Duntech's Kiat Low Interview

SoundStage! Talks: SoundStage! Australia editor-in-chief Edgar Kramer talks to Duntech Audio’s CEO, Kiat Low, about John Dunlavy’s legacy design philosophies and how they apply to the drivers, crossovers, and overall design of the company’s new Senator and Princess loudspeakers. Kiat Low also touches on the future reinvention of the iconic Duntech Audio Sovereign loudspeaker.

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Feature: The Importance of Expert Analogue Rig Setup

Recently, the arrivals of a Transrotor Crescendo turntable and Reed 1X tonearm had this writer performing analogue system assembly acrobatics with the meagre remnants of near-zero muscle memory. After some brow swiping, I had the assembly of the various arm and turntable components finally completed. Next task was to tackle the complexities and inter-relationships of proper tonearm, cartridge and turntable adjustment. However, the skills and tools to properly do that are beyond me, leading to investigations on an aptly experienced and suitably equipped turntable set-up guru.

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Björn Bengtsson Nordost Video Interview

SoundStage! Talks: Nordost's Björn Bengtsson talks to SoundStage! Australia editor-in-chief Edgar Kramer about clocks, oscillations and synchronizations across the company's new QPoint Resonance Synchronizer and versatile QSource dedicated Linear Power Supply. Bengtsson also touches on his positive experiences and feedback demonstrating the QPoint and QSource to audio enthusiasts across a variety of systems around the world's biggest audio shows.

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Mark Levinson and Master Class Video Interview

SoundStage! Talks: SoundStage! Australia Editor-in-Chief Edgar Kramer chats to Mark Levinson regarding Daniel Hertz and Master Class "Digital Cello Palette" Sound Enhancement software.

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Peter Foster Halcro Video Interview

SoundStage! Talks: SoundStage! Australia editor-in-chief Edgar Kramer talks to Halcro CEO Peter Foster about the rebuilding of the brand and where his group plans to take it.

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Perfecting a Room – Vicoustic Room Acoustics Products

Having the best audio system in the world can amount to naught if it sits within the context of a room which suffers from a mediocre acoustic signature. Yes, every room has an inherent acoustic signature, or profile… sounds produced within it are influenced by the room’s dimensions, the materials employed in its construction, the objects within it and the relationships between its boundaries. Different loudspeaker designs will have distinctive environmental interactions ultimately resulting in varying degrees of influence on the sonic performance.

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Feature & Interviews – The ‘New’ Duntech Audio & Halcro

Around the mid-1980s and again in the late 1990s, two Australian brands jolted the high-end audio industry with uniquely-designed and disruptively-engineered debut products… In fact, you could say Duntech Audio’s towering Sovereign loudspeakers and Halcro’s distinct super-low distortion dm58 monoblock amplifiers were quite revolutionary. In fact, revolutionary was the word used in Halcro’s dm58 review on Stereophile magazine while Duntech Audio’s flagship were said to be “the most neutral and accurate” loudspeaker design in the world.

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Factory Tour – Focal, Part 2 – A Driver’s Perspective

Saint Étienne

It’s become lore that one of Focal founder Jacques Mahul’s motivations for designing loudspeakers was his fervent desire to listen to quality music ‘dans la voiture’. It was that budding kernel – spawning a high quality car audio driver – that later flowered into JM-lab, a full-blown international transducer-producing concern, then further blossoming into the giant loudspeaker manufacturer Focal is today. Mahul’s self-mandated mission was to create the very best drivers that technology allowed at the time.

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Factory Tour – Focal, Part 1 – Respect for Wood

Bourbon-Lancy

Fly to Switzerland in order to get to France. But that was the plan prior to touch down. To make the best time ex-Geneva tout suite to Focal’s Franco factory duo in Bourbon-Lancy et Saint Étienne. That way, going Franco-side is an easy 2-hour coach ride from UN-HQ to stop 1 in B-L.

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Naim & Focal Luxury Audio Event at Bentley Motors Melbourne

For many audio enthusiasts, luxury cars and high-end audio are symbiotic… like Astaire and Rogers, or Lennon and Mc Cartney, Fripp and Eno. Like the almost interdependent association between the auto and the audio, others also stretch these relationships to cameras, watches and even high-end writing utensils. However, think unrivalled luxury in the auto industry and the name Bentley draws gasps of awe and lustful admiration. The über luxury brand has had an association with Naim Audio for round about 10 years now, with the quintessential British brand supplying bespoke electronics for Bentley Motors’ top models. BusiSoft AV, Australian distributor for Naim Audio and Focal among many other high-end brands, staged an event at Melbourne’s Bentley showroom to showcase Naim’s Statement preamplifier and power amplifier masterpiece to dealers and their selected customers and also to introduce these flagship products to an affluent new audience.

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Halcro Eclipse Monoblock Amplifiers Sydney Launch

After a near-ten-year hiatus, which saw the highly-acclaimed and headline-grabbing Halcro marque going into slumber, the Australian company’s recent relaunch has the potential to revive audiophile fervour around the world.

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Nordost Event at Audio Connection Australia

Who’s up for a bit of Hi-Fi dominance and submission? On 15 October, at Audio Connection in Sydney, attendees got to experience exactly that in the form of the latest Nordost QRT devices, the QPoint Resonance Synchronizer and QSource Linear Power Supply. First introduced at Munich earlier this year, the devices have already garnered a number of awards for their ability to “synchronize” the performance of individual system components. The indefatigable Björn Bengtsson of the Nordost design team was on hand, en-route to the Melbourne Hi-Fi Show 2019, to demonstrate the rather obvious improvements these products bring to even the highest calibre of audio systems.

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