9001

NS-3000 Flagship Speaker

TRUE MUSICAL EXPRESSION

WHEN AN ARTIST CREATES MUSIC, THEY EXPRESS
THEIR PASSION, EMOTION AND SOUL TO CAPTIVATE THE
AUDIENCE. IT’S NOT JUST THE SOUND THAT MOVES US
WHEN EXPERIENCING A LIVE PERFORMANCE, BUT THE
INTANGIBLE HUMAN CONNECTION TO THE MUSIC.
IT IS THIS EXPERIENCE WHICH THE NS-3000 IS ABLE
• ZYLON™ WOOFER AND TWEETER FOR REMARKABLE
CONTINUITY IN TONE ACROSS FREQUENCIES
• NEW 16 CM WOOFER PAIRED WITH THE NS-5000
TWEETER
• CUSTOM RESONANCE SUPPRESSION (R.S.) CHAMBER
PRESERVES DELICATE TONAL NUANCES AND CRITICAL
au.yamaha.com

TO CONVEY TO ITS AUDIENCE - TRANSPORTING THE SONIC DETAIL

LISTENER TO THE TIME AND PLACE OF THAT SEMINAL
MOMENT CAPTURED IN THE RECORDING.
• NEW CUSTOM-DESIGNED ACOUSTIC ABSORBER
• CROSSOVER CIRCUIT USING THE HIGHEST-QUALITY
COMPONENTS INCLUDING THE MCAP® SUPREME EVO
AUDIO CAPACITOR MADE BY MUNDORF OF GERMANY

Now auditioning exclusively at these select retailers:

CARLTON AUDIO VISUAL LEN WALLIS AUDIO TODDS HI FI WEST COAST HIFI
Carlton VIC Lane Cove NSW Tingalpa QLD O’Connor WA
carltonaudiovisual.com.au lenwallisaudio.com todds.com.au westcoasthifi.com.au
 ITALY’S
BEST
You’ll fall in love!

10 EXPERT
REVIEWS
INSIDE!

INTERVIEW
PHILIP SWIFT
OF SPENDOR

A TRIUMPH
Super-charged sound

X³³È0ُ‫׏א׎אٲ׏‬ ‫חחِא׏ڟ‬ٜzñ‫חחِג׏ڟ‬
 If music really matters™

The new ECI 6 DX MKII integrated Amp/DAC/Streamer

combines a best-in-class feature set with cutting edge
audio technology and true Electrocompaniet sound.
This single unit is able to play whichever, wherever and
whatever audio source you may have, and makes sound
like music was meant to be.

THE ULTIMATE It’s extremely powerful built-in streamer is flexible and easy to

MUSIC PLAYER FOR use and can play directly from music services such as Tidal,
Qobuz and Spotify fed through AirPlay or DLNA, and can

MUSIC FANATICS even index and play from your own music collection stored
on your network and of course is Bluetooth enabled, allowing
you to stream from any phone or tablet.

The ECI 6 DX MKII also features the design upgrades

introduced with the MKII series, including new front plate
design and updated, more rigid chassis.

The ECI 6 DX MKII can be operated by the intuitive iOS or

Android application, the universal web-interface, or with the
straightforward IR remote control.

With Roon, you’ll rediscover your old favourites and find new
music you love. Explore the world of music as you want it.

Please call (03) 9882 0372 now for the location

of your nearest Electrocompaniet Dealer.

Proudly distributed in Australia by Audio Dynamics Pty Ltd

p (03) 9882 0372 m info@audiodynamics.com.au
w www.audiodynamics.com.au

News
WILSON AUDIO Alexx V loudspeakers 06
BERGMANN 08
Gold Edition Galder turntable
TIVOLI HI-FI acquires new brands 10
Interviews
JAMES TRANCHINA 11
PHILIP SWIFT (Pictured above) 66
NICK PAPAS & TONY STANTZOS 76
28
D’AGOSTINO PROGRESSION
REVIEW
12 INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
Designer Daniel D’agostino is proud of
the fact that his amplifiers rarely appear
on the second-hand market and, when
they do, they command premium
prices… sometimes exceeding the
original purchase price. None of which
makes it any easier if you decide to join
a very exclusive club by signing the
cheque that will turn you into a proud
34
D’agostino owner!
SONUS FABER ELECTA
REVIEW
20 AMATOR III LOUDSPEAKERS
The Sonus faber Electa Amator IIIs are
hugely capable performers. When it
comes to midrange expression and
articulation they are exceptional and
with the right music they can sound
almost magical. On more than one
AUDIO ESOTERICA #1 2021
occasion the wonder was if anything
40
could ever sound better.
MUSICAL FIDELITY
REVIEW
M3XVINYL PHONO STAGE
Musical Fidelity promotes the products
that comprise its M3 range using the
catch-phrase “Great-looking, superb-
sounding hi-fi doesn’t have to cost a
fortune. Our M3 range offers an elegance
of design, quality of build and standard
of finish you’d associate with products
costing twice as much.”
50
BEL CANTO
REVIEW
E1X DAC/CONTROL PREAMP &
E1X STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
Bel Canto is Italian for ‘beautiful singing’
but Bel Canto products are not built in
Italy and the company’s founder and
chief designer, John Stronczer, is an
American through and through. So how
did Bel Canto get its name, and exactly
what makes these two products so
different?
60
REVIEW YAMAHA
NS-3000 LOUDSPEAKERS
Yamaha is the only Japanese company
that is world-famous for the quality
of its loudspeakers. There are two
other famous Japanese loudspeaker
manufacturers — TAD and TOA — but
few people outside of Japan have ever
heard of them. To know the reason for
Yamaha’s success, you need only listen
to these speakers… or their bigger
brothers.
CLASSÉ DELTA PREAMP &
REVIEW
DELTA STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
Classé’s new owners have moved
production away from China, where the
previous owners had moved it from its
original home in Canada, and introduced
a brand new series that, without any
shadow of a doubt, has some of the
finest amplifiers Classé — or any other
high-end manufacturer — has ever built.
A SHORT HISTORY OF
FEATURE
SPENDOR LOUDSPEAKERS
There are few loudspeaker companies
with such an interesting history as
the UK’s Spendor Loudspeakers, and
few loudspeaker companies that have
debuted such significant advances in
audio technologies. The company now
has a new Australian distributor, Indi
Imports, so we took the opportunity to
003

look at some of the more significant
moments in Spendor’s history.
SPENDOR A7
REVIEW
63
LOUDSPEAKERS
You’ll need to toe them in slightly
toward the listening position to get
the best of their solid focus for vocals
but once you do, you’ll also hear their
fantastic detail levels, the pin-point
accuracy of their timing and their total
transparency.
SPENDOR D7.2
REVIEW
65 LOUDSPEAKERS
The floor-standing Spendor D7.2s,
which are completely re-worked
versions of the original D7, sound taut,
agile and highly responsive, and can
kick hard when required, plus have a
90dBSPL/W/m sensitivity, so they don’t
need excessive levels of power to do so.
PHILIP SWIFT
INTERVIEW
66 SPENDOR LOUDSPEAKERS
This year Philips Swift celebrates his
21st year at Spendor, after having
purchased the company from the son
of its founder, following his decision to
retire. So why and how did Swift, after
an illustrious career at Audiolab, make
the jump from electronics to acoustics?
68 REVIEW BRYSTON BCD-3 CD PLAYER
Says our reviewer, Martin Iredale: “If
you had to buy your very last CD player,
Bryston’s BCD-3 is most definitely the
one I would recommend! And if you
want to buy your first DAC, I’d definitely
recommend you buy the BDA-3.
Bryston’s on a winner with both these
components.” Why not turn to page 68
to see if you agree!
ELECTROCOMPANIET ECI 6
REVIEW
72
DX MKII AMP/DAC/STREAMER
As the product name suggests, the ECI
6 DX MkII has it all! It’s not only a hugely
competent integrated amplifier with a
rated output of 125-watts continuous
per channel into 8Ω, it’s also a full-
featured digital-to-analogue converter
and an equally full-featured streamer.
76 DEALER FOCUS AUDIO SOLUTIONS
In the 21 years it’s been in business,
Audio Solutions has become as famous
for its coffee as for its technical advice
about all aspects of home audio, both
of which are given to customers free
of charge. Jez Ford dropped in for a
coffee and a chat with genial owners
Tony Stantzos and Nick Papas to find
out about all the new brands they now
have in-store.
No 1, 2021
Future Publishing Australia
Level 10, 89 York Street,
Sydney, NSW 2000
Tel: 02 9955 2677
Email: audio.esoterica@futurenet.com
Web‫ي‬ɯɯɯِɯǝƏɎǝǣˡِƬȒȅٖƏɖɀɎȸƏǼǣƏȇǝǣˡ
Subscription enquiries:
Please call CRM on (02) 8227 6486
Editorial
Editor: Greg Borrowman
greg.borrowman@futurenet.com
Contributing Editor: Jez Ford
jez.ford@futurenet.com
Art Director: Kristian Hagen
kristian.hagen@futurenet.com
Contributors
Nate Grkinich, Stephen Dawson,
Steve Holding, Ian Frazer, William H. Fisher,
Eric Haswell, Brad Cunningham, Steven Rowland,
Paul Boon, Angus Bradley, Kailu Chen, Peter Giles.
Photography
All copyrights and trademarks
are recognised and respected.
Advertising
Advertising Director: Jim Preece
jim.preece@futurenet.com
Advertising Manager: Lewis Preece
lewis.preece@futurenet.com
Advertising Liaison: Diane Preece
diane.preece@futurenet.com
Management
Managing Director: Neville Daniels
Printed by IVE GROUP
Distributed in Australia and NZ by Ovato ovato.com.au
We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from
ȸƺɀȵȒȇɀǣƫǼɵȅƏȇƏǕƺƳًƬƺȸɎǣˡƺƳǔȒȸƺɀɎȸɵƏȇƳƬǝǼȒȸǣȇƺ‫ٮ‬ǔȸƺƺȅƏȇɖǔƏƬɎɖȸƺِÁǝƺ
paper in this magazine was sourced and produced from sustainable managed
forests, conforming to strict environmental and socioeconomic standards. The
manufacturing paper mill holds full FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) or PEFC
ƬƺȸɎǣˡƬƏɎǣȒȇƏȇƳƏƬƬȸƺƳǣɎƏɎǣȒȇ
All contents © 2021 Future Publishing Australia or published under licence. All
rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or
reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England
ƏȇƳáƏǼƺɀِ«ƺǕǣɀɎƺȸƺƳȒǔˡƬƺ‫ي‬ªɖƏɵRȒɖɀƺًÁǝƺȅƫɖȸɵً ƏɎǝ ‫׏׏‬ÈِǼǼ
information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as
we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any
responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to
ƬȒȇɎƏƬɎȅƏȇɖǔƏƬɎɖȸƺȸɀƏȇƳȸƺɎƏǣǼƺȸɀƳǣȸƺƬɎǼɵɯǣɎǝȸƺǕƏȸƳɎȒɎǝƺȵȸǣƬƺɀȒǔȵȸȒƳɖƬɎɀٖ
services referred to in this publication. This magazine is fully independent and not
ƏǔˡǼǣƏɎƺƳǣȇƏȇɵɯƏɵɯǣɎǝɎǝƺƬȒȅȵƏȇǣƺɀȅƺȇɎǣȒȇƺƳǝƺȸƺǣȇِ
Information contained in this magazine, whether in editorial matter or in feature
articles or in advertisements or otherwise, including in particular, but not limited
to, technical information, is published on the basis that neither the publisher,
ǣɎɀƺȅȵǼȒɵƺƺɀƏȇƳٖȒȸƏǕƺȇɎɀًȇȒȸǣɎɀƳǣɀɎȸǣƫɖɎȒȸɀƏƬƬƺȵɎɀȒȸƏɀɀɖȅƺɀǼǣƏƫǣǼǣɎɵȒȸ
responsibility for any loss or damage resulting from the incorrectness of such
ǣȇǔȒȸȅƏɎǣȒȇِÁǝƺɀɖƫȅǣɀɀǣȒȇȒǔȅƏɎƺȸǣƏǼƏȇƳٖȒȸȵȸȒƳɖƬɎɀɎȒɖɀɀǣǕȇǣˡƺɀɎǝƏɎɵȒɖ
have read, acknowledged and accepted all the abovementioned conditions.
XǔɵȒɖɀɖƫȅǣɎȅƏɎƺȸǣƏǼɎȒɖɀɵȒɖɯƏȸȸƏȇɎɎǝƏɎɵȒɖȒɯȇɎǝƺȅƏɎƺȸǣƏǼƏȇƳٖȒȸǝƏɮƺɎǝƺ
ȇƺƬƺɀɀƏȸɵȸǣǕǝɎɀٖȵƺȸȅǣɀɀǣȒȇɀɎȒɀɖȵȵǼɵɎǝƺȅƏɎƺȸǣƏǼƏȇƳɵȒɖƏɖɎȒȅƏɎǣƬƏǼǼɵǕȸƏȇɎ
Future and its licensees a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in
ƏȇɵٖƏǼǼǣɀɀɖƺɀƏȇƳٖȒȸƺƳǣɎǣȒȇɀȒǔȵɖƫǼǣƬƏɎǣȒȇɀًǣȇƏȇɵǔȒȸȅƏɎȵɖƫǼǣɀǝƺƳɯȒȸǼƳɯǣƳƺ
and on associated websites, social media channels and associated products. Any
ȅƏɎƺȸǣƏǼƏȇƳٖȒȸƺȷɖǣȵȅƺȇɎɵȒɖɀɖƫȅǣɎɎȒɖɀǣɀɀƺȇɎƏɎɵȒɖȸȒɯȇȸǣɀǸƏȇƳًƏǼɎǝȒɖǕǝ
every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents, subcontractors or
licensees shall be liable for loss or damage. We assume all unsolicited material
is for publication unless otherwise stated, and reserve the right to edit, amend,
ƏȇƳٖȒȸƏƳƏȵɎƏǼǼɀɖƫȅǣɀɀǣȒȇɀِÁǝƺɀɖƫȅǣɀɀǣȒȇȒǔȅƏɎƺȸǣƏǼƏȇƳٖȒȸȵȸȒƳɖƬɎɀȒȸ
ƺȷɖǣȵȅƺȇɎɎȒɖɀɀǣǕȇǣˡƺɀɎǝƏɎɵȒɖǝƏɮƺȸƺƏƳًƏƬǸȇȒɯǼƺƳǕƺƳƏȇƳƏƬƬƺȵɎƺƳƏǼǼɎǝƺ
abovementioned conditions.
Equipment reviews are based on laboratory measurements and controlled
ǼǣɀɎƺȇǣȇǕɎƺɀɎɀƏȇƳɀǝȒɖǼƳƫƺƬȒȇɀɎȸɖƺƳƏɀƏȵȵǼɵǣȇǕɎȒɎǝƺɀȵƺƬǣˡƬɀƏȅȵǼƺɎƺɀɎƺƳ٪
neither Future nor its employees, agents, subcontractors or licensees assume
responsibility for product performance, quality or applicability.
Privacy statement
If you provide information about yourself this will be used to provide you with
products or services you have requested. We may supply your information to
contractors to enable us to do this. Future Publishing Australia will also use your
information to inform you of other publications, products, services and events.
Future Publishing Australia may also give your information to organisations that
are providing special prizes or offers and are clearly associated with the Reader
Offer. Unless you tell us not to, Future Publishing Australia may give your
information to other organisations that may use it to inform you of other products,
services or events. If you would like to gain access to the information Future
Publishing Australia holds about you, please contact us.
Future plc is a public Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne
company quoted on the Non-executive chairman Richard Huntingford
London Stock Exchange !ǝǣƺǔˡȇƏȇƬǣƏǼȒǔˡƬƺȸ Penny Ladkin-Brand
(symbol: FUTR)
www.futureplc.com
005

WILSON AUDIO ALEXX 5
T
he new Wilson Audio Alexx 5 is
not an updated version of the
original Alexx that was released
to universal acclaim in 2016.
Designer Darryl Wilson says he and his
team decided to approach the Alexx V as
it if were an all-new loudspeaker. “We took
elements that clearly worked in the origi-
nal design and began to apply the myriad
of technologies generated by Wilson’s
R&D since the advent of the Alexx for the
WAMM Master Chronosonic, Chronosonic
XVX, Sasha DAW, and SabrinaX,” he said.
This sees the new Alexx V using the
same 177mm Alnico QuadraMag driver
06
NEWS
originally developed for the Chronosonic
XV. Its crossover network uses the same
AudioCapX-WA capacitors that are used
in the WAMM Master Chronosonic, all of
which are made in-house at Wilson Audio.
Its terminals are the ones developed for
the Sasha DAW. The new Alexx V also
debuts an entirely new Convergent
Synergy Carbon (CSC) tweeter, with a
3D printed rear-wave chamber as well as
a new technology — the Wilson Audio
Acoustic Diode — an all-new spike
system that features a novel combination
of austenitic stainless steel and Wilson’s
own V-Material.
“This coupling system has superlative
vibration management that reveals far
greater dynamic nuances across the
entire frequency spectrum,” says Wilson.
“The Alexx V joins a very special family of
ground-breaking loudspeakers designed
and handcrafted especially for music
lovers and audiophiles alike.”
More information from
Advance Audio Australia
02 9561 0799
www.advanceaudio.com.au
 TO TUBE OR...

NOT TO TUBE...

STAX IS THE QUESTION.

Introducing the new SRM-700T vacuum
tube type and SRM-700S semiconductor
type headphone amplifiers from Stax.

Distributed by Audio Marketing / www.audiomarketing.com.au / 02 9882 3877 /staxaustralia

 BERGMANN GOLD
B
ergmann turntables float in the air, liter-
ally! Or, to be more precise, the rotating
EDITION GALDER platters on Bergmann turntables float
TURNTABLE on a layer of air, in order to make sure that
unwanted noise cannot affect the music on an
LP. It isn’t only the platter that floats in the air
either — so does the tonearm that supports
the phono cartridge, so there’s no way for noise
For more information, to enter your hi-fi system that way either. Play
contact Audio Magic LPs on a Bergmann turntable and you hear
03 9489 5122 only the music, nothing else.
www.audiomagic.com.au The Bergmann name is hallowed in hi-fi
08
circles because every single part used in its
turntables and tonearms is manufactured in
designer Johnnie Bergmann’s own workshop
in Denmark. His Galder turntable (pictured
here in its Gold Edition, with a matching Gold
Edition Odin tonearm) was the first Bergmann
turntable ever to become available without a
tonearm.
Although you can buy a Bergmann Galder
turntable fitted with an Odin arm for as little
as $34,000, the Gold Edition version, complete
with a vacuum hold-down, retails for $60,240.
 WE ARE
CO M P L E T ELY S A N E
Some might say we’re crazy for re-engineering
our new Delta Series amplifiers from the ground up.

But we say this: If the definition of insanity is doing the

same thing repeatedly, hoping for a different result —
then we’re completely, certifiably sane. Because only
at Classé, will we try anything, then try again until it’s
as close to perfect as possible. Everything we do is in
service of the purest, cleanest sound so you hear the
© 2020 Sound United. All Rights Reserved.

music, and only the music.

S TA R T L I S T ENING

For more information or the name of your nearest dealer, please contact us:
Bowers & Wilkins Australia (02) 9196 8990 | classeaudio.com | info-au.bw@soundunited.com BowersWilkinsAu
 NEWS

Sasha DAW (left): 30 years on from

Dave Wilson’s original WATT/Puppy
(the lineal ancestor of the first Sasha), the
new design is the highest resolution, lowest
distortion, and most linear loudspeaker in
the line’s history, and includes the 8-inch
driver from the Alexia Series-2.

Wilson Audio Alexia Series 2 (centre):

The respectful remaking of Wilson’s classic
Alexia, with its three separate time-alignable
enclosures, now incorporating Wilson’s latest
breakthrough W-Material developed for
Dave Wilson’s magnum opus, the flagship
WAMM Master Chronosonic.

SabrinaX (right): A ground-up rethinking

of Wilson Audio’s small floorstander, now
incorporating wisdom and technologies
developed for the recent Chronosonic XVX.
The result, claims Wilson, is even greater
musicality, while at the same time
improvements in transient speed,
resolution, intimacy, and transparency.

010
 NOW ON SHOW AT
TIVOLI HI-FI
M
elbourne’s Tivoli Hi-Fi in Hawthorn East
is a destination store for hi-fi, home
theatre and installation projects, and is
renowned not only for the quality of its
advice but also for the quality and décor of its listening
rooms. We asked Tivoli Hi-Fi’s James Tranchina to give us
TIVOLI HIFI’S
IMPRESSIVE a quick tour around some of their key high-end brands
DEDICATED and latest arrivals. First stop was Wilson Audio,
MCINTOSH SPACE, which has just returned to Tivoli Hi-Fi with
AND THE MA9000, its SabrinaX, Sasha DAW and Alexia
MCINTOSH’S BIGGEST
EVER INTEGRATED Series 2 models. We asked James
AMPLIFIER what makes Wilson Audio special.
“Well they just sound
absolutely gorgeous,” he says.
“It’s a speaker we know well
as a store, and while there’s no
right or wrong when it comes to
speaker choice, I just feel they’re
the most natural and honest-
sounding speaker that I’ve heard.”
For another US brand, McIntosh,
Tivoli Hi-Fi has a dedicated space
(pictured left) using elements inspired by
the company’s famous Townhouse in the heart
of New York City’s SoHo neighborhood.
“We find we’re doing a lot more integrated
amplifiers in the high-end, rather than pre-powers
these days,” James notes. “McIntosh’s integrateds, like
the MA7200 or the MA9000, they sell very well for us.
I think it comes down to people having fewer boxes
around, and the beauty of the ‘Mac’ stuff is that when
you get into that realm you’re dealing with things that
have DACs onboard, that have moving-magnet and
moving-coil phono. With a lot of products you’ll need
a DAC for this or a phono stage for that, whereas with
the McIntosh amps they’re full function. And they have
paid attention to simple things such as being able to
label the inputs, so for ‘TV’ it says ‘TV’. And you can also
turn inputs off and on, so if they have only three things
plugged in, it scrolls through only those three inputs.”
There’s a dedicated space also for Scotland’s Linn,
with Tivoli showing systems from the top Klimax pairing
of Klimax DSM and 350E speakers, down through the
Akurate, Selekt and Majik ranges to the little Series 3
active wireless speakers.
“All are great products, fully featured,
again simple for people to use, and easy
to integrate into different things,” says
James. “And they sound fantastic.
All the boxes you want ticked.”
Bowers & Wilkins is another
key high-end brand, with
everything in-store up to the
800 D3 flagship of the 800 Series
Diamond, as well as the 700 and
600 Series, the new 702 and 705
Signatures, and a dedicated custom
wall to demonstrate in-ceiling, in-wall
and outdoor speakers. “We’ve just taken
on the new Classé electronics,” adds James.
“That’s on demo in the room with the 800 Series.”
Also new in-store is the dCS range of high-end
electronics out of the UK, and an entirely revamped
home cinema room.
And why, we asked James, should you drop in or
make a listening appointment with Tivoli Hi-Fi?
“The easiest way to put it is just honest expert
advice,” says James. “I’ve been here since, well two
stints but my current one since 2001, and all of us
are long-term people who love it, breathe it, live it —
and love music.”
More information: 03 9813 3533
www.tivolihifi.com.au
011
 DAN D’AGOSTINO
MASTER AUDIO
SYSTEMS
D
aniel D’Agostino, the founder of
D’Agostino Master Audio Systems
and the designer of the Progression
Integrated amplifier, is one of
the world’s foremost amplifier
designers. He first found fame as
the founder of Krell, where his amplifiers were lauded
for their power, their performance and their sound
quality. As for their looks, well, not so much, as Borat
would say.
When Daniel founded D’Agostino Master
Audio Systems, he decided that he’d better begin
to start paying as much attention to his amplifiers’
external appearance as he did to their circuitry, their
performance and their sound quality. His first design,
the Momentum M400 mono power amp, was arguably
the first amplifier he’d ever designed that looked every
bit as good as it sounded, which was proved by its
sales success, despite its price (which is in “if you have
012
to ask” territory, but is still considerably less than that of
his current flagship mono amplifier, the Relentless).
But its success was what spurred D’Agostino to
continue in the same design vein, and whose looks
and circuitry influenced his ‘budget’-priced Progression
Series, which currently comprises the integrated
amplifier under review, a monobloc power amplifier, a
stereo power amplifier and a pre-amplifier.
EQUIPMENT
One of the features of all amplifiers bearing
D’Agostino’s name has been the presence on the front
panel of one or more multi-function meters whose
appearance resembles that of an expensive Patek
Philippe chronograph (or time-piece if you prefer, but I
can’t bring myself to call it a wrist-watch).
While this marketing device has been remarkably
successful at carving out an identity for the brand,
these meters have polarised the opinions of critics.
 D’AGOSTINO PROGRESSION
One result of this diversity of opinion is that
with each new design, D’Agostino has made the
meters a little less ostentatious, reducing the size
of the meters themselves, the size of the bezels
surrounding them and the distance they protrude
from the front panel, so that the Progression
pre-amplifier was the first time the meters were
contained completely within the front panel,
though still surrounded by a coppery bezel.
As you can see, D’Agostino has gone even
further with the Progression integrated and
removed the individual bezels completely and
replaced them with a single rectangular surround
that mirrors the one on the opposite end of
the front panel that contains the buttons (all of
which have inbuilt LEDs) that are used to select
whichever input you’d like to be active. Speaking
personally, I would have preferred it if Daniel
had used the same meters on the Progression
Integrated as he used on the preamplifier. My
advice to him would be: “Don’t listen to the critics
any more.” (But if he listened to that, he’d be
ignoring the advice I just gave him.)
Although he can tinker with the appearance
of the meters, D’Agostino can’t eliminate them
completely, because as I stated earlier, they’re
multi-function meters, not just standard ‘power
output’ meters — in fact they’re not actually
‘power output’ meters at all. During normal
playback, the meters function as ‘signal level’
meters, indicating the average signal level of
the music being played. However, if you want
to adjust channel balance (and the Progression
Integrated is one of the very few modern high-
end amplifiers that will allow you to do this), the
meters become indicators of channel balance.
And whenever you adjust the volume control,
the meters indicate the volume level you have
selected. These function changes happen
completely automatically, which is rather clever.
In another nod to the critics, D’Agostino
has included a ‘Dark’ mode on the Progression
Integrated that if activated will cause the front
panel of the amplifier to be completely dark:
no glowing LEDs, and no greenish meter
illumination. Adjusting a front panel control (or
one on the remote control) will deactivate the
‘Dark’ mode for around 15 seconds so you can see
the result of what you’ve done, but after that the
illumination will again extinguish.
Another reason for using D’Agostino’s
‘Dark’ mode would be if you have switched the
amplifier’s ‘Mute’ control on (only available from
the remote control), and most particularly if you
have switched the polarity of the signal (also only
available from the remote control) before using
the Mute control. This is because when the Mute
control is activated in normal mode, the two front
INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
panel meters flash green then white, then green WITH EACH NEW DESIGN,
continuously, at about two flashes per second. D’AGOSTINO HAS MADE
THE METERS A LITTLE LESS
If the polarity of the amplifier has been inverted, OSTENTATIOUS, REDUCING
the meters flash red, then white. THE SIZE OF THE METERS
Although it’s fairly common for DACs and CD THEMSELVES, THE SIZE OF THE
players to provide push-button access to signal BEZELS SURROUNDING THEM AND
THE DISTANCE THEY PROTRUDE
polarity inversion, it’s rare to find it on an amplifier. FROM THE FRONT PANEL
Which kind of begs the question of why you’d
want to be able to invert signal polarity at all. It’s
all to do with maintaining the acoustic integrity of
the original performance.
Consider that when a drummer pushes
the pedal that operates his (or her) kick-drum,
the beater hits the drum skin, forcing it to go
forwards, compressing the air in front of it, after
which it moves backwards, then forwards and
so on until the vibration dies. But the initial
movement was forward, into the room.
If the sound of that kick drum is recorded,
and signal polarity is maintained through-
out the recording and playback chain, when
your speakers replay that sound, the woofer’s
movement should be the same as the original
drum skin, in that it should first move outwards
into the room. However, if signal polarity
is inverted due to errors in the recording/
reproduction chain, your woofers will move Which kind of
backwards instead of forward at the initial ‘hit’.
The above simplification makes it easy to
begs the question
see the initial problem. But there’s a further
problem, which is that it’s actually impossible
of why you’d want
to know whether a signal that’s going into the
Progression amplifier is the correct polarity in the
to be able to invert
first place so, in the exact words of D’Appolito’s signal polarity at
Owners Manual: “Because you have no way of
knowing what the proper polarity is, you must all. It’s all to do
set this control by ear. Try listening with the
polarity normal or inverted, and use whichever with maintaining
setting sounds better.” Interestingly, although
this is sensible advice, it seems to assume that
acoustic integrity...
the setting that “sounds better” will be the one in
013

THE REMOTE CONTROL D’AGOSTINO
SUPPLIES WITH THE PROGRESSION
INTEGRATED IS UNUSUAL FOR AT
LEAST TWO REASONS
014
D’AGOSTINO PROGRESSION INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
which polarity is correct, and this is not actually
a given: I have heard recordings that sound
better with inverted polarity than they do with
correct polarity. The panel on the left side of the
front panel has a top row of input selector push-
buttons labelled (left to right) Server, Aux, Theatre,
Radio, Phono, and DAC. The two push-buttons
beneath are labelled ‘Standby’ and ‘Mute’. Every
one of these buttons has a bright LED at its centre
so you can see which one (or more) has been
selected. Unless, of course, you’re in Dark mode.
The ‘Server’ input is just a standard analogue line-
level input, by the way, not a digital input. The
‘Theatre’ input is, as its name might suggest to
those skilled in the art, a ‘Pass-Through’ input that
bypasses the Progression Integrated’s volume
control. So any signal you connect will get the
benefit of the amplifier’s total available gain and
power output.
The ‘Phono’ input button is a tad misleading,
because it’s not a phono input if you order the
bare-bones Progression Integrated. If you want a
phono stage you need to order it and add $3,995
to the base price. The phono module enables
you to connect with a moving-coil or a moving-
magnet cartridge (i.e. not both simultaneously)
with the option of selectable impedance (50,
100Ω, 200Ω, 500Ω, 1kΩ, 2kΩ, 10kΩ and 47kΩ).
All these adjustments (including MM/MC
selection) are located on a DIP switch on a
printed circuit board inside the amplifier’s casing,
which will be OK if you use just the one cartridge,
but rather inconvenient if you switch back and
forth between different cartridge types.
The same might be said for the DAC input
button, because it, too, is simply an analogue line-
level input. The nomenclature simply assumes
that you will be connecting the analogue output
of your own DAC to the Progression Integrated,
which doesn’t come standard with its own DAC.
You can, however, option in a DAC module,
either at the time of purchase or later if you
choose. Doing this will add $8,995 to the base
price of the amplifier. If you do option it in, you’ll
get the whole digital sheebang: USB, S/PDIF
and Network (via Ethernet or Wi-Fi), though a
bit surprisingly (for reasons which will shortly
become obvious) there’s no Bluetooth audio
capability. Digital capabilities are PCM up to
192kHz/24-bits and up to DSD 11.1MHz along
with MQA. However, in order to control the
DAC module, you’ll need to own a suitable
Apple device in order to use D’Agostino’s digital
app, which is IOS-only. When connected to the
internet you can stream services such as Tidal,
Qobuz, and Spotify via the built-in Converse
Digital streaming platform. The module is also
Roon certified.
REMOTE CONTROL
The remote control D’Agostino supplies with the
Progression Integrated is unusual for at least two
reasons. The first is that it looks like no remote
control I’ve ever seen before, being almost square,
rather than rectangular. The second is that it
communicates with the amplifier via Bluetooth
radio signals rather than via the more usual
infra-red optical signals. While I am not convinced
by the shape of the control, for reasons of both
aesthetics and ease-of-use, I am totally on-board
with using Bluetooth rather than infra-red,
because you don’t need line-of-sight to use it,
 D’AGOSTINO PROGRESSION INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
you don’t need to ‘point’ it at the amplifier, and it
operates from a lot further away than a typical IR
remote. I was even able to operate the amplifier
from a completely different room in my home.
Using a Bluetooth remote is very canny,
too, because it makes it possible for users to use
their phone or other device
to control the Progression
integrated via an app instead
of using the remote. However
it appears that at the time of
writing, at least, D’Agostino has
only got around to providing
Using a Bluetooth an app for IOS devices. As yet,
there’s no app available for
remote is very Android. But there very well
could be one by the time
canny, too, because you read this review, so that’s
something you will need to
it makes it possible check for yourself.
The Progression Integrated
for users to use their incorporates D’Agostino’s
iPhone or other ‘Super Rail’ technology, where
the front end of the amplifier
idevice to control is powered by a fully-regulated
high-voltage rail, whereas the
the Progression output stage’s rail is at a much
lower voltage and unregulated.
via an app This means that the output
stage will always run out of power before the input
stage, which D’Agostino says makes the amplifier
totally solid, totally stable, and able to drive huge
amounts of current into very low impedances
without affecting its performance. “Keeping
the front-end transistors at a constant voltage
irrespective of the output of the amplifier gives
you an extra edge on power and big dynamics
without the front end being crushed by the output
stage,” he says.
As with the Momentum and the Relentless,
the Progression uses unusual elliptical heat-sinking.
It’s one of the reasons for the amplifier’s good
looks, but there’s a practical aspect as well, because
D’Agostino took an aversion to conventional
heatsink fins after one ripped a hole in his favourite
suit; “It was a very expensive Canali suit and it
can’t be fixed,” he says. The Progression’s heat-sink
finning is actually more efficient than the ones
in the Momentum, because the holes are bigger,
which gives them more area to dissipate heat.
If you look at the excellent Owner’s Manual
provided with the D’Agostino Progression
Integrated (it’s also downloadable from
D’Agostino’s website, so you could start reading
it straight away if you wanted to) you’ll see that
it says “Handmade and built by hand in the
USA using USA machinists, vendors and parts
procurement.”
015

THE ‘PHONO’ INPUT BUTTON IS A
TAD MISLEADING, BECAUSE IT’S
NOT A PHONO INPUT IF YOU ORDER
THE BAREBONES PROGRESSION
INTEGRATED. IF YOU WANT A
PHONO STAGE YOU NEED TO
ORDER IT AND ADD $3,995 TO THE
BASE PRICE OF THE AMP.
016
D’AGOSTINO PROGRESSION INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
If that sentence sounded rather specific and long-
winded, it’s because D’Agostino is well aware
that many manufacturers that claim to build their
products in the United States in fact get all the
component parts made in foreign countries and
merely assemble them in the USA. It’s great to see
D’Agostino doing the right thing.
REAR PANEL
Obviously the appearance of the rear panel will
vary depending on whether or not you have
optioned in the digital module. If you have, you’ll
see a bolt-on plate with optical (Toslink) and
coaxial (gold-plated RCA) digital inputs, an RJ-45
Ethernet jack, a USB (Type-A) input and a single
stubby wi-fi antenna.
If you’ve optioned in the phono module,
the gold-plated RCA terminals at the far left
of the rear panel alongside the gold-plated
RCA terminals marked ‘Aux’ will actually be a
phono input, as per the ‘Phono’ lettering screen-
printed above them. If you haven’t optioned
it in, this will simply be a standard unbalanced
line-level input.
As for all the other inputs, every single
one of them is balanced, in keeping with the
amplifier’s balanced circuitry (the output stage
is also balanced). Rather oddly, rather than
mounting the eight female gold-plated XLR
inputs either horizontally or vertically in the
usual manner, D’Agostino has off-set them.
It was only when I actually went to connect
cables to them that I realised that although this
might look odd, it works really well, because
it’s super-easy to insert and remove the XLR
connectors, all of which have tiny locking
buttons that would otherwise be difficult to
access (at least the left-channel ones would be).
As for outputs, you get balanced pre-
amplifier outputs (again via XLR, but of course
male types this time, rather than female).
Also on the rear panel are a Bluetooth
antenna, an RS232 connector to enable control
via a home automation system, 12V triggers to
enable automatic remote power switching, a
6.35mm headphone socket and, of course, left
and right channel speaker terminals (gold-plated
multi-way types).
The fact that the D’Agostino Progression’s
headphone socket is on the rear panel is
interesting. I am guessing that it wasn’t put on
the front panel because it would have ruined
the obvious visual symmetry of the front panel
design. It’s also more cost-effective to put it on
the rear panel, rather than the front. If you don’t
use headphones, it’s not going to worry you
much, but if you do, this position is likely going
to be rather inconvenient.
If it is, I’d recommend that you buy a
headphone extension lead, plug it into the
rear panel socket and run the female end
to somewhere more convenient. In order to
activate the headphone output you have to
press the Theatre button on the front panel and
hold it down for three seconds. Activating the
headphone output simultaneously deactivates
the speaker outputs, so you can’t use both at the
same time, which is something I often do. Then,
in order to switch the headphone output off, so
you can again listen via your speakers, you have
to switch the amplifier off (or, more precisely, to
Standby) then switch it back on again.
 D’AGOSTINO PROGRESSION
IN USE AND LISTENING SESSIONS
Installation is straight-forward, though you do
have to be careful connecting speaker wires
because the knobs of the gold-plated speaker
terminals are not insulated. It is perhaps for this
reason that D’Agostino’s Owners’ Manual recom-
mends “the use of high-quality cables terminated
with spade or ring lugs that will fit the Progres-
sion Integrated amplifier’s binding posts.” (The
reason being that any stray wires could result in a
short-circuit.)
You also have to make sure that you connect
only ordinary, passive loudspeakers to the output
terminals. If you connect an active speaker or a
subwoofer, there’s a possibility that the negative
terminal of that device could be grounded, in
which case it might result in damage to the
D’Agostino’s balanced output stage.
And for those who like their equipment
on the floor, you can only do this with the
Progression Integrated if you have a hard wood
or tile (or more likely, natural stone) floor. The
Owners’ Manual specifically states that the
amplifier should not be used on a carpeted
surface. As for setting polarity before listening,
the simple fact is that you can’t ‘set’ polarity. You’re
very likely to have to use a different setting for
each different recording you listen to, because
some will come into the amplifier with correct
polarity and won’t need to be inverted, whilst
others will come in with incorrect polarity and
will need to be inverted. Which is why having a
switch to do it (rather than re-wiring both your
loudspeakers every time, which is the way to
invert polarity manually) is a no-brainer.
The bad news is that it’s difficult to choose
the polarity that sounds the best, much less the
polarity that’s actually correct. But don’t just take
my word for it, even D’Appolito’s Owners’ Manual
says: “Depending on the recording, the effects of
polarity inversion are often subtle and sometimes
even inaudible.” I have to say that I do like that
the multi-function meters turn from green to red
when the polarity is inverted.
The good news is that the D’Appolito
Progression Integrated sounds fantastically good,
no matter which polarity setting you choose,
which is hardly a surprise considering it was
designed by a man who’s been building critically-
acclaimed, award-winning amplifiers for more
than forty years.
LISTENING SESSIONS
Sonically, the Progression Integrated doesn’t set
a foot wrong. The sound is glorious and there’s
plenty of it. The most obvious ‘on-paper’ differ-
ence between the Progression Integrated and, say
the Progression Stereo — or even the Progres-
INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
sion Mono — is the power output, but given
the totally clean, undistorted volume levels I was
able to achieve in my listening room using very
inefficient loudspeakers, I really doubt that there
is anything to be gained by adding an additional
100-watts per channel output in the case of the
Progression Stereo or even 300-watts in the case
of the Progression Mono, other than bragging
rights. It’s important to bear in mind that those
figures represent audible increases in power out-
put of just 1.7dB and 3.9dB respectively.
Basically, what I’m saying is that unless you
have extraordinarily inefficient loudspeakers
and have a listening room that’s the size of a
concert hall, you really aren’t going to need
any more power than is available from the
Progression Integrated, that being 200-watts
per channel into 8Ω loads and 400-watts per
channel into 2Ω loads. I really tried hard to drive
the amplifier into clipping, even resorting to
wearing ear-plugs so that I could turn the volume
up without damaging my ears, yet I still could
not get the Progression’s output stage to clip,
even with highly dynamic music that was full
of transients. When playing my loudspeakers at
levels louder than I’d ever play them, even in my
most enthusiastic and raucus listening sessions,
the bass from the Progression was ultra-tight,
ultra-solid and completely coherent, without any
blurring of even the fastest bass passages, and
with absolutely no dimunition in tonal quality. At
the same time, while this bass was going full tilt,
the clarity and transparency of the very highest
frequencies was totally unaffected by the goings-
on in the bass — for example I could hear not
only the reality of an initial cymbal strike, but also
the shimmer as the sound faded into inaudibility.
In other words, outstandingly good performance.
I’ve been listening to Nick Cave and Warren
Ellis’s lastest album, Carnage, and it was a
revelation to hear it reproduced by the D’agostino
Progression. Even the opener, Hand of God, which
is fairly undemanding, demonstrated increased
rhythmic stability in its underlying pulse. As for
The good
the myriad synthesised sounds, the Progression news is that
made it clear that they were synthesised, whereas
lesser amplifiers might have you wondering if the D’Appolito
they were real or synthesised. The motif ‘Hand of
God’ which is repeatedly chanted throughout the Progression
track by various solo voices, as well as by choirs,
all with varying degrees of deliberate distortion,
Integrated sounds
sounded more ethereally authentic when I
listened using the Progression.
fantastically good,
Is this Cave and Ellis’s best album since Push
The Sky Away, or Abattoir Blues? I’d say not, and
no matter which
it’s not even up to the standard of Ghosteen, polarity setting
but it’s a fine album indeed, and it’s certainly
wonderfully recorded. you choose
017

SPECIFICATIONS
D’Agostino Progression
Brand: Dan D’Agostino
Master Audio Systems
Model: Progression Integrated
Power Output (8Ω):
200 watts per channel
Power Output (4Ω):
400 watts per channel
Frequency Response:
0.1Hz to 1MHz, –3dB
Frequency Response:
20Hz to 80kHz, ±0.5dB
Total Harmonic Distortion
(@ rated output): <0.1%
Signal-to-Noise
Ratio: 95dB (unweighted)
Standby Power
Consumption: 14 watts
Input Impedance: 100kΩ
Output Impedance: 0.1Ω
Dimensions (HWD):
178×432×432mm
Weight: 26kg
Price: $47,985 RRP
(fully optioned as reviewed)
Comprised of $34,995 for base
model plus $8,995 for the DAC
Module and $3,995 for the
Phono Module.
Contact: Advance Audio
Australia on (02) 9561 0799 or
www.advanceaudio.com.au
018
D’AGOSTINO PROGRESSION
I admit to being adversely affected in my
opinion by how down-beat all the tracks are,
despite some of the inspired lyrics, witness
“Reading Flannery O’Connor with a pencil and a
plan” from the title track, or, even better, from the
album’s best track, Albuquerque, “We won’t get to
anywhere, darling, any time this year / We won’t
get to anywhere / Unless I dream you there” but I
guess I should not have expected anything uplifting
from an album that’s titled ‘Carnage.’ Cave and
Ellis certainly deliver what they promise. I would
dearly love it if they’d re-record this album with real
instruments.
Carnage is so depressing that I felt almost
uplifted playing one of my current favourite
albums, which is kind of on daily rotation, that
being the album Promises, by Pharoah Sanders
and Floating Points (the stage name of pianist
and DJ Sam Shepherd) in collaboration with the
London Symphony Orchestra. At 75 years of age
his signature saxophone sound is not what it once
was, but he accomodates the deficiencies so well,
in the process creating mesmerizing soundscapes,
particularly against the sustained sounds created by
the LSO’s string section. Once again, the D’agostino
Progression reveals instantly that you’re listening to
real strings, rather than samples. The Progression
also captures the melancholy of the Sanders’ sax
dramatically well, especially in its lower registers,
while also being rather more revealing of the
reed sounds than lesser amplifiers. It’s also rather
revealing of the sounds at the end of Movement
2, and those at the beginning of Movement 3, but
amplifiers are supposed to reveal such minutaie,
irrespective of whether they’re supposed be there
or not.
For fans who’ve been waiting patiently for
nigh-on seven years, don’t think twice before
picking up a copy of The Antlers’ (Peter Silberman
and Michael Lerner) Green to Gold album. I get
distracted every time I play the second track,
Wheels Roll Home, whose melody and arrangement
reminds me of Tommy James & The Shondells’ 60s
hit Crimson and Clover (covered more recently by
artists as diverse as Joan Jett, Cher, Dolly Parton and
Prince), but that certainly doesn’t stop me playing
Green To Gold over and over. It’s just such a lovely,
quiet, contemplative album all of whose tracks
resonated with me, particularly Just One Sec on
which Silberman laments “Could you clear my cache
momentarily? / For just one sec, free me from me.”
I think I’d play this album even if it wasn’t a great
recording, but luckily it is, as you’ll hear if you use the
D’agostino Progression to play it, for example the
drum sound on Stubborn Man and the gorgeous
bass and lead guitar sound on the title track (and
the drums too). Laid over all is the mellifluous vocal
of Silberman himself.
INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
Great acoustic guitar intro to Porchlight too, with the
brushed drums and the lovely atmospherics. The
out-of-tune piano sound is a nice touch as well.
Switching to something with a bit more bite,
I played Foo Fighters’ latest, Medicine at Midnight.
As Arlo Guthre famously said in one of his songs ‘it
wasn’t the best song I ever wrote’ and Dave Grohl
might be the first to admit that it isn’t the best
album they’ve ever released. The metal isn’t that
heavy and there’s a noticeable lack of the energy
that permeated All My Life, for example. The tracks
are also a little too formulaic for my liking, with six
tracks clocking in within 9 seconds of each other.
Co-incidence? Still, there’s a lot to enjoy, again both
musically and sonically, most especially when you
have amplification of the quality of the D’Agostino
Progression Integrated. Listen carefully and you’ll
hear how the Progression has perfect balance
between its two channels, plus you can actually
hear the separation between the tracks during
the multi-tracking, such as on Shame Shame and
even more evidently on the intro to Cloudspotter,
where you should hear total silence in the right
channel during the guitar riff until the percussion
starts in the right. I happened to be looking at the
D’Agostino’s meters at the time and noticed that the
right channel’s meter was dancing even though it
was the left channel that was playing. I assumed this
was a one-off on my review sample, and it’s easily
fixed in any case.
More great sound from Australian trio Middle
Kids’ new album Today We’re the Greatest. It’s the
first they’ve made in a top pro studio and trust me,
you can hear the difference! What hasn’t changed
is the fabulous voice of lead singer Hannah Joy,
except that you can now hear it in all its glory. This
is no better examplared that on Cellophane (Brain)
which starts off acoustic then bursts into electric
guitar heaven with Joy’s voice leaping high and
low in front and behind. The kick-ass bass on R U
4 me let me forgive the song’s title, Stacking Chairs
is a masterpiece of a tune and Questions had me
gasping for breath. Golden Star has everything
and more, all revealed with amazing clarity by the
D’Agostino Progression. But all the tracks really work
up to the closer Today We’re The Greatest which is a
truly glorious song on all levels.
CONCLUSION
This latest addition to Daniel D’Agostino’s
Progression series of components can be tailored
to suit your exact requirements. But the greatest
thing about this new amplifier is that it delivers
the performance you’d expect from, say, the
equivalent model in D’Agostino’s Momentum
series at just a fraction of the price. In other
words, it’s everything you need in a high-end
audio amplifier.
 SW I M IN TH E MU SI C
The Parker series is a real departure from traditional
speaker design. Significant advancements in cabinet
resonance, a newly designed crossover and bespoke
drivers delivers a giant leap in performance. All models
come in ceramic or diamond editions.

The new and improved construction, allows the cabinet

to truly disappear from the soundstage. As the world
shifts at this demanding time, we feel it’s necessary to
keep pace. At Marten, it’s business as usual and we’re
proud to deliver these three new speakers, no matter
the challenges we face.

In moments like these, we do more than float on the

surface - we swim in the music.

AVAILABLE IN AUSTRALIA THROUGH ABSOLUTE HI END . 0488 777 999 . info@absolutehiend.com . www.absolutehiend.com
020
 SONUS FABER
ELECTA AMATOR III Reviewer William H. Fisher

LOUDSPEAKERS

C
he sorpresa! There I was
expecting delivery of a pair
of small, bookshelf loud-
speakers and the courier
made me sign for two
outrageously large cartons,
both of which were so heavy that I had to get
a trolley to move them off the stoop. How on
earth could either of these cartons contain a
pair of small bookshelf loudspeakers?
Once inside, I opened the smaller of the
two cartons first, which revealed the Sonus
faber Electa Amator III loudspeakers I had been
expecting. So what could possibly be in the larger
box? Had the distributor also sent me a second,
larger pair of loudspeakers to evaluate? A few
moments with a box-cutter revealed that the
larger carton contained a pair of stands — stands
that I later discovered were designed specifically
for use with the Electa Amator IIIs.
Originally released in 2018 at the Rocky
Mountain Audio Fair (where they picked up a
‘Best of RMAF’ award), the Electa Amator IIIs were
designed to commemorate Sonus faber’s 35th
anniversary, because despite all the loudspeakers
the company has built since that time, it is on
record as stating that it was the original Electa
Amator (released 1987) and Electa Amator II
(released 1997) that contributed most to the
company’s international success, and that
this new ‘small but precious speaker’ inherits
characteristics from both those models.
Sonus faber was founded by the late Italian
loudspeaker pioneer Gianfranco ‘Franco’ Serblin.
He sold the company and retired in 2006, but
then came out of retirement in 2010 to start a
new company bearing his own name, producing
two famous eponymous designs, the Accordo

021
 SONUS FABER ELECTA AMATOR III
THE MW18XTR04’S CONE IS TERMINATED BY A
STANDARD HALFROLL PROFILE RUBBER SUSPENSION
SURROUND WHICH IN TURN CONNECTS TO THE BASKET,
WHICH IS MADE FROM CAST ALUMINIUM
and Ktema, before he died in 2013. Sonus faber
is now under the control of The McIntosh Group
(formerly Fine Sounds Group), which also has the
high-end audio brands McIntosh and Sumiko
Audio in its portfolio.
EQUIPMENT
Even a casual glance will show that this new
model is made firmly in the mould of the two
previous generations of Electa Amators: put sim-
ply, this third generation model is also a compact,
two-way, stand-mount, bass-reflex design… just
like the two that preceded it.
The tweeter in the Amator III is the same
H28 XTR-04 DAD soft-dome type that is used
in the company’s top-end Homage Tradition
and Reference models. That ‘28’ in the model
number indicates that the tweeter is 28mm in
diameter, while the DAD stands for ‘Damped Apex
Dome’. What’s DAD I hear you ask? When a soft
dome moves forward (after first having moved
backwards), the highest point of the dome
(which Sonus faber refers to as the ‘apex’) tends to
‘crumple’ inwards due to air pressure.
022
LOUDSPEAKERS
This means that the movement of that particular
bit of dome fabric is not only non-linear, but also
out of phase, which causes the high frequencies
to roll off prematurely. Sonus faber’s solution
was to add what they call ‘local dampening’ via
a small bridge across the dome, at the centre of
which is a backwards-facing cone. This structure
is quite visible on all Sonus faber tweeters
incorporating DAD technology.
Sonus faber says that the 180mm-diameter
bass/midrange driver in the Electa Amator III (part
number MW18XTR-04) was designed specifically
for it and — at least so far — has not been used
in any other Sonus faber model… or at least not
to my knowledge. The driver’s cone, however,
is made of the same materials that feature in
many other of the cones used in Sonus faber
speakers, being made of a blend of cellulose pulp,
kapok, kenaf and other natural fibres. During the
production process this cone is air-dried in real-
time, rather than being force-dried using a heat-
fan, a technique that is said to optimise rigidity,
reduce mass and minimise the cone’s resonance
behaviours. (And should you be wondering what
kenaf is, its botanical name is hibiscus cannabinus,
which should give you a very good clue about
this particular ingredient. As for kapok, it’s a fine,
fibrous substance rather like cotton that grows
around the seeds of the ceiba pentandra tree.)
The MW18XTR-04’s cone is terminated by
a standard half-roll profile rubber suspension
surround which in turn connects to the basket,
which is made from cast aluminium. Sonus faber
says it designed the motor system ‘to ensure
high excursion with low distortion in order to
maximise dynamics.’
The crossover network has a nominal
crossover frequency of 2.5kHz and is said to
use very high-quality components, including
ClarityCap capacitors and Jantzen inductors…
though I wasn’t about to pull the cabinet apart to
confirm this. Connection to the speaker is made
via two pairs of rather beautifully made multi-
way speaker terminals that are shaped to make
handling easier.
As stated earlier-on in this review, the
Electa Amator III is a bass-reflex design. The
bass reflex port is located on the rear panel,
above the terminal plate. It’s 185mm in length,
68mm in diameter and made from thick plastic,
making it rather larger than I’d have expected
for a cabinet of this volume. It’s also flared at
both ends to reduce the possibility of chuffing or
other port noises.
There doesn’t appear to be a lot of speaker fill
inside the cabinet, because if you look in through
the port you are able to see the unusual shape of
the H28 XTR-04 DAD tweeter’s motor assembly.
 SONUS FABER ELECTA AMATOR III
Whereas most loudspeakers that are made of
wood are made of a manufactured wood (usually
MDF, HDF or ply) that’s then finished with either a
plastic or wood veneer (or painted—usually with a
high-gloss varnish), the cabinet of the Sonus faber
Electa Amator III’s cabinet is crafted from solid slabs
of 25mm-thick walnut that are left as bare wood on
the top and sides of the cabinet
but covered with soft leather
on the baffle and rear panel.
At the base of the cabinet is
a 30mm-thick slab of Carrera
marble which is the build
element that contributes most
I loved the Sonus to each speaker’s back-bending
weight of 14.6kg. The overall
faber Amator IIIs effect of this combination of
pricey materials is very classy —
for so many reasons, there are very few loudspeakers
including their size, that convey such an aura of
luxury.
their heritage, their Whereas in some countries
the Electa Amator III’s are sold
appearance, their without stands, which brings
the overall price down quite
sound-staging, and substantially, Sonus faber’s
Australian distributor has
their imaging elected to bundle the stands
LOUDSPEAKERS
with the speakers. So if you are comparing prices
on the internet, make sure that the prices you’re
comparing are ones that include the stands, or
you won’t be comparing like with like. (By way of
example, in the UK, where the speakers are sold
without stands, and the stands are instead listed as
an optional extra, those stands retail for £1,495, or
around $2,850 at the current exchange rate.)
At 11.2kg each these stands are very nearly as
heavy as the speakers since the supports are metal
and the base is made from the same Carerra marble
used at the base of the speaker cabinets.
The stand itself is 720mm high, which puts the
tweeters exactly ear-height above floor level…
though some further height adjustment is possible
thanks to the provision of four spikes underneath
the base of the stands.
IN USE AND LISTENING SESSIONS
You won’t have to work too hard to get great sound
from the Sonus faber Electa Amator IIIs. Just do what
I did and place them out into the room and away
from the side walls, and just a bit angled-in towards
the listening position. In most rooms this should
give a wide-open sound stage that’s nicely layered
while still delivering reasonably balanced tonality,
but if your particular room is a difficult one, you’ll
have to find the best position by trial and error.
023
024
SONUS FABER ELECTA AMATOR III LOUDSPEAKERS

SONUS FABER’S DAD TECHNOLOGY INVOLVES ADD

ING LOCAL DAMPENING’ VIA A SMALL TRIANGULAR
BRIDGE ACROSS THE DOME, AT THE CENTRE OF WHICH
IS A BACKWARDSFACING CONE. THIS STRUCTURE
IS QUITE VISIBLE ON ALL SONUS FABER TWEETERS
INCORPORATING DAD TECHNOLOGY.

However, listening to Arvo Part’s Tabula

Rasa while running the speakers in, they initially
seemed a little bright in the upper treble, which
I quickly cured by re-angling the speakers so
the tweeter paths didn’t converge just in front
of the listening position, but instead converged
just a little bit behind it, the result being hugely
rewarding and beautifully-detailed high-
frequency sound without the brightness I’d
noted before, yet at the same time with the high
frequencies extended enough to take them up
beyond the upper limits of human hearing. The
quality and refinement of Sonus faber’s unique
damped apex dome tweeter meant that this
difficult recording never sounded aggressive, as
it sometimes can when reproduced by tweeters
whose high-frequency resonances are not so
well-controlled as they are here.
When I started listening to music
that tested the Sonus faber Electa
Amator IIIs’ midrange, these little
speakers delivered exceptional
expression and articulation, to the
point that with well-recorded tracks,
they sounded totally magical, the
magic being enhanced by the
dynamic capabilities on show, so
long as replay volume was kept
at a socially acceptable level. And
keeping the volume restrained was
difficult, because the overall sound
is so clean and balanced that I was
constantly winding up the volume
too far, and unfairly asking more of
these small speakers than they were
production and complex
rhythms with jaw-dropping They delivered
able to deliver. However, whenever I
did this, they warned me gracefully
finesse, reproducing Gardot’s
rich tonality brilliantly,
the album’s
by responding with mild confusion on
the peaks, rather than with noticeable
injecting levels of expression
and layers of nuance that were
sumptuous
distortion. as good as anything I have heard at production and
The Electa Amator IIIs are those rare small this level.
speakers that can really bring the excitement Maybe they’re not the last word complex rhythms
and emotion in music to the fore, and most in rhythmic precision or outright drive,
particularly when it comes to their ability to but I can’t recall comparable speakers with jaw-dropping
bring the best out of vocals. Listening to Melody
Gardot’s ‘The Absence’, the Sonus faber Electa
that track changes of intensity through
the mid-frequencies with as much skill
finesse and rich
Amator IIIs delivered the album’s sumptuous or enthusiasm. tonality
025
 SONUS FABER ELECTA AMATOR III
SPECIFICATIONS
Sonus faber
Electa Amator III They can also reveal sonic complexities like
few other speakers, as I proved to myself listening
Freq Resp: 40Hz–35kHz
to Yves Tumor’s ‘Heaven To A Tortured Mind’. The
Sensitivity: 88dBSPL
stuttering intro to opener Gospel for a New Century
Nominal Impedance: 4Ω
actually has a lot going to make it the tour de force
Dimensions (HWD):
it is, but most speakers just skate over the top,
375×235×360mm
whereas the Amator IIIs reveal everything with
Weight: 14.6kg
crystalline clarity, which serves to accentuate the
sonic shock as the track turns into Medicine Burn.
Price: $16,995 per pair (RRP)
Low frequencies are another strength. These
(Including stands)
are fairly compact speakers so they’re never going
to produce the kind of bass that makes furniture
Contact: Synergy Audio Visual
rattle, but this doesn’t stop them from sounding
on 03 9459 7474 or visit
impressively authoritative or from delivering bass
www.synergyaudio.com
frequencies with palpable punch and muscle.
026
LOUDSPEAKERS
Pleasingly, low-end agility goes hand-in-hand
with this brawn, such that the resulting sound is
both articulate and tuneful. By way of example
I wasn’t expecting to feel the real impact of
those lovely deep bass lines on HTATM’s Identity
Trade, but the Amator IIIs surprised me by doing
a great job. If you’re cherry-picking tracks from
this album, make sure you don’t miss hearing
Kerosene, which features Diana Gordon, and then
make sure you don’t miss the fabulous music
video of it. Stupendously good!
Which is not to say that the low-frequency
delivery of the Amator IIIs is ideal for all musical
genres. If you listen to music that requires
aggression to work (i.e. if your music collection is
packed full of hardcore hip-hop or metal), or on
the classical side, you’re into pipe organ recitals,
then you’re likely to find the Electa Amator IIIs a
little too bass-light and just a touch too polished
and polite for your tastes. They don’t quite have
that ultimate degree of bite such music demands.
In common with the very best small, high-
quality two-way designs, the sound-staging
abilities of the Electa Amator IIIs are outstandingly
good, such that if you close your eyes whilst
you’re listening to them you’ll find it impossible
to locate where the speakers are within it yet at
the same time the stereo imaging is so precise
that you’ll hear all the instruments totally locked
in position and remaining positionally stable no
matter what the musical demands of the music
that’s playing.
CONCLUSION
Sonus faber’s engineers steered a very clever path
when they created the Amator III’s sonic signa-
ture. It is undeniably Italian and the sonic DNA of
the Sonus faber ‘family’ is writ large across it, yet
it’s at once accurate without having the ultra-neu-
tral delivery of a studio monitor while at the same
time muscular and full-bodied without straying
into the realms of overt colouration. Granted you
do need to partner them with suitably-talented
electronics, and with an amplifier which has
sufficient free-flowing power on tap in order to
extract the full dynamism of which they’re capa-
ble, but this is no more than would be asked of
almost any loudspeaker in the same orbit.
I loved the Sonus faber Amator IIIs for so
many reasons, including their size, their heritage,
their appearance, their sound-staging, their
imaging and of course last, but far from least,
their amazing and quite charming sonic qualities.
Have a listen and I think you’ll fall in love with
them too.
 MUSICAL FIDELITY
M3x VINYL
PHONO STAGE
T
THE M3X VINYL IS
THE FIRST MUSICAL he Musical Fidelity M3x Vinyl
FIDELITY PRODUCT phono stage is a first for Musical
TO BE BUILT IN Fidelity in more than one way.
COUNTRIES THAT First, it’s the first phono stage in
ARE A PART OF THE
EUROPEAN UNION the company’s M3 Series, which
Musical Fidelity promotes using
the catch-phrase “Great-looking, superb-sounding
hi-fi doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Our M3 range
offers an elegance of design, quality of build and
standard of finish you’d associate with products
costing twice as much.”
The M3xVinyl is also the first Musical Fidelity
component to be built entirely in countries in the
European Union. This is a significant switch that
requires some explanation. When he started the
company back in 1982 after leaving Michaelson &
Austin, Anthony Michaelson built Musical Fidelity
products exclusively in the United Kingdom.
He later switched production of most of his
products to Taiwan. However, in 2018 Michaelson
sold Musical Fidelity to his good friend Heinz
Lichtenegger, the owner of Pro-Ject, who with his
wife Jozefína (who owns European Audio Team),
has multiple manufacturing facilities in the EU.
The M3x Vinyl is the first Musical Fidelity product to
be built in one of these facilities. It remains to be
seen whether Lichtenegger will start manufacturing
other Musical Fidelity components in the EU.
028
Reviewer Ian Frazer
The M3x Vinyl is also almost the first phono stage
Musical Fidelity has manufactured that does not
use op-amps (operational amplifiers), instead using
discrete components (separate resistors, capacitors,
transistors and so on in the place of op-amps. This
is rather the opposite of what’s happening in other
hi-fi components, so we asked Musical Fidelity the
reason. The answer, according to the company?
“Countless hours of listening tests have shown us that
even the very best op-amps do not tend to be so
neutral, natural, dynamic or vivid — all of which are
characteristics of the Musical Fidelity sound. For that
reason, we’re rediscovering our passion for traditional,
discrete designs.”
Musical Fidelity is not the first company to
eliminate op-amps from its circuits. Marantz famously
uses op-amp replacements it calls HDAMs and here
in Australia, local high-end manufacturer Burson
Audio builds what it calls ‘Supreme Sound’ op-amp
replacements that it sells to other manufacturers as
well as to DIY upgraders. Burson Audio’s Supreme
Sound ‘op-amps’ are comprised entirely of discrete
devices. Each one is about 40 times the size of its IC
equivalent and comprises 24 matched FETS (Field
Effect Transistors), 16 metal film 0.5% tolerance
resistors, a pair of silver mica capacitors and a pair
of variable resistors. This means that a manufacturer
that replaces a single dual op-amp with discrete
 MUSICAL FIDELITY M3x VINYL
components will have to solder in (and make
room for on the circuit board) 44 components.
This means you’d need almost 900 discrete
components to replace just 20 dual op-amps.
But the M3xVinyl wasn’t the first Musical
Fidelity product to eliminate op-amps. It was
the second. The first was the M6xVinyl phono
pre-amplifier, a component that in many ways is
very similar to the M3x, which we’ll discuss later
on in this review. However Musical Fidelity hasn’t
only removed op-amps from the M6xVinyl, it has
also removed all the active circuitry that’s usually
used to provide RIAA equalisation and instead
provides the all-essential RIAA equalisation using
a completely passive circuit. What’s more, it’s
divided this passive circuit into two different
circuits. Musical Fidelity says its split passive EQ
circuitry: “is more costly to design and implement
but ensures the most accurate representation
of the ideal EQ curve. Split passive equalisation
allows for better impedance matching and less
deviation from the ideal RIAA curve.”
In order to understand what this all means,
and why it’s so important, we need to delve a
little more deeply into RIAA equalisation and
the whys and wherefores of how it can be
implemented — active or passively.
PASSIVE VS ACTIVE RIAA EQ
The purpose of a phono stage — its raison d’etre,
if you like — is to ‘correct’ the frequency response
of the signal the diamond tip of your phono car-
tridge’s stylus is extracting from the LP’s groove.
This comes about because in order to ‘store’
music on an LP the cutting engineer has to pre-
attenuate the levels of the low frequencies and
pre-boost the levels of the high frequencies. At
the midway point (1kHz) there is no boost or cut.
This is the 0dB point. As the music being recorded
on the LP gets progressively lower in frequency,
its level is progressively reduced until at 20Hz it is
19.3dB lower than the 0dB reference at 1kHz.
The opposite happens with frequencies
above 1kHz. The higher the frequency of the
music being recorded, the more the audio signal
is boosted until, at 20kHz, it’s boosted to +19.6dB.
PHONO STAGE
Because the levels of boost and cut applied are
different for every different frequency, the overall
effect is described as an ‘equalisation curve’, the
most common of which is the RIAA curve, so-
called because it was developed by the Record
Industry Association of America.
So in order to ensure the correct response
is sent to your main amplifier and then to your
The M3xVinyl
speakers, a phono stage must provide an ‘inverse’
RIAA curve that restores all the frequencies to
wasn’t the first
their correct levels, for example boosting the bass Musical Fidelity
at 20Hz by 19.3dB and cutting the treble at 20kHz
by 19.6dB. product to
But what happens below 20Hz? If the RIAA
equalisation boosts frequencies below 20Hz, this eliminate op-
means that unwanted low-frequency sounds
from your turntable (drive motors, bearing noise
amps. It was the
and so on) as well as from your LPs (record warp
and sounds actually inadvertently recorded at the
second. The
original recording session) would be made more first was the
audible. It is for this reason that in1976, Europe’s
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), M6xVinyl phono
decided to authorise the RIAA replay curve to be
modified in such a way as to reduce (attenuate) pre-amplifier, a
frequencies below 20Hz. It wasn’t an entirely
popular solution to the problem of low-frequency
component that
noise, because the circuitry required introduced
amplitude and phase errors into the frequency
in many ways is
response above 20Hz, and the circuit’s action very similar to the
was so mild below 20Hz that it really didn’t
do a lot to remove rumble, particularly if that M3xVinyl
rumble occurred between 10 and 20Hz. Most
manufacturers decided a better option was to
use a standard RIAA replay curve but provide a
dedicated ‘rumble filter’ that provided far more
attenuation at low frequencies than the IEC RIAA
variant.
As for the means of providing RIAA
equalisation, the circuitry required to do this
can be implemented in two different ways —
WORTHY OF SPECIAL MENTION IS
actively or passively. Active RIAA equalisation THE ALLESSENTIAL TURNTABLE
involves using voltage gain and feedback loops GROUND POST FITTED TO THE
that adjust the frequency response depending REAR PANEL OF THE M3XVINYL.
IT’S SIMPLY THE BEST SUCH
on the amounts of feedback returned to the
TERMINAL I HAVE EVER SEEN
input. One advantage of active equalisation is ON ANY PHONO STAGE, AMP
that exact component values in the circuit are OR PREAMPLIFIER
029

THE FRONT PANEL OF THE
M3XVINYL PHONO STAGE PRETTY
MUCH GIVES AWAY EXACTLY
WHAT FEATURES IT HAS INSIDE IT
BECAUSE THEY’RE ALL PRINTED
RIGHT THERE ON THE PANEL
If you use a high-
quality phono
cartridge, it is
essential to also
use a high-quality
external phono
stage if you are to
extract the best
performance
030
MUSICAL FIDELITY M3
M3x VINYL
not crucial and that left- and right-channel
matching is largely unnecessary. One
disadvantage is that, because it is active, the
circuit is prone to input overloads.
There’s also the problem that an active circuit
must have a very high voltage gain in order
to deliver the level of compensation required
to boost low frequencies by 19.3dB as well as
providing the additional gain necessary to bring
the circuit’s output up to the necessary one or
two volts required to feed the line input of a hi-fi
amplifier (or pre-amp). The problem with gain is
that the more of it you use, the more unstable
a circuit becomes and the more phase shift you
introduce. A solution circuit designers often
use to get around these problems is to split the
equalisation process into two, and use one active
circuit to manage frequencies below 1kHz and
another to manage the frequencies above.
The alternative to active equalisation is
passive equalisation, so-named because only
‘passive’, non-powered, components — resistors
and capacitors — are used to create the RIAA
equalisation required. The advantages of passive
equalisation include that the input can’t be
overloaded and because there is no feedback,
the circuit is completely stable. However the
disadvantage is that because the circuit is
passive, no ‘gain’ is possible (this has to be done
by a separate circuit) and the performance of
a passive circuit will be affected by the phono
cartridge’s own resistance and capacitance, as
these effectively become part of the circuit itself.
To get around most of these problems, designers
of passive RIAA equalisation circuits usually take a
leaf from the circuit’s active counterpart, and use
two passive networks, one for frequencies below
1kHz and the other for frequencies above.
FEATURES AND FACILITIES
The front panel of the M3xVinyl phono stage
pretty much gives away exactly what features it
has inside it because they’re all printed right there
on the panel itself.
PHONO STAGE
You can see that the unit will accommodate
both moving-magnet (MM) and moving-coil
(MC) cartridges but despite the provision of two
push-buttons to select between them, there’s
only a single phono input on the rear, so you can
connect either the one or the other, but not both
simultaneously.
If you are using a moving-magnet cartridge,
the six push-buttons just to the right of the two
MM/MC selector buttons allow you to choose
what load capacitance will be presented to your
cartridge: 50pF, 100pF, 200pF, 300pF 350pF or
400pF. Whichever of these load capacitance
values you select, the value of the load
impedance will remain fixed at 47kΩ.
The gain of the MM section is fixed at 40dB.
If you are using a moving-coil cartridge, the
six push-buttons at the far right of the front panel
allow you to choose the load impedance that will
be presented to your cartridge: 25Ω, 80Ω, 100Ω,
400Ω 800Ω or 1.2kΩ. The gain of the MC section is
fixed at 60dB.
Between the MM and MC load-setting
buttons are two buttons, the left-most of which is
labelled ‘IEC’ and the rightmost ‘+6dB’.
What the IEC button does is switch the
M3xVinyl’s equalisation curve from being a
standard RIAA curve to an IEC-RIAA curve. As
for that ‘+6dB’ switch, it activates an additional
amplifier stage that adds an extra 6dB of gain
to increase the voltage at the M3xVinyl’s output
terminals (which, by the way, are standard
unbalanced types, using RCA connectors). So
activating this circuit will mean that moving-coil
cartridge output voltages will be boosted by
a total of 46dB (40dB + 6dB) and moving-coil
cartridges by 66dB (60dB + 6dB).
What the previous paragraph means in real
life is that without the additional gain stage if
your moving-magnet cartridge was delivering
5mV to the M3xVinyl’s input terminals, you’d have
500mV at the output terminals. For a moving-coil
cartridge delivering 0.5mV, you’d have 500mV at
the M3xVinyl’s output terminals.
 MUSICAL FIDELITY M3x VINYL
If you press the +6dB button in, those output
voltages would double, to 1000mV, or one volt
(1V) for the same inputs noted previously.
As explained earlier-on in this review, the
more gain stages you introduce during the
equalisation process, the more you increase the
possibility of errors being introduced, so if you
can achieve adequate volume levels from your
loudspeakers without using the additional 6dB
of gain on offer, my advice would be to leave it
switched off.
If you try to compare the ‘sound’ of the two
gain settings by alternately pressing the button
on and off, you should be warned in advance that
this is a waste of your time, because the sound
will always seem to improve when you switch
to the +6dB setting. This is a trick your brain is
playing on you, because given two otherwise
identical sounds, the human ear will always prefer
the louder one over the softer one. Why do you
think rock bands sound so good at live concerts?
As for the final button on the front panel,
the ‘Power’ button, I’ve left that to last because
it’s rather curious. It’s not an On/Off switch. It
instead switches the M3xVinyl between ‘On’ and
‘Standby’. The reason I say the switch is ‘rather
curious’ is because Musical Fidelity’s promotional
literature claims the M3xVinyl is fitted with — and
I quote verbatim — “a new proprietary power
supply solution that has zero standby power
consumption. Absolutely zero! It is a super green
product and we are sure, there isn’t any other
product in existence with an ecological standby
function like this.” This statement is, of course
impossible and, therefore, not true. The Musical
Fidelity M3x Vinyl does draw power in its standby
mode, but it draws it not from the mains power,
but from a 3V CR2030 battery inside it. This
battery ensures that whatever cartridge type,
load and gain settings you were using when you
switched the M3x Vinyl off will be restored when
you next switch it on.
Take a look inside the M3xVinyl and you’ll not
only see the battery, but also that the PCBs inside
it take up so little space that Musical Fidelity
could, theoretically, have made the chassis a
good deal smaller than it is, but one reason for
its physical size is that it enables the designers to
position all the unit’s power supply components
on a separate printed circuit board (PCB) and
mount it as far away from the primary circuitry
as possible. They’ve also used a totally shielded
low-core saturation toroidal transformer to step
down the 240V mains voltage to the amplifier’s
rail voltage. Look inside very carefully and you’ll
see that while Musical Fidelity hasn’t used any op-
amps in the circuitry of the M3x vinyl, the circuitry
is not, as the company claims, “entirely discrete”
PHONO STAGE
because the PCBs do contain integrated circuits,
including an STM32F030F4P6TR 32-bit 16kB
48MHz ARM micro-controller.
Worthy of special mention is the all-essential
turntable ground post fitted to the rear panel of
the M3xVinyl. It’s simply the best such terminal I
have ever seen on any phono stage, or pre-amp
or integrated amplifier. It’s a full-on brass screw
fitting not unlike a speaker terminal. So much
better than the horrible plastic/arrow prong
terminals that are usually provided.
LISTENING
If you use a high-quality phono cartridge, it is
essential to also use a high-quality external
phono stage if you’re to extract the best
performance from it. The phono stages built
into even the best high-end pre-amplifiers
and integrated amplifiers simply won’t do it jus-
tice, most particularly if you’re using a
moving-coil cartridge.
I first listened to a brand-new LP I’ve just
purchased, but one with which I was intimately
familiar, having listened to earlier versions of it for
more than two decades. That LP was the 45rpm
version of L. A. Woman, by The Doors, pressed by
Analogue Productions. It’s a part of a six-disc set
which makes up The Doors’ six studio LP titles (the
others being The Doors, Strange Days, Waiting
For The Sun, Soft Parade, and Morrison Hotel).
All were cut by the legendary Doug Sax using
the original analog masters. According to Doors
producer/engineer Bruce Botnick, in order to play
the original tapes they had to be baked in an
oven to make sure the layers didn’t stick before
they could be replayed!
Of course L.A. Woman has Love Her Madly on
it which was a No 1 here in Australia, a No 3 in
Canada and reached No 11 on Billboard’s Hot 100
chart when it was released as a single. I think it
was The Doors’ best-selling song.
But look past Love Her Madly
and you have such unbelievably
good tracks as Riders on the Storm,
L’America, Been Down So Long, The
Changeling and, of course, the title
track. Game-changers of songs all.
For my money, the outstanding
musician on Love Her Madly is bass
player Jerry Scheff, who once played
bass for Elvis Presley. Listening via
the Musical Fidelity M3xVinyl I was
able to appreciate even more how he
manages to be totally inventive, with
unusual bass lines that drive the song
and create an underlying pulse, while
all the time containing the song’s
break-neck tempo (one of Scheff’s
jobs was to make sure keys man Ray
Manzarek didn’t play too fast!). The
M3xVinyl revealed the tone of his bass
better than I’ve ever heard, and also
delivered the best stereo image I’ve
heard from this track, given that it
was recorded wide, with instruments
played mostly left and right, rather
than spread across the sound-stage.
The spacey intro to L.A. Woman
was served up beautifully by the
M3xVinyl, which makes the bass
and drums intro even more exciting,
with the excitement increased
even more by how well the M3xVinyl
handled the crisp drumming of
John Densmore.
WHILE MUSICAL FIDELITY HASN’T
USED ANY OPAMPS IN THE
CIRCUITRY OF THE M3X VINYL,
THE CIRCUITRY IS NOT, AS THE
COMPANY CLAIMS, “ENTIRELY
DISCRETE” AS YOU CAN SEE
031

SPECIFICATIONS
Musical Fidelity M3x VINYL
Price: $2,500 (RRP)
MM INPUT
Frequency Response: RIAA
or RIAA/IEC ±0.2dB
Input Sensitivity: 5mV in for
500mV out (at 1kHz)
Input Impedance: 47kΩ
Input Capacitance: 50–400pF
selectable
Gain: 40 or 46dB with +6dB
function
THD+N: <0.028%
Signal-to-Noise Ratio: 95dB
Crosstalk: >100dB
Overload Margin: 26dB
MC INPUT
Frequency Response: RIAA
or RIAA/IEC ±0.3dB
Input Sensitivity: 500μV in
for 500mV out (at 1kHz)
Input Impedance:
25Ω–1.2KΩ selectable
Gain: 60 or 66dB with +6dB
function
THD+N: <0.28%
Signal-to-Noise Ratio: 80dB
Crosstalk: > 90dB
Overload Margin: 26dB
GENERAL
Output: 1×RCA (500mV nom
10V max)
Input: 1×RCA
Power Consumption (Max):
20-watts
Power Consumption
(Standby): <0.5-watts
Dimensions:
440×105×390mm
Weight: 6.6kg
Contact: Audio Marketing on
(02) 9882 3877 or visit
www.audiomarketing.com.au
032
MUSICAL FIDELITY M3x VINYL
I think Densmore was pretty excited to
be working with Scheff because I think he
lifted his playing to a level higher than I’d ever
heard from him before. Listen particularly to the
way his cymbals cut through the mix on this
track: you won’t hear that using a lesser phono
stage! Listen also to the repeated riff after the
rhythm change at 3.02 and how the Musical
Fidelity’s channel balance is so exact that you
can hear the almost imperceptible difference in
arrival times from left and right speakers. Again,
this is a level of detailing you just won’t hear
from lesser phono stages.
On Crawling King Snake (a cover of a John
Lee Hooker classic) you can hear not only the
restraint of Marc Benno’s guitar contribution,
but also the unrestrained scream of Robby
Krieger’s lead. But then listen to how purely
and delicately the M3xVinyl delivers the final
lighthearted Krieger contributions. The contrast
is educational. Morrison’s vocal in Riders on the
Storm was also delivered marvellously well by
the Musical Fidelity, and balanced perfectly
against the ghostly background vocals. The
sound of Manzarek’s Rhodes piano is also
amazing, particularly in the upper octaves.
It’s a masterpiece of engineering, considering
the ‘studio’ and the equipment used, so the
album is a real tribute to the skills and talents
of Bruce Botnick as well as those of the band.
I can never really listen to the lyric of Riders on
the Storm without thinking how it was a portent
of Morrison’s death just three months later.
The lyric also reflects that it was not only the
last track on the album, but the last track
Morrison would ever release.
A real test for any phono cartridge — or
any phono stage for that matter — is the
magical soundscape presented by the Alan
Parsons Project’s album I Robot. I was absolutely
captivated the minute the stylus dropped into
the title track that kicks it off. The mezzo who
sang the wordless lead vocal on this should
have been given a credit. (Presumably it was Jaki
Whitren, but it could also have been a member
of the English Chorale). The vocalese is a bit
reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s Great Gig in the Sky (it’s
actually much better!), which is rather fascinating
when you consider that Parsons was the engineer
for Dark Side of the Moon. The vividness of the
orchestral colouring on this track was reproduced
blindingly well by the Musical Fidelity M3xVinyl.
I personally think this was Alan Parsons’ best
album, mostly because it has more ‘best’ tracks
than any other PP albums. (Those tracks being
I Wouldn’t Want to be with You, Breakdown, and
Some Other Time.) I think his best-ever song is Eye
in the Sky, but it and MammaGamma are the only
PHONO STAGE
good songs on his album of the same name, so
it misses out according to my personal criteria for
‘Best Album.’ (And yes, I know Alan Parsons Project
is Alan Parsons and Eric Wolfson, so when I say
one I mean both.)
The Parsons link dictated that Dark Side
of the Moon just had to be the next album on
my audition list, and once again, the opening
track dictated the auditioning mood because
the clarity of the sound from the M3xVinyl was
such that as those ‘heart’ beats pulsed from the
speakers, I could feel my body melting back into
my listening chair.
Great sound has that ability to relax the
soul, and the sound from the Musical Fidelity
had me totally relaxed from the get-go. There’s
an amazing amount going on in Speak to Me/
Breathe, and I’m not only talking about the
spoken contributions. Then in the following track,
On the Run, listen to the pan that starts at 1.36
and then the panoply of effects that follows, and
hear how the imaging ability of the M3xVinyl
throws everything into stark relief. The breath
sounds as the track closes out were rendered
as well as I’ve ever heard them. Marvellous!
As for Time, I was revelling in the hollowness
of the acoustic: the echoed percussion was
rendered with amazing precision. Money revealed
yet again the M3xVinyl’s amazing ability to
separate the left and right channels while still
maintaining a crisp stereo image. And on Us and
Them I snapped to attention when I heard the
sound of Dick Parry’s sax — the M3xVinyl was
working wonders with it, so it was a flawless
performance, both sonically and musically.
During every album that I played while I
was preparing this review I experimented with
the RIAA curve setting, switching back and forth
between each and rather confoundingly, found
that I preferred the IEC-RIAA setting every time. I
really wasn’t expecting this! And it wasn’t because
it cut out rumble, because on all but one of the
LPs I played there was no recorded rumble, and
my system doesn’t have any rumble to remove
anyway. The IEC-RIAA setting just sounded better
to me, period. As for that single LP I played that
did have rumble on it (The Buskers’ Album) the
IEC-RIAA setting completely eliminated the
rumble recorded on this album whilst leaving
the street and traffic noises untouched. In other
words, a perfect outcome.
CONCLUSION
The Musical Fidelity M3xVinyl phono stage is
certainly a one-trick pony, in that it only does
one thing and accommodates only one phono
cartridge, but as Paul Simon says in his song of
that name, “it turns that trick with pride”.
The Power
to Deliver

EDGE M
MONOBLOCK POWER AMPLIFIER

EDGE NQ
NETWORK PREAMPLIFIER

www.synergyaudio.com 03 9459 7474  /synergyaudiovisual

 BEL CANTO
e1X DAC/CONTROL
& e1X AMPLIFIER
PREAMP & STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
W
hy Minneapolis-based John
Stronczer, the founder and chief
designer of Bel Canto, who once
described himself to an inter-
viewer as “American by birth and
French by orientation” decided on
an Italian name for his company was always a mystery to
me until I read a review of one of his Evo amplifiers in which
the reviewer (Steven Stone) wrote “Bel Canto’s original
products were single-ended tube amplifiers. These large,
hot, low-powered behemoths have very simple circuits that,
although inefficient, produce wonderfully lush, beautiful
sound. That’s why founder John Stronczer named his com-
pany Bel Canto, which is Italian for beautiful singing.”
E1X DAC/CONTROL PREAMP
Bel Canto’s e1X DAC/Control Preamp is a complex device,
though you’d never know it by looking at its front panel,
which has a single rotary control and a headphone socket.
Which begs the question of which is better: a single
multi-function control or a front panel full of buttons?
Funnily enough, my answer changed from the one to
the other over a single weekend. On Friday, which was the
day my review sample arrived, I was all for buttons.
034
On Monday, just three days later, I was a firm believer
in multi-function controls. It all had to do with my
experience over the weekend.
My wife and I had been asked by friends to stay the
weekend. After a very pleasant day touring vineyards in
the Barossa we were back at their place enjoying some
of what we’d purchased from the cellar doors when Mike
(not his real name) asked if I’d look at his system for him,
because he didn’t think that it was sounding as it should.
Now Mike absolutely loves his music, has a huge collection
of LPs and a somewhat smaller one of CDs, and his system
is very nice, with a carefully curated assembly of synergistic
components into which I had absolutely no input at all.
The first problem was that I couldn’t help him with his
sound problem because he couldn’t get any sound from
his system at all. “Funny, it was OK yesterday,” he said.
He was pressing buttons rather randomly on the front
panel of his amplifier, and every time he adjusted the
volume to see if he’d got a result, I heard a scratchy sound
from the left loudspeaker, so something was amiss. So of
course I offered to take over.
My first problem was that his amplifier was on the
floor and his system was in his ‘man-cave’ at the back of
the house, which had only one window and a single light.
I had to lie down on the floor (literally) in order to see the
front panel at all. Then when I was down there, it was so
dark and the writing on the front panel was so small that
even using the light on my phone it was difficult to see
which button did what.
The no-sound problem was quickly solved. It turned
out that his son, who was visiting in the school holidays,
 BEL CANTO e1X DAC/CONTROL & e1X
had plugged his phone into the system
and switched it to the auxiliary input,
which Mick never uses. He simply leaves
the input selector on phono and presses
the CD Direct button whenever he wants
to listen to a CD. But once we had sound, it
was obvious there were some fairly glaring
anomalies, again attributed to his son, who
was unfamiliar with his system, so various
other controls were inappropriately set.
Trying to work all this out while lying on
the floor using my phone to illuminate the
buttons and work out what was what had
me cursing buttons (silently of course!). But
the harsh light of the phone also revealed
that the amp’s proximity to the floor, along
with the fact that Mick’s wife refused to
set foot in his domain (or was not allowed,
I got two different stories on that one!)
meant that all the knobs and buttons had a
fairly generous covering of dust and carpet
particles, so I immediately had a fairly good
idea of why the volume control made
scratching sounds (although this wasn’t the
problem I’d been asked to trouble-shoot)
and why some of Mick’s button-pressing
might not have been terribly effective.
All this meant that we spent Sunday
disassembling his system, moving it all to
his studio (he’s a very talented artist, and
the difference in the lighting conditions
between his man-cave and his studio was
more than dramatic), then doing more
disassembly and spending several hours
with an air compressor, several of his artists’
brushes, cleaning solvent, side-cutters and
P2000 wet ‘n dry before re-assembling the
entire system.
All of which reveals why, on the
Monday, when I resumed writing this review,
I was now a fan of multi-function controls!
For a start, you don’t even have to see the
control in order to use it. Then there’s only a
single control, so there’s far less to go wrong
(or get dusty). And a multi-function rotary
control will be an optical encoder, so it really
doesn’t matter if it does get dusty.
But there are rotary controls and there
are rotary controls, because some are
more difficult to use than others, due to
poor programming decisions made by the
manufacturer. So, for the record, Bel Canto’s
control is so easy and intuitive to use that
most people won’t need to refer to the
Owners’ Manual at all. But if you do, the fact
that Bel Canto can explain every single one
of its functions in just a single page (page 5)
is proof of how easy it is to use.
PREAMP & STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
The only ‘non-intuitive’ issue with
using the control is that you have to know
what options are available for each sub-
menu, because they’re not ‘previewed’ on
the front-panel display. So, for example,
you have to know that the built-in phono
stage allows you to choose between four
different gain settings (40, 46, 60 and 66dB)
before you start setting this particular
parameter. You should, however, already
know what features are on offer as a part
of the purchasing process itself — such as
reading this or some other review of the e1X
DAC/Control Preamp, or simply having them
shown to you by your retailer.
I was intrigued
by Bel Canto’s
provision of a Tilt
control rather than
the usual bass and
treble controls,
which it ‘kind of’
replicates
In the extremely unlikely event that you
don’t know what settings are available, they
are all explained in detail on pages 6 and 7 of
said Owners’ Manual, complete with handy
and informative graphs to explain the e1X’s Tilt,
Bass Eq and Main HP options.
I was intrigued by Bel Canto’s provision
of a Tilt control rather than bass and treble
controls, which it ‘kind of’ replicates. I say ‘kind
of’ because whereas with bass and treble
controls you can boost both high frequencies
and low frequencies at the same time, with
a Tilt control whenever you boost the bass
frequencies you reduce the high frequencies
at the same time and whenever you boost the
high frequencies you simultaneously reduce
the low frequencies. So in essence you’re
‘tilting’ the otherwise-flat frequency response
one way or the other which, I guess is exactly
why it’s called a Tilt control.
Interestingly, after not having seen any
component fitted with a Tilt control for at
least twenty years, I’ve recently seen half-
a-dozen, so I guess it’s now either a ‘flavour
of the month’ control or manufacturers are
using the same OEM software/hardware IC.
In the case of the e1X, you get ten
different tilt options, from –5 to +5, with the
maximum settings offering a maximum of
3dB of boost and cut. So if you choose the –5
setting, for example, you’ll get –3dB of cut at
20Hz and +3dB of boost at 20kHz. The centre
frequency (or the tilt axis or hinge point if
you prefer) is at 775Hz.
The Bass Eq button is ‘kind of’ a bass
tone control control in that it allows you to
cut or boost low frequencies, again from –5
to +5, with the ‘maximum’ settings offering
a 3dB of boost and cut. The difference
between Bel Canto’s Bass Eq control and a
bass tone control is that whereas a bass tone
control will have an effect on frequencies
all the way up to 1kHz, Bel Canto’s Bass Eq
control has no effect on frequencies above
350Hz. Unlike some Bass Eq controls, which
are peaking types, Bel Canto’s Bass Eq control
action is ‘shelved’ so that if you choose, say,
+1.6dB of bass equalisation, the frequency
response below 350Hz will progressively
boosted with decreasing frequency to end
up at +1.6dB at 120Hz, after which it will
remain at this level all the way down to 20Hz.
As for the that ‘Main HP’ control, it
implements a second-order high-pass filter
for the main loudspeaker output so that
you can better-integrate a subwoofer into
your system (about which I’ll talk later in this
review). It gives you nine turnover points,
starting at 40Hz then moving up in 10Hz
increments to the maximum of 120Hz. Not
planning on using a subwoofer? Then you
can turn the filter off completely.
There’s also a ‘Sub LP’ (Subwoofer Low-
Pass) filter that allows you to interpose a
complementary 2nd-order low-pass filter
into the circuit of the e1X’s analogue line
output (not the main line output!).
Obviously, being a complementary
circuit, you again get nine turnover points,
starting at 40Hz then moving up in 10Hz
increments to the maximum of 120Hz, plus
the option of not having the filter in-circuit
at all. You can also adjust the output voltage
of the line output from –6dB to +6dB in
1dB steps. I am not 100 per cent sure of the
usefulness of this particular circuit, but I
guess it’s better to have the ability to do this
at this point in the signal chain than not.
035
 THE BEL CANTO E1X DAC/CONTROL
PRE PROVIDES ALL THE DIGITAL
INPUTS YOU COULD NEED, PLUS IT’S
BOTH ROON AND MQA COMPATIBLE
SO IF YOU HAVE A ROON ACCOUNT,
YOU CAN USE ROON REMOTE TO
CONTROL PLAYBACK OF YOUR
DIGITAL FILES
If you have a
stereo system
that includes a
subwoofer, you
should make
ANALOGUE INPUTS
The Bel Canto e1X has three analogue inputs one
of which is a phono input and the other two line
inputs. All are accessed via RCA terminals. The pho-
no input has four different gain settings — 40dB,
46dB, 60dB and 66dB — as mentioned previously,
which means you can deploy phono cartridges
with nominal outputs of 0.25mV, 0.5mV, 2.5mV or
5.0mV. In order that these can be either moving-
coil or moving-magnet designs, you are also able
to select the load applied: 50Ω, 100Ω, 500Ω, 1kΩ
or 47kΩ. If you don’t need one or more of these
inputs, they can be “hidden” from the input selector
switch so that you won’t have to scroll through
them. And if you’d prefer to name them to reflect
components in your own system, rather than the
default ‘PHON’, ‘LIN1’ and ‘LIN2’ you can — so long
as you stick within the four character limit and use
only upper or lower case letters or numerals. At the
very least you should change these to ‘Phon’, ‘Lin1’
and ‘Lin2’ because it looks so much better on the
e1X’s otherwise basic front panel display.
DIGITAL INPUTS
The Bel Canto e1X DAC/Control Pre provides all
the digital inputs you could need, plus it’s both
Roon and MQA compatible so if you have a Roon
account, you can use Roon Remote to control
playback of your digital files. To do this you will, of
course, have to use the Ethernet input, which ac-
cepts up to 24-bit/192kHz files and DSD64 in DSF
format. For higher rates you’ll need to use the USB
input, which accepts up to 24-bit/384kHz in PCM,
and MQA and up to DSD128 in DoP format. The
stored), then play it back. You can load the SEEK
app onto your tablet or smart phone but at the
time of writing, that device would have to be
made by Apple, because the app is iOS-only.
REMOTE CONTROL
The Bel Canto e1X is provided as standard with
a very handsome infra-red remote control that is
also heavy. So heavy ,in fact, (362 grams) that if you
needed to grab a weapon for self-defence, it would
be a very good choice! This remote controls only
the hardware-related components of the e1X: you
can’t use it to select and play music. For that, you
need to use Bel Canto’s free SEEK app.
SPECIFICATIONS
I know it’s unfashionable to refer to specifications
these days, but I usually can’t help myself and
when I looked at those provided with the e1X
DAC/Control Preamp I saw that in an otherwise
extremely comprehensive set of specs there was
one that was missing — the frequency response.
It only took a moment to realise that Bel Canto is
implementing its many response-tailoring features
including Tilt, Bass EQ, High-Pass and Low-Pass
filter options digitally, rather than by analogue
means. This means that all analogue audio signals
delivered to the e1X’s input are converted to digital
internally by an A–D converter for processing
before being converted back to analogue by a
D–A converter and the sampling and conversion
processes required to do this place an upper limit
on the unit’s high-frequency response.
The same high-frequency limitations apply

listening to this other digital inputs (AES, SPDIF and Toslink) are all
capable of 24/192 performance.
to the e1X Stereo Power amplifier but this time it’s
not because of A-D-A conversion but because of
Bel Canto pair If you don’t subscribe to Roon, you can instead
use Bel Canto’s free SEEK app to browse through
the use of Class-D amplification (Bel Canto puts
the –3dB point of the e1X Stereo power amplifier
a priority your stored digital music (no matter where it’s at 50kHz.)

036
 BEL CANTO e1X DAC/CONTROL & e1X
Although the upper frequency response limit
of this pair will be dictated by the power amplifier,
I think I would have liked some kind of bypass
circuit to be fitted to the DAC/Control Preamp.
FRONT PANEL DISPLAY
I rather liked that the very first thing the e1X does
when it turns on is light up every single element in
the front panel display (in three additive stages) to
create a large, blu-ish white rectangle so you can
see if you have any dead pixels. After this it shows
in turn the company’s name, the product’s model
number and then the software version it’s running
until finally showing the active input (at the left of
the display) and the volume setting at the right.
E1X STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
The weight of the e1X is a dead giveaway that
it’s a Class-D design with a switch-mode power
supply, but even if you don’t pick it up you can
tell from its size, because there’s no way you could
cram the power supply required for a Class-AB
design rated at 250-watts per channel into such
a small chassis. But what type of Class-D amplifier
stage is it using? Is it one from Hypex, or Purifi, or
IcePower? (Between them, these three manufac-
turers supply Class-D modules to almost every
high-end manufacturer that’s building Class-D
amplifiers.)
Look inside the e1X and you’ll find that
Bel Canto is using two 400-watt NCore Class-D
modules from Netherland-based company
Hypex’s NCcore range. “The output stage is a low
gain NCore Class-D stage that provides extremely
low noise and distortion while delivering up to 30
amperes of current,” says Stronczer. “The overall
architecture of this amplifier — along with the
other NCore-based products in our line — is a
two-stage architecture with no global feedback.”
Hypex says of its NCore 500 OEM module:
“The NC500 OEM amplifier module is an extremely
high-quality audio power amplifier module which
operates in Class-D. Not only does it offer a way
for audiophile music reproduction to continue
in an ever-more energy-conscious world, its
measured and sonic performance actually raises
the bar for audio amplifiers of any description.
Operation is based on a non-hysteresis 5th-order
self-oscillating control loop taking feedback
only at the speaker output. Furthermore, the
NC500 OEM is an unbuffered amplifier leaving
the implementation of an input buffer up to the
manufacturer. The NC500 is practically devoid
of any sonic signature so this external buffer is a
good way of tuning in a ‘house sound’.”
Hypex rates each NC500 OEM Class-D
module with an output of 400-watts into 8Ω,
and 700-watts into 4Ω but these are peak figures
PREAMP & STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
based on a single test frequency (1kHz) and a
distortion level of 1 per cent. Bel Canto rates
the e1X somewhat lower, claiming an output of
250-watts per channel into 8Ω, and 500-watts into
4Ω. Interestingly, Bel Canto used IcePower Class-D
modules (made by Bang & Olufson) in its REF500
amplifiers and Hypex modules here.
Stronczer may not have designed the second
stage of the e1X’s two-stage architecture, but he
did design the first (input buffer) stage, which is a
very fast, low-noise Class-A amplifier with a single-
stage folded cascode architecture and more than
500mA of peak current output capability that
has a very high open-loop bandwidth in order to
enable low distortion levels through the audio
band. Bel Canto says this single-stage high-current
amplifier stage (which it refers to as an SSHA) is
implemented using a vertical modular design
to permit the best use of IC-based and discrete
component design. “The SSHA module brings
a further element of dynamic resolution and
contrast to the NCore amplifier,” says Stronczer.
The SSHA stage delivers either 14dB or 20dB of
gain, depending on which internal switch setting
you use while the NCore module adds a further
13dB, so the overall voltage gain of the amplifier is
either 27dB or 33dB.
Rather than design his own power supply
Stronczer again turned to Hypex for an off-the-
shelf one. He uses that company’s SMPS (Switch
Mode Power Supply) S1200 which is a 1,200-
watt supply specifically designed to be used in
combination with Hypex’s range of UcD and
NCore amplifier modules.
LISTENING
It was only when I came to actually use the re-
mote control to adjust volume during my listening
sessions that I realised it has a fixed scrolling speed
and scrolls through every one of the
0.5dB steps that Bel Canto makes
available in order that you can pre-
cisely set your desired volume level.
This means that should you decide to
use it to ramp up from minimum to
maximum volume, you’ll be waiting
around 22 seconds.
So if you decide to make major
volume control changes, you’d be
better-advised to use the ‘Mute’ but-
ton on the remote.
If you follow my advice you’ll
find a ‘hidden’ feature of Bel Canto’s
remote, which is that it has two
settings: ‘Soft’ and ‘Mute’. ‘Mute’ mutes
the volume entirely, while ‘Soft’ knocks
it back by not quite so much (10dB,
actually). I say it’s a ‘hidden’ feature
because it’s not mentioned in Bel
Canto’s Owners Manual.
I rather expected that the e1X’s
front panel display would show 0.0
to 100, but in fact, if you press the ‘Up’
volume button once you’ve reached
100, the display shows ‘Max’. Because
of this, I rather expected that if the
display was showing 0.0 and I pressed
the ‘Down’ volume button, the display
would show ‘Min’, but it doesn’t. (And
so far as I could tell, ‘100’ and ‘Max’ are
exactly the same volume level.)
BELOW YOU CAN SEE THE FOUR
SINGLESTAGE HIGHCURRENT
AMPLIFIER STAGES SITTING
VERTICALLY ON THE MAIN PRINTED
CIRCUIT BOARD. BEL CANTO CALLS
THESE SSHA MODULES
037
 BEL CANTO e1X DAC/CONTROL & e1X
SPECIFICATIONS
Bel Canto e1x
Stereo Power Amplifier
Price: $10,100 (RRP)
Power Output (8Ω): 250w/ch
Power Output (4Ω): 500w/ch
Minimum Load: 2Ω
Frequency Response:
0Hz–50Hz ±3dB
THD+N: 0.002% (1w/1kHz/4Ω)
IMD (CCIF): 0.0003%
Output Noise: 35μVRMS (A)
Gain: 27 or 33dB (Selectable)
Damping Factor: >500
Output Impedance: <16mΩ
Power Consumption: 44W
Standby Consumption: 0.5W
Dimensions (WHD):
451×400×83mm
Weight: 5.9kg
Bel Canto eX1
DAC/Control Preamplifier
Price: $11,000
MM/MC Input:
Input Sensitivity: MM: 2.5–
5mV; MC: 0.25–0.5mV
Input Load: MM: 47kΩ; MC:
50ΩΩ, 100Ω, 500Ω, 1kΩ
RIAA Accuracy:
50Hz–15kHz ±0.25dB
THD+N: <0.01% (A-weighted)
S/N Ratio: >70dB (A-weighted)
Line Inputs:
Maximum Input: 2.2 VRMS
Input Impedance: 10kΩ
THD+N: 0.003%
Dynamic Range: 110dB(A)
General:
Dynamic Range: 126dB (A)
THD+N: <0.001%
IMD (CCIF): <0.001%
Power Consumption: 20-watts
Dimensions (WDH):
451×400×83mm
Weight: 6.4kg
Contact: Absolute Hi End
on 04 8877 7999 or at
www.absolutehiend.com.au
038
PREAMP & STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
The very first music I played using this Bel
Canto combo was Fiona Apple’s wonderfully
titled album “The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the
Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve
You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do.” It’s a title that
captured my imagination even though I have no
idea of what it means. The first first track (Every
Single Night) had me impressed by just how quiet
this Bel Canto combo is. There was absolutely no
background noise at all, meaning that I could really
hear all those weird things Apple has going on in
the background that are usually lost in the noise
floor of most amplifiers.
The same was true of Daredevil which is an
outlandish track that just doesn’t work unless
you have a first-class sound system. First there
are the rhythmic textures of the various disparate
percussion instruments, and the stabbing sounds
of Apple’s piano, all of which are fiendishly difficult
to reproduce, yet the Bel Cantos e1Xes made it
seem easy. But then listen to how well the Bel
Canto e1Xes deliver the multiple acoustic spaces
Apple used when creating the various sound
effects. If you listen using ordinary amplification,
you just won’t hear this — everything will appear
to have been recorded in the same acoustic space.
The sub-bass throb that leads in on Valentine
was delivered perfectly by the Bel Cantos, neither
too dry nor too wet, which are the two most usual
mistakes made by many amplifiers. Listen, too, to
how Apple’s vocal strategies change during the
song — the catches in her voice, the inflexions —
and you’re just going to love the fade at the end.
These strategies are all magnificently rendered by
the Bel Canto e1Xes.
If you’ve never heard anything of Fiona Apples,
you simply have to listen to Jonathon. The sounds
are amazing, but it’s the actual composition itself
that is flawless — musically, this is a straight-out
genius composition. The minor keys against the
majors, the use of semitones, it’s a jaw-dropping
musical experience. The very first time I heard it,
I was so amazed by the music that I didn’t even
notice the lyric, much less Apple’s voice. Once
again, the Bel Canto e1Xes were more than up to
the task of delivering her genius. Pay very special
attention to the closing moments!
Listening to Bjork’s Cocoon (from “Vespertine”)
revealed that the ability of the Bel Cantos e1Xes
to deliver transients (the glitches) is second to
none. These are superbly fast amplifiers, so fast that
the effects Bjork incorporates may well have you
fearing for your tweeters, so turn up the volume at
your peril. Listen to the beautiful high-frequency
sounds she’s captured a few tracks later on Pagan
Peril and marvel that the Bel Cantos can deliver
them so effectively. On Frosti, which follows, the
rhythmic perfection of their delivery is awesome.
The same transient capabilities were again
ably demonstrated to me when I fired up
Radiohead’s “In Rainbows”, particularly in the
opener 15 Steps, but also right throughout the
album. In 15 Steps I admired the way the Bel Cantos
were able to keep such incredible separation
between the left and right channels whilst at the
same time keeping the vocals and bass perfectly
centred. There’s absolutely no bleed at all!
Turn up the volume on Nude and you’ll be
able to appreciate the massive power delivery of
the Bel Cantos, which includes the almost second-
sense knowledge that there’s still plenty of power
in reserve. The fullness of the sound stage and the
complete lack of distortion are also stunners and
you can hear that Yorke’s really into it, putting his
utmost best into his performance, and you sense
that Phil Selway and Colin Greenwood realise this
and lift their usually tight partnership to a point
where they sound arc-welded together. The sound
of the finger-picked acoustic guitars on Faust Arp
is perfect, as is the string sound of the Millennia
Ensemble. On lesser amplifiers, these strings can
sound syrupy, sweetened, and lacking in texture,
but with the Bel Canto e1Xes the sound was
accurately and authentically realised.
Another album you need to hear loud via
the Bel Cantos and a great pair of speakers is The
Strokes’“This Is It”. Do this and I’ll guarantee you’ll
be in for the duration right from the title track
opener. The sounds of Nikolai Fraiture’s bass and
Fabrizio Moretti’s kit are totally real, bursting from
the speakers, driven by the Bel Canto e1Xes. The
pair are again front and centre on Someday and
again on Last Nite and yet again on my personal
favourite Hard To Explain. It’s all just rock n’ roll, but
that’s the beauty of it, really, and the Bel Canto
e1Xes do it oh-so-well.
CONCLUSION
If you have a stereo system that includes a sub-
woofer, you should make listening to this Bel Canto
pair a priority, because integrating a subwoofer
into a high-end two-channel system is very tricky
to do without the tools at hand to do it. And by
‘tools’ I mean the high-pass, low-pass, phase and
sub-gain circuits that are fitted to the Bel Canto
e1X DAC/Control Preamp. These are what will
enable you to integrate a subwoofer perfectly with
your main loudspeakers so that you will always
be guaranteed an improvement in the sound of
your hi-fi system. (And a subwoofer will improve
the sound of any hi-fi system, no matter how large
your main speakers might be).
And if you’re not planning on using a
subwoofer, you should still make listening to these
Bel Canto e1Xes a priority, simply because they
work so well and sound so amazing.
 YAMAHA
NS-3000 Reviewer Eric Haswell

LOUDSPEAKERS

040
 YAMAHA NS-3000
Y
amaha is the only Japanese
company that is world-famous
for the quality of its loud-
speakers. There are two other
famous Japanese loudspeaker
manufacturers — TAD and TOA
— but few people outside of Japan have ever
heard of them and both of them operate almost
exclusively in the commercial sphere, so they’re
not exactly household names.
The very first loudspeakers Yamaha
designed and built back in the 50s were not hi-fi
loudspeakers. They were for use in the company’s
range of electronic organs, which it named
‘Electone’ and promoted as having a sound the
same as that of the conventional organs they
replaced. In other words, a ‘natural sound.’ This
‘natural sound’ slogan is continued to this day in the
model numbers of all Yamaha loudspeakers — NS.
Amongst audiophiles, the most famous of
Yamaha’s loudspeaker designs over the years
was undoubtedly the NS-1000. Introduced in
1974 it was the first loudspeaker in the world
to use Beryllium diaphragms and it was the first
loudspeaker to have a gloss black cabinet finish.
This was a three-way, three-driver bass reflex
design that was also available as a professional
monitor for studios (NS-1000M).
Yamaha’s current flagship domestic
loudspeaker, the NS-5000, shares much of the
DNA of the original NS-1000, right down to the
fact that it, too, is a three-way, three-driver bass
reflex design with almost the same physical
dimensions and a similar finish.
Amongst audio professionals, the most
famous of Yamaha’s loudspeakers designs was
the NS-10 and its variants (NS-10M, NS-10 Studio
et al). These speakers became so famous with
recording engineers that at one point it could
fairly be said that almost every single recording
studio in the world owned at least one pair. Even
now, if you look at any photograph of a recording
studio that was taken between 1980 and 2000
you’ll almost be guaranteed of seeing a pair of
Yamaha NS-10Ms.
Reasons for the popularity of the NS-10
design were many, but according to an in-depth
survey of 36 pairs of studio loudspeakers by
Philip R. Newell, Keith R. Holland and Julius P.
Newell, the main ones were— “the free-field
frequency response was what was needed for
pop / rock music mixing, the better than average
step function response which enables ‘rock and
roll punch’, the distortion characteristics being
better than average for a loudspeaker of its size
and that the output sound pressure levels were
suited for close-field studio monitoring with
adequate reliability.”
LOUDSPEAKERS
No longer available, the Yamaha NS-10M was
a two-way, two-driver infinite baffle design that
used 180mm bass/midrange driver and a 35mm
soft-dome tweeter in a 10.4 litre enclosure.
Which brings us to the Yamaha NS-3000,
which is a two-way, two-driver bass reflex design
that uses a 190mm bass/midrange driver and a
30mm soft-dome tweeter in a 28.4 litre enclosure.
ZYLON TWEETER
High-end loudspeakers do not sell like hot-cakes,
so developing unique drivers for a specific model
is a very expensive exercise, so when a second
model is added to a particular range, there’s a
huge incentive to use parts developed for the
first model in the second. Marketing departments
usually call this process ‘trickle-down technology’
and canny consumers should always be on the
look-out for products that use parts developed for
more expensive designs, because it means they’re
getting a level of quality and performance that
would not otherwise be possible.
This is certainly the case with Yamaha’s NS-
3000 design, because it uses exactly the same
tweeter as Yamaha’s range-topping NS-5000
design. On the face of it (literally!) it’s a fairly
conventional 30mm dome tweeter, but if you
look under the hood, you’ll find it’s anything but.
For starters, the dome is made from a
material that was first used in a loudspeaker
in the NS-5000 — Zylon. You’ve probably not
heard of this material but it currently holds the
world record as being the world’s strongest man-
made fibre, one whose cross-sectional strength
outperforms both steel and carbon-fibre. In fact THE RESONANCE SUPPRESSION
it’s so strong that in order to save weight, Zylon CHAMBER BEHIND THE ZYLON
cord is used instead of stainless steel rigging on DOME SUPPRESSES UNWANTED
modern racing yachts. RESONANCES, BUT ALSO
CONTROLS BACKWAVES FROM THE
In terms of weight in relation to tweeter DOME TO IMPROVE THE TWEETER’S
domes, Zylon is actually lighter than Beryllium, INTRINSIC PERFORMANCE

YAMAHA SAYS THAT “ZYLON
DRIVERS BOAST A SOUND VELOCITY
COMPARABLE TO BERYLLIUM YET
POSSESSING THE CHARACTERISTIC
SOFTNESS OF TEXTILES.”
These are small
speakers but this
track was the
first of many that
proved to me
that these little
speakers punch
well above their
weight in the bass
042
YAMAHA NS-3000 LOUDSPEAKERS
Yamaha’s previously favoured material, with a
density of 1.55g/cm³ compared with Beryllium’s
density of only 1.8g/cm³. One problem with
Zylon is that it can be adversely affected by both
ultraviolet and visible light, so Yamaha coats its
Zylon domes and cones with an aerospace alloy
containing nickel, copper and iron, one of whose
brand names is Monel.
Yamaha says that “Zylon drivers boast a
sound velocity comparable to Beryllium yet
possessing the characteristic softness of textiles.”
As for its composition when used as a dome and
cone, it’s a weave that’s made of a composite of
carbon and glass fibres.
Also unconventional is the resonance
suppression chamber behind the Zylon dome
that, as its name suggests, suppresses unwanted
resonances, but which also controls back-
waves from the dome to improve its intrinsic
performance. Controlling resonances and back-
pressure is an expensive business — just ask
B&W how much it cost to develop and produce
its famous ‘Nautilus’ system, which is designed
to achieve the same end. Yamaha has taken a
rather different engineering approach to the
same problem, however, so that whereas B&W
uses a single tapered tube filled with different
absorption materials, Yamaha uses multiple tubes
of differing lengths.
Yamaha calls this a resonance suppression
chamber because it is, and that’s why I referred
to it as such in the previous paragraph. However
Yamaha also abbreviates it to an “RS” chamber.
I assume no-one told them what those initials
stand for here in Australia!
The diameter of the dome itself is 25mm,
which increases to 30mm if you include the
dome’s suspension. The entire unit sits in the
exact centre of a machined aluminium face-plate
that is 114mm in diameter.
ZYLON BASS/MIDRANGE
The Yamaha NS-3000’s bass/midrange driver is
190mm diameter overall, but it has a moving
diameter (cone plus roll surround) of 145mm and
a cone diameter of 115mm. The all-important
Thiele/Small diameter is 130mm, which gives it
an effective cone area (Sd) of 133cm². Not one of
these dimensions is 160mm, or even close to it, so
I have no idea why Yamaha’s specifications list this
as being a 160mm driver.
The bass/midrange driver cone is also formed
from Zylon and although it looks dish-shaped
in photographs, you’ll find that in the flesh it’s
actually flared, with a recessed central dust-cap
that’s also made of Zylon. The bass/midrange
driver’s frame appears to be made of machined
aluminium (rather than a casting).
ACOUSTIC ABSORBER
Just as the performance of a tweeter’s dome
can be affected by resonances, so too can the
performance of a bass/midrange driver’s cone,
though this time the resonances are caused by
standing waves within the cabinet, due to the
fact that sound waves reflected from one surface
(say the top of the cabinet) are interfering with
sound waves reflected from an opposite surface
(in this case the bottom of the cabinet). Most
manufacturers try to limit these reflections by
‘softening’ the hard internal surfaces with padding
or foam — or a combination of both. Yamaha
says it solves the problem by fitting what it calls
an ‘acoustic absorber’ which it says “cancels the
standing waves by use of internal resonance.”
Unfortunately the company does not go
into any technical detail about which resonances
are cancelled or exactly how this is done, but it’s
all done with a small U-shaped rectangular tube
filled with acoustic wadding. In the absence of
any other technical information I can only assume
that this tube is acting as a Helmholtz resonator,
and has been tuned to resonate at the frequency
Yamaha’s engineers wish to cancel.
Yamaha uses two such ‘acoustic absorbers’
inside the NS-5000, each of which is is J-shaped,
rather than U-shaped as in the case of the
NS-3000. Once again I can only assume the
smaller cabinet volume of the NS-3000 and the
YAMAHA NS-3000 LOUDSPEAKERS

043
 YAMAHA NS-3000
resulting difference in the resonant frequency
required to be cancelled is the reason for the
differences in shape and size of the acoustic
absorber and the fact that there’s only one of
them inside the NS-3000’s cabinet.
Yamaha’s engineers say of the device
inside the NS-3000: “Designed specifically
for the NS-3000, the new acoustic absorber
reduces the impact of internal standing waves
while simultaneously reducing the need for
sound absorbing material. Consequently,
musical energy remains distinctly evident.”
CROSSOVER NETWORK
The crossover network in the Yamaha NS-
3000 that splits the incoming frequencies to
send to the drivers is relatively simple, as I’d
044
LOUDSPEAKERS
expect in a two-way design that’s not using
any compensation, but the parts used are
top-quality, no better evidenced by the fact
Yamaha’s engineers have specified the use
of an Mcap Supreme Evo capacitor made by
Mundorf, in Germany. And the inductor used
in the NS-3000 is one of the largest I have
ever seen on a small two-way design — even
larger than the one the British Broadcasting
Corporation’s engineering department speci-
fied for use in its famous LS 3/5A broadcast
monitor design.
Yamaha specifies the crossover frequency
as 2.8kHz.
But speaking of specifications, someone
at Yamaha either has a sense of humour or
is trying to slip one past the keeper, because
the frequency response of the Yamaha NS-
3000 is not only listed fairly conventionally
(as 39Hz to 60kHz –10dB), but also quite
unconventionally (as 39Hz to 100kHz –30dB).
Even if it were possible to hear a sound
with a frequency of 100kHz (the upper limit
of hearing in an adult human is generally
accepted to be 20kHz), a reduction of 30
decibels at that frequency would make it
even less likely to be audible, even in an
anechoic chamber.
REAR TERMINALS
Given its engineering prowess it’s not surpris-
ing that Yamaha decided to make its own
loudspeaker terminals rather than buy them
off-the-shelf from one of the usual audiophile

BEHIND
YAMAHA’S
“MAKE WAVES”
SLOGAN
Yamaha’s corporate slogan ‘make waves’ is
an exceedingly clever one, because it works
across so many of this famous Japanese
company’s different businesses. The oldest of
these, of course, is its musical instrument divi-
sion, which kicked off ‘way back in 1887 when
the company was founded to manufacture
pianos and reed organs.
Yamaha is now one of the largest piano
manufacturers in the world, not least because
in addition to manufacturing its own Yamaha
pianos it now also manufactures pianos
for Bösendorfer. Over the years, Yamaha
started manufacturing other types of musical
instruments as well, so it now makes an
almost-orchestral range covering brass,
woodwind and stringed instruments as well
as percussion instruments. And, as all of these
instruments — whether they’re acoustic or
electric — create sound waves, Yamaha’s
“make waves” slogan is most appropriate.
So why do I think Yamaha’s slogan is
so clever? Well, Yamaha’s marine division
makes jet-skis as well as a huge range of
outboard motors for boats, and when you
attach an outboard motor to a boat and head
off, you’ll certainly “make waves” — both
sonic and aquatic.
Yamaha is also famous as manufacturer
of motorcycles, snow-mobiles, quad-bikes
and golf carts. The same “make waves” slogan
could still apply to these products, since all
make sound waves, but Yamaha instead uses
a completely different slogan — “Revs Your
Heart” — which to me, doesn’t have quite the
same ring.
However, although it may use different
slogans across its various divisions, all of
them use the same Yamaha corporate logo
which, if you look at it closely, you will see
is comprised of three tuning forks enclosed
within a circle. Obviously tuning forks are
associated with music (they were actually
invented by a musician called John Shore in
1711) but you also have to tune engines, so
the logo is still quite apt. And if you think I’m
drawing a long bow with that analogy, you
should know that until quite recently, Yamaha
made archery products and a great many
Olympic medallists used Yamaha bows on
their way to gold!
YAMAHA NS-3000 LOUDSPEAKERS
speaker terminal suppliers — WBT, etc.
And a fine job they’ve made of it too,
because the terminals and the posts themselves
are sculpted from solid brass. They’re multi-way
types that accept stripped wire, spades, rings and
banana plugs and both terminals are both colour-
coded and signically identified. These terminals
are fitted to a very tasteful solid alloy plate that
simply bears the Yamaha logo, the Yamaha name
and the model number of the speaker — NS-
3000. This plate is in turn fixed to the rear panel
with four Philips-headed stainless steel bolts that
fix into captive nuts inside the cabinet. (I assumed
from the use of stainless steel that the plate is
not made of aluminium due to the potential for
galvanic corrosion.)
BASS REFLEX PORT
The rear-firing bass reflex port has a curiously-
YAMAHA’S ENGINEERS HAVE
moulded exit ‘horn’ that’s shaped a bit like the
SPECIFIED THE USE OF AN MCAP
petals of a flower, presumably to improve air SUPREME EVO CAPACITOR MADE
flow in and out of the port to reduce the pos- BY MUNDORF, IN GERMANY. THE
sibility of chuffing, or ‘port noise’. The port itself is INDUCTOR USED IN THE NS3000
IS ONE OF THE LARGEST I HAVE
185mm long overall and for most of its length is
EVER SEEN ON A SMALL TWOWAY
55mm in diameter. The petal-shaped flared horn LOUDSPEAKER DESIGN
is moulded from black plastic; the tube itself is
made from pressed paper.
As with many modern bass reflex designs,
Yamaha has included multi-stage foam plugs
that can be used to partially or completely block
output from the ports. The theory is that these
can be used to ‘improve’ the sound if you end up
putting the speakers at a sonically unfavourable
position in your listening room. Personally, I’d
suggest a better option would be to move your
speakers somewhere more sonically favourable in
your room, but I guess if this is not possible you
could use the plugs as a last resort.
SPS3000 STANDS
The Yamaha NS-3000s do not come with stands.
Yes, I know we’ve pictured them on stands, and
you’ll see stands in most of the advertisements
for the NS-3000s, but as the fine print in those ads
As with many
says: “Although images of the NS-3000 may depict
the SPS-3000, it is not included.”
modern bass reflex
Yamaha Australia offered me a pair of SPS- designs, Yamaha
3000 stands, which it says “were specifically
designed for use with the NS-3000s” for the has included
purposes of this review, but I declined, preferring
to use my own stands instead which, as it multi-stage foam
happened, were the perfect height to elevate
the tweeters to the exact point they should
plugs that can
be — level with my ears when I’m sitting in my
preferred listening chair.
be used to adjust
Because I didn’t have the stands I cannot offer output volume
any personal comment on their construction,
but according to Yamaha, the risers of the stands from the ports
045
 YAMAHA NS-3000 LOUDSPEAKERS
are made from wood (MDF) while the plate at
the top of the risers is made from 6mm metal
plate. The base is made from two metal plates
which sandwich a wood chip/rubber mixture
that absorbs any vibrations that escape the four
rubberised vibration-isolating feet.
Yamaha says of these stands: “The SPS-
3000 provides the ideal surface upon which
the speaker should sit for optimal performance.
After painstaking design and engineering of the
speaker cabinet rigidity, the speaker stand must
not compromise this. The vibration-isolating feet
of the SPS-3000 safeguard against any negative
impact of vibrations thus maintaining the
accuracy of the audio.”
If you choose to buy the SPS-3000 stands,
you can figure on paying around $2,000 per pair
for them.
WARRANTY
Yamaha has strongly promoted the warranty
terms of its flagship NS-5000 speakers, and justifi-
ably so, because it’s a fantastic bargain for buyers.
Not only does Yamaha give a 10-year warranty
on its NS-5000 speakers but in the unlikely event
that the speakers speakers develop a fault in the
first 12 months, Yamaha does not repair them, but
instead gives you a brand new pair!
046
This same warranty is not, unfortunately,
available for the smaller, less-costly NS-3000s:
these instead attract the industry-standard
warranty of 5 years and there’s no Aladdin’s Lamp
‘new for old’ clause for a fault occurring within
the first 12 months. However, Yamaha Australia
says that if you register your purchase of a pair of
NS-3000s on its website, it will offer an additional
5 years of warranty protection to bring the total
warranty period up to 10 years.
Considering that all the elements in the NS-
3000 are built to the same standard as those in
the NS-5000, and use mostly identical materials, I
think you could safely expect more than ten years
of trouble-free life!
LISTENING
The second thing I did after unboxing my
review pair of NS-3000s was to double-check
the packaging to see where the grilles had gone.
(The first was to set them up facing each other,
connected in anti-phase, so I could run them in
using pink noise).
It transpired that I need not have double-
checked the packaging for the missing grilles,
because the NS-3000s not only do not come
with grilles but they’re also not even available as
an optional extra. So you’d better like the look of
‘naked’ loudspeakers!
Look carefully at the photographs
accompanying this review and you’ll see that the
left and right speakers are slightly different due
to the tweeters being offset differently on each
speaker, so rather than being identical pairs the
speakers are actually’mirror-imaged’ pairs.
Mirror-imaging, although more costly for
manufacturers, increases the speaker-positioning
options for end-users. The idea is that if you have
the speakers fairly close together, you’d arrange
the pair so the tweeters were to the ‘outsides’ of
the cabinets, whereas if the speakers were further
away from each other, you’d arrange the cabinets
so the tweeters were to the ‘insides’. It’s all about
being able to adjust the stereo image so it’s
correct at the listening position.
Because of the different positions of the
tweeter on the left and right speakers Yamaha
has had to position its logo and name to the
left of one tweeter and to the right of the other.
Personally I would have preferred it if there were
no logo at all on the front baffle or, perhaps, that
the logos were rather smaller than they are, but I
guess that since this is exactly what Yamaha does
with its branding on its expensive grand pianos,
it should not be a surprise that it would do the
same with its loudspeakers.
I should say before I start with my
experiences listening to the NS-3000s that
 YAMAHA NS-3000
although as I said at the outset, I ran them in for
48-hours continuously using using a pink noise
test signal in order to settle the suspensions and
form the capacitors, I found that for the first few
hours of my listening sessions
with music, the sound was
actually improving whilst I
was listening, so I gave them a
further 48-hours and re-started
my listening sessions only to
find the same thing happening
They respond — the sound kept improving
the longer I listened.
beautifully This is far longer run-
in time than I usually find
to clockwise necessary with loudspeakers,
so maybe it’s down to the
movements of the construction of the drivers, or
the cone material. So when
volume control, you are auditioning these
becoming livelier speakers for yourself you will
need to make certain that you
and more dynamic are listening to a pair that’s
been completely run in!
as you increase the Incidentally, the reason
for running in speakers with
volume them facing each other and
LOUDSPEAKERS
one of the two wired out of phase is that the
resulting cancellation of the sound means that
I’m not listening to pink noise for days on end.
It also allows me to evaluate the quality control
during production and the accuracy of the drivers
and crossover network, because the lower the
volume level of the pink noise, the better the pair
matching. The almost-complete cancellation I
heard when running in the NS-3000s was proof
positive of the excellence of the driver-matching
and the quality control achieved during the
manufacturing process.
Once the Yamaha NS-3000s were ready to
review, I placed them on my stands, without
their ports obstructed by the foam plugs and
30 centimetres from the rear wall. In my room,
I thought this resulted in an excellent balance
between the bass, mids and highs.
One thing few small speakers do very well is
handle amplifier power. As you turn up the volume,
their sound becomes more congested as the
dynamics compress. So it was rather a revelation to
discover that this is not the case with the NS-3000s.
They respond beautifully to clockwise movements
of the volume control, becoming livelier and more
dynamic as you increase the volume — so quite
the opposite of what usually happens.
047

You can also hear
the accuracy of
Yamaha’s left/
right speaker
matching on
Sober, by listening
to the tone of
the backing
vocals remaining
absolutely
identical
SPECIFICATIONS
Yamaha NS-3000
Price: $12,999 (RRP)
Type: Two-way bookshelf
Freq. Resp: 39Hz–60kHz
(–10dB)
Sensitivity: 87dBSPL
Crossover Frequency: 2.8kHz
Nominal Impedance: 6Ω
Minimum Impedance: 4.6Ω
Dimensions (WHD):
244×394×326mm
Weight: 13.1kg
Contact: Yamaha Music
Australia on 1800 805 413
or visit au.yamaha.com
YAMAHA NS-3000 LOUDSPEAKERS
You do eventually reach a limit, of course, but
I was amazed at how loudly I could play them.
The extreme treble of the NS-3000s, which is
a little forward when listening at normal volumes,
becomes a little more obvious at these higher
volumes, but I found that I could ameliorate both
these traits by facing the speakers directly up the
room, so I was listening a little off-axis. Also, after
20 or 30 minutes of listening at high volume,
the treble softens a little, presumably as a result
of the tweeter’s voice-coil heating up and its
impedance increasing slightly as a result.
That said, I wasn’t too worried either way,
because the NS-3000’s high-frequency sound is
so beautifully clean and nuanced that I imagined
that I could tell whether the drummer was
using Zildjian or Sabian cymbals. Either way, the
sound was glorious, with a crisp impactful strike
transient on any hi-hat followed by a ride that
had no tinny-ness whatsoever, just a beautifully
true ring, until finished with a lovely sizzling cut-
off. Crash cymbal sonics were equally good, and
perfectly imaged by the Yamahas.
As for the midrange, just listen to Mount
Eerie (Phil Elverum) on his album ‘A Crow Looked
At Me.’ If you can get over the tragic lyric of every
single song on the album (written shortly after
the death of his wife, Canadian cartoonist and
musician Geneviève Castrée, of pancreatic cancer,
aged 35) you’ll be able to marvel at the intimacy
with which the Yamaha NS-3000s deliver his
chronicle/tribute to her. The speakers position his
voice perfectly wherever he is in the room (he
moves around a bit!) and deliver the tonality of
his voice with true-to-life accuracy (particularly in
My Chasm). Then, on When I Take Out The Garbage
at Night, the acoustic guitar sound you’ll hear is
as if the guitar is in the room with you. Listen to
the string scrapes and to the microphone rustles,
and to the plaintive, sparse piano. It’s a rough
recording, and you can hear all the mistakes
listening via the NS-3000s — they don’t pull any
punches. You’re with him there, in the room in
which she died, as he plays the instruments she
left behind, and the Yamaha NS-3000s transmit all
that raw emotion viscerally.
The sparse piano on ‘A Crow Looked At Me’
reminded me a bit of one of my favourite Lorde
albums (actually all her albums are my favourites)
— 2017’s ‘Melodrama’. Green Light, which kicks
off the album, starts a little Eerie-ly, but soon
bursts into a totally full soundfield. The deep bass
on this album is super-important to the overall
effect, so at the intro at 0:49 I was impressed by
how well the NS-3000s handled it. These are small
speakers but this track was the first of many that
proved to me that these little speakers punch
well above their weight in the bass department,
both in terms of extension and in the feeling of
weight they can attach to kick drums, bass guitars
and other low-pitched instruments.
I absolutely loved Max Martin’s comment
about Green Light, which bears repeating here: “By
no Top 40 rubric should her song fire off, within its
first 60 seconds, a spectral synthesizer wobble, a
strident line of house piano, a subterranean vocal
plunge, and an apropos-of-nothing gear shift that
feels like storm clouds ebbing to the sun.”
But then again it’s something she does so
often, so well and so naturally.
You can also hear the accuracy of Yamaha’s
left/right speaker matching on Sober, by listening
to the tone of the backing vocals remaining
absolutely identical as they alternate between
the left and right channels. The sweetness of
the sibilances on the word ‘sober’, is totally
enchantingly delivered by the NS-5000s.
As for Liability, I can think of few speakers that
have delivered this track as well as the Yamaha
NS-5000s did. It was a masterpiece performance
and became a go-to track for visitors to whom I
wished to demonstrate not only Lorde, but also
the whole point of a having a high-fidelity audio
system. It’s kind of got everything, from Lorde’s ‘go
for it’ to the unsweetened count-in for the piano,
to the fullness and richness of the piano sound
itself, to the finger-scrapes on the guitar strings
then there’s Lorde’s stage-centred voice first
strong and powerful with no FX, then little-girl,
then with added FX and echo.
If push came to shove I’d have to say that the
very deepest bass is not an overly strong region
for NS-3000s but it’s nothing a subwoofer couldn’t
fix and if you’re prepared to sacrifice a little stage
depth, you’ll be surprised at how much more bass
they can muster if you move them closer to a
wall. Indeed this could easily be an argument for
positioning them on a bookshelf or a side table
rather than a pair of stands — not to mention
that you’ll save yourself a couple of thousand
dollars into the bargain.
CONCLUSION
Don’t go looking for a pair of NS-3000s in any
finish other than piano-gloss black, because it’s
the only one available, meaning that you’re really
going to have to love these speakers a lot if you’d
have preferred them in another colour or finish
— and/or would rather have had the option of
being able to fit a grille.
You can count me as a person who’s not a
fan of high-gloss black finishes, or of speakers
without grilles, but you can also count me as
someone who liked these speakers so much
that’d I’d buy them anyway — which proves to
you just how much I loved them.
&VIMRXIKVEXIHEQTPMǻIVWXLI
[E]SJXLIJYXYVI$
(SQIMRERHǻRHSYX

497-4;7442-&2&3=,7*&8.38*,7&8*)c&251.+.*7c'7&3)
84*3/4=&3)&,7*&8(954+(4++**844

Contact 1195 Botany Road www.audiosolutions.net.au

Mascot NSW 2020 info@audiosolutions.net.au
02 9317 3330
050
 CLASSÉ DELTA PRE AND STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
CLASSÉ
DELTA
PRE AND STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
I
f you have even a passing knowledge of
the French language, you will know that
Classé’s company name is pronounced
not with a silent ‘e’, as in ‘class’, but with the
final ‘e’ pronounced as an ‘a’, as in Class-A.
This is not because Classé was founded in
a French-speaking province in Canada (although
it was, in fact, founded in Montréal, which has
more French speakers than English speakers), but
because the company’s very first product — the
DR-2, a 25-watt amplifier designed and built by the
company’s sole founder, David Reich — was, in fact,
a Class-A amplifier.
That’s rather appropriate, because the Classé
Delta Stereo power amplifier that’s one of the
two products reviewed here is also a Class-A
amplifier — or at least it is up to a power output
of 12.5-watts, after which it transitions to being a
linear Class-A/B amplifier up to its rated output of
250-watts per channel into 8Ω (and 500-watts into
4Ω and 350-watts into 2Ω) and the Classé Delta
Pre operates completely in Class-A. (For technical
details about the differences between Class-A and
Class-AB amplifiers, see the article ‘Amplifier Classes’
on page 58.
CLASSÉ DELTA
PREAMPLIFIER
Although it is only a two-channel pre-amplifier, the
Classé Delta Pre has all crossover controls and time
THERE ARE CURRENTLY delay controls (and more!) that you would expect
THREE MODELS IN THE
CLASSÉ DELTA RANGE. to find in a full-featured home theatre component:
THIS IMAGE SHOWS very few two-channel pre-amplifiers provide these.
THE CLASSÉ DELTA You can also configure for either one or two
MONO AMPLIFIERS AT subwoofers and when you tell the Pre that you’re
THE TOP AND BOTTOM,
WITH THE CLASSÉ using a subwoofer (or two) a dialogue opens that
DELTA PREAMPLIFIER. allows you to set the crossover frequency, crossover
THE CLASSÉ DELTA slope and, if you’re using two subwoofers, whether
STEREO POWER you’re using them in stereo or as two mono subs.
AMPLIFIER REVIEWED
HERE LOOKS IDENTI It also allows you to delay the signal to the subs
CAL TO THESE MONO so you can time-align the signal to be in sync with
VERSIONS OF IT. your main front left and right speakers.
Reviewer Andrew Rundle
Rather trickily, if your left and right speakers
happen not to be equidistant from your listening
position, you can use this delay circuit to delay the
audio signal going to the speaker closest to you in
order to sync the left and right channels. You can
do this even if you are not using a subwoofer.
You can also choose to high-pass the
signal going to your main speakers, leaving the
subwoofer(s) to handle all the bass, or send a full-
range signal to them, so both main speakers and
subwoofer(s) are operating at the same time.
All this enables extraordinary flexibility when
setting up your system.
The USB port on the front panel of the Delta
Pre is specifically designed to work with portable
media devices made by Apple ( ‘Pad, ‘Pod and
‘Phone ) accepting data up to 96kHz, as well as
providing power for them. It’s also able to be used
to load firmware updates downloaded onto a USB
stick from Classé’s website.
The Classé Delta Pre’s volume control is not
a variable potentiometer, which allows almost
infinite adjustment of volume level, but a stepped
attenuator, so you have to select a pre-determined
volume level. Unlike many such devices, which
offer a fairly limited number of levels, the Delta
Pre’s attenuator has a 107dB operating range
(from –93dB to +14dB) and over the most critical
section you are able to adjust the volume in
0.25dB increments. Says the Owners’ Manual: “Most
stepped attenuators offer too few steps, causing
the listener to choose a level that is a bit too soft or
too loud, not just right. The volume display on the
touchscreen reads in 0.25 dB increments, thereby
closely approximating a continuous volume
control, allowing the desired level to be selected
precisely as required for critical listening.”
In an age where it’s rare for high-end
components to offer any type of tone control at all,
the Delta Pre offers three different types of controls
for tone, although one of these three is aimed
more at compensating for deficiencies in your
051
 CLASSÉ DELTA PRE AND STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
listening room’s acoustics than adjusting tone
per se. The more straight-forward ‘tone’ controls
on offer are bass and treble tone controls, whose
operation is so ubiquitous that they need no
further explanation, and a ‘Tilt’ control, which is
rare enough that it does require an explanation
(at least it does unless you’re familiar with pre-
amplifiers manufactured by UK manufacturer
Quad, which popularised this particular circuit).
The ‘Tilt’ control actually ‘tilts’ the Delta Pre’s
frequency response away from flat, so that if you
‘tilt’ it one way, you get more bass and less treble,
while if you ‘tilt’ it the other way, you get less bass
and more treble. It operates a bit like a child’s
see-saw. This sounds a bit like how bass and
treble controls work except that whereas with
tone controls you can increase or decrease bass
without affecting treble, the tilt control always
I CAN’T REALLY IMAGINE ANYONE
EVER WANTING MORE PHYSICAL IN
PUT FACILITIES, EITHER ANALOGUE
OR DIGITAL, THAN ARE FITTED TO
THE CLASSÉ DELTA PRE
052
However, Classé has improved on the original
implementation of the ‘tilt’ control by allowing
you to specify a range of frequencies that will
not be affected when you otherwise ‘tilt’ the
response. To my mind, this is a huge and useful
improvement. Classé has, however, been fairly
conservative regarding the amount of boost
and cut available, providing only 6dB rather than
the more usual 10–12dB. This too, to my mind, is
very sensible. If you need more than 6dB there’s
something seriously wrong with one or more of
the other components in your system.
As for the other ‘tone’ control, the Classé
Delta Pre has a two-channel, five-band
parametric equaliser (PEQ) built in that allows
you to construct up to five different filters for
each channel. One or more of these would
most appropriately be used to compensate for
 CLASSÉ DELTA
If, for example, you had a standing wave
that resulted in your room accentuating
frequencies at 113Hz by 2.5dB, you could build
a filter that provided 2.5dB of cut at 113Hz.
Such parametric filters are widely available on
powered subwoofers, but I can’t recall seeing
one previously on a preamplifier. Classé’s Owners’
Manual (which is absolutely excellent, by the
way, and well worth reading solely for the
information contained in it) advises first that
“These filters should be constructed based upon
audio measurements made by a well-qualified
acoustical engineer” and then follows up by
stating: “These powerful filters are made available
in a completely manual fashion to help your
professional installer give you the best listening
experience possible.”
Whilst I agree that a professional skilled in
these measurements will be able to deliver a
better end-result than the average end-user, I do
have to say that with the number of loudspeaker
and room acoustics measurement packages now
available, it is possible for average end-users to
do a pretty good job provided they do some
research into the “dos” and “don’ts” of equalisation
before starting out. The actual process would
not be completely dissimilar to the one used for
subwoofers, which is described at www.tinyurl.
com/sub-cal. Classé has been particularly sensible
with the PEQ circuit by limiting the boost to just
3dB per band, but enabling 20dB of cut per band.
Because Classé uses digital signal processing
(DSP) to provide these tone, tilt and PEQ
functions (as well as several others) you should
be aware that using the DSP will ‘downgrade’
many of the specifications claimed for the Delta
Pre. For example the ‘native’ frequency response
of the Delta Pre extends from 1Hz to 2MHz but if
The Classé Delta Pre
has a two-channel, five-
band parametric equaliser
(PEQ) built in that allows
you to construct up to five
different filters for each
channel
PRE AND STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
the DSP is in-circuit (even if it’s not actually doing
anything at all) the frequency response is reduced
to 10Hz to 84.5kHz. Other differences are that
distortion increases from 0.0004% to 0.002% and
noise increases from 133dB to 105dB. So to ensure
maximum sound quality, you’ll need to use the
Classé Pre’s ‘Bypass’ mode.
The Classé Delta Pre has two muting modes.
One mode mutes the level by a specific amount
SPECIFICATIONS
that you can preset, such as 20dB or 30dB. Classé Classé Delta Preamplifier
calls this mode ‘Dampening’. The other mode
LINE INPUTS
allows you to ‘mute’ the volume to a specific
Frequency Response: 1Hz–
level. I put the word ‘mute’ in inverted commas
2MHz (–3dB)
because if you were listening at –20dB and you
THD: <0.0004% (1kHz)
had the muting set to –20dB, nothing at all would
IMD: <0.001%
happen. However, if you set it to –93dB, the sound
Maximum Line Input Level:
would totally disappear. Once you have used the
9Vrms/4.5Vrms (Bal/SE)
Menu to select which of these you’d like to use,
Signal-to-Noise Ratio: 133dB
the ‘Mute’ control uses that mode (though you
(A-wtd)
can always change it to the other via the Menu).
Crosstalk: 140dB (1kHz)
I would have liked having the two modes always
Gain Range: –93dB to +14dB
available, because this would enable me to either
Channel Matching: 0.05dB
temporarily drop the level of sound for a while,
Input Impedance: 50kΩ
yet still be listening to the music, or totally mute
Output Impedance: 200/50Ω
the sound so I could take a phone call. What I
(Bal/SE)
elected to do was activate the Dampening mode
Max Output: 18//9Vrms (Bal/
and whenever I wanted a full mute I’d just switch
SE)
to an unused input. Best of both worlds!
The Standby button also serves as a ‘Data
PHONO INPUTS
Save’ mechanism. Each time the Standby button
RIAA Deviation (20Hz-
is pressed, the Delta Pre will save any custom
20kHz): <0.2dB
settings you’ve made. It does not, however, save
Selectable Load for MM: 50,
any adjustment you have made to system balance
100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350,
(though phono balance will be remembered) nor
400, 450pF
will it save the volume level you were using —
Selectable Load for MC: 7.5,
this defaults to either –30dB or to whatever other
10, 33, 50, 82, 100, 330Ω, 1kΩ
level you have pre-set.
Gain (High/Low):
41.5dB/60dB
INPUT/OUTPUT FACILITIES
S/N Ratio (High/Low):
I can’t really imagine anyone ever wanting more
93dBA/74dBA
physical input facilities, either analogue or digital,
than are fitted to the Classé Delta Pre. For ana-
DIGITAL INPUTS
logue sources you get two pairs of balanced line-
USB-B: 32, 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96,
level inputs (XLR) plus two pairs of unbalanced
176.4,
line level inputs, as well as a pair of unbalanced
192, 352.8, 384kHz, DSD64,
phono inputs. The phono inputs can be switched
DSD128, DSD256
for moving-coil or moving-magnet, between low
and high gain and offer an extended range of
File Types: WAV, AIFF, ALAC,
FLAC, WMA, AAC, MP3,
loading options (see Specifications panel). And if
a single phono input is insufficient for your needs,
OGG-VORBIS, DSD64, (DoP)
SPDIF: PCM 32k, 44.1k, 48k,
you can re-purpose the XLR2 balanced input to
88.2k, 96k, 176.4k, 192k /
be a phono input. All these inputs can be routed
to the output entirely in the analogue domain, or
DSD64
via the digital domain, as mentioned previously.
Digital audio inputs include USB (PCM up to
GENERAL
Dimensions (WDH):
32-bit/384kHz and DSD up to 256), AES/EBU (PCM
up to 32/192), and three (each) coaxial and optical
444×449×121mm
Weight: 13.5kg
connections (all PCM up to 32/192).
Price: $16,900 (RRP)
053
 THE LOW NOISE FAN INSIDE THE
CLASSÉ DELTA STEREO POWER
AMP IS CREATING A LOCALISED
LOWPRESSURE AREA WITHIN THE
AMPLIFIER, WHICH THE AIR INSIDE
YOUR ROOM, BEING AT HIGHER
PRESSURE, IS RUSHING INTO THE
AMPLIFIER TO FILL, IN ACCORD
ANCE WITH NATURE’S ABHORRENCE
OF A VACUUM, VIA THE ICTUNNEL
054
there’s an Ethernet connection, so you can get
files from anywhere on your network.
In all the Classé Pre has five outputs, all with
balanced and single-ended options. There are
outputs for the main left and right channel and a
subwoofer; the other two outputs (Aux 1 and Aux
2) can be configured to mirror the main stereo
channels for bi-amping, or one can be used to
send a high-passed signal to a second sub, as I
explained earlier in this review.
HDMI? No, it’s not on the standard Classé
Pre, but you can add a 4K-capable HDMI module
that will give you four HDMI inputs and one HDMI
output to the unit.
But what of any wireless options? There are
no specific options but if you’ve connected the
Pre to your network, you could use Apple AirPlay
because the Classé Pre will deliver content from
any iOS device that’s connected to the same
network. But there’s no Bluetooth and frankly I
don’t think there should be on a component of
this quality. The quality of an audio signal sent
wirelessly (via BT or any other system, including
AirPlay) will always be inferior to the quality of a
AirPlay-connected sources. You can also remotely
control the Delta Pre with Classé’s free App which
does everything the infra-red remote can do and
more — but you do have to have the Delta Pre
connected to your home computer network in
order to be able to use this App (which is avail-
able for IOS and Android).
CLASSÉ DELTA STEREO
POWER AMPLIFIER
That louvre-looking window that dominates the
front panel of the Delta Stereo Power amplifier
is actually the air intake for what Classé calls
(and has trademarked) its “ICTunnel”, with the
“IC” bit not standing for Integrated Circuit, but for
“Intelligent Cooling”, which the company claims
“removes heat from the amplifier by pulling cool
air through the intake on the front panel.”
“Pulling cool air?” Professor Julius Sumner
Miller would be turning in his grave. “The air is
being pushed into the amplifier!” he’d be shouting
down from the heavens. Which is true.
 CLASSÉ DELTA PRE AND STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
The low noise fan inside the Classé Delta Stereo
power amp is creating a localised low-pressure area
within the amplifier which the air inside your room,
being at higher pressure, is rushing into the amplifier
to fill, in accordance with nature’s abhorrence of a
vacuum. Like quite a few manufacturers of high-
power amplifiers, Classé has elected to minimise the
amount of heat-sinking required (and remove it from
being located externally, as it
would otherwise have to be) by
using a fan to remove the heat
from the internal heat-sinking.
As for the “intelligent” reference,
this simply references the fact
that the fan only turns on when
The Classé Delta required, and only runs as fast as
required to remove excess heat.
combo delivered Where is that heat removed to?
If you look around the back of
the depthy richness the amplifier you’ll see the fan
itself, which exhausts via the
of the soundfield rear panel. So as well as not
obstructing the intake on the
in a way that front panel, which would be
was completely unlikely, you also have to make
sure the exhaust vent on the
gratifying rear panel is not obstructed in
any way.
The next most obvious
feature of the Classé Delta
Stereo’s front panel are those
two power output meters, which will show power
output in watts (but only if your loudspeakers
present a pure 8Ω resistance to the output
terminals). Because most loudspeakers do not
present pure 8Ω resistance in most cases the output
power level shown will only be an approximation.
Classé suggests that you instead use the meters to
determine if the amplifier is running in its Class-A
mode or its Class-AB mode, with the Owners’ Manual
advising that: “A good rule of thumb is that when
the pointer is below/left of vertical the amplifier is
operating in Class-A.”
The two meters are back-lit, with that lighting
able to be switched through three different levels or
turned off entirely.
Despite reading output power, the meters are
not physically connected to the amplifier’s circuitry.
They’re instead connected via an optical coupler,
whose signal is converted to digital so it can be
delivered to the needles logarithmically to deliver
VU-like movement.
“A VU needle ballistics response is preferable
to a PPM (peak-reading) response in the context of
a ‘power meter,’” says Classé designer Sergiu Ignat
when asked about this. “A VU will certainly miss
some of the peaks in a musical program, but we
considered that showing potential clipping more
often (as a PPM type would do) may discourage
users from listening comfortably to a satisfactory
level. While less spectacular than a PPM, the VU-type
response was the judicious choice.”
055

SPECIFICATIONS
Classé Delta Stereo
Power Amplifier
Frequency Response:
1Hz–650kHz (-3dB)
Power Output:
250 watts per channel (8Ω)
500-watts per channel (4Ω)
350-watts per channel (2Ω)
THD: <0.0007% at 1kHz
Input Impedance: 82kΩ
Voltage Gain: 29dB
SMPTE IMD: <0.0018%
CCIF IMD: <0.004%
Signal-to-Noise Ratio: 120dB
Crosstalk: 107dB (1kHz)
Slew Rate: 75V/μs
Damping Factor: 850 (1kHz)
Dimensions (WDH):
444×492×222mm
Weight: 46.4kg
Price: $19,900 (RRP)
Contact: Bowers &Wilkins
Australia on 02 9196 8990 or at
www.classeaudio.com
056
CLASSÉ DELTA PRE AND STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
The rear of the Classé Delta Stereo is
dominated by that fan I’ve already mentioned,
either side of which are pairs of multi-way colour-
coded speaker terminals that are very sensibly
offset so you can use any type of speaker wire
and/or connection that you like. Excellent design!
In another example of excellent design, although
I might be temped to regard it as overkill, the
terminals have a feature built-in called ‘torque
guard’ that works exactly like a torque wrench.
When the terminals are sufficiently tight, further
attempts to increase tightness will simply result in
a ratchet-like clicking sound. I say overkill because
in a lifetime of tightening speaker terminals, I have
only ever broken one, and that was because it was
a terrible design in the first place. Classé’s ‘torque-
guard’ terminals (made by Furutech, as are all the
terminals on the Classé Delta components) are,
however, totally cool!
Above the fan and speaker terminals are
the line inputs. You have the choice of using
unbalanced (single-ended, or SE) RCA terminals or
balanced terminals, which are industry-standard
XLR types. If, for whatever reason, you choose to
use the unbalanced inputs, Classé recommends
you leave the two pins that otherwise connect
the ‘ground’ and ‘negative’ terminals of the XLR
input (pins 1 and 3 respectively) in place.
Arrayed down the left-hand edge of the
rear panel are an Ethernet jack, a USB connector
(simply for firmware upgrades), an RS232 jack,
CAN-BUS terminals, jacks for infra-red extenders
and d.c. triggers and an automatic standby
switch that be set so that the amplifier stays on
permanently or switches itself off after it hasn’t
detected an audio signal for twenty minutes (and
switches itself back on if such a signal is detected).
I was very pleased to find that the Classé
Delta Stereo has a very, very comprehensive
regime in place to protect the amplifier from
damage in the event of a fault condition (usually
an external fault, but not always). Perhaps most
importantly, because it’s the most common fault,
the Delta Stereo will shut down automatically if
you accidentally short-circuit its output terminals
with, say, a stray strand of speaker cable. It will
also shut down if excessive current is drawn from,
say, a low-impedance loudspeaker. It will also
shut itself down in the event of there being too
much direct current at the speaker terminals —
though this is to protect your loudspeakers as
much as it is the amplifier itself. It will also shut
itself down if the amplifier becomes too hot, in
spite of the fan cooling, plus it will shut down if
the cooling fan itself fails, is disconnected, or is
unable to spin. But the Classé Delta Stereo does
more than just protect your expensive investment
— it keeps an ‘Event Log’ of any faults, so that you
(or more accurately, the technician tasked with
investigating the fault) has a complete record
of what happened. I rather liked that Classé felt
obliged to point out in its Owners Manual that
“Protection events are rare and generally occur
due to issues that are external to the amp. They
should be interpreted positively. The amp is doing
what it’s designed to do.” I’d totally agree with
this statement. Modern protection circuits do not
interfere with sound quality and most of the time
sit there doing absolutely nothing at all. But when
they do cut in, the fact that they’ve done so will
not only save you thousands of dollars — literally
— but will also ensure you have a pristine ‘as-new’
amplifier, rather than one that’s been repaired.
LISTENING SESSIONS
I was right in the middle of reading the book
“Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs!” written by
Dennis Dunaway who was, with Vince Furnier,
a founding member of the Alice Cooper band
(Furnier changed his name by deed poll to Alice
Cooper just so it was the same as the band) when
the Classé Delta pre/power combo landed on
my doorstep, so it seemed only appropriate that I
start by spinning a few Alice Cooper classics.
One of the first was Be My Lover, from the
band’s 1971 “Killer” album. This is an absolutely
fabulous track (if you can get past the fact that
the thematic is the one Lou Reed used when he
wrote Sweet Jane for the Velvet Underground, and
the structure is a copy of one the Rolling Stones
made famous — 2.31 in if you’re interested).
It’s a perfect example of the complexity of the
band’s arrangements, and the undeniable musical
talents of the various members. Alice Cooper
seems to be remembered more for biting the
head off a chicken (which he didn’t do, BTW, at
least according to Dunaway) and the band for its
theatrics, than for the music.
Listen to the music minus the theatrics and
you’ll be impressed. Dunaway’s bass lines are
interesting, Neal Smith’s drumming is amazing
and the lead and rhythm guitar contributions
are exceptionally good. The self-referencing lyric
is also a step above that of most bands of their
ilk, and that of a good many highly-regarded
songwriters as well. Listening via this Classé
combo made that all transparently clear.
One problem I always had with AC was
that their song titles often obscured just how
good the songs were. A classic example is Killer’s
Dead Babies, which contains the lyric “Daddy
is an agrophile in Texas/ Mommy’s on the bar
most every night/ Little Betty’s sleeping in the
graveyard / Living there in burgundy and white.”
The bass intro to this track is sheer genius, and
again the Classé combo made this clear.
 CLASSÉ DELTA
And listen to the subtlety of the hi-hat sizzle!
Then just listen to the title track (and the closer)
and you’ll hear why Frank Zappa was such an AC
fan. This is just great music, great sound, great
recording technique. Admittedly the Classé
combo makes the double-tracking more obvious
than you’ll hear from lesser amplifiers, but this
only seems to add to the effect. You’ve gotta love
the Dr Who close-out too!
And if you’re wondering why AC would
choose to close with Killer, the opener, Under My
Wheels, will show you why. Sure it’s a classic rock
track, but with a precision that’s mind-blowing
despite the “everything but the kitchen sink”
approach to the sonics. Naturally I finished my
session with School’s Out; how could I not? Which
meant I had to crank the volume to 11 (couldn’t
resist the Spinal Tap reference, but in point of fact,
it was more like –9 on the Classé Pre’s display.)
Although the song is anthemic, and the childrens’
voices inspired, only AC could have included the
line “We got no class / And we got no principles
/ And we got no innocence / We can’t even think
of a word that rhymes.” ( Dunaway goes into detail
about this lyric in his book).
Since I’d been thinking of Zappa while
listening to AC, I decided to use the Classé Pre
and Delta Stereo combo to spin up some of
his classics as well, starting with Hot Rats. The
opening instrumental, Peaches En Regalia, is
PRE AND STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER
wonderfully scored, so much so that you almost ”A VU NEEDLE BALLISTICS
RESPONSE IS PREFERABLE TO A
miss that it also has a great melody. What you PPM PEAKREADING RESPONSE IN
can’t miss is the incredible sense of fun, and THE CONTEXT OF A POWER METER”
it’s this sense of fun that’s not only captured SAYS CLASSÉ DESIGNER
exactly but also amplified by the Classé duo. SERGIU IGNAT
The follower, Willie the Pimp, not only features
a blazing, bafflingly complex (and long!) guitar
solo by Zappa but also the incredible electric
violin sound of Sugarcane Harris (whose sound
you can compare to that of Jean-Luc Ponty’s
electric on the closer track) and the incomparable
rhythm section of John Guerin (drums) and Max
Bennett (bass). Both musicians were from jazz
backgrounds and both went on to play with Joni
Mitchell on Court and Spark, Hissing of Summer
Lawns and Hejira. (Indeed Guerin and Mitchell Admittedly the
were once an item, and the song Hejira is her
version of their break-up.)
Classé combo
I had not listened to ‘Hot Rats’ for a while
(whereas ‘Apostrophe’ is an almost-weekly listen)
makes the double-
and was actually surprised at how modern tracking more
and jazzy it sounded. Indeed if it were released
today anonymously I am certain that it would obvious than you’ll
shoot rapidly up the avante-guard jazz charts to
number 1. It would also become a favourite with hear from lesser
audiophiles on the basis that it’s so wonderfully
recorded that it’s a great system-tester. Listen
amplifiers, but this
particularly to Ian Underwood’s sax sound on
Gumbo Variations, where he does his best Archie
only seems to add
Shepp imitation, referencing why Zappa called to the effect
057

CLASSÉ’S CLAIM THAT HEAT IS
REMOVED FROM THE AMPLIFIER
BY “PULLING COOL AIR THROUGH
THE INTAKE ON THE FRONT PANEL”
IS NOT QUITE TRUE... IT’S ACTUALLY
PUSHED IN THROUGH THE INTAKE
CLASS-A
& and the Delta Stereo uses both Class-
CLASS-AB
058
the album (which was his first solo effort, by the
way), Hot Rats. “On his recording of The Shadow
of Your Smile [Shepp] plays a solo that sounded to
me like an army of pre-heated rats screaming out
of his saxophone,” said Zappa.
Yep, this is music from the 60s and 70s, but
at least one musician who was producing hits
back then is still producing them, so I thought I’d
bring my auditioning into the 21st century by re-
listening to Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways
from just last year. Despite the fact I think that
he’s really taking the piss on most of the tracks
(My Own Version of You being my No 1 exhibit)
it’s still an extraordinarily listenable album. Dylan
famously told The New York Times “The lyrics are
the real thing, tangible, they’re not metaphors.”
But we all know what Dylan thinks of interviews.
S
ince the company is actually named
after a particular ‘Class’ of amplifier,
A and Class-AB circuit topologies, you
should really know a little about both
these circuit types.
Basically, in order to ‘amplify’ an audio signal
we need to use a special type of semiconductor
called a transistor which allows you to use a low
voltage (the input) to control a much higher
voltage (the output). This means that the word
‘amplify’ is something of a misnomer because it’s
not actually making the low voltage signal any
bigger, it’s just making a different, higher-voltage
signal increase and decrease in perfect unison
with the low-voltage signal.
Various different types of solid-state devices
have been invented to do this. The most common
of these is the bipolar junction transistor (BJT).
Another common one is the metal oxide
semiconductor field effect transistor, or MOSFET.
Classé uses a special kind of MOSFET known as a
lateral MOSFET.
Nonetheless, whatever I think of the lyrics, the
music is great and the production values are very
high and the Classé Delta combo delivered the
depthy richness of the soundfield in a way that
was completely gratifying. And is it just me, or
did the Classé combo make Dylan’s voice sound
better than I’ve ever heard it before?
But if you want to hear production values,
you can’t go past auditioning these Classés with
Amaarae’s debut long-player ‘The Angel You Don’t
Know’ (do, however, be prepared for some head-
snapping — and speaker-bending — sound
effects). Although her music is often called ‘afro-
pop’, the fact that every single one of the fourteen
tracks on TAYDK is completely different makes this
an ineffective stylistic definition. But if it’s a genre-
bender of an album, it’s also a toe-tapping, finger-
snapping sonic revelation of an album, from
her multi-tracked, echoed vocals to the depth-
charged bass and take-no-prisoners percussion.
CONCLUSION
The Classé Pre and Classé Delta Stereo honour
their brand name in every one of its meanings.
Sure, the circuitry is technically Class-A, but the
sound itself definitely rates an ‘A’ in its class, so the
amplifiers are ‘Class A’ in that sense as well. And if
I can twist the pronunciation a little further, these
amplifiers are most definitely ‘classy’ as well, as
you can certainly see for yourself from the photos
in this review and will be able to hear for yourself
when you audition them.
Because transistors can only handle a fairly
small amount of power, multiple transistors are
required to be connected together in order to
achieve high power output levels.
When using multiple transistors, they can
also be connected together in different ways,
called ‘Classes’. We’re only going to deal with three
of them here in this review: Class-A, Class-B and
Class-AB.
In a Class-A amplifier, the transistors handle
100 per cent of the audio signal, so they conduct
though the full 360 degree sinusoidal waveform.
This means that the transistors are working at
their maximum capability, which means they
draw maximum power and generate maximum
heat.
To avoid this, amplifier designers came up with
a Class-B design, where two different transistors
were used. One transistor handled the first half-cycle
of the audio signal from (0 to 180 degrees) and the
other handled the second half-cycle, (from 180
degrees to 360 degrees), after which it’d hand the
audio signal back to the other transistor.
 Whilst-ever one transistor was ‘on’ the other
one was ‘off.’ There were two problems with this
system. The first was that you had to use one type
of transistor for the 0–180° part of the cycle, and
a completely different type of transistor for the
180–360° part, and the two different devices have
different electronic characteristics.
The second, bigger, problem with this
arrangement was that transistors cannot switch
instantly, so there was always a ‘glitch’ at the point
of switching which created so much distortion
this circuit could not be used for amplifying audio
signals. This is where Class-AB comes in.
In a Class-AB amplifier, each transistor
conducts for more than 180 degrees, so there’s an
overlap that effectively eliminates the switching
glitch.
If you make the overlap quite small you
are able to reduce the cost of the amplifier by
having a smaller power supply, less expansive
heat-sinking and a reduced number of output
transistors. But there will still be a small glitch
when the audio signal changes from one
transistor to the other. This can be partially
overcome by increasing the size of the overlap,
but of course as you increase the amount of amplifier will operate up to 12.5-watts in Classé Delta Stereo would still be operating
overlap you also have to increase the size of the Class-A before switching to Class-AB. in the superior Class-A mode.
power supply, the area of heat-sinking and add In the scenario described in the We should note that there is some
additional output transistors. previous paragraph, so long as you listen disagreement about what constitutes a
The amount of overlap is determined by at a volume level that requires these two ‘Class-A’ circuit design—even amongst
the amount of bias voltage you apply to the amplifiers to deliver less than 2-watts, you’d amplifier designers. Some designers claim
transistors. If you use a low bias, the amplifier be hearing ‘Class-A’ sound all the time from that the only ‘true’ Class-A circuit is one
will operate in Class-A mode up to a certain set both amplifiers. If, however, you turn up where only a single semiconductor is used
power say, 2-watts, before switching to Class- the volume so you’re listening at a constant to produce the audio signal, and that there
AB. Let’s call this Amplifier X. If you use a higher level of 10-watts, Amplifier X would be can be no ‘sharing’ of the audio signal
bias, as Classé has done with its Delta Stereo, the operating in Class-AB mode while the between different semiconductors.

WHERE IS Technology) purchased both B&W and Classé

CLASSÉ MADE?
Where products are made is becoming an increas-
ingly important question for many audiophiles, par-
ticularly here in Australia. Originally manufactured in
Canada by Classé itself, the brand continued to be
manufactured in that country until it was purchased
by Bowers & Wilkins in 2001, which moved produc-
tion to China. However, when B&W was in turn
purchased by EVA Automation (in 2016) it put Classé
into hibernation, which included dispensing with
the services of Classé’s president, David Nauber, de-
spite the fact that the company was in the process
of developing a brand-new model series — Delta.
In 2018 Canadian company Sound United (which
already owned Marantz, Denon, Polk and Definitive
from EVA and one of its first actions was to
hire David Nauber to bring Classé out of
mothballs and finalise the development of
the Delta Series models. Its next move was
to move production of the Delta Series from
China to Japan, making use of that country’s
famous Shirakawa Audio Works manufactur-
ing facility, where it was already manufactur-
ing high-end Denon and Marantz products.
“Shirakawa had the most comprehensive
manufacturing and testing capability that
I’d ever seen,” says Nauber. “Everything from
how a board gets made, to how a product
gets assembled, to how the packaging is
tested—it was beyond anything that we’d
ever done.”
You may also be intrigued (as were
we) by how closely Classé’s Delta Series
components resemble the Michi pre
and power amplifiers made by Rotel.
The resemblance was so uncanny I even
wondered if they’d been made in the same
factory. The answer, of course, was ‘No!”.
Rotel makes its Michi amplifiers in China,
whereas Classé makes its Delta amplifiers in
Japan. A very important difference. But then
I wondered about the chicken and the egg.
Which came first? Who copied who? For the
answer to that you only have to look back
to Classé’s CA-M400, CA-2100, CA-2200, CA-
3200 and A-5200 which Classé introduced
back at the turn of the century, which look
almost identical to the Delta (but used
different internal circuitry). So although
the Delta Series itself is new for Classé, the
company came up with this distinctive look
long before Rotel ever did.

059
 Spendor’s Classic 200Ti is the
titanium-baffled version of the
company’s flagship Classic 200,
taking their standard price of
$34,999 up to $38,999. While
they hark back to the BBC
template from which Spendor
was born, and still deliver
music with the captivating
warmth and charm of the
1970s originals, the latest
models are built around the
newest generation of Spendor
technology — advanced poly-
mer and Kevlar cones, refined
crossover networks, enhanced
cabinet structures, new elasto-
mer panel damping and new
style magnetic grilles.

060
 SPENDOR
A SHORT HISTORY
OF SPENDOR
LOUDSPEAKERS
Interview feature Jez Ford
“ T
hese days there are few
things outside of perfor-
mance cars and hi-fi, and
maybe wine, watches and
art, where you have to take
a hands-on ‘test-drive’ before
you can make an informed buying or upgrade
investment decision,” notes Philip Swift, CEO of the
UK’s Spendor Audio Systems Ltd. “Good retailers,
and the ‘driving experience’, not internet sales,
continue to be an important link in the supply
chain. As a specialist manufacturer with the focus
always on performance I don’t think the fundamen-
tals which Spendor applied 50 years ago are very
different to those that underpin everything we do
today. What has changed is the availability of new
and superb materials, manufacturing techniques,
software and instrumentation, alongside the easy
availability of a vast library of music of all genres in
wonderfully musical-sounding — though OK, not
every recording is perfect — high-res formats.”
Philip Swift is clearly a businessman as well as
an audio enthusiast. Previously the co-founder of
Audiolab, he took over Spendor at the beginning
of 2000, and the company has since increased its
turnover tenfold. And it still manufactures all three
of its product ranges in the UK.
“Yes, we design and manufacture all Spendor
drivers and cabinets in-house in the UK. This
gives us complete control over the quality of our
products and manufacturing processes. It would
be difficult to continue using some of the special
proprietary materials and techniques — the
hand-finishing methods and special calibration
and testing we have developed for our drivers,
cabinets, crossovers and complete loudspeakers
— if they were made in Asia or outside the UK.
FEATURE
“Besides, our end-customers, dealers and
distributors in Asia have always liked that our
products are totally made in the UK. We wouldn’t
want to lose that advantage, it’s an inherent
element of our personality and individuality.”
Indi Imports, which recently took over
Spendor’s distribution in Australia, clearly agrees.
“The Indi Group made a decision to sell only
brands which have a true heritage and history
in the audio industry,” says Indi Imports’ MD
Paul Riachi. “That’s one reason why we took the
opportunity with Spendor. And also, of course,
because their build and sound quality is, I believe,
the very best coming out of the UK.”
THE ATOD OF SPENDOR
Spendor’s current collection of loudspeakers is
divided into three ranges — the A-Line, the D-Line,
and the Classics. The divisions are more about
sound character and style than technology or
performance, says Swift.
“A few years back we asked ourselves, ‘How do
we communicate who we are and what we do on
a consistent global basis to our increasingly diverse
but ever more discerning and aware — via the
internet — target audience’. We identified three
groups, which internally we refer to as making
up our ‘Music Lover’s Universe’ — our audience,
in other words. We identified Music Lovers,
Entertainment Seekers and Enlightened Consumers.
There are no black-and-white divisions between the
groups, and some will migrate between them as
experience and aspirations develop. So for example,
while people in each group may have a turntable,
their reasons for purchasing the turntable vary
between ‘novelty’, ‘intrigue’, ‘fun’, and ‘nothing
will ever sound as good as vinyl!’
061

THE ORIGINAL SPENDOR BC1,
WHICH WAS SELECTED BY THE
BBC AS A BROADCAST REFERENCE
MONITOR LOUDSPEAKER
While engineering
provides the tools we
need to realise our
ideas, our ears will
continue to guide
our decisions on
what sounds right
062
And that exercise helped us to understand
how to describe each of our three product lines
and who they will most likely appeal to.”
So he describes the A-Line as aimed at
customers who want high performance, neat
modern styling, and loudspeakers that will give
good results with a wide variety of equipment
and rooms, including less expensive equipment.
They are “bringing music to life”, he says, “refined
and composed with real subtlety, but also with
a snap and drive that makes them captivating to
listen to at all times.”
The D-Line, then, is aimed at customers
who want modern loudspeakers that deliver
uncompromised sound quality in any listening
environment, able to reveal the advantages of
the finest high-end equipment and recordings.
“They reveal every detail,” says Swift. “No
distortion, no ambiguity, no blurring of the
music’s shades, tones and colours: all is exact
and faithful to the original recording, while
highlighting subtleties you may never have
noticed before.”
Then there’s the Classic line, with designs
that hark back to the earlier days of Spendor in
their looks, but which nevertheless incorporate all
Spendor’s latest technologies and research, rising
to their peak with the $38,999 Classic 200Ti.
“There’s an obvious appeal to traditional
hi-fi enthusiasts,” notes Swift. “But the Classic
loudspeakers are also finding a new following
amongst those who simply want something a
little different from the world of chrome and tech.
Even if you don’t have the space or the budget,
no-one can fail to be impressed with the sheer
scale and music-making abilities of the Classic
200. And our new Classic 100Ti and Classic 200Ti
feature titanium baffles that bring a dramatic
modern look to our original Classic style.”
INNOVATIVE ADVANCES
“So we focus a lot of attention on the shape, size,
form, dimensions and finish of each of our models
to ensure they will fit elegantly into any listening
environment,” says Swift. “But we focus even more
attention on making better and more innovative
products, at reasonable and accessible prices.”
He highlights some of the company’s most
recent innovations. In cabinet design there is
the Spendor 5th-generation linear flow port
technology which was inspired, he says, “by
the advanced aerodynamics we saw being
applied to great effect in Formula 1”. The new
port is featured in the Spendor D-Line D7.2 and
D9.2 speakers.
Dynamic damping is used inside the cabinets
of both A-Line and D-Line speakers. This, says
Swift, “ensures a clear naturally dynamic sound
free from cabinet coloration — it avoids high
mass and heavy damping which store energy
and then, as it is slowly released, slow and blur
the sound you hear.”
Swift points also to Spendor’s LPZ tweeter
and EP77 engineering-polymer mid/bass cones.
“The LPZ wasn’t a trial-and-error
development,” he says. “Instead we sought to
understand exactly what happens to sound
waves once they leave a tweeter diaphragm.
The goal of every tweeter designer is to achieve
linear acoustic output over a wide frequency
range, but in practice this is extremely difficult.
Our approach is radical, and it works. The tweeter
is built around a stainless-steel front plate which
forms a damped acoustic chamber in front of a
lightweight woven polyamide diaphragm. The
front plate incorporates a phase-correcting micro
foil to equalise soundwave path lengths across
the diaphragm surface, while it also generates
a symmetrical pressure environment on both
faces of the tweeter diaphragm. So the tweeter
operates in a balanced linear mode.”

The EP77 engineering-polymer cones
are rigid and light, “and avoid the break-up
and energy storage modes that blur and
harden the sound of most conventional
loudspeakers,” he says.
For dedicated bass drivers, Spendor uses
a Kevlar composite material, with its desirable
combination of lightness and high rigidity.
IN THE BEGINNING
It was innovation in cone materials which
originally put Spendor on the map at the
end of the 1960s. Bextrene was the material
of choice for the speaker cones in Spendor’s
first pair of speakers, the BC1, with Spendor’s
8-inch bass-mid driver staking a claim as
the world’s first commercial-production
8-inch plastic cone driver. A product of
BBC engineer Spencer Hughes (co-founder
with Dorothy Hughes, hence the name of
Spen-Dor) and co-designer Dudley Harwood,
the BC1 speakers had a three-way design:
the 8-inch Bextrene mid/bass driver, a
Celestion HF 1300 tweeter ranging between
3kHz and 13kHz, and a Coles 4001 G
supertweeter above 13kHz.
Philip Swift was a Spendor fan from
the first (see following interview) and has
an interesting take on that supertweeter.
“Contrary to what many enthusiasts
and historians like to believe, the Coles
supertweeter was added so that with three
drivers the BC1 could be classified as a
SPENDOR REVIEWS
professional product and thus avoid the
significant additional purchase tax that was
levied on non-professional loudspeakers.
Alan Sugar was even more innovative in his
approach to this purchase tax issue, moulding
a three-way front for his Amstrad loudspeaker
but only including two working drivers!
“So while adding a second tweeter was
never a preferred option — wavelength
constraints make it near-impossible to
integrate two small tweeters — on a practical
level the BBC did find that the slightly
extended ultra-high-frequency response
made it easier to identify 19kHz stereo pilot
tone breakthrough, a big problem in many
FM tuners, and TV line-breakthrough noise.
Remember that the BBC and others selected
the BC1 as a broadcast reference monitor
loudspeaker — not merely for listening to
music and voice, but to ensure the highest
level of technical quality and consistency for
all programmes and broadcasts.”
Swift also offers a historical clarification
on Hughes’ use of bextrene.
“Bextrene on its own is an awful material
for a loudspeaker cone!” he notes. “It is light
and fairly rigid but it vibrates and generates
nasty-sounding resonances and break-up
modes. Spendor’s secret was the application
of viscoelastic damping and understanding
that the loudspeaker cone, damping,
surround, suspension and adhesives must be
considered as a whole working system. So
important elements of the BC1 — and the
BC2, BC3 and original SA1 — included thin-
walled viscoelastic damped cabinet panels
to push any cabinet colouration down in
frequency away from the critical mid-band,
lifting the cabinet to a good listening height
with an original low-mass open-frame stand
design, and careful tuning and damping
of the reflex ports to ensure optimally flat
LF response and correct Q. Also crucial was
their understanding of the influence of
cone profiles, the application of three-port
inductor auto-transformers wound on high-
saturation radio-metal cores for accurate level
matching, and a highly refined and calibrated
multi-element crossover network to achieve
an even flat frequency response with good
phase characteristics. Finally they knew how
to make loudspeakers that were closely and
consistently pair-matched to a BBC-approved
reference standard.”
Some 600 pairs of BC1s are said to
have ended up in operation at the BBC —
and this author should perhaps declare
that he grew up with two pairs of ex-BBC
Spendor BC1s in his home, and still has one
of those pairs in full working order, though
sadly not with the original stands, which
Philip Swift notes may have seen Spendor
responsible, if inadvertently, for inventing the
loudspeaker stand as we know it today. One
more among the many innovations which
continue to keep the brand ahead.
REVIEW
SPENDOR A7
T
he big brothers of the
A-Line, the Spendor A7s are
elegant in their simplicity.
They are two-way speakers,
each with a wide-surround
22mm tweeter and one of
the company’s latest 18cm EP77 Polymer
cones for mid/bass. They’re 93cm high, but
relatively slim and compact for a floorstander,
so will fit neatly into most homes. But don’t
push them up against a wall: their rear-firing
slot-shaped reflex ports not only reduce noise
and distortion, they give better grip on bass.
Four spikes screw into the metal discs on
each plinth to provide better contact and aid
the cabinet’s rigidity.
063
 SPENDOR REVIEWS

SPECIFICATIONS
Spendor A7
Price: $6,875
Design: 2-way
Frequency response:
32Hz–25kHz
Sensitivity: 88dB/W/m
Impedance: 8 ohms
Dimensions (HWD):
934×180×305mm
Weight: 18kg (each)
Contact: www.indimports.com
And with Spendor having its own cabinet-
making plant in the UK, it delivers a high quality
build with crisp edges and impeccably smart
wood-veneer finishes in oak, black oak, walnut
(above) or (previous page) in satin white, which
here doesn’t incur the price supplement applied
in their home market.
Toe them in slightly towards the listening position
to get the best of their stereo imaging and solid
focus for vocals, because their detail levels proved
fantastic, timing with pinpoint accuracy and
transparency.
Their sound was clean and organised; where
other Spendors have prioritised refinement, these
A7s also pack in plenty of punch to keep things
sounding lively. They also went satisfyingly deep,
keeping a firm grip on the bass line of Massive
Attack’s Angel, for example. Each note was pulled
taut, the edges precise, the performance agile
and controlled. Across all genres these articulate
Spendors remain endlessly listenable even
when things get intense. These are refined yet
entertaining speakers combining precision and
subtlety with enjoyable dynamics and rhythm.

064
REVIEW

SPENDOR D7.2

R
ecently replacing the original D7,
the new D7.2 speakers don’t mess
with the basic form factor, but
deliver changes under the skin.
They remain a two-and-a-half-way
design, with a Kevlar composite
bass unit augmenting the output of the centrally-
mounted EP77 polymer-coned mid/bass. The
tweeter is the LPZ (Linear Pressure Zone) design
explained by Philip Swift in our main article, built
around the eye-catching circular stainless steel
front plate which forms a damped acoustic cham-
ber in front of the woven polyamide diaphragm.
What’s changed inside the slender 95cm-
high cabinet is revised and now has asymmetric
bracing, together with a refinement of the small
low-mass constrained polymer dampers between
the bracing and cabinet panels, and the noted
lack of acoustic filling traditionally used to absorb
drivers’ rearward output. The new structure is
claimed to be far more rigid, providing a better
foundation from which the drive units can work to
advantage in low-frequency precision and agility.
The speaker’s bass output is tuned by the latest
generation of Spendor’s linear flow port.
It’s another beautiful box, too, with five
options for the finish, adding cherry to the list of
veneers for the A7 (left).
The D7.2s proved highly-transparent
performers, fairly ruthless in revealing the sonic
traits of the partnering system, so if your system
electronics are bright or edgy you’ll know about
it. They also took a few days to come on song,
mellowing out over time, but never to the point
of becoming overly easy-going. They sounded
taut, agile and highly responsive — they can
kick hard when required, and the 90dB/W/m
sensitivity means that they don’t need excessive
levels of power to do so. And again they remained
SPECIFICATIONS
composed under pressure, staying organised and
rhythmically coherent even at higher levels. Spendor D7.2
There’s plenty of finesse too, vocals natural Price: $9,499
and expressive, while the D7.2s rendered an Design: 2.5-way
expansive and nicely layered soundstage overall, Frequency response:
populated by precisely-focused instruments. 29Hz–25kHz
Considering their comparatively modest Sensitivity: 90dB/W/m
dimensions, the sonic authority on offer here is Impedance: 8 ohms
impressive. If you want to analyse the recording Dimensions (HWD):
you can, but these speakers will also let you simply 980×190×330mm
sit back and enjoy the music. Weight: 21kg (each)
Contact: www.indimports.com

065

PHILIP SWIFT ENCOUNTERED
SPENCER HUGHES BEFORE
SPENDOR THE COMPANY WAS EVEN
FORMED. THIRTY YEARS LATER,
AFTER HIS TIME WITH AUDIOLAB,
HE BOUGHT THE COMPANY
We quit our day jobs
to focus totally on
developing the
8000A, 8000C
and 8000P. That was
done in a bedroom
in my house...”
066
SPENDOR INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
Philip Swift has been the owner
of Spendor since January 2000,
and was previously co-founder
of Audiolab. “I’m always thinking
about the future,” he says, “that’s
where my interest and focus has
always been”. But here Jez Ford
persuades him to delve into the
key moments of his hi-fi past.
Audio Esoterica: Spendor recently celebrated
its 50th anniversary, and I gather you were aware
of the company’s speakers from near the beginning.
Where did you first encounter them, and why did
you warm to them?
Philip Swift: I was a student at Imperial College
and found myself working part-time at the
original ‘Audio T’ shop in London’s Oxford Street.
That’s where I first heard a very early version
of the BC1. It sounded amazing — so real, so
clear, with a stable stereo image and surprisingly
articulate bass for the time. It wasn’t cheap, about
twice the price of a pair of KEF Concertos or B&W
DM3s, and relative to those and other popular
speakers of the day the BC1s were slim, compact
and standmounted. I had to work a lot of hours to
afford my first pair of BC1s. A few years later I had
Spendor BC3s — serial numbers one and two!
And Audio T is where I met Spen [Spencer
Hughes] before Spendor was incorporated as a
limited company in 1971. We sold many Spendor
loudspeakers and I got to know Spen and his
‘family’ team well, and he was happy to explain all
the design and engineering that made Spendor
loudspeakers so special. So I guess I’ve always
been a fan of not just Spendor loudspeakers
but also the company and its elegant intelligent
approach to engineering and manufacturing.
AE: But before Spendor you had an illustrious career
with the original Audiolab. How did you get into
music and then hi-fi, and then into the industry?
PS: Even as a child I had been fascinated by
sound and music. I made various amplifiers
from scratch while at school, and built several
loudspeakers. Then at the hi-fi shop when I went
to University we had amplifier test equipment
which was better than most manufacturers had,
and a proper demonstration room with a custom
remote-controlled comparator. At the time most
dealers simply sold sealed boxes with no demon-
stration — and no technical support or after-sales
service. We did things very differently: we offered
home demonstrations and part exchanges, and
we got involved in some quite complex instal-
lation projects. So we got noticed, and I got to
meet and visit designers and engineers from just
about every important hi-fi manufacturer and
importer. We caught the attention of the hi-fi
press and several professional sound engineers,
while many equipment designers and several
like-minded dealers would regularly drop by
for an update and a listen, to show us their
new products and sometimes to see how they
measured. It was a fascinating time.
I also spent a summer in the R&D department
of Bang & Olufsen in Denmark, and saw how
serious hi-fi manufacturing was a complex and
challenging business. So when I left University I
knew there was only one thing I wanted to do.
I’d met Derek Scotland [the co-founder of
Audiolab] at University and we decided to design
our own products, which subsequently became
Lentek products when we moved to Cambridge
to join the company as MD [Swift] and Technical
Director [Scotland]. Our Lentek products
enjoyed good success, and we were also the first
distributors outside of the US for Mobile Fidelity,
Sheffield and Telarc. But once we decided we
were sure — and others were not so sure! — that
our concept for a new range of affordable high-
performance hi-fi electronics was viable, we quit
our day jobs to focus totally on developing the
Audiolab 8000A, 8000C and 8000P. That was done
in a bedroom in my house. The original 8000A
was launched in October 1983, and we never
looked back.
AE: How long did you remain at Audiolab after
the arrival of Udo Zucker and the conversion to
Tag McLaren Audio in 1998? Was there an interim
before taking on Spendor?
PS: I remember well... it was one year and one
week — three months of that on gardening leave.
Zucker didn’t want any input from me; I wish I
could have left sooner! It was two years later that
I acquired Spendor.
AE: Where did Spendor stand when you arrived?
How did you come to join?
PS: UK company Soundtracs had acquired the
business around 1993 when Dorothy Hughes
[MD and wife of the late Spencer Hughes]
decided it was time to retire. Derek Hughes
[Spendor chief engineer, son of Spencer and
Dorothy] enjoyed his engineering role, but didn’t
want to take on running a business day to day.
Spendor was still doing steady business — sales
weren’t growing and the brand had lost some of
its visibility, but its international reputation was
intact. Then in 1999 an industry friend in Taiwan
mentioned that Spendor was for sale, and was I
interested? I was well advanced with developing
my own home automation business including
high-end audio, and had got involved in some
exciting projects with others. But I had to do it.
I knew if I didn’t buy Spendor it would be sold
to a Chinese company and re-located to China.
This was a never-to-be-repeated opportunity to
acquire one of the UK’s most highly respected
loudspeaker brands, and I saw there was great
potential to transform Spendor into a progressive
modern business and put the name firmly back
on the map.
A few minutes later Todd Wells, the MD of
Soundtracs, was on the phone to me! I acquired
the business at the beginning of January 2000.

AE: Where did you take the company from there?

And who were you working with?
PS: So initially Spendor loudspeakers were
designed and engineered by Spencer Hughes.
After Spencer passed away in 1983 Derek Hughes
took over. When I acquired Spendor in 2000
Derek continued as consulting engineer until
2003, when he decided to semi-retire and pursue
other projects. Graham Landick, ex-B&W and Tag
McLaren Audio, joined as Head of Loudspeaker
Design and Engineering — and that was when
we started to introduce the major changes and
innovations which were realised in our multi-
award-winning S-Series loudspeakers. Since I
acquired the business I think we’ve transformed,
streamlined and thoroughly modernised almost
everything. Alongside our all-new D-Line and
A-Line we’ve carefully — sensitively, successfully
— introduced the most significant-ever advances
to the Spendor Classic Line without losing any of Our new design team has some of the sharpest ears “OUR NEW CLASSIC 100Ti
the heart and soul of the 70s’ originals. Today our I’ve ever encountered, and everyone has a real passion for AND CLASSIC 200Ti FEATURE
turnover is about 10 times what it was back in music and sound. While engineering provides the tools we TITANIUM BAFFLES THAT BRING
A DRAMATIC MODERN LOOK TO
2000, so we must be doing something right. need to realise our ideas, our ears will continue to guide
OUR ORIGINAL CLASSIC STYLE.”
Terry Miles, who had over 30 years our decisions on what sounds right.
experience working for Spendor as chief
technician became Technical Design Manager in AE: Is there anything exciting in the pipeline you can share?
2007. In 2010 we moved to our own brand-new PS: I can reveal that later this year, when hopefully some
custom-fitted premises in Hailsham in East Sussex, sort of new normality resumes in the world, we will be
and we now have our own specialist cabinet launching BASE, a new division of Spendor specialising in
manufacturing facility (Timberworx) alongside Vibration Control Technology. Our first products have been
our new Spendor R&D facility at the Advanced three years in development, and they incorporate unique,
Manufacturing Park in Sheffield where I am now elegant, and highly effective patented technology. They
heading up our new team which will include a offer a solution which eliminates the all-pervading
number of fresh graduate engineers with the vibration which adversely affects the sound of all hi-fi and
vision and skills to implement the most modern audio components, from streamers to amps, turntables,
measuring techniques and simulation software. power supplies, whether digital, analogue or tube, and
I believe this is the only way forward because it regardless of cost. The effect of adding a BASE Platform
opens exciting possibilities for significant sound is instant, dramatic and clearly audible. We’ll update you
quality advances. Already we’ve come up with when we are ready to launch!
some exciting new ideas for future products, but
they will take time to develop and prove. For Spendor in Australia, visit: www.indimports.com

067
 BRYSTON
BCD-3
CD PLAYER
A
question I am often asked is: ‘Why would any-
one buy a CD player these days?’ I usually just
answer with a single word: ‘Simplicity’. I am
now consciously trying to reduce the stresses
of modern living by making my own life as
simple as possible. When I want to play mu-
sic, I rather like that I can just pop a CD in a drawer, press play
and be listening to music immediately. Yes, I have ripped all
my CDs. Yes, I have a music server connected to my system.
Despite this, when I want to listen to music, it’s more likely
that I’ll browse the CDs stored on my shelf, select one and
play it than that I’ll pull out my phone, fire up an app, browse
through the music stored on my NAS and play from that.
The same question must often be asked of the folks up at
Bryston, in Canada, because they have an answer published
on their website. Here it is, verbatim: “Although high resolution
digital downloads dominate the attention of audiophiles,
many music lovers have hundreds or thousands of CDs that
require the finest playback equipment to sound their best.
Though universal disc players or DVD players can play back
CDs, they certainly won’t resolve the full dynamic range and
nuance the medium is capable of. Such players inherently
compromise CD playback to support additional formats.”
THE EQUIPMENT
The Bryston BCD-3’s front panel looks quite standard until you
switch it on and the display lights up and you discover that
it’s amazingly crisp and sharp.
068
Reviewer Martin Iredale
In fact it’s downright beautiful… probably the
best display I have ever seen on any CD player ever. It
turned out to be an OLED, of course, but in the course of
discovering this, I also discovered that it comes in different
colours: blue and green. You can choose either, but it’s a
factory-only option, so if your local hi-fi store doesn’t have
both colours in stock, ordering a different colour might
take a while.
Despite the provision of this state-of-the-art display,
Bryston has included an option that means you don’t
have to use it. If you connect the BCD-3 to your local area
network (via the Ethernet interface on the rear panel), you
can control it via a web browser. (You can also update the
BCD-3’s firmware via that same Ethernet interface should
Bryston make improvements to it to enhance operation or
add a new feature.)
If you choose to operate the BCD-3 using the
front panel controls you’ll find all the usual buttons are
there, along with the less-usual ‘Repeat’ button (though
it only does Track and Disc repeats, not A–B repeats),
and ‘Random’. If you use Bryston’s BR2 remote control
to control the BCD-3 (which will require an additional
purchase, since Bryston doesn’t provide one with the
BCD-3), you will get a feature that is not available from the
front panel: direct track access using 0–9 buttons. This is
handy if you regularly skip tracks on CDs that have dozens
of tracks, but on most CDs I find it’s faster to just press the
‘Previous’ or ‘Next’ buttons multiple times.
 BRYSTON BCD-3 CD PLAYER

This system of skipping tracks works particularly

well on the BCD-3 because it has a buffer than
allows you to press multiple times very quickly,
and track access is also quick, so I probably
wouldn’t bother buying the remote unless I had
other Bryston components (though if this were
the case you might already own a BR2 remote!).
The disc drawer is very solid and, rather
refreshingly, made of metal rather than plastic.
Rather too solid in fact, because there are metal
rods either side of the tray that no doubt increase
rigidity but make it very hard to remove discs
unless you jamb your finger into the CD’s centre
hole and remove the disc from the tray that way. I
found it almost impossible to remove a disc from
the tray by grasping it by its outer circumference.
The rear panel of the Bryston BCD-3 has both
balanced (XLR) and unbalanced (RCA) analogue
outputs, and AES/EBU (XLR) and S/PDIF (RCA)
digital outputs. It also has RS232, Ethernet, USB
and ‘Remote’ connectors. Note, however, that the
USB input is only for system control — it does
not accept (or output) digital audio signals. There
is also no headphone output — either on the
front or the rear panel which, because I do a lot of The ‘Play’ button does the usual, but if you
headphone listening and prefer my headphones press it while a disc is playing, it will re-start play
to be as close to the original source as possible at the beginning of the track. Conversely, if you
(so as to have the least circuitry in the way) I view press |<< while playing a track, it skips you back
as a fairly significant oversight… but you might to the beginning of the previous track. I was not
have a different opinion. used to this functionality, but once I became
used to it, it then seemed like an excellent way of
LISTENING SESSIONS arranging the transport logic.
After loading my first CD into the player (and these What wasn’t quite so logical — at least to
are the only discs the BCD-3 will play, by the way) me — is that the player won’t skip tracks while
I played around with the transport controls a little a disc is paused, and in order to get the player
and made a few discoveries. The first was that the out of its pause mode you need to press pause THE USB INPUT IS ONLY FOR
fast-forward and fast-reverse buttons are multi- again: pressing ‘play’ won’t do it. Another quirk I SYSTEM CONTROL  IT DOES NOT
stage so one press will start a slow-ish search and discovered was that whenever I connected the ACCEPT OR OUTPUT DIGITAL
a second press will speed that search up. Pressing BCD-3 to my network and used my browser to AUDIO SIGNALS. THERE IS ALSO NO
HEADPHONE OUTPUT  EITHER
the button a third time drops you back into play. control it, whatever CD I next tried to load into ON THE FRONT OR THE REAR

069

BRYSTON
BDA-3 DAC
The performance of the BCD-3 turned
out to be so exceptionally good that
Bryston decided it would use almost
identical circuitry in a DAC as well, that
DAC being the BDA-3. Both products
use exactly the same DACs (AKM 4490s)
in exactly the same configuration (two
per channel, in differential mode), but
it isn’t only the conversion process that
is the reason for the exceptional sound
quality. The analogue output sections of
both the BCD-3 and the BDA-3 operate
entirely in Class-A, and all the gain and
buffering devices are discrete and all the
components for are on their own PCB.
The power supply is on another PCB all
by itself and the digital circuitry is split
over two PCBs. In fact, in a rather beautiful
piece of electronics design by Bryston’s
own Dan Marynissen, there are only 12
070
BRYSTON BCD-3 CD PLAYER
‘thru-hole’ components across all of the
printed circuit boards — everywhere else
you’ll find state-of-the-art surface-mount
components are used.
The Bryston BDA-3 has ten digital
inputs — S/PDIF (RCA & BNC), AES/EBU
(XLR), HDMI (×4), USB (×2), and Optical
(Toslink). Between them, these offer
PCM support up to 384kHz/32-bit and
DSD support up to DSD-256 (×4) which
include user-selectable upsampling.
It has two pairs of analogue outputs,
one unbalanced, via gold-plated RCA
terminals, the other balanced, using
gold-plated XLR terminals. The BDA-3
retails for $5,600.
It’s not only the sound quality of the
BCD-3 and BDA-3 that is exceptionally
good either. The build quality is also
exceptional. As for the country of
manufacture, which is becoming
an increasingly important concern,
particularly here in Australia, you’ll be
pleased to learn that they’re made in
Bryston’s own facility in Canada.
the player would rarely load, with the display
just showing ‘Reading’ continuously. Ejecting
the disc and then re-loading it always fixed
this issue, so it’s obviously just a programming
glitch and will likely already have been fixed
by the time you read this review, because
the machine I was using had old firmware
(V2016.12c).
The very first disc I just had to play was a
strange one titled ‘Colour Thinking’ by Human
2.0 that was recorded by Dutch outfit trptk in
352.8kHz 32-bit DSD using only state-of-the-art
technology. The company makes its recordings
available in all formats, but obviously I was
listening to the CD version. It’s a conceptual
album that marries conventional instruments
with electronics and samples plus a small
choir. I’d been finding it strangely beguiling on
other components and in other formats and
I wanted to hear how well the Bryston BCD-3
would reproduce the sounds on the disc, more
than listen to the music itself. Wow! It was
immediately obvious just from the very first
track (Progress) that the sound from the Bryston
BCD-3 left the sound from my own player in
the shade, which rather stuck in my craw since
BCD-3 retails for just over half of what I paid for
my own machine. I was hearing deep, rich, bass
sound, super-authentic percussion (cymbals in
particular, but the sound of the snare drum was
also amazing), but it’s the overall soundscape
that’s created by the BCD-3 that is the most
mesmerising. The guitar sound on Problem
Child howled from my speakers like a banshee,
echoing the howl of lead singer Robin Coops.
Despite its strangeness, I liked this disc
so much that I invoked the BCD-3’s ‘Repeat’
mode, and through a curious twist of fate
discovered that this mode is eternal: if you
switch it on, the Bryston will continue to play
the disc (or track) forever.
I invoked the BCD-3’s
‘Repeat’ mode and
discovered that this mode is
eternal: if you switch it on,
the Bryston will continue to
play the disc or track forever

This obviously wouldn’t be good for either
the drive motor or the laser, so I’d advise using
this mode with caution, and making sure you
remember to turn the player off whenever
you’ve finished listening, just in case. (But
again, this might have been fixed in firmware
already… which is one of the beauties of the
BCD-3’s firmware being update-able.)
On more familiar fare, the performance
of the Bryston BCD-3 was equally exceptional.
Listening to Winds of Change’s ‘Work of Art’,
the reproduction was as good as I’ve ever
heard this album sound at 16-bits and 44.1kHz.
Listen, for example, to the finger snaps that
kick off My Love for You and you’ll be amazed
by the clarity and reality of the sound…
indeed it’s so clear and so realistic-sounding
that I am prepared to bet that you just will
not believe you’re listening to a standard
Red Book CD. Listen through the entire album
and you’ll be equally amazed by the dynamics:
they’re simply incredible.
I sampled more highly dynamic music
listening to Aix Records’ album ‘Guitar Noire’
which features ex-Wings guitarist Laurence
Juber, Steve Forman (percussion) and Domenic
Genova (bass). The sound of Juber’s Martin
acoustic is perfectly captured, as is the sound
of Genova’s double-bass.
BRYSTON BCD-3 CD PLAYER
The realism of these instruments — and
the sound of the percussion — as reproduced
by the Bryston BCD-3 is inspiring.
Even on ‘standard’ commercial pressings,
such as Red Hot Chilli Pepper’s ‘Blood
Sugar Sex Magik’, tracks such as Suck my
Kiss showed the Bryston BCD-3 delivered
superlative sound throughout — not the
least impressive characteristic of which was
the ability to delineate bass lines in the midst
SPECIFICATIONS
of high-powered bass mayhem. More than
a few components have difficulty resolving Bryston BCD-3
Chad’s closely-miked kick drum and Flea’s Price: $6,200
simultaneous hi-jinks on bass on Suck in Frequency Response:
particular, but listening to the BCD-3, the bass 20Hz–20kHz ±0.1dB
sounds were completely differentiated and THD+N: <0.002%
delivered with amazing detail, without losing S/N Ratio (Bal): 140dB
any pace, rhythm or timing. S/N Ratio (Unb): 134dB
O/P Voltage (Balanced):
CONCLUSION 4.0Vrms
Many pundits in the hi-fi industry will tell you: O/P Voltage (Unbalanced):
‘The CD is dead.’ I’d have to disagree, but even 2.0Vrms
if they’re right and I’m wrong, I can tell you that Dimensions (WHD):
if you had to buy your very last CD player, Brys- 482×87×305mm
ton’s BCD-3 is most definitely the one I would Weight: 4.0kg
recommend! And if you want to buy your first Contact: BusiSoft on
DAC, I’d definitely recommend you buy the (03) 9810 2900 or at
BDA-3. Bryston’s on a winner with both these www.busisoft.com.au
outstandingly engineered components.
071
 ELECTROCOMPANIET
ECI 6 DX MKII
INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER/DAC/STREAMER
I
t was only after I pressed that golden power button in
the centre of the EC’s front panel and saw the bright blue
‘Є’ that is Electrocompaniet’s logo flash into being in the
display at the left of the amplifier that I realised exactly
how similar it is to the symbol for the currency of the
European Union: the Euro. This could hardly be deliber-
ate, since the Norwegian manufacturer was building amplifiers
twenty years before the EU came into being. But it is bemusing,
because Norway is still not a member of the EU, so the country’s
currency remains the Krone, as it has since 1875.
EQUIPMENT
As the product name suggests, the ECI 6 DX MkII has it all!
It’s not only a hugely competent integrated amplifier with a
rated output of 125-watts continuous per channel into 8Ω,
072
Reviewer David Cooke
it’s also a full-featured digital-to-analogue
converter and an equally full-featured
streamer.
A power output of 125-watts into
8Ω from such a compact (and, it just
has to be said — stunningly beautiful —
chassis is impressively high. But even
more impressive is that it can also deliver
200-watts per channel into 4Ω loads
and 370-watts per channel into 2Ω loads.
That 2Ω specification is particularly
noteworthy, because very few — if any
— integrated amplifiers can drive such
low impedances at all, much less at power
levels approaching 400-watts.
 ELECTROCOMPANIET ECI 6 DX MKII
It means that the amplifier can not only
provide voltage to your speakers, but current
as well. In fact, Electrocompaniet claims a peak
current ability of more than 100-amps.
As for control, Electrocompaniet is one
of the very few high-end manufacturers that
provides both iOS and Android apps so that you
can control the ECI 6 DX MkII not only from the
supplied dedicated remote control, but also from
your phone or pad. But that’s not all. This forward-
thinking Norwegian company also allows control
via a standard web interface, so you can use your
computer, across all operating systems.
And when I say ‘control’ I am not just talking
about control over volume, input selection and so
forth, I’m talking about the ability to select, play
and pause etc tracks from all of the most popular
streaming formats and services, including Spotify,
Tidal and Qobuz, plus the system also has built-in
internet radio. You can also stream to it via Airplay
and Bluetooth. It’s also Roon-ready, so if you
subscribe to Roon, it will seamlessly connect and
let you play and control it via Roon.
The app in combination with
Electrocompaniet’s “EC Software Engine”, which
is built into the ECI 6 DX MkII also lets you index
play, pause etc tracks from your own music
collection stored on your network.
It would seem that Electrocompaniet is
expecting all owners to use one or more of the
apps to control the ECI 6 DX MkII because the
screen on the front panel is a relatively coarse
dot-matrix display (dot size of around 1mm),
blue on black, so the letters that indicate the
active input — CD, DVD, AUX, HT, COAX1, COAX2,
TOSLNK1, TOSLNK2, USB — have staircases in
place of curves, but the letters are so large that
they’re easy enough to read, even from many
metres away.
The misspelling of Toslink1 and Toslink2 is not
a typographic error.
INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER/DAC/STREAMER
The display can show only seven characters, so
they’ve had to abbreviate Toslink to Toslnk. The
characters are all upper-case, too, because of the
display resolution. Curiously, however, if the HT
input is muted the display will, when you select
it, show HT (MUTED) with the ‘Muted’ all in upper-
case, but in very small lettering, so the display
itself is obviously capable of another, higher-
As the product
resolution display mode. name suggests, the
The display shows only the input that is
active; there is no digital indication of volume ECI 6 DX MkII has
level. Instead, volume is indicated analogously
and rather ingeniously, via a method I cannot
it all! It’s not only a
ever recall seeing previously. Electrocompaniet’s hugely competent
engineers have put a motorised potentiometer
behind the glass front panel, and fitted it with integrated amplifier
a bright blue LED. So, as you raise and lower
the volume, either via the ‘Up’ and ‘Down’ push-
but also a full-
buttons on the front panel, or with those on the featured digital-to-
remote control, you can see the blue LED move
clockwise (or anticlockwise) behind the front
analogue converter
panel. At least you can if you’re directly in front of and an equally full-
the amplifier. If you’re off to the left, you can’t see
it at all. If you’re off to the right, you can see a faint featured streamer
blue halo reflection. If you’re above the amplifier,
it really depends on the position of the LED as to
whether you can see it or not.
Although this is ingenious, it means that you
can’t really get an identical listening level across
multiple sources because you can’t say, turn the
volume to 4, or 6, because there are no markings.
The volume also doesn’t re-set itself when you
power down. It always powers up at the same
volume level that was being used when it was
powered down. You’ll need the app for precision
adjustment. Handily, if the amplifier powers up
at a volume level you’re not comfortable with, TURNTABLE USERS MIGHT NOTICE
THE MISSING PHONO INPUT, BUT
you can use the ECI 6 DX MkII ’s ‘Mute’ function AT THIS LEVEL YOU SHOULD BE US
to quickly drop it down. This circuit is perfectly ING AN EXTERNAL PHONO STAGE,
implemented, so that when activated, the word AND YOU COULD PLUG THIS IN TO
MUTE shows in the front panel display. EITHER THE DVD OR AUX INPUT
073
SPECIFICATIONS
Electrocompaniet
ECI 6 DX MkII
Price: $11,949 (RRP)
AMPLIFIER SECTION
Power Output (8Ω):
125-watts/channel
Power Output (4Ω):
200-watts/channel
Power Output (2Ω):
370-watts/channel
Frequency Resp: 1–150kHz
Channel Sep: >120dB
THD: <0.004%
Daming Factor: >350
O/P Impedance: <0.02Ω
Input Sens: 1.3Vrms
DIGITAL SECTION
USB: 24-bit/192kHz (up to)
S/PDIF: 24-bit/ 192kHz (up to)
Toslink: 24-bit/96kHz (up to)
WiFi: 802.11 AC w MIMO
Ethernet: 1 Gigabit
Formats Supported: WAV,
MP3, AAC+, Vorbis, ALAC,
FLAC, APE, WMA, PCM,
DSD 128
GENERAL
Power Consumption:
110-watts
Standby Power
Consumption: 1-watt
Dimensions (WDH):
470×430×128mm
Weight: 20.5kg
Contact: Audio Dynamics on
(03) 9882 0372 or at
www.audiodynamics.com.au
074
The circuit also correctly cancels itself
whenever the volume is adjusted and also, of
course, cancels itself whenever the amplifier is
switched off.
LISTENING
Whenever you turn it on, the ECI 6 DX MkII auto-
matically defaults to MEDIA so it’s pretty obvious
that Electrocompaniet thinks most users will be
streaming their music, rather than hard-wiring
it, but it would have been nice if the infra-red re-
mote had a ‘MEDIA’ input selector. (Or failing that,
that the manual had told me that you can access
it by pressing the Stop/Eject’ button!)
Right from switch-on it was immediately
obvious that the ECI 6 DX MkII is not just a pretty
face. It was able to drive my hopelessly inefficient
loudspeakers to more-than-adequate volume
levels (much higher than I’d ever listen) without
even raising a sweat (though the amplifier’s
casing did become rather warm, so do make sure
it is well ventilated).
And it wasn’t just the power levels that
impressed. The sound is so super-clean that
distortion is clearly totally under control (i.e.
inaudibly low) and the noise levels are also below
the vanishing point. Whenever music wasn’t
playing, I couldn’t hear a thing from my speakers
— no hiss, no buzz, no unwanted background
circuit noise of any type whatsoever.
The ECI 6 DX MkII was not the first product of
Norway to arrive in my home. I have been a fan of
that country’s band Jaga Jazzist for many years.
As the band’s name suggests, they play a lot of
jazzy music, but I wouldn’t categorise it as jazz
myself, and they seem to change their musical
style subtlely with each new album anyway.
If you’d like to sample their music you could start
with their latest album (“Pyramid”) but I would
instead recommend 2005’s “What We Must” as the
ideal entry point to their oeuvre.
The Electrocompaniet ECI 6 DX MkII made
Jaga Jazzist’s music sound absolutely fabulous.
The sound of Martin Horntveth’s drum kit was
stunningly good, particularly when he’s taking
it out on his cymbals, which he does often. The
sound of the saxophones on For All You Happy
People is revelatory, but tear yourself away from
concentrating on this to listen to the differently
programmed sounds in the left and right channels
and the singing sound of the guitars.
The extraordinarily complex soundscape of this
track was delivered perfectly by the ECI 6 DX MkII
and, in the closing moments, you’ll hear what I said
about the silence of the amplifier’s noise floor.
Swedenborgske rom (Track 5) is one of the
most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, and the
wordless vocal ‘choir’ that comes in around two
minutes in always makes me sigh with joy. Jaga
Jazzist uses synthesised sounds better than any
band I have ever heard, and you’ll hear why
listening to this track via the ECI 6 DX MkII. The
purity of the sound is so sensational it’ll have
you gasping for breath. Listen to the way the
Electrocompaniet still lets you hear the vocal
line in the background even at the height of the
crescendo. There’s another signature close-out
too. Listen to the sound of the piano fade.
The ECI 6 DX MkII’s total command of rhythm
and pace is more than amply demonstrated by
Mikado, with its staccato cross-beats, percussion
and plucked string effects. You can also hear the
amplifier’s total control over the bass and treble.
CONCLUSION
Electrocompaniet’s ECI 6 DX MkII is a rare find.
It’s that classic case of a steel fist in a velvet glove.
You really would not expect that such powerful,
great-sounding and full-featured multi-functional
electronics wizardry could be contained within
such a modestly-sized chassis whose shiny black
exterior is, in fact, reminiscent of velvet.
 AUDIO
SOLUTIONS Report Jez Ford

MASCOT, SYDNEY

076
T
he challenges of the last year have
been enough to take the wind out of
many sails, both personal and business.
But when we spoke with Tony Stantzos,
who co-owns the Audio Solutions hi-fi
store in Mascot near Sydney Airport
along with Nick Papas, he was as ebullient as ever.
“For us, to be honest, look, we can’t really complain.
We had a very reasonable year,” he tells Audio Esoterica.
“We were pretty much open all the way through —
never really told that we had to close, so we obviously
followed all the protocols, had the warning signs up to
sanitise your hands, and only allowed a few people in
the shop in any given room at any time.”
A reasonable if very different year, then, in which
Audio Solutions celebrated its 20th anniversary after
two decades running one of Sydney’s iconic
destination hi-fi stores. Back in 2000, Nick
and Tony started Audio Solutions to
combine Tony’s experience in
custom installation of home
theatres and multiroom
077
 AUDIO SOLUTIONS DEALER FOCUS

Turntables have audio with Nick’s experience in high-end

two-channel audio. Over the years the balance
put the specialist of business between custom and two-channel
has fluctuated — “there was a long time when
back in the game. high-end and two-channel and home video was
going really well for us”, Tony remembers. In 2019,
And that’s also from he’d told us that custom installation was coming
between the three sides of the business —
the two-channel, home theatre and the real
custom stuff — I’d say that 20 per cent of it
last year was in theatre and custom, while the
other 80 per cent was all in mid to high-end two
channel.”
And it isn’t hard to identify the reasons

talking to other back strongly. But as the pandemic told hold, the
balance changed once again.
behind this return to the joys of music.
“Well I think that was accentuated by people
specialists who are “In the last year, it’s been probably 80 per
cent mid to high-end two channel, and that’s very
being home, and I can give you any number
of different examples of that. One client had
saying the same different from normal,” he says. “There was really
very limited custom install, and home theatre
planned a big $15–20k New Zealand ski trip,
which obviously got cancelled. He came into the
thing. Massive.” was fairly quiet for us. So the balance changed store and he spent 20 grand on a two-channel

078
 AUDIO SOLUTIONS DEALER FOCUS

system, saying ‘If I went to New Zealand I wouldn’t

have done this’. So there’s one smack-bang full-on
sale that was taken from the travel industry.
“We also had people upgrading — people
who had bought a very good pair of speakers two
to three years ago but couldn’t afford to buy the
amplifier to drive them properly, so had kept their
old amplifier. And they’re saying — ‘I’m still earning
the same money, I’m at home, I’m not spending it...
you know what, I’m buying that amplifier.’ So they’d
come in and upgrade from a $5000 amplifier to a
$15,000 or $20,000 amplifier.”
THE PERSONAL TOUCH
Many companies have thrived online during the
pandemic, and Audio Solutions has a detailed
website where it advertises its stock lines, its
custom installation and other services, as well as
news and occasional trade-in items. But the store
didn’t see a huge switch to online activity during
the pandemic, perhaps because, as Tony points
out, online sales are almost in conflict with what
makes Audio Solutions unique, which is the level
of its customer service.
“It really is a very small part,” he admits, “and
probably we’d like online to be more important.
But the type of stuff we’re selling, you know, we
need people to come in. You’ve got to talk them
through things, let them physically touch, look,
smell — whatever they have to do the product
— before they make that purchase. And hear it,
of course! I don’t know how many people are
going to go online and buy a $10,000 integrated
amplifier or a pair of speakers without hearing
MAKING A
DIFFERENCE:
NORDOST
PURPLE FLARE
AND RED DAWN
POWER CABLES
them, you know what I mean?
“So online is not something that we really
focus on, and perhaps we’re missing out there, but
we really are more about customer service, about
building relationships — getting the people to
come in here, or we’re spending long periods of
time on the phone talking to people who can’t
make it in, perhaps if they’re in country New South
Wales. So rather than them just reading stuff online
and not really getting a full understanding of what
they’re buying, we’re happy to talk for half an hour
or an hour on the phone, talk to people about what
they’re actually buying. I think that’s invaluable. And
that’s why we’re so unique.”
THE POWER OF THE TWEAK
Another specialty at Audio Solutions is introducing

AUDIO SOLUTIONS’
LEGENDARY ESPRESSO
MACHINE HAS NOT
LOST ITS PLACE
DESPITE THE RECENT
RENOVATIONS TO THE
GROUND FLOOR.
NICK PAPAS LEFT
PLAYS BARISTA
WHILE TONY STANTZOS
SAMPLES THE RESULT

© ORLANDO SYDNEY

THE DIABLO 300 INTEGRATED
AMPLIFIER FROM DENMARK’S
GRYPHON AUDIO DESIGNS.
“BEING A GRYPHON DEALER, THAT’S
A VERY PROUD MOMENT FOR ME
AND NICK”, SAYS TONY STANTZOS
080
customers to the smaller things in hi-fi which
can deliver an extra level of performance from an
existing hi-fi system.
“Absolutely — all those little things,” agrees
Tony. “That’s something that Nick and I pride
ourselves on, knowing what difference these
things can make to your sound system without
spending huge amounts of money. Like isolation
platforms, and cables. Out front in the store
now we have our new Nordost cable display —
speaker cables and analogue interconnects, but
also power cables. People are spending huge
amounts of money on amps and electronics
and just running the power cable that comes
in the box. And mate, spending even just a
couple of hundred dollars — if you’ve got an
integrated worth five grand and you spend a
couple of hundred bucks on a power cable —
the difference it makes to the system is huge.”
We challenge Tony to answer why it’s worth
spending 200 bucks on the last metre of power
cable from the wall to the amplifier when you’ve
still got the same old dodgy copper all the way
through the house and up the street.
“Because it cleans up other stuff ; it’s not just
the power,” he says. “There’s radio frequency in the
signal that it filters out; there’s a lot of other stuff
in there that makes a difference to your sound
system. And often we put our money where our
mouth is and tell them to take it home and bring
it back if you don’t like it. They never bring it back.”
NEW LINES, CLASSIC LINES
We asked Tony what was generating the most
excitement among the Audio Solutions team at
 AUDIO SOLUTIONS
the moment in terms of new products and tech.
“Well, definitely now being a Gryphon dealer:
that’s a very proud moment for me and Nick, that
Joe [Josef Riediger, at distributor Advance Audio]
was happy to hand that over to us before his
passing; that’s a huge thing for us. We’ve got the
Diablo 120 and 300, and we’ll be doing the pre
and power amps as well.”
We noted a prominent space on the Audio
Solutions website for Spendor speakers (see the
separate article this issue), and asked Tony for
their opinion on this longstanding British brand.
“Yes we love their speakers — and they’re
very unique. Greg here owns a pair of Spendors;
he loves them, and he’s the one that, you know,
pushed us over the line after we parted way
with PMC and needed something to replace it.
That was the perfect fit. They’re different to most
other speakers — they’re not a Focal or a JBL
or a Bowers, the big guys, but they are a special
product. We’re concentrating on the A series and
the D series at the moment; the Classic series will
probably be next.”
Talking of classics, Tony also waxed lyrical
about the recently-released JBL Classic speakers.
“Yeh, we’re getting a bit excited about the
JBL Classic series. They’re probably not your
DEALER FOCUS
traditional hi-fi speaker, but Nick and I have found
that when you listen to them, they’ve got that
characteristic of, you know, the time when we
were growing up and first listening to music —
they just put a smile on your face.”
Any hints as to what to pair those with, what
works well with the JBLs in terms of amplification?
“We did find — after putting a lot of different
things in and testing them — that even though
they’re fairly efficient, they need a lot of power.
So valves are good, but it’s got to be a substantial
valve amp. Otherwise a warm-sounding high-
current solid-state integrated amp, that’s what
you would pair them with. We’ve had great
success with Hegel amps; Hegel seems to go
Online is not
really well with them. They definitely need some something that
grunt behind them to get them to work right.”
we really focus
A CHANGING STORE
Audio Solutions encourages walk-in customers, on: we really
as well as appointments for listening sessions in
the upstairs demonstration rooms. In addition
are more about
to Nick, Tony and Greg, there’s David (Sales) and
Joseph (Installations ) ready to assist. And there’s
customer service,
always something new to discover in this hi-fi about building
store which rarely stands still. The in-store Bowers
& Wilkins Sound Studio was entirely rebuilt relationships...”
081

A CURRENT STORE FAVOURITE, JBL’S CLASSIC
100 SPEAKERS UPDATE THE ICONIC L100
DESIGN FROM THE 1970s. “THEY’VE GOT THAT
CHARACTERISTIC OF THE TIME WHEN WE
WERE GROWING UP AND FIRST LISTENING TO
MUSIC,” SAYS TONY STANTZOS. “ THEY
JUST PUT A SMILE ON YOUR FACE.”
CONTACT
Audio Solutions
1195 Botany Road
Mascot, NSW. 2020
02 9317 3330
www.audiosolutions.net.au
082
a couple of years ago, its new clean lines disguis-
ing a wealth of equipment — speakers from
B&W’s 700, 600 and Mini Theatre Series, right up
to Bowers & WIlkins’ range-topping 800 Series.
There’s a focus on in-wall and in-ceiling speakers,
with a wall of B&W Custom Install models ready
to play.
“That’s been going well, even during the
pandemic,” says Tony. “That 20 per cent that I was
saying was custom business, a lot of that is B&W.”
And is that because they have the chance to
hear those installation speakers playing in situ?
“Absolutely. People can go into shops and
they’re told ‘we can’t demo this, we can’t demo
that’. Well, we can, and we can let you hear the
difference between going for a $600 pair of
in-ceiling speakers or a $1500 pair of in-ceiling
speakers. They can be blown away by that.”
The front of the store has also been recently
renovated, though regular customers will be
relieved to know that the legendary Audio Solutions
coffee machine has not lost its place. But there’s a
new counter area, new displays for those Nordost
cables, and for mid-to-high-end wireless speakers
such as Naim’s Mu-so and the Bluesound Pulse.
Most prominent of all is the large new display area
for turntables. Turntables are still going well?
“It’s huge, mate, huge. Turntables, I think,
have put the specialist back in the game. And
that’s also from talking to other specialists who
are saying the same thing. Massive.”
Invariably when we speak to Tony
there’s some future plan about which he doesn’t
want to give too much away. This time he started
telling us about a planned area where “you’ll be
able to see how a control system works in a whole
house…” before decidingto save that for next time.
So there’s always something new happening,
new products and technologies to discover, and
all backed by the team’s in-depth yet jovial advice,
plus the levels of personal service which have
seen Audio Solutions get through the pandemic,
and indeed through now 21 years of business
serving the music and home entertainment
lovers of Mascot, Sydney, and beyond.

BIT PERFECT
FOR PERFECT SOUND
Bryston digital audio components
!(‫ٲ!(ٲ‬³Á«0xXzJ
Bryston’s digital audio components give you the chance to
hear a bit-perfect replica of what the musicians intended. They
ƺɴȵƺȸɎǼɵƬȒȇɮƺȸɎɵȒɖȸ!(ًˡǼƺًȒȸɀɎȸƺƏȅǣȇǕƳƏɎƏɎȒƏƫǣɎɀɎȸƺƏȅ
that the DAC can understand, then deliver the result through
fully discrete Class-A balanced analogue outputs. Whether you
choose CD, DSD, PCM or streaming, count on Bryston to deliver
your perfect digital source of choice.
Bryston BDA-3
digital-to-analogue converter
• 10 different inputs including 4 HDMI, 2 USB, AES/EBU, S/PDIF
RCA, S/PDIF BNC, and Toslink
• PCM to 384kHz / 32-bit, DSD to DSD-256 (x4)
• Separate power supplies for analog and digital circuitry
• Fully discrete Class-A balanced analog outputs
• Control via IR, RS232, IP, or 12V trigger
• Aluminum chassis and metalwork
MADE IN CANADA
Bryston BCD-3
CD player
• Redbook CD player
• XLR and RCA output
• Digital out via coaxial and AES/EBU
• Control via web UI or automation systems
• Rugged metal CD tray with support rails
• Built using identical DAC circuitry originally
developed for BDA-3 DAC
Bryston BDA-3.14
(!ٖɀɎȸƺƏȅƺȸٖƳǣǕǣɎƏǼȵȸƺƏȅȵǼǣˡƺȸ
• All the BDA-3’s features PLUS
• Built-in streamer up to 192kHz / 24-bit
• Tidal, Qobuz, Roon, Internet Radio and more
• Connect USB or NAS drive for local library playback
• Full control via web enabled device
Proudly distributed in Australia by