try chopping one leg off your dining room table.

I tend to agree with Peter that stand and shelf supports should at best be placed more or less under the feet of the components they are supporting, so that the sinking pathways are essentially vertical, presumably the only direction - if any - that most designers considered when specifying damped shelves etc. My best results have always come from this arrangement.

These days I am very much in the camp of rigidity and mass of the support framework. To my ears inadequately supported lightweight frames impart a hollow bloominess characteristic to a recorded acoustic, which in any other language implies an induced distortion especially in the critical lower-mid audio band.

I wonder if you would consider an article researching/reviewing what seems to be the future of hi (greater than CD) quality audio. With a number of record companies offering high bit rate downloads and Linn audio creating a network attached hi bit rate dac it seems to me that the time is ripe for some evaluation of what can be achieved with high bit rate downloads. What's more given your contributors include recording engineers and the best audio reviewers I hope that you will find this a worthwhile topic for a future issue.

HIFICRITIC wrote:
Hi Richard > We are looking into this as we speak!

Richard wrote:
good to see that your latest issue has made a start on this very interesting topic. I'm hoping (especially with the product releases from the likes of Linn (Klimax DS, Akurate DS) and Naim (HDX)) that you will be following up on Tony and Wes's articles. It would be great to get your team's view on these high resolution formats especially comparing how they sound on pc sound cards and dedicated devices (such as those from Linn and Naim). Keep up the good work.

If my car's engine has eight cylinders, but only five of them have pistons, I will be disappointed in its performance.

If a digital converter is in 24-bit format but its distortion and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) correspond to 15-bit performance, I will likewise be disappointed.

Some 24-bit converters indeed do not reach 15-bit performance. Some reach 15 but not 16. Full 17-bit SNR and distortion are uncommon, and 18-bit performance is rare. Better performance is rarer still.

This matters because people are discussing "24-bit sound" when they haven't even heard 18 bits. This would be like my discussing V-8 engine performance based on the engine described above.

It also matters because more bits are indeed required for noise-free reproduction at realistic levels.

(See Louis D. Fielder, "Dynamic-Range Issues in the Modern Digital Environment" JAES Vol. 43, No. 5, May 1995. "A dynamic range of over 120 dB is found to be necessary in the most demanding of circumstances....")

In a personal communication, Mr. Fielder stated that up to 124 dB may be needed.

Using the formula dB dynamic range = 6.02n + 1.76, where n is the number of bits, and bearing in mind that you can't have a fractional bit, a range of 120 dB requires 20 bits; 124 dB, 21 bits. More bits yet are required for the analog-digital converter used for master recording, to allow for uncertainty in setting level. Twelve dB, or 2 more bits, is reasonable.

When I choose a converter for recording my own next piano concert, I will listen to the candidates, of course. But before I go to that trouble, I want to know I'm getting enough bits of performance, not just format. The pickings are thin.

Just finished reading the Class D article and it is a well reasoned and explained article with (what is unfortunately missing from other press) teeth. I actually have a chance to hear this first hand as an advocate of Class D is bringing his amps over today and I will be interested in how it fares against my McIntosh 275.

I notice that you have not reviewed McIntosh amps, do you have a view on their quality, is it all pipes and slippers?. Although Alvin was impressed and I respect his views. Anyway, an excellent magazine.

I suspect that you will receive a lot of criticism over the Class D 'bubble burst' but please carry on clearly stating your views.

Congratulations on your first year; something for everyone, almost. I suppose it's right that you leave me wanting more. I think that Hi-Fi Critic got off to a good start and has gradually improved issue by issue despite annoying print delays for issues 4 and 5.

International High End products help demonstrate progress in audio so keep up with the market - please don't be afraid to nail the duffers.

For me, renewal of my subscription is mandatory!