The Latest
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- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Reviews Reviews
- Published: 01 March 2021 01 March 2021
Totaldac d-1 direct Digital-to-Analogue Converter
If you survey classic CD players, the ones that were the format’s leading lights in its golden age throughout the 90s, you’ll spot a common theme. The ubiquity of multi-bit digital-to-analogue conversion using DAC chips which are now expensive and rare. In an alternate methodology, resistor ladder-based conversion (R2R) has taken the sonic performance of multi-bit DACs to a level which, by the zealous testimony of many astute audiophiles, crowns the technology as the ultimate glory of digital. In fact, some manufacturers are engineering proprietary modular ladder architectures while others achieve conversion by painstakingly aligning regiments of carefully-matched high quality resistors. French digital specialist Totaldac is in the latter camp. Here, we look at the company's recently introduced top single-box solution, the d1-direct digital-to-analogue converter.
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- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: News News
- Published: 25 February 2021 25 February 2021
Metaxas' Sinfully Beautiful Papillon
Multi-award winning Australian artist, industrial designer and engineer Kostas Metaxas introduces the bespoke Papillon, his audio company Metaxas & Sins’ third reel-to-reel player/recorder.
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- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: News News
- Published: 23 February 2021 23 February 2021
Line Magnetic Event Coming to South Australia
Line Magnetic Australia is teaming-up with Adelaide’s GrizzlyWorks High Fidelity Audio for an event that sees the showcasing of the former’s best electronics and the latter’s latest audio racking system.
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- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: News News
- Published: 19 February 2021 19 February 2021
McIntosh Laboratory Announces New MCD85 SACD/CD Player
The new McIntosh Laboratory MCD85 is a full-featured SACD/CD player with digital inputs and a design language which matches it to a growing range of the company’s most recent releases.
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- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: News News
- Published: 18 February 2021 18 February 2021
Meitner Audio MA3 DAC/Streamer Lands in Australia
Meitner Audio’s recently-launched next-gen digital hub solution, the new MA3 digital-to-analogue converter and streamer combo, lands in Australia.
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- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: News News
- Published: 17 February 2021 17 February 2021
YG Acoustics Loudspeakers More Coherent via Sonja Series Upgrade
In a further development of the many proprietary technologies YG Acoustics has implemented in its Sonja range of high-end loudspeakers, the company now introduces the DualCoherent 2 crossover refinement.
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- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: News News
- Published: 16 February 2021 16 February 2021
New Copland CSA 150 Hybrid Integrated Amplifier
Danish audio specialist Copland has introduced a new flagship ‘CSA’ series hybrid integrated amplifier with a comprehensive features set making it a powerhouse hub for analogue and digital audio.
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- Written by Edgar Kramer Edgar Kramer
- Category: Reviews Reviews
- Published: 15 February 2021 15 February 2021
Transrotor Crescendo Turntable & Reed 1X Tonearm
What was thought to be a dinosaur in-waiting, with extinction as intensely ominous as the outlandish rainbow-like shine from polycarbonate discs, has resulted in a mere lull followed by an explosive rebirth. Yes, seemingly retrograde – but far from it, really – the mechanical turntable and vinyl, its analogue expression, have survived onslaughts from many-a-digit-based technology. They have persevered with assertive triumph. Germany’s longest-running analogue specialist Transrotor, like its industry brethren, has weathered the onslaught of digital music and continues to adhere to its no compromise principle of producing highly sophisticated turntables. Ditto for relative newcomer Reed, a tonearm specialist offering a variety of finely-engineered options. In this review, we examine in detail our in-situ pairing of Transrotor Crescendo Nero with the Reed 1X tonearm (recently subtly modified to 1H).
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- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: News News
- Published: 10 February 2021 10 February 2021
Gryphon Takes a Stand with StandArt Audio Supports
Back in October 2020, Gryphon Audio Designs expanded its product portfolio with the now about-to-land modular StandArt audio racks which, while harmoniously suitable to support any component, are especially simpatico with the company’s wide assortment of electronics.
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- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: News News
- Published: 09 February 2021 09 February 2021
Roon 1.8 Touchdown
Roon Labs has announced a complete re-imagination of its leading streaming software with significant changes in graphic design layout, enhanced music discovery possibilities and a more personalised user experience.
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- Written by News Editor News Editor
- Category: News News
- Published: 05 February 2021 05 February 2021
McIntosh Laboratory Drops MHA200 Headphone Amplifier
Proudly carrying onwards with the current McIntosh Laboratory aesthetic design language – a lexicon of pure beauty – McIntosh Laboratory’s new MHA200 valve headphone amplifier also promises to deliver the company’s renowned sonic performance.
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- Written by Stephen Dawson Stephen Dawson
- Category: Reviews Reviews
- Published: 01 February 2021 01 February 2021
Yamaha NS-3000 Loudspeakers
When I was young, it was conventional wisdom in the high-fidelity community that Japan was one of the best places from which to acquire the electronic components of your audio system. But your loudspeakers really ought to be American, British or, perhaps, European. Meanwhile, Yamaha – a Japanese company if ever there was one – was producing the Yamaha NS-10, or what has been described as “the most important loudspeaker you never heard of”. In the late 1970s and through the 1980s the NS-10 became almost ubiquitous in recording studios, principally for their revealing nature. So what do we make, now, four decades later, of the Yamaha NS-3000 speakers? At just under AU$13,000 per pair for mid-sized two-way speakers, we’re talking about Yamaha firmly placing itself in high-end territory.
