SPECIAL EDITION PACKED WITH HI-FI & AV REVIEWS FROM

SPRING 2023

AUDIO BLISS BONANZA!

Elevate your entertainment with top hi-fi and AV gear

TOP
REVIEWS
& HOW TO
CHOOSE TVs & PROJECTORS

2023#2
A$12.95
NZ$13.90 AV RECEIVERS SPEAKERS SOUNDBARS
(inc. GST)

TURNTABLES STREAMERS SMART AMPS

;OLH[YL9LKLÄULK
,_WLYPLUJL[OLUL^Z[HUKHYKPU2OVTL[OLH[YLSHZLYWYVQLJ[PVU[LJOUVSVN`MYVT,WZVU

With advanced pixel-shifting technology* and dedicated processors for resolution

enhancement and HDR, the EH-LS12000B delivers an exceptionally sharp 4K
WPJ[\YL [OH[ HJOPL]LZ  TPSSPVU WP_LSZ ¶ H YLZVS\[PVU VM  _  VU ZJYLLU
¶^P[OV\[ZHJYPÄJPUNWPJ[\YLIYPNO[ULZZ

This isn’t just a new way to watch movies — it’s the best way.

www.epson.com.au/LS12000B
®

4K
29LZVS\[PVU,UOHUJLTLU[;LJOUVSVN`ZOPM[ZLHJOWP_LS[VWYVK\JLHUPTHNLVUZJYLLU\W[V[OLZ[H[LKZWLJPÄJH[PVU
 CONTENTS
BEST BUYS AUDIO & AV | 2023#2

HOW TO...
How to choose hi-fi & home cinema 06
Screen dreams: a lesson in home cinema imaging 53

TELEVISIONS
TCL 55C845 – Mini LED television 72
TCL 55C745 – QLED television 76

AV PROJECTORS
BenQ W4000i – home cinema projector 40
Epson EH-TW6250 / LS12000B – AV projectors 44
Optoma L1+ – ultra-short-throw projector 48

AV SOUND
JBL Bar 1300 – soundbar system 56
Marantz Cinema 40 – AV receiver 60
Sennheiser Ambeo Plus & Sub – soundbar 64
Sony STR-AN1000 – AV receiver 68

STEREO HI-FI
Denon DNP-2000NE – streamer with HEOS 08
Lenco LBT-225 – turntable with Bluetooth & USB 12
Rega Planar 3:50 – anniversary-edition turntable 16
Transrotor Phono MC 8.2 Sym – phono stage 20
TAGA Harmony TWA-10B – wireless streaming adaptor 24
Yamaha R-N2000A – streaming stereo amplifier 28
Revival Sprint 3 – standmount loudspeakers 32
Marantz Model 40n / B&W 705 S3 – system package 36

HI-FI SHOPS
Tivoli Hi-Fi – Melbourne destination hi-fi store 80

3

BEST BUYS AUDIO & AV • ISSUE 2023-#2, SPRING
ISSN 1442-2824 ©2023
FUTURE PUBLISHING AUSTRALIA
PO Box Q1179, Queen Victoria Building, NSW 1230
Tel: 02 9955 2677 www.whathifi.com/soundandimage
Some screen images & art: Stable Diffusion 1.5
Editor: Jez Ford • jez.ford@futurenet.com
Contributors: Greg Borrowman, Stephen Dawson, Becky Roberts
Art Director: Kristian Hagen
Advertising Sales Manager: Lewis Preece
Advertising Traffic: Di Preece • diane.preece@futurenet.com
Divisional Manager & National Advertising Sales Manager:
Jim Preece • jim.preece@futurenet.com
Managing Director: Neville Daniels
A SOUND+IMAGE SUBSCRIPTION
INCLUDES TWO ISSUES OF ‘Best Buys Audio & AV’ EACH YEAR.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE at techmags.com.au
or call CRM on (02) 8227 6486
Printed in Australia by IVE. Distributed in Australia
and NZ by Are Direct. We are committed to only using
magazine paper which is derived from responsibly
managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free
manufacture. The paper in this magazine was sourced
and produced from sustainable managed forests,
conforming to strict environmental and socio-
economic standards. The manufacturing paper
mill holds full FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) or
PEFC certification and accreditation
All contents © 2023 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 writ-
ten permission of the publisher. Future Publishing
Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in
England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House,
The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All 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 contact manufacturers and retailers directly with
regard to the prices of products/services referred to
in this publication. This magazine is fully independ-
ent and not affiliated in any way with the companies
mentioned herein.
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, its employees
and/or agents, nor its distributors accepts or assumes
liability or responsibility for any loss or damage result-
ing from the incorrectness of such information. The
submission of material and/or products to us signifies
Future plc is a public
company quoted on
the London Stock Exchange
(symbol: FUTR)
www.futureplc.com
that you have read, acknowledged and accepted all the
abovementioned conditions.
If you submit material to us you warrant that you
own the material and/or have the necessary rights/
permissions to supply the material and you
automatically grant Future and its licensees a licence
to publish your submission in whole or in part in any/
all issues and/or editions of publications, in any format
published worldwide and on associated websites,
social media channels and associated products. Any
material and/or equipment you submit to us is sent
at your own risk and, although every care is taken,
neither Future nor its employees, agents, subcontrac-
tors 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, and/or adapt all submissions. The submission
of material and/or products or equipment to us signi-
fies that you have read, acknowledged and accepted
all the abovementioned conditions.
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.
Chief executive Jon Steinberg
Non-executive chairman Richard Huntingford
Chief financial officer Penny Ladkin-Brand
Tel +44 (0) 1225 442 244
The Hi-Fi Headlines
NEWSLETTER NO.266

At Len Wallis Audio, we’re continuously fueled by an invigorating

rush of innovative products surging through our doors—and this
month proves to be just as exhilarating!
Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista Series.
§ňĄĉňĩáýŀƪȶɫőňĉɫőĞɫƃĥĩźɫƪĉáŴɢźɫźĩğňĩLjþáňƃɫŀáƉňþĥĉźɫþőŇĉźɫĞŴőŇɫ
eƉźĩþáŀɫ>ĩĄĉŀĩƃƪȶɫáɫýŴáňĄɫĽňőƤňɫĞőŴɫĩƃźɫŴĉŇáŴĽáýŀĉɫĉŀĉþƃŴőňĩþɫþŴĉáƃĩőňźȶɫ
ňőƤɫűĩőňĉĉŴĩňğɫáňɫƉňűŴĉþĉĄĉňƃĉĄɫƣĉňƃƉŴĉȵɫ¡ĥĉƪɢƣĉɫƉňƣĉĩŀĉĄɫƃĥĉɫ
fƉɏÁĩźƃáɫźĉŴĩĉźȶɫáňɫĉňźĉŇýŀĉɫőĞɫáŇűŀĩLjĉŴźɫƃĥáƃɫűŴőŇĩźĉźɫƃőɫýŴĉáĽɫ
ňĉƤɫğŴőƉňĄȵɫ¡ĥĉɫŴáňğĉɫĩňþŀƉĄĉźɫáňɫĩňƃĉğŴáƃĉĄɫáŇűŀĩLjĉŴȶɫáɫűŴĉɏáŇűȶɫáɫ
źƃĉŴĉőɫűőƤĉŴɫáŇűȶɫáňĄɫŇőňőýŀőþĽɫűőƤĉŴɫáŇűŀĩLjĉŴźȶɫĉáþĥɫĉƩĥĩýĩƃĩňğɫ
eƉźĩþáŀɫ>ĩĄĉŀĩƃƪɢźɫƉňƤáƣĉŴĩňğɫþőŇŇĩƃŇĉňƃɫƃőɫųƉáŀĩƃƪɫáňĄɫĩňňőƣáƃĩőňȵ

Nu-Vista 800.2 Nu-Vista Pre pre- Nu-Vista PAS. Nu-Vista PAM.

ĩňƃĉğŴáƃĉĄɫáŇűŀĩLjĉŴȵɫ
ÂĥĩŀĉɫƃĥĩźɫáŇűŀĩLjĉŴɫĩźɫýáźĉĄɫőňɫ
ƃĥĉɫŴĉþĉňƃŀƪɫĄĩźþőňƃĩňƉĉĄɫfƉɏ
ÁĩźƃáɫǚǒǒɫáŇűŀĩLjĉŴȶɫĩƃɫĩźɫźőňĩþáŀŀƪɫ
áɫĄĩDžĉŴĉňƃɫýĉáźƃɫɉáźɫğőőĄɫáźɫƃĥĉɫ
ĉáŴŀĩĉŴɫƣĉŴźĩőňɫƤáźɊȵɫIƃɫĩźɫźƃĩŀŀɫáɫ
ĥƪýŴĩĄɫĄĉźĩğňɫɉƣáŀƣĉɫĞŴőňƃɏĉňĄɫ
ƤĩƃĥɫźőŀĩĄɫźƃáƃĉɫőƉƃűƉƃɫźƃáğĉɊɫ
ŴáƃĉĄɫáƃɫǕǒǒɫƤáƃƃźɃþĥáňňĉŀȶɫ
ýƉƃɫňƉŇĉŴőƉźɫĉŀĉþƃŴőňĩþɫáňĄɫ
źƃŴƉþƃƉŴáŀɫþĥáňğĉźɫĉƩĩźƃȵɫ¡ĥĉɫ
fƉɏÁĩźƃáɫǚǒǒɫƤáźɫáɫƣĉŴƪɫğőőĄɫ
áŇűŀĩLjĉŴɫɑɫƃĥĉɫfƉɏÁĩźƃáɫǚǒǒȵǔɫĩźɫ
ŇƉþĥɫýĉƃƃĉŴȵɫPrice $19,990
áŇűŀĩLjĉŴȵɫ
eƉźĩþáŀɫ>ĩĄĉŀĩƃƪɫƃŴĉᥟɫňĉƤɫ
ğŴőƉňĄȶɫþŴáĞƃĩňğɫáɫűŴĉɏáŇűŀĩLjĉŴɫ
ƤĩƃĥɫƉňűáŴáŀŀĉŀĉĄɫáƉĄĩƃőŴƪɫ
ýŴĩŀŀĩáňþĉȵɫ¡ĥĉĩŴɫĞƉŀŀƪɫýáŀáňþĉĄɫ
űŴĉɏáŇűȶɫĞĉáƃƉŴĩňğɫǘ˜ǗǓfɫfƉɏ
ÁĩźƃáɫƣáŀƣĉźɫáňĄɫáɫĄĉĄĩþáƃĉĄɫ
ĉƩƃĉŴňáŀɫűőƤĉŴɫźőƉŴþĉȶɫźĉƃźɫáɫ
ýĉňþĥŇáŴĽȵɫIňɫƃĥĉĩŴɫƤőŴĄźȶɫɡ>őŴɫ
ƃĥĉɫLjŴźƃɫƃĩŇĉɫĩňɫEĩɏ>ĩɫĥĩźƃőŴƪȶɫ
fƉƣĩźƃáɫƃƉýĉźɫŇĉŴğĉɫƤĩƃĥɫ
þƉƃƃĩňğɏĉĄğĉȶɫĞƉŀŀƪɫýáŀáňþĉĄɫ
ƃĉþĥňőŀőğƪȶɫáňĄɫáĄƣáňþĉĄɫ
ĄĉźĩğňɫŇĉƃĥőĄźɢɫPrice $41,000
¡ĥĩźɫĞƉŀŀƪɫýáŀáňþĉĄɫźƃĉŴĉőɫ ¡ĥĩźɫǘǒǒɏƤáƃƃɫŇőňőɏýŀőþĽɫ
űőƤĉŴɫáŇűŀĩLjĉŴɫőƉƃűƉƃźɫǕǒǒɫ űőƤĉŴɫáŇűŀĩLjĉŴɫĩźɫýáźĉĄɫőňɫ
ƤáƃƃźɃþĥáňňĉŀɫáňĄɫþőŇĉźɫƤĩƃĥɫ ƃĥĉĩŴɫŀĉğĉňĄáŴƪɫ¡ĩƃáňɫźƃĉŴĉőɫ
áňɫĉƩƃĉŴňáŀɫĄĉĄĩþáƃĉĄɫűőƤĉŴɫ űőƤĉŴɫáŇűɫáňĄɫþőŇĉźɫƤĩƃĥɫ
źƉűűŀƪȵɫPrice $44,000 ĩƃźɫĄĉĄĩþáƃĉĄɫĉƩƃĉŴňáŀɫűőƤĉŴɫ
źƉűűŀƪȵɫPrice $82,000/pair.
¡ĥĉŴĉɫĩźɫáňɫĉáźĉɫőĞɫŇƉźĩþáŀɫĄĉŀĩƣĉŴƪɫƃőɫƃĥĉźĉɫáŇűŀĩLjĉŴźȶɫ
ŴĉŇĩňĩźþĉňƃɫőĞɫ[ŴĉŀŀɢźɫőĞɫƪĉźƃĉŴƪĉáŴȶɫýƉƃɫƃĥĉɫɡýŀáþĽňĉźźɢɫĩźɫŇőźƃɫ
þáűƃĩƣáƃĩňğȵɫ*ƣĉŴƪɫňőƃĉɫőĞɫƃĥĉɫŇƉźĩþɫĩźɫĄĉLjňĉĄȶɫĥáňğĩňğɫĩňɫźűáþĉȶɫ
ýƉƃɫőňþĉɫűáźźĉĄȶɫƃĥĉŴĉɫĩźɫňőƃĥĩňğȵɫ¡ĥĉźĉɫáŇűŀĩLjĉŴźɫŇáƪɫþőźƃɫ
ƃĥĉɫźáŇĉɫáźɫáɫŀƉƩƉŴƪɫƤáƃþĥɫɉáňĄɫáŴĉɫýƉĩŀƃɫƃőɫƃĥĉɫźáŇĉɫŇĉƃĩþƉŀőƉźɫ
źƃáňĄáŴĄźɊɫɑɫýƉƃɫƃĥĉƪɫőDžĉŴɫĞáŴɫğŴĉáƃĉŴɫƣáŀƉĉȺɫ

Pantheone
ĉŀĉýŴáƃĩňğɫáɫljőƉŴĩźĥĩňğɫ
ƉźƃŴáŀĩáňɫ
áþĥĩĉƣĉŇĉňƃɫƤĩƃĥĩňɫőƉŴɫźĉþƃőŴȶɫáňƃĥĉőňĉɫ

ƉĄĩőɫĩźɫĉƃþĥĩňğɫĩƃźɫğŀőýáŀɫŇáŴĽɫƤĩƃĥɫáɫ
ŇáƃþĥŀĉźźɫƤĩŴĉŀĉźźɫźƃŴĉáŇĩňğɫźűĉáĽĉŴɫ
Ŵáňğĉȵɫ¡ĥĉɫűŴőĄƉþƃɫŀĩňĉƉűȶɫŀĩŇĩƃĉĄɫƪĉƃɫ
ƉňĩųƉĉȶɫĞĉáƃƉŴĉźɫőňŀƪɫƃƤőɫŇőĄĉŀźɒƃĥĉɫ
ĄĩźƃĩňþƃĩƣĉŀƪɫźĥáűĉĄɫáňƃĥĉőňĉɫǓɫáňĄɫ
ƃĥĉɫƣĉŴźáƃĩŀĉɫoýźĩĄĩáňȶɫĉųƉĩűűĉĄɫ
ƤĩƃĥɫýőƃĥɫűőƤĉŴɫáňĄɫýáƃƃĉŴƪɫőűƃĩőňźȵ
¡ĥĉźĉɫáŴĉňɢƃɫŇĉŴĉɫáĉźƃĥĉƃĩþɫ
ŇáźƃĉŴűĩĉþĉźɫŇáźųƉĉŴáĄĩňğɫáźɫ
źűĉáĽĉŴźɒáɫƃŴőűĉɫƤĉɢƣĉɫƤĩƃňĉźźĉĄɫ
áŀŀɫƃőőɫőĞƃĉňȵɫIňźƃĉáĄȶɫƃĥĉɫĄĉźĩğňɫğĉňĩƉźɫ
źűŴĩňğźɫĞŴőŇɫƃĥĉɫþőŀŀáýőŴáƃĩőňɫýĉƃƤĉĉňɫ
oŴĉňɫ
ĄáňĩȶɫáɫźĉáźőňĉĄɫƣĉƃĉŴáňɫƤĩƃĥɫáɫ
ǔǗɏƪĉáŴɫĩňĄƉźƃŴƪɫĉƩűĉŴĩĉňþĉȶɫáňĄɫ
ĄŴĩáňɫ
˜ƃáþĥőƤĩþƳȶɫáɫþŴáĞƃźŇáňɫŴĉLjňĉĄɫýƪɫáɫ
ųƉáŴƃĉŴɏþĉňƃƉŴƪɫƃĉňƉŴĉɫáƃɫ>őþáŀȵɫ¡ĥĉɫáŴƃĩźƃĩþɫ
ljáĩŴȼɫŴĉĄĩƃɫƃĥáƃɫƃőɫ
ňňĉɏŀáĩŴĉɫőƃƃőźȶɫáɫ
þŴĉáƃĩƣĉɫĞőŴþĉɫƤĥőɢźɫŀĉňƃɫĥĉŴɫĉƩűĉŴƃĩźĉɫƃőɫ
źőŇĉɫőĞɫƃĥĉɫğŀőýĉɢźɫŇőźƃɫŴĉƣĉŴĉĄɫŀƉƩƉŴƪɫ
ýŴáňĄźȵ

Ŵƃȵɫ>őŴŇȵɫ˜őƉňĄȵɫ¡ĥĩźɫĩźňɢƃɫŇĉŴĉŀƪɫƃĥĉɫ
ƃáğŀĩňĉɫĞőŴɫáňƃĥĉőňĉȶɫĩƃɢźɫáɫŇáňƃŴáɫƃĥáƃɫ
ŴáĄĩáƃĉźɫƃĥŴőƉğĥɫƃĥĉĩŴɫĄĉźĩğňɫáĉźƃĥĉƃĩþɫáňĄɫ
űĉŴĞőŴŇáňþĉɫþáűáýĩŀĩƃĩĉźȵ
Pantheone 1 Price $3,699
Obsidian Price $1,995

64 Burns Bay Road, Lane Cove, NSW 2066 | (02) 9427 6755 | sales@lenwallisaudio.com
lenwallisaudio.com
 HOW TO
HOW TO CHOOSE...
HI-FI & HOME CINEMA
Welcome to a magazine packed with some of the world’s most
awesome audio and AV equipment. But how do you choose what to buy?
t’s one thing to flick through a
magazine like Sound+Image or
Best Buys Audio & AV, reading about
the latest equipment, or catching
up on the latest developments. And
we know many of our readers will
already have a system and may be looking
for a specific upgrade — a more powerful
amplifier, better speakers, or a more
up-to-date AV receiver, for example.
But it’s quite another thing to be
starting from scratch, faced with a world
of equipment and wondering where to
start. Here are some of the fundamental
questions you should be asking.
Hi-fi, home cinema, or a mix?
Are you an avid music lover looking for
an exceptional hi-fi system? Or are you
more interested in creating a cinematic
experience with a home theatre? Or
something inbetween — a hi-fi which will
flank your TV to play both music and TV/
movie sound? Defining the purpose of your
system will enable you to make a list of
exactly what products you’ll be looking for.
Hi-fi systems can be as minimalist as
you like, with all-in-one options available,
although there are good arguments for
getting proper hi-fi separates. A system
for TV and music can also be achieved
relatively simply. Home cinema systems
6
are inevitably more complex, and if you’re
going for a full-on dedicated cinema room,
you would be very wise to involve a profes-
sional as early as possible in the process.
Separates or all-in-one?
You can get all-in-one hi-fi systems that will
require only a single purchase. These vary
from the old-school ‘stacked’ mini system
with speakers, to modern-style systems
with everything in a single unit. There’s
also the most recent entry to the all-in-one
solution — streaming speakers, which have
amplifiers and streaming built in, so that
in theory you could use them as a complete
solution, or plug additional sources in.
But there are great advantages in having
separate sources, amplifiers and speakers.
Separate hi-fi components allow for greater
flexibility, customisation, and potential for
higher audio performance. They also enable
individual parts to be upgraded when
desired, without junking the whole system.
Perhaps the best argument for separates
is that few brands are great at everything
in the chain, so you can achieve superior
sound quality by mixing and matching
speakers from a speaker specialist, an
amplifier from a company known for
making brilliant amplifiers, and so on.
In home cinema, you’ll almost definitely
be dealing with a separates solution.
What’s your budget?
Determining your budget is a very obvious
first step when shopping for hi-fi or home
cinema! But you need to be realistic,
especially in home cinema, where too little
can result in a system which is simply no
fun. It’s better to wait and save than to
splash early on a system you won’t enjoy.
As for how you split that budget into
individual pieces, this is one of the great
debates in hi-fi! Forty years ago, when the
main source was a turntable, the equation
was often stated as 40/30/30, with 40% on
the turntable, 30% on your amplifier, and
30% on your speakers. Curiously the same
people would advise spending 10% of your
budget on cables, apparently hoping you
would expand your budget to do so!
Today you may have multiple sources —
streamer, CD player, turntable... although
these can often be combined in some way,
with streaming in your amplifier, say, or a
combined CD player and streamer.
But we’d also say that both source value
and amp value have grown greatly over
the decades. If these are chosen wisely, we
reckon you can put as much as 50% into
your speakers. The source-first philosophy
(garbage in, garbage out) still applies,
especially for turntables, but high-quality
digital sources are available more cheaply
than ever before, changing the equation.

How big is the room?
The size and layout of your room play
a significant role in the overall audio
experience (and the acoustics still more, see
below). Larger rooms may require a more
powerful amplifier with larger speakers,
while smaller spaces might benefit from
bookshelf/standmount speakers or even,
for TV/music systems, a good soundbar.
Putting large speakers in a small room may
sound fun, but you probably won’t achieve
the listening distance they’re designed for,
which can affect how the drivers integrate
to deliver the best performance. Also the
vast majority of speakers are designed to
sound best when placed away from any
wall — a 50cm gap is a good place to start.
Again, this will probably see larger speakers
compromised when used in a small space.
Do I need a subwoofer?
In a home cinema system, yes; a subwoofer
is compulsory because that’s the way
home cinema sound is delivered. When
you see systems described as 5.1 or 7.1, or
Atmos systems as 5.1.4, say, that ‘.1’ is the
subwoofer, and movie soundtracks have a
specific track for that bass content. You can
tell AV receivers to reallocate the bass to
your other speakers, but you’ll miss hearing
that massive movie sound, as intended.
For stereo systems, however, we’d say no,
particularly when starting out. Yes you can
add subwoofers to a stereo system, and it
can especially fill out the sound of smaller
bookshelf speakers. But subwoofers are not
cheap, and in general you’ll be far better off
allocating those funds to better speakers in
the first place.
What source components?
Consider this carefully, and remember you
can always add something later. Start by
building a system which will let you listen
to the music in the way you do already. So
if you currently stream music on a phone
and listen on headphones, we’d advise a
system that enables you to continue your
streaming in the same way, and to have
your hi-fi ‘take over’ when you get home.
There are today so many ways to stream
that this handover could be to a dedicated
streamer unit, or to an amplifier with a
streaming system built-in, or even to those
smart streaming speakers we mentioned
earlier. The point is not to switch wholesale
to, say, vinyl, if you’re currently enjoying
digital music. Complement your current
listening methods; don’t replace them.
How will you control it?
In hi-fi, the answer to this has long been
the traditional remote control. But in the
age of smartphones and apps, a lot of hi-fi
offers control in that way. Home cinema is
potentially more complicated if the room
includes lighting, motorised curtains and
other home automation miracles, but
those can very often be neatly controlled
from a tablet device or, with slightly less
convenience, from a phone.
And that’s great; app control can often
be entirely comprehensive, and can get you
to complicated settings far quicker than a
traditional remote. However, we’re seeing
lots of hi-fi these days which doesn’t come
with that physical remote, and leaves you
with just an app. We don’t like that at all.
When the phone rings and you have to
turn down the volume quickly, an app is
often completely useless (because your
phone is ringing and you don’t have time
to start the app, connect to the product,
etc.) and without a remote control you’re
left running across the room to turn things
down manually, like in the 1950s. Even in
a home cinema, adjusting the volume via
a tablet means a bright screen lighting up
in your darkened theatre, which breaks the
mood, when a physical remote can do the
job with total discretion.
So with either type of system, we always
recommend that you look for dual control,
or budget for the now ‘optional’ remote.
Does the room need
acoustic treatment?
Depends on the room, of course, but almost
certainly yes. Indeed the room in which
you listen is arguably the biggest single
influence on the performance of your
system. This can be great news — fixing
your room can be one of the cheapest ways
to upgrade your system! Room acoustics
don’t just make a small difference: they can
have a big impact on clarity and tonality.
Every room has a sonic signature, made up
of the way sound bounces around it and the
resonances that are generated. This has to
do with the room’s size and construction, as
well as the way it is furnished. Yes, even that
bookshelf in the corner is contributing to it.
At low frequencies, your room’s
behaviour is characterised by its size and
the materials it’s built from. While solid
brick walls and concrete floors tend to
hold onto bass energy, wooden-framed
partition walls and suspended floors tend
to let it escape — but not before they flex in
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
sympathy, creating unwanted effects on
the sound in the process. Small rooms
tend to have more issues with uneven
low frequencies, particularly if any of their
dimensions — length, width or height —
are similar.
Higher frequency issues are more
related to furniture in the room and its
proportion of hard reflective surfaces.
What to do? If your room is sparsely
furnished, and has wooden or tiled floors
and/or a large glass area, there’s a good
chance that it will sound bright. Is there
strong reverb when you speak? Such effects
will make your system sound forward,
cluttered and tiring. The prominence of
high frequencies could well unbalance
the presentation and even make it sound
lacking in bass weight and natural warmth.
So it’s worth adding some absorbing
materials such as rugs or carpets on the
floor between the speakers, or shelves filled
with books. Heavy curtains are a great
option in front of large glass areas, and
things like heavily stuffed sofas also help.
But a too-heavily-furnished room
absorbs a lot of the higher frequencies,
so it can make your system sound dull
and unexciting. So reduce the amount of
absorption material if your room seems a
dull listen. The ideal, of course, is to strike a
balance between these extremes.
Home cinemas can be acoustic
nightmares, and again, professional design
and commercial acoustic products can turn
mush into magnificent movie sound.
Where should I buy?
Sorry, Amazon (or actually, not sorry at all),
but the internet is not the place to buy hi-fi.
The number one reason for this is because
if you buy audio equipment without
listening to it first, you’re buying a pig in a
poke. Even if our reviews praise a product
to the skies, we’d still recommend an
audition before purchase, and that means
a hi-fi shop with listening rooms. Hi-fi
dealers offer an incredible service, setting
gear up for you, letting you sit in there for
free, probably bringing you coffee, all in the
hope of a sale. To do all that and then walk
off to buy on the internet and save $50 is
very unfair to them and will bring you such
bad karma your hi-fi will probably blow up
anyway. And then where will you have it
replaced or fixed? So find a friendly local
dealer. Indeed, a good hi-fi shop will help
you so much with advice, you really don’t
need this article in the first place!
7
 HI-FI
DENON DNP-2000NE
STREAMER WITH HEOS
It’s a high-resolution audio streamer with HEOS. But it’s actually a whole lot more,
while also showing the advantages of having a full-size component-width product.
D
enon has a definition problem
here. Not musical definition:
heaven forbid, this unit
operates at high-resolution and
should offer all the definition you need
in those terms. No, it’s what exactly to
call the DNP-2000NE — how to define its
functions. Officially it’s a “high-resolution
streamer with HEOS Built-in”. And so it is.
But it’s also rather more.
For one thing this streamer has a set
of digital inputs, for which it behaves not
as a streamer but as a digital-to-analogue
converter. And indeed these abilities go
beyond many standalone DACs in having
an HDMI connection which can play audio
from your TV, and a USB-B socket for
playing direct from a computer or laptop, in
addition to optical and coaxial connectors.
For another, it’s got a volume control.
That makes it a preamplifier, and if you
don’t use any analogue sources you could
do without a conventional amplifier in your
system, and go straight from this Denon
into power amps or active speakers.
So it’s more than a streamer — to give
the DNP-2000NE its full due we might
8
call it a streaming digital preamplifier.
Definition sorted, then, let’s see exactly
what it can do for you.
Build & facilities
Streamers come in all shapes and sizes,
including teeny-tiny boxes, as you can
see elsewhere this issue. But Denon’s
DNP-2000NE, although low in height,
is full component width, so it will match
other hi-fi separates and slot neatly into a
hi-fi rack or stack.
Where some streamers have entirely
blank frontages, this unit’s solid aluminium
front fascia has a lot going on. On the
right is a selection ring for getting through
menus, while on the left there’s a useful
full-size headphone socket, and a handy
USB-A slot below the power button into
which you can plug a stick or drive of
files for playback. (There isn’t a USB-A
slot on the back, sadly, so if you plug in a
permanent drive, it’s gonna look messy.)
Then there’s that potentially game-
changing volume control, which is perhaps
rather a small knob, but you’re more likely
to be using the up/down keys on the
surprisingly comprehensive full-sized
remote control, which can also control
a compatible Denon amplifier.
Of course, if you do plug this into a
normal amplifier, you won’t want a volume
control — you’ll be needing a fixed output.
So round the back of the DNP-2000NE are
not one but two sets of analogue outputs:
choose fixed, or variable, as you like. And
we like this option very much.
You can also take the output digitally, via
optical or coaxial outputs, into a superior
DAC should you have such a thing, though
we assume these outputs will be limited
to the usual 24-bit/192kHz. The analogue
outputs are specified to at least 50kHz
(-3dB), if we’re reading the specs correctly,
so from the analogue outputs the rest
of your equipment chain can receive a
genuinely high-resolution signal.
Then there are those inputs — two
optical digital, one coaxial digital, a USB-B
socket for connecting a computer, and that
handy HDMI socket with ARC playback
from an ARC-equipped TV.
There’s an Ethernet socket for wired
networking, or antennas to screw in for a

Wi-Fi connection, and for Bluetooth direct
streaming. Bluetooth seems limited to the
base-level SBC codec, however, so other
streaming methods will produce better
results. There’s AirPlay 2, though Apple’s
own current implementation limits device
streaming to 256k AAC. The unit is Roon
tested, should you enjoy that paid software.
But really, all streaming leads back to the
HEOS platform, which is the obvious way to
stream most things, and in most cases will
deliver the best quality.
HEOS
HEOS is the streaming and multiroom
platform developed originally for Denon
and Marantz, though pleasingly it has
roots in Australian technology (the Avega
system for wireless speakers). Early HEOS
development took place in North Sydney.
It was one of the original platforms
of this kind, so by now is one of the best
developed and safest hands; its ubiquity
is shown by HEOS appearing in two other
products in this issue of Best Buys Audio &
AV alone: the Marantz Model 40n amplifier
on page 36, and the Cinema 60 receiver on
page 60. Thanks to their multiroom ability,
HEOS-equipped things can talk with each
other, so if you had one of those Marantzes
elsewhere in the home, you could play the
Denon’s inputs to them, or their inputs
to the Denon, or just play a streaming
service through all the units at once, for
whole-home music under app control.
The HEOS interface is wonderfully
simple, connection usually reliable, and it
brings all kinds of streaming access: direct
(via Wi-Fi, so high quality) from music
stored on a phone or tablet, from any shares
of files on your network, and then from
music services paid and free, and internet
radio. Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music and
Deezer are here (at this level Qobuz might
be considered an omission), with TuneIn
radio, iHeartradio and Soundcloud all
getting panes on the main selection menu.
You can build and store playlists, check
your playback history, and more besides.
For ease of control, then, and for access
to online sources, the DNP-2000NE is
something of a motherlode.
We can’t resist looking back here,
because it was not always so. In 2013, the
year before HEOS launched, we reviewed
the DNP-720AE, a predecessor of this
unit. The ‘Denon Remote App’ which
controlled it back then was so flawed (as
was sister company Marantz’s then ‘Wizz’
app) that we deemed various aspects of
the product unusable until a new app was
released six months later, bringing such
absolute basics as alphabetical jumplists
and text search, without which DLNA and
internet radio selections required endless
glitchy scrolling. So all hail HEOS, and the
difference a decade makes.
Ultra AL32 processing
The DAC chips used in the DNP-2000NE
are 32-bit/384kHz-capable ESS Sabre
ES9018K2M chips, well-regarded, offering
two DACs per chip (compared to the
ES9018’s eight), and used here in a four-chip
implementation. But it’s what’s around the
chips that makes the difference, and the
processing method within the DNP-2000NE
is given headline position on the front
panel above the main display, where Denon
has enscribed ‘Ultra AL32 processing’.
This contrasts with Denon’s CD player
range, one of which is pictured on the
DNP-2000NE web page where this streamer
is shown shelved above a matching
DCD-1700NE. That product’s fascia says
“Advanced AL32 processing Plus”.
In fact Denon’s CD players have since
moved on — there’s now a choice between
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
two others: a $3499 “Reference CD/Super
Audio CD Player” and a $1099 non-SACD CD
player, both of which share that “Advanced
AL32 processing Plus”.
But there’s also a $5490 DCD-A110
CD player released for Denon’s 110th
anniversary in 2020, and that one has our
streamer’s “new Ultra AL32 Processing”.
Ultra AL32 even has its own space-age logo.
So is this the latest and greatest, what is it
anyway, and what’s the diff?
There’s quite the history here, too.
Denon’s Alpha processing goes all the way
back to 1990, when its original introduction
marked the “world’s first technical formula”
for using upsampling and adaptive filtering
to present 16-bit data in 20-bit quality, with
the key advantage of vastly raising the
number of possible quantisation levels for
each sample from 65,536 levels to over a
million, allowing more accurate processing
and fewer rounding errors.
AL24 Processing later increased this to
24 bits (more than 16 million quantisation
levels), and of course the current AL32 is 32
bits — a stonking four billion levels. The
‘Plus’ suffix indicated a lift from 192kHz
sampling rates up to 384kHz.
Now we have the ‘Ultra’ label, which
doubles the processing bandwidth again,
upsampling even 32-bit/384kHz content
to 1.512MHz. Denon does sometimes say
foolish things about “carefully restoring
data that was lost during digital recording”
(not possible), but what it means is that the
steps between the digital samples are being
smoothed out ever more smoothly with
interpolated sub-samples.
As with frame interpolation in TV
motion-smoothing systems, this leaves us
in the curious position of enjoying vastly
more artificially-generated samples than
we do originally recorded music. But
while Tom Cruise has been jumping on
sofas to warn us about what this does to
video quality, it’s fully accepted in audio
(predicting a one-dimensional value is
rather simpler than interpolating 2D 4K
video frames).
Meanwhile the higher bandwidth
simplifies analogue post-filtering by
allowing the reconstruction/anti-aliasing
filter to be well above audible frequencies,
so it can work effectively without cutting
into frequencies below 20kHz and
distorting phase in the audible band.
This is, in fact, the best argument for
high-res audio in general. But the benefits
above, say, 96kHz are questionable, so the
9
 HI-FI
push to go ever higher might be considered
similarly so. Still, as with all things high-res,
why not. So if Ultra AL32 is on offer, we
might as well celebrate it. Let’s have a listen.
Listening sessions
It’s not only full component size, the
DNP-2000NE is surprisingly heavy for a
source; indeed at 9.7kg it’s heavier than a
number of Denon’s integrated amplifiers.
That’s generally a proxy for the quality of
components within as well as the external
chassis, giving us confidence as we cabled
the output to our amp and plugged in our
computer, a drive of music, an Ethernet
cable, and the power. After a few remote
control selections using the clear 3-line
front display, the unit was updating and
then ready to use. Time from unboxing to
playback: about 10 minutes.
As the unit had opened up showing the
internet radio menus, we got it playing our
local community station while we spent
some time exploring the device’s settings
via the HEOS app.
One of these settings offered the
software choice of fixed or variable output,
which was odd given the two sets of outputs
for exactly this purpose — but the setting
didn’t seem to do anything to either pair.
Another setting for ‘Quality’ offered a
choice of ‘Normal’ or ‘High’, so we went
high, obviously, though this turned out
to govern only the quality when sharing
between HEOS devices — Normal for
reliability, High for best bit-rate.
We went from internet radio to our
attached drive of high-res files, the
biggest quality jump possible! We were
immediately and immensely impressed;
the quality was superb. We’ve played Diana
Krall and Michael Buble’s version of Alone
Again (Naturally) 100 times before; we’ve
never heard it so absolutely clear. For once
Krall’s voice wasn’t large and dripping, it
was just real, no effects, no sibilance, just
10
there, and terribly sad (it’s a terribly sad
song). Tears here, and heavens we were
just getting started. It was going to be one
of those sessions.
The Krall is a 2.8MHz DSD file — if
you hit the info key on the remote this is
usefully displayed on the front panel; it’s
also shown on the Now Playing screen of
HEOS. As we cheered ourselves up with
some Coldplay, we noted the front display
said 24-bit/48kHz while the HEOS app said
24-bit/192kHz — strange, but it sounded
good enough. With Nelson Riddle’s Come
Blow Your Horn (no really, it was a movie),
the app gave no file information but the
display correctly said 24-bit/192kHz.
Everything sounded thrilling; the DAC
implementation and the analogue output
stage here are exceptional, their resolving
powers allowing insight into detail after
detail, while the music flowed through
unchecked. We tried to fox it with some
tricky stuff, but it even managed to prevent
Dion’s vocal on I Read It (in the Rolling Stone)
from emerging thin and painful, as it does
when played on a great deal of equipment.
How about a 128k MP3? Ah, well, the
Denon was equally clear on revealing the
limitations of that file, given a good system
on the end of it, so we would say that this is
not the machine for smoothing over shite
(but then, what is?).
Spotify sounded rather better, with
nicely native operation from the Spotify
app, instructing the Denon rather than
throwing tunes through the air. But again,
Spotify’s sub-CD (still!) quality was easily
audible, especially when compared against
the same song played locally.
So the only thing we’d say about the
DNP-2000NE is that it’s a streamer and
DAC of sufficient quality that it deserves
decent file quality as an input. Garbage in,
garbage out is always a valid philosophy
(see p6-7), but it’s rarely so audibly self-
evident as it was here.
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
We returned to our CD-quality and
high-res collection and played via the
USB-B from computer and through USB-A
from the hard drive. The DNP-2000NE
simply never put a foot wrong.
Conclusion
You might think a streamer’s a streamer,
and why go higher than entry-level? The
DNP-2000NE puts that misguided notion to
bed, pulls up the duvet and sets fire to the
bedroom. It does streaming and network
playback thrillingly, while bringing the
considerable benefit of digital inputs and
variable outputs under volume control. Plus
it’s all so easy with the HEOS app in hand.
We always search hard for problems with
review equipment. Other than a limited
Bluetooth implementation and being too
revealing for playing rubbish files, there just
aren’t any here. Top marks.
DENON
DNP-2000NE
• High-level processing; excellent
sound
• Fixed and variable outputs
• HEOS streaming & multiroom
• Bluetooth SBC only
• No rear USB-A socket
Price: $2999
Inputs: USB-A, USB-B, coaxial digital,
2 x optical digital, HDMI ARC, Ethernet,
Wi-Fi, HEOS, Bluetooth (SBC only)
Outputs: fixed analogue RCA, variable
analogue RCA, optical digital, coaxial
digital, headphone, IR control (Denon)
Dimensions (whd): 434 x 107 x 374mm
(plus 50mm height for antennas if used)
Weight: 9.7kg
Contact: Masimo Consumer
Telephone: 02 9196 8990
Web: www.denon.com/en-au
MAKE EVERY GAME
A GRAND FINAL WITH
TCL BIG SCREENS

Bring the thrilling excitement of the game right into your living room. Experience every kick,
mark, and goal on a grand scale with TCL’s big screen TVs. Gather around the captivating action
and feel every match as though you’ve got the best seats in the stadium.

JOIN THE TCL BIG SCREEN REVOLUTION

NEW SERIES OUT NOW

P745 / C645 / C745 / C845

DISCOVER THE FULL RANGE AT YOUR NEAREST RETAILER TODAY.

www.tcl.com/au Official Television and

White Goods Partner
 HI-FI
LENCO LBT-225
TURNTABLE WITH BLUETOOTH & USB
Not only is Lenco’s affordable turntable impressively built and loaded,
it comes with a built-in phono stage, Bluetooth output, and USB recording.
F
rom the very first sight, this seems
like a lot of turntable for the money.
Lenco’s LBT-225 is a belt-driven
fully-manual turntable with a
substantial plinth in a very nice walnut
finish, fitted with a glass platter, a carbon-
fibre tonearm, no less, and the ever-reliable
Audio-Technica AT-VM95E moving-magnet
cartridge tracking your tunes.
If that wasn’t enough, under the platter
hangs an electronics section which includes
a built-in phono stage, so you can take the
output at full line-level into any amplifier.
That’s handy for hi-fi newbies, as otherwise
you’d need either a special phono input on
your amplifier or a standalone phono stage
to pre-boost the signal. This way you can
use any amp — although you still have the
option to come out at phono level if you
have your own superior phono stage.
12
And there’s more — a Bluetooth output,
which can pair with headphones or a
Bluetooth speaker (or anything else that
can receive Bluetooth, such as a smart
amplifier) for easy vinyl replay without the
cables. This option gives versatility to site
the Lenco turntable anywhere in the room.
And what’s this USB-B socket on the
rear? That’s to connect with a computer and
record your vinyl digitally. Handy.
At this price — $695 — you might hope
to find one or two of those features on
a turntable. But the lot? It hardly seems
credible. Yet here it is, sent to us by the
enthusiastic importer and distributor
Audacity Australia. We got straight into it.
Build & facilities
Lenco has a long history, originally Swiss,
flourishing until the 1970s, when both
founders passed away within four years of
each other. Since then the name has been
revived several times, and is currently based
in the Netherlands as part of the Commaxx
stable of brands, with this model manufac-
tured in China; the company makes a point
of letting us know they are tight on working
practices, production quality and trust.
There’s certainly every sign of quality
control marking out the LBT-225. The
plinth is no lightweight, nearly 30mm thick
(the full turntable is 6.6kg), and that walnut
finish looks like a nice dark properly-
grained veneer; it fits perfectly round edges.
The sub-platter is plastic, one of the
few signs of economy here. But then the
13mm green-tinged glass platter which
sits on top lends it such a touch of class
that it’s almost a shame to cover it with the
provided Lenco felt slipmat.

There’s also the essential hinged plastic
lid included, to fit over the deck.
That snazzy carbon-fibre arm is coated
in a clear lacquer and has a 8.6-inch
effective tonearm length, angled to a ‘J’.
bringing the AT-VM95E cartridge and its
stylus parallel to the LP grooves.
The green-shelled AT-VM95E cartridge
is an old friend, of course — a dual-magnet
design and one of the company’s best-
selling cartridges for good reason: it has a
smooth, rich sound quality, and tracks very
well. A replacement cartridge will be only
around $80, or just the stylus for $50.
Indeed you can slide in different styluses
for different occasions: instead of the
replacement VNM95E stylus you could
upgrade to Audio-Technica’s nude-mounted
elliptical VNM95EN ($199), the nude-
mounted microline diamond VNM95ML
($279), or others. This gives the option of
using the supplied stylus for day-to-day
playback, but switching it out when you’re
making a recording to computer, say, by
sliding in, say, the superior microline stylus.
So you have a nice little upgrade path there.
The final task was plugging up and
rechecking the plinth and platter were level,
the latter job made easy by the Lenco’s large
and adjustable isolation feet.
We eventually listened to all four
outputs of the LBT-225. their selections
governed by switches at the rear — never
convenient to access on a turntable, so
plug up before you do the final set-up.
Listening sessions
The power button is up by the tonearm
pivot, a little inconvenient. We thought
we’d just use the dial at bottom left to move
between the central stop position and
either 33⅓ or 45rpm, but the Lenco goes
into standby pretty quickly, so you need to
power it back up regularly.
Momentary panic when the platter
didn’t start revolving no matter which
buttons we pressed. The instruction book
gets this wrong; it says the platter will start
revolving and then you unlock the arm clip
and move the arm over the vinyl. In fact
things start revolving only after the arm is
moved over the record. Phew.
It’s a very quiet turntable at this price
in terms of background noise. We played
side 3 of Jack White’s ‘Acoustic Recordings’,
opening with the Coke ad Love Is the Truth,
which contrasts spacious sound with bursts
of action, delicate picking over light toms
into full-on strumming with fuller drums
and overdubs. Startlingly real it sounded;
this was no entry-level vinyl performance.
Next up, the bluegrass version of White’s
Raconteurs/Saboteurs Top Yourself, in
which the Lenco thoroughly proved its
hi-fi credentials by putting Mr White’s
vocal centre-stage and impeccably toned,
in-the-room real, even as the bluegrass
action blasted around him — fiddle
left, banjo right, each clear and widely
separated, Patrick Keeler’s drums with a
deep thuddy kick and splashy right-channel
cymbal, and again, no audible noise except
a little surface crackle between tracks. As
you’d expect from a man who owns a record
plant, these LPs are impeccably mastered
and the Lenco is a playback device able to
reveal this quality.
It even held on to the tricky innermost
track, the lively Machine Gun Etiquette,
perhaps a little less open, the vocal tracked
with a little less clarity, but no side-groove
noise, and excellent stability, as some
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
stretches of lone piano made clear. Talking
of which, we ran both the Sound+Image
strobe card and the RPM app over the
Lenco, finding it running a tad (0.77%)
fast at 33.59 rpm, while the RPM app put
wow and flutter at an acceptable 0.15%.
Next we upped the groove rate by
turning to the 12-inch single of Tears For
Fears’ Sowing The Seeds Of Love, and were
very impressed by the Lenco’s handling of
this extremely dense mix, which is some
parts Wall of Sound, some I Am The Walrus
effects madness, some pumped-up ‘Pepper’,
but with a very pushed snare crack cutting
through from start to finish. Thanks to
a sublime friendliness for which we can
credit the A-T cartridge, this difficult
piece was never harsh and yet allowed
that snare the crack it needed, even while
celebrating the soundscapes to either side.
And we had this playing very loud, because
audible distortion was so low that volume
was encouraged.
To reveal the subtlety of this system, we
turned to the less frenetic but deeply cool
pace of Miles Davis’ ‘Nefertiti’. We had this
up very loud for the lead-in and there was
a little deep grind audible above the noise
floor, although the music, once started, was
so loud that once we’d turned it back down
to normal listening levels you’d be hard
pressed to hear it.
We were still using the built-in phono
stage, so mid-LP we switched the cables
to our own reference phono stage. The
grind vanished, but was replaced by earth
noise, as the provided cable did not have
the requisite flying earth lead to connect to
the earth pins at each end. We substituted
our own, and not only was the background
quieter but the clarity and soundstaging
13
 HI-FI
were indeed taken to another level. That
shows that the Lenco has more to give
beyond the abilities of its own phono stage,
enjoyable as it was, so there’s one upgrade
path for you ready and waiting, with the
stylus swap-outs offering another.
Listening via Bluetooth, on the other
hand, will not be an upgrade; the codec
used here is only SBC, a good way below CD
quality. To connect, you put your receiving
device into pairing mode, then hold the
power switch to put the Lenco into pairing
mode, and they should handshake quickly
to make the connection. And we know well
the joys of wandering the home with vinyl
playing through your headphones. So use it
for that kind of convenience and freedom,
but we’d recommend the cabled path for a
longterm connection to a hi-fi system.
The USB output worked beautifully.
Lenco recommends the free software
Audacity (and quite right too); we used
ProTools Ultimate on a MacBook Pro, with
the Lenco appearing as ‘USB Microphone’,
apparently offering a range of sampling
rates up to 48kHz, most likely 16-bit, though
we made recordings at 24-bit/44.1kHz.
We should mention that the arm drop
on this Lenco is possibly the slowest in the
world — just over six seconds from when
you drop the lever to when the needle
actually hits the groove. Happily the drop is
14
accurate as well, and there are advantages
in this slowness — most especially when
you’re recording to computer, as you’re able
to get back and hit the red button without
missing a thing. The tone of our recordings
was very good, the sound quality matching
rivals near the price and requiring a near
doubling of funds or more to find anything
which brought a clear improvement by
pulling more detail of the acoustic around
the vocal in Pigs On the Wing Pt.2, for
example, or better delineating the piano
notes of Ketih Jarrett’s Flying Pt.1. The only
issue with the USB output was a consistent
low-level buzz we couldn’t identify (and
can’t entirely blame on the Lenco, other than
not having encountered it with others).
Conclusion
All in all, we think the Lenco LBT-225 to
be an absolute bargain. It performs to the
level of any rival at the price and beyond
most of them, while its build (carbon-fibre
arm, best-seller cartridge, walnut plinth)
and facilities (phono stage, USB and
Bluetooth output) offer a great deal extra
and will delight everyone except purists and
separatists who want everything isolated in
different boxes.
And there are so many upgrade paths.
You could start with just this turntable and
a small active speaker, then upgrade to a
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
real hi-fi, and still then upgrade the stylus
and the phono stage, and through all that
the basic performance of the LBT-225 is
high enough to support better sound all the
way. All in all, an excellent buy.
LENCO
LBT-225
• Great looks and build
• Solid fundamental sound
• Internal phono stage
• Bluetooth and USB out
• Cabled output better than Bluetooth
• Some noise on USB output
Price: $695
Type: belt drive, manual
Speeds: 33⅓, 45pm
Cartridge: AT-VM95E
Outputs: phono-level, line-level (RCA
switchable), Bluetooth out (SBC),
USB-B digital out
Dimensions (whd): 418 x 123 x 346 mm
(cover 410mm high when open)
Weight: 6.7g
Contact: Audacity Australia
Telephone: 03 9645 3887
Web: www.audacityaustralia.com.au
 THE VERY BEST CONSUMER TECHNOLOGY...

UNLOCKING THE
TOP PRODUCTS
DOOR OPENS: AUGUST 15TH 2023
g
Awardinbest
the veryucts
prod er
for ov RS
40 YEA

EISA AWARDS 2023-24

Celebrating the year’s best products
The Expert Imaging and Sound Association is the community of 56 technology magazines, websites and social media
commentators from 27 countries, specialising in hi-fi, home theatre, photo and video, in-car and mobile electronics.
Every year the EISA jury of experts rewards the best products in each class with a coveted EISA Award.
The 2023-24 EISA Awards will be announced on August 15th 2023

TESTED BY THE EXPERTS Q WWW.EISA.EU

 HI-FI
REGA PLANAR 3:
50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
TURNTABLE
When a turntable makes LP after LP sound like you’re listening to the
best album in the world, you know it’s doing something very right.
H
appy birthday Rega. It’s 50
years since its founding in
1973 in Southend-on-Sea, UK,
where the company still lives,
designs and manufacturers Rega turntables,
electronics and speakers.
The Planar 3 arrived just three years into
the company history, as the glass-plattered
Planars took over from the original Rega
‘The Planet’. They maintained founder Roy
Gandy’s low-mass philosophy, abandoning
large and solid plinths and platters at a time
when the thinking back then (and for many
makers still) was that high mass will create
rigidity and assist speed stability while
lowering and spreading resonances.
That was never the Rega way. Rigidity
yes, but not through piling on weight.
Mass absorbs energy, says Rega. Slowly-
16
released energy adds coloration, and lost
energy equals lost music.
So for Roy Gandy it’s all about stiffness
and bracing and lightness. Rega aims
for the lightest possible chassis, with the
stiffest possible brace — on this current
Planar 3 that is the two-layer brace that
spans between tonearm mount and main
central bearing, a 3mm phenolic bottom
and metallised-skin phenolic top that acts
as a structurally-sound ‘stressed beam’,
bringing that rigidity to the structure.
We are told that the Planar 3 was no
overnight hit; “it sold like cold cakes”.
But after its slow start, the Planar 3 found
increasing acceptance, and then acclaim;
today it is considered a classic. Ongoing
revisions included the arrival in 1983 of the
almost equally-legendary RB300 tonearm.
Half a century on, we now have this
commemorative 50th anniversary Planar 3.
And without too much of a spoiler, we’ll tell
you now — it sounds so good.
Build & facilities
Because of the Rega philosophy on
weight, the plinth looks (and is) relatively
lightweight, its internals a “particulate core
with a highly rigid phenolic resin skin”, yet
outwardly encased in a new walnut-look
laminate: beautifully finished, grained and
woody, badged in aluminium (as is the lid)
at lower left to celebrate the occasion. This
walnut is exclusive to the Anniversary deck;
the standard Planar 3 turntable comes in
gloss white, black or red.
One of the key upgrades for the 50th
anniversary version is a Neo PSU Mk2, an

offboard power supply (pictured overleaf)
hand-tuned to the Planar 3’s 24V motor.
Rega says the PSU should be positioned
as far from the turntable as the cables will
allow (which is more than a metre).
Another upgrade changes the usual
Advanced EBLT drive belt to the Reference
version, not that you’ll see this item
much, because you won’t be removing the
platter to move the belt for speed changes:
here: the offboard power supply does the
speed change electronically, a significant
convenience lift for singles fans!
The arm is Rega’s own RB330, and the
cartridge also Rega’s own, the handmade
Rega Exact, a moving-magnet design.
Australian distributor Synergy points
out that the P3+ Exact currently retails
for $1799, while the Anniversary Edition
includes upgrades valued at $624 RRP for
just $100 more, as well as giving you a little
piece of Rega history.
Performance
It’s easy to nail together, the Planar 3, since
the cartridge is prefitted, so you need only
lower the glass platter and felt mat onto the
spindle, put the counterweight on the end
of the arm and bring it up until the arm is
floating just above an LP surface, then add
the tracking weight to the little dial and the
very small antiskate slider. There’s not even
a belt to fit, as it’s attached at the factory.
Plug up all the cables; the socket for
the mini-DIN cable from the offboard PSU
is deeply recessed at the back, quite hard
to line up, so do this early, before final
levelling! The Neo PSU allows fine speed
adjustment,
but our
Sound+Image strobe
card showed it already
on the money.
We began with Marillion’s ‘Script For
A Jester’s Tear’, herald of the 80s’ neo-
progressive moment, such as it was, and an
album that was recently remixed, a result
which put the original digital release to
shame. Surprise, then, to find the original
vinyl sounding at least as good as the
remixes, perhaps because that’s how we
knew it first, but at least partly thanks
to the Planar 3’s ongoing train of sonic
revelations. Such clarity and energy: we
played through both sides before moving on.
The cartridge proved capable of tracking
even quite damaged albums; a bargain-bin
copy of 10CC’s ‘How Dare You’ had visible
marks and audible surface noise but the
Planar still delivered these complex songs
with full clarity through the spectacular
dreamscapes, stacked harmonies and
panned strumming of the magnificent
I’m Mandy Fly Me, a song so good we
lifted the arm and played it twice. The arm
lift is relatively undamped and lifts the
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
stylus
only a few
millimetres; the drop is safely damped,
the descent taking less than a second.
Happily our copy of 10CC’s ‘Deceptive
Bends’ is rather cleaner. so higher
and higher we turned the volume,
remembering to drop the cover over
the turntable to provide a little acoustic
isolation as well as dust protection.
This cover has no bumpers to stop it
touching the plinth, a good thing, as
such bumpers create space all round and
seriously reduce both types of protection.
The kick drum was deep and tight on
Good Morning Judge, the duelling guitars
bright and incisive, the bass guitar full
throughout its range. More massed
harmonies on the divine The Things We
Do For Love, Eric Stewart’s lead perfectly
rendered in the centre. The extended closer
on side two, Feel The Benefit, brought the
first genuine rapture. CDs just don’t sound
like this; the Planar 3 was providing a
full-blown advert for the joys of vinyl.
We jumped forward to last year’s most
played album, a deep blue vinyl copy of
Alex The Astronaut’s ‘How To Grow A
Sunflower Underwater’. Tough opener
here: Growing Up is incredibly dense and
gives hi-fi in general a hard time in terms
of revealing the details within the rising
mush, but the Planar 3 did as good as job as
we’ve heard, and on the simpler subsequent
tracks the vinyl presentation gave the tunes
a substance they lack digitally: Octopus far
fatter, for example, its bubbles more realis-
tically bubbly, its flow more organic. This is
a turntable which takes you to the music.
It took us all through the Special Airplay
Album (1-LP) of ‘Extracts From Jeff Wayne’s
Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds’,
our speakers on fire with the ear-bending
17
 HI-FI
synths and ‘Ullaaas’ being wrenched from
these well-played grooves, with the overall
tonal richness also serving the softer
Forever Autumn and dynamic Spirit of Man
(one of Phil Lynott’s strangest but greatest
moments). Presumably Rega’s higher
turntables would sound even better —
indeed we’ve had some of them on the very
same Quadraspire rack, playing through
the same system. Tell you what though:
listening to this vinyl masterpiece playing
on the hi-fi masterpiece which is the Rega
Planar 3, we didn’t want for more.
Having decided this album was perhaps
the best ever, we decided within 15 minutes
that no, the last side of Kate Bush’s ‘The Red
Shoes’ (it has four sides on the ‘Remastered
in Vinyl’ series) was actually the best ever
and the closing You’re The One certainly the
most devastating Kate Bush track ever. And
then a Philip Glass album, ‘1000 Airplanes
On The Roof’, a performance among the
best vinyl experiences we’ve had; this was
exceptional, the Planar 3 digging deep and
The 50th Anniversary
Rega Planar 3 was
making album after
album sound like the
best album in the
world. Album, album,
album, side after side.
18
delivering massive scale for this unique
arrangement of deep synth, brass and wind.
The one LP that didn’t perform, despite
its heavy vinyl and presumably impeccable
mastering, was the recent Sgt Pepper remix
and re-release on vinyl. It sounded rather
compressed and dull; we lifted the needle
even before Lucy got a chance to shine. Too
much more in the racks to enjoy.
The point is that the 50th Anniversary
Rega Planar 3 was making album after
album sound like the best album in the
world. We really couldn’t stop. Album,
album, album, side after side after side. It
was a 12-hour session, and next morning
there were unracked records everywhere.
We could go on, and indeed we did. But
what didn’t we like? The belt would let out a
little squeal when starting up and gripping
the subplatter, but the more albums we
played, the less it squealed. The thin hinges
for the lid slipped out several times while
lifting it lopsidedly. But everything else,
even the little things, are perfect. The
finger lift on the cartridge head is wide and
sculptured. The LP extends just beyond
the platter so it’s easy to lift off without
stopping the platter spinning. The light
on the PSU burns red for albums but very
‘Rega green’ for singles, so you’re never
likely to embarrass yourself by doing a John
Peel at a dinner party.
It’s probably no surprise everything
works so well; if there was anything wrong,
well, Rega’s had 47 years to fix it. Legend.
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
Conclusion
It’s a no brainer, the 50th anniversary Rega
Planar 3. Useful upgrades for not much
more, wonderful vinyl replay in every
regard — full frequency response, detailed
resolution and soundstaging, kicking kick
drums, delicacy when required.
If you want a real turntable, a classic
taken to a new level, look no further —
but look quickly: Rega is saying the
50th Anniversary editions will be built
only during 2023, and no later.
REGA
PLANAR 3: 50TH
ANNIVERSARY EDITION
• A classic made more classic
• Useful upgrades
• Fantastic sound
• Thin lid hinges
Price: $1899
Tonearm: RB330
Platter: 12mm glass polished edge
Outputs: flying phono leads
Power: Neo PSU Mk2 via Mini DIN
Dimensions: 447 x 117 x 360mm (lid closed)
Weight: 6.0kg
Neo PSU dimensions: 180 x 150 x 50 mm
Contact: Synergy AudioVisual
Telephone: 03 9459 7474
Web: synergyaudio.com
 HI-FI

TRANSROTOR PHONO MC 8.2 SYM

PHONO STAGE
Turntables produce smaller signals than digital sources, so they need additional
amplification. And that amplification becomes critical to vinyl performance.
This relatively high-end example of the breed proves a stunning performer.

P
hono cartridges produce an
output signal that is tiny, being
inducted only by the bouncing and
shimmying of a diamond through
a vinyl groove. To play this into a line-level
amplifier input, the signal needs to be
much bigger — boosted by a phono
preamplifier, also known as a phono stage.
Moving-coil cartridge signals are even
lower than those with moving magnets.
And precisely because the signals are very
delicate, the quality of a phono stage has a
large influence on your vinyl sound. Some
of the best phono stages are, unsurprisingly,
made by turntable companies, as is the case
here, with the Phono MC 8.2 Sym.
Build & facilities
Transrotor is a German turntable company
in the city of Bergisch Gladbach, North
Rhine-Westphalia. The location is more
important than usual, because the
Betriebsanleitung — that’s ‘operating
manual’ for all you non-German speakers
— is not available in English, not even
online, that we could find, so you can’t strip
out sections and feed them into ChatGPT
or Google Translate. But you’ll need to do
something, because pages six and seven are
needed in order to be able to use this phono
preamplifier correctly. Their spreadsheet-
style tables explain how to set the four
dual in-line package (DIP) switches located
inside the phono stage for the correct input
sensitivity (between 0.07mV and 2mV),
and input impedance (from 60 ohms to
4.7k ohms) to match whatever moving-coil
phono cartridge you are using.
To help you along, eingangswiderstand
means ‘input resistance’, and verstärkung
alle aus means ‘reinforcement all off’
(Google Translate) or ‘reinforcement all

20

out’ (ChatGPT). German being what it is,
even that doesn’t make sense: verstärkung
actually means ‘all gain switches set to off’.
So good luck with that. But we will say
that such efforts are worthwhile; this is
quite the phono stage.
As you can see from the photo, it comes
in two boxes: the main phono stage and
the partnering power supply. You might be
asking yourself how much power a phono
amplifier needs — in which case you’d be
asking yourself the wrong question.
The rationale for having a separate
power supply is to enable enough storage
(via capacitors) that the power supply
delivers DC voltage so stable that it seems
to be coming from a battery rather than a
rectified and filtered AC source: “stabilized
and absolutely constant voltage” says
Transrotor in this case.
So why not use a battery instead? Too
much “wear and tear”, says an opinion
stated on the company’s website.
Interestingly, the internet also revealed
that the internals of our sample power
supply were quite unlike the internals
of Transrotor Phono MC 8.2 Sym power
supplies we saw online. Those images
showed a device with 16 storage/smoothing
capacitors, whereas ours had only had
six capacitors, though they are physically
larger, so presumably have a higher
capacitance (in μF), so perhaps the overall
capacitance is the same and Transrotor has
just decided to use fewer capacitors.
The power supply’s chassis is exactly the
same size as the phono stage’s — 17.5cm
wide and 7cm high (7.5cm if you include the
feet). Both are 31.2cm deep, but because of
the need to fit plugs and cables, you’d need
to allow around 40cm of depth.
A single push-button on the power
supply activates both components, which
are linked by a single six-conductor power
cable with locking DIN-like connectors at
either end. This conductor is one metre
long, and you should use it to keep the
power supply physically distanced from the
phono stage (and your other components).
The front panels are more than a
centimetre thick, and so heavy that they
may be made of steel, finished in what we
assume is chrome, and if so then this is the
highest-quality chromium plating we’ve
ever seen. The remainder of the chassis
is aluminium. The top and sides are a
single-piece finned extrusion that slides
off the chassis after you remove the front
panel, the same one used across many of
Transrotor’s offerings.
The Transrotor
delivered opening
track Atopos superbly,
exhibiting perfect
separation between
the channels and a
perfectly focused
stereo image...
The rear of the phono stage is solid if
less luxurious, relatively plainly finished,
and with inputs and outputs identified by
stick-on paper labels. Our review unit was
fitted with a pair of XLR inputs, a pair of
XLR outputs and a single ground terminal.
But if you prefer standard unbalanced
connections (for input and/or output), you
can optionally order a Transrotor Phono MC
8.2 in the configuration of your choosing.
Inside, it’s clear the various electronic
components are state-of-the-art — the
transformers, the resistors, the capacitors,
the semiconductors... everything. No
expense spared. The circuitry for the two
channels is completely separate, balanced
and symmetrical (which is why the abbre-
viation ‘Sym’ is used in the product name).
The semiconductors that do the heavy
lifting in the Phono MC 8.2 are high-
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
performance, low-noise 1512 audio
preamplifier ICs made by THAT Corporation
in Massachusetts USA. The 1512 is not a
particularly common device, but you’ll
often find it used in differential low-noise
preamplifiers, differential summing
amplifiers, differential variable gain
amplifiers and microphone preamplifiers.
The four DIP switches — two for each
channel, and each with four toggles — are
on the PCB itself. So where some phono
stage have buttons or DIP switches on
the bottom, here you’ll be opening up the
phono stage to make your selection.
The DIP switches adjust input sensitivity
and impedance. Transrotor has rather
unhelpfully abandoned labels altogether
here, but you’ll be able to identify them
by referring to the image in that owners’
manual. You can use the two tables on
pages six and seven to set the four toggles
on each of the DIP switches in various
patterns to give various input sensitivities
(0.07, 0.08, 0.09, 0.10, 0.11, 0.12, 0.13, 0.15,
0.16, 0.19, 0.23, 0.30, 0.33, 0.50, 1.0 and 2.0
millivolts/mV) and input resistances (60,
65, 70, 75, 77, 83, 91, 100, 158, 188, 230, 300,
333, 500, 1k and 4.7k ohms).
When putting the box back together,
you should note the tiny hole in the front
panel through which a small blue LED
pokes: you will need to carefully align
the LED with this hole.
Listening sessions
In case you are wondering why the
Transrotor Phono MC 8.2 Sym phono stage
has balanced inputs, you need to know
that all moving-coil phono cartridges have
balanced outputs — so you’ll get the best
performance from using a phono stage
with a balanced input. It’s as simple as
that. As for the balanced outputs, this is
because you will invariably get the best
performance when you connect audio
components together using a balanced
21
 HI-FI
few moving-coil phono preamps actually
have balanced inputs, and only a few have
balanced outputs.
We started listening with an excellent
recent piece of vinyl, Björk’s 2022 album
‘Fossora’. It’s a good test for a phono stage.
First, there’s her unique and distinctive
voice, beautifully recorded. Then there are
the superb production values behind it.
But what about the sound of the
percussion and the bass clarinet (often in
either one or both channels)? These were
clearly audible on opening track Atopos,
with the Transrotor delivering them
superbly, exhibiting perfect separation
between the channels and a perfectly
focused stereo image. This is a truly manic
song, Björk at her best and back doing what
she became famous for in the first place.
Sorrowful Soil, a tribute to Björk’s
late environmental-activist mother,
benefits from the massed female voices
of the Hamrahlid Choir. Choral music is a
challenging test for all audio components,
but the Transrotor delivered the sound
authentically — really, we couldn’t have
asked for it to sound any better. The intro to
Sorrowful Soil is sung a capella and features
many gaps — some long, such as the one
after the line “our roots are dark” — which
allowed us to hear that the Transrotor’s
circuitry is perfectly silent. All we heard
during these interludes was the faintest
22
this album, as it’s a great pressing played
only a few times (having been ripped on
its first play, in order to preserve it for
product auditions like these).
Parts of Victimhood sound like they’re
the soundtrack to a horror film scored
by Vangelis, though with orchestral
instruments abounding, particularly
clarinets, including several bass clarinets,
and the tonal quality was perfectly
reproduced by the Transrotor. The
almost machine-like percussion and
the alternating channel stabs that are
all-pervasive throughout highlight the
ability of the Transrotor to deliver perfect
pace, rhythm and timing while still
retaining the sensuously fluid sound.
The Phono MC 8.2 Sym performed
just as exceptionally when playing Arctic
Monkeys’ ‘The Car’. Opener There’d Better
Be A Mirrorball has a soundstage to die for,
not least because Turner and Ford had the
good taste to use real strings rather than
synthesised ones. Then, with the vocal
from Turner on I Ain’t Quite Where I Think
I Am, we could hear how well — and how
smoothly — the Transrotor delivered the
very highest frequencies.
The solidity and depth of the
Transrotor’s bass delivery were immediately
obvious on Sculptures of Anything Goes, too,
where the gothic synth sounds explore the
low-frequency limits of human hearing.
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
which they wrote the song based on the
sound that came out.
Conclusion
The Transrotor Phono MC 8.2 Sym
moving-coil phono preamplifier is
superbly designed and superbly built.
It sounds absolutely amazing, and is
able to be adjusted internally to perfectly
suit — and therefore extract the best
from — any moving-coil cartridge you
care to use with it. Is it worth deciphering
a German-language manual to operate?
Most definitely.
TRANSROTOR
PHONO MC 8.2 SYM
• Superb sound
• Flexible settings
• Great looks
• German-language manual
• Rear panel finish
Price: $5850
Gain adjustment: 0.07mV-2mV
Input resistance: 60-4.7k ohms
Dimensions (hwd):
7 x 17.5 x 31.2cm (per box)
Contact: Absolute Hi End
Telephone: 04 8877 7999
Web: www.absolutehiend.com
THE FUTURE OF
v

MAGAZINES

Subscribe at www.techmags.com.au
Free delivery across Australia | Never miss an issue | Save money
 HI-FI
TAGA HARMONY TWA-10B
WIRELESS STREAMING ADAPTER
Designed to bring streaming to an existing audio system, this tiny little box
combines easy set-up with wide-ranging streaming abilities at an attractive price.
W
e were impressed by the
TWA-10B before we’d even
fully unpacked it. First
out flopped two printed
manuals, identical except for one being
in English and the other in Polish, so that
the latter announces a ‘Bezprzewodowy
Odtwarcz Sieciowy’, while the former goes
with ‘Wireless Streaming Adapter’.
The two manuals are a good size, and
proper stapled books, not unfolding
origami leaflets; the text is large and the
instructions are clear. It does contain
a warning against lighting, saying that
lighting storms might be an issue, but
otherwise the English is good and the
explanations clear.
There are hardly ever full manuals in
the box these days. So credit to TAGA
Harmony (TAGA = To Achieve Glorious
Acoustics), a small Polish company with
its research and manufacturing in China,
for doing what nearly every multinational
doesn’t do. A very promising start.
Build & facilities
The TWA-10B streamer is a tiny little unit,
indeed rather smaller than the manuals
with which it came. It’s just 13cm wide
and a mere 24mm high in its aluminium
casing, with a shiny black front that arrived
covered by a layer of rather hard-to-remove
pull-off plastic protection.
24
There’s a circle on the front right that
looks like a socket, and is labelled ‘input’,
but it’s actually a switch; this powers the
unit on and off (long press) and then cycles
(short presses) between its inputs.
What inputs? Well none, physically, so
the button cycles through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,
Spotify Connect and Standby Mode. There’s
also Tidal Connect onboard, and web radio.
The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modes
allow streaming of digital music from
smartphones and tablets, and from music
libraries on computers or network storage;
the listed compatibility is for FLAC, WAV,
ALAC (Apple Lossless), APE (Monkey’s
lossless), and MP3 file types. There’s even
multiroom operation available, by using
an app to address multiple devices at once,
TAGA or otherwise.
For output it’s fully equipped; there are
both analogue RCA outputs and digital
outputs on coaxial or optical. So if you
have an external DAC or a good amplifier
with digital inputs then you can pit those
DACs against the TAGA’s own by connecting
both digital and analogue outputs to
your system and flipping between them
to compare. The DAC in the TWA-10B is
the generally well-regarded ESS Sabre
ES9023, which has the limitation of 24-bit
performance and no higher, but then its
coaxial and optical digital outputs are
similarly limited, so that makes sense.
With the analogue outputs, however,
we should note that while the TWA-10B
can process high-res files, it doesn’t output
anything over 20kHz via its own analogue
outputs, so without the high-res benefit of
keeping the roll-off filter’s phase distortion
far outside the audible frequency range.
Pick an app
TAGA Harmony doesn’t have its own app
to control the TWA-10B or to stream to it;
it’s designed to work with third-party apps.
The two recommendations are 4STREAM
by Rakoit Technology in Shenzen, and WiiM
Home from Linkplay Technologies, offices
in California, Shenzhen and Shanghai.
Linkplay also makes its own streamers
under the WiiM brand. Indeed it emerged
during our testing that this is a streamer
“powered by Linkplay” for TAGA.
Apps can present a longevity issue,
should the apps or the companies that
make them disappear at any time. Will your
product still then work?
Well here, almost certainly yes, the point
being that the TWA-10B could work with
any number of third-party apps, including
longstanding generics such as BubbleUPnP
on mobile devices or Foobar2000 on PC.
There will surely always be such apps in the
world, so the TWA-10B should survive the
death of any particular app. Indeed it can be
considered safer in that regard than those

which have a dedicated app from a single
manufacturer, no matter how prominent.
Set-up and listening
We chose the 4Stream app, as it is TAGA’s
first recommendation, and we had
wondered how smooth or otherwise set-up
might be with a third-party app. But the
answer was very smooth indeed!
With the app running on an iPad Pro,
4Stream instantly ‘found’ the TWA-10B,
connected to it, and got it hooked up to
Wi-Fi rather faster than most devices from
major brands. It doesn’t support 5GHz
Wi-Fi (there’s an option in the software to
turn 5GHz on, but it doesn’t ‘stick’).
The app then invited a firmware update,
which we took. Even that was pretty quick.
So this is more than an app to stream; it’s
also a control app. You can even switch the
input from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth via the app.
Firmware update completed, the left
side of the app populated with available
music services and sources (see right) — 14
in all, listed alphabetically, including paid
services Amazon Music, Deezer, Qobuz,
Spotify and Tidal. The last two of these
should work with their ‘Connect’ versions,
using your device for control but streaming
the actual music straight to the TAGA unit.
There are also freebies like Calm Radio,
SoundCloud, TuneIn and iHeartRadio, and
a few services that won’t work in Australia
without a VPN, like Napster and Pandora.
You can also play from ‘My Music’,
which offers music on the device being
used (e.g. the iPad Pro), plus local servers
(though it didn’t pick up one of our key
UPnP shares), any playlists you’ve made in
the app, and songs you’ve already played.
So if you’re thinking a third-party app
might mean an ugly interface with random
inclusions, you can relax. This
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
We ran our local community radio
station and added it easily to the app’s
presets. We opened Spotify and had
it ‘Connect’ to the TWA-10B; it played
immediately, ran glitch-free, and when we
played continuous albums like ‘The Dark
Side Of The Moon’, it proved itself able to
play gap-free as well. Gapless playback is
supported for Spotify, Tidal and network-
attached storage playback.
Not only is there Tidal Connect here, it’ll
stream Tidal Masters to 24-bit/48kHz (HiFi
Plus subscription required).
For any other music service, notably
Apple Music, you have only Bluetooth
as a fallback, and this uses the most basic
SBC codec. The lack of AirPlay 2 seems
one of the few limitations; TAGA’s Chinese
office told us it is AirPlay compatible
(but not AirPlay 2), but this is not listed
anywhere in the paperwork, and it didn’t
appear for us in AirPlay lists on any device
we tried. So we don’t think that’s right.
We tried a workaround, downloading an
Apple Music album to play through ‘My
Music’ over Wi-Fi at full quality — but
it turned up labelled ‘DRM’; and Apple
wouldn’t let it play that way. Pity. We
did run some tunes via Bluetooth: they
sounded softer, thicker, shorn of high-
frequency content compared with the same
tunes over Wi-Fi. When we played 10CC’s
Good Morning Judge both ways it was chalk
and cheese, with Bluetooth representing
the cheesier version.
So we preferenced Wi-Fi to evaluate the
sound quality available from the TWA-10B,
including Foobar2000 running on a Mac.
The app showed Foobar passing high-res
files in terms of sample rate, and the sound
quality from the streamer’s analogue
outputs proved excellent. We enjoyed an
extended session of assorted tracks from
of rapid-fire notes that show up timing
smears: nothing apparent here, the edges
were clear and delineated. There were a
couple of glitches in playback here and
elsewhere — but what’s to blame: network,
app or streamer? We noted that the light
on the front of the streamer would go
out just before any glitch, so we can
assume it was momentarily losing its
Wi-Fi connection, for reasons unknown.
Glitches are always a reminder that discs
and especially cables still have their role
in high-reliability hi-fi playback. There
were no valve amps nearby, something
TAGA warns can cause interference.
25
 HI-FI
The light on the front changes colour,
incidentally — white for Wi-Fi streaming
blue for Bluetooth, green for Spotify, also
red when it’s in standby, not that you really
need to put it in standby, as it pulls only 2W
when turned on without playing music.
We can also note that although not listed
in the TWA-10B’s listed file types, AAC and
AIFF files both played fine, although AIFF
files seemed to take a while to initiate.
26
No DSD in any form, however
(despite the app showing an
SACD symbol when Foobar was
streaming high-res); DSD files
simply don’t appear in the app
as recognised files.
Overall we’d put the sound
quality at the level of a DAC at
this price and perhaps above.
When we played its digital
output into our standalone DAC
at three times the price, there
was a clear improvement in
resolving power in particular,
perhaps partly because the
TWA-10B offers bit-perfect
digital output from the files we
were network-streaming.
So very few issues:
occasional unattributable
glitches in playback, no DSD,
and no AirPlay that we could
find. A USB-A slot would be
nice to connect a big drive of
files directly and thereby avoid
any network issues (no room for
it, said TAGA when we asked). That aside,
we’d say we encountered as few problems
as ever from a streamer here, easier set-up
than almost any of them, and as friendly an
app as you’ll get from most of the majors.
And thanks to being designed and
engineered in Poland but built in China,
you can get all this from a tiny box priced
under $400. Nice.
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
Conclusion
It’s such a tiny device, the TWA-10B
streamer, yet if you’re adding streaming
to an existing system, a discreet device
like this could be just the thing. It uses
third-party apps to its advantage, and
they work well, offering access to most
paid music services including the direct
Connect versions of Spotify and Tidal, good
freebies too, and playback from network
shares. Good built-in analogue output, and
of course upgradeable later via the digital
outputs. This is a great little streamer.
TAGA
HARMONY TWA-10B
• Good sound for the price
• Bit-perfect digital output
• Excellent set-up and apps
• No AirPlay or USB-A
• No high-res from analogue outs
Price: $399
Inputs: Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (SBC),
Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect,
UPnP/DLNA
Outputs: RCA line-level analogue, optical
digital, coaxial digital
Dimensions (whd): 130 x 24 x 94mm
Weight: 0.45kg
Contact: Audacity Australia
Telephone: 03 9645 3887
Web: audacityaustralia.com.au
 Distinctive Design, Elegant Execution, Beautiful Sound.

Motion®: Reimagined.
Introducing the all new Motion® XT and Motion® Series from MartinLogan® – a collection of high performance speakers
for home theatre and stereo listening that will elevate your audio experience to new heights. These aren’t simple
upgrades from their predecessors, but a new level of quality and excellence that makes for an unforgettable experience
every time you play them. Reimagined with a bold new look, and a host of audio advancements, we left nothing on the
table to bring you our best Motion® Series yet.

Distributed by Audio Active Australia www.audioactive.com.au Phone: (03) 9699 8900 Find a Dealer X
 HI-FI
YAMAHA R-N2000A
STREAMING STEREO AMPLIFIER
Excellent performance and classic looks that disguise a full wireless and
multiroom streaming platform: this is a magnificent release from Yamaha.
W
hile Yamaha’s AV receivers
brim with smart functions
and streaming options,
the Japanese company
has hitherto kept its premium stereo hi-fi
amplifiers fully analogue. Indeed its top
5000 Series is a fully analogue system from
end to end, with a giant turntable as its only
source component: no streaming in sight.
That’s all now very sensibly changing,
with a group of ‘smart’ and networked
amplifiers rolling out, the toppermost of
which is this Yamaha R-N2000A.
How ‘in-yer-face’ do you make the
modern stuff? Yamaha’s answer is ‘not
much at all’. So while some smart amps
are fronted by a giant colour touchscreen
proclaiming their modernity, Yamaha has
28
been significantly and successfully subtle in
the merging of analogue and digital.
As part of Yamaha’s 2000 Series, the
integration of traditional and modern
here includes the thoroughly audiophile
design concepts of the higher 3000 and
5000 Series: symmetrical ‘folding book’
circuitry, the ‘Mechanical Ground concept’
to minimise vibration — and a focus on
‘True Sound’ musicality. True Sound is
an evolution of the tonal and timing focus
of what Yamaha used to call (and perhaps
still does) ‘Natural Sound’, now adding a
focus on dynamics and energy, the actual
experience with music — “Making waves
in your heart”, as it was once described to
us by Mr Susumu Kumuzawa, Yamaha’s
Head of Hi-Fi Development.
That’s the classic stuff. But while fully
analogue amplifiers are all very well if you
have a separate CD player or a media player
which can do the heavy digital lifting,
many 21st-century users will not want to
be shelling out for a CD player, because
they have no interest in silver discs, having
shifted their musical consumption entirely
to streaming, or at least file-based replay.
This is precisely why the smart amplifier
has become such a plat du jour. Take an
amplifier, add a DAC for digital inputs,
along with networking to allow direct
streaming of music from the internet and
playback of digital files either locally or
across the home network.
And that, in a nutshell, with some other
bits outside the nutshell, is the R-N2000A.

Build & features
Visually, too, Yamaha has made a cunning
portmanteau of classic and modern. With
backlit VU meters and the long vertical
toggle switches, the R-N2000A fully
maintains Yamaha’s timelessly classic
styling which, amazingly, dates all the way
back to a 1954 tuner designed by a legend,
Kenji Ekuan (he was the creator also of
Kikkoman’s iconic soy sauce bottle).
Classic as it looks, the R-N2000A
incorporates not only a DAC and digital
inputs, not only networking and streaming,
but a full implementation of Yamaha’s
MusicCast streaming and multiroom
platform, which includes the MusicCast app
for control via iOS and Android devices.
This amplifier is able to send its music to
any other MusicCast-equipped Yamaha
products in the home, or to stream a music
service simultaneously to multiple zones.
The smarts are all hidden very well in a
black strip underneath the main fascia with
a little white-on-black display in the centre,
the slightest possible digital intrusion into
all the analogue loveliness.
In terms of physical inputs, there are
three line-level analogue inputs, one
of which is labelled CD (there is a 2000
Series CD player available), and there’s a
phono-level input suitable for a turntable
with a moving-magnet cartridge.
Above those are four digital inputs: two
optical, one coaxial, and a USB-B socket for
connecting a computer. Thanks to the use
of an ultra-precision clock, this last hits
the heights so far as file types go, capable
up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM (and including
88.2kHz multiples) and stereo DSD to
11.2MHz/DSD256), compatible with ASIO
Native and DoP delivery.
There’s one other digital input, tucked
away at one side — a very useful HDMI
socket capable of receiving audio down
an HDMI cable connected to your TV’s
ARC-compatible input. That makes the
R-N2000A a solid stereo solution for TV
and movie sound as well as music.
Other physical sockets include the FM
antenna socket, a 12V trigger, a single mono
subwoofer out, and a pair of pre-out RCAs
which could be used to expand power.
There’s also Ethernet networking,
along with Wi-Fi; either will activate the
whole MusicCast platform, and also allows
AirPlay streaming. There is Bluetooth in
two directions — inward to stream music
from a personal device, and outward to,
most likely, a pair of Bluetooth headphones,
though you could equally connect a
Bluetooth speaker within range.
The MusicCast app also gives direct
access to internet radio, Amazon Music,
Qobuz and Deezer, while the buttons for
Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect open
the native apps; the streams from those will
play straight to the Yamaha.
The remote control is a lovely solid
aluminium wand, and for our money
perfectly populated, every input having its
dedicated button, and with volume and
mute buttons clearly separated in a line at
the bottom. Top marks.
On the front panel there is a little
minijack socket to receive the supplied
microphone to undertake Yamaha’s YPAO
(Yamaha Parametric Room Acoustic
Optimizer). This aims to correct room
acoustics, using 64-bit/192kHz EQ, and
what the company calls RSC (Reflected
Sound Control) to actively control the
important early reflections. If your room is
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
problematic in some way, then this could
be a useful carryover skill from Yamaha’s
multichannel receivers.
The amplification is Class-AB, the power
quoted 17 different ways between Yamaha’s
website and the R-N2000A’s manual, the
most ‘hi-fi’ specification seeming to be
2 × 90W into 8 ohms or 2 × 145W into
4 ohms, both measured across the full
audio spectrum with 0.07% THD.
Interestingly the A-S3200, which
is double the price, offers only slightly
more power, rated at 100W/150W into
8/4 ohms with that same 0.07% THD,
while its quoted ‘Maximum Power’ is
actually lower, 2 x 170W compared with
the cheaper R-N2000A’s 2 x 190W. Strange.
Perhaps we should just do what we came
for, and give it a good listen.
Listening sessions
We took advantage of this amplifier’s
extended stay, using it in multiple listening
sessions from multiple sources.
Tidal Connect proved a particularly
easy way to stream at high quality. From
the official Dylan bootleg collection,
‘Fragments’ pulsed and jangled forth
fully etched and clear, not a jot of softness
from the stream. The Tidal stream also
fully opened up Peter Gabriel’s The Court
(Dark Side mix), revealing the depth
and breadth and detail in this delightful
recent ‘New Moon’ release. And all this
with the convenience of browsing from
our smartphone in the native Tidal app,
simply selecting the MusicCast ‘room’
as the app’s output.
To ensure full possible file quality,
we played a huge amount of music from
USB-B, attached to our Mac Mini music
29
 HI-FI
machine. In this scenario the Yamaha
proved a solid and reliable deliverer of
delights during the many hours we listened,
and we confirmed high-res capability up
to and beyond 24-bit/192kHz. The uncom-
pressed 24/96 version of McCartney’s
‘McCartney’ was a joyfully crisp listen, the
snare hits on Every Night not only thrillingly
isolated in the right channel but delivered
with impressively realistic crack. As the
layers were building through this track,
every element could be examined individu-
ally, nothing fell at the wayside compressed
under the weight of another, yet the whole
drifted along on its masterful melody,
so that we enjoyed a window into the
recording process, but without polishing
away the magical sheen of the music.
This proved an ongoing gift of the
R-N2000A — complete clarity, but without
becoming clinical, revealing the detail but
never restraining the dynamics to do so.
The former acoustic clarity was further
proven with some high-res Holst, the BBC
National Orchestra of Wales, with The
Morning of the Year: Mating Dance rolling
with timpani in the deep before suddenly
surging forth with simultaneous brass,
‘True Sound’ is an
evolution of the tonal
and timing of ‘Natural
Sound’, now adding
a focus on dynamics
and energy: “Making
waves in your heart...”
30
woodwind, male and female choirs —
this is an extreme arrangement, yet the
R-N2000A’s toroid and capacitor reserves
laughed it off, even allowing enough
acoustic space over the top of it all for
the cymbal crashes which punctuate the
climax at stage right; quick the shocker.
The phono stage was just as fun,
performing exceptionally well. We
played the first two sides of Nick
Mason’s ‘Saucerful of Secrets Live at the
Roundhouse’; the Blu-ray of this gig is also
recommended, and there’s much to be
said for its surround mix, but the vinyl still
captures the powerful live performance
and the band’s love of the material, here
met by an adoring crowd while the trippy
bleeps and effects ricochet between
stereo speakers during the underground
mystique of Interstellar Overdrive, Astronomy
Domine and 20-odd (some really odd)
other under-appreciated early Floyd
tracks. The pop from the kick drum was a
full-force thwack. Frankly, you’d not pick
the sound of this album from our Thorens
turntable through the Yamaha’s phono
stage as even being vinyl; the soundstage
never cracked, compressed or sounded
curtailed, delivering a full audio spectrum
throughout, and tracking solidly through
the many dense and deep moments in
this set. Vinyl fans won’t go wanting here,
assuming moving-magnet is all you need.
Conclusion
Know what we did? There’s so much else
going on in the R-N2000A that we forgot to
try the tuner section — the very bit which
defines the R-N2000A as a receiver rather
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
than an amplifier. There are FM and DAB+
tuners available, and internet radio too:
yet another bonus to this high-quality
amplifier that takes its design cues from
Yamaha’s even higher analogue-only
models, yet here gaining a full digital and
wireless streaming platform.
Many higher-end manufacturers think
their purist customers will want digital
and streaming kept separate from their
control electronics and power sections.
The convenience plus confidence of the
R-N2000A should make them think again.
YAMAHA
R-N2000A
• Great sound quality
• Impeccable combination of
analogue and digital
• Full streaming & multiroom
• HDMI & USB-B inputs
• No problems here!
Price: $4999
Power: 2 × 90W into 8 ohms
(20Hz–20kHz, 0.07% THD)
Inputs: phono, 3 × line-level analogue,
2 × optical digital, coaxial digital,
USB-B, HDMI ARC, Ethernet, Wi-Fi,
MusicCast, AirPlay 2
Outputs: subwoofer out,
4 × speakers out
Dimensions (hwd): 157 x 435 x 473mm
Weight: 22.1kg
Contact: Yamaha Music Australia
Telephone: 1300 739 411
Web: au.yamaha.com
 THE ALL-NEW AVC-A1H
A REVOLUTIONARY FLAGSHIP 15.4 CHANNEL RECEIVER
With 15 amplifiers supporting speaker configurations up to 9.4.6, and full
8K60/4K120 video capability on all HDMI inputs, our AVC-A1H is designed
to deliver the ultimate movie and music experience in your home cinema.
Designed and made in Shirakawa, Japan.

Denon AVC-X3800H Denon AVC-X2800H Denon AVR-X1700H

Powering 105W per channel the AVC-
X3800H 9.4 channel 8K AV amplifier delivers
an enveloping 3D audio experience and
amazing picture quality to satisfy the most
discerning home theatre enthusiast.
Fill medium-sized rooms with more refined
sound using this 7.2 channel AV receiver
with 95W per channel. The Denon
AVR-X2800H offers increased HDMI 2.1
connectivity with three 8K inputs.
Bring your movies to life in smaller spaces
with this award winning 7.2 channel 80w
AV receiver. Stream all your favourite music
via the integrated HEOS, Airplay or Bluetooth
chipsets. Unleash your home theatre.

Hear for yourself at your authorised Denon dealer today.

DENON.COM.AU Contact us for your nearest Denon Dealer: sales.au@soundunited.com SCAN TO SEE
03 8542 1111 | /DenonAustralia THE FULL RANGE
 HI-FI
REVIVAL SPRINT 3
STANDMOUNT LOUDSPEAKERS
The first range from a new French company blew
us away and went on to become award winners.
Can a second lower range pull off the same trick?
I
t was while reviewing for the previous
issue of Best Buys Audio & AV that we
first encountered Revival Audio, an
entirely new operation hailing from
Alsace in France, close to the German and
Swiss borders. Although a new company, it
has been co-founded by industry stalwarts
32
who have significant experience: what
they call “nearly four decades of ‘savoir-faire’
behind many well-known flagship models
among top-tier brands”.
CTO and design engineer is Daniel
Emonts, his experience spanning
Altec-Lansing, Focal-JMLab and most
Dynaudio, ultimately as Chief Commercial
designs, the Atalante 3 and 5 models, both
large and gorgeous designs. The Atalante 3
went on to win a Sound+Image 2023 award.
Now, fairly hard on the heels of the debut
including the company’s first floorstander,
the Sprint 4, and the standmount speakers
are substantially less than half the price of
intended to differentiate themselves from
towards tower speakers and narrow-fronted
The Sprint 3 is still a substantial speaker,
Atalante counterpart, so that if you do the
greater volume. That’s likely very deliberate,
to maintain the environment in which the
drivers worked so well in the debut range.
And despite the price difference, the
drive units appear to be identical across
both ranges, or very nearly so. That’s
quite the trickle-down, as it were, since
the drive units are Revival’s own designs,
and their technologies are key to the
speakers’ performance.
So the tweeter is Revival’s ‘RASC’
28mm soft-dome tweeter, which has an
asymmetrical dome suspension and a large
ferrite magnet which promises to achieve
neodymium levels of control without the
cost (and in a more eco-friendly material).
Behind their visible dome is an inner
dome which Revival claims as being the
“critical component elevating the performance

of our tweeters and midrange drivers from
outstanding to extraordinary”. It’s given the
appellation ARID (Anti Resonance Inner
Dome), a rigid plastic construction where
the surface has been computer-designed
in ridged swirls that aim both to avoid
resonances and to guide the waves behind
the ARID, to be absorbed in the back cavity
which is equipped with a similarly swirly
computer-designed damping disc. This
method seems a similar idea to the MAT
tweeter damping introduced a few years
ago by KEF, but here doubling down by
adding the inner dome along with the
back-chamber disc.
The coating of the outer tweeter’s soft
dome is also bespoke, referred to as a
“secret recipe” called ‘RASC’, while its
suspension has a custom asymmetric
shape which Revival says achieves a more
linear resonance-free performance and
improved dispersion.
This tweeter is quoted out to 22kHz
at -3dB, as in the Atalante 3. The only
difference in the implementation here is
that the crossover in the Sprint is rather
lower at 1.8kHz than the Atalante 3’s at
2.8kHz. We note that the tweeter is also
listed as having a low-resonance frequency
of 650Hz, compared to 570Hz in the
Atalante. So while the crossover point
still remains high above that resonance,
they’re much closer together in the Sprint
than in the Atalante.
Despite the similar cabinet volumes,
the Atalante 3 also goes lower in the
bass, to 44Hz -3dB, compared with this
Sprint 3’s 55Hz -3dB, though to put that in
perspective, it’s only four frets fewer from
a bass guitar, the difference between
reaching a bottom F and a bottom A.
This difference must be a function of
the cabinet design and tuning, as the bass
driver seems identical, its cone a sandwich
with basalt-fibre fabric as the top layer, a
polymer glue and felt in the middle, and a
specially customised foam-based cone as
the bottom layer (BSC, they call it, for Basalt
Sandwich Construction).
One thing very different for the Sprint
range is the front baffle, named ‘Elytron’,
sculpted to limit diffraction and improve
directivity. And while the Atalante’s had
offset tweeters, the Elytron baffle puts the
tweeter centrally on each speaker.
So — same volume, same drivers, new
baffle design. How and why, then, are the
Sprint speakers so much cheaper than the
Atalante speakers? The answer is pretty
simple: the Atalantes are built in France.
But Revival’s original angel funding came
from a group based in Shenzen, so the
company has the contacts to manufacture
there as well. And that’s the difference;
the Sprints are made in China.
Listening sessions
Country of manufacture is not the sole
difference, of course; the cabinet quality
is also significantly changed. With the
Atalantes we were taking photos of the
beautiful cabinet finish, its wood-engraved
logo details, and the lovely line of inlay
right around the speaker. There’s none
of that here, excepting an embossed gold
logo at the bottom of the baffle. While we
gather the collaboration with Paris-based
A+A Cooren Design Studio continues, the
Sprint 3s are straight-cornered rectangles,
the cabinet sides on our review pair simple
We pulled out a
full-on bass tester,
Tyler, The Creator’s
Earfquake , and —
there you go — the
Sprints can do quite
strong bass when
thrown such wild
electronic content...
large sheets of blonde oak veneer (matte
black and walnut finishes also available),
undetailed, though well-applied over the
MDF construction within. The single set of
binding posts at the rear seem of the same
high quality as on the Atalantes, so far as
our memory serves.
The Sprint 3s arrived with their grilles
on, though these are not rectangular grilles
covering the whole front, rather a circular
grille over the woofer (see the lead image),
with grey fabric that doesn’t look especially
acoustically transparent. As we invariably
listen grilles-off anyway, we attempted to
remove this grille, only to find it very firmly
fixed in place. We checked the manual for
instructions on removal; nothing there:
indeed the manual is the same booklet
as for the Atalante, so there’s no Sprint-
specific information in there at all.
We tried prising the grilles off by
leveraging a pair of plastic flossing tools
under the grille edges, but no joy. We were
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
thinking of wedging a screwdriver behind
there, but were pretty sure we’d damage
the baffle doing this, so we contacted the
distributor Audio Marketing and asked
rather sheepishly if there was some trick to
this procedure.
There is. The entire front baffle is only
magnetically attached to the loudspeaker
— so you just pop off the whole front of
the speaker, and then the grilles come out
easily from behind.
It’s a very clever idea — neither of our
main reviewers have ever seen such a thing.
But hey, Revival, howsabout putting it in the
freaking manual, eh?
Finally revealed au naturel, as it were, the
Sprint 3s were run in first face-to-face then
in casual use for several weeks before our
planned critical listening sessions.
Normally, during our casual use
warm-up, we hear some noteworthy
performances. The earlier Atalante 3s had
bewitched us from their first song. The
Sprint 3s didn’t. They did nothing wrong,
but nothing leapt out. Even when we gave
them full attention, for days on end, we
were hard-pressed to pick a prime moment.
We were finding them rather bass light
in general, and yet they did prove able to
roll out a tight and properly pitched bass
line on, say, Tom Petty’s Running Down a
Dream, which plays on the E above bottom
E, and falls to C on the bridge, all delivered
in full, if not in force, by the Sprints. Also to
the point, they were clearly fast in timing
terms, with no cone hangover to blur the
edges, no bloat to smudge the bass.
This nimbleness assisted PinkPantheress
& Destroy Lonely’s Turn Your Phone Off,
where electronic percussion moves at a
mesmeric pace underpinned by electronic
bass with some rapidly-tapped notes
requiring just such a lack of overhang to
deliver — no problem here, though the
lowest notes notably dropped off in level.
We pulled out a full-on bass tester,
Tyler, The Creator’s Earfquake, and — there
you go — the Sprints can do quite strong
bass when thrown such wild electronic
content, although we could again discern
the drop-off between the bottom A and the
G of this song’s three-note bass run. Things
weren’t as extremely phat as they should
be on this track, either, though this allowed
the notes to be more shaped than from
bassier kit which fart these notes out at
their full and frankly excessive strength.
Overstimulated by Cat & Calmell came
33
 HI-FI
forth with a real punch, and the imaging
was excellent. To hear the best of what
these speakers do in that regard, go and sit
up close, about a metre away. But again the
lowest notes of this song dropped away.
Finally, Glen Campbell’s Ghost on a
Canvas, which is quite a special song
anyway, got special treatment from the
Sprints. The main guitar arpeggio rang
out centre right, there was depth and
width to the guitar overdubs, while the
still-strong vocal rang out with a suitable
edge, lush strings expanding and a good
dynamic drum portrayal even through all
this production.
Eventually, we decided to bring a
subwoofer into circuit. This allowed the
Sprints to do their fine work up top and
These speakers
are cannily named,
we think. They are
indeed ready for a
sprint, their tightness
tracking music with
quick-fire elements
cleanly, and with
great definition.
34
provide focus to the edges of sounds below,
while supported with fuller low frequencies
for a bigger richer sound. But given we
rarely recommend a subwoofer under
$1000, and double that for preference,
that brings you up into the territory of the
Atalante 3s anyway (at $4150 the pair),
against which there is no contest. We’re
rather tempted to say that the Sprints are
an advertisement for assemblé en France
versus assemblé en Chine, or for hand-
assembly over mass production, though
we’re sure it’s not a matter of quality
control. But we remember how the
Atalantes sounded (and felt) so like the
real thing, while the Sprints come over
more as a reasonable performer in a busy
and competitive market.
Conclusion
These speakers are cannily named, we
think. They are indeed ready for a sprint,
their tightness tracking music with
quick-fire elements cleanly, and with great
definition. As we said, the Sprints did
nothing wrong; the tech is good and the
finish fair enough.
We must, however, be honest, and say
we found ourselves always wanting a fuller
sound to deliver a more real and present
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
sense of reality. And they were eclipsed
by the memory of the Atalante 3s, which
did exactly that.
REVIVAL
SPRINT 3
• Great clarity and speed
• High-quality drivers
• Radical baffle and grilles
• Sound could be fuller
• Lack of guidance on grilles!
Price: $1750
Type: 2-way rear-ported standmount
Drivers: 28mm soft-dome tweeter,
180mm (7-inch) basalt sandwich woofer
Quoted frequency response:
55Hz–22kHz -3dB
Sensitivity: 87dB/2.83V/1 metre
Impedance: 6 ohms nominal
(min. 4.5 at 175Hz)
Crossover: 1.8kHz
Dimensions (hwd): 380 x 213 x 307mm
Weight: 9.1kg
Contact: Audio Marketing
Telephone: 02 9882 3877
Web: www.audiomarketing.com.au
 Dive into a world of unrivalled visual detail with TCL’s C845 series.
Incredible Mini LED technology delivers deep blacks, radiant brightness, and
contrast - providing a viewing experience that is as limitless as your imagination.

C845 SERIES

55" | 65" | 75" | 85"

NEW 2023 MODEL

Available now at leading participating retailers.

Ready for the full story? Visit our website to explore the limitless world of TCL.
tcl.com/au
Official Television and
White Goods Partner
 HI-FI

MARANTZ MODEL 40n

+ BOWERS & WILKINS 705 S3
PACKAGE: INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER + STANDMOUNT SPEAKERS + CABLES
Package deals can take the worry out of hi-fi component matching — and
they can save you money too. With brands like these on offer, it’s a win-win.

M
ixing and matching is one
of the big points of buying
hi-fi separates, rather than
an all-in-one system or a
complete set of kit from a single brand.
Some companies are good at loudspeakers,
say, while others are amplifier specialists.
By combining brands, you can have the best
of everything: the best system in the world!
But can you be sure two randomly-
chosen components will work well
together? In the olden days of hi-fi, this
was a definite no. Rival philosophies and
different approaches required careful
choices to be made. But these days, outside
the high-end at any rate, most amplifiers
are sensibly built and most speakers will
react well to most of them.
But still, if someone offers you a well-
matched system and sweetens the deal with
a discount, you’d be foolish not to take a
look. And when the brands are Marantz and
Bowers & Wilkins, well, it might be saving
money on a system you were going to buy
anyway. A warning, though: the deal here is
only live until 30 September 2023. If you’re
reading this article after that, check the
current pricing before getting excited.
Masimo duo + cables
This deal is possible because both brands
come from Masimo Consumer, which used
to be Sound United, a powerful stable of
brands including the two here, plus Denon,
Polk, Boston Acoustics, Classé, Definitive
Technology, and HEOS.
AudioQuest is also included in this
deal by virtue of common distribution
in Australia: you get a three-metre pair

36

of AudioQuest Rocket-33 speaker cable
included here. Those have a retail price
of $1150, and they’re substantial cables
using two types of specialist copper in
AudioQuest’s ‘Star-Quad’ geometry, so
quite the bonus, especially when you do the
maths on the deal — which is $8699 the lot.
The Marantz 40n is normally $4650, a
pair of B&W 705 S3 speakers $4799, plus the
cables: that’s $10,599: so a saving of $1900.
Why no source component? Perhaps
because the Model 40n is a smart
amplifier, with the ‘HEOS’ streaming and
multiroom platform built in. So if you’re
fully committed to music streaming, it’s
here in profusion: HEOS plays from Spotify,
Tidal, Amazon Music or Deezer, along
with iHeartRadio, SoundCloud and TuneIn
internet radio. All this is controlled via the
HEOS app, in addition to high-res network
playback via UPnP, also AirPlay 2 streaming
or Bluetooth, though this last is surpris-
ingly limited to the most basic SBC codec,
so should be considered a convenience
connection, not a full-quality one.
There’s one wired connection even
streaming music fans should consider: an
HDMI connection to your smart TV. The
Model 40n has an HDMI eARC digital input,
so enabling TV sound that will put pretty
much any soundbar to shame.
So for an impressive TV sound system
with high-quality music streaming, this
amp and these speakers (and the cables)
really could be all you need.
But of course the Marantz amp has
plenty of inputs with which you can build
a larger system. There’s one each of optical
and coaxial digital inputs, and three
gold-plated analogue line-level inputs
plus a separate phono input and earth
pin for a turntable with a moving-magnet
input. There’s also a ‘power amp in’, which
bypasses the 40n’s volume control, this
being useful (if slightly hazardous) for any
component with its own volume control.
We like the output provision too.
There’s a fixed level ‘record out’ (often
more useful than a variable pre-out), and
a single subwoofer pre-out for which you
can adjust the crossover point in 20Hz
steps from 40Hz to 120Hz.
Finally there are full-size RCA remote
in/outs, two sockets for the provided
dual-band Wi-Fi/Bluetooth antennas
which extend slightly above the height of
the unit, and an Ethernet socket for wired
network access, which we gave it.
Missing sockets? Only USB-B for a
direct computer connection. But there is
a USB-A slot, to which we attached a hard
drive of high-res music and kicked off a
DSD 2.8MHz file of Diana Krall and Michael
Bublé’s take on Alone Again (Naturally).
It takes a bad amp indeed to cock this
fine recording up, and it sounded suitably
luscious from the Model 40n, hanging on
every breathy articulation, and soaring
suitably high with the harmonies.
Dynamics were confirmed with Chick
Corea’s Australia concerto, with lively rim
shots punctuating this joyfully eclectic
piece, and an impressively deep and wide
soundstage too, especially during Hans
Glawischnig’s extended acoustic bass solo,
surrounded by swirling cymbal work.
We also did a good bit of TV and movie
listening through the combo, and it was a
lesson in clarity. You want punchy effects,
dialogue clarity, real dynamic impact, and
musical talents too? Then we generally
recommend a hi-fi system, not a soundbar.
Bowers & Wilkins 705 S3
The loudspeakers in this package are
instantly recognisable as coming from the
UK marque of renown — not because they
are extravagantly branded to Bowers &
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
“For an impressive TV
sound system with
high-quality music
streaming, this amp
and these speakers
(and the cables) really
could be all you need”.
Wilkins, but because of that ‘tweeter on top’,
with its ‘Nautilus’ tube behind, decoupled
from the main cabinet. The tube is milled
from a single solid block of aluminium, and
the tweeters themselves carbon-domed,
as were the previous 700 Series, compared
with the famous diamond domes of the
800 Series, or the aluminium (for now…)
domes of the 600 Series.
This is a straight two-way design,
and while very specific about its tweeter
materials, Bowers & Wilkins is downright
evasive about the woven silver-grey
composite cone material of the 165mm
midrange/bass driver; they call it
‘Continuum’, but won’t tell you what it
is actually made from. Industrial secret!
There are dedicated stands available
for these speakers — and those are not
included in the package, given you might
prefer to bench them either side of your
TV, using that HDMI input on the Marantz
amp. If you do want the style and optimised
support of the stands, they sell for $1399 a
pair. And Australia has four colour options
for the speakers themselves: a new mocha
finish (see overleaf) or the company’s long-
standing rosenut, in addition to the gloss
black and satin white options. We enjoyed
the mocha option, and up on their stands
with a well-placed spotlight, the fiery lustre
of the mocha veneer grain really shone out.
As did the music. In addition to our TV
and USB-A drive listening, we streamed
37
 HI-FI
several ways using HEOS: from Amazon
Music, enjoying the high-res it offered,
as well as Apple Music via AirPlay and
internet radio via the TuneIn section of the
HEOS app. It’s such a convenience to use
the HEOS app for music selection, though
we confess we were fond of the Marantz’s
physical remote control, especially for
casual volume control. We also had an
adjacent turntable plugged in, confirming
that Marantz has included a high-quality
moving-magnet phono stage in its amp.
There was, overall, an interesting
two-level delivery here. The system did
38
absolutely nothing wrong at low and
medium levels, but we found there was a
point above casual levels where the sound
really came alive, sometimes almost like a
switch being thrown.
So down low the Bowers & Wilkins
sound was nice enough, and Jeff Beck’s
Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers noodled
along — nice melody, perhaps a bit too
thin to engage. Turn the amp up, however,
and Beck’s guitar became a living thing:
crying, crackling, wailing. Phil Chenn’s bass
filled out to the point of realism, and we
could enjoy the tight but powerful punch
of Richard Bailey’s kickdrum, and the sense
of acoustic around his cymbal work. We
were also appreciating George Martin’s
clarity of production, though but fleetingly
as we were drawn back inexorably to Beck’s
infinitely-variable guitar tone.
Once up at this listening level, there’s
no turning back. The 6.5-inch mid/bass
unit had no trouble pushing out a big
fat walking bass to kick off Rodriguez’s
legendary I Wonder. Scintillating strummed
guitar strings shimmered from the carbon
tweeters to launch Jeff Buckley’s Last
Goodbye. This last track we played on vinyl,
finding that the incision of the tweeters
benefited the smooth sound of the Marantz
phono stage, keeping an edge on even the
smoothest of disc playback.
Turn things up and they’ll gleefully
pump out even a slice of dance pop; they
delivered a swirling soundstage for the
build to the drop on Tiesto & Tate McRaie’s
10:35; thereafter the kick drum was tight
and the bass notes solid down to the
fundamental Bb. The 705s’ trick here is
to keep on giving exactly where lesser
standmounts would be collapsing into
compression. The speakers are only an
average 88dB sensitivity, but with the solid
Marantz Class-AB power we could push the
705 S3s right into the party zone without
loss of musicality, resolution or control
— especially impressive given a single
mid-bass driver handling everything below
the tweeter-on-top.
We ended up back with the HDMI
connection for TV sound, but given our
musical discoveries, this time we really
cranked it. The clarity and the gutsiness at
volume rumbled the room impressively as
a team set off across the desert 10 minutes
into E05 of the swashbuckling SAS: Rogue
Heroes, and they mightily pumped this
series’ rock soundtrack (AC/DC, Motorhead
etc.) with exhilaration.
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
Conclusion
Nice-looking speakers and an attractive
amplifier, yes, but your money here pays
for an ability to hold onto the music far
louder than niceness; this combo continues
to deliver tight and clean sound into fun
levels and up to reference. That’s where you
get your value: dedicated sessions of your
favourite tunes at volume. Such brands of
renown are an obvious benchmark, but also
a true benchmark: they’re beautifully built
and ready to impress. Turn them up.
MARANTZ MODEL 40n +
BOWERS & WILKINS 705 S3
PACKAGE
• Excellent style match
• Detailed and spacious sound
• Good speaker cables included
• Powerful at mid-high levels
• A little ordinary at casual levels
Marantz 40n: $4650
B&W 705 S3: $4799/pr
Audioquest Rocket-33 3-metre
speaker cable: $1150 = $10,599
Package price: $8699
MARANTZ MODEL 40N
Quoted power: 2 x 70W into 8 ohms
(both channels, 20Hz–20kHz, THD
0.02%); 2 x 100W into four ohms.
Inputs: 3 x line-level analogue, 1 x power
amp (bypass), moving-magnet phono,
optical digital, coaxial digital, USB-A,
HDMI ARC, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, remote in,
Bluetooth (SBC only), HEOS streaming
Outputs: line-level out, subwoofer
pre-out, speakers out, remote out
Dimensions (whd): 443 x 170 (194 with
antennas up) x 432mm (including knobs
& binding posts)
Weight: 16.7kg
BOWERS & WILKINS 705 S3
Type: Two-way standmounter
Drivers: 25mm decoupled carbon-dome
tweeter, 16.5cm ‘Continuum’ mid/bass
Quoted frequency response:
50Hz-28kHz (no envelope stated)
Rated sensitivity: 88dB/W/m
Nominal impedance:
8 ohms (minimum 3.7Ω)
Dimensions (hwd): 413 x 192 x 337mm
Weight: 9.58kg
Contact: Masimo Consumer
Telephone: 02 9196 8990
Website: hifibundles.com.au
HD 660S2 Feel the full drama and emotion
of your music with the HD 660S2,
now with double the low-end
sound pressure. Breathtaking reso-
Dive deeper lution and powerful, accurate sub
bass envelop you in instruments

into legendary and vocals — with a natural and

relaxed tone that’s never harsh
or fatiguing.
sound The open-back design and plush
earcups of the HD 660S2 make it
perfect for long listening sessions.
It’s an intimate experience you
won’t want to live without.

Available at specialist
independent dealers and online at
sennheiser-hearing.com/hd-660s2
 AV PROJECTORS
BENQ W4000i
HOME CINEMA PROJECTOR
First-class image quality, and a superfast gaming mode which knocked
10 seconds off our correspondent’s Gran Turismo lap times. Say no more.
B
enQ seems pretty excited about
its new W4000i home theatre
projector. It’s a premium model,
although not stratospherically
priced. Do we think its excitement is
warranted? Let’s see.
Equipment
At first glance, this compact black-coloured
projector doesn’t look particularly unusual.
It could almost be a business model.
There’s no protruding lens: it’s well-
protected within the unit’s body. But
looks can be deceiving. In fact, it measures
significantly larger than BenQ’s business
and lower-cost home entertainment
projectors, and weighs about 50% more,
suggesting a fine build quality.
And then there’s the feature set.
The projector uses solid-state LED lamps,
which are warrantied to 20,000 hours
of use. That’s about two years and three
months without switching it off. Or, more
40
realistically, 18 years with three hours of
use every single day.
The image is provided by a 1920 ×
1080-pixel 0.65-inch Digital Micromirror
Device with 4× pixel-shifting technology,
designed to deliver a native Ultra-HD
(consumer 4K) image. The BenQ rates the
brightness at 3200 ANSI lumens, and the
contrast ratio at up to 2 million to 1.
The unit supports modern high-end
picture quality standards: HDR10, HLG
and HDR10+ and both Rec.709 and DCI-P3
colour. Indeed, for both of those colour
standards the projector offers 100%
support, not only some subset of the colour
range. Every projector is individually
calibrated for colour accuracy at the factory
and provided with a calibration report.
There are two HDMI inputs, both
supporting 4K and HDCP 2.2. One of them
also supports the HDMI audio return
channel (and eARC as well). Why would
that be, given that ARC is only useful where
the display device is an audio source?
Because the W4000i comes bundled with a
BenQ QS02 Android TV dongle. Although
“dongle” is perhaps misleading, because
it doesn’t poke out precariously from one
of the HDMI inputs at the back. Instead
there’s a neat rectangular housing for
the QS02 on the back of the projector
(shown right, but covered in use), with its
own power and HDMI connector — as well
integrated into the projector as anything
can be, short of factory installation.
Two remote controls are provided: one
for the Android TV device, and one for both
the QS02 and the projector itself.
Other connections are a USB-A slot for
media playback, another to supply power
to anything else you might want to plug in,
stereo analogue and optical digital audio
outputs, and RS232C, Ethernet and a 12V
trigger output for system integration.
The projector is well-equipped in the
optical department. All adjustments are

manual, but smoothly implemented. There
is both vertical lens shift (up to 60%) and
horizontal (up to 15%). The zoom range is
1.3:1. For a 100-inch screen that means a
range of between 2.526 metres and 3.301
metres is required.
The projected image, when no lens shift
is applied, is centred on the lens axis, rather
than cast upwards or downwards. While
the lens shift allows some adjustment,
you’re still going to have the projector
somewhere in line with the screen unless
you want to resort to keystone adjustment.
Of course, the projector supports that, but
we always recommend against it because
the digital image processing results
in fewer pixels than those physically
available being used, reducing resolution
of content. Interestingly — a first for
us — the projector also displayed an
on-screen warning before presenting the
keystone adjustment screen during set-up,
suggesting that the fast games mode will
not work as quickly if keystone adjustment
is applied. That digital processing takes
time as well as compromising pixels.
Performance
We experienced a slight wobble setting
up the projector for use, because it clearly
wasn’t at factory-original settings. For one
thing, the QS02 dongle had already been
installed, and it seemed that the remotes
had been paired. We tried resetting things
to factory default — both the dongle and
the projector itself — but afterwards we
couldn’t get the usual Google Home set-up
to work on our phone.
Not a real problem — we were just
being lazy. We went into the QS02 menu,
signed onto our Wi-Fi network, entered our
Google credentials and we were in. After a
bit, we fired up the Netflix app and Google
offered to log us in automatically, which we
accepted. We expect that a unit purchased
at a retail store will take advantage of
Google Home set-up on an Android phone,
but even so our set-up added maybe five
minutes to the process.
We watched a bit of this and that on
Netflix, including a couple of episodes of
the most recent season of ‘Dark Mirror’.
This is shot sharp and with full benefit of
modern technology, and it kind of startled
us with how exceptionally good it looked.
The present writer has been reviewing
display technology since the days when TVs
were exclusively CRT (or the occasional rear
projection TV) — including home theatre
projectors. And I for one think this may be
the best big picture I have ever seen.
Why?
No, the black levels aren’t OLED TV in
their darkness, but they are dark enough
to go beyond the threshold in which black
on-screen items look to the human eye
legitimately black. And even in dark scenes
which are deprived of a contrast range
which helps those blacks look black, the
dark levels are convincing enough for
unimpeded enjoyment.
Why else? Well the brightness is
excellent. By default, the projector runs
in ‘Eco’ mode, which means a lower lamp
brightness than the maximum available
(which BenQ calls ‘Normal’). For screens of
100 or fewer inches, that Eco is likely the
appropriate output setting. The brightness
is plenty and the fan noise virtually
inaudible. If you have a 200-ish inch
screen, then you’ll probably need a bit
more oomph, but you’ll also likely be in a
larger venue in which a bit of fan noise will
be of relatively little import.
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
Just as important, though, perhaps even
more so, is what happened between the
dark and the light stuff. What happened
there was realistic, natural gradients. In
particular, skin tones were superbly graded
across faces, with never a hint of flattened
surfaces. Faces were perfectly rounded.
And of course things like trees, the blue sky,
colourful features were correctly intense.
And all that was at the default settings.
The projector noticed when HDR10 signals
were coming in and set itself correctly. The
result: gorgeous.
Even better was UHD Blu-ray. There are
a lot more bits of data in this format than
anything streaming, even if the resolution
is nominally the same. All the discs we
span looked great, and especially great
were things like Gemini Man, which is
encoded at 2160p/60. It’s a pity that frame
interpolation motion smoothing was ever
invented, since it seems to have given many
people a visceral dislike of natively high-
frame-rate content. But this disc looked
simply stunning with this projector. It had
all the virtues listed above, and added the
subjective sense of markedly higher picture
sharpness, which is one of the side-effects
of HFR. With less resistance to this format,
we’d hopefully see more movies shot in
this way, realising a great jump in picture
quality. Oh well.
Now, since we’re talking about
resolution, let’s be clear. Test patterns
reveal that displaying full 3840 × 2160
pixels is sort of within the capabilities of
this projector. But it’s more ‘hinted at’ than
clearly etched out, unlike a direct-view
display such as a 4K TV. In fact, we’ve
found that earlier BenQ projectors using
the 0.47-inch DMD, rather than the
0.65-inch DMD of this model, deliver a
41
 AV PROJECTORS
job with standard Blu-ray and even with
standard PAL DVDs. That last was a bit of a
surprise to us. But the picture processing
and scaling managed to turn 576i/50
into 2160p with decent sharpness, while
avoiding noticeable artefacts. Well, on our
hardest torture tests, we did notice one brief
instance of the picture analysis processor
slipping the projector incorrectly into
video-sourced deinterlacing mode (that
is, it bobbed the two fields into a frame,
rather than weaving them). On the scale
of these things — amongst devices that
don’t offer a manual film mode, anyway
— that was just about as good as it gets.
The same happened in one brief flash with
our 1080i/50 test. Again, very close to as
good as it gets.
Importantly, both 576i/50 and 1080i/50
had no cadence problems, unlike many
earlier pixel-shifting DLP projectors. Clearly
With latency reduced
to an astonishingly
low 18.2 milliseconds,
we ran the same track
on Gran Turismo and
effortlessly knocked
more than ten
seconds off our time...
42
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
change, it had reduced
to an astonishingly low
18.2 milliseconds.
The delay was now
well below any level at
which it could make a
difference. We ran the
same track on Gran Turismo
and effortlessly knocked more
than ten seconds off our time... and
that was after a glass of wine. Superfast
So, do we think BenQ’s excitement about
the W4000i is warranted? We do. We
suppose that you might be able to produce
a finer picture than it delivers... if you
throw enough thousands of dollars at
some other projector. But for us, that
would definitely be a case of significantly
diminishing returns. Because the BenQ
W4000i is thoroughly satisfying.
kind of thing (buried in the Picture menu
BENQ
W4000i
under “Advance Color Settings”, then
“CinemaMaster”, then “Motion Enhancer • First-class overall picture quality
4K” if you’re looking for it), with three levels • Superfast games mode
and “Off”. The “High” level provided super- • Android TV
smooth motion, with some mild heat-haze
artefacts, but none of the weird detail • As always, a setting to force
film-mode deinterlacing would
jumping that some systems produce. be welcome
A touch of gaming Price: $4999
Since BenQ has highlighted the projector’s Projection technology: 16.5mm FHD
‘Fast Mode’, we gave Gran Turismo 7 a Digital Micromirror Device with 4x pixel
spin on the PlayStation 5. Initially it was shifting technology
disappointing. We found a bit of lag in the Resolution: 3840 x 2160 pixels
display, evidenced by us continually braking Aspect ratio: 16:9
late and missing corners. Lamp: 4LED
So we went exploring. With our Lamp life: 20,000 hours
electronic picture-lag checker (this is Contrast ratio: 2,000,000:1
only capable of 1080p output), we found (Full On/Full Off with Dynamic Black)
that in ‘Fast Mode’ the latency (picture Brightness: 3200 ANSI lumens
delay) was around 112 milliseconds, and
Inputs: 2 x HDMI (1 with eARC/CEC), 1 x
with it off the delay went up to 125 millisec- USB-B (with media support), Android TV
onds. That didn’t seem right. An on-screen
Outputs: minijack stereo, optical digital
box had suggested switching of processing, audio
such as noise reduction. We switched
Other: RS-232C, USB-A (2.5 amp power),
everything off that we could find and got RJ45 Ethernet, 12V trigger
the latency down to 109ms.
Dimensions (whd): 421 x 135 x 312mm
There was only one thing left on the
Weight: 6.6kg
list of suggestions: ensure that the aspect
ratio is set to “Auto”. We had a look and
found that we’d earlier set it to 16:9 to force Contact: BenQ Australia
some DVDs into the correct shape. When Telephone: 1300 130 336
we checked the latency after making that Web: www.benq.com/en-au
 AV PROJECTORS

EPSON EH-TW6250 + EH-LS12000B

AV PROJECTORS
Epson scored two Sound+Image Awards this year for its projectors —
with two very different designs, one with excellent ease of use and a smart
Android TV interface, the other for full-on dedicated home theatre performance.

S
omething has changed in the world
of projectors recently, especially
at the medium level. Traditional
projectors may be fairly clever in
how they serve light to the screen, but
they’ve been pretty dumb otherwise,
requiring a video source, and some kind
of external sound system plugged in.
Hence projectors have traditionally
been permanently installed and cabled
up — and not many are the modern living
rooms in which that’s convenient these
days, so that over the last decade we’ve seen
bigscreen movie projection moving more
and more into dedicated cinema rooms.
In a bid to appeal more widely, then,
projector manufacturers have started
building in extras. Some projectors have
little sound systems, which can often seem
pretty laughably small compared to the
bigscreen pictures being produced. But
more useful is the second evolution, which
has seen first external media sticks and
now internal receivers which can provide
(usually) a built-in Android TV interface
with apps streaming content direct to the
projector, no additional source required.
Voilà, a projector which can work almost
as well as an ad hoc plonk-me-down visitor
as it would if properly installed.
EH-TW6250: smart and neat
That ease of use is a key part of the appeal
of the first Epson award-winner, priced at
an attractive $2099. The EH-TW6250 is
smallish, clearly designed for ease of set-up
and use. The mechanical lens controls are
on the top and work smoothly.
Frightened of lamp replacement costs?
The brochure notes that the lamp should
be good for 15 years if you watch one typical
movie a day in ‘Eco’ mode.
There’s only one HDMI input and an
analogue audio output — well, unless
you go looking, because there’s another
HDMI input and USB socket inside for the

44

Android TV dongle. But connectivity is
certainly straightforward.
Inside are three 15.5mm LCD panels
with 1920 × 1080 pixel resolution. These
are enhanced with Epson’s ‘4K PRO-UHD’
pixel-shifting technology. This is not the
same as native 4K; the final resolution falls
somewhere between 2K and 4K. Perhaps
the main advantage you get here with 4K
Ultra-HD material is the projector’s support
for greater colour bit-depth per pixel —
which makes for smoother colour and
greyscale gradients.
With 24fps films you can have it all, but
with 50 or 60Hz material there’s a choice:
2160p/60 with regular Blu-ray-like colour,
or 1080p/60 with higher resolution, more
finely-graduated colour. We chose the
latter nearly every time.The picture looked
possibly want. Black levels were pretty
decent for an LCD projector.
The Android TV interface provides
your entry to a world of smart streaming
apps. Epson’s implementation is unusual
in including Netflix; some projector
companies are unable to offer this, Netflix
having dragged its feet for years on apps
for projectors. Here there seems everything
you’d get with, say, a Chromecast dongle
with Android 4K, including the ability to
Chromecast from other devices.
If we’d have guessed the price here, we’d
have gone far higher. We’d still recommend
an external sound system, but otherwise
this smart-equipped Epson delivers great
images at a great price.
Towards carbon negative
For decades we have watched and
applauded Epson’s deep and genuine
commitment to minimising environmental
impact, creating sustainability in a circular
economy, and indeed a wider social
responsibility such as an active Human
Rights Policy. Its laudable goal is to use
its “efficient, compact and precision tech-
nologies to enrich people and our planet”.
And it’s no mere lip-service; one of
its latest announcements is that 100%
of Epson’s electricity used at all of its
Australian and New Zealand offices and
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
There’s also the
advantage of Epson’s
3LCD system in having
three individual LCD
chips continuously
in action, able to
display 100% of an
RGB signal throughout
every frame.
EH-LS12000B:
true home cinema
We’ve seen what Epson can deliver down
near the entry-level with the EH-TW6250.
But this is a company that does massive
imaging systems for museums, art
company sites has now been certified
under Australian GreenPower and the
New Zealand equivalent.
Epson also joined RE100, a global
initiative that brings together the world’s
most influential businesses driving the
transition to 100% renewable electricity.
“In our renewed Environmental
Vision established in 2021, Epson
made a firm commitment to achieve
carbon negative and be underground
resource free by 2050,” says Epson
Australia’s MD Craig Heckenberg.
“Renewable electricity is a top priority
in our decarbonisation strategy.”
45
 AV PROJECTORS
such companies and you’ll find Epson at or
near the top. Good on ’em. (See panel.)
So this $8999 LS12000B projector sees
Epson taking its home cinema performance
to the next level, with high-brightness
bigscreen images, realistic colours and
excellent optimisation. It’s a stunner in
performance terms, although the price for
this is having a unit which is no compact
tabletop projector — it’s quite the beast,
indeed, at 52cm across and 45cm deep.
This space is required for Epson to
install a large and high-quality light engine
with a proprietary 15-element precision
glass structure. The projector also gains
an all-new Laser Array Light Source, using
true multi-array laser diodes in a three-chip
system that allows 2700 lumens of both
white and colour brightness.
The lasers also confer far longer life
than ye olde bulbs: 20,000 hours of full
brightness operation is Epson’s promise,
and suffering no bulb-like fade-off in
brightness on the way.
Is this a 4K/UHD projector? Genuinely
so, it seems. Previous Epson ‘4K Pro-UHD’
projectors (like the TW6250) have accepted
An all-new Laser Array
Light Source allows
2700 lumens of both
white and colour
brightness, and also
confers far longer life
than ye olde bulbs:
20,000 hours of full
brightness operation.
46
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
displaying four slightly separated shifts
of a panel having native 1920×1080 EPSON
resolution. It’s still not native 4K, but it
EH-TW6250 & EH-LS12000B
goes further than most. • Two award-winners
There’s also the natural advantage • Choose smart & neat…
of Epson’s 3LCD system in having three
• ...or full-on performance
individual LCD chips continuously in
action, so able to display 100% of any RGB EH-TW6250
colour signal for every frame all the time: Price: $2099
no colour wheel to segment each frame into Projection technology:
different colours over time (which reduces 3LCD (3 x 15.5mm panels)
brightness). A proprietary 36-bit Epson ZX Lamp life: 4500 hours in high mode,
Picture Processor handles real-time colour, 7500 hours in economy mode
contrast, HDR and frame interpolation up Brightness:
to 120Hz. Finally, this being Epson, there 2800 lumens (white & colours)
is great attention to all-of-life eco features, Contrast ratio: 35,000:1
including recyclability.
Inputs: 1 x HDMI, 1 dongle HDMI input
Suitable for much larger rooms, this is a
Outputs: 1 x 3.5mm stereo audio
magnificent projector, bringing laser UHD
Dimensions (whd): 333 x 131 x 275mm
delivery at a thrilling price. The price of its
truly cinematic images is worth paying. Weight: 4.1kg
EH-LS12000B
Double awards Price: $8999
Such were the merits of these two projectors
Projection system:
that each of them won a Sound+Image
3LCD (3 x 18.7mm panels)
2023 award at their respective price points.
Laser life: 20,000 hours
They are so clearly differentiated that
Brightness: 2700 lumens (white &
it’s not an either/or choice: Epson’s little
colours)
EH-TW6250 projector delivers great images
at an attractive price, coming with Android
Contrast ratio: 2500,000-to-1
TV smarts inside and some but not all key Connections: 2 x HDMI (one with eARC),
USB-A (settings/updates only), service
benefits of 4K, while the EH-LS12000B
port, Ethernet, RS-232C control, trigger
reveals Epson’s pure performance levels, out, optical HDMI
a magnificent home cinema projector,
Dimensions (whd): 447 x 520 x 192.7mm
notably in bringing laser UHD delivery at a
Weight: 12.7kg
still thrilling price.
Add all this to the reassurance of Epson Contact: Epson Australia
treading lightly on the planet in terms of Telephone: 1300 361 054
its green initiatives, and it’s not hard to Web: www.epson.com.au
 TIVOLI HI-FI PRESENTS

LISTENING IS BELIEVING
AUDITION THE CLASSIC ESL 9’S AT TIVOLI HI-FI NOW

1800 848 654 | info@tivolihifi.com.au

155-157 Camberwell Road, Hawthorn East Victoria 3123
Delivering Sound Excellence
tivolihifi.com.au
 AV PROJECTORS

OPTOMA L1+
4K ULTRA-SHORT-THROW PROJECTOR WITH ANDROID TV
Optoma delivers the smallest ultra-short-throw 4K projector we’ve yet seen,
and its compact size doesn’t limit its performance.

O
ptoma’s latest L1+ shows
precisely how much projectors
have changed since the arrival
of the smart ultra-short-throw
breed. It requires no cumbersome instal-
lation, benching close to the wall shining
up, rather than attaching to your ceiling
somewhere at the back of the room. The
Optoma L1+ fits in more like a television.
With three HDMI inputs, it rivals
connectivity in many televisions as well,
and has a sound system built in. Bulb
replacement? Not here; the Optoma has a
four-LED light source which is expected to
provide 30,000 hours of operation — that’s
three hours every day for 27 years, or 10
hours a day for eight years.
And it’s a smart projector in terms of
apps and streaming, thanks to the inclusion
of a third-party Google & Netflix-certified
Android TV dongle —yes, Netflix, still
something of a rarity on smart projectors.
All in all, then, the Optoma L1+ projector
is no dumb light box; it takes on all aspects
of a modern smart TV (except a TV tuner),
while still bringing projection’s killer differ-
entiator — truly bigscreen entertainment.
Build & facilities
The L1+ ultra-short-throw projector is
surprisingly compact at 40cm wide, a
significant advantage in fitting into your
lounge. Optoma actually claims this as the
most compact and lightest 4K UST projector
on the market at the time of its release. It
looks nice enough in moulded plastic with

48

a fabric frontage over its speakers, and a
classy gold power button. It also has beauty
of a different kind, built with 50% post-
consumer recycled materials and with
99% recyclable packaging too.
While the L1+ does have its own sound
system, there’s an optical audio out, or
stereo minijack audio out for an external
audio system, although no HDMI eARC
provision. There are two HDMI inputs on
the back, and a third mini-HDMI inside for
the smart Android TV dongle.
The throw distances remain the same
whether benched below or mounted to
the ceiling. For a 100-inch image, the back
of the projector needs to be 25cm from
the wall, putting the projector’s front feet
around 50cm from the wall. For a 120-inch
image, the projector front will need to
be 68cm out from the screen. We always
suggest you measure that distance out as
an early realisation that UST projectors do
not sit quite as close to the wall as publicity
images may imply.
As for the question of what surface
you’re throwing onto, a proper screen is
highly recommended, though Optoma
doesn’t bundle one here. It’s not only a
question of maximising brightness and
achieving more accurate colours (as for
all projectors), but also a specific ultra-
short-throw requirement for uniformity.
The geometry of throwing an image
up from below is challenged by any
imperfections in a wall surface, which
may look superficially flat, but (unless
rendered by a robot) will have bumps and
slopes which can significantly distort a
projected image thrown from below.
Optoma does assist wall projection
(perhaps because everybody knows
that a lot of people do it) by including a
wall-colour adjustment menu with presets
for blackboard, light yellow, light green,
light blue, pink, and grey. That may help
with colour, but for surface uniformity
and best performance overall, we’d still
recommend a screen.
Adjustments during installation and
adjustment are mainly manual, and UST
projectors need accurate initial positioning
to get a perfectly rectangular image exactly
where you want it. Here there’s four corner
adjustment, an unusual de-warping option,
and two-way keystone correction, but each
will either reduce your effective resolution
or/and increase processing time — not
enough to throw out lip-sync but enough to
trouble gamers (and gaming specs are good
here in its dedicated mode). We found that
we needed to lift the front of the projector
to achieve an exact rectangle on the wall
sans keystone; the feet aren’t adjustable, but
a coin under each front foot was enough.
This projector uses DLP projection
technology, which means one of the
inconceivably-complex Digital Micromirror
Devices on which 1920 × 1080 tiny mirrors
pivot to four slightly different positions
during each image frame, thereby claiming
four times the resolution: UHD (consumer
4K) of 3840 × 2160. Overlapping pixels are
not the same thing as native resolution,
and we never see four-flip DLP managing
to cleanly resolve a single line of pixels. It’s
pretty close, though, while being a whole lot
cheaper and smaller than native 4K.
Performance
Unboxing the L1+ and substituting it for
our usual UST projector certainly impressed
in how compact a unit this really is.
Almost exactly the width of normal hi-fi
components, it will sit very neatly on the
top shelf of a hi-fi rack.
First task was to flip it over and open
a hatch to install the little ‘Hako Mini’
Android TV dongle, a third-party solution
(while Optoma is a Taiwanese company,
Hako is based in China). This means you get
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
The L1+ of course
shines brightest when
the sun goes down.
How rich the Marvel
red in the credits of
Secret Invasion ; how
deep and textured the
raised skin of Nick
Fury’s face scars...
two remote controls, but the Hako remote’s
lowest button switches it to control the
projector instead — neat!
Again the Hako scores over many such
projector dongles in having a working
Netflix app, along with the thousands of
other apps available via the Android TV
10 interface, including all five Australian
terrestrial catch-up services. Indeed we
couldn’t find anything at all missing.
Screen size depends entirely on distance
from the wall; there is no optical zoom, and
the digital zoom just zooms (and so crops)
the content within the existing screen area.
Focus is manually set, and we had a little
trouble achieving perfect focus for both
the central area and at both side edges
simultaneously; the edges looked a tad soft
with test images, but you wouldn’t pick it
in use. More impressive was the projector
lens’s ability to deliver straight horizontal
lines, preventing long wide pans swaying
from this common UST distortion.
Colours were good out of the box; it goes
beyond the Rec. 709 colour gamut to cover
93% of the DCI-P3 gamut, and in a darkened
room the colours were able to lift with
vibrancy from blacks that were subjectively
close to true black. There is 10-bit HDR10,
though not 12-bit Dolby Vision. Either
signal type will put the Optoma into its
HDR settings, which lock off most further
adjustments, though you can force them by
49
 AV PROJECTORS
disabling auto-HDR, not that we’d advise
this, since the auto results were good!
There are no motion-smoothing settings
except, rather oddly, in the gaming mode,
so with the dongle set by default to output
at 4K/60Hz, there was pull-down judder on
50Hz material and potentially even 24fps.
In fact the results were not too bad: some
judder on wide pans of ABC’s Gardening
Australia, but only slight judder on one shot
of our dongle torture test, S4E1 of Formula
1: Drive To Survive, where Christian Horner
jogs through the countryside after the title
sequence. Generally if something’s going
to judder, that scene judders, and it was
almost perfect here.
But pedants like us will be mighty
pleased to find that under the Android
TV menu’s ‘TV settings’ you can change
the output of the dongle to 4K/50, or even
4K/23.976Hz for movie perfection. It’s a bit
of a drag (and there’s trial and error; SBS
movies played best at 50Hz rather than
24Hz, for example), but all judder vanished
each time we selected the right frame rate.
We found the projector’s settings menus,
as opposed to the Android settings, to be
a bit glitchy, slow to come up, or disap-
pearing after use, rather than carrying on
to the next setting. HDMI handshakes on
changing inputs could be slow, too.
How about the brightness? LEDs
generally aren’t as vibrant as laser light
sources, but the L1+ is quoted at 2500
lumens, and it’s firing from up close, so
could this UST projector replace a TV, even
during daytime?
That depends on a number of things.
In a living room with substantial ambient
light, as is common in Australia, not really.
An ambient light-rejecting screen will
help, but even then you’ll have a hard time
watching dark material by day, although
50
cartoons and Gardening Australia were
bright enough to enjoy, if not to benefit
from the full delivery of colour and contrast
you get once the sun goes down.
The L1+ of course shines brightest when
the sun goes down and its full abilities can
come into play. How rich the Marvel red in
the opening credits of Secret Invasion (4K/24
from an Apple TV via HDMI); how deep
and textured the raised skin of Nick Fury’s
face scars and skin. Very best performance
and maximum sharpness came via HDMI
from UHD Blu-ray, though we’d say if its
compact size (and relatively compact price)
are betrayed at all in visual performance, it’s
perhaps in ultimate sharpness against some
larger rivals. And the truth of it is that UST
projection starts at a disadvantage against
front projection for sharpness anyway.
We should also note that we used this
projector two ways — with a 100-inch
fixed screen, and then blowing things up
fully to 120-inch using a large open wall
area. And it’s funny; the screen clearly gave
the best image quality, but we were quite
happy to take the extra real estate and
suffer the slight losses and image distortion
this incurred. It’s bigscreen images that
remain projection’s trump card, and the
Optoma works well even if you’re using an
impromptu projection surface.
The built-in sound system we thought
to be disappointing. It’s stereo but there’s
very little bass to it, so that voices are
intelligible but the overall delivery is brash
and rather dimensionless if you turn it up.
If you want expansive and full sound, add
at least an optically-connected soundbar,
preferably a hi-fi system.
Conclusion
TVs are getting bigger; even 98-inch
TVs are beginning to enter the realms of
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
affordability these days. But 120-inch TVs?
Forget it. Projection is the only way. Smart
ultra-short-throw projection can be a neat
solution to achieve this, and Optoma here
delivers one at just $2999.
It’s relatively compact, perhaps why its
sound system is also small-sounding, but
with Android TV onboard and brightness
sufficient for all but strong light conditions
(preferably with a proper screen, but with
presets for various shades of wall), the
Optoma L1+ performs above its price as a
genuine bigscreen TV alternative.
OPTOMA
L1+
• DLP 4K resolution
• Good performance at the price
• Nicely compact unit
• AndroidTV with Netflix
• Good gaming specs
• Built-in sound mediocre
• Ambient light washes out
Price: $2999
Projection technology: DLP, 0.47-inch
FHD Digital Micromirror Device with
4x pixel shifting technology
Resolution: 3840 x 2160 pixels
Lamp: 4LED (life: 30,000 hours)
Quoted contrast ratio: 1,800,000:1
Inputs: 2 x HDMI 2.0, 1 x mini-HDMI
(internal), Wi-Fi, AndroidTV dongle
Outputs: optical digital audio, minijack
analogue audio, USB-A (power 1.5A)
Brightness: 2500 lumens
Dimensions (whd): 400 x 113 x 316mm
Weight: 5.6kg
Contact: Optoma Australia
Web: au.optoma.com
 HI-FI SOLUTIONS FOR MOST EVERYONE AND ALL IN
PERFECT HARMONY
The HTR-1000CD v.2 is a
high-fidelity all-in-one stereo
system with no compromises
in sound performance!
“The Taga Harmony HTR-1000CD
CD-Receiver and the Azure S-40 v.2
speakers is a good, stylish, functional
and powerful hi-fi minisystem with an
attractive price.”
ON.mag.fr review.
The TWA-10B can be quickly and
easily connected to your existing
audio system transforming it to a
thrilling digital smart system that
can stream co Hybrid amplification
plus the power and precision of
modern technology. $399 RRP
For more information contact the Australian distributor Audacity Australia: audacityaustralia.com.au | 03 9645 3887
Receiver +
speaker combo
package
$1,580
RRP
Azure v.3 Bookshelf
Loudspeakers
The name of the series was inspired by the French
Riviera, which stretches over a hundred kilometres
of coastline where the beautiful coloured Mediter-
ranean Sea closes in around amazing cliffs, sandy
beaches and exquisite resorts.
The AZURE emphasizes speakers sound character,
which is like the sea’s breeze powerful and gentle
at the same time, giving the joy of listening a new
dimension.
The design of the new AZURE v.3 series is elegant
and stylish, so can fit into the décor of the home,
both traditional and modern.
HTA-1000B is a 2 x 105W / 8ohm
high-fidelity, affordable hybrid
integrated amplifier utilizing three
high-performance PSVANE and
four Toshiba transistors at the
output – ensuring a very warm, always deliver the best sound
linear and lifelike sound with high performance.
dynamic presentation.
“…powerful and well-balanced
Connect a range of digital devices
hybrid hi-fi amplifier that
via optical or coaxial inputs and
makes you smile” ON.mag.fr review.
the built-in premium high-
resolution 24bit / 192kHz DAC will Price $1,645 RRP
Everything old is nu again.

Distributed in Australia by audiomarketing.com.au

 AV INSTALLATION
SCREEN DREAMS
A LESSON IN HOME CINEMA IMAGING
This super-widescreen home cinema in the Mornington Peninsula provides a
lesson in how to consider a complete imaging system for a home theatre.
I
n the main issues of Sound+Image
magazine we regularly feature home
cinemas which have been custom-
installed by experts: the full monty,
the film-lover’s dream of a theatre room at
home to which the owners can retire for a
full-blown movie experience.
The home cinema room shown above
is in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula,
and was the creation of Andersons AVI in
Victoria. It went on to win a Sound+Image
Gold Award for its outstanding design and
for the performance of its audio, for which
Andersons was supported by Steve Spurrier
of Studio Connections, and the imaging
system, for which Andersons involved
Paul Kutcher of Visual Fidelity, distributor
of Stewart Filmscreen.
60-degrees of immersion
And it’s the screen which most impresses
on first acquaintance with this home
cinema, because the angle of view from
the seats is far greater than the norm for
such rooms; most home cinemas don’t
go much above 40 degrees wide. With the
screen here, some 4.5 metres in width for a
175-inch diagonal, the view from the single
row of four seats is truly immersive, a field
of view approaching 60 degrees.
There were discussions early on
regarding extending the room to
accommodate a second row of seats (and a
longer projection throw), but only on rare
occasions would the cinema be hosting
an audience greater than four, so it was
decided that any visitors could be accom-
modated by having additional beanbag
seating in front of the main seats.
Such decisions were made easier by a
longstanding relationship: the owners of
the home were no strangers to the wonders
of home entertainment; this was their
third dedicated cinema room, and the
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
second room developed in conjunction
with the Andersons team.
“I’ve known this family for many
years, ever since they had a home cinema
installed at a different property,” Alan
Anderson told us. “And I made them a
promise that in their next home I would
deliver a cinema that would deliver a result
beyond their expectations.”
So for this latest project, the pressure
was on to achieve an exceptional result.
The importance of imaging
“The projection system was designed as
a whole,” says Paul Kutcher from Visual
Fidelity. “The screen selection is an
integral part of that, not selected in
isolation but based on factors including
room size, viewing distances, the projector,
even the room aesthetics.”
Indeed Paul is quite the proselytiser
when it comes to the importance of
53
 AV INSTALLATION
considering not only the projector, but the
complete imaging system.
“People tend to pay most attention to the
projector choice,” he says. “It’s inevitable
— projectors are loaded with technologies,
so you want the latest options and best
specifications. Often the projection screen
then becomes a secondary or even tertiary
consideration. But this attitude is very
wrong. The role played by the projection
screen is absolutely critical in determining
the final picture outcome.”
He explains that just as the chain of an
audio system needs to be considered as a
whole, so the whole light path needs to be
considered as a complete system if it is to be
optimised for the best image performance
possible — the combination of projector,
screen, and the room itself.
“Poor screen selection will display an
image well short of optimal,” he warns.
“Indeed it can remove the enjoyment and
excitement of the experience — your ‘wow’
factor could become a wimp factor.”
Once the decision was taken not to
extend the length of the room or push the
projector further back to permit a longer
54
throw, an optimal system was carefully
designed to match the final internal depth
of the room and the optimised acoustical
layout for the space.
Going anamorphic
For this, a native 2.35:1 aspect ratio screen
was chosen, to maximise the width of the
image in the space. To achieve this, the
recommendation was made to also install
an anamorphic lens system in the optical
path, enabling such a large image to be
projected without the need to push the
projector further back from the screen.
“More importantly, the anamorphic
lens also enables the full pixel resolution
and light output of the projector to be used
when projecting Cinemascope-format
images, maximising on-screen image
brightness,” explains Kutcher. “Because of
the projection distance from the screen to
the projector, the anamorphic lens required
was a Schneider 1.33× [this figure indicates
the ‘stretch’ factor] XL anamorphic lens
mounted to a Schneider motorised linear
sled. The anamorphic lens is only deployed
when it is required, so the full 4K resolution
of the projector is used for both the 2.35:1
and 1.78:1 aspect ratios.”
Unlike designs that are based around
multiple lens memory positions and/or
video scaling, this solutions maximises
both the image brightness and the
resolution at all times.
The projector selected was a high-end
Sony native-4K model offering 2200
lumens from a Z-Phosphor laser light
engine that promises a usefully-long
20,000 hours of operation — that’s a
movie a night for the next 27 years.
The screen chosen by Kutcher was
Stewart Filmscreen’s Cine-V model with a
THX Ultra2 microperforated surface.
“So the Cine-V is a curved dual-format
masking screen featuring a native 175-inch
diagonal 2.35:1 image,” he explains. “Then
there is drop-down vertical masking to
provide a 140-inch diagonal 1.78:1 image.”
The actual screen material is also
dependent on the rest of the image chain:
“a range of factors,” says Paul Kutcher,
“including room size, viewing distances,
the projector that it is being paired with
and the room décor and aesthetics. Optical
 Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2

elements in the screen can provide specific

useful traits, or be tinted to enhance
performance in certain conditions.”
The screen surface here is Stewart’s
Ultramatte 150, which has a peak gain of 1.5.
“The additional brightness bump of the
Ultramatte 150 was selected to maximise
on-screen brightness and to compensate for
the 10.2% light loss through the perforated
surface,” says Paul Kutcher. “Effectively,
there is a gain of 1.35 that pretty much
matches that of a Stewart non- perforated
StudioTek 130 surface. As the front left
and right speakers are located behind
the screen, the masking panels are
acoustically transparent.”
Curved screens look great and keep a
more uniform viewing distance across the
width of the screen, but they are not so easy
to install! Alan Anderson was responsible
for custom-designing the front wall specifi-
cally to the radius curvature of the screen,
making custom laser-cut curved top and
bottom panels to be installed around the
screen, with each stud custom-fitted and
the wall upholstered from behind. “The room needs to work as a system,” light from the projector passing through
“A lot of tedious work!,” admits Alan, confirms Steven Spurrier. “Everything is the micro-perforations.”
“but it provides a gapless installation.” important, and everything needs to work The construction of the room itself was
Following the installation of the system, in harmony. And in this case I didn’t also carefully designed to achieve sound
the projected image was professionally believe Atmos to be critical to the success insulation from the rest of the house and
calibrated to industry standards by ISF- of this room.” externally, with Soundchek plasterboard
certified Mick Peaker from Avical Australia. So the sound layout here is 7.1, using a with Green Glue [a noise-proofing foam
“When working on projects at this level processor/preamp to feed a system of active sealant] and extra in-wall acoustic blocks,
with our dealers, we always stress the speakers from Genelec, coaxial point source all to help minimise sound transfer
importance of having the system profes- monitors each packing their own internal between the room and the house.
sionally calibrated for the utmost in image power. A single subwoofer with 800W of
performance,” says Paul Kutcher. “The power and a 15-inch driver underpins the Happy owners
differences between a calibrated and non- audio performance. We’ll leave the final word to the happy
calibrated image are stark and if the image And again the ‘system’ approach, with owners as testament to the imaging and
has not been professionally calibrated, you the room properly treated acoustically. sound in this home cinema.
are simply not getting the best performance “Your room is the most powerful signal “What the team delivered and how they
that your system has to offer.” processor of the system,” as Steven Spurrier delivered it was brilliant from the start of
puts it. “This is why so much time is spent the design process through to completion,”
Sound decisions in design, and why room acoustics and they tell us. “It is fantastic to have a special
Studio Connections’ Steve Spurrier made a treatment are so crucial.” place in which to experience the wonders
good case for a non-Atmos sound solution Acoustic panels are used here at the first of cinema as the filmmakers intended.
in this space, considering the relatively low reflection points of side walls and ceiling, May there always be a place for high-
ceiling height, and the budget. and at the rear at the room, while Steven quality custom installations in the world
“The dollars spent adding four channels highlights particularly the sometimes of home cinema!”
of Atmos might not be huge, but it’s money underestimated importance of treating the
that could be diverted to allow the next front wall behind the screen.
model up in projector, or the anamorphic “It is essential,” he says. “If not treated, CONTACTS
lens, or one of the other design choices we the front wall will be a great reflector of Andersons AVI: andersonsavi.com.au
had to make,” he says. the rear channels, and of any audio Studio Connections:
This echoes the point made earlier by reflecting from the rear surface of the studioconnections.com.au
Kutcher for the imaging system, and it’s projection screen. The front wall of this Stewart FilmScreen:
worth reinforcing. No single aspect of a room incorporates bass trapping and 100% stewartfilmscreen.com
theatre design should be considered in coverage of the front wall with acoustic Paul Kutcher at Visual Fidelity:
isolation: it’s all working to the end goal. panels, all in black to allow absorption of www.visualfidelity.com

55
 AV SOUND
JBL BAR 1300
SOUNDBAR SYSTEM
Pull off the ends of JBL’s Bar 1300 and they work as battery-powered rears —
or standalone wireless speakers. And the performance here is exceptional.
N
ot so many years ago we were
steering readers away from
soundbars wherever possible.
But our views have been
changed by developments at the premium
end of the market, where a soundbar
system like JBL’s range-topper here can be
priced up at $2k. That brings the budget
not only for some clever technologies,
but for higher-quality drivers and a
wireless subwoofer with useful rather than
compromised performance.
The Bar 1300 is JBL’s largest soundbar
and subwoofer combo to date, and also its
most ambitious. Its very particular trick
is that each end of the soundbar can be
removed and resituated at the back of the
56
room, where they instantly become a pair
of battery-powered wireless rear speakers,
so delivering genuine (rather than
virtualised) surround sound.
Plus each detached rear also has an
upward-firing driver, fulfilling duties as
Atmos-enabled height channels. In this
way, the Bar 1300 is able to claim a huge
11.1.4-channel Dolby Atmos delivery.
Its success in this, and our opinion of
the results, can be judged by its win as
Sound+Image’s 2023 Soundbar System
of the Year. So, what’s so special?
Build & facilities
JBL’s latest soundbars look pretty plain
and functional, with flat black plastic
areas between the grilled areas covering
drivers. But you know what? Who cares.
Soundbars should play to the ears, not the
eyes, and plain black is just the thing to
disappear below your TV, especially as the
bar stands just 65mm high off a bench (a
wall-mounting kit is also included) and is
usefully matte on top, so won’t reflect much
of the picture above.
How long is the bar? Depends if the ends
are attached (138cm long, 6cm high) or not
(102cm long). Socketry is generous, with
three HDMI inputs as well as the output,
which has eARC so it plays your TV audio
back down the wire. (And this worked for
us even with some TVs that often don’t like
handshaking this way.)
 AV | 2023#2

The Bar 1300 is fully compatible with

Dolby Atmos from streaming services and
discs, also with DTS:X, which you
may find on some Blu-rays.
There’s Ethernet and Wi-Fi
here for networking, optical
audio as a TV fallback, and a
USB-A slot which can charge,
say, an HDMI dongle.
Then we have those detachable rears,
the Bar 1300’s particular magic trick,
although it’s not unique in this regard —
several other bars in the new range and
the previous JBL Bar 5.1 can do the pull-off
trick, and it’s an idea pioneered by Philips
Fidelio soundbars going back a decade.
JBL told us you’ll get three to four hours of
full-on performance from the Bar 1300’s
pull-off pair, though the website is more
optimistic, quoting up to 12 hours; basically
it “may vary according to content type and
volume level”. But there’s also a USB-C power
socket on each speaker, so you could use
any spare USB-C power adaptor to keep
them juiced up indefinitely in their rear
positions, rather than returning them
regularly to recharge from the bar. within the app — Spotify, Tidal and Amazon beguilingly effective with stereo music,
That also allows further freedom, — as well as direct streaming via AirPlay 2, and a room-filling rendition of the first
because each rear speaker can individually Chromecast, Alexa Cast and Bluetooth. Georgia Fair album/EP was one of the first
become a standalone Bluetooth speaker. warm-ups we enjoyed on the Bar 1300.
Plug one in bedside to a USB-C power cable Listening sessions Once started, we had no inclination to
and you can send it bedtime tunes and With the rears popped off and in position, stop it, so rich were the brushstrokes, so
podcasts from your phone or tablet. we played Picard Season 3 from Prime, enveloping the sound, despite us knowing
So the rear speakers are clever and delivered in 5.1 and lighting up ‘Dolby the surround effect was being faked.
compact. The bar’s other partner is clever Surround’ on the bar’s LED display. The With stereo TV shows, however, the
but not very compact at all. The subwoofer surround track was immediately effective, effect of the upscaling was to throw slices
is large by soundbar combo standards, steering ships from rear corners to the of the front dialogue rear-ward, which
making it perhaps just that little bit harder front, or delivering clinking glasses and sounded very distracting, like people
than usual to accommodate — a 31cm chit-chat atmospherics from pub scenes, were whispering in our ears. Lacking
square footprint and 43cm high, so about while the chunky subwoofer kept up the any button to shut off the upscaling, you
the height of a piano stool; people may well subtle low rumble of space travel and can instead silence the rear and ‘Atmos’
sit on it. Its back is defined by the flared supported the slams of battle with great channels using dedicated buttons on the
port and the power socket, and the main impact, if not the nimblest and tightest remote. Or just put the rears back on the
10-inch driver fires down and out through of bass control. The disconnected rears bar, of course, and reserve separation for
the space between the feet. were in almost constant activity, and their true Atmos soundtracks.

57
 AV SOUND
In fact, we reckon the rears were clearly
‘hot’ (a little high) as set by the calibration;
happily, as noted, here you can tweak
various levels using the supplied remote
control; the changing levels are shown on
the bar’s LED display. We dropped the bass
to 2, to stop it woofing things up quite so
much. We put the rears to medium for
atmospheric movies, but with Thor… we
dropped them back to low, which kept
things immersively real, less distractingly
busy. There’s even a level control for
upfiring level; that one we kept high.
So set, the JBL 1300 delivered masses of
power, a solid and tight sound, and a strong
but realistic level of immersion. In one wide
room we experienced something of a gap
between front sound and rear, but once in
a listening room with solid side walls the
drivers that fire at an angle from the bar’s
edges could do their thing well enough.
The opening of AppleTV+’s Tetris movie
provided a wonderful example of the Bar
1300’s talents, opening with a rear-left
dice rattle from the detached speaker and
progressing into an immersively pumping
theme. Then there’s an important dialogue
scene — here the surround largely dropped
away, so you’re focused on the dialogue,
which remained solid and distinct up front,
then effects lifted again as the Russian
back-story began — a street in Moscow
with a crack of thunder, falling rain and
supporting music. Solid sonic stuff.
58
while track 3, Emily I’m Sorry, similarly
spreads beautifully front to back, a fine
advert for listening in Atmos. And there’s
no listening to this quietly: the Atmos
music effect only becomes more immersive
as you raise the level, a slightly dreamlike
audio world. If things started to feel a little
floodied and swampy, we backed off the
subwoofer a stop or two using the remote.
So not everything was brilliant; the
Atmos mix of The Beatles ‘Help!’ didn’t
sound very lively at all, and when playing
some of the stuff we know best in Atmos,
like the brilliant mix of Rush’s Tom Sawyer,
or Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’, it
was obvious there wasn’t the precision
that’s available from a larger system
with receiver and speakers; vocal tones
weren’t quite hi-fi, the bass less tight,
the immersion less complete. But that’s
comparing this soundbar system against a
receiver and speaker package that would
cost far more than the Bar 1300.
And that bonus of using the removable
rears as separate Bluetooth speakers? Thin
and weedy little standalone speakers, right?
Well, no! Don’t forget that JBL makes the
world’s best-selling and regularly-awarded
Bluetooth speakers, and that experience
shows here, with the solo rears sounding
solid, full and enjoyable, with a fair degree
of level too, so one of them will be great as a
little bedroom speaker, say. When we paired
the two together in stereo, they were three
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
times as good, the sort of
sound you’ll get pairing two
large JBL Bluetooth speakers,
so a tad artificial, a bit pushy
sometimes, but strong and
enjoyable, powerful enough
for a good stereo performance
in a small-medium room.
The only problem we foresee is
that family members will be pinching
the bar’s ends all the time to use in other
places — a full movie night may require
a hunt through the home. But what a
It’s highly impressive to find a soundbar
system which can go this loud this
effectively and still remain musical. Its
removable battery rears are not unique
but as yet still unusual in not taking over
your lounge entirely with speaker boxes
and cables, yet still offering true surround
and height from behind. It all makes for an
award-winning package.
JBL
BAR 1300
• Breaks apart to deliver genuine
Atmos surround from wireless
battery-powered rears
• Detachable rears can be used
as Bluetooth speakers
• Big sound for movies or music
• Large subwoofer to fit in
• Best surround effect requires
near side walls
Price: $1999.95
Inputs: 3 x HDMI, 1 x HDMI eARC,
Ethernet, Wi-Fi, AirPlay, Chromecast,
Alexa Cast, Bluetooth
Outputs: HDMI, optical audio,
USB power
Drivers (bar): 6 racetrack drivers
(46 x 90mm), 5 tweeters (20mm),
4 up-firing (70mm drivers)
Drivers (remoable rears, each):
racetrack driver (46 x 90mm);
20mm tweeter, 70mm up-firing driver
Driver (subwoofer): 10-inch
Dimensions (whd): 140 x 60x 14cm
(centre section without rears is 102cm);
rears 20 x 6 x 14cm;
subwoofer 30.5 x 44 x 30.5cm
Contact: Harman Australia
Web: www.jbl.com.au
 S E R I E S 1 0

RX-A2A RX-A4A RX-A6A RX-A8A

7.2 Channels 7.2 Channels 9.2 Channels 11.2 Channels
4+1 year warranty * 4+1 year warranty* 4+1 year warranty * 5+5 year warranty *

Yamaha AVENTAGE RX-A8A

AV RECEIVER OF THE YEAR OVER $5000

Yamaha’s award-winning AVENTAGE range has

evolved. The 10th generation anniversary series
has been reimagined to deliver the pinnacle of
next-generation home entertainment.
*With online registration
 AV SOUND
MARANTZ CINEMA 40
AV RECEIVER
Marantz’s top integrated audio-visual receiver brings nine channels of
high-quality power — and a great deal of versatility in delivering them.
T
he Cinema 40 is the current top
of the range for one-box Marantz
AV receivers, outperformed only
by the separate flagship AV 10
and Amp 10 multichannel preamplifier
and power amplifier combo — and those
come in at more than $25k the pair.
Here it’s everything in one box
for $5000, and a big box it is for this,
the highest of Marantz’s integrated
AV receivers, its bulk softened by the
company’s recent style upgrade featuring
a scooped-out frontage etched with a
receding spherical grid pattern.
The amp is bulky partly because there
are so many connections on the fairly
crammed back panel, but mainly because
this is a powerful nine-channel amplifier,
a number which not only allows a larger
surround system than five- or seven-
channel receivers, but also more versatility
for how you use any leftover channels.
So you could use the full nine to power
a surround system of 5.1.4 or 7.1.2, or have
a lesser surround system and choose to
biamp your front speakers or to enjoy
60
additional zones of audio — the Cinema 40
can actually handle three separate zones,
one with video, the other two audio only.
What fun! Let’s put it through its paces.
Build & facilities
As the top model in the range, Marantz
has thrown everything into the Cinema 40:
not only the latest surround formats and
8K compatibility across all its HDMI inputs,
but things that hard-core users might need,
notably legacy connections.
What hard-core users need most of all,
of course, is power: here the specs are
quoted various ways up to 235W a channel
under AV-style criteria, but the more hi-fi
figure is 125W per channel into 8 ohms
across the full audible frequency band and
driving two channels at once with only
0.05% distortion allowed. And 125 proper
Class-AB hi-fi watts from Marantz proves
to be a lot of power.
Up here on Marantz’s top models,
you still get the old-style front flap that
flips down; lesser receivers have only the
company’s traditional but rather small
‘porthole’ display in the centre, which
may be a Marantz ‘tradition’ but is quite
unsuitable for an informative display.
The Cinema 40’s flap reveals a far wider
and larger text display which is very useful
when paging through menus and checking
formats — although as we’ll see, the on-TV
display of information is also very good: it
is able either to overlay video inputs with
basic low-res information, or to go full
screen for impressive clarity and ease of
instruction during set-up.
The only sockets under the flap are for
the Audyssey calibration microphone, and
a USB-A slot (“to connect USB storages”,
says the manual). The full-size headphone
socket is on the right of the fascia above.
Then round the back, profusion. The
seven HDMI inputs are all specified to 8K
with HDCP 2.3, and given it’s not clear if
we’ll ever have an 8K future, this can be
considered well future-proofed! There are
three HDMI outputs, one full 8K with ARC
and eARC for connecting to your display
and, if it’s a TV, to receive audio back down
the wire. The second HDMI output can be

used for a Zone 2, playing a different source,
remembering only the limitations of long
HDMI runs and also that using this will
apparently (“may” says the manual) result
in losing surround sound in the main
room, though we can’t quite see why.
All video inputs are assignable,
meaning you can pair them with audio
coming in another way, if so desired —
audio inputs include two optical, two
coaxial, five assignable RCA stereo inputs,
one nonassignable, and a phono input with
earth pin for a turntable equipped with a
moving-magnet cartridge.
There are even legacy video inputs: one
component video and two composite video.
And crucially, these are converted to HDMI
for output along with everything else.
The only obvious input omission here is
a USB-B connection which would allow for
direct computer playback.
We were delighted to see a full set of
preouts, so you can upgrade any or all
channels (particularly useful for upgrading
your main L and R for stereo playback),
alongside audio outputs for Zone 2 and
Zone 3, and four subwoofer outputs. These
can be set to share an output or to have
differentiated outputs, receiving only
the bass of the speakers nearest them. In
either case their distance and phase are
individually set either manually or during
calibration. The fourth of these can also
be used to connect a tactile transducer
(or a “butt-shaker”, as local Masimo tech
dude Adam usefully translated it).
Such comprehensive connectivity
extends to trigger and RS232 control
connections and unusually wide abilities
for external control — via IP or RS232,
app control from Marantz and HEOS apps,
plus a full wand remote control, a web
interface, and integration of Alexa,
Google Voice Assistant and Siri on Apple
HomePod. You could even use the actual
buttons on the receiver itself…
Setting up and calibration
Leave the full manual alone: it’s fully
comprehensive, if not fully proofread, but
good luck finding how to wire, say, a 5.1.2
system, as we were initially. For starters,
Marantz doesn’t follow this standard way
of expressing channels; it says 7.1 instead
of 5.1.2, and then bounces you around
between sections until you’re befuddled.
Better to just get on with it, wire it as you’d
expect (for a single pair of surrounds
use surround left and right, not the rear
surrounds), or just get the HDMI connection
over to your TV as soon as possible. That
enables on-screen set-up, which walks you
through everything wonderfully.
There are 11 pairs of speaker outputs in
all, allowing some flexibility of connections,
and we were delighted to find the binding
posts stretched across the full width of the
back panel, with more space than on some
lower-channel receivers, for which we were
grateful when inserting bare wires into
the binding posts, which are still plastic,
but fairly stable. The socket where we had
some trouble was the main HDMI output,
which became angled down significantly by
our heavy HDMI output cable, eventually
causing a connection issue. We had to
improvise a support to hold the plug up to
enter in a more horizontal fashion.
The final step in set-up is Audyssey
calibration, but we set that aside for later.
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
Knowing that this would later take over
the first speaker profile, we instead used
the second speaker profile (only two; more
would be nice at this level) to manually set
all distances, and we used the provided test
tones to balance levels.
We also ran Morten Lindberg’s Atmos
channel tester on Apple Music to double
check all channels were emerging correctly
where they should.
We knew the Audyssey calibration
would be a bit tedious, as we’d previously
reviewed the smaller Cinema 60. Audyssey
requires you to plug in the provided
microphone and then calibrate no fewer
than eight times at different listening
positions, even if, as in our room, there’s
only one position ever used. In such a case
it would be better and more accurate to
calibrate or at least favour a single listening
position. The Audyssey system included
here doesn’t seem to allow that.
Dynamic EQ is offered; we’d advise you
to reject it. Happily Dynamic Volume was
then also off by default. Just the Audyssey
MultEQ XT remains.
As the onscreen instructions continue,
you’re invited to download the Audyssey
MultEQ Editor app, at a cost of US$20, for
“advanced control of the room correction
features built into your AVR”. Or the Pro
version of the software for, er, US$200.
There’s also DiracLive available (US$259-
$349), a system very highly regarded,
though requiring a better microphone (not
included) and a laptop run the software.
Post-calibration, the Audyssey settings
offer four choices of implementation: firstly
‘off’, a default ‘Reference’ (thought best for
movies, and L/R Bypass (Reference but with
61
 AV SOUND
calibration removed from the front left
and right speakers). Finally a ‘Flat setting,
recommended for small rooms only. Credit
to Audyssey — we didn’t feel inclined to
fiddle much with its results, and as with
another Marantz receiver recently, for our
room we preferred ‘Flat’ over ‘Reference’.
But anyway, even with some speaker
rewiring and the Audyssey calibration
process, setting up this receiver took us
around two hours from unboxing.
Listening sessions
We didn’t make it all through Avatar:The
Way of Water, having already seen it in
High Frame Rate at the cinema, but the
Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos presenta-
tion on Disney+ certainly confirmed the
film’s technical prowess: stunning sound
design, every detail sharp — the click of
beads, crackle of fire, ominous rumble of
human machinery, deep crash of tumbling
waterfalls. The return of the ‘sky people’
served such a right-to-left surge we rushed
to turn down the system, yet the Cinema
40 never showed any sign of lacking clean
power to deliver the big stuff. And there’s
plenty of big stuff in Cameron’s sequel.
Streamed Dolby Atmos is compressed,
of course, while UHD Blu-ray Atmos is not,
so we loaded The Rise Of Skywalker to enjoy
its last hour, with the Resistance attack,
in which the swooping X-wings provide a
The swooping X-wings
provide a steering
challenge for any
Atmos decoder.
The Marantz shrugged
it off, and pulled us
into the action rather
than the soundtrack:
good work.
62
steering challenge for any Atmos decoder.
The Marantz shrugged it off, and pulled us
into the action rather than the soundtrack:
good work. And Rey’s final communion
with Jedi past is lovely subtle sound design,
dropping voices all over the place at varying
distances and with varying effects.
We were soon playing music too, and
we’d found in the menus a way to add
the subwoofer to our front speakers as a
standard stereo mode, so this performance
enjoyed an extra kick even over our
full-range speakers, as well as pushing the
likes of Tyler, The Creator’s Earfquake into
some thrilling gut-resonating territory. We
also selected the ‘Pure’ button (two options,
Pure and Pure Direct), something which
with some brands can deliver a significant
sonic upgrade by switching off unneeded
circuits and processing. It certainly
tightened the bass and smoothed off some
edges, but the difference was less chalk-
and-cheese than with some others.
We opened the HEOS app to play some
music via its various options. The Spotify
here opens the Spotify native app, which
then controls a Spotify Connect stream
straight to the receiver. It’s less neat for
Tidal: this opens within the app in a form
very reduced and hard to use compared
with the native app — and there’s no Tidal
Connect, so your alternative is to stream
to your phone then on to the receiver, far
less robust. HEOS really should have a Tidal
Connect update by now. A fallback option
would be to use a TV app for Tidal, playing
into the receiver via HDMI eARC.
You could even get Tidal Atmos
surround music playing that way — if you
pay the extravagant fee for top-tier Tidal.
The cheaper route to Atmos music is an
Apple Music subscription, and we soon had
this flowing in from an Apple TV. Indeed
we spent much non-review time just filling
the room with Atmos mixes — and if you
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
leave the front flap down, the larger display
allows you to easily track the incoming
format and the channels in play. Some
Atmos mixes are pretty mild — the 2019
remix of Space Oddity, for example, has the
second verse’s countdown at back left but
otherwise merely smears a few effects to the
rears and height. But an Atmos blinder like
Rush’s Tom Sawyer is full-on, its fizzy synths
almost stripping the enamel from our teeth
under the Marantz’s impressive power. We
could go on (and often do).
Conclusion
It’s hard to point a finger at anything
wrong with the Marantz Cinema 40. The
power should be more than adequate even
for a good-sized room, and the pre-outs
allow expansion if you should need
more. It can benefit from either Audyssey
(basic version included) or Dirac (paid)
calibration. It has both modern and legacy
inputs, along with the well-developed
HEOS streaming and multiroom platform.
It even looks rather more cool than most
receiver boxes. All bases covered: this
receiver is a very safe pair of hands.
MARANTZ
CINEMA 40
• Power plus finesse
• Modern & legacy inputs
• Versatile channel allocation
• Detailed set-up assistance
• No single-seat calibration
Price: $5000
Inputs: 7 x HDMI (all 8K), HDMI eARC,
2 x composite video, 1 x component
video, 2 x optical digital, 2 x coaxial
digital, USB-A (front), 6 x RCA stereo,
1 x phono in, Bluetooth (SBC), antenna in,
IR in, remote in, RS232C, Ethernet/Wi-Fi,
AirPlay 2, calibration mic in, HEOS
Outputs: 3 x HDMI (1 with eARC),
11 x preouts, 4 x subwoofer out,
Zone 2 audio, Zone 3 audio, 3 x trigger
out, headphone out (front), speakers out
(22 binding posts)
Power: 9 x 125W into 8 ohms
(20Hz-2 kHz, 0.05% THD, 2ch-driven)
Dimensions (whd): 440 x 185 x 401mm
(+70mm height for antenna)
Weight: 15.1kg
Contact: Masimo Consumer
Telephone: 03 9699 8900
Web: www.marantz.com/en-au
BenQ W4000i(HT4550i)
4K Home Cinema Projector
Expand Your Vision with Astounding HDR Details and
Authentic Color as Director Envisioned
 AV SOUND
SENNHEISER AMBEO PLUS & AMBEO SUB
SOUNDBAR & SUBWOOFER
Sennheiser’s second Ambeo soundbar is another fine performer
but comes with choices: subwoofer or not, and Ambeo or not?
A
few pages back, when we said
that higher-end soundbars had
made us rethink a previously
negative attitude to soundbars,
there was one soundbar in particular which
made that change. It was from Sennheiser,
called just the ‘AMBEO’, and was so large it
didn’t require a subwoofer.
That soundbar is now called the AMBEO
Max, because Sennheiser has now created
this smaller bar, the AMBEO Plus. This can
also be used alone, but it gains in substance
from the addition of the new AMBEO Sub.
Alone it is $2400, while the combo is $3520
— high for a soundbar system, but that’s
almost the point. If a soundbar fits your
needs, but you don’t want to compromise
your sound, this is where to look.
Build & connections
The Sennheiser that makes this new ‘Plus’
soundbar is really now Sonova, branded
64
as ‘Sennheiser Hearing’. Sonova is a
Swiss group that specialises in hearing
care; it bought the consumer division of
Sennheiser a few years ago, and in response
to our queries it indicates that the various
former Sennheiser teams remain working
within Sennheiser’s headquarters, so no
changes as yet for the research and design
group. Hence this new product is labelled
“Designed in Germany, built in China.”
The soundbar is a supremely solid bit
of kit, a bit more squat than most high-end
bars (the Sonos Arc is longer but thinner),
but still 105cm long, 12cm wide and just
under 8cm in height, officially 77mm with
its feet on. That’s important because 8cm is
pretty much the limit for bench positioning
a bar in front of most current TV models
without blocking the bottom of the screen
and/or the TV’s infrared receiver. The larger
Ambeo Max bar is 13.5cm high, too high for
many a bench, and so suitable really only
where the TV has been wall-mounted. You
can see the size comparison overleaf.
More compact, then, yet the Plus bar
doesn’t skimp on the inputs, with three
HDMI sockets, two of these being inputs
and the third an output with eARC, so
that it can either send the video entering
its inputs on to your TV, or use the eARC
(enhanced Audio Return Channel) to
receive audio from the TV itself, as well
as from other inputs to the TV.
There are also optical and analogue
audio inputs, the latter on proper RCA
sockets rather than the usual minijack,
plus an Ethernet connection in addition
to the built-in Wi-Fi, and a USB socket for
powering a streaming stick. We note also
a proper subwoofer pre-output on the
bar, and indeed an input on the otherwise
wireless subwoofer, very unusual in this day
and age, yet giving the subwoofer useful
potential life beyond this specific system.

There is Bluetooth streaming, apparently
just SBC and AAC codecs, so that the
Wi-Fi/Ethernet connection will bring
higher quality streaming via Apple
AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect
and Google Chromecast, all built in.
Atmos & Ambeo
The Plus bar’s provision of eARC means
that it can, in theory, receive Dolby Atmos
down the HDMI eARC cable, but the best
possible Atmos quality will be played into
its HDMI inputs from an external device.
To these we connected an AppleTV 4K and
a UHD Blu-ray player.
But what exactly is ‘Ambeo’? The
official answer, which we had from the
original head of Ambeo some years ago,
is that Ambeo is not a codec, not a mixing
desk or a product, it’s simply an immersive
experience that the company (or now
companies) considers to be common to
all Ambeo products.
However, that doesn’t quite sit with
the inclusion of a specific ‘Ambeo’ button
on the remote control here. This invokes
some process which is either on or off, and
is called ‘Ambeo’, and is described in the
manual as a “3D surround effect” with three
intensity levels. So here Ambeo is more
being used to describe a specific upscaling
process of some kind.
Creating this Ambeo experience in the
Plus soundbar are nine drivers in all, seven
being little 5cm aluminium cones, three of
them in L, C, R positions, one more firing
at an angle from each end, and two more
on top, firing upwards. The last two drivers
are larger four-inch cellulose cones, which
seem to operate as woofers for bass content,
presumably especially if you’re using the
Ambeo Plus bar without its subwoofer.
Sennheiser quotes the lone bar as having a
frequency response of 38Hz–20kHz.
Set-up
We were impressed by almost entirely
non-plastic packaging for both bar and
subwoofer; there is zero polystyrene,
and even the usual plastic wraps around
products are replaced by brown paper.
Sennheiser’s Smart Control app is
needed to get the bar networked and
updated; it then runs the room optimisa-
tion, or ‘Self-Calibration’ as it’s here called.
It’s quite the process, claiming to “read
your room’s acoustic properties and then
position seven virtual speakers around
the listener, plus four more overhead...”
Yes, 11 virtual speakers, they say, from
seven actual drivers plus the two bass units.
As with Sony’s 360SSM (next review), we
do think it confuses the process to invent
virtual speakers instead of describing what
the actual drivers do. Here the two upward
drivers are clearly delivering Atmos height
bounced off the ceiling; the side drivers are
hoping for wide or rear surround bounced
off your walls, while the LCR drivers come
straight at you. This would seem to be 5.1.2
channels if described conventionally.
Given its central role, the app is
thankfully a breeze to use, walking you
through everything nicely, with some good
deep settings to let you customise the
Ambeo experience. You can link Alexa and
Google for voice control; if you open Spotify
or Tidal on your smart device of choice it
should quickly find the bar available.
There’s also a solid remote control
included, though without dedicated input
buttons, just two buttons to shuttle through
inputs — tricky without a front display to
give visual feedback on where you are. So
you really need the app open all the time to
know what’s going on. Ultimately we found
that our best option to switch inputs was
usually to turn the bar on and off again, and
then it would find the active input.
Listening sessions
We first calibrated and listened to the
soundbar alone, without the sub. And it
became clear very quickly that there are two
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
ways you can use the Ambeo Plus: with the
‘Ambeo’ effect on, or off. The difference is
night and day, yet it’s not an easy choice.
So far as we can establish, this process
uses something called ‘upHear’, an
Immersive Audio Virtualization technology
licensed by Fraunhofer IIS, upscaling any
input to use all the bar’s drivers. But it can’t
be simply upscaling, because the Ambeo
button works even when the bar is playing
a full-fat Dolby Atmos soundtrack.
You couldn’t find a better example
of this Ambeo effect than the opening
sequence of Elvis, playing on UHD Blu-ray
attached directly to the Ambeo Plus. With
Ambeo off, a key strength of the bar’s
sound was depth to the pulses under the
ominous intro music, and after Tom Hanks’
first intro, the big choir intro revealed the
bar’s dynamics, although perhaps with
just a little too much edge. We selected the
‘Neutral’ sound mode, which tamed this
nicely. All the dialogue was solid and clear,
and we were able to listen quite loud, with
no notable distortion heard.
Now let’s listen again with the Ambeo
button pressed. Wow. There is a magic
in the air, a width to the acoustic space
around the Warner/BZ credit sequence,
and the choir now slams in HUGE. So
far, then, an easy choice. But listen to the
voiceover starting two minutes in — “liar,
cheat, conman”. This sounded clearly more
processed, artificially thinned, slightly less
intelligible once Ambeo was engaged.
65
 AV SOUND Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2

With movie soundtracks, the scale added

by the subwoofer is significant, and the
additional power will be able to fill larger
spaces. Indeed we gather that up to four
Ambeo Subs can be added, with individual
calibration for optimal overall sound.

Conclusion
So the Ambeo Plus is big enough that it
doesn’t quite need the subwoofer. Indeed
if you do get the subwoofer, then you don’t
need quite so big a bar. We anticipate some
product yet to come — a smaller bar, as a
more sensible partner for the Ambeo Sub.
Hence while the Sub does its job well,
we’d primarily recommend this Ambeo Plus
as a bar-only solution. We’d otherwise also
face the pricing issue where the original
Ambeo Max bar is currently available for
less than the new Plus and Sub together,
and we’d recommend that instead.
The Ambeo Plus is a talented soundbar,
obviously large, and only mildly marred by
the lack of useful visual feedback on the bar
and the ongoing choice of whether to listen
with Ambeo on (impressive!) or Ambeo off
(accurate). We suggest you do as we did, and
press buttons until you’re happy.

That presented a quandary: it’s hard
not to choose the Ambeo option for action
scenes — it’s a much broader soundstage,
giving widescreen audio to match today’s
big screens. The processing never strays too
far into artificiality, but we did often turn it
off again for dialogue scenes.
It’s a trade-off that we found consistently
happening while using the Ambeo Plus, but
you can flip this Atmos effect on/off from
the remote control, so adjusting it is easy
enough on the fly. And in the end, to be
honest, we mostly kept it on.
We streamed Atmos music from Apple
Music on an attached AppleTV 4K. Should
we choose the ‘neutral’ or the ‘music’
sound mode? Ambeo on or off? With some
classical Atmos (LSO, ‘A New Dawn’), it
was down to personal preference, but with
other material, such as the Atmos release
of Talking Heads’ ‘Remain In Light’, the
Ambeo button shrank the soundstage and
stuck it in a recessed box. So again, you’re
free to play, but on the whole we thought
that music was far better non-Ambeoed.
Another thing we thought for sure —
the Ambeo Plus really doesn’t need the
subwoofer to deliver a big sound with some
real heft. We remember its bigger brother
(in front above) doing far more in the ‘wow’
stakes as a solo soundbar, but even this
smaller bar manages a full and powerful
sound without additional support.
Ambeo Sub
We added the Sub anyway. It’s quite a tall
bucket of a subwoofer, with a down-firing
eight-inch proprietary woofer paired
with a 350W Class-D amplifier. It’s quite
prominent out in full view, although
aesthetically pleasing, with smooth dark
grey plastic around, fabric on top.
It certainly added a more confident
bottom end. With music (neutral, no
Ambeo) the subwoofer added a foundation
for more powerful performance at higher
levels, where the bar seemed up to the
challenge of delivering the top half of
music at rising levels. It played loud with
musicality and pleasure, but at lower levels
the bass beats could be realistic but rather
intrusive, and with no easy way to reduce
them other than via a slider deep in the
app’s subwoofer menus.
SENNHEISER
AMBEO PLUS SOUNDBAR
& AMBEO SUB
• Bar alone delivers a wide and
weighty sound
• Good inputs and streaming
• Subwoofer adds confidence
and power
• Regular adjustment of Ambeo
• Top display not much help
Price: $2399.95 / $1119.95
Inputs: 2 x HDMI 2.0, HDMI eARC (2.1),
RCA line-level, coaxial digital, USB-A
(charge only), Wi-Fi, Ethernet, AirPlay 2,
Chromecast, Spotify Direct, Tidal Direct,
Bluetooth (SBC, AAC)
Outputs: sub out, wireless sub out
Drivers: 2x 101mm cellulose cones,
7x 5cm aluminium cones
Dimensions: 105 x 7.5 x 12.1cm
Weight: 6.3kg
Sub driver: 203mm (8-inch) cellulose
cone
Sub dimensions: 274 x 369 x 274 mm
Sub weight: 8.3kg
Contact: Sennheiser Hearing
Telephone: 02 9910 6700
Website: www.sennheiser-hearing.com

66
 Introducing
the latest
700 Series

The latest Bowers & Wilkins

700 Series is defined by
elegance and driven by
performance. The range is
enabled by technologies first
developed for our flagship
800 Series Diamond, and
with eight models to choose
from, there’s a speaker to
suit every home.

Studio Sound comes home.

702 S3 703 S3 704 S3 705 S3 706 S3 707 S3 HTM71 S3 HTM72 S3

Rosenut Gloss Black Satin White Mocha Satin White Gloss Black Mocha Gloss Black
with FS-700 S3 with FS-700 S3 with FS-700 S3

info-au.bw@soundunited.com 02 9196 8990 bowerswilkins.com/au BowersWilkinsAu

 AV SOUND
SONY STR-AN1000
AV RECEIVER
It looks the same as the previous model, but internal upgrades and updated
abilities bring Sony’s new midrange receiver back to the top of its class.
I
n Australia this is Sony’s very latest
top-of-the-line multichannel receiver.
In the UK it’s an amplifier, because it
doesn’t have a tuner. In America it’s a
relatively junior model; they get three other
new models above it, with Sony’s desirable
‘ES’ ‘Elevated Standard’ suffix, no less.
But wherever you are, the STR-AN1000
certainly represents a significant upgrade
on its predecessor — internally at least.
Outside, well, not so much.
Design & facilities
This is a clear replacement for the previous
STR-DN1080, a highly regarded receiver
even after five years in the market. The new
model looks the same (indeed the front
hasn’t changed much since its great-grand-
pa was released back in 2013). But it brings
technical standards up to date with HDMI
2.1, with 4K compatibility throughout, and
68
two inputs that handle 8K as well. Internal
upgrades on the previous model include
new power supplies, an optimised digital
section, and DACs getting a new analogue
output filter circuit. Claimed result: better
sound, lower noise floor.
There are still seven channels of power
on board, so this receiver is able to service
a straight seven-channel surround system,
or a 5.1 system plus two height channels
(which is how we primarily assessed it), or
with an additional zone of audio.
You bring your own speakers, of course,
but the STR-AN1000 can also connect
wirelessly to optional Sony rear speakers
and wireless subwoofers.
While HDMI standards are raised, the
socketry is unchanged, with six HDMI
inputs, though two now compatible up to
8K/60 or 4K/120. There’s Dolby Atmos and
DTS:X processing onboard to get multi-
channel movies, TV soundtracks and music
delivered to your chosen channel count.
Additional inputs for audio components
are relatively sparse: just one coaxial digital
and one optical input. There’s a USB-A
socket (on the front) for sticks, but no
USB-B available for plugging a computer in.
We chuckled at two yellow composite
video sockets, each paired with one of
three RCA analogue audio inputs —
useful for old-timers, but the video is not
converted to HDMI, so it comes back out
only on another yellow composite ‘monitor
out’. Ditching these for more optical inputs
or a phono-level/switchable input might
bring the input section rather more
convincingly into the 2020s.
The only physical addition since 2017 is
a minijack socket marked ‘S-Center’ for use
with specific Sony XR TVs, allowing you to
use the TV audio as your centre channel

— convenient, but not necessarily the best
thing for a homogenous front sound field.
This new receiver does music streaming
several ways, as did its predecessor —
AirPlay 2, Chromecast, and Bluetooth. We
often suggest you use Bluetooth only as
a convenient last resort, but here, being
a Sony product, there is the LDAC codec
which can theoretically deliver lossless CD
quality, so Android users can relax.
There’s that FM tuner inside, but no
DAB+, which again makes the Sony look
either unregionalised or a little dated.
Alongside the immersive sound
formats, Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound Mapping
(360SSM) is mentioned prominently for
this receiver; indeed Sony headlines this as
a “360 Spatial Sound Mapping 8K 7.2 ch AV
Receiver”. Despite the potential confusion
with Sony’s 360 Reality Audio, this 360SSM
is not a sound format; it’s a way that Sony
processes the audio for an idealised set of
imaginary speakers, then mapping your
actual speaker layout onto that perfect
layout. It’s not a gimmick, but its main
purpose is to correct for poorly positioned
speakers. So far as we’ve been able to work
out from the patents, a well-positioned
speaker system won’t much benefit from it.
But there is also a calibration system
with a neat stereo mike, which automati-
cally determines your speaker positions and
optimises the system. You can then choose
whether or not to include 360SSM, which
you should if you’ve got speakers all over
the place, and probably shouldn’t if you
have a well-designed multi-speaker system.
On the website the headline power
for the STR-AN1000 is given as 120W per
channel, but a more useful “Minimum RMS
Output Power” comes in at 100W (into 6
ohms, 20Hz-20kHz, THD 0.09%). Do you
have 6-ohm speakers? Probably not, so
with 8-ohm speakers the power figures will
drop well into double figures. The usual
conclusion: it’s hard to use power figures
usefully for anything much — better to
listen and see what it can do.
Setting up
Unboxing and setting up was a fairly quick
affair, slowed only by the fiddliness of
bare-wire insertion into the speaker output
binding posts, which are solid enough,
though made of plastic, and very tightly
spaced despite room to separate them out
more on the rear panel (see below). Banana
plug insertion for our front channels was
far easier than the bare wire rears and
height speakers! But the back panel is all
clearly labelled, making connections an
easy job even without reference to the
provided manual (and bonus points for
giving us a proper printed manual in the
box, a great rarity these days).
Once connected and powered up,
we investigated the menus. You have
two available speaker layout presets,
one of which the calibration system will
mostly fill out automatically. The user
guide encourages immediate use of the
microphone and automatic calibration
system; we did it all manually first, to
ensure we heard the receiver at its cleanest.
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
Listening sessions
If you have your system up loud when you
start Dune on Netflix, you’ll get quite the
jump at the beginning, where a short initial
snatch of Sardakaur language is delivered
with a marvellous multichannel vocal effect
that uses the subwoofer quite as much as
the centre channel.
The subsequent battle scene thundered
through the Sony to our 5.1.2 system,
well-knit and clean on the detail, well-
directed and dynamic on the explosions.
The sound of the sand thumpers was so
solid we could still feel them hitting our
gut even when they’d moved off the screen.
The wide-panned thrum of the dragonfly-
inspired ornithopters is a magnificent
example of the sound designer’s art, and
its complexity was fully revealed by the
Sony’s processing and power.
When Atmos is used entirely perfectly,
you may barely notice it: it simply
emphasises dramatic effect. We couldn’t
tell you anything about the sound design
in the mindbending Joan Is Awful episode
of Black Mirror, because our jaw was on the
floor and our brain otherwise occupied.
At other times, you sit back and applaud.
Formula 1: Drive To Survive not only comes
with an Atmos soundtrack that thrills to
the core for Season Five, it has some highly
active Atmos music as well, with the height
channels in use more than any other show
we’ve heard, partly because the music is
kept entirely away from the centre-channel
dialogue. So in S5 E7 the sound designers
are not only placing the 140dB whines of
69
 AV SOUND
F1 cars, there’s some fantastic thunder and
rain, and a thrilling hemisphere of music
blipping and beeping all over the place. It’s
almost exhausting.
And yet the Sony can do better. We
hadn’t yet pressed the magic button...
One little button
We hadn’t previously pressed ‘Pure Direct’
because we’d thought the manual had said
it blanked the screen as part of its purifica-
tion process — but it turned out that means
the receiver’s little screen, not your big TV
screen. Duh: makes rather more sense!
When we pressed the Pure Direct button
during The Empire Strikes Back, it was like
experiencing a different system. It gave
more weight to the rears, more weight
overall, a significantly superior sound even
with this old-fashioned LFE soundtrack
which only ramps up the low-end during
the big stuff with John Williams blasting
away in the background. Happily there’s
plenty of that, and whatever functions
the Sony turns off while playing in Pure
Durect, well, clearly we don’t want ’em. We
went from a monitoring mentality to full
immersion, with much over-the-shoulder
zooming of X-wings and wonderful
pumping of ion cannon during the ‘battle in
the snow’ sequence, way off in the distance,
a marvellous thud in a wide acoustic. When
Chewbacca is imprisoned in the Sky City
(1:29:17) and tortured by soaring sirens,
these fill a high void above, absolutely up
high, one of the best Atmos height effects
we’ve yet enjoyed.
We lived in Pure Direct mode thereafter,
both for movies and nearly always for
music. We’re not sure why you wouldn’t.
70
With a stereo input, the Sony’s default
two-channel delivery was to upscale it to
all available speakers using some Dolby
surround algorithm — and surprisingly we
found this non-purist approach extremely
enjoyable. Streaming Judie Tzuke’s ‘I Am
The Phoenix’ album in stereo on Apple
Music (we have the vinyl but, hey, no phono
input here), we were hard-pressed to choose
— the purer stereo was punchier, clearer,
more original, but heavens, how room-
filling and believable was the artificial
surround field; only on a simple song like
Hell Or Waters High did a strange spread of
piano betray the artifice of this processing.
Of course if you want music from all
speakers, you don’t need upscaling: just
call up Spatial Music on Apple, or Atmos
on Tidal. We are still loving Atmos music
played on a full system, and Apple’s
championing of it has seen levels of
content flooding forth that put Sony’s own
360 Reality Audio format (no relation to
360SSM) firmly in the shade.
Despite the compression involved in
streaming Dolby Atmos, the Sony made
the Atmos mix of the 50-year-old ‘The Dark
Side of the Moon’ so thrilling it was like
listening for the first time to the pulsing
opening heart beat, the mad surround
chimes opening Time: the Sony opened up
detail and spaces wonderfully, such as a
remarkably clear isolated acoustic around
the central snare on Money.
We moved to the Beatles’ Love DVD, in
5.1 DTS 24/96, having too much fun to be
playing with the settings. We just let it rip,
and it ripped good. We can thoroughly
sign off this receiver as that rarity: an AV
product which can make great music too.
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
Conclusion
Sony’s last midrange receiver was widely
acknowledged as brilliant. This one is
undeniably more brilliant, especially on
the inside. (The outside, front and back,
is long overdue an overhaul.)
So meet the new boss. Even though
it looks the same as the old boss.
SONY
STR-AN1000
• Excellent all-round performance
• Good with music as well as movies
• ‘Pure Direct’ option
• No stereo pre-outs
• No phono in or USB-B
• Only one optical in
Price: $1699
Inputs: 6 x HDMI 2.1, HDMI eARC, 2 x
composite video, 1 x optical digital, 1 x
coaxial digital, 4 x RCA stereo, Bluetooth
with LDAC, antenna in, IR in, FM tuner,
Ethernet/Wi-Fi, AirPlay 2, Chromecast,
Spotify Connect, USB-A (front), calibra-
tion mic in, wireless speaker options
Outputs: HDMI (with eARC), HDMI Zone
2, composite video ‘monitor out’’, zone 3
audio, 2 x subwoofer out, S-Center out,
IR out, headphone out (front), speakers
out (14 binding posts)
Power: 7 x 120W into 6 ohms
(1kHz, 0.9% THD), 7 x 100W into 6 ohms
(20Hz-20kHz, 0.09% THD)
Dimensions (whd): 430 x 156 x 331mm
Weight: 10.3kg
Contact: Audio Active
Telephone: 03 9699 8900
Web: www.sony.com.au
 BAT TLE SHIP GREY

MEET THE ALL-NEW FIGARO!

AN EVOLUTION OF OUR MOST SUCCESSFUL SPEAKER SERIES.
AVAILABLE IN

AZURE BLUE CAFE BROWN FERN GREEN MAROON RED PEARL WHITE

AVAILABLE IN AUSTRALIA THROUGH ABSOLUTE HI END 0488 777 999 . info@absolutehiend.com . www.absolutehiend.com
 TELEVISIONS
TCL 55C845
MINI LED GOOGLE TV
Our first TCL TV this issue is a technology leader. With 800 nits full white and 2200
peaks, Mini LED retains its dazzle and continues to compete effectively with OLED.
T
CL was the first to bring Mini
LED to market, and it’s stuck with
it for this 2023 Google TV. Mini
LED combines tiny backlights
with an LCD panel and quantum dots (QD),
a combination which challenges OLED
performance and indeed beats it in several
key areas, notably brightness.
We spent several weeks with the 55-inch
C845, the most modest screen size in a
range which this year rises all the way to
an 85-incher. There is a 900 series of Mini
LED TVs above the C845, but those are not
(yet, anyway) being refreshed, putting the
72
C845, though lower in zone count, ahead a
generation in technology. So let’s start by
seeing exactly what the C845 has gained
over the previous C835 range.
Facilities and design
So this year, playing to the strengths of Mini
LED, the brightness is again up, of course:
HDR brightness up from 1500 nits in last
year’s specs to 2000 nits this year. We
gather even the full white brightness is
800 nits (impressive, especially considering
the current 900 Series tops out at around
500), with peaks in fact up to 2200 nits.
There are no more actual LEDs than
previously, but TCL has doubled the number
of zones by splitting each former zone
vertically into two, the main advantage
being to achieve better local dimming. The
LEDs themselves are different, however,
amplifying the available brightness by
acting almost like three LEDs in one.
Mini LED through LCD with a quantum
dot enhancement film delivers highly
accurate colour performance: here 100%
of the DCI-P3 colour space, or to put it
another way, every colour that a cinema
camera is capable of capturing.

There’s an improved processor this year
— AiPQ 3.0 over the previous 2.0 — which
continues the previous 12-bit driving of
the backlight, and we gather the challenge
for this year was make the light control as
linear as possible by balancing feedback
between the LCD screen and the Mini LED
backlight. The result is an extraordinary 27
steps of potential dynamic range, though
practically limited to 24 stops, partly to limit
power use, apparently, and perhaps heat.
That range more than covers Dolby Vision
content on Netflix and Disney+, as well as
HDR10+ content on Amazon Prime.
Another lift in performance is the ability
to have a 240Hz refresh rate for the LCD
panel when in Full HD; for UHD it can run
to 144Hz, which will delight gamers.
All connections except the power socket
are on the right (looking at the TV from
the front): four HDMI inputs of various
capabilities up to 4K/144Hz, a minijack
composite AV input with an adapter cable,
two USB-A slots, a headphone output, and
an optical digital output.
That’s the physical stuff, but of course
the Ethernet or Wi-Fi connects to your
network, bringing to life the abilities of
the Google TV operating system (a variant
of Android TV) with all its thousands of
available apps.
There is also a ‘TCL Channel’ with a
dedicated button on the remote, leading
through to 80+ live channels and quite the
collection of on-demand content, a lot of
B-level stuff but some goodies too, partly by
including Plex inside the TCL content.
There is Apple AirPlay, and Apple
HomeKit compatibility too. Some
online specifications say it doesn’t have
Chromecast built-in, but that would be
weird for a Google TV, and of course it does.
It is Alexa-compatible, but as a Google
TV it’ll clearly work best with Google
Assistant, especially as the C845 has this
capability built in, with microphones both
on the TV and available on the remote by
pressing the key with Google’s childish
coloured symbols on it.
There are any number of apps in the
Google play store for streaming music,
but also Bluetooth (and Chromecast and
AirPlay) for streaming music to the TV.
Setting up
Ten screws are needed to get the base onto
the TV (TCL’s diagrams were clear and the
process straightforward), a flat shiny-steel
central stand here, rather than the little
twin end legs that TCL uses elsewhere. The
stand’s screws allow a very nice variation
in height, thanks to two choices of screw
position on the back of the TV. Use the
higher holes and the TV will sit nicely low
to the shelf, or use the lower mountings
to lift the TV 3cm higher — which might
make all the difference to get the screen
above a soundbar. Great idea!
Once mounted and in position, you
can start stripping off the protective film
covering the entire panel, plus side and top
plastic strips. It is a lot of plastic, but hey,
excellent protection during installation.
Once you’ve turned the TV on, Google
TV and the Google Home app take over
the set-up process, which is convenient in
many ways, if not all, because Google Home
is not a flawless app, and it took us a couple
of tries to get through it all. But once joined,
you can use the Google Home app for basic
controls, including a virtual remote.
A firmware update took a while, and
installing apps another half an hour at least,
and if you want to make the most of Google
TV’s cross-service recommendations,
you’ll have to disable the apps which you
didn’t request. That done, the Home page
is great, although it doesn’t list physical
inputs, so to switch between those you need
to press the ‘inputs’ button on the remote
control — or use voice control.
One setting delighted us — audio sync
adjustment which goes both positive and
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
also slightly negative. This is extremely
rare, as it requires memory-intensive video
delay, yet this is the only way to solve most
sync issues. Monumental kudos to TCL
for continuing to include this potentially
system-saving adjustment.
Watching & listening
The picture was immediately impressive
out of the box: the kind of visual punch that
sells high-level TVs. In ‘Smart HDR’ mode
the luminance was mad, yet never crushing
or flaring, instead supporting crazily three-
dimensional contrast and clarity between
edges of objects; no apparent enhancement,
just pure performance.
It is, really, hyper-realistic. This suits a
show like Formula 1: Drive to Survive well,
with all those F1 primary colours — the
Ferrari red, Heineken green, McLaren, um,
papaya… It’s also a great show for checking
motion, of course. As with other TCL sets,
whichever ‘Picture’ setting we chose, we
activated motion settings under Advanced
Settings, shifting Blur Reduction and Judder
Reduction to somewhere in the midrange.
There’s no ‘Film-maker Mode’; the
‘Movie’ mode is TCL’s equivalent. For our
long-term viewing pleasure, this has more
to recommend it than Smart HDR: you
don’t get quite the bonkers contrast, but it’s
more realistic, and performs well with all
manner of content, video and film sourced
— at least once two settings are tweaked.
73
 TELEVISIONS
First, as with most Film-maker modes, it
shoves the tint down to Warm, too yellow
for us, so we return that to the neutral
centre as a starting point. Second the
Movie mode turns off all motion settings,
as requested by Tom Cruise et al, but really,
a little is good, and happily TCL allows you
to tweak this mode like any other (some
rivals lock this off).
Dolby Vision material, however, will
trigger TCL’s Dolby Vision modes, four in all,
but with Dolby Vision IQ as the default; this
senses the ambient light conditions and
moves to Dolby Vision ‘dark’ if you are in a
dark room and Dolby Vision ‘bright’ if you
are in a very bright room.
Such systems can often be compromised
by mixed lighting, or a sunbeam falling
on the sensor, but here the results seemed
never to offend, nor to suddenly pump
when detecting a change. More good
implementation from TCL.
There’s also Dolby Vision ‘game’,
which works in a slightly different way,
the TV set communicating with the game
console, which pre-processes its output,
hence minimising latency from any TV
processing. There’s extensive gaming
support on this TV.
The TV’s sound system proved quite
serviceable for a small room. It’s a 2.1
solution branded to Onkyo, the 0.1 being
a dedicated bass speaker highlighted
prominently on the back of the TV.
There are no drivers on the TV to deliver
height or width beyond the screen, other
than by using virtualisation trickery.
74
So it’s still very much worth upgrading
the sound. With a full surround system we
could further appreciate the C845’s high-
quality pictures. And with the tweaked
Movie mode in use, the 55C845 simply
shone across all kinds of content: UHD
Star Wars movie action, the vivid flora
of ABC’s Gardening Australia, live Ashes
sessions from the UK.
Even without the more brilliant picture
modes there were some superb Dolby
Vision IQ moments where those nits made
their mark. The Netflix series Tour de France
Unchained looked spectacular; the insane
mountain climbs 19 minutes into E4 were
breathtaking in the impact of their colours
and brightness, and yet realistically so, not
exaggerated, combining brilliance with
excellent motion handling. Nor is there any
problem watching on the sunniest of days
with ambient light streaming in, given the
brightness available here, combined with
the TCL’s smart settings. Take that, OLED.
Conclusion
There’s more. Add a big USB stick and you
have a PVR to pause and store broadcasts.
You can have art or photo screensavers.
And there’s Bluetooth out for headphone
listening, even for a Bluetooth speaker
or soundbar, given that negative sync
adjustment would get over the latency
issues of Bluetooth transmission.
But the main ‘wow’ remains that super-
bright picture with everything you need to
optimise it (or let the TV optimise itself).
And of course, a not overly premium price!
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
Again we say of a TCL television, it’s just
hard to believe the quality you can get for
the money these days.
TCL
55C845
• Blazingly brilliant picture
• Excellent motion handling
• Two-position stand
• Google Home for set-up
• Internal Google mike on by default
Price: $1999
Display technology:
Mini LED backlit LCD with QD
Screen size: 55-inch
Other sizes: 65-inch ($2999),
75 ($3999), 85 ($4999)
Operating system:
Google TV with microphone
Native resolution: UHD 3840 x 2160
Refresh rate:
120Hz (VRR 144Hz/DLG 240)
HDR: HDR10, HDR 10+, HLG, Dolby Vision
Inputs: 4 x HDMI 2.1, 2 x USB 2.0,
component AV via minijack and adaptor,
antenna in, Ethernet, dual-band Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth, AirPlay 2, Chromecast
Outputs: minijack headphone, optical
digital, HDMI ARC, Bluetooth audio out
Weight: 16.7/18.7kg without/with stand
Contact: TCL Electronics Australia
Telephone: 1300 738 149
Web: www.tcl.com/au
YOU’VE NEVER HEARD ANYTHING LIKE THE JBL BAR 1300
MultiBeam technology with six up-firing drivers that deliver massive Dolby Atmos®
and DTS:X 3D room filling surround sound. 1170W of total output power and thrilling
bass from a 10” subwoofer to make the room shake.

Never miss a word with PureVoice technology, which makes sure the dialogue is clear at all times.
Stream your tunes from AirPlay, Alexa Multiroom Music or Chromecast. You can even take one of the
detachable speakers (or both for powerful stereo sound) out to your kitchen or patio and enjoy music
or podcasts via Bluetooth.

Dolby Atmos PureVoice Technology Detachable speakers

Multibeam Technology Standalone Bluetooth speaker 10” Subwoofer

JBL.com.au
 TELEVISIONS

TCL 55C745
QLED TELEVISION
The C745 is one range below the Mini LED of the C845 in the previous review.
It’s a more conventional panel, but it’s still loaded with facilities, including Google TV.

C
hinese TV firm TCL is interesting
in a number of ways, not least
being its seeming agnosticism
as to which smart TV system it
implements in its televisions. Its present
line-up includes Google TV models,
Android TV models (similar but not
identical to Google TV) and also Roku TV.
The C745 series goes for Google TV.
We spent a fair bit of time with this
entry-level model, the 55C745. It is distin-
guished from the others in the range only
by size. As the model number implies, this
one measures 55 inches. But there are also
65-, 75-, 85- and 98-inch versions.
Build & facilities
The TCL 55C745 TV is rather nicely priced
(and we are seeing it on the street even
lower than the prices quoted at the end
of this review). Yet it has pretty much all
the features you’d expect from a modern
TV, with a couple of extras as well. Google
TV means, of course, full support for
integration into a Google-based multiroom
audio system, along with easy mirroring
from Google apps on a mobile phone, such
as YouTube. One surprise was a decent
implementation of Apple’s AirPlay 2.
The UHD Quantum Dot screen has a
thin bezel, slightly less than 2mm all the
way around. Including the non-display area
of glass around the screen, the picture is
8mm in from the outer edge at the top and
sides, and 14mm in at the bottom. That’s
not counting a 12mm tall pod at the middle

76

centre of the underside which carries
four power LEDs and (we suppose) an IR
receiver. Even though it’s 70mm deep, the
panel seems thinner because it tapers in at
the edges.
The stand is simple but neat, and is
only 315mm deep and 355mm wide, so a
relatively small surface can be used for the
TV. The bottom of the TV panel bezel is
held 70mm above the desktop, so you
might be able to place a soundbar in front
of it, but since the stand does extend about
140mm in front of the panel it might get in
the way on some surfaces.
Quantum Dot displays use engineered
nano-particles which are excited by regular
LED backlights to produce colours in a very
narrow band of wavelengths, allowing more
precise filtering for accurate colour display.
This TV also features ‘Full Array Local
Dimming’ — a grid of backlights which can
be turned down in specific areas to enhance
contrast. We’ll try later to determine the
size of the grid, though we should note
TCL does not call these ‘Mini LEDs’, as in
the higher C845 model.
In terms of raw specifications, TCL
continues its practice of exercising a rare
honesty when it comes to contrast ratio.
It specifies 6000:1, which would seem to
be the native contrast ratio of the panel,
not a “dynamic” rating or some such. The
maximum brightness is specified at a
decent 550 nits, HDR peaks to 1000 nits.
As for signal support, well it does pretty
much everything including Dolby Vision
IQ (which is Dolby Vision plus an ambient
light sensor), HDR10+ and IMAX Enhanced.
For the gamers it also runs at up to 144Hz
with Variable Refresh Rate and includes
AMD FreeSync Premium Pro (seamlessly
adjusting the frame rate if the gaming
device requires it). TCL makes much of its
gaming credentials, even labelling this a
‘gaming TV’ in some markets.
Installation
We must remark on one seemingly small
‘feature’ of this TV, one which we would like
to see others copy. When you pull the TV
out of its box the first time, you’ll see the
screen protected by a plastic film, covered
with the usual array of stickers boasting of
features and the energy-star rating label.
And on top of the film are two spacers, only
about 4mm thick, one on each side. These
allow you to place the TV face down on a
flat surface so that you can attach the legs,
without any fear that the screen will be
thereby scratched.
Thereafter set-up was simple. The
power input is on the left of the panel as
you look at it from the front, and the signal
connections, including aerial, at the right.
One of the four HDMI inputs is labelled for
ARC/eARC, so that would be the one to use
for a home theatre receiver or soundbar.
Another one is labelled 144 hertz, so you’d
be plugging your gaming device in there.
Google TV is well developed, so setting
it up was easy using the Google Home app
on a phone. This automatically connected
the TV to our Wi-Fi network (you can
use Ethernet instead if you have a cable
available). It also signed us into our Google
account, so when we went to use Netflix the
first time Google logged in automatically.
The remote (IR for power, but RF for
everything else) has six dedicated buttons
for streaming services: Netflix, Stan (so
clearly the model is localised for us down
under), Prime Video, Disney+, YouTube
and a TCL service. Only Netflix, TCL and
(we think) YouTube were pre-loaded, so as
part of the setup we selected the additional
streaming services we wanted: Prime Video,
9Now, 7+, ABC iView, 10Play and Spotify. We
can’t say how long it took because we hadn’t
set a timer, but we would not be surprised
if 20 minutes or more passed by the time
these apps loaded. We have no idea why
they should have taken so long. Perhaps
it was just a bad day for the internet, but
probably not, as our (different) reviewer of
the C845 experienced the same thing.
Still, while slow, it was steady and all
worked fine. Other apps available at that
point were Apple TV, YouTube Music,
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
The TCL 55C745
television is a fine
unit, and reasonably
priced, with the range
going right up to a
98-inch model at
$8999, which is a fair
bit of money, but wow,
a 98-inch screen!
YouTube Kids, Binge, Kayo Sports, Foxtel
and Paramount+. But there are a seemingly
limitless number of apps available for
installation through the Apps section,
including SBS On Demand and Tidal.
All the usual Google TV stuff worked
perfectly as well, including Google
Assistant. The remote has a microphone
built in to facilitate that. You can also talk at
the TV. And if you’re worried about privacy,
there’s a small hard-wired switch on the
TV’s underside to cut the microphone.
Performance
Before getting to any formal testing, we just
used the TV for several days as our main
TV. It worked flawlessly, once we’d tossed
out a formerly trusted HDMI cable we used
between the 144 hertz input and PS5. With
a new cable there were no dropouts. And
Gran Turismo 7 automatically invoked game
mode on the TV. We found no noticeable
latency so we were able to get decent (well,
for us anyway!) track times.
Netflix was super-sharp and smooth, as
was Amazon Prime. It was clear that the
TV defaulted to motion smoothing because
on some scenes (particularly things like
following a focused subject through out-
of-focus tree branches in the foreground)
there was some image confusion.
The picture was beautifully bright and
colourful, with a pleasing richness and
nicely smooth gradients.
That was also the case for UHD Blu-ray
discs. After, that is, we solved a puzzle...
77
 TELEVISIONS
We fired up the Gemini Man disc and were
surprised to see that the TV kept reporting
that the signal was 1080p/60 with Dolby
Vision. Dolby Vision, yes, but it’s supposed
to be high frame rate (60p) UHD (3840
× 2160). We had the player plugged into
HDMI 4, which is the one labelled for eARC/
ARC, which is what we’d normally use with
a receiver. (We use a direct connection for
these tests, rather than via a receiver, to
keep variables out of the way.) We already
had HDMI 1 (labelled 144 hertz) connected
to the PS5, so we switched the UHD player
to HDMI 2, which is labelled 120 hertz. That
then worked perfectly with this disc.
So it looks like the ARC input isn’t
capable of handling HFR UHD, or perhaps
it’s HFR UHD loaded with Dolby Vision
content: too much bandwidth required.
Probably not a problem for most people
given the paucity of such discs, but a
reminder that the inputs have different
abilities and so should be used accordingly.
With 576i/50 and 1080i/50 content
from disc and TV, we found the
sharpness (particularly on the former)
and colour saturation (on the latter) a
bit intense. Both are easily adjustable.
Deinterlacing was largely OK, with
the TV slipping into the wrong
mode only occasionally. The TV
did default to ‘Low Power’ mode,
and with intelligent brightness
setting (i.e. it adjusts for ambient
light) on. We found that the movie
mode gave better results if you
want a quick adjustment.
That setting also switched off
motion smoothing. We spent a
bit of time adjusting the level of
judder removal with this on (that
is, the number of frames which are
interpolated by the TV) and found
that while the default setting of 10
(the maximum) was super smooth,
it also produced visual artefacts.
However a level of 7, at least with
1080p/24 Blu-ray discs, took most of
the judder out of the worst scenes,
while largely avoiding heat haze
effects or the soap opera look.
We also did a visual
check of black levels.
78
That confirmed our impression that,
while not OLED level, the blacks were on
a par with other Quantum Dot (or similar)
TVs with far higher claimed contrast
ratios. With a test pattern, we were
also able to determine that the local
area backlights consisted of a grid
of eight across by five down, for a
total of 40 areas. Oddly, it turned
out that accessing our test pattern
was the single toughest thing we
found with this TV, apart from that
HDMI inputs issue. It was on a USB
stick, and when we inserted it, the
TV popped up an access panel. But
that went away after a few seconds,
and by the time we went to access
it, we couldn’t find the USB input. It
wasn’t on the list of inputs, nor on the
home page. Eventually we tried a key
on the remote decorated with some
red boxes, and that produced a TV
Services page, which included a media
player. Opening that gave access to
the contents of the USB, plus DLNA
network resources.
Conclusion
The TCL 55C745 TV is a fine unit,
and reasonably priced, right up to a
98-inch model at $8999, which is a
fair bit of money, but wow, a 98-inch
screen! At this level of
TCL’s ranges the C745
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
doesn’t have quite the ‘wow’ levels of the
Mini LED C845 series, but of course it costs
less, and with Google TV support neverthe-
less offers a very solid smart platform, while
its picture quality is sure to please.
TCL
55C745
• High picture quality
• Solid smart TV performance
• Excellent value for money
• As always, a setting to force film-
mode deinterlacing would be welcome
Price: $1699
Display technology:
LCD/QLED panel Direct LED backlight
Screen size: 55-inch
Other screen sizes: 65-inch ($1999),
75 ($2999), 85 ($3999), 98 ($8999)
Native resolution: UHD 3840 x 2160
Refresh rate:
120Hz (VRR 144Hz/DLG 240)
Inputs: 4 x HDMI, composite video,
stereo audio, 2 x USB 2.0, Ethernet,
Wi-Fi, antenna, Bluetooth, AirPlay 2,
Chromecast
Outputs: minijack headphone,
optical digital audio
Weight: 14.3/13.2kg with/without stand
Contact: TCL Electronics Australia
Telephone: 1300 738 149
Web: www.tcl.com/au
Show SYDNEY 2024
BROUGHT TO YOU BY

05-07 APRIL 2024

Building on the success of the
Australian Hi-Fi Show 2023
 HI-FI SHOPS

TIVOLI HI-FI
DESTINATION HI-FI STORE, HAWTHORNE EAST, MELBOURNE
One of Melbourne’s essential destination hi-fi stores, Tivoli Hi-Fi, is approaching its
50th anniversary. We speak with one of its original founders about the store today,
and how things have changed since it began as a backyard repair operation in 1973…

T
he general ethos at Tivoli Hi-Fi in
Melbourne is nicely summarised
in one of its favourite taglines:
‘Music Lovers With A Purpose’.
“Tivoli Hi-Fi is run and operated by music
and movie lovers,” the team says. “We
listen to music, buy music, stream music,
and go to live music gigs — we understand
music lovers as we are music lovers! Our
passion is to help our customers put together
the system of their dreams, and their means.”
A half-century of experience
Recently we asked the Tivoli Hi-Fi team to
put together a system for Sound+Image’s
‘retailer recommendation’ feature. Sales
manager James Tranchina, director Philippe
Luder and AV tech guy Burak Sunter chose
a system featuring fine components from
McIntosh, Auralic and MartinLogan. But
they had a great wealth of other brands to
choose from, as Tivoli Hi-fi’s product depth
is both legendary, and longstanding.
“Our manufacturers, our choices,
they’ve been validated,” says Philippe
Luder. “Tivoli Hi-Fi prides itself on our
50 years — yes, 50 years in October —
so we’ve been through all the hoops and
hurdles and I honestly believe that the
brands we have represent the best you can
have in their price categories.
“And when you look at the range we
have, it’s legacy brands that have not only
survived but thrived. We are going through
a time where the industry has been just
fantastic in producing so many good new
products. When I think about Bowers &
Wilkins, founded in the 1960s, McIntosh
founded in the 40s, Bang & Olufsen in the
1920s! — and all still on top of their game,
it’s just extraordinary. And apart from their
huge R&D investments and so their high
performance from subsequent improve-
ments every time they realise something
new, you also get the security of a brand
that will be able to service your product for
its lifetime — they’re going to be around.”
Of course it’s not just having the
brands, it’s knowing what to do with them,
matching brands with other brands.
“At that level you still need to ensure
synergistic brands,” Luder confirms.
“Loudspeakers today, the quality of design
and materials used in the drivers and the
crossovers, the capacitors and so on are
such that you achieve extremely high
resolution, so it reveals the electronics
far more than 40 or 50 years ago. So it’s
critical that you get an amplifier that
matches that well — the speakers are

80
 Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2

revealing, the sources, analogue or digital, that room is probably more of a typical “You know, we have got the best guy
are super-capable in providing dynamics home environment — it’s not a perfect in the business developing our real high-
and resolution. And if you’ve got a demonstration room. So we decided to quality home cinema side, and we now
mismatch you’re going to know it.” make it a statement room, to display the have three areas, even without counting the
range of products. Then to hear them we’ll Bang & Olufsen space, where we show large
A modern experience take you into one of our studios.” screens, super-large TV sets and projectors.
Back when Tivoli Hi-fi was in its “And I guess while I like all the rooms,
infancy, hi-fi shops would use switching Favourite room especially the quality of the rooms that
comparators to quickly compare how So with all these varied spaces, does can provide analytical demonstrations so
amplifiers or speakers sounded with each Philippe himself have a favourite room people can really make informed decisions,
other, but that’s not the world of hi-fi at Tivoli? This was apparently not an easy I think my favourite is the very high-end
retailing today. It’s all about ‘the experience’ question, and he mentally ranged around home cinema, where we have Elementi
today, we suggested to Philippe. the store before coming up with an answer. and Bowers & Wilkins. It’s an absolute
“You’re absolutely right, yes — we
don’t have rooms where we are switching
speakers or electronics, that was all way in
the past. I don’t think people would look
favourably on that kind of demonstration
now, where you switch! In the old days
people had a definite wish to buy ‘Hi-Fi’:
they went into the stores where real hi-fi
was being promoted, and they expected
some kind of situation where they could
quickly switch and compare.
“But now people come and they want
an experience, as you say, so the shop has
to really offer them an experience. And it’s
got to look the part: there’s no point being
in a shack trying to sell $100,000 Wilson
Audio speakers; you’ve got to offer genuine
facilities, to match the expectations. I know
people think that having done this for 50
years it’s all easy now, but you still have to
work hard, you still have to adapt to the new
times, and reinvest constantly. And if you
don’t do any of this, it doesn’t matter how
established you are, you won’t succeed.”
So visiting Tivoli Hi-Fi today is a journey,
through spaces dedicated to key brands, in
environments appropriate to each.
“So for example we have within Tivoli
Hi-Fi a concept Bang & Olufsen store,” says
Luder. “And at our level of commitment
that has to look like a full B&O store.
Also, having been first in the 1970s to
retail the Bowers & Wilkins brand, still
today a very major brand of course, we
have a B&W room, again, totally dedicated.
We have a Linn room, totally dedicated,
Wilson Audio, and McIntosh…”
The McIntosh space (lead image) is a
particularly stylish room, taking design
elements from that company’s famous
townhouse in the heart of New York City’s
SoHo neighbourhood. Is that done to create
a mood, a brand connection?
“Well that room had actually struggled
to find its own purpose,” says Luder. “We’d
had several trials of things in there, because

81
 HI-FI SHOPS
sensational experience when I’m watching
a James Bond film... or Ford v Ferrari, that’s
one of my favourites — in that room it’s a
nail biter, you’re holding onto your seat.
So from a performance point of view that’s
probably the room I like best…”
82
Best Buys Audio & AV | 2023#2
new to Australia but one of the classic
Italian names. Oh, I really can’t favour
a particular room!”
Mastering adversity
Luder also points to a series of crises
through Tivoli’s half-century as actually
helping to define the modern store.
“Our business is a funny business,” he
says. “It’s had so many pivotal disastrous
moments, from roofs falling in, early floods,
a big flood recently… But every time we’ve
had a major catastrophe — even some that
could have broken us, to be honest — we
turned around and reshaped things. All
these events made us sit back and think —
now, what is it that we need to do to prepare
for the future, rather than just get back
into the old track, you know. And with the
investment to do that, it’s brought us to that
word you used, creating the experience.
That’s where the store is today.”
Our conversation with Philippe also
ranged in much greater detail about the
early days — Tivoli’s birth as a backyard
repair outfit, its first tiny shop in Kew, the
golden days of Marantz and Cambridge,
the other early stores in Melbourne. All
of which we’ll keep for the store’s 50th
anniversary celebrations in October. Or
pop into the store, on Camberwell Rd in
Hawthorn East, and ask them yourself.
He almost immediately backtracked
on his choice of favourite, however.
TIVOLI HI-FI
“But then Studio 2, and Studio 1! — Address: 155-157 Camberwell Rd,
the Electrocompaniet and B&W room, Hawthorn East VIC 3123
or that Wilson room driven with some Telephone: 03 9813 3533
McIntosh... or a brand like Chario, quite Web: tivolihifi.com.au
 Introducing the one of a kind earbuds that adapt to how you hear.

AVAILABLE NOW

DENON.COM.AU Contact us for your nearest Denon Dealer: sales.au@soundunited.com

SCAN TO SEE
03 8542 1111 | /DenonAustralia
PRODUCT VIDEO
 YO U M O V E T H E S O U N D . T H E S O U N D M O V E S YO U .
WIRELESS SURROUND SOUND SYSTEM

SURROUND MODE
Wireless surround speaker for an
authentic surround sound experience in
9001

your listening space.

SOLO MODE
Portable Bluetooth® speaker with IP67
water and dust resistance and up to
12hrs playback.