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9th June, 2010
Colloms Performance Listing
Colloms Performance Listing has been updated this week.
Colloms Sound Quality Archive: Comparative sound quality ratings for power amplifiers, preamplifiers, CD players and DACs, and for integrated amplifiers. HIFICRITIC has incorporated this sound quality rating archive.
A number of historic and interesting products are included in the listing for reference purposes. Please also see our ratings explained page to find out more about Colloms Sound Quality ratings.
6th June, 2010
Free Read: HIFICRITIC Awards, Vol3 No4, AUDIO PRODUCT REVIEW SELECTION: A RETROSPECTIVE
Completing HIFICRITIC’s third year, a brief review of some of the more outstanding audio products we have tried, reviewed or lived with is in order. We have tried to consider relevant and important product rather than hoovering up all that has been presented for review, but despite our critical stance, a number of winners have emerged which really entertained and impressed us. We also have a significant archive of reliable reviewers’ experiences, so can now publish our recommended product listings, without ceremony, awards dinner or fanfare – simply a hopefully helpful listing of hi-fi hardware that meets our approval.
5th June, 2010
High Definition Audio Developments at the AES, reporting from the 128th AES Convention London
The 128th AES Convention held in London, May 22-25, 2010 brought to light some promising developments in HD audio notwithstanding the official peer reviewed AES position based on the journal published and hence peer reviewed Meyer and Moran listening tests (Double-blind test of SACD and DVD-A vs. Redbook 16/44 in JAES, Brad Meyer and David R. Moran. JAES 55(9) September 2007) which show that under the conditions so defined a 16bit 44.1 kHz encode decode channel is transparent, i.e. entirely sufficient for audio reproduction.
5th May, 2010
FREE READ: Digital Activity
Digital Activity: THE COMBINATION OF ACTIVE DRIVE AND DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING CAN GIVE MERIDIAN’S DSP 7200 LOUDSPEAKER SOME REMARKABLE PROPERTIES, AS MARTIN COLLOMS EVENTUALLY DISCOVERED
25th March, 2010
Vol4 No1
Our latest issue is complete and will be printed in the final week of March, for dispatch in first week of April.
Thank you for your patience.
5th January, 2010
Stormy Brighton, Full Report
Institute of Acoustics: RS25 (Reproduced Sound 2009, Nov 18 -20).
14th December, 2009
Volume 3 Number 4
We are happy to announce that our December issue, Vol. 3 No. 4, has gone to print. Excerpts to follow shortly.
3rd December, 2009
TRANSPORTER OF DELIGHT
Malcolm Steward checks out the Slimdevices Transporter, which claims to deliver audiophile quality computer music to your hi-fi .
24th November, 2009
THE AUDIO EXPLOSION
Institute of Acoustics: RS25
(Reproduced Sound 2009, Nov 18 -20,)
The National Audio Show
at Whittlebury Hall, Northampton (Silverstone) September 26,27th. 2009 (organised by Chester Group, Roy Bird)
by Martin Colloms
HIFICRITIC and Enjoy The Music partner:
HIFICRITIC is now affiliated with Enjoy The Music dot com.
Please see the HIFICRITIC section at EnjoyTheMusic.com.
Tokyo Confidential
November 20, 2008 by studio360blog
(Kurt Andersen kindly gave permission to reproduce this fascinating piece on a vinyl based music bar)
Sound quality guru Ken Ishiwata celebrates 30 years at Marantz with a product launch at the Ivy
6th May 209, by Martin Colloms
HIGH END Munich 2009 Lecture Programme
The broad demo and lecture programme for the HighEnd Show at Munich has been announced and I note in particular the subject of two talks:
`Electric smog , its effects on sound and vision` and
`Can sound quality be measured?`
This year the show (22 to 24 May , 21 trade) is larger than ever belying the European downturn. Paul Messenger and Malcolm Steward will be attending. I would be great to gear up a UK show to complement the massive HighEnd Society performance, and we hope to make some progress on this with the upcoming Autumn Northampton Sound and Vision show.
Martin Colloms
HIFICRITIC 2008 October News.
Regular visitors to the site will notice many changes, some still underway.
We have added a HIFICRITIC FORUMS covering music and stereo equipment matters and we are already impressed by the quality of both our participants and their responses, pretty thoughtful stuff.
The Sound Quality Archives will be updated. Many more back reviews will be uploaded, available free of charge. Currently, we are working on a HIFICRITIC Authors section, inevitably partly dependant on author contributions, so you can find out more about the team.
Paul Messenger and I wrote a series of technology guides some years ago and we now have permission to reproduce them. Look out for the recent Technologies Explained (A12-A14) uploads in our Archive Pages.
Many thanks to all subscribers and those who have re-subscribed. New subscribers are key to the development of the project so please everyone else know what you think of us and encourage them to join us.
HIFICRITIC attended the Manchester Audio Show at the airport Radisson SAS 26th to 27 Jan 2008. (See the Manchester show blog ). We met many of our readers, signed up newcomers and fielded numerous technical and system queries. Please let us know what you would like to see covered in future in the magazine.
A month later we arrived at Bristol for the Sound and Vision Show, (See the Bristol show blog ) Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th Feb at the 'Mariott City Centre Hotel'. Our reception was as brilliant as last year and we welcomed all our friends with a good turnout of HIFICRITIC authors, including the Editor, Paul Messenger. Now in our second year we find that we are gaining increasing respect and acceptance from the audio industry. We put out a Bristol show blog and there were a number of interesting technology and product introductions at this show.
HIFICRITIC also attended the Munich HIGH END Show, HIGH END® 2008 and while we did not exhibit we presented a paper for the lecture series on the performance of Class D amplification entitled: ARE CLASS D AMPLIFIERS HIGH FIDELITY? We also reported on interesting aspects of this important European audio show.
We have just tidied up after the September 2008 Heathrow Show and Paul Messenger has posted his show report above. (See Manchester show blog)
Issue11 is completed which was mailed out in September 2008 and which has some fascinating content. Issue 12 is in preparation and includes a big survey of loudspeaker and interconnect cables. See ‘Upcoming’.
In writing up the cartridge reviews for Issue 7 (Vol2 No 1) model were so helpful that we have obtained permission to reproduce the general text on our site, and many thanks to Symmetry and Sumiko for helping make this happen. Download Sumiko Cartridge setup instructions here.
British High End Audio Manufacturer enters the Phone Business
Chord Electronics enters the phone business with their new product launch at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel. Two products were showcased, not prototypes, rather full working models, with pre production already under way and retail orders in hand , including Sevenoaks Sound and Vision.
While the project was reaching maturity earlier in the year it was too soon to publicly release it at the Munich Show, and while I knew of it, I could not discuss it until this London release.
How do you associate high quality audio with a mobile telephone?
Buried in the Bluetooth wireless transmission standard is an uncorrupted coded audio signal, digital and full resolution, like S/PDIF, and present on nearly all modern handsets. It is called A2DP and no one has ever thought to use it. Using it is not as simple as that, and Chord conducted significant research into the subject in cooperation with the Finnish engineers involved in founding Bluetooth, resulting in a unique decoding chip in order to achieve mute free reliable transmission at the highest quality. At present there is audio over Bluetooth but it is not so reliable and is decoded to a barely average quality level, intended mainly for hands free headsets.
Having looked at the extant iPod market and the concept of these larger stores of audio that need to be accessed by a physical or wired connection and are generally loaded up via a computer and matching software, Chord have decided to jump forwards.
Chord is gambling on the increasing penetration of often short term downloaded music to mobile phones. The rapid growth in large inexpensive memory for phones is fuelling this development. Once there, it is wholly logical for the younger market to bypass conventional systems, even stationary music and net servers, and wish to play at high quality at home, straight from the phone.
QBD76 semi transparent view
QBD76 showing rear panel interfaces
Proof of concept is an audiophile 'digital to audio' product called the QBD76 which is itself a massive working of their well regarded DAC 64 for hi fi systems, and costs a substantial £3,000. I heard this 24 bit resolution device through a £30,000 audio system and it sounded just fine, top CD quality in fact, but then founder John Franks revealed that what I was hearing was transmitted from the Sony-Ericsson mobile in his pocket, with uncompressed, full resolution WAV files. I asked about transmission stability and in response he chucked the phone to an assistant at the back of the hall who proceeded to juggle with it and two others while proceeding out into the hotel beyond. The result; uninterrupted, high dynamic range audio. 20m transmitting range is solid, 30m is usually attained.
Then a much smaller unit was revealed, still finished in Chord's trademark super fine, burnished, anodised aluminium. Merely 'very good' rather than full-on audiophile, this does the Bluetooth digital audio capture and replay too, at a fraction under £400 and should still be genuine hi fi.
Franks has dubbed this one the 'Chordette Gem'
Chordette Gem Bluetooth Digital audio player with aerial
The Chordette Gem colour range
www.chordelectronics.co.uk
Copyright HIFICRITIC 2008
23rd UK AES conference 9,10 April 2008:
'Music Everywhere'
New Hall College, Cambridge
Blog by Martin Colloms.
HIFICRITIC 2008
Many thanks to all subscribers who have already re-subscribed, and there is still time to take advantage of the discount offer for those who haven't yet. Due to great demand it has been extended to March 31st 2008. New subscribers are key to the development of the project so please everyone else know what you think of us and encourage them to join us.
HIFICRITIC attended the Manchester Audio Show at the airport Radisson SAS 26th to 27 Jan 2008. (See the Manchester show blog ). We met many of our readers, signed up newcomers and fielded numerous technical and system queries. Please let us know what you would like to see covered in future in the magazine.
A month later we arrived at Bristol for the Sound and Vision Show, (See the Bristol show blog ) Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th Feb at the 'Mariott City Centre Hotel'. Our reception was as brilliant as last year and we welcomed all our friends with a good turnout of HIFICRITIC authors, including the Editor, Paul Messenger. Now in our second year we find that we are gaining increasing respect and acceptance from the audio industry. We hope to put out a Bristol show blog quite soon and there were a number of interesting technology and product introductions at this show.
We have just completed Issue 8 which is scheduled for mail out in very early March 2008 and which has some fascinating content. Responding to requests we have reviewed a batch of five integrated amplifiers from £500 to £800. One was capable of 250W per channel four ohm loading for music programme, was inexpensive and sounded good! Most were UK designed while one from Japan had UK design support in the form of custom 'voicing' from UK's Air Studios. This issue also assesses two high performance wall mount speakers, one on-wall of improbably slim and self effacing profile, and one which is improbably expensive and is optimised for near wall location. Both may help solve conflicts arising for free space location and room interior design.
HIFICRITIC is attending the Munich HIGH END Show, HIGH END® 2008 and while not exhibiting we will present a paper for the lecture series on the performance of Class D amplification entitled: 'ARE CLASS D AMPLIFIERS HIGH FIDELITY? We will also report on interesting aspects of this important European audio show.
In writing up the cartridges for Issue 7 we found that the Sumiko setting up instructions for their Blackbird moving coil were so helpful that we have obtained permission to reproduce the general text on our site; many thanks to Symmetry and Sumiko for making this happen. Download Sumiko Cartridge setup instructions here.
