Sound and Image

I'm being a little careful about how exactly to write this comment piece, because I can imagine how some music fans will react to it. But not knowing your particular preferences, I'll plug on. OK. So in the last month, I'd say about 80% of all my mus

What did you do during the pandemic? Fix up the house? Get into a bit of basket weaving? Vivid Audio's Laurence Dickie spent his hotel isolation designing his dream loudspeakers. You might expect something extreme, given that Dickie's creations as an

Visitors to the Australian Hi-Fi Show in Sydney voted the room with Sonus faber's $90k Stradivari G2 loudspeakers to be the best-sounding room of the whole show. One has to ponder what greater wonders of sound could have emerged had another of the co

Paradigm first launched its Decor range of passive soundbars back in 2017, and now there's a V2 Series, using a revamped acoustic platform to deliver even greater clarity, bass response and power handling, says the Canadian company, as well as making

It's an invariable delight to park your ears behind a pair of Romanian Meze Audio headphones, the brand ranging from relatively affordable 99 Classics to the decidedly high-end Empyrean II. The latest is the company's secondgeneration iteration of it

Another launch product that was on demonstration at the recent Australian Hi-Fi Show was the latest generation of the Imagine speaker series from Canada's PSB Speakers. PSB's best-value speaker series, the range comprises two new towers, the T65 at $

Two new products from Stax, sold separately though they could be certainly be paired together. First is the new SR-X1 earspeaker (left), priced at $1100, following in the footsteps of the previous SR-1 and the SR-X but having newly-engineered circula

Meridian's all-new Ellipse is announced as the company's first wireless speaker system — although we still remember the Meridian F80 back in 2006, in its variety of bright Ferrari colours which led to Stereophile’s memorable description that “it rese

WiiM, a brand from California-based Linkplay Technology, has two more high-value boxes to tempt those in the market for streaming components. The first is the $599 WiiM Ultra (above), a touchscreen-equipped music streamer that can also handle preamp

With feet in both consumer audio and professional music, Yamaha was well-placed to come up with this neat little audio mixer to handle audio for gamers. The ZG02 compact game audio mixer takes inputs from microphones, games consoles and fellow player

Samsung's Frame TV has been joined by an audio sibling, the Music Frame, a wireless speaker that can hide among your picture frames. It's a 35cm square with just over 5cm in depth to service its six rear-firing drivers, which claim Dolby Atmos suppor

Genelec's active studio monitors are legendary in studio control rooms and mixing suites. I visited recently the impressive facilities of JMC Academy (“Australia's leading Creative Industries Education Provider that nurtures your passion for Music, A

No shortage of giant horns at Munich, but the colossal ESD Super Dragon speakers were a highlight, a cool €811,111, loud and proud, although using a rather odd version of the German national anthem as a demo… Stein Music TopLine Bob L speakers in ‘to

As you'll see in this round-up, this year we'll see 100-inch TVs landing in Australia priced as low as $5999. How can you resist? Well, there might be a few reasons. First, measure out a 100-inch TV on your wall. It's around 2.3 metres wide, and 1.5

Hisense's toppermost TV models for 2024 are in the UXAU range, which features the company's top ‘Mini-LED X’ technology, they are available now in 65-inch ($3999), 75-inch ($4999) and 85-inch ($9999) models, while a monster 110-inch version is due “l

Samsung continues to champion the release of 8K televisions, in two ranges for 2024, the QN900D and QN800D, both in 65-inch, 75-inch and 85-inch sizes and using the NQ8 AI Gen3 processor with its Neural Processing Unit. While 8K material remains migh

Our UK colleagues have already reviewed the A95L, Sony's next-gen QD-OLED TV, successor to the widely-lauded A95K. It's not yet in Australia, but we believe pricing will be $5999 for the 65-inch, and $9495 for the 75-inch. It's not clear if the 55-in

TCL's C855 Premium QD-Mini LED 4K Google TV (below) is the replacement for last year's award-winning C845, the new model starting at 65 inches ($2999) and rising through 75-inch ($3999) and 85-inch ($4999) models to a 98-incher at $9999 (noting again

LG continues to lead on OLED, and is using AI from the company's latest α11 AI processor to get the best from the tech: there's a Personalised Picture Wizard, AI Brightness Control, AI Super Upscaling, Brightness Booster and Brightness Booster Max. T

BenQ W5800 4K DLP projector BenQ W5800 Price: $8999 + Powerful pristine images + Excellent motion handling + Screen sizes up to 200 inches + Great remote control – No built-in smarts or speakers (which is OK) – ‘True 4K’ claim Anyone who attended Wav

Hisense C1 4K DLP projector Hisense C1 Price: $3499 + Premium solid construction + VIDAA interface & streaming + Automagic set-up & sound options + Does OK against ambient light… – …but best-quality images come after dark – Some signals arrived in HD

Marantz Cinema 30 multichannel receiver Marantz Cinema 30 Price: $7900 + A genuine reference + 13 channels of processing + 11 versatile channels of Class-AB power – Quite the size Since a recent reinvention as the ‘Cinema’ series, the numbering of th

JBL Bar 300 soundbar JBL Bar 300 Price: $529.95 + Affordable yet feature-rich + Atmos in 5.0, calibration and Wi-Fi streaming + Full bass without a sub – Weak in the mids – Not the best with music We were extremely impressed last year by the JBL Bar

Rega Naia turntable Rega Naia Price: $19,999 / $24,999 with cartridge + Exceptional clarity and detail resolution + Transparency and naturalness + Brave styling – Foam edges look a little underfinished At $19,999, the Rega Naia is the best turntable

Yamaha NS-2000A stereo loudspeakers Yamaha NS-2000A Price: $9999 + Genuinely ‘natural sound’ + Stunning piano-gloss finish + Matching driver materials – Nothing at the price As you'll see in our little Yamaha history later in this issue, Yamaha's fir

Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro ‘X’ Limited Edition headphones Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro ‘X’ Limited Edition Price: $349 + Open and full sound + Solid build & comfort + Limited Edition cachet + Mobile-friendly, if best at home – Nothing at this price Beyerdyna

Sonos Ace Wireless NC headphones Sonos Ace Price: $699 + Style and Sonos links + USB-C playback – Price – Safe sound – Features held at launch Sonos created and perfected the technology of multiroom audio, before expanding into wireless speakers, sou

Austrian Audio The Composer headphones Austrian Audio The Composer Price: $3999 + Our favourite sound ever from production dynamic headphones + Beautiful build + Among the most comfortable ever + Versatile with sources… – though best with a good amp,

Wireless earbuds, often called ‘true wireless’, can be difficult things to choose. The choice is wide. It's hard to audition them to check for ‘fit’. And they're perhaps the shortest-lived product in hi-fi: two to three years is the expected lifespan

Earfun's formula is to load its earbuds with features and functionality, then somehow price them way below more high-profile and credible rivals. It's a clever trick — if they can pull it off. The Air Pro 3s are made of glossy plastic: black for the

With these WF-C500 headphones, Sony attempts to bring its widely successful performance in premium in-ear buds to an altogether more aggressive price. Nevertheless, the WF-C500s find themselves competing against capable rivals, some of which have def

We found 20 true wireless models listed on JBL Australia's website, from below $90 up to $300. So the JBL Live Pro 2 TWS, although not the latest, might be considered around the sweet-spot. With a nice glossy finish they look good enough for the mone

Panasonic has been expanding its range of wireless buds recently: five models currently on the books, topped by the RZ-S500W here at $249 RRP, which was originally released in 2020 (the lower non-ANC RZ-S300W has since been updated to a 310W model).

Audio-Technica's studio-led overear headphones have taken a number of our awards in recent years, but we've not previously heard their in-ear offerings. These ATH-TWX7 use the same 5.8mm high-resolution drivers as the company's flagship ATH-TWX9 mode

Changes between Sony models year on year are often iterative upgrades; you can then save money by buying last year's model without much loss in the way of features. But not this time: Sony has made big changes to its new top-of-the-line buds. But are

Apple's early AirPods were one step behind the competition when it came to sound quality. That all changed with the latest AirPods Pro 2 model, the second generation of Apple's flagship wireless ANC earbuds. These brought a more powerful processor, w

Bose's QuietComfort ‘Ultra’ Earbuds replaced the QuietComfort Earbuds II when they were barely over a year old. So what changed? The design is pretty much identical save for a couple of things: a tweak to the finish on the outer stems, a new metallic

The latest Momentum True Wireless 4 earbuds look near-identical to the True Wireless 3: the same ovular shape, the same touch-sensitive surfaces, albeit with three new colours: metallic silver, graphite, and black copper. Inside each earpiece, though

Denon's premium true wireless earbuds offer something different: a personalised listening profile tuned to your hearing, using something called Masimo Adaptive Acoustic Technology (AAT). With Denon and its stablemates now owned by medical company Mas

Bluetooth LE is rising as the new low-energy version of the ‘Classic Bluetooth’ wireless technology, and in our group of ‘true wireless’ earbuds this issue we have seen some of the first products to support the new standard. For now, devices will sup

You'd think it would be easy enough to find a box the size of a shipping container sitting in the middle of Darling Harbour's Tumbalong Park. But being entirely mirrored, other than a logo and new slogan ‘Hear More’, Sennheiser's Mirrorbox was remark

Yamaha makes one key claim to its position within the original Golden Age of post-war audio, when the very concept of “high fidelity” was first being established through a string of technological and material advances in the late 1940s and into the 1

In 1974 came the NS-1000 loudspeaker — of which we heard much in recent years when it inspired the modern NS-5000 speakers launched in 2015 as the start of a new 5000 Hi-Fi series. The great innovation back in 1974 was the introduction of beryllium v

It's quite a pedigree — Yamaha's latest loudspeakers carry the same ‘NS’ prefix as the company's first ‘Natural Sound’ speaker back in 1958, the NS-20 (pictured overleaf), which used the principles of a piano soundboard in a speaker for the home. The

While Yamaha dates its ‘Hi-Fi’ birth to the Yamaha Hi-Fi Player, there is another product of the same period which looks far more ‘Yamaha’ than that Hi-Fi Player — the Hi-Fi Tuner R-3, above. Both products enjoyed design input from GK Design, then a

The voice of Robby Krieger on the phone sounds like Travis in Paris, Texas. One note. Bone dry. Exhausted and burned by the whole sentenced-to-life séance that the story of The Doors has become. Yet quite cheerful. Robby was always the most easy-goin

Britpop's favourite grumpy uncle channels Bowie, Bacharach, Blur. Against the odds, Paul Weller has entered a liberating new creative phase over the past decade or so. Once the unchanging man, obstinate brand leader for rootsy Real Ale Rock, the form

First of all, Bat Out Of Hell isn't even the best song on the album. But it is the title track, and therefore the most representative of that mammoth, life-changing, world-eating magnum opus. Is there any other album ever produced that is viewed so f