The September monthly meeting was truly a combination effort. From B&W Australia came David Trevaskis, who brought alone two pairs of B&W speakers: the stand-mount 705 Series 2 and the floor-mount 702 Series 2. From The Audio Experts in Cheltenham www.theaudioexperts.com.au Steve Varga contributed a plethora of interesting gear: two integrated amplifiers from the USA, in the shapes of a Pass Labs INT60 and a Parasound Hint 6, a Chord Electronics Qutest DAC from the UK, and a blast from the past, a Marantz KI Pearl SACD player. Our own Nick Karayanis brought along his laptop with a hard disc full of music for and, more importantly, was the person who chose and collated the tracks played during the evening.

The evening took a slightly different - and to my ears, welcome - approach to the standard line of attack. First, it was Nick who supplied the music whereas in almost all earlier sessions it's been the demonstrators who have brought along their selections. Sometimes this has worked well, other times not so well, depending in large part upon whether the demonstrator was more interested in audio equipment than in the music it played. Second, various combinations of the assorted goodies on stage were played during the night, and this provided us with an interesting suite of set-up permutations of sources, amplifiers and speakers to compare. Third, we didn't break for evening coffee and then restart for the final listening session at the end of the evening: I often thought that this approach divided the evening up too much and it was difficult to get everyone back in their seats (and concentrating) for the final session, which tended to be pretty short in any case. The single 'all-in-one' listening session worked very well on the evening.

First, an overview of the equipment on demonstration. Speakers. The B&W (oops: Bosey & Wilkins, as they now prefer to be called, so they are not confused with a certain German maker of luxury cars or, worse to them, a certain Danish manufacturer of uber stylish and ultra expensive audio equipment ) speakers were the 705 Series 2 and the 702 series 2 speakers.

The 705 S2 is the top model of the three book-shelf/stand-mount speakers in the 700 Series 2 range. All are two-way designs with rear ports. The 705 Series 2 uses the new Continuum cone material for the 165 mm bass/midrange, complemented by a 25 mm carbon-deposition tweeter mounted in a torpedo-shaped housing, milled from a block of aluminium, decoupled from the cabinet and presented as a stylish addition on top of the cabinet. Their sensitivity is stated as 88 dB/V/m, which is about average nowadays. The crossover frequency remains a major mystery, as none of the otherwise comprehensive reviews in wellregarded audiophile magazines (see below) nor even the specification sheet from B&W itself provided any information.

The average impedance of the 705 S2 is stated as 8 ohms, but it does drop to a minimum of 3.7 ohms. This might be important for some users, as it suggests that it is not a particularly easy speaker to drive. Indeed, this shift to ever-lower impedances by speaker manufacturers is something that increasingly annoys me. It's done so that the speaker sounds louder for a given input, and this is clearly important in a show room, when multiple speakers may be compared - and it is well known that the one that sounds loudest will almost always be the one that's purchased. But this sleight of hand does nothing for the real-life drivability of the speaker by your typical amplifier. Please, can we return to an honest 8 ohm impedance for your run-of-the-mill loudspeaker?

The 705 S2 has been reviewed positively by a number of critics. The review in TONEAudio concluded that "Along with wide frequency response and wide dynamic range, the 705 S2 have a cleaner, more natural tonal rendition than their past iteration. Acoustic instruments feel correct and that bastion of audiophilia, the female vocal, is well represented" www.tonepublications.com/review/bowers-and-wilkins-705s2 The Absolute Sound concluded that "The Bowers & Wilkins 705 S2s are all-rounders. If they had a medical degree they'd be a great family doctor" www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/bowers-wilkins-705-s2-loudspeaker SoundStageHiFi said "the 705 S2s provided very clean, tight, powerful bass for their size; an exceptionally detailed and extended top end; and a rich, textured midrange devoid of cabinet colorations. This small speaker played big, got out of the way of the music, and let it flow freely into the room" www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php/equipment-reviews/1254-bowers-wilkins-705-s2-loudspeakers

The 702 S2 are much larger, floor-mounted speakers. They share the same 25 mm tweeter as the 705 S2, but have a 150 mm woven Continuum-cone for the midrange and three 165 mm Aerofoil woofers, again in a rear-ported enclosure.

This time the crossover frequencies are available: 350 Hz (third-order HP/LP) and 4 kHz (second-order LP, first-order HP). The actual minimum impedance is 3.1 ohms (despite their being labelled as '8 ohm speakers'), and this supports Dave's statement at the beginning of the demonstration that they "love horsepower", which I guess means that they need high-power amplifiers, capable of providing lots of current, to perform best. Stereophile said the 702 S2 "is a reasonably priced, full-range, three-way floorstander capable of satisfying the needs of demanding listeners" www.stereophile.com/content/bowers-wilkins-702-s2-loudspeaker-page-2

Perhaps it's a sign of the times, but the 700 S2 series of speakers is made in China, in B&W's factory in Zhuhai, China. The only speakers B&W still manufactures in their Worthing factory in Sussex (UK) are the 800 D3 models and the iconic Nautilus. It's probable that the reasonable cost ($3,500 for the 705 S2 and $6,500 for the 702 S2) reflects their Chinese manufacture, but this was in no way indicated in the quality of the cabinets, which was superb.

Electronics. The Pass Labs INT60, a very substantial Class AB integrated amplifier, is heavily biased into Class A, with the first 30 of the total 60 watt output Class A. This must account for the set of humungous cooling fins that adorn each side panel. (I once had the Musical Fidelity A1 from the late 1980s, which was biased fully Class A into 25 watts. The top was griddled so the heat could be dissipated, but you could still fry eggs on it after along listening session.) As expected with any amplifier from the House of Pass, INT60 has been very favourably reviewed www.stereophile.com/content/pass-laboratoriesint-60-integrated-amplifier I am, however, still mystified by what that huge round window does on the front panel, other than to signify and further identify the amplifier as having come from Pass Labs. Cost? $16,000.

The Parasound Hint 6 integrated amplifier ($6,000) runs in Class AB (160 W per channel into 8 ohms) and includes a discrete headphone amplifier, a 32-bit ESS Sabre32 DAC chip, five line-level RCA inputs, defeatable tone controls (hurrah!), a subwoofer output, and optical, USB, and coaxial digital inputs.

The Qutest DAC is a gorgeous little thing, the cheapest ($2,400) in the line up of DACs from Chord. It is, I believe, electronically very similar to the much more expensive Hugo 2. Both use Chord's proprietary, 10-element pulse array design, designed by Rob Watts and implemented using a field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip. The oversampling digital reconstruction filter uses 45 208 MHz DSP cores and, typical of all Chord DACs, has a phenomenally long filter length of 49,152 taps, compared with the 128 or so that most DAC designers use. Why this is important to the quality of sound that comes out of the little black aluminium box is impossible to describe in a few pages, but for a start have a look at 2011 Richard C Heyser Memorial Lecture reprinted in an old issue of Stereophile www.stereophile.com/content/2011-richard-c-heyser-memorial-lecturewhere-did-negative-frequencies-go-case-study-3-digita The Qutest has received uniformly very favourable reviews (e.g. in Stereophile, which concluded that "it offers close to the state of the measured digital art ca 2019, and it sounds simply superb": www.stereophile.com/content/chord-electronics-qutestda-processor and in StereoNet, which concluded that "I can't put forward a suggestion of a better DAC for the money": www.stereo.net.au/reviews/review-chord-electronics-qutest-dac

Set-up 1: Laptop, DAC, Parasound & 705 S2 Having learnt from my mistake in last month's demonstration (see report in MAN Issue 529, page 5), this time I located myself in the centre of the back row of seats at the start of the listening session. What I was rewarded with was a rock -steady central sound image, an extended clean treble, and a nicely controlled bass. Maybe the Willis Room does favour smaller book-shelf or stand-mount speakers over larger, full-range items? Greg Brown's 'Loneliness house' (off the iconic Slant 6 Mind album) sounded quite lovely. I'd love to have heard 'Billy from the hills' or 'Speaking in tongues', two other tracks on this 1997 album, on this set-up too.

Set-up 2: Marantz SACD player, Parasound & 705 S2 The switch to the SACD player retained the lovely central image I'd heard with the laptop/DAC (e.g. on Track 5, Amber Rubarth's 'Storms are on the ocean', off Sessions from the 17th Ward) and again a commendable, deep, controlled bass (e.g. the left-hand piano work on Track 6, by David Helfgott). Delightful too were Track 7 (Chris Wilson, recorded live at The Continental in 1994) and Track 8, 'Russian Lullaby' by Jerry Gracia and David Grisman, off the 1991 selftitled MoFi CD.

By now I'd realised that I was familiar with at least 80% of the tracks Nick had selected. In fact, I owned most of them too. It was clear that Nick was a man with exquisite musical taste! At this stage too, I thought that the laptop/DAC combination sounded slightly better (i.e. more resolved, less harsh) than the SACD player set-up. Of course, we've had to hear the same tracks played on the two set-ups to be sure, but given the choice I'd opt for the former arrangement over the latter (and both had the same amplifier and speakers, so the comparison was sort-of fair).

Set-up 3: Laptop, DAC, Pass Labs & 702 S2 Set-ups 1 and 2 sounded just fine and to my ears would supply a budding audiophile with everything he/she could possibly want in an affordable set-up, but once we switched to the (far more expensive) Pass Labs amplifier and larger 702 S2 speakers, I noted what was lacking in the smaller and cheaper kit. Suddenly there was massive scale and everything was that much more effortless. Was it the change in amplifier or the change in speakers? We'll never know.

Nick chose a piece by the blues guitarist/singer Doug MacLeod for Track 11. MacLeod is a favourite among audiophiles: his works are superbly recorded by the Californian audiophile label Reference Recordings, all in HDCD (High Definition Compatible Disc).But to my ears, he's a bit too 'try hard' and 'white boy', especially in his signing. And the problem of that muddy, overwhelming bass that I reported on with last month's Hulgich speakers re-appeared. Was the Willis Room again being unkind to big, full-range floor-standing speakers? Nick pointed out to me in a subsequent email communication that there was a marked change in sound with when the foam bungs were inserted into the rear ports; that reduced that bass boom and alloyed the midrange to sound less coloured, with better articulation.

Track 15 was 'Burning down the house' (Talking Heads, 1983 Speaking in tongues album); the only track I didn't enjoy one bit, but even Nick is allowed one momentary lapse in reason. (In his defence, Nick did note that the Talking Heads track was chosen to show off the speakers ability to handle Pop/Rock music.)

Set-up 4: Marantz SACD player, Pass Labs & 702 S2 The three last tracks of the night saw us return to the trusty old Marantz SACD player, but this time with the expensive amplifier and speakers. The night finished with a peculiarity: Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to heaven' played on two solo guitars by Rodrigo y Gabriela, and that seemed to be a delightfully idiosyncratic way to conclude the demonstration.

Playlist (Performer - Album - Track No - Label)

Joe Chindamo - Paradiso. The Joy of Film Music - Tr 6: James Bond Theme.
Erin Bode - Over and Over - Tr 11: Holding Back the Years - Maxx Jazz.
Greg Brown - Slant 6 Mind - Tr 2: Loneliness House - Red House Records.
Tutti! Orchestral Sampler - Tr 9: Vivaldi,Concerto in F,RV 569 Allegro. - Reference Recordings. HDCD.
Amber Rubarth - Sessions from the 17th Ward - Tr 14: Storms Are onthe Ocean - Chesky.
David Helfgott - Brilliantissimo - Tr 15: Pasquinade Op.59, Gottschalk. Plus Tr 16:Flight of the Bumble Bee - BMG.
Chris Wilson - Live at the Continental - Tr 1: You Will Love Again - Aurora Records.
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman - jerry GARCIA / david GRISMAN - Tr5: Russian Lullaby - MoFi UltraDisc. SACD.
Eltham East Primary School Choir - Always Remember - Tr 7: Out Beyond the Black Stump.
Amanda McBroom - Dreaming - Tr 1: Dreaming - XRCD.
Doug MacLeod - Whose Truth, Whose Lies? - Tr 1: Whsoe Truth,Whose Lies? - AudioQuest Music.
Bryn Terfel - Bryn Terfel Sings Favourites - Tr 9: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot - Decca.
Dolly Parton - The Grass is Blue - Tr 11: The Grass is Blue.
Alex Pertout - Alex Pertout - Tr 12: For Carlos.
Talking Heads - The Best of Talking Heads - Tr 13 :Burning Down the House.
This Is K2 HD Sound! Various Artists - Tr 2: Pepe Romero / Zapateado. Plus Tr 11:Vivaldi / Four Seasons / Spring. Plus Tr 15: Tsuyoshi Yamamoto / Autumn in Seattle - FIM. Rodrigo y Gabriela - rodrigo y gabriela - Tr 6: Stairway to Heaven - Rubyworks.

Thanks to Nick for providing the comprehensively detailed playlist.

Paul I Boon

It's been some time since wrote a review of the equipment demonstrated at the club's monthly meeting. The reasons are twofold. First, two of my internal organs decided to go delinquent in late March and I've been in and out of hospital ever since. Second, as soon as things seemed to be on the mend I took the opportunity to abscond for 6 weeks to central Australia with our new Tvan camper trailer and trusty, old, 60-series LandCrusier, for the first time without our now-adult children. That journey prompted an interesting 'do it yourself' project in the shape of an installation of a solar-powered audio set up in the diminutive Tvan, a topic that I'll report on in a later article for MAN.

Anyway, this all meant that the August meeting was the first opportunity I'd had since March to attend a monthly demonstration. I was particularly looking forward to it, given that I'd listened briefly to Nicolas Hulgich's speakers at two audio shows in Melbourne over recent years and was mightily impressed by what I'd heard. Colleagues with better ears than mine thought his speakers sounded damn good too, and it's always nice to have independent affirmation of one's views. I'd not come across Anthony Holton's Precision Audio previously, but how could one possibly ignore an amplifier that comes from a manufacturer based in Tasmania? So - the stage was set for a nice return to the warm embrace of the peculiar acoustics of the Willis Room, the comradeship offered by fellow club members, and the kindness shown by people coming to demonstrate their gear on a cold, blustery Melbourne winter night.

Since both demonstrators are Australian-based it's probably worth introducing the two companies in some detail. Hulgich Audio is run by Nicolas Hulgich from his base in Andrews Farm, a northern suburb of Adelaide. Nicolas is a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina and perhaps that accounts for his love of jazz and tango (which certainly came through the music he selected for the demonstration: see the play list below). He works closely with Goran Nireus of Audio-Excite Loudspeaker design as technical advisor, and their current speaker range extends over five models, from the Serenade, the Maestro, the Nina, the Ella, and at the top of the range, the 3-way Duke. It was the Duke we listened to during the demonstration on Wednesday night.

The Duke is a front-ported bass-reflex speaker with cross-over frequencies at 300 and 2,300 Hz. The bass driver is a 9.5" unit with a hard paper cone, from SB Acoustics, a firm based in Indonesia which is very quickly establishing a reputation for making first-rate drivers. The mid-range is a 6" vented devise with a papyrus cone; and the tweeter is a 1.2" ring dome. Sensitivity is stated as 87 dB and impedance nominally as 4 ohms. The cabinet comes in two parts and it reminded me a bit of the old Wilson Audio Tiny Tot (in its first incarnation, the WATT) in that the upper pyramidal section houses the tweeter and midrange unit and the lower box houses the dedicated bass driver.

What was especially important to me was the gorgeous design and finish of the speakers. Nicolas confesses on his webpage www.hulgichaudio.com.au that "loudspeakers occupy physical space in your home or office, so in effect, they also function as furniture." Readers who know my love of Sonus faber speakers from Italy would realise that I share this opinion; speakers are usually so big that they have to be visually intrusive in any room (look, for example at Dave Chamber's gigantic Tannoys or Gerald Eude's monster Klipsch/JBL set ups) and this being the case, they may as well be as beautiful as their function can allow. The Hulgich Audio webpage also notes that "Accordingly, our products will always be locally made and so will directly support the Australian economy". And no-one could possibly argue with that sentiment, especially in an age when everything in the shops seems the bear a 'Made in China' label, even loudspeakers from what were once staunchly British manufacturers (KEF, B&W, QUAD anyone?).

The Duke retails for a (relatively) miserly $18,600 and at that price you get an awful lot of visually and sonically attractive loudspeaker. They have been reviewed recently, by Tom Waters in SoundStage!, who concluded that "Reviewing the Hulgich Audio Duke speakers was an absolute joy. The words "balanced" and "believable" appeared in my listening notes a number of times. Their detail retrieval, tonality, imaging and soundstaging are all superb. They are terrifically open sounding yet never turned harsh unless provoked by a really poor recording. Are the Dukes world-class speakers? That's not really for me to say, but if they aren't, they're damn close! Crikey!" (see www.soundstageaustralia.com)

Anthony Holton's Holton Precision Audio in based in Launceston. The range includes the Holton One-Zero-Zero Supreme power amplifier ($3,600), the Five-Zero-Zero Supreme ($8,900) and tops off with the Anteos Stereo Power Amplifier at $35,000 (www.holtonprecisionaudio.com). The webpage also shows the Holton DC Blocker One, which removes DC from the mains power supply, at $565. For the August demonstration Anthony brought along the two less-expensive power amplifiers (and it was the Five-Zero-Zero Supreme that did most of the demonstration) along with a prototype preamplifier that will retail when released in the $1,500-1,800 range. It is based on a Texas Instrument op amp but is biased heavily into Class A and so functions as a single-ended device. The power amplifier uses MOSFETs for the driver and output stages and can deliver a terrifying 800 watts into 2 ohms - which should be more than enough to drive any conceivable speaker. The power supply filters have a capacity of 320,000 uF, and that too should ensure that transients are dealt with in a thoroughly dismissive way by the amplifier.

It was Anthony's DC Blocker One that invoked some discussion during the demonstration. Peter Allen asked whether Anthony believed expensive power cables made any difference to the sound; Anthony gave a response that was music to my ears: he pointed out the logical absurdity of expecting a 1 m length of artisan cable at the end of a house wired with commercial 240 V power cables to have any beneficial impact at all. This, of course, is the very point I made in my article 'Things I've never understood about high-fidelity audio - Part 1: power and speaker cables (mainly)' in last month's MAN. Anthony was less sceptical about having a dedicated spur line put into your wiring to provide audio equipment with its own supply, and thought this might confer some benefit.

Where Anthony was adamant was with the subject of the contaminating 'junk' on the 240 V mains supply in Australia: e.g. DC introduced by multiple air conditioners each sucking kilowatts from a stretched suburban supply during hot days, and the switch-mode power supplies of laser-jet printers injecting all sorts of harmonic and non-harmonic trash into it as well. Someone in the audience raised the topic of what banks of solar panels do to our supposed 240 V sine wave too, and I asked whether it was only one's own air conditioner (not that we own one, preferring to have a far greener existence on this planet than such flippery implies) that caused problems or whether my own audio set up could be mauled by the thoughtless person down the street in his 50 square house running an air conditioner that causes the street lights to visibly dim each time it was turned on: the sad answer was that, yep, every house in the street could contribute to the problem. I image there will be a justifiable influx of order for his DC Blocker!

Now onto the important stuff: how did it all sound? I have to confess that for the first half of the evening I was consistently unimpressed: a mid bass thump (somewhere between 50 and 100 Hz?) seemed to permeate every track played, regardless of whether it was classical or jazz or bluesy. The bass was simply slow and plodding and ill-defined and lumpy and exaggerated. Surely this can't have been the speakers that impressed me so much at the two earlier audio shows in Melbourne? When introducing his speakers, Nicolas stressed the lengths he'd gone to so as to obtain a flat frequency response, and the sound I heard didn't match that sentiment at all.

About 9 o'clock I took the opportunity to relieve an overfull bladder and, instead of resuming my earlier seat in the middle of the Willis Room, this time I stood along the rear wall when I returned. Suddenly and miraculously that terrible bass boom boom boom was gone. What had, to my ears, been "curiously unengaging" (the words written in my note book referring to the Jessica Williams track) became detailed, coherent and enjoyable. It had all started to jell. What I reckoned had happened is that the powerful bass extension of the front-ported Dukes had excited a series of fearsome bass resonances in the room and I was in the unfortunate position of having chosen a seat where all those waves combined and coalesced and reinforced each other to create a mangled sound at all frequencies.

The bass response of loudspeakers demonstrated in the Willis Room is often pretty ghastly, seemingly regardless of manufacturer, and now I realise that's almost always a function of the room and the positioning of the speakers and the listeners, and not a flaw of the equipment on display. Perhaps the problem becomes worse with large, full-range floor-standing units such as the Duke, and smaller stand mounts, with their lesser bass response, are not as subject to the vicarious whims of the Willis Room. I enquired about this with Nicolas when I sent him a draft of this review to check, and he replied that yes, "Definitely smaller speakers as a 2 way stand mount model would benefit a lot from the Willis room". A second limitation arises with the seating arrangements in the room: having that centre aisle, while obviously necessary for safety and ease of access, means that in Nicolas' words "a corridor between the chairs right in the center of the room that is precisely the 'Sweet Spot' of any stereo system". And the room is, of course, notoriously undamped other than via the presence of all those bodies sitting in said seats, unlike any domestic environment where such equipment is likely to be used routinely.

Anyway, in my new position I could start to understand just how good the set up was: yes, a very powerful bass that would appeal to many, and matched to a clarity and speed and transparency that's pretty rare and should appeal every audiophile. And this sort of quality, I would wager, is especially rare when the speakers cost <$20,000 and the amplification <$10,000. I only wish I could have heard Dean Martin's 'If you were the only girl (in the world)' from the preferred vantage point at the back of the room instead of the terrible one I had chosen in the middle at the start of the demonstration.

So, to conclude, what a joy it was to return to a monthly MAC meeting and to have auditioned two locally made set ups that offer stiff competition to imported products. Thanks heartily to Nicolas and Anthony for taking the trouble to come to us and showcase their gear.

Track list:

Laura Fyhi: Besame Mucho
George Benson: The ghetto
David Bowie: Lazarus
Yello Feat: Kiss in blue
Brooke Miller: There you are
Count Basie & his Orchestra: Bluesville
Dominic Miller & Neil Stacey: La belle dame sans regrets
Cyrus Chestnut: Grandma's blues
Melody Gardot: Baby I'm a fool
Jessica Williams: Mysterio
Barb Jungr: Keeper of the flame
Oscar Peterson & Ben Webster: Bye bye blackbird
Ben Webster & Tete Montoliu Trio: Ben's blues
Ben Webster: My romance
Fairfield Four: Shadrack
Natalie Mercant: The peppery man
Dean Martin: If you were the only girl (in the world)
Kristiansand Symfoniokester: Islandmoen requiem
Vincent Belanger & Anne Bisson: Dedethoven
Trodheimsolistene: Britten- Simple symphonie, Op 4
Ensemble 96:Nystedt - Immortal bach
Eiji Oue & the Minnesota Orchestra: Etudes-tableux 5 for orchestra
Goran Fristop & Olavskoret: Pie Jesu
Robert Cray: What you need (good man)
Keith Greeninger & Daya Kai: Bid you goodnight
The Idea of North: Neat surprise
The Idea of North: Just a closer walk with thee.

Paul I Boon

July 2019

The Delmetics Play Live at the MAC

The Delmatics began in 1983 under another name, when I joined forces with guitarist Stuart Beatty and two other musicians to form a four piece rock and roll band. Beverley became our live sound engineer 1985 and completed her Live Sound Engineering Certificate in May 1991. Three guitarists and two drummers later the quartet split in 1989. Together with Stuart we auditioned drummer Rob Urban and started playing as a trio. In June 1991 the Delmatics trio spent two nights at Sun Studios in Memphis where we recorded a number of songs. The best of, and most complete, tracks were copied to several cassettes and I packed two reels of 2 inch, 16 track Ampex tapes in a brief case to bring home to finish in Melbourne. Finances were limited so finishing the Sun Sessions was delayed and in 1992 Rob decided to try his luck with a modern pop band. Rockian Trading became very busy and Stuart went back to work in the film industry, so my instruments went into storage and The Delmatics went into hibernation.

Most MAC members know Bev and myself as importers and distributors of audiophile recordings, but it is our involvement in live music that eventually lead us to Rockian Trading. In the 1960s we lived on a farm 13km north of Benalla. I was a young farmer on a family property, and in my spare time I played bass in a blues influenced pop trio inspired by Cream. In 1970, due to family conflict on the farm, and my musical ambitions, we moved to Melbourne with the trio.

About a year later the trio split when our guitarist moved back to Albury after he was arrested for a crime he didn't commit. The drummer got work teaching drums at Billy Hyde's Drum School and later became a founding member of Ross Wilson's Mondo Rock.About a year later the trio split when our guitarist moved back to Albury after he was arrested for a crime he didn't commit. The drummer got work teaching drums at Billy Hyde's Drum School and later became a founding member of Ross Wilson's Mondo Rock.

My first job in Melbourne was working in the Strauss Sound factory building and repairing guitar and PA speaker cabinets and amplifiers. I was a self taught technician with a basic understanding of amplifier design and I was reasonably proficient with a soldering iron and wood-working machinery. I switched to sales when Strauss Sound went broke and was purchased by a new owner who renamed the company Nova Sound.

The collapse of Strauss Sound was largely due to the failure of their Strauss Sound shop in Flinders Street Melbourne opposite St. Paul's Cathedral. I saw an opportunity to open a business in South Yarra, selling Strauss amplifiers and other brands previously marketed in the Strauss Sound store, Jensen guitars and amplifiers from New Zealand and Australian made Drouyn Drums.

I signed a lease on a two bedroom house at 96 River Street, South Yarra and set up an informal commune business named Infinity (years before Infinity speakers arrived). The front lounge room was set up to display and sell musical instruments, the first bedroom was set up as an amplifier repair business, the dining area of the kitchen became a guitar repair workshop and the second bedroom was sound proofed with caneite paneling covered with egg cartons and became Australia's first dedicated band rehearsal studio. Our most notable rehearsal client was Daddy Cool.

Despite personal promotions and advertising in magazines like Go-Set, business for the sales and services side of the Infinity commune were only successful part of the business. After a couple of years Infinity closed and Beverley went to work in communications with the Victorian Railways and I supplemented my meager earnings as a musician by driving Silvertop Taxis. After several years, driving taxis and delivery vans, I secured an informal contract with Encel Stereo transporting stock from International Dynamics in Moorabbin to the shop in Richmond and delivering stereo systems to clients, with an occasional home service call. Working with Encel Stereo was my real start in the quality audio industry.

At the same time Beverley moved to the head office of Flag Inns, and after working for a time as a "Sally" on telephone bookings she was promoted to publications where she became the editor of the Flag Inns Motel Directory. Rockian Trading began, and was registered in October 1983 and Beverley graduated from Latrobe University with a BA in North American Studies in May the same year.

I have known Stuart Beatty since the mid 70s. At the time he was working under the pseudonym Melvin drawing satirical cartoons for the underground magazine The Daily Planet. Late in the 70s he became the guitarist in the new wave mod group Little Murders. As a student of the Swinburn Tech (now University) Film & TV School he worked for a time for Australian Film Laboratory and later found work in the film industry. He was a crew member on the first Kennedy Miller production, the landmark movie "Mad Max." Somewhere on a mantel in Stuart's house is an AFI (Australian Film Institute) Award for best short film sound track, he won for music he wrote for a friend's short film.

We first made contact with Rob Urban in 1989 after he responded to a classified advertisement in The Age, seeking a drummer. We met in a rehearsal room at Dane Audio in Brunswick. Stuart and I were excited by his energy and vocal ability. He was then a budding graphic artist and designer, and I was convinced he was an ideal choice as a drummer when his mother phoned me to reassure me that he was wonderful boy. Thank you mother Urban. Rob has a long history working with a number of pop and rock and roll bands, including a stint with Level Spirits that took him to play at festivals in the USA.

I met Stan Borysiewicz in 2010 at a jam session put together to celebrate the 60th birthday of Manny Evangelidis. Manny was the drummer in Kaleidoscope, a pop cover band I played with in the early 70s. Manny and Stan both work at the Sunshine Campus of Victoria University. An electrician by trade, Stan is now an educator preparing electrical engineering apprentices for a career in the trade. He is a technology fan, as displayed by his use of the Roland Guitar Synthesizer. As a young man Stan played in a number of cover bands and later spent time in a two person reception band. Although he light heartedly refers to himself as a retired wedding singer, his guitar, voice and musical knowledge completes The Delmatics Sound.

Ian Hooper - Rockian Records - a division of Rockian Trading

June 2019

AGM

May 2019

Members Request Night

From on the spot notes scribbled, without due attention to grammatical rules.

Doris Day, Close your eyes. 'From before she was a virgin' - said Malcolm. Mostly harmless. Doris Day was from a time when you needed to have a good voice, and know how to sing, before they let you make a record. Nice natural female voice. We audio geeks like this sort of thing to test our rigs, because we know how it is meant to sound.

Andre Previn. Cocktail lounge piano jazz, can't complain, with the drummer's brushes sounding natural, plus appeared to have some depth. Fancy that. Dudley Moore plays like this too.

Eric Bibb. Not on Opus3 here, but Bev Hooper will bring that along to our June Buy Treasures Sell Surplus night. Nice guitar. 'Diamond Days'I know that, but only because the free iPhone app 'Sound Hound' dentified it. Amazing technology, which can identify a tune by its unique sonic 'fingerprint'. Not just the song name, also SoundHound gives all the lyrics. And more.

Star Wars. John Williams, The Force awakens, The Scavenger, 2015. Available on Spotify. SoundHound: Much bio info. on J Williams, who also did Harry Potter (but you knew that). Similar artists: Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, John Barry. I once ran a home meeting on Film Music because there is some really good soundtrack music.

Stan Getz, Laurindo Almaieda, 1963. Menina Moca (=Young Lady).

Russell Morris 'on a good system' (sounded pretty good to me). Sharkmouth, 2012, features in 'the Dish.' From late '60s became a major singer songwriter' Ed Nimmervoll and plenty more info. Online, Discogs has much recording detail. And is perhaps the major source for buying difficult to find music for sale.

Tchaikovsky Suite #2 on Decca. Antal Dorati, LSO. Not loud enough at first, then one realized John had it right. Convincing full-range sound, SPL mid- to high 80s dB, appropriate. Anyone challenging spelling of this composer's name will realize the insoluble conundrum in organizing an online classical music library. People not au fait with classical liked this, a lessknown piece by T-etc, who knew how to produce great tunes even if we spell his name different ways. Well if Shakespeare did.

Jazz, Nick C, new Convenor. James Morrison a real show-off piece (well it is Jimmy) 'Screech Machine, 2009. Out-Santanas Santana. Also playing was David Jones, a world's best drummer though not everyone knows it, keeping up with James no trouble. Plus Ben Robertson, another local man, also world class.

Lynn Miles Singer songwriter, known for melancholy. Well she is Canadian. 'Night in a strange Town' 1998. Lynn Miles, 'Anywhere' Folk, pop rock and roots. Four stars at Allmusic.com. Related artists: Eva Cassidy, Lucinda Williams etc. Useful in leading one along musical roads of discovery.

Bach-Ravel, 'Ave Maria.' Cello. 1990 , Deutsche Grammophone. Mischas Maisky (cello) + piano. 'Meditation' CD. He began age 8, moved to Leningrad, fed up with the rigid curriculum. (which kills many keen players) and bloomed under Rostropovich. Bought black market records, got 18 months in a labour camp his education paid off by a generous American. The rest is worth looking out.

Mario Ng, our Mr Eclectic. 'Libertango' it was, ostensibly, but really? My problem. Yes, a famous Astor Piazolla piece, by group 'Glass'. Later, curious because I trust Mario I looked it up, Glass Duo, on the glass harmonica, stroking a series of glasses to induce attractive resonances, as written for among others Mozart for its ethereal sound. Some tunes take repeated exposure to understand. Thank you Mario.

Tom Waits, Orphans - Missing my Son, a spoken word story 'Bye Mum!' punchline brought applause from our crowd. We were scammed, best scam ever. Thinks. Could it really work? Waits scammed us in a voice only Steven Wright shares. Steven: 'I had an MRI scan to detect if I had claustrophobia.'

Telarc, Mackerras, 'Cosi fan Tutte' overture, 1994 Scottish CO, Mozart who was the original irremediable sexist; well consider the translation: 'All ladies do it / that's what they are all like.'

Stan Getz, 'Focus', I'm late, I'm late. (the white rabbit). 'Third stream, post bop' where Stan listened via headphones over darkish yet scintillating string charts designed to give him room to improvise over it, leaping and yelping, challenging and arguably Stan's finest moment. - one of my desert island disks. Getz' favourite is this piece, rated 5-stars. Allmusic.com told more while the music was playing:

'Jazz Samba Feb 62 introduced bossa nova with Charlie Byrd. He could have spent the next decade working that groove, but chose to play more challenging jazz' -Scott Yanow. There is a 2003 Japanese re-issue, dynamically remastered with SBM (Sony's Super Bit Mapping.) Stan Freberg, 'St George and the Dragnet'. 1953. Some of us at a certain age recall it verbatim, having heard it often on the wireless, when 'variety' was rather limited. Bach, Goldberg Variations, Rosalyn Tureck on Hyperion. If you have Roon online, it finds tunes, finds photos, bios, reviews, lyrics, dates, and offers connections between performances to lead one to suggested music. 'Tune' an execrable 4-letter word for a gracious art, the word Apple applies to anything, even a Bach cantata.

Icelandic jazz trio, Bjork Guomundsdottir & Trio Gu - 'Brestir Og Brak.' Snap and crackle, lots of fun, with lyrics, if my Icelandic serves me, and I think it does, 'for example Christmas celebrations can be postponed until March.'

Malcolm K introduced June Tabor of the memorable pure strong voice, called 'the greatest living British folk singer' and if she appeals, 'Silly Sisters' will too. Here with sax and piano. Sort of jazz, sort of not.

'Quercus' (=Oak Tree) on ECM,. 'The Lads in Their Hundreds'. poem by A. E. Housman (1859-1936). June sang George Butterworth's First World War setting of the poem. Housman had a thing for doomed young men, and quite possibly Butterworth did too. 'The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.' He had a strange death wish, burning his unpublished music before joining up. And dying in the war. .

Peter Allen

April 2019

Synergy AV presents Cambridge Audio with ELAC speakers

EQUIPMENT LIST

Alva TT Direct Drive Turntable with matching MC Cartridge. $2799
Edge A. 100 watt Integrated Amplifier. $7999
Adante AF-61 Floor standing Loudspeaker. $8999

Rega Apollo CD Player. $1249
McIntosh MA-252. 100 watt Hybrid Integrated Amplifier. $6995

Web Ed.

March 2019

Mark Dohmann and Tivoli Hi-Fi

"Wow! The GM system makes me realise that my system at home is not very good" said none of us, ever.

Because we are used to our home systems, we built them up to suit us; not only that, our rooms suit a domestic limited hifi system so most of us would fail to fill the large space in the Willis Room.

...said none of us, until this special meeting, and we were unanimous.

We were sat In the Round - a Circle of Confusion perhaps. What is this all about? Mark Dohmann told me before we started, 'There is energy in the room'(he knew something) and there was anticipation of something special. Mark has never presented anything that was not international best practice. Mark, along with such notable Aussie world-beaters as Kyron loudspeakers perform at the top of the international high end shows and get wows.

Tonight's performance for us was courtesy of Tivoli Hi-Fi , who I remember at the little shop in Cotham Road Kew (was it more than forty years ago?) and young Philippe Luder was the man, always keen, knowledgeable and courteous. Long may you live Philippe. "The Tiv" in Melbourne was live theatre where you went for 'Variety' but young me that translated as pretty ladies without many clothes. But classy. TV killed it. Another Tivoli is an entertainment public park in Denmark. Philippe is Swiss, so where the name of his store came from, you guess.

His man lent to us for tonight is Geoff Haynes, the Store Manager. Mark and Geoff told how we would be welcome to hear some Telos gear 'even higher high end than Tivoli had known until then' so they took on the agency. Drop in a Saturday where Mark is likely to be around, maybe able to check a stylus or turntable setup. Plus 'World's Best Coffee'.

As well they have the B&O agency, you could call it 'domesticated audio' We experienced a unique concept, a powered speaker able to be placed anywhere, especialy in the centre of the room, and heard anywhere in the house. What's so great about that - I have a wife like that. Likewise, the mono sound follows you as you move about: the opposite of one hot spot.

Let's have some music. The almost inevitable D Krall piano trio. I heard plenty of around 60Hz energy, pretty good for the small device. I also measured the average sound volume to be typically 85dB, and that's what I reckon is typical and about right for listening at home, but with peaks too.

There is a free smart phone app, "NIOSH SLM" and no it's not the name of a rapper, it is the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Sound Level Meter and their thing is not damaging hearing from excessive noise.

Yes Graham Cobb, parts of the Scheherazade was TOO LOUD on the night (only that track), if you believe it should only replicate and not exceed the SPL in a live concert. A guilty admission: I sometimes very surreptitiously run my SPL at the ballet in row D, and mid to high 80s is typical average loudness, with occasional full tilt peaks of mid 90s. Is that lower than one expects?

It is good to have tracks that we know, for comparison. Fleetwood Mac is one of those. Some thought the midrange was lacking. The full outfit costs a mere $2500 so don't complain, it is appropriate to its task. Consider what you get, plenty Blu tooth connectivity, just add the free Spotify music streaming your almost unlimited choice of music, a nICE class-D power amp by B&O. Consider it like a perfectly adequate nice meal for lunch, it's not a foodie big night out, you don't always need that; suitable for purpose. Designed by Joachim Gerhard, the main designer of highly rated German Physic speakers, it has a four inch driver firing upwards to a cone which deflects the sound 360 degrees. Audio Club DIY convenor Dr (of acoustics) Jim Menadue once created a similar arrangement for our DIY-ers. Anyone had them and can comment? The B&O is for 'listen all day' for semi background music.

Next track, one genre that we always request, but don't always get, is orchestral. Here it was convincing, the string tone non-aggravating. For extended listening, anything that irritates soon becomes intolerable. On the other B&O extreme soundwise, don't forget that they have their Beolab5, the real deal, with 'listen to the room' self-correcting calibrated sound. I have heard a before (sounded pretty good) then an 'after', Wow!

The CD music storage and playback system is compatible with other PC hardware (not a closed system). It is comprised first of ripping, then storage, which is to read the CD, get track info and cover art from the web, and save to a hard drive. Then played back as chosen from one's collection via an iPad graphical interface. Features include a 200watt power amp and hard drive to hold thousands of full resolution (the only way) CDs. An internal DAC can be included, prices are non-scary, far less than other similar devices, not much more than a roll your own.

With an external amplifier, we got Ms Krall again, 'The girl in the other room' and sadly she's stopped following me. I hear a 60Hz hump again, but not a big deal for a system like this. Bass is difficult, perhaps the most difficult thing in audio to get right. And you simply won't get he-man deep tight fast integrated bass without paying big. Good bass is a drug (some drugs are good) and once you've had it, and if you don't have it you miss it.

German Physics second speaker of the night was next, and before it was played I was under-expecting much from its slight appearance, and at $18K the pair, better be good. Somebody has the same ideas as our Dr Jim, because he also created an inverted flower pot Ohm-Walsh driver loudspeaker for our DIY-ers. Mark's featured a carbon fibre cone whose method of operation is with the voice coil at the top of the cone, acting downdards, pistonically, causing buckling and flexing of the cone, being anchored down below. MBL pulsating spheres work with a similar / different approach. Frequency response runs from 24kHz (my dog would hate them) down as far as 170Hz. Taking over the bottom sound are two eight-inch drivers in a sealed cabinet.. That covers the speakers, many would say the most important part of a good hifi.

Those same would also suggest the next most important is the amplification. The Thrax amp, let's wait and see if it's as magic here as it sounded at an Albert Park hifi show.

Some others including Ivor Tiefenbrun of Linn would insist that the source is obviously the most critical component, it's the limiting factor. Mark might say the same. Helix 2 turntable is the new and simpler so considerably less expensive model than his Helix1. Less expensive but also with some important improvements. Both have as a crucial component the Minus-K which very effectively isolates floor-born vibration, down to half a Hertz.\

Even if on a concrete floor, the earth moves for record-playing audiophiles. A poor person's device that works but differently - a heavy slab floating on a slightly-inflated slow bounce bladder such as a wheelbarrow tube.

The iPhone, with its movement sensors, has a free very sensitive 'Vibration Analysis' app. Mark allowed me to place it on the stationary platter, and the normally very hairy vibration pattern was practically flat.

The negative stiffness principle of buckled beam at equilibrium absorbing energy dates back, to Leonhard Euler, 1707-1783, who was one of the most eminent mathematicians of the 18th century and is held to be one of the greatest in history. He is also widely considered to be the most prolific mathematician of all time.

Although a DIY Minus-K device is beyond my capabilities, Mark suggests that similar isolation can be obtained by suspending the device in a sling of octopus straps, the bounce frequency being as low as possible, else it does not block vibrations. My music storage HDD is in such a mini sling and it sounds great. But no I didn't do a before and after, so rigorous folk, please disregard.

The Helix-2 comes currently with a Frank Schroeder arm, with a unique and patented string/magnet bearing, and also manufactured in Bulgaria under the combined Audio Union banner, together with Thrax and Helix. We recall Mark's design of the world-changing Continuum turntable (no Minus K) and Caliburn arm, so I asked whether or why not he is planning as an option his own arm. Yes.

One problem for turntables (among many) is dynamic drag. Consider the stylus suddenly coming across the cannon in the Telarc 1812. Watch it ram sideways and consider its slowing effect on rotational speed. Inconsequential? So why do many designers concentrate mass on the periphery of the platter, and why does Mark use an expensive thirdhorsepower torque motor?

Music time, the Decca Rossini Overtures. Is this the same as the Argo, a subsidiary of Decca, highly praised (and prized if 100 Euros on eBay is a guide). Shazam and Soundhound (free iPhone samplers of music) attempt to identify it though not the Argo, though they were unsure. You can't trust some digital. A pity, because that was the LP that the president of the Sydney Audio Club played years ago for a skeptical journalist, sent to do a hatchet piece scornful of those stupid audiophools. He reported back, "...and was the hifi system worth tens of thousands of dollars? Certainly!"

So how did the Decca sound? A wide Dynamic range. Loud and soft both, rather rare these days of 'loudness wars' all equally loud recordings. Consider also power amps and loudspeakers squashing down peaks I had the average sound level, (C-weighting, Fast) to be low 80s, which surprised me, as the sound felt louder, more enveloping. Could it be the ambient sound coming back from the walls? They say that about half the sound we get at a classical concert comes off the walls. Mark announced that the maximum sound hit 100dB, which surprised me, but he was working with a professional meter. Other impressions of the music included several important variables, detail being one. Another is transparency. Further, an Integrated feeling, the music tidy, together. It made me think of actually being at a concert, which indeed I was later that week, the Prokofiev Cinderella, the full orchestra and I recommend it as a pleasant discovery. "It was teriffic, with spatial imaging like a symphony" said a friend afterwards.

Next Mark played a Sheffield Direct to Disk, Harry James, the epitome of live and of dynamics. I have the LP but sought out a CD of it for convenience. Kill me now. It was a disappointment, not an official re-issue, seems like dubbed from a poor LP system. Serves me right. John Lee Hooker 'The Healer' (not to be confused with LJ Hooker 'The Estate Agents') had plenty of life alright. So consider this - CD has a dynamic range of say 120 dB; LP real world 60-70dB, please explain? Well our typical music rooms are never less than about 35dB ambient sounds (try it and be surprised, even in the outer suburbs), thus nullifying most of your CD theoretical range.

My night's highlight was 'Scherehazade' a Super Disk if ever there was one, and super duper in the recut by Analog Productions. It has been one of my own desert island disks since my father let me handle carefully his microgroove records, for which I thank him forever, letting me discover much of the popular classical repertoire. His was the Silvestri Bournmouth, always thrilling, via his Lowthers, dynamics unbounded, as they must be for big symphonic music. Nowadays I rather like the Thomas Beecham, seductively engrossing. Anyway, back to the RCA 1960 Living Stereo. I was at a show where Chad Kassem (the AP reissues fellow) played it over a really big system, JBL Everests, and I wept. Ours was equally good.

Never has a Melbourne Audio Club crowd been so magnetised. "Best system I ever heard" - ex-president John Drew. Thank you Mark, Geoff and your team, it was a bucket list experience.

Peter Allen

Web Ed.

February 2019

The ATC SCM19A Active Speaker

Some reviews are hard to write, some are easy. It's hard to write a review about equipment that you are only luke-warm about, even harder if you dislike it. How can you be honest in your reporting, but not distress the manufacturer or distributor who came all the way out to Nunawading at night to showcase their beloved set up, when you just don't like the sound at all? On the other hand, it's easy to write a review about equipment you like. And it's really easy to write a review about equipment you really like. This review was really, really, really easy to write. That's because I really, really, really liked the ATC speakers demonstrated during the February meeting.

Despite having quite an array of speakers at home . Sonus fabers, Sonabs, B&Os, B&Ws, Advents, IMF-TDLs, Audix . I've always wanted a pair of ATCs too, preferably the iconic floor-standing 3-ways with the 12" bass driver and the wondrous 3" dome mid range. After hearing the newest active 2-ways ATCs last Wednesday, I want a pair even more. The ones showcased during the February monthly meeting were good, bloody good. This made it a dream to prepare my monthly report, as I didn't have to tread gingerly with the demonstrator's feelings. And it's made me closely reconsider whether I should buy that pair of mint 3-way ATCs I know are for sale at the moment. Just how can I slip them past my wife? Won't my daughter question me unforgivingly as to exactly why I need another pair of speakers? Where will I put them?

ATC is the abbreviation for the 'Acoustic Transducer Company'. It's an accurate name, since ATC is one of the very few loudspeaker manufacturers who design and build all their own drive units bespoke, rather than simply getting them from one of the large manufacturers (such as ScanSpeak or Vifa) in Denmark. And what drive units they are! One of their first products was the 12PA75-314 bass driver, which was widely recognised for its excellent power handling and efficiency (Figure 1). But the one I think ATC is best known for is their iconic 3" soft-dome dome midrange, the SM 75- 150s (Figure 2). I've fiddled with one of these, and its weight and the precision of the engineering has to be seen to be believed. Those who attended the February meeting had the opportunity to handle the new bass/ midrange driver used in the new ATC entry series, the 2-way SCM19A (Figure 3). All who did so were amazed at what a substantial thing it was. Who can possibly resist loudspeakers that contain bespoke driver units as impressive as these?

Another reason for my being interested in ATC is that they are also one of the few audio manufacturers who span the domestic and the professional market. A few other companies do this (e.g. B&W for speakers; Weiss and Nagra for electronics) but most commit to one or the other. ATC instead handles both markets, and not only via the provision of loudspeakers but of the electronics that go with them too. The ATC webpage pints out that the company tries to mix the best of the qualities of professional monitor loudspeakers with the best of what's needed for domestic units: "The best hifi speakers have brilliant sound quality - wide and smooth frequency response and low distortion, but typically have limited dynamic range. In the home listening environment, this is a reasonable compromise since the majority of commercially available music that we listen to for enjoyment has already been processed to restrict dynamic range. On the other hand, studio monitors must be capable of accurately reproducing not only the finished audio product, but also raw, unprocessed sound straight from the microphones which can have a wide frequency range and a huge dynamic range as well".

And you want to know who uses ATC equipment? Try clubs such as Ronnie Scott's (!!!) in London, let alone the Royal Opera House in London, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra in China, Sony Music Studios in New York, Telarc Records in Cleveland and, much closer to home, the Sydney Opera House. Seems yet another reason why I need to buy that pair of 3-ways on sale.

A third reason? Let's admit it: ours is an age of unremitting, uncritical, jingoistic nationalism. Just around the corner from my house is a massive yellow sign stating that some fat man from Queensland, who peers down at us from the advertisement with a goonish grin on his face and two thumbs in the air, will "Make Australia Great". The nationalist link with ATC, which after all is manufacturer based in Gloucestershire in the UK, is that its founder is Billy Woodman, a chap born in Castlemaine, central Victoria, in 1946. He founded ATC in 1974. Like so many others - Clive James, Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries - Billy is an expat who's done well in The Old Country and has an enviable international reputation. For those interested in following up his story, you can read interviews published in Hi- Fi Choice atcloudspeakers.co.uk/2015/02/billy-woodman-interview-hi-fi-choice-magazine and in Studio Hi-Fi http://studio-hifi.com/images/ATC%20Founder%20Billy%20Woodman.pdf

The ATC speakers we were privileged to hear on Wednesday night, showcased by George Oosthuizrn, from JAG Imports, were the entry-level Active Series SCM19As, a mid-sized floor-standing unit with the new 25 mm soft-dome tweeter and the new 150 mm bass/midrange unit shown in Figure 3. It's an active design, powered on each side by a 180 watt Class AB amplifier. Interesting to see that ATC has retained the classic Class AB amplifier typology rather than being seduced by the dubious delights of Class D. The boxes are about a 1 m high and 350 mm wide and deep. They weigh a not-insubstantial 31 kg each. They look lovely. They cost a tad under $10,000 a pair, which seems a fair bit until you remember that if you buy them you don't have to buy a separate power amplifier and speaker cables.

Allow, say, $4,000 for the amp and $500 for the cables, and the comparative cost comes down to $5,500. Pretty good value I'd say! Music sources on the night were taken care of by a Linn Akurate DSM Source, streaming from 16 bit Tidal via the ethernet and a Telstra 4G modem, and a custom-built Roon server, with a 16/24 bit music library. It was controlled from an iPad using Roon Remote over the Aerohive Wireless network. The Akurate DSM RRP is $12,195 and Roon server with custom case is $3500. Electrons flowed between all the components via CAT5 and CAT6 cables.

For this month's report I won't go into the detail about the playlist, other than to note that it was a well-chosen collection of classical (Vivalidi, Bizet, Berlioz), jazz (Dave Brubeck, Patricia Barber), Americana (Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Eilen Jewell, Greg Brown), what is for the lack of a better term is now known as 'world music' (Hugh Masekala's Stimela, plus a wonderful piece by Ali Farka Toure), some blues (Lightnin' Hopkins, Keb' Mo', Eric Bibb) and delightful peculiarities from the Fairfield Four, Astor Piazzoli, Henry Mancini, Mark Knoffler, Jennifer Vaughan, and Casandra Williams among others.

I reckon my ears were particularly well attuned for the Wednesday night demonstration, as in the past week I'd attended three concerts in the stunning acoustics of the Melbourne Recital Centre: (1) polyphonic vocal pieces from the Eton Choirbook of 1510, sung by The Song Company; (2) the Gabrieli Players and Consort performing Henry Purcell's King Arthur; and (3) an unexpectedly delightful performance of little-known Baroque pieces for the violin, viola and cello, including works from 17th and 18th century Scotland, Sweden, the Netherlands and France, performed by the Australian Evergreen Ensemble, led by the stunningly talented Shane Lestideau.

So what live sound really sounded like was very fresh in my memory come Wednesday night. How did the ATCs compare with that? Brilliantly! As I always do, I made copious notes during the demonstration: "The sound not only hung delicately between the two speakers most realistically, but often seemed to extend far beyond them, to the left and to the right". Other descriptors?: "fast, engaging, dynamic, resolved, resolved, resolved, no over hang yet not tiring at all". With the Patricia Barber track I noted that her voice "just shot out of the speakers, but was not forward or shouty". I thought my main system at home (Cary valve amplification, Cary SACD player, Sonus faber speakers) sounded better than the equipment on demonstration with the Eilen Jewell track, but then again it was precisely this type of female vocal and home-style acoustic music that I'd tuned my set up to work best with. On the other hand, I thought that the ATCs performed much better than my set up with the Greg Brown track, that wonderful song about his family's new car, Brand new '64 Dodge. Isn't this one of the best songs ever recorded?

To conclude: I reckon the ATCs were good, as I said above, bloody good. I'd have a pair in a flash. So now it's time to be off and check out those secondhand ATCs up the road. Thanks mightily to George for showing us the ATCs, and as ever to Nick for organising it all.

Paul I Boon

Web Ed.

January 2019

A Raspberry Pi Music Night

To my mind, membership of the Melbourne Audio Club brings three benefits: (1) exposure to a wide range of interesting audio gear, new and old; (2) exposure to music and musicians you've never heard before; and (3) comradeship with friendly people having a similar interest in music and audio equipment (and sometimes, food and wine and the general state of the world). Last month's meeting brought together all these things. The equipment first.

Chris M provided his bijou Raspberry Pi III music server with new and purpose-built DAC using a DAC chip from the Japanese firm Asahi Kasei Microsystems. The DAC deserves some attention, as most commercial ones use chips from a limited number of firms such as Cirrus Logic, ESS Sabre, Wolfson, Analog Devices, Sony or Texas Instruments (i.e. Burr Brown). Chord, of course, goes its own way with its proprietary Pulse Array DAC and Watts Transient Aligned filter, and by all accounts what a job that thing does. (Peter A has one now, and loves it.) Data Conversion Systems (aka dCS) with their Ring DAC is also outside the standard run-of-the-mill users of commercially available DAC chips, but at the price of their stuff, so they should be. Although Cirrus Logic, ESS Sabre, Wolfson and Analog Devices are probably the main supplies to makers of commercial DACs that most of us can afford, the chips from AKM have found their way into a surprisingly large number of products too, including items from high-end producers such as Gryphon and Esoteric and ModRight, plus some DACs by the much more affordable American maker Schiit.

The range of audio DAC chips available is truly staggering: a look at the Texas Instruments web page alone shows hundreds, most of the delta-sigma type www.ti.com/audio-ic/converters/dac/products.html , so Chris did have a huge range to choose from. Most of the DACs in the Texas Instruments range cost less than $10. Chris said the AKM DAC board cost somewhere around $60-80. The very schnazzy case cost more, at ~$100. Bearing in mind the retail price of high-end commercial DACs, it's clear that (1) the actual bit of microelectronics that does much of the work accounts for a trivial percentage of the cost and (2) the mark-up before the thing ends up on the shelves for you to buy must be astronomical.

Speakers were also bijou: a 3-way system using a 10" Peerless bass driver, Vifa cone midrange and ScanSpeak tweeter, built by Greg Kerr. Each side came in two boxes, the lower one housing the bass diver in a sealed enclosure and the upper one housing the midrange and tweeter units. The boxes were stunningly built, with perfect veneer and perfect edges. Very nice. Given the type and appearance of the drive units, I guess they hailed from the late 1980s or early 1990s? CDs were played on an Oppo universal player, and the amplifier was a Naim kit unit, said to produce 100 watts/channel at the usual 8 ohms. Acoustic suspension and all sorts of fancy anti-vibration devices were provided by the unmodified - rickety, but otherwise immensely capable - kitchen table that has been dragged out of the Willis Room servery for decades and pushed into use as an equipment stand.

The music? We were exposed to 19 tracks, many of them new to me, some old favourites. A few really stood out. Track 1, from Chris M, compared the human voice with the left and right speakers alternately in and out of phase. It hardly qualifies as music, but it was educative to hear the difference on consecutive recordings. I'd have liked to hear also the effect of music having been recorded in inverted phase, as some people say there really is an appreciable difference when the speaker cones goes out when it should be going in, and vice versa. A 'p' is, after all, an explosive sound, not an inhaled one. Chris M's Track 2, Nina Simone signing 'Don't let me be misunderstood' was, of course, special. Jean Luc Ponty, the virtuoso French jazz-rock violinist, made an appearance for Track 3. Track 4 was Buddy Rich performing a jazz version of The Beatles' 'Norwegian Wood'. Chris pandered to "those classical bums" (his words, not mine) with his sixth choice: Grieg's 'Peer Gynt', an ABC Classics recording. Chris then left the stage, to be replaced by el presidente Martin B.

Martin confessed to having experienced a life-transforming bus trip in Turkey in the early 1970s (Midnight Express anyone?) that introduced him to the dubious delights of Middle Eastern music played non-stop and extra loud during a longdistance and painfully slow bus trip through the old Byzantine Empire, and the oud in particular. His selection was perfect and a nice antidote to the Westernonly focus of the rest of the evening. In turn, Martin left to make way for Ed S, who entertained us with the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio playing a version of 'Raindrops keep falling on my head'. Yes, anything is possible at a Committee Member's choice evening.

Then it was Laurie N's turn and he regaled us with a heavy-metal version of the classic Simon & Garfunkel's 'The sound of silence', from the band Disturbed (off their 2015 album Immortalized). Laurie seems to have a penchant for musical things from far left field, and I reckon we are all very pleasantly surprised by the way these heavy-metal rockers interpreted the song. Martin then came back from his hippy trippy Turkish experience with his mind still intact, and played us Mr Sinatra's 'One for my baby', recorded in 1965 with the Count Basie Orchestra. Fabulous. I think it was at this stage that Peter amazed us with his Miles Davis selection ('Time after time') and a Cyndi Lauper track. 'Time after time' was, simply, stunning.

Geoff H took the stage and showcased that 1970s Ozz jazzy bluesy rocky songstress Renee Geyer singing 'Morning glory'. Ed returned with a Jessica Williams' piece off her album Touch: 'Goodbye pork pie hat'. Laurie came back to the mainstream with Shirley Bassey singing 'Hey big spender'. Peter then kept the 1960s theme going with Tony Bennett and Bill Evans performing 'Two lonely people'; Rob B dragged us into the 1970s with a Kate Bush song 'The man with the child in his eyes', off the 1978 album The kick inside. The evening finished on a high point with Geoff H's final choice: Eva Cassidy singing 'Ain't no sunshine', which I think came off her album Time after time. Was this song first recorded by Bill Withers in the early 1970s? Seems we had lots of 'time after times' during the evening.

So there passed another annual committee members' selections. It may have been me in a gloomy mental state after a few days of field work in east Gippsland and a long, boring, hot drive back to the meeting that afternoon/ evening from Bairnsdale, but did I detect a sense of melancholy in the choice of music? Selections 2 (Nina Simone), 4 (Buddy Rich), 10 (Disturbed), 13 (Frank Sinatra), 17 (Tony Bennett) and 19 (Eva Cassidy) were all down-beat songs, dealing with lost lovers, or unfortunate misunderstandings long regretted, or lonely boozy nights in dimly lit diners. Perhaps it's just that those subjects typify the human condition. Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave would have fitted in well.

Yours 'till next month.

Paul I Boon