November - December 2021

Sound and Image

Australia's No 1 Audio Visual guide

Sound and Image5 min read
Big Screen, Or Big Sound?
Question for you. When you’re watching a movie, what’s more important for a feeling of full entertainment immersion — a big screen, or a big sound system? Hands up, then — you at the front. A big screen? Yes, that’s how most people are likely to vote
Sound and Image1 min read
Sound + Image
www.whathifi.com/soundandimage Editor: Jez Ford jez.ford@futurenet.com Art Director: Kristian Hagen Advertising Sales Manager: Lewis Preece Advertising Traffic: Di Preece diane.preece@futurenet.com Divisional Manager & National Advertising Sales Mana
Sound and Image12 min read
EISA Awards 2021/2022
Sound+Image and Australian Hi-Fi are EISA’s representatives for Home Theatre and Hi-Fi respectively here in Australia, part of the Expert Imaging & Sound Association which each year pools the editorial review experience of 60 special interest magazin
Sound and Image9 min read
Coast With The Most
If you were fortunate enough to have a home in a stunning ocean-side location such as this, wouldn’t you want the best in home entertainment to supplement the natural environment around you? This home’s owner had recently purchased the three-bedroom
Sound and Image11 min read
Yamaha Aventage RX-A8A 11-channel AV receiver A perfect 10?
It’s the big one – Yamaha’s very toppermost one-box model in its latest Aventage series of AV receivers, with the company also celebrating 10 years of Aventage, or spilling into 11 years given the trials of the last 18 months. Yamaha has one of the l
Sound and Image6 min read
Sonic Partnership
Back in the earliest days of soundbars, they were made exclusively by audio companies – Altec Lansing, Cambridge, DefTech, Yamaha, and the outlying specialist ZVox. It was, after all, a sonic challenge to redesign a large traditional speaker box into
Sound and Image4 min read
STAND-OUT STANDMOUNTS! BIG Sounds From Small Speakers
Here at Sound+Image we are great fans of standmount speakers. It’s true that if you have a vast room that needs filling with sound, there’s no substitute for the sheer air-shifting abilities of floorstanders. But they do tend to dominate a room, and
Sound and Image3 min read
ELAC Debut B5.2
As we’re running our group in ascending price order, our first two standmounter pairs show how much can be achieved with a relatively modest outlay. And they’re hardly budget brands – Germany’s Electroacustic GmbH has been dealing in sound delivery (
Sound and Image3 min read
DALI Spektor 2
Over the border in Denmark, where you can’t throw a block of Lego without hitting a loudspeaker manufacturer, the company known by its acronomic initialism of Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries offers these Spektor 2 standmounters, available in
Sound and Image3 min read
Q Acoustics 3030i
There’s an interesting comparison between these Q Acoustics and another brand out of the UK – Wharfedale. Both come from titularly British companies (though both are unsurprisingly manufactured in China), and both have employed the design services of
Sound and Image3 min read
Triangle Borea BR03
We travel now over the English Channel – or la Manche as they’d call it on the other side – to these French-designed standmounts from Triangle, a company of some 40 years standing, located in the ancient town of Soissons, halfway between Paris and th
Sound and Image2 min read
Bowers & Wilkins 607 S2 Anniversary
The 607 has always been the smallest and lowest-priced model in Bowers & Wilkins’ 600 Series, and to our minds it has also always offered the best value for money of any loudspeaker in the company’s range, particularly when the ground-breaking Series
Sound and Image3 min read
ELAC Debut Reference DRB62
We began this group of standmount speakers with ELAC’s little Debut B5.2 models – here we move up a size, but also a level, as the German company has extended its Debut ranges with a selection of ‘Reference’ versions, an arrangement just repeated wth
Sound and Image3 min read
Polk Reserve R200
An interesting comparison across this spread at prices $100 over the thousand, with an Aussie legend opposite, and here the American Polk, another brand now under Sound United in Australia, alongside Boston Acoustics, Bowers & Wilkins, and Definitive
Sound and Image3 min read
Richter Merlin S6
Richter’s own ‘Legend’ series is now in Series 6, a complete redesign while maintaining the goals of this Aussie brand currently celebrating its 35th anniversary. And its success can be gauged by the fact that three of the four new models have won ou
Sound and Image3 min read
Definitive Technology Demand D9
And here’s yet another speaker brand now to be found under the auspices of Sound United. Definitive Technology is best known for its high-level black tower speakers, notable for their inclusion of bass radiators and active drivers in their lower port
Sound and Image3 min read
Sonus faber Lumina 1
Another interesting page-to-page comparison here, as we have an all-Italian sound-off between Sonus faber and a brand that is rather lesser-known here, Chario. Both make much of the Italian art of handcrafting – just look at those cabinets! – with So
Sound and Image3 min read
Chario Constellation II Lynx
If you haven’t heard of Chario, be not ashamed – we hadn’t either, until Audio Dynamics began bringing them into Australia. Yet this Italian company was founded back in 1975 – longer ago even than Sonus faber. It professes to being “in the very small
Sound and Image3 min read
KEF LS50 Meta
It’s immediately obvious how much KEF’s LS50 differs from the vast majority of standmount speaker designs. First introduced in 2012, the fundamental design hasn’t changed, yet looks every bit as modern in its latest incarnation as the original did wh
Sound and Image3 min read
Revel Performa3 M105
Revel is the brand-name applied to high-end loudspeakers made by Harman International, and given that this company also has brands such as JBL and Infinity, that puts the Revel designs on a pretty lofty pedestal. The M105 is the smaller of two standm
Sound and Image3 min read
Spendor Classic 4/5
While Spendor has two ranges with more modern styling, its Classic line harks back to the earlier days of Spendor in their looks, a heritage that leans on BBC research carried out half a century ago, but now updated, of course, to incorporate all Spe
Sound and Image3 min read
Kef R3
The KEF R3 is a rare three-way standmounter – there is only one other in this entire group. It doesn’t, however, look like a three-way, because its tweeter and midrange co-inhabit the top space, in the form of the distinctive Uni-Q driver array, an a
Sound and Image3 min read
JBL L82 Classic
First came the L100 ‘Classic’, an all-new design with fully up-to-date components within, yet sporting those classic white woofers and black, blue or orange Quadrex foam grilles as key DNA from JBL’s original L100 design back in 1970. More recently,
Sound and Image3 min read
Krix Esoterix Altum
Many of our standmount reviews so far have noted how the tweeter waveguides are an important element in assisting high-frequency dispersion. Well, clearly in the Esoterix Altum, South Australian loudspeaker legend Krix considers the waveguide to be e
Sound and Image3 min read
Harbeth Compact 7ES-3 XD
This is the BBC, calling the world from – well, in this case, Harbeth’s headquarters in Haywards Heath, West Sussex. Harbeth was founded in 1977 by Hugh Dudley Harwood, who had worked in the BBC’s Research Department (Engineering Division) for nearly
Sound and Image3 min read
Fyne Audio F701
Fyne Audio is a relatively new brand, forged in fire back in 2017 after the drawn-out and painful departure of Tannoy from its Scottish facilities at Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire. A host of key personnel departed Tannoy to create Fyne Audio — just 1
Sound and Image6 min read
Bowers & Wilkins 805 D4
We couldn’t have wished for a more prestigious launch to occur while we assembled our group of standmounts. With great fanfare and a wildly optimistic embargo period, Bowers & Wilkins announced the entire new 800 Series D4 (see also News p9), and we
Sound and Image5 min read
Sonus faber Electa Amator III
Our second pair of standmount speakers from Sonus faber raises the stakes from the company’s Lumina 1 at $1595 (back on page 58) to the larger of the two standmounts in the company’s luxurious Heritage Collection, the Electa Amator III. These are, as
Sound and Image7 min read
Spin To Win
On the block, in the street, as it were, there are two questions that we get asked more than any other. The first is “should I buy a soundbar?’ – which requires a bit of questioning to clarify their intended use, before we generally answer ‘no’. The
Sound and Image8 min read
New Blue
Bluesound is part of the Lenbrook Group of Companies, the Canadian-based group which also brings you NAD and PSB Speakers. And the complementarities between Bluesound and NAD in particular are obvious, and useful. NAD has adopted the BluOS streaming
Sound and Image13 min read
Cambridge Audio Evo 150 smart amplifierMusical EVOcation
Now flushed with success in the EISA 2021-2022 Awards featured this issue (see p30), this Evo 150 smart streaming amplifier is the more powerful and the better equipped of two new all-in-one solutions from the UK’s Cambridge Audio. The lesser Evo 75
Sound and Image5 min read
JBL Live660NC Wireless Noise-cancellers Live & Let LIVE
Our first note here is a warning not to confuse JBL’s model numbers. The headphone here is the Live 660NC, its recommended selling price $249.95. But there is another 660NC, the Tune 660NC, which sells for $149.95. Both are wireless noise-cancelling
Sound and Image6 min read
Yamaha YH-L700A Noise-cancelling Headphones Centre Field
It’s been around a month since we started using Yamaha’s YH-L700A headphones – not to be confused (though we’d quite understand if you were) with the similarly-named YH-E700A headphones that we reviewed a couple of issues back. Those E700As were conv
Sound and Image5 min read
Klipsch T5 II True Wireless ANC Wireless Noise-cancelling Earphones A Solid Case
From the very unboxing, there’s no doubt that the Klipsch T5 II True Wireless ANC ‘earphones’ (as Klipsch calls them) are a premium pair of buds. The charging case feels like a fancy Zippo lighter, with considerable heft, a metal casing and side-hing
Sound and Image6 min read
Music & Movies
Queen drummer’s sixth solo album is the first he’s really got right. Like his Queen bandmates, Roger Taylor has rarely flourished outside the mothership. His band The Cross were hard to bear, and while his clutch of solo albums had their moments, he
Sound and Image2 min read
CLASSIC TRACK: Jimi Hendrix Experience – Hey Joe
Jimi Hendrix, session guitarist turned solo superstar, was primed to explode when he landed smack in the middle of London’s burgeoning psychedelic rock scene in September 1966. Former Animals bassist Chas Chandler had imported Hendrix into Britain, i
Sound and Image15 min read
News
The 800 Series Diamond range is the iconic height of the UK-based brand: “everything we know, and everything we are”, as the company says. The new D4 incarnation continues the 800 Series’ reputation since John Bowers introduced the original 801 back

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