S1 EP010 Live from the Melbourne HiFi Show 2024. Roving reporter, Brad Serhan gets the vibe of the show and chats to two great characters of the show. Chris Allman from Allclear Audio is a new cartridge re-tipper in Australia who is re-making rather than simply re-tipping. Brad also catches up with world-renowned Kim Ryrie from DEQX who is best known for the Fairlight Synthesizer.
S2 EP037 Host Andrew Hutchison and co-host David Corazza have strong opinions on the sound and gear at the Stereonet HiFi & AV Show 2025. The good, bad, and terrible of the Show. All the big brands, the good, bad and who got it wrong. COMING 9/09/25
Podcast transcripts below – Episode 010, Episode 037 COMING SOON
Transcipt S1 EP010 Stereonet HiFi & AV Show 2024
Live from the Stereonet HiFi & AV Show 2024 – Chris Allman on re-tipping cartridges & Kim Ryrie from DEQX.
Chris Allman: Yeah, there’s a lot of retippers out there and it frustrates me now, Anne, because people are cut. You know, they’re buying the cantilevers from Japan, and they’re getting people’s cartridges, cutting and shunting them, putting brass splints in and doing some horrendous things that you wouldn’t believe. when I retip a cartridge, I’m making the cartridge back like it was new again.
Andrew Hutchison: Hi, it’s Andrew here, not an audiophile. Episode ten. We’ve just come back. We, Brad, myself, Sharron just come back from the Melbourne stereo net hi fi and av show which I’d have to say was a great success for everybody concerned. Everyone seemed happy and fantastic. exhibitors, lots of great displays, lots of happy hi fi enthusiasts wandering around and audio visual enthusiasts wandering around enjoying great sounds. Lots of australian manufacturers there, which was a pleasure. Many, I’m not going to mention them all at this stage. We’re going to cover that in a future episode. What we did do, or Brad did in his roving reporting was catch up with two future guests on the show. Chris Allman, who’s more or less a cartridge maker. I’m not sure that anyone realised we made cartridges in Australia but apparently we do. I didn’t know, but I’ve found out Chris is a great guy. I had a chat with him myself as well. Does the incredibly fine work of retipping cartridges. And of course Brad also caught up with Kim Ryrie, somewhat of a legend in australian electronic and audio design. Known of course many years ago for the Fairlight synthesizer. His involvement with that he wasn’t the only person involved but certainly one of the geniuses behind that. A ah, very, very smart man. And of course he has his DEQX or DEQX as it is generally known. dsp pre amplifier, dac streaming. Apparently now type product that you can use to turn a box full of random drivers into an amazing sounding high end loudspeaker. At least I think that’s the gist of it. So Chris is up first. And now these are roving reports. The audio is good for show conditions, quite intelligible. but of course when we have them on the show one would like to think the audio would be slightly better. And we’ll also in the case of Kim, nail him down on structure of the range of his products and what they can achieve. So thanks for listening and enjoy.
Brad Serhan: Okay, Mavis Stafford, welcome back to the MCG. It’s Richie Benneaux here to introduce you to, John De Sensi and Chris Allman.
John De Sensi: Of all clear audio.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. Anyway, enough of my silliness. John, how do you know Chris? How. What’s the connection?
John De Sensi: connection is via a turntable that a few of us are kind of building. and I think that’s how it came about, didn’t it?
Chris Allman: yeah, there’s through, through Kevin and,
John De Sensi: Warren Jones.
Chris Allman: Yeah, Warren Jones.
Brad Serhan: Okay.
John De Sensi: He’s building a super duper, sort of reference turntable.
Kim Ryrie: Okay.
Brad Serhan: There’s a few of you sort of joining. Joining the team to. Are you part of the sonic hoops? The listen?
Kim Ryrie: Yes.
Brad Serhan: Okay, we are.
John De Sensi: We are. So Chris, retips and manufactures his own line of incredible cartridges. He’s one of the best re tippers in Australia, if nothing the world.
Chris Allman: Thank you.
Brad Serhan: And what did I see in your room there? What were you showing me?
Chris Allman: Well, yeah, this is a bit of, my baby. I’ve always been interested in passive preamps. Back when I was 15 or 16, when I was messing around with DIY audio, I used to make the most basic of a passive pot, which is, literally a pot and a plastic box and some ins and some outs. And of course, the problem with that, is your source is seeing a different load as you’re turning the, the pot up. So it messes with the frequency. And, yeah, it sort of interested me for a bit as a kid, but, yeah. and then as the years go by, you see there’s other ways of doing this. You can have a resistive pot and again, that’s got its own set of problems. And then there’s the transformer based pots. But the issue with these is the iron core. And the iron core of the transformer causes a dip and a peak in the curve. and I heard about somebody winding these amazing transformers. And, I got him to do some for me, which have got this perma alloy core. And, yeah, the specs are just out of this world, flat to 35,000 hz. a beautiful square wave. So I made one with the most basic box and a stepped pot. And, it was out of this world. So I spoke to John and said,
00:05:00
Chris Allman: how can we make this really audiophile, how can we make this happen? he sort of helped me on the way to, making the beautiful thing you saw in this.
Brad Serhan: It is stunning. I know Andrew, Hutchinson will love.
Kim Ryrie: The look of that.
Brad Serhan: so you two combined to do the design on the final.
John De Sensi: Pretty much, pretty much. So there was a lengthy software kind of development. we wanted to make it remote control, have balance control. We also has a special feature for a passive preamp which is actually having gain. So it’s got a six decibels gain switch which is very useful for a passive, And have I missed anything else?
Chris Allman: Now there’s a mute as well. But there’s, there’s really nothing out there. everything else on there on the passive front apart from nothing, nobody’s got six decibels. Again is they’ve got a motorized pot generally.
Brad Serhan: Yes.
Chris Allman: So you’ve got a big motorized pot and then a rat’s nest of wires going to the back of the motorized pot. So you open it up and look inside and it’s all horrible. And because it’s a motorized pot there really is no way of giving you balance. And I said from the outset we need balance. So what we’ve done is John’s help is we’ve got really high quality relays and we can switch out one channel and not the other. So we’ve got balance, all on the remote. And you haven’t got all these horrible.
Brad Serhan: Wires everywhere which what, introduce noise I assume. Pardon my ignorance.
John De Sensi: yeah, they can act as antennas and pick up all sorts of noise. But also you’re lengthening the signal path which actually always reduces the signal integrity or can compromise it. It’s not done properly. And when you’ve got so many secondary wires as a steps attenuated transformer, it’s very hard to kind of twist them all together to kind of reduce cross torque and interact. So we’ve eliminated all that by having a very sort of multi layer printed circuit board that actually takes care of all the messy wiring. So you get this beautiful neat product.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Yeah that’s brilliant.
Chris Allman: Right. Now the gain how that works works is that, no other passive has got gain. So how basically a transformer based attenuator works is you’ve got so many turns, a certain number of turns on the primary and then you’ve got stepped increasing terms on the secondary until it’s one to one. what we can do is we can switch out a section of the primary. So you’ve got, if you’ve got, it’s not ten turns, it’s hundreds. But if you had ten turns here and ten turns on the out, that’s one to one. If you’ve got five turns here and ten turns here. You double the volume. So we looked at what point changing what the source sees becomes an issue and starts to change things. And it’s way above what we’ve actually done. So six decibels doesn’t hurt anything and you’ve got gain.
Brad Serhan: Excellent. Right, yeah, crossing that threshold without crossing that threshold.
Chris Allman: But just if you want to keep it all pure, we’ve got it on a switch on the remote, 60 b on six, db off. Brilliant.
Brad Serhan: and, what is it going to self?
Have you selling it direct or, uh. We’re looking at retail
Have you selling it direct or,
Chris Allman: We’Re looking at, retail. and, at, this point it’s looking around $17,000. But we’ve got a show special of $10,000, which is actually quite cheap when you consider the amount of technology in this thing. And the transformers are very special.
Brad Serhan: Obviously that’s the reason why getting these transformers made a difference, obviously, for the whole course. Brilliant. And have you got retailers lined up?
Chris Allman: I’ve got some distributors who are interested and, we’ve met a few people at the show, so probably after the show we’ll have, ah, more of who that might be.
Brad Serhan: Excellent.
is a cartridge retipper and also builds engines
Chris Allman: Well, the other thing I do is I’m a cartridge retipper. M. I also build cartridges and, I’m a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I’ve got a couple coming out. If I’d had another. If this show was another two weeks away, we would have had a cartridge here. But it was just the engine was made, but the bodies weren’t quite ready. And, Yeah, we just run out of time. But, Yeah, very, very, very proud of what we.
Brad Serhan: Very exciting.
Chris Allman: Very exciting. Yeah.
Brad Serhan: All made here.
Chris Allman: All made here. I wind the coils myself. solder the coils myself. everything, everything is done myself.
Brad Serhan: Amazing. And what now? One thing I haven’t mentioned, the brand.
Chris Allman: All clear. Audio.
Brad Serhan: It wasn’t clear to me before because I forgot to ask and stain it.
Chris Allman: Yeah, yeah. Now, all clear audience.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, well, brilliant. Chris, I’ll come back to you and we’ll chat some more. Kevin, you’re an attractive man.
Chris Allman: No worries. Yep.
Brad Serhan: Thanks, mate. Go ahead.
When I retip a cartridge I’m making the cartridge back like it was new
Chris Allman: Yeah, there’s a lot of retippers out there. And it frustrates me now, Ann, because, people are cut, you know, they’re buying the cantilevers from Japan. and, they’re getting people’s cartridges, cutting and shunting them, putting brass splints in and doing some horrendous things that you wouldn’t believe. when I retip a cartridge I’m making the cartridge back like it was new again. so I’ve been doing something ivanade. Koetsu is many thousand dollars. And I’ll be removing the front pole piece, cleaning the coils, rotating the suspension to fresh suspension. removing any broken bits out of the stub. New cantilever in. And when it all goes
00:10:00
Chris Allman: back together again, they’ve effectively got a new koetsu or, whatever it might be.
Brad Serhan: Restoration is probably not good enough.
Chris Allman: It’s not a retip, it’s a complete writ of service. as new, it’s as new. And I’m aligning the tips within a degree. if I do a diamond only, it can take me several hours to make sure that that diamond is absolutely spot on. Which you actually don’t often get on a factory cartridge because they haven’t got the time that I’ve got to sit there for two and a half hours, making it absolutely perfect.
Brad Serhan: I suppose in the old days of racing cars, blueprinted, if you like, everything sort of the tolerances. Your tolerances are really tight.
Chris Allman: They’re really tight. And I’ve also gone to the extent of Koetsu is now finished and gone. And I’ve managed to find out, because it was never published, I found out which diamonds they were using. I’ve actually got them to make me a whole, which a lot of money. But I’ve got them to make me a run of diamonds. So into the future, I’ll be able to. Well, December they’ll arrive, I’ll be able to reciprocity. It would be indistinguishable from factory.
Brad Serhan: That’s brilliant, mate.
Chris Allman: Oh, well, yeah. it’s a passion. if I’m not retipping, I’m doing something similar, related for myself. So it’s, Yeah, it’s more than a business, it.
Brad Serhan: Comes from the heart.
Chris Allman: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Thanks, mate.
Chris Allman: No worries at all. Happy to speak. Yeah. How it sort of all really started to happen for me was, I did a retip, for Mark, who’s running the starrynet show here. And Mark, Dohmann fitted that cartridge to his turntable. And Mark Dohmann sort of went, mmm. Oh, this is nice. And then Mark Dohmann contacted me from that contact and, ah, sent me a box of cartridges. And I opened the box of cartridges and I thought, oh, yeah, I can do that one. I can do that one. And then the next one. This is destroyed. the suspension was split. the coils were broken. It was just an absolute mess. So the cartridge was worth maybe a. There’s not a $1,000. It’s not worth. Not worth doing. So I rang up Mark and said, yeah, look, mark, you know, this, I can do those two, but this one’s not worth doing. And he said, oh, it’s. It’s got sentimental value. Could you do it for me anyway? And at the time I thought, oh, why does he want to do this? This is nothing. Look, okay, Mark, whatever, you know. And I rewound the cartridge and I put a, new cantilever diamond on and, suspension and made it as new. And I sent it back to mark and he rang me up and he said, you’ve just built a cartridge. And I said, yes, I know. And he said, you’ll also be doing all the work for Nirvana.
Kim Ryrie: Wow.
Brad Serhan: Brilliant.
Chris Allman: Yeah. So you almost.
Brad Serhan: Was it a test?
Chris Allman: It was a test, yes.
Brad Serhan: and you more than passed muster. Well, in terms of high jump, you cleared it by a clear way. Brilliant. So that got you on the move as far as your own cartridge. Brilliant. Great story.
Andrew Hutchison: So, yeah, thanks, Chris, for the, info there related to, retipping, et cetera, and how you sort of almost accidentally ended up manufacturing a cartridge from scratch.
If you have questions, feel free to ask them in future episodes
And, now onto Kim. So Kim Ryrie, has mentioned in the introduction somewhat of a legend. The guy is a genius. This interview with Brad. Brad has cornered, him in the back of his room during the show. And, I guess it’s somewhat of a stream of consciousness without perhaps a laying out of the finer details of what the range of the products are. So enjoy. but if you have questions, which you may do, we will absolutely get them answered in a future episode. When he’s interviewed between now and Christmas. and of course, comment, send us an email. Details are on the website. or of course, comments on the YouTube, video. well, not video, it’s an audio. An audio with a picture. But, at least you can comment there. So feel free to ask questions. We’ll have him answer them, when he’s on the show. So here you go.
Kim Ryrie introduces impulse response correction for drivers in loudspeakers
now here’s Kim, talking about his new, gen four range of products.
Brad Serhan: So, Kim, we were talking earlier about one of your new products, regarding taking old speakers. Is that what you’re saying? Probably, if you would.
Kim Ryrie: Yes. So with the new decks, what we call generation four, because we’re now 27 year old sort of startup. So we’ve sort of been doing r, and d for like 27 years. And we’ve had these products that have been very difficult to work because, you know, there were 160 pages operating manuals and was all Windows based software that needed a lot of hand holding. but what it was effectively was we introduced the idea of using impulse response correction for drivers in loudspeakers like Wharfedale Midrange, because they all have, as we know, they’ve all got frequency response errors. But
00:15:00
Kim Ryrie: the stuff that is virtually impossible to address in the analogue world is the timing and phase response. and usually a lot of the sort of equalization you used to do in the analog domain could actually cause more phase problems than you’re starting with. So what we call sort of group delay errors wherever some frequency groups are sort of more delayed than others. And it’s only in the order of milliseconds or fraction of a millisecond. But sound travels 1ft in a millisecond, you know, 30 cm in a millisecond. So it’s not insignificant. And it happens a lot because of the electromechanics of loudspeakers, which is why loudspeakers are, essentially the showstopper when it comes to affordable reproduction of true high definition audio. And it’s why, you know, the best of them could cost $100,000 a pair. You know, when they get it right.
Brad Serhan: The buck stops with a loudspeaker. In a sense.
Kim Ryrie: The buck stops with a loudspeaker.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: And then you’ve got the added problem that you’re trying to get an amplifier, that will do ten octaves of audio along one speaker curve. Yeah. You know, it’s all hard work. So then you not only pay a lot of money for the speakers, but you then pay a lot of money for really good amplifiers.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: That can pump, you know, tens of amps for base frequencies and, you know, and yet still have air happening in the tweezers. It’s, it’s not easy.
Brad Serhan: No.
Kim Ryrie: You know, so better in, you know, in the pro world when active decades ago.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: Whereby you’ve got a separate amplifier for every type of driver. So typically one for bass, one for mids, one for tweeter m, that means you’re dividing the audio into sort of three or four octaves per driver. That makes the job much easier for the amplifiers, it makes it much easier for the cables, it makes it basically much easier for everything. And I experienced that when our band back in the seventies, I got hold of a pair of altec voice of the theater speakers, which is the big sort of, you know, horn reflex place thing.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, yeah.
Kim Ryrie: With a horn on top. And it had an Altec passive crossover, and we used to blow. The drivers are regularly, regularly, you know, every month or two at least we blow the diaphragm up in the tweeter and someone said, why don’t you do this actively? You know? And at the time, I helped start a magazine called Electronics today became Eti. Electronics today.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: Remember it well? Yeah. And we used to do projects every month. And one of those was a little hundred watt amplifier module. So I got a couple of those and then I made a 24 decibels proactive active filter at the front end. So this was my first experience of doing an active speaker. And you know, so we had one amp on the horn and the other for the woofer and put them all in the box and we never blew up another horn again. But more to the point, everything just got so much cleaner. And I’m thinking, well, hang on, this, this was really pretty easy to do, you know, why isn’t everything active? And of course, in the pro audio world, it was already active. But active didn’t suit the marketing of consumer audio because you needed a box that you only needed two wires to connect to the box. You needed one amp for one speaker that everyone could deal with that.
Brad Serhan: Keep it simple.
Kim Ryrie: Yeah, keep it simple.
Brad Serhan: Kiss.
Kim Ryrie: And admittedly, it would have been very difficult to do it any other way. And back in the day, amplifiers were expensive. You just couldn’t sort of come up with lots of amplifiers for no money. But what we did when we started, decks, and that’s another story I’d been doing, my company was Fairlight, where we used the first DSP. We used the first Motorola DSP chips at Fairlight to do the computer musical instrument. And, and then, one of our, after I’d left fairlight, the program, no, I still working actually in fairlight. But one of the guys started a company called Lake, and he rang me up and said, oh, look, we’ve developed this headphone technology using finite impulse response filters, which I knew very little about at the time, right? He said, so come and have a, have a listen. And so he showed me, this processing
00:20:00
Kim Ryrie: that we could do with it. They were doing with a chip that the CSIRo had developed. It was called the a 250 or something like that. And it did 250, what’s called taps, of finite impulse response filtering. And he had a little six inch car, loudspeaker, in a shoebox and he had absolutely brilliant. And he measured this speaker, and they created this, impulse response filter that corrected it. And they thought they’d make m their fortune selling these chips to car audio, to car manufacturers, to, ah, make speaker sound better. And sure enough, it did. It was a very short, in today’s terms, it was a very short, low resolution correction because of the technology at the time, but it made a difference to the speaker. And, he said, could fairlight use things? and I said, well, fairlight don’t make speakers, so, you know, we can’t really do that. But, you know, maybe we could think of doing speakers because this is really cute, this technology. And then just as I was leaving, he said, oh, by the way, it takes about 250 milliseconds of processing, so that adds, like, quarter of a second of latency. And I said, no, sorry, we just couldn’t ever use that. But let me know. He said, but we think we’ve got a solution to that. And I said, well, great. Let me, let me know.
Brad Serhan: This is like, this is like, this is now.
Kim Ryrie: Lake. They left the CSIRO. They’d started. Lake. and, and a year later, I got a phone call. Well, we fixed the latency. Come and have a listen. So I had another listen, and they said, could you help us? We’re doing headphones out of headphone technology. Wherever the sound that you’re listening through, through headphones seems to be coming outside of your head.
Kim: Dolby discovered the headphone technology. You sold Lake to Dolby
And it was really impressive. And they said, can you help us market this? And at the time, I was not really full time at Fairlight. I was more a consultant. And I said, yeah, I’ve got time to do that. And so we ended up, long story short, we ended up selling lake to Dolby.
Brad Serhan: Excuse me, Kim, reminisce of the cold. Sorry about this. You sold Lake to Dolby? Well, not you, per se.
Kim Ryrie: We ended up turning people on. Lake went public. Dolby discovered the headphone technology. And I said, well, why don’t you use this to do loudspeakers? And, Brian said, who was the CEO? He said, no, why don’t you do it?
Brad Serhan: Lobbed it your way.
Kim Ryrie: We’re too busy doing the headphone stuff. You know, why don’t you do it? You know, we found it’s all pretty difficult, but, you know, and you should use this guy, Paul Glendenning, who was one of our engineers, and he’s a genius. So Paul and I started at the time, we called it clarity Eq. and we were going to lose license their patent to do the low latency fir. But when Dolby bought them, they said, oh, sorry, you can’t, we’re not going to license our patent. So we’d already started clarity and Paul said, don’t worry, I know another way to do this. So we did it another way. We got a patent for the way we did it. The only difference was we had to use floating point, DSP instead of fixed point, which made it a little bit more expensive.
Brad Serhan: Circumvented there.
Kim Ryrie: We circumvented that. So, and then that’s how effectively clarity started. And so basically what it meant was that you could, as I was saying, you know, loudspeaker electromechanics have a lot of problems, especially the cheap ones. So you could measure their frequency response errors, their timing, their grip delay errors, and you could create a filter. And using the finite impulse response filters, you could compensate the audio that’s driving each transducer to compensate for the shortcomings. And for instance, you would fix, you know, you obviously can’t speed up, delayed frequencies, but you could slow down, the frequencies that were on time.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: And let the slower ones catch up. And then you’d glue it all back together again. And so that’s why group delay ends up being so group delay. And we only had to add, you know, say, five milliseconds of delay to pull that off. So, that’s always been the fundamental stuff. At the same time, we correct the frequency response or set it to a target. So at the same. So that was the fundamental stuff that we formed the company to do.
Brad Serhan: That’s the basis of clarity then takes.
Kim Ryrie: That’s right. And the problem was that we could only use DSP chips at the time. This is now back in the late nineties. Right. So we came up with a way of using two dsps, two shark dsps, which were the best around at the time.
00:25:00
Kim Ryrie: And we managed to fit, to do quite long filters. I think we ended up doing, just trying to think, would have been, 16, about 20,000 taps. But that was across stereo. So it’s only about 10,000 taps per left and right channel. And we go say 2000 taps to the tweeter and 4000 to the midrange, another 4000 to base, which wasn’t.
Brad Serhan: So when you say taps, just for.
Kim Ryrie: Taps, taps means the resolution by which you can grabs. Sort of grabs. Yes, effectively it grabs. But if you want to work it out mathematically, let’s say you’re doing a sample rate of, I won’t say 44.1 code to keep the number simple. Let’s say 40k.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: Ah, sample rate. And let’s say you have a 4k tap filter. Will you divide that 4k by forty k and you’ve got, ten. Yeah, sorry, 10 should say.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: so that was the resolution we had got you.
Brad Serhan: Okay.
Kim Ryrie: Okay, now here’s where it all gets weird. People said, oh, you’re not only doing stuff at 44 one, we want to do everything at 96k. So, okay, now you can dividend 4k by ninety six k and you don’t have 10 hz resolution anymore. Now your resolution’s gone to 20 hz or actually about 24 hz, which is a whole octave.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: So you’ve got virtually no resolution down in the bottom optic.
Brad Serhan: Right.
Kim Ryrie: So when people say, oh, you know, you’ll get more resolution going to 96k, well it’s the exact opposite. You’ve actually halved your resolution that you could correct the timing information. So. Yeah, that’s so fortunately these days everyone’s worked out that the high sample rates are completely utter waste of time, especially to all us baby boomers who can’t hear a thing over ten k anyway.
Brad Serhan: So I couldn’t possibly admit that, Kim.
Kim Ryrie: So we spent a lot of time making everything run at sort of meet with all the marketing. So now, and of course we can do processing at whatever you like. We can do 192k, whatever. So every time you double the sample rate you have the resolution of your correction within the frequencies you can actually hear.
Brad Serhan: Yes. Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Especially in the base end.
Kim Ryrie: Yeah. But now that everything is being streamed on tidal and cubars and whatever at ah, typically, you know, forty eight k, twenty four bits. That’s right down our alley because that means we’re running at what I call an ideal sample rate.
Brad Serhan: Yes.
Kim Ryrie: Gives us good resolution. We’re now running much longer filters in the new generation products so we can do really good. Yeah.
As you go up in octave you’re getting more and more resolution
So we’re getting much more resolution, getting more like for instance in the, in the, bottom up the, in 2020 to 40 octave, we get about quarter octave at the moment and we can do better than that if we want to. It’s sort of good enough.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: And as you go up in octaves you’re getting more and more resolution.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, as you go.
Kim Ryrie: Yeah. So the resolution is like four, four to eight times, better in the new system than the old system. and we’ve got more channels, we’ve got eight. So we can do four way, crossovers. The other issue I discovered is that and you know of course the steeper the crossovers you use.
Brad Serhan: Yes.
Kim Ryrie: The more you can make each driver work in their comfort zone.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: So if you’ve only got a very shallow crossover say between the base, the woofer and the mid range driver, for example, if you only had twelve decibels per octave, you know, two pole filter.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: Then an octave below that crossover frequency and let’s say the crossover frequency is 200 hz. That means that midrange driver is still getting quite a lot of base energy hitting it which is causing it to move towards its xmax.
Brad Serhan: Yes.
Brad Serhan: Which is upsetting it in a modulation distortion and all that sort of stuff.
Kim Ryrie: And it’s just introducing stuff. Not supposed to be there. So if we introduce a As Alan was saying we tend to use something like well from from base to mid range we use 72 decibels per octave. So that’s a twelve pole filter. That’s all verging on a brick wall filter.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: That means that you can sort of go as loud as you like and the mid range driver is going to be as happy as Larry because it’s just not getting that excursion excursion.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: And it has the other advantage that also
00:30:00
Kim Ryrie: what happens is that the woofer when it’s allowed to be outputting audio above, let’s call it a 200 hz crossover to the mid range, something in that order. it’s starting to be, if I’m starting to, if it’s, it’s, if it’s hearing if it’s output frequencies not at 200 but at 408 hundred those frequencies are beaming forward which is making the dispersion from the driver less natural.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: And the same applies when you’re going from the mid tweet especially.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: So these are all the advantages of steeper things. Now of course you can’t make filters that steep in the analog world. I mean you can do it that the phase corruption will be just out of control and the tolerance you would need on the components is equally out of control. But you can do it digitally no problem. And because we’re doing because we’re working in the time domain we can actually make the crossovers remain m stay in linear phase which normally you can’t do in the analog world at all once you go past the six decibels per octave. Very shallow filters.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: So we can keep them linear phase at very steep crossovers. So we have minimal, almost no crossover distortion between drivers. and you’re keeping the drivers happy as Larry.
Brad Serhan: Comfort zone. It’s all about comfort zone and it’s.
Kim Ryrie: All about even dispersion. You can turn a lot of our drivers literally 180 degrees and they’re verging on omnidirectional. That’s, that’s, that was our party trick we used to do with the nhT.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: Speakers. Oh, yes. Way back.
Brad Serhan: I remember that.
Kim Ryrie: And
Brad Serhan: So yeah, that’s the goal. Isn’t the power response being. Yeah. As the power response in the room is even all the way around.
Kim Ryrie: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Which just tends to sound more natural, doesn’t it? Yeah, yeah. and you just get a wider.
Brad Serhan: Sound stone and that’s because just those who are listening, you’re not getting that beaming, as you call it, the directivity of the driver drooping off axis. So from the base or the mid range or whatever, you’re crossing over that optimum point where it doesn’t beam.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: The other. But then we’re sort of trying and I’m just sort of assuming the whole audio world is going to go active, you know, tomorrow afternoon. And just, it was just so naive that it was ridiculous, you know?
Brad Serhan: Yeah, yeah.
Kim Ryrie: And I mean, funnily enough, it’s happening more now as people are getting into wireless speakers because they have to put amplifiers in the speakers anyway, so they might as well put more of them.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: And these days you can make amplifiers for $10, you know, and very small in cheap.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: So what, so what? We have been, you know, it wasn’t a good business.
Brad Serhan: So in other words, you had a particular aim in mind and it seemed.
Kim Ryrie: Like a bad idea at the time.
Brad Serhan: It’s morphed, it’s mutated.
Kim Ryrie: Yes. So that’s right. So I, from day one, like 20 years ago, I’m just thinking we should just focus on active. We should try to get people to go active. And a lot of people did. Of course, we had oems doing it, but also because I was saying that the hardware was limited in its resolution, our resources were limited in terms of the amount of OMB we could do. We ran out of DSP memory a decade ago, all those sort of issues. So then of course processes came out. The sort of things that we have in our iPhones.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: And they over the last decade have just got so insanely powerful. 64 bit, you know, quad core, you know.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: Orders of multitude more powerful than the DSP chips.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: So we just had to ditch the DSP chips, which were fine for doing traditional audio stuff like simple crossovers and simple egg heres and stuff like that.
All the new models initially have streaming capabilities
But they really were not good at doing the FIR stuff. You just needed much more processing power and much more memory. So thats why the new arm processors is made. Thats what we call generation four stuff is its all based around multi core processing. And Linux, which is the operating system which also then lets us get into Internet streaming and all the other good.
Brad Serhan: Things that you currently have on.
Kim Ryrie: Yeah, so all the new models initially have streaming capabilities. we’re using volume, with them. So
00:35:00
Kim Ryrie: we can do tire bars and stuff. You can do airplanes. So you can be running stuff directly from your phone, Spotify or whatever, just by airplane. Yeah, but so we’ve sort of tried to package everything into a, into a more integrated solution. And then we’ve moved all our software. All the old software was running on Windows. There was nearly a million lines of code developed over 20 years.
Brad Serhan: Jesus.
Kim Ryrie: And it was just a nightmare. And we thought, okay, this has got to go. Everyone hates windows and having to have PCs running this stuff. Let’s move it all into the cloud. So we had to rewrite all that stuff, a lot of it. And so we had five programmers working on this stuff for years. And so this is a.
Brad Serhan: Sorry to write, but this is the culmination of all that work with the new.
Kim Ryrie: Right. So this is what we call the, for generation four. So it was lots of years doing the hardware as well because. Talk about disasters. Right. So the first round of our hardware development used the AKM DACs and a to ds and sample rate converters. And then the AKM factory in Japan burnt down. Oh, yeah, they couldn’t make the chips. So we spent a year and a half designing that hardware. Had to ditch the whole thing. Then we decided, then I decided I don’t want to buy these arm, processor chips from chinese companies because they’ll just stop production, you know, unannounced. So let’s use the one, these OEM specific ones that Samsung had brought out. They started a company called Arctic and they made these very cute, beautifully made little small arm, processor hardware modules.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: So we started to use them and we’d spend about a year developing on that. And then they shut down the company because they weren’t getting enough business. And I’d only chosen them because I thought, well, because it’s Samsung, we can rely on being able to get them forever.
Brad Serhan: So I mean, it’s okay if you’re an athlete and you’re running in the hurdles. Generally the hurdles stay the same as you get towards the finishing line, your hurdles getting higher and bloody higher. So what happened then?
Kim Ryrie: So then I’m thinking, holy mackerel, I’m gonna have to sell the doghouse, keep funding this.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, that’s funny. The dog house you got, kid.
Kim Ryrie: Yeah. So anyway, then we, found a really good supplier in China, actually, that brought out not only a, good quad processor at the time, but they had an upgrade path for the future, which maintain a lot of compatibility. So we were designing all that. so it’s just been a lot of, you know, lots of balls in the air that have to come together. So it’s why, you know, we’ve been talking about this new product for years and it just kept having problems like this thrown at it.
Brad Serhan: And now it’s.
Kim Ryrie: So we’re finally, now we’ve been, we’ve got about a hundred of the beta unit. We’re in a. So when we finalized the new hardware.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: we, we went through three revisions of hardware just to get it right for production.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: So once we got to that point, we announced the beta program that we have. So the software is still in beta.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: and m so that meant that we contacted all our old DEQX. You know, we’ve got a lot of DEQX users around the world.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: And we offered them to be part of our beta software testing program. About a hundred of them took that up straight away. So we’ve got 100 units out on test and getting, they’ve been out on test for probably five months now.
Brad Serhan: So when we. Sorry to interrupt you, but when we did the, or, drop us into it momentarily. So when we did the show together in April.
Kim Ryrie: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Australian.
Chris Allman: Hi.
Brad Serhan: Foster show in April in Sydney. That was, that was just before you released those.
Has there been, have there been many changes since we used your DEQX
Has there been, have there been many changes since we used your DEQX?
Kim Ryrie: There’s been a lot of hardware changes. There’s been a lot of software changes.
Brad Serhan: Right.
Kim Ryrie: Yeah. And we brought on new people in the software team. We’ve got five, people doing software now. And, we’ve got a new software director, a guy that, funnily enough, I used to work with, you know, 30 years ago, we were competitors, at Fairlight. We made a big, you know, multi channel, massive digital mixing console workstation we used to sell to Hollywood. And he had another company called, I forget what they were called, but he made a competing, digital console. We both selling them to Hollywood and they’re all around the world. We were, I mean, funnily enough, the top of the line stuff for big high. And these were all hundred
00:40:00
Kim Ryrie: thousand dollars a hit type console back in, what.
Brad Serhan: The seventies or eighties? Eighties.
Kim Ryrie: Ah, this would have been the nineties.
Brad Serhan: Nineties, wow.
Kim Ryrie: Yeah, late eighties. And, So we had, well, Fairlight had most of Hollywood.
Chris Allman: We had a.
Kim Ryrie: We had Torrey o. Glenn. Glenn. Paramount Pictures, sony pictures, they were buying these things, $100,000 each to do all their post production for their movies. We won an Oscar, actually, for services to the.
Brad Serhan: You’ve got the statue.
Kim Ryrie: not you, per se. Not me. But actually, I’ll tell you who does. Chris Alfred, who’s our cto now. He got the Oscar. He’s got it at home.
Brad Serhan: Do you take turns? Don’t you just. No, no rubbing shoulders with the Oscar.
Kim Ryrie: I’m not allowed to touch it, I don’t think.
Brad Serhan: Okay, fair enough.
Kim Ryrie: So anyway.
Brad Serhan: But Chris is amazing, fascinating in all serious. That’s an amazing achievement.
Kim Ryrie: Yeah. So we’ve just been so lucky, probably because of the Fairlight legacy. I’ve just always been lucky to have great people working with us.
Brad Serhan: You’ve worked with them over that time and built those relationships.
Kim Ryrie: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: And there’s nothing like that but a teamwork. So you’re now a lot of us.
Kim Ryrie: And Joe Jonah Wright.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: as I said, he was making the other console. He’s a fantastic programmer. He’s done everything. You know, Joe.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Right.
Kim Ryrie: And so he’s our coo now. You know, I’m starting to get old. You, know.
Brad Serhan: Can’t believe you’re saying that.
Kim Ryrie: Kim, he’s ten years behind me, mate.
Brad Serhan: Oh, God. I don’t want to argue because you still look young, but, yes, we are both, edgy.
Kim Ryrie: So, anyway, no, Joe’s been fantastic and he’s, Well, he’s a real programmer, unlike me. Right. He’s able to just pull everyone together.
Brad Serhan: And so he coordinates all that. But who was the fellow? Sorry? The fellow that you were competing with, in Hollywood. I took you away from that main.
Kim Ryrie: No, that was Joe.
Brad Serhan: That was Joe.
Kim Ryrie: That was Joe he was making.
Brad Serhan: I’m sorry, I’ve got to apologize. I remember.
Kim Ryrie: And he sold dozens and dozens of those. And we sold them to not only Hollywood, we had, you know, NHK in Japan had had dozens of these Fairlight consoles that were hundred. In fact, they were really expensive in Japan. They were like a couple hundred thousand.
Brad Serhan: So two Australians were basically, you know, we had the.
Kim Ryrie: We had the post production market sewn up. amazing at the early part of it, anyway. And then what happened subsequently with Fairlight is it got bought by, blackmagic in Melbourne who were focused on video.
Fairlight is a digital equalization and crossover system for post production
they had the DaVinci video editor software, but they wanted to integrate audio with their video, so they bought Fairlight. And today, if you go to, blackmagic or davinci, it’s the Fairlight operating system that’s running all their audio. They can run fairlight can now do thousands of tracks, for post production. It’s the fastest growing audio post production thing around, as far as I know, because you can download it for free, the entry level version. Then you can buy hardware options, consoles, moving faders, the whole, it’s a modular approach and it’s all fully integrated to the incredible. It’s fantastic. They’ve done a fantastic job with that. And, so anyway, look, long story short, I’ve always just thought the, the missing LinkedIn audio was the domestic playback environment. And so that’s where we focused DEQX, which DEQX, by the way, I changed the name years ago, mainly because of trademark issues with clarity. And, DEQX stands for digital equalization and crossover, which is sort of, we sort of think of form for doing a high definition allowance. It’s got to be digital, it’s got to have equalization. But that also means time domain equalization, not just frequency response. And the crossovers key to get right, you know, the linear phase crossovers.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: So that’s stuff that works.
Brad Serhan: Passive designers only wish, right.
Kim Ryrie: But, you know, I mean, you’re one of the few people that I’ve seen who can make the passive crossover sound amazing. You know, those little speakers from, you guys do the mewtwo. And the problem is we can’t make them sound much better, which is extremely unusual. Usually we can take almost any speaker, measure them, do a correction on them, and they can sound, really alarmingly better.
Brad Serhan: Right.
Kim Ryrie: Your speakers sound slightly better, I must admit, but not that much better with the caliber.
Brad Serhan: I’m slightly, I’m blushing somewhat, but, no, I appreciate you saying, that is great.
Kim Ryrie: No, they’re really astonishing. And it’s, and it’s, and it’s why, you know, they’ve had so many awards, and I just think that’s very
00:45:00
Kim Ryrie: well deserved. So, anyway, thank you.
You were going to talk about taking old speakers or whatever with the new generation
Brad Serhan: I suppose the thing is that I know, I know we’ve probably got a little bit of time constraint on you because you should be upstairs. Was there a rick? Now, we keep it so easy to, just mean I, but what, what we might do is a part two give you a rest, because I think probably need to go upstairs. Not because I want to stop, but I don’t want to dominate. You were sort of going to talk about taking old speakers or whatever with the new generation. four. What I might do is grab you later and we’ll say, okay, break it up. Although, yeah, that wouldn’t just say, hey.
Kim Ryrie: This is part of the reason why we did the amplifiers now. as well, because that was always one of the problems for people being active. Suddenly I need thousands of amplifier channels.
Brad Serhan: Yes.
Kim Ryrie: And I don’t want them looking big and clunky and being too expensive. So we’ve also.
Brad Serhan: And that what I filmed.
Kim Ryrie: Hm.
Brad Serhan: Upstairs is that particular unit when we had it, the show, that unit was. That was, that was a different unit. What you’ve got upstairs. Correct.
Kim Ryrie: Sorry, which one?
Brad Serhan: Well, you know how you’ve got the. Where the Dax on board, the streaming on top of the stand?
Kim Ryrie: Yeah. That.
Brad Serhan: That one is the one that would potentially sell for what was 20,000.
Kim Ryrie: Is that right? Yeah. That lists. In America we do everything in us dollars because that’s where my markets are. But. So that in America is like 15,900 Us.
Brad Serhan: Gotcha.
Kim Ryrie: and so for the beta people, it’s virtually half. I mean, it’s because for beta, I mean, you know, reading between the lines. Right. Once we go public with the products next year, once we’re out of beta.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: We’ve got to sell through retailers.
Brad Serhan: Yes.
Brad Serhan: Right.
Kim Ryrie: Hence the pricing. Yeah, that’s close to 16,000. So meanwhile, for people that want to sign on to be beta users and use the beta software, it’s still production hardware. But, but it won’t be, it won’t be full, release software until the new year. So meanwhile, they get better, they get an advantage. They get an advantage of cost because they can buy them direct from us. They can tell us, oh, we don’t like this. We’d like you to do add this feature. We do all that. and it’s great. So we’ve already got 100 people doing that. We’re just running another hundred units now, which will be for, Because we’ll have another three, maybe four months of beta where that’s an option.
Brad Serhan: And then you can. Then after that.
Kim Ryrie: See, after that, we can’t undersell the retailers.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, no, of course not.
Kim Ryrie: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: So what we might do is pause it now. And because you were going to.
You had to talk about, um. I’m trying to remember how we started this talk
You had to talk about, I’m trying to remember how we started this talk about taking old speakers and sort of applying to, the DEQX, you know, playing around with the filters to take an old pair of speakers.
Kim Ryrie: Is that correct? Well, what we also didn’t talk about is that you can use decks. We have three models.
Brad Serhan: Thank you. Right.
Kim Ryrie: And the one we’ve been talking about is the flagship, which is the one that can do active.
Brad Serhan: Yes.
Kim Ryrie: And that you can upgrade existing passive speakers to active with that. Or you can just build a Brad Serhanrom scratch. Or we sell those to Oems.
Brad Serhan: Yes.
Kim Ryrie: Who are doing their own designs from scratch. But two other models, one of them is called the pre four. So it’s designed. You just add an amplifier or two. So it’s just the main passive, full range speakers. Right. Or for that matter, full range active speakers.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: and then you can add one or two subwoofers. So it’s got four outputs. That’s the reason for that. And then there’s the LS 200. So that’s really for where you just want to add speakers and keep it simple. For minimum, it’s actually a bit cheaper. A few compromises to the design. right. That’s the fully integrated. Just add speakers. Away you go model, and away you go.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Kim Ryrie: Yeah. And it’s a little bit cheaper than the others as well.
Brad Serhan: Okay, great.
00:49:15
Transcript S2 EP037 Stereonet HiFi & AV Show 2025
Len Wallis Audio has been guiding hi Fi enthusiasts on their audio journey
>> David Corazza: Italian panel speakers called Fonica F O N I C a.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Not seen them before?
>> David Corazza: No, never. Didn’t even know they existed as a company. But you know, lordy, lordy, what a sound. Because I’ve owned a lot of panels in the past, including Maggie’s Sound Labs, you know, quads, apogees, you name it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: But these things now you don’t have any panels.
>> David Corazza: Oh yeah, I owned heaps of panels.
>> Andrew Hutchison: You’re addicted to them. You’ve had every. Well that’s, that’s all of them basically.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, pretty much.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Foreign. And we are, back not an audiophile. The podcast, episode 37, season 2 and today. Primarily it’s the show roundup, Melbourne hi fi show 2025.
Are you craving incredible sound? For over 47 years, Len Wallis Audio has been guiding hi Fi enthusiasts on their audio journey. They’re not some corporate machine, just a tight knit crew of audiophiles and entertainment lovers obsessed with great sound. From precision turntables to immersive home theater systems, they hand pick gear that delivers. Stop by the store in Lane Cove, Sydney, Australia or visit lenwallisaudio.com Len Wallis Audio where your passion finds its sound.
moving right along back to the show, March Audio, fantastic amplifiers. Alan March has been on the show a couple of times. He’s a great guy, very, very smart cookie and he manufactures a range of amplifiers and loudspeakers using purify components in most cases, which we all know are extremely high quality. So check out March Audio. Great sound, brilliant build quality and design. And in fact I believe there is a new preamp which is a ground up design of their own coming out, from literally a clean sheet of paper. Marchaudio.com
we’re here with David Corazza back, ah, in the studio. The not an audiophile Studio center, Studio one, wrap up of the show, the StereoNet. Melbourne, Australian hi Fi 2025 AV show or something. I shouldn’t joke about the name, but do you know what it is?
>> David Corazza: It’s the International Melbourne hi Fi show or the Melbourne hi Fi International show or is it the Melbourne International hi Fi Show?
>> Andrew Hutchison: I tell you what, whatever it is, it’s definitely international and it was definitely big.
>> David Corazza: It was wonderful the amount of international guests we had there. I was really happy.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It was it, yeah, it’s the Melbourne hi Fi show. As Far as the locals are concerned. And it was the 2025 edition at the Pullman Hotel as it has been for a number of years. It is a pretty good venue for a hi fi show. The bar is pretty good. but the rooms, I don’t know, I thought I heard pretty bloody good sound this year.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, I agree. there was a couple of rooms that actually caught me by surprise when I walked in. I thought gee, that’s really lovely sound.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I agree.
We had four people working on this project, David. Four. I also want to mention that we had the whole team there
and we are going to talk about those rooms. Would you like to talk about your individual experiences first, David? Or I should actually. I also want to mention that we had the whole team there. We had yourself very kindly came along and and Brad Serhan who also was there perhaps for his own business reasons as well as he had his products there with his partner Morris. But Brad very kindly also roped a couple of these luminaries of the hi fi industry into interviews and he did one himself as well. So that’s coming up in the future. And of course my far superior half Sharon was there assisting with with all of the actual work. So it was, it was a four. Four. Well three man, four, one woman effort.
I think Mark Rushton and Stereonet organised a fantastic show
now back to the show. Wow. I, I okay, I just thought it was great. I think Mark Rushton and the Stereonet team did a fantastic job of organising it. He’s gotten very good at that. not that I think he’s ever run a bad show but this was this is slick, you know, it’s world class and very impressed.
>> David Corazza: And look, I think even more importantly it has a really nice cross section of types of gear and affordable gear. So it went from entry level like gee, what’s this hi fi stuff all about? All the way to the vastly extraordinary ordinary pointy end of step this way, sir. $200,000, sir?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Or in fact 200,000. Absolutely. For one piece. There were a number of probably million dollar rooms.
>> David Corazza: Oh yeah, easily.
>> Andrew Hutchison: so let’s start at the bottom M but not the bottom necessarily as far as performance. I’m not sure that you heard these little loudspeakers but the VAF, DC2X I think they’re
called. Their new entry level speaker M which I guessed was two and a half or three grand apparently 16.99. Well clearly that’s a mistake. So that’s too cheap. I think it’s even got a real wood veneer box for that. So Made in Australia. Real wood veneer enclosure, $1699 clearly they’ve, either worked out how to build speakers for nothing or that’s a bargain. Sounded pretty good too.
The most expensive thing that I laid eyes on was the DCS stack
to the other end of the range, what was the. What was the most expensive thing, do you think?
>> David Corazza: I think the most expensive thing that I laid eyes on was the DCS stack at half a million dollars.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes. A half a million dollar, streamer. Dac.
>> David Corazza: Well, basic, basically.
>> Andrew Hutchison: He does stream as well as dac.
>> David Corazza: Yeah. And it’s their statement piece. And I was speaking to Ali from DCS and allegedly they’ve made a hundred, but they’ve sold 50 already globally and two in Australia, which boggles the mind at half a million bucks a piece.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It does, it does. It’s, Yeah, that’s a piece. to skip from $16.99 bookshelves, loudspeakers to five box streamer. Dax mono DAC. Two of the boxes. One has left channel, one has right channel. DAC in it. re clocking, streaming, what have you. It’s,
>> David Corazza: Yeah, it’s the state of the art as far as digital goes.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And Ali will, flesh out the ideas behind that in a future interview. we spoke, both of us, to a number of people. I spoke to a few more people. You spoke to another person? Brad spoke to someone. We’ve got lots of interviews coming up in the, in the near future. they’re not necessarily related to what happened at the show. They, are just interesting interviews with very interesting people. So, listen out for that, folks.
The show is now big enough, even though we were there for three days
Back to the adjudication. would you like to start with? well, we don’t. We didn’t listen to everything. No, it’s impossible. The show is now big enough, even though we were there for three days, that you can’t hear everything properly. so we. The caveat is that we. There’s no best in show. I mean, that’s a. I mean, I’ve seen people go, oh, this is the best sound of the show. I don’t know how you judge that, because everyone’s got a slightly personal taste version of ah, what’s great. there are things that I enjoyed more that I enjoyed more than others. do you want to start with what you enjoyed the least? Because we’re going to save the best for last. Right.
>> David Corazza: That’s what you do. We kind of do. Look, there wasn’t, in all honesty, there wasn’t a room I walked into and thought, oh, my God, I’ve got to get out of here. This is terrible. There were rooms that I thought, you know, not for me. Blahdy blah. do I remember them clearly? And I’m not being evasive, but the question is just that, seriously, the good rooms have kind of burnt there.
>> Andrew Hutchison: They’re the ones you remember?
>> David Corazza: Yeah, they’re the ones I remember. And there were quite a few good rooms, much to my surprise. Rooms that I would have thought would not have tickled my fancy.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, okay.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I don’t. I would say the ones that. That impressed me less have good sound reasons for doing so. I, think that the. The. The sound gallery, slash, audio connection, room. The ballroom.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Was, a brave choice. as far as sound quality. The room itself had a great vibe. I mean, it had all of this amazing equipment in it. Oh, the gear was amazing people in it. I mean, there was representatives from around the world.
>> David Corazza: Oh, yeah. We had heaps of like, you know, fantastic luminaries who were there.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> David Corazza: But the room was a bit of.
>> Andrew Hutchison: A compromise, I think, from sound quality perspective, because it’s a huge space and even though it had huge systems in it, you know, from Wilson, Estelon, Linn, and, I always forget the name of the speakers on the other wall. But it was powered by some very nice components which, I’ll have to check my photos. I should have perhaps done that before the show. it doesn’t matter. Everything in that room sounded just a touch lost. If you did sit down in front of it. Pretty close was pretty good. but obviously, you know, everything in that room was hundreds of thousands of dollars.
>> David Corazza: Yeah. But look, you know, to be fair to the guys who, you know, the effort poured into that room was just phenomenal.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, absolutely.
>> David Corazza: you know, I don’t. You know, as much as you try to get good sound out of a massive room like that with four or five divergent systems, because don’t forget, the devialet stuff was there too. you know, I think it was there as, like, here it is, we’ve got it. You cast your eyes on this. It was more of a showcase.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, no, I enjoyed that room.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: But you had to, you had to forgive it a little bit.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Acoustically it was. It’s a disaster. I mean, it’s a. It’s a room. You’d never put a system like that in without fixing it. And plus, if you had a room that big, you. You wouldn’t have the little Wilsons. You’d have the big ones. so no, that was, That’s not to say it was the. It was the. It was Just, what are you gonna do? I think their idea was great. I think they went past the idea that we’re going to try to wow people with the sound quality of this equipment at this show. Because it is of such high quality. It needs to be set up properly. You can’t even really do that at a show to some degree, I think. and so really it was a lot of the more affordable gear. And when I say affordable, I mean still not entry level. that in fact shone, I think.
David Tricky went to try out some new JBL loudspeakers
Do you want to talk about David? The things that shone that really.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, look, there was a couple of real surprises, stuff that I had biases for and stuff that I knew very little or nothing about. Like, I’ll start off with the stuff that I knew very little about. And I walked in and went, oh, my God. You know, this is really interesting. In, no particular order, the jbl, Summit Room with their new Summit, speakers. They had the babies there on the stand just running through a streamer. And I got to tell you, sometimes when you walk into a room and there’s an audio system going and you have this involuntary grin on your face, you know that something’s right.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Absolutely. Yeah.
>> David Corazza: The, the speakers were very interesting. The system was playing, Now, don’t laugh. a big band, you know, kind of from 30s, 40s big band stuff, but a Japanese big band.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> David Corazza: So a genre I would have consciously have chosen, but it was, it was bloody excellent. And, so then I asked the gentleman to play a couple of tracks that I chose. And I just thought if. If any speakers I’ve heard at the show had life with, you know, in 72 point Helvetica, all caps, bold, underlined. it was these things. They were alive.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, they were. in fact, I walked in behind you, and, I was, Because I. Okay. I harbour a mild concern about the balance, for me personally, of some JBL loudspeakers over the years. There’s nothing wrong with these. They are. They do have. They’re, exuberant, as you allude to, and, yet they do that with some degree of restraint. They are not. They’re not, fingers in the ears material like some from the 80s. So.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, really impressive. Yeah. And I don’t think particularly pricey.
>> David Corazza: No, I think the. A tad. Look, memory fails me. I think they’re around 30k or slightly under. I could be wrong, but. Yeah, that’s not a lot of money for speakers these days.
>> Andrew Hutchison: They sounded like Music. Yes.
>> David Corazza: That’s exactly what I thought.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. similar vein. the Wilson Benesch room, is one that I remember because Wilson Benesch. Lots of carbon fiber, lots of interesting cabinet ideas that should work, but I’ve never really heard them make music like today. Today was probably this day last week. yeah. Hellcro amplification, full stop. So Australian amplifiers, English loudspeakers of some exceptional quality, and yet making music as well. very fine levels of detail, very accurate, very dynamic, very musical, very clean. These are all things hard to get to combine together. Did a great job, I think. Yeah. Very, very good sound. price tag, irrelevant. you know, most of us aren’t buying it, so I don’t know how much it costs. but the point is that if you do spend the money, you can have something really exceptional, something exciting to listen to.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, it was really convincing as a musical artifact. they were playing some light, I think it was possibly baroque stuff when I walked in. and then I walked in again, and they were playing some female vocal, the staple of hi Fi shows. I say. I don’t say that with any disrespect. It’s just. It is what it is. You know, most things sound okay with female vocals, but they were,
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, the speaker’s got to be pretty. Well.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, no, I’m resolved for the design.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Department because, I mean, you know, upper harmonics are falling right into the.
>> David Corazza: Oh, yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Tricky crossover region, I guess.
>> David Corazza: But these things resolved. The musical piece.
>> Andrew
Hutchison: Yep.
>> David Corazza: I can maybe count on one hand at the max, two hands in my life that I’ve heard a speaker do that. They were really something else.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay, so we’re on the same page there.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they had the halcrows behind them, so. The halcros. And those were just an insanely synergistic match.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, so it would seem. Absolutely. And in fact, the thing that perhaps I was reacquainted with during the show is. And I think the reason why the sound was better this year was system synergy, probably because the acoustics of the hotel haven’t changed.
>> The Melbourne hi Fi Show 2025 was well attended on Friday and Saturday
>> Probably more people brought treatments with them. I think when I say more people, I mean not the customers who walked in with a suitcase full under their arm, but the, exhibitors. And, but well attended. Particularly, Saturday. Almost too many people. so very impressive. Friday was a busy day. Earlier start than normal on the. Friday, I think, was a success. it was a pretty busy day. Some say Sunday was a Little slower. But, you know, it was Sunday and there’s also stuff going on in Melbourne that day that probably didn’t help. the other point I was going to make was let’s have a break. Back in a second.
>> Heynow hi Fi specializes in creating personalized audio experiences with brands to suit all needs and over three decades of experience. Geoff from hey now hi Fi can help find your sound for your life. Have a look at the website now. Right now you’re listening to the podcast later, but soon.
>> And we are back in the studio with David Corazza and myself, Andrew Hutchison, wrapping up the Melbourne hi Fi Show 2025 with our very much personal thoughts. they are literally what we think. I mean admittedly we’ve both been in hi Fi forever and music and what have you related to sound quality? And I guess our opinions are worth something, but, still very personal.
>> okay, other rooms of note. I’ve got plenty here.
>> David Corazza: There was quite a surprise. Another surprising room, again in no particular order, was the Radiance room. And Goran, had a pair of Italian panel speakers called Fonica F O N I C A.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Not seen them before.
>> David Corazza: No, never. Didn’t even know they existed as a company. But you know, lordy, lordy, what a sound. Because I’ve owned a lot of panels in the past, including Sound Labs, you know, quads, apogees, you name it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: But these, I didn’t know you don’t so many panels.
>> David Corazza: Oh yeah, I owned heaps of panels.
>> Andrew Hutchison: You’re addicted to them. You’ve had every. Well, that’s, that’s all of them, basically.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, pretty much. But you know, as anyone who’s owned these creatures knows, they’re a devil to place in a room because the back wave has face cancellation, etc. Etc. So getting good bass out of them is important, is a tricky thing. But these guys were full range and active, no less. Tool of the devil, I say. no, not at all. and they were making sweet music and they were sounding like big dynamic speakers. So they had that open air aspect that all panels have, but with the grip and authority and the muscularity of a dynamic driver which befuddled me when I walked in. So I had to sit down and have a listen to a few tracks.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Indeed. In fact, I’ve got notes on those, which basically say, So not only are they fully active, but they’ve got a remote control and they’ve got room. Correction. I wonder whether that’s Helping. Made in Bergamo, near the base of the Alps. So. What a nice place to live. But that’s another story. Sweet, sweet, delicate sound I’ve got written here. Lots of space.
>> David Corazza: Yep.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Very consistent response vertically. Sit up, stand. Sorry? Sit down, stand up. 29,000 for the big ones that we heard.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, look, I’d have them in a high.
>> Andrew Hutchison: That’s audio, you know. What’s that? About 3,000American dollars or something? It’s, You know, it’s, Yeah. Yeah, at. Interesting. That was when you and I were traveling together briefly and we. We listened to those.
>> David Corazza: Yep.
>> Andrew Hutchison: We then walked next door and heard, according to my notes, probably a name system with focals.
>> David Corazza: Oh, yeah, we did, too. That’s the one with the Revox. B77.
>> Andrew Hutchison: With the Revox. B77. The new one.
>> David Corazza: Yes, yes.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Shall we say what we thought of it?
>> David Corazza: All right. I’m gonna piss a lot of people off.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Go your hardest.
>> David Corazza: It’s, it’s, it. It’s an answer without a question.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> David Corazza: it was a. A lovely, It’s a vanity statement from Revox, and I’m sure there’ll be people who buy it at a mere 37,000, whatever it is. but if everyone’s cognizant of what’s happening with the availability of media these days, especially quarter inch tape, it’s, it’s, it’s just a positioning piece. It’s a lovely positioning piece, but.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, I haven’t. I have another opinion.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, please do.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I love it.
>> David Corazza: Oh, no, I, I do too, but it’s just kind of like.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I love it, but I, But I, If I, If I was to have an old open reel machine because I’m, of low brow, sort of, you know. You know, What’s the word? I just love test Scammer tx. Sorry?
Skylab Audio in the United States is selling refurbished Technics 1520s
>> David Corazza: Well, the old, the, the old, the old, What was it? The old Technics 1520 open.
>> Andrew Hutchison: That’s the machine that’s the prettiest open reel.
>> David Corazza: Well, you know, is it. Skylab Audio in the United States is selling them refurbished now for 30k US. Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Well, I actually, I. Yeah, I know where there’s one too. I know, I know.
>> David Corazza: Yeah. The original in that kind of dark color was just insanely beautiful.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, the guy that’s got it.
>> David Corazza: But anyway. Yeah, so B77 Mark III doesn’t know.
>> Andrew Hutchison: What to do with it, but neither. Sorry. He did know exactly what to do with it, but unfortunately his family does not.
Very good sound in that room. Nice stereo placement
Now, moving right along. Yes, why is my. Hang on. so quite a bit of dredged up detail is my comment on that room. Nice stereo placement. Yeah. Very good sound in that room. And of course the focal name sound is a bit more precise. It’s a bit more, you know, it’s got a bit of tappity tap.
>> David Corazza: It’s, you know, it’s fun and engaging.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I, I enjoyed that room. And of course I’m a bit of a name fan and I hadn’t actually seen the new components in the flesh much. I think they look alright. we then skipped along, did we? We didn’t skip.
>> David Corazza: No, not with baskets under our hand.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I’ll adorithina to the next room or somewhat further along.
>> David Corazza: Yeah. Right.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I’m not sure whether the next room was Devore or was. Or the. Or the Graham Audios, but it doesn’t matter.
Graham: First time I’ve listened to the O96s in a room
Let’s talk about both. Or in fact the Serhan Swift room. so I. Let’s say it was the Devore room. a different kind of sound again. So we had the very very natural, very spacious sounds of the panels. Then we had the more precise sound of the focals. Then we had the devores. Now, driven by interestingly, a first watt pass amp which I’m not sure how many watts it’s got. I think it’s five. Some say ten. Doesn’t really matter. It’s not much power.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I was never aware that the power amp was so gutless as some people would say. I mean it was. It was played quite Bill McLean, who, who who is the importer in this country, played the system quite loudly I would say. I’m not loud as in nightclub levels, but.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No sense of lack of headroom, or anything like that. And no sense of strain. very Sort of easy to listen to. coloration. Not as much as maybe you’d expect. First time I’ve listened to the O96s in a room I’m more familiar with. And I, I kind of liked it. What did you think?
>> David Corazza: Yeah, it was very. It was a seductive sound.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It was seductive. Yeah. Very easy to listen to.
>> David Corazza: Very easy to listen to. And I can understand why people would absolutely be bewitched by that combination. Yeah, maybe not for me because I like full range, lots of dynamics and stuff like that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> David Corazza: but I can totally understand why these things sell.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I, Very nicely made and actually you know, really in the context of what was at the show, not, not particularly expensive, our System and, and right in there. In fact, value for money. Sounds like a silly thing to say about I think a 25,000 odd dollar speaker or whatever. And I, I can be corrected on that price because things have a habit of going up in the last few years. Maybe they’re a little bit more. But they very well made. Made in the US obviously. And and I, I Yeah, I like them. I mean I’m a, I’m a bit of a fan of that the paper cone thing, you know. But I also see that I’m hard to please. I’ve always got to have two stereos. I’ve got to have that sound for late night, you know, really super enjoyable relaxed listening. And then I want the precision of a full active thing.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: In the middle of the day to wake
me up.
>> David Corazza: Yep.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, the other way around it should be, but it’s not. because I’m usually asleep in the middle of the day, so. Graham, audio.
M. M. asks what you thought of BBC’s new bass pedals
See now there’s, there’s something I wanted to hear. These are the ones with the slot loaded bass driver.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Five fives, I think they are.
>> David Corazza: What did you think?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, you, you seem scared to go first.
>> David Corazza: No, I’ve got no look of trepidation upon my face at all.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I Look, I want to like them because I’m a BBC engineering fan. I’ve grown up on that recipe. if you like the way that the designed, by a committee at the BBC, sort of. I feel that the people who worked at the BBC in those days in the 60s and 70s were literally just a roomful of geniuses. So yes, you can. If you design a horse by committee, apparently you get a camel. In this case, I just think you get, you get a racehorse. It. Ah, yeah. I think when you consider this is an early 70s recipe. M. How does it sound? That linear and that wonderfully musical. They were designing the chart recorders and an anechoic corner. Not even a proper chamber, I’m sure. yeah, I thought they were delightful. big. Well, what did I say? Okay, here’s the notes. Easy, fun and a bit of colour I wrote.
>> David Corazza: Yeah. Look, honestly, the thing is, again, going back to a couple episodes ago about cognitive bias and things like that, I walked in and I thought, oh Jesus, these are out of the arc. Just visually.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah, Visually, I think they’re hilariously nostalgic.
>> David Corazza: Well, they are. You know, all that kind of goes away when you sit down and you listen to it. Maybe you think, oh, okay, yeah, these are really doing a great job.
>> Andrew Hutchison: M. Yeah, there’s a touch of Dvor. Yes indeed there is because they’re a big baffle and big cones. and actually yeah, almost different flavors of a similar thing. I couldn’t say I preferred one to the other, to be honest. Yeah, I enjoyed them.
And of course we are talking loudspeakers here. I’ve kind of forgotten what electronics was on them, which, I mean, what does that say about we. We are really talking loudspeakers, aren’t we? This harks back to a previous episode where I tried to lay out. In fact I think it was the last episode where I lay out that the, the biggest differences or the smallest differences in sound are due to certain things in my so called hi Fi rant. Unfiltered Never. a rant really can’t be bothered and too old. And the reality is the loudspeaker is going to have the biggest effect on the way the system sounds. Evil Ivor will not agree. never did.
>> Now, where are we? What else did I have here in my notes? SpectraFlora. I’m not sure that. Did you get in there with me to the Spectra Flora room? Now we went in there for a reason. There’s two reasons to go to the Spectra Flora room. You go in there for Steve’s the designer’s dry wit and general demeanor, which I find enjoyable. The way he He He. He loves to pause gently before answering any question. He knows the answer. It’s purely theatrical. his new smaller loudspeaker, Is yet again presenting an alternative way for a loudspeaker to sound. It’s the sound that he likes. I say good luck to him. It’s it’s interesting. I thought the small speaker, the newer one is very, very good. Very I say well balanced. Slight for me and I’ve told him this slight lack of bass perhaps for, for me, people who know my loudspeakers will know they tend to have too much bass. So maybe that’s just me. But you know, it’s Yeah, it’s a very and beautiful sense of the placement of instruments in the soundstage was a delight.
>> David Corazza: Oh, the dispersion on those things is magical.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes. So, ah, definitely worth hearing. An alternative appearance, of course. but you know, so what, you know, throw. Throw a bit of grill cloth over them and you won’t even know what they look like. Definitely, worth a look. $18,000 for his new speaker. And, now they’re, you know. And I mention him also because he’s, a new player in the Australian manufacturing market and he’s given it a decent crack and has some interesting ideas. So good luck to Steve there. And I, thought they were performing well in that room. What else did you hear? Because now you went off on your own, and heard what? That, that, treated your ear kindly, sir.
>> David Corazza: Well, if we can literally and metaphorically go down a step or two, there was a big surprise in the Sound United room. They had a pair of little Polk R200s strategically placed in the middle of the room. And the guys m. Obviously did their due diligence with room nodes.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> David Corazza: and they had a Denon, I think around 5 or 6k integrated, playing through them. And I used to sell those R200. So I know pretty much what they sound like. But they were sounding very dynamic, very muscular beyond the size of their speakers. So if you wanted something that was very inexpensive, there was pretty dynamic and fun. you know, not the last word in refinement that you can’t do that at that kind of price level. But boy, oh boy, did they sound good.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, they do. That range of Polks, is super value for money. and for anyone starting out in hi fi, yeah, just, just, get a listen to them. They sold in every second hi fi shop around the country. So they’re not hard to get a listen to. They are, and they’re sold in every second hi fi shop for good reason. They are, great value for money and they are a lot of fun. But Polk always was a lot of fun. The Polk balance back in the day was slightly fruity in the bottom end and rich. and, a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, I agree. and yeah, and probably continuing on the tradition of a slight lack of, sophistication through the rest of the range. And I don’t mean that as a, as a negative. It’s just, it’s a, it’s a fact that the difference when you start throwing money at a loudspeaker design is you’re going to get better performance in that area because you’re going to have a more complex crossover with fancier drive units and a better built box. You can’t get that for how much? Two grand?
>> David Corazza: No, it’s under two grand. I think they’re about 1200, $1300. It’s silly. And, you know, if you get them on a special, it’s under. Under well, they were under a grand, which is just like. You’ve got to be kidding. Take my money.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, here’s a system. You can. You can build a fantastic system based around those for two and a half grand with a screener. Use one of the, recently reviewed, WiiM, amp ultras and a pair of those. So a grand total of, 1800 bucks. There’s your stereo. Does everything. Plug your TV into it? I know where the amp ultra does that. Does it have. Does it have.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, it’s got hdmi.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, of course it does. Yeah. Yeah. What about. So I’d set it up at home. I can’t even remember my own reviews. Yeah, I mean, actually, there you go. I mean, that’s the two best value for money products in the country, right? Really?
>> David Corazza: Yeah. I don’t think there’s any contention about that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No. Okay. Well, there’s other great speakers around the green, but, you know, yeah, they do shine. and you know, those other brands didn’t turn up at the show, so they don’t get a mention. Sucked in. so. Is that too harsh?
>> David Corazza: No, no, not at all. It’s, You’ve got to be in it to win it, and you’ve got to be there. The problem with this industry is it’s certain manufacturers, and importers and dealers think that, you know, everyone knows about all that’s available. And, you know, if you walk into a shop and you don’t have brand X and you know what I’m trying to say, there’s a lot of people out there who aren’t like us, where they’re not in the industry, they’re not aware of, who.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Soaking up every brand and every fine detail, each product. They will, know about things that come flying at them.
>> David Corazza: That’s called marketing.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Do more of it, folks. m. Okay. I have one. I have a couple of other thoughts. Australian manufacturers. There was tons of them at the show.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, it was a good representation.
Brad Serhan raves about his new Richter speakers
>> Andrew Hutchison: actually, I do want to talk briefly about our own Brad Serhan’s room. I’ve written here a delightful balance of attributes of the FU2 floor stander, otherwise known as the Mew3, isn’t it?
>> David Corazza: Yeah. Look, there’s something big on it. The floor Stander, they’re just done. Right. I’ve, got not much to say about them, but they’re one of those rare speakers on the planet at any price. Used to. Good. They were using Boulder amplification.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I think the Boulder all in one streamer, amplifier unit, which is a pearler. It’s not inexpensive, but it’s a, it’s a marvelous machine.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Never heard it sound bad.
>> David Corazza: The exquisite speakers, they just are,
>> Andrew Hutchison: And they are, they do fall into the trap though, a little bit. Like, some speakers I’ve sold over the years where they don’t have an obvious, you know, star ingredient. There’s no hero element to them. They are very, very good all rounders. So they do lots of things very, very well. And you know, I, you know, maybe you need
to have a second listen to them to realize just how easy they would be to live with. so there you go. That, sounds slightly conflicted that Brad’s on our team at not an audiophile and we’re raving about his speakers. But what are you going to do? I think, I think they’re 15k. They’re not crazy money. maybe a little bit more. no, I think that’s what they are. 15,000 AUD. And they are really good.
>> David Corazza: Well, as a postscript to that, if I can add to the Australian flavour of speakers there, honestly, the Richter Room with the new.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Just getting to it.
>> David Corazza: Oh, okay.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Stealing your thunder. No, no, no.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, the Richter room was a glorious surprise, but, you know, every year, the Rector Room sounds good. and the new Dragons, they’re top of the line. you, you want a full range speaker with dynamics and bass extension in spades. for under. If they’re under 10 grand.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. I’ve got it written here. They’re 7995.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: A pair.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: not Radio Shack pricing each. and, and I’ve, I’ve written real wood curved cabinets. Well, real wood veneer curved cabinets. Terrific value for money.
>> David Corazza: Correct.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Incredibly linear, detailed and sweet. Try making that work. Martin Gosnell’s the designer, under the guidance of, the current owner, of, Richter, Brian Rodgers. What a team. they should be very proud. That is a delightful sounding loudspeaker. It’s I don’t think it’s got much. Is there anything wrong with it? It’s got a dome mid range and they made it work. It’s beautifully integrated with the other drive units. There’s quite a few drive units on the front baffle. They’ve made it work. It’s very hard to do that. yeah. Completely impressed. yeah, yeah, fantastic job. Glad you liked it as well.
>> David Corazza: Yep, I did.
>> Andrew Hutchison: you’ve got to go. I’m going to do some other wrap up by myself. because we are short of time which sounds ridiculous but we do need to get this episode out. otherwise who cares about a show in three weeks time. That was four weeks ago. couple of other quick mentions though.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, please.
>> Andrew Hutchison: OAD ultra fidelity.
>> David Corazza: Miss, miss, can I say something?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes, go.
>> David Corazza: the the technical engineering award for the show for me goes to Oad.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah.
>> David Corazza: By far and away the most staggering engineering I’ve seen at a price point that is just.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Are you talking about his new integrated.
>> David Corazza: I’m talking about. I’m talking about. Well, any of them. The pre. The power. I mean this is kind of Nagra level of engineering for, for way less than Nagra money.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah, yeah. No. So John showed me, he had a, the new integrated on display.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: oad by the way, make amplifiers but also make open baffle speakers and the only ones I’ve ever heard that sound any good by the way. So moving back to the amps, the, he had a bit of Perspex over the top of it you could see inside. He said, as a technical person, what do you think? I’m just looking at it going as I wave my right hand at a nagra in the workshop here today with the lid off. It’s that quality like you said. It is as well thought out inside. I said what’s that, 15 grand? He goes no, eight. Eight? Why? Like that’s, it’s, it’s ridiculous. I don’t know how he makes it for eight, let alone sells it for eight. Oh yeah, it’s. And, and it’s all, it’s not some box with some stuff off AliExpress bolted into it. This is his ground up design. Yeah. Oh, it’s, it’s, it’s stunning. And John needs to shake, give himself a good shake and, and work out what it really costs to make that. Put the price up to reality because otherwise he’s going to have orders literally for hundreds of those things from around the world.
>> David Corazza: Oh yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And he won’t know how to make them all.
>> David Corazza: Well, back when I was in manufacturing 10,000 years ago, I just, I did a quick cost of goods estimate on, on the chassis because it’s milled out of a aluminium billet.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> David Corazza: And I would say.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, is it, is it billet? Yeah. Is it?
>> David Corazza: Yeah, the sides are.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, yeah. Oh, there’s this. Don’t. Yeah, there’s lots of.
>> David Corazza: I’m not saying it’s a, it’s a, a unibody no, no, no.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s. Oh yes, it’s screwed together out of lots of very high quality machines, serious machine stuff.
>> David Corazza: And that would have, that would have at cost. Cost a few thousand bucks. So the pricing I think is deliriously.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Cheap for what it is made in Australia, stunningly good. And of course the power amp has giant vu meters. yeah, I, Yeah, yeah, I think you need to get a listen to that. yeah. Ah, Bashdown John’s door. He has a website with a lot of technical stuff on it. If only it had a little bit more marketing on it. But anyhow, it’s. If you can wade through the technical stuff because the guy is a genius. Of course.
>> David Corazza: Agreed.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And so he loves to, he loves to wade neck deep in in that sort of stuff. And their website, you know, does, does a, look a bit like that. But wow, what, a result. Yeah, you’ve got to get a listen to that. And like I say not too lightly, his open baffle loudspeakers are very, very good. Very warmly balanced, very musical, a pleasure to listen to and I think under $10,000.
John Doman’s Doman turntable is hands down the best
So, any other quick thoughts on stuff that just stood out?
>> David Corazza: Oh yeah. again, I’ll never get tired of listening to the Dohmann turntable.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No, indeed.
>> David Corazza: Just it’s a, you know, I don’t know. I haven’t heard the new Wilson Benesch monster thing that’s come out. But honestly, without, hands down, the finest turntable I’ve ever heard in my life.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It actually is.
>> David Corazza: It’s. It just, it’s like, it’s like it’s not there. It’s not just bullshit. Good.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, it’s, it’s Okay, this is the way it strikes me. In most configurations it’s super fast. Compared with other turntables, it just starts and stops on a dime. it’s immediately obvious. it Somehow everything on it seems to track a bit better. It’s a bit cleaner, it’s produces great stereo on when I’ve been able to sit in the sweet spot, I couldn’t say enough nice things about it. And then once again, made here. I don’t know how he does it. I suspect that the machining may be related to where John gets his done. I don’t know. I know he uses, as per our episode when John was on, back in the early days, he, he uses a company that is renowned worldwide for super high precision, machining. Oh yeah, I mean, Mark did share a little thing with me which I think I can pass on.
>> David Corazza: Please do.
>> Andrew Hutchison: he said that he would sell more turntables if he put the price up. Now I don’t know what that says about the world. but he has had people say to him, how would you do you seriously buy 100,000 or an 80,000 or 150,000 thousand dollar turntable based on just the price, how shiny it is.
>> David Corazza: But yeah, once you’re in the luxury market, that’s all that really matters.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well then, I mean his looks beautiful though, right? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, he said there’s a few people he’s, he known. He knows he’s lost a couple of sales because it’s not over because it’s too cheap.
>> David Corazza: I know that’s just sinful.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I mean it’s just odd, isn’t it? And of course the reality is in this country it’s whatever it is, the, the Dearer 1 is 100, 120 or something. I mean, of course with our fairly weak shekel that we have at the moment, you know, it’s, it’s a bargain overseas. So, yeah, I have, I have other details, which I’ll pass on in a quick ten, minute rant, after you depart to get your tiler to retile your bathroom or whatever you’re up to this morning on this fine Sunday.
Andrew: David, you should always subscribe to our podcast. I think we’ve got a pretty good show
hey, thank you David for dropping in. Thank you, thanks for coming to the show. thanks for your insights. A, pleasure again. And we will have you back on the show very soon.
>> David Corazza: Really appreciate it, Andrew. And listeners, don’t forget that we’ve got a whole bunch of fantastic interviews we did at the show and they’ll be being released over the next few weeks.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes, they are coming, the first one, well, probably in two weeks time. And I, thank you again for availing yourself to do one and a half of those. And I was gonna say one other quick thing is that you should always, you know, like, and subscribe. Apparently that’s what you gotta say when you have like a podcast or a YouTube channel, it’s important that you get it. They say that people won’t do it unless you ask them. I feel like you need a good show and then they’ll want to subscribe. I think we’ve got a pretty good show, so you should subscribe.
>> David Corazza: Yeah. And on that lovely note, I’ll bid you adieu.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Thank you, David. Speak to you soon.
>> The hi Fi shop Is the home of quality hi fi experience the best of everything from affordable turntables to not so affordable high end loudspeakers. Let Alex curate a complete system for you or have him, using his technical background, assist with your next
upgrade. Visit in person or check the website hi fishop.com for easy information on all of your favorite brands. Go straight to the top. Speak to Alex at HiFi Shop. Turns out David’s Tyler is running late, so, he’s still here. any other rooms, David? That.
>> David Corazza: Yeah, yeah. Look, honestly, it all comes flooding back. the funniest, the funniest incident was, I walked into audio marketing’s room and, the lovely Tim there had the Triangle Actives. French, speakers.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I keep hearing about these.
>> David Corazza: Yes, M. And you know, kind of, of course, the main business, I guess, was primarily looking at the musical fidelity stuff there, which is, you know, very impressive. Couple of turntables, all very good.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, the new New Vista. The new new Vista.
>> David Corazza: Yeah. 25 years on, we found some more of these tubes. In they go.
>> Andrew Hutchison: The new New Vista, all jokes aside, sounded pretty good though.
Back to the Active. Surprise, certainly at that show. When you go to shows, you’re not expecting something
Back to the Active.
>> David Corazza: But the real, I think one of the stars of the show, this is lovely. When you go to shows, you’re not expecting something and. And something delivers more than you even realize it could. Tim was all cock a hoop because he knows I generally like active speakers. I’m very familiar with different Actives. He said, oh, you’ve got to have a listen to this. And he played these. You gonna have to forgive me, Tim, because I’ve forgotten the model number. But the new Triangle actives, they’re around 5k and Lordy, Lordy, do they have some life in them?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> David Corazza: And they’re using WESA as a wireless product protocol, so no cables, just ac.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, okay.
>> David Corazza: You know, kind of following the foots of Bang and Olufsen and others. Finally, Weiss is out there. and did they sound alive but really quite dynamic for their size? rude. Fully dynamic for their size. And for a lot of people, if they want a fun, no nonsense, plug in and play Active for that kind of money. I don’t think there’s anything else on the market. It was a real surprise.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Surprise, certainly at that show. Oh, yeah, There was no other $5,000 actives, but yeah, no, the talk, the talk of the show was people going, have you heard that the Triangle Actives. No, I must go and hear them. Oh, no, Tim’s down the end of the hall. Can’t be bothered. no, it’s it’s not like that at all. I just. The reality of that show was there was a wealth of stuff to look at. And sometimes people go, oh yeah, I’ve only got two hours to have a quick look around the show. Like these are, punters that have turned up, which is what the show is for, I guess, after all. And and I have always said to people, two hours is certainly not long enough. How about two days? And people go, oh no. Can I just say one thing to people? If you’re going to come to the show, which you absolutely should when it’s on, I guess next year, you’re not coming to this year’s anymore. And, it’s definitely finished. And you can you please allow two days because it’s a three day show.
>> David Corazza: Well, I think you have to.
Andrew: One thing that we haven’t touched on is the head fire stuff
And very quickly before I depart, the one thing that we haven’t touched on is the head fire stuff that was downstairs. I was keeping a, rueful eye over the people that came in there. Generally a, younger demograph. What a surprise. But I tell you what, there was some stuff down there that sounded magnificent.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I’m going to say, because I’m not a headphone guy, I didn’t listen to anything. I do know there’s a new stacks the 007, which is supposedly amazing. And I wanted to, to listen to that and I didn’t get the time as I alluded to. There was just simply too much to listen to, you know, and, and I think I also dragged the chain a bit because you find yourself sitting in a room enjoying yourself, heaven forbid. And then, you know, you go, well, what else you got to listen to? I mean, when you and I were doing the duo, yeah. We were listening to three and four tracks per room.
>> David Corazza: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: In reality, time is slipping past.
>> David Corazza: Correct.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And you’re not really clocking it. And next minute it’s lunchtime. And Obviously after our 3 1/2 hour boozy lunch, there’s not much left of the afternoon.
>> David Corazza: Ho, ho, ho.
>> Andrew Hutchison: If only, if only a, sandwich and keep going. All right, now you can go and see your Tyler.
>> David Corazza: All right, thanks, Andrew.
>> Andrew Hutchison: See you. Bye. Bye. And we.
Some highlights I guess the visual highlights at least. Well, I’m back. So David has gone this time. So, uh, look,
>> Well, I’m back. So David has gone this time. His tiler. beckoning him to, come and open the house up. So, look, I’m going to cover the final remaining details we’ve, we’ve skipped around and we’ve obviously mentioned all of the rooms that we, we really love, that we both visited. But There’s a whole bunch of others that notable mentions if you like, that were still, still sounded great, look great, great equipment and I’d like to cover some of those as well. The one that immediately jumps to mind is the Abbey Road sort of limited edition 800 series B and W. The 801, resplendent I should say in its one off finishes. I mean I guess it’s the same loudspeaker but wow, it does look very, very cool in those finishes. It’s a. If I was going to buy a pair that’s the color I would want them in. Ah, I should also mention that we have a video up on YouTube that people seem to like of visual. Sort of a visual summation if you like of the show. of course the, the music that was on in the room is playing in the video. It’s not something we make money out of. It’s it’s just a example of what we saw and it’s quite good to, to sort of if you couldn’t get to the show to get a quick runaround of the show. Some of the highlights I guess the visual highlights at least. And you certainly can’t draw any conclusions from the sound that you hear from that I’ve recorded with the camera. But Although it doesn’t sound, you know it’s clearly not distorted but it is nice to just see how the rubs look rather than usual just talking about it.
Another room that I really enjoyed was the Antipodes speakers
So another room that I really enjoyed was the Antipodes, room that had the emotion audio loudspeakers in the slightly pyramidical looking units, with the solid timber grills, grill frames that was that were Yeah, okay. I, I hadn’t heard them before and they were quite stunning. very pleasant sound. And of course the industrial design of the new Antipodes, is quite striking. I’m not sure what it is with the Kiwis and designing boxes of electronics. They do a really good job. Yeah, very impressed. But the sound of those speakers was a genuine surprise. So a motion audio, kind of a blandish sort of name for a brand. But nothing bland about the sound. Very impressed. The Chario electrocompaniet, room E.C. easier to say. Very ah, good sound in there as well. I was impressed with that. you know, and why wouldn’t you be? you know they’re a lovely looking Italian speaker, great electronics, from Norway as I remember it. I Hope I’m correct. they’ve been around for so long and I’ve enjoyed the sound of those amplifiers for many years. I mean they’re largely I guess doing kind of the. Doing it the way they’ve always done it. But it’s Why not? It works. speaking of doing it the same way for donkey’s years, esoteric audio. just I’ve mentioned before on this show such well made electronics. Pretty good sound through the Eggleston works. I was pretty impressed with that. And they had a few pieces of esoteric audio componentry off to one side and you could see perhaps why it might sound good. Such beautifully made electronics and the CD mechanism looks like it’s sort of hewn from the solid. Yeah, very impressed that it’s. Anyone still makes a CD mech to that quality. So some enjoyable time spent in there. The new PS audios with the American panels. I didn’t get as much time listening to those. I, I listened to them at the start of the show I think on the Friday and I intended to get back for a proper listen and didn’t because the room was full the whole time. And I mean chock a block. you know, can I say I just couldn’t get a decent listen to them again, which was a shame. But next door, Jack from Airtight, the owner of Airtight in Japan tube amplifiers was running that room for Jeff, from Hay now hi Fi. And that was the Dohmann turntable room. And the I just call them the slate speakers. I shouldn’t call them that. Fisher and Fisher of course is the brand. But Jack, put one record on and it’s a classic track and I think it’s actually. I think it’s in the video that I alluded to before and it just sounded incredibly lifelike. certainly once again a synergistic match there. The, the dohmann turntable, the airtight tube amplifier and those speakers worked incredibly well together. Made great dynamic lifelike music. I can guess the listener by now is going so everything just sounded great. Well you know, it kind of didn’t, you know like. So it’s. There was another room. I don’t know what was going on. I’m not going to say what the brand was. Very, very expensive equipment. I don’t. Talking about synergistic, you know, or the synergy of a system. yeah, they got it wrong. it was. Dour and uninteresting and at a price tag that it should have been anything but. And and it was genuinely unexciting and a bit crap to be honest. And there were people coming out of the room saying as much. And so that’s why I’m not going to say because
it doesn’t matter what it was. It was, it was not the fault of the equipment. The equipment involved is all extremely high quality but they have pieced it together in a way that just didn’t work and they should have.
Many say you can’t get good sound at a hi Fi show for various reasons
And this is where I feel the skill at a hi Fi show, the real skill of the exhibitor is under test. And you know many say oh you can’t get good sound at a hi Fi show for all the following, you know, all these reasons. Well the real, the only real excuse is just how damn noisy they can be. I mean that, that is a problem for sure. But the acoustics, everyone’s dealing with the same acoustic qualities in the room. They’re all built the same way. They’re all more or less the same rectangular shape. And look, the sound in, in the two rooms this particular company put on left a lot to be desired for the multi hundred thousand dollar price tags. And I think if you do your maths you can probably work out who I’m talking about. But that’s not really the point. It’s they need to, they need to work it out. They need to go well this doesn’t sound any good. I mean many people are up late at night fixing their rooms, improving them, tuning them, using random materials they can find to improve the acoustics. Etc. If you, if you choose not to try, then, then you, you don’t get a mention on the show and you will have people walking out of your room going that sounds like crap. Which is literally what I caught someone saying.
Deqx D eqx put on an amazing display with their Atmos system
now onto a polarizing room in a way. and, and this is Deqx D eqx, locally made, incredibly high performance, complicated, sophisticated DSP preamplifier, combined with active amplifiers, combined with their own Class D amplification. What’s up? Their own. But you know they, they’ve made them using purify modules I believe and I shouldn’t be quoted on that because it’s, there’s only so many class D modules you can buy and they’ve got the good ones I believe. The point is that they this time put on an amazing display. Now I’ve left it to last because once again there were people saying to me I heard it and it wasn’t that good. Now here’s, here’s the thing. These guys, they’re a company of geniuses. Overused word, overused word on this show. But these people are incredibly smart, have incredible power at hand to change the sound. There’s too much adjustability in my opinion. I guess they’re trying, trying to tune the system for the room a little bit. But when I heard it they had two rooms, one a ah two channel room and one an Atmos room and they were both stunning. There was the amount of cohesion, the lack of actually hearing. The acoustic signature of the room was amazing. particularly the Atmos room maybe by the fact that it was surround sound was particularly you know, involving. but even the two channel room with these I’ll admit slightly oddball looking custom made speakers that they were using which had purified drivers in them. So they were, they were an expensive very they were made sort of in a sandwich layer system with apparently very complicated enclosures within the box for the multiple cone drivers which need their own enclosure internally. And I have to say the sound of those when I heard them was very impressive. The way they’d drawn this I think a four way system together to sound as one. The only negative, and it’s not really a negative, it’s just an attribute of the system was that the, the sound staging was quite close to the back wall. It sort of was set back. I’m not sure of the exact reasons for that but then, but then I think they kept messing with it because different people that I spoke to, people whose opinions I regard quite highly had other things to say about the room. So I guess you know they were messing with it when I was in there and they said they just finished so maybe they kept playing with it. So. But decks in previous years have I felt not offered great displays using inexpensive speakers and showing how they can make them sound better. To my way of thinking a multi thousand dollar ah DSP preamplifier can be put to better use and in this case they did just that and it was, I think it was completely impressive. So hand clap for Dex this year showing off the real power of their very impressive products and I think that’s kind of a wrap for the show. I have missed a bunch of brands and I’m very sorry. we for a variety of reasons just cannot get to the whole show. But there are follow up interviews. And in those interviews we will mention other things. But for as far as the quick fire, roundup of what was a great show, unfortunately that brings it to a close.
It would be much appreciated if you follow the show on podcast or YouTube
So thanks for listening folks. As we mentioned earlier, it would be much appreciated if you follow the show on whatever, podcasting service you’re listening on or if you’re listening on YouTube, which very few people do. But if you are, please subscribe. And of course you can comment on the show on YouTube. And while you’re there, you may as well hit the subscribe button. And and of course there’s the video which people are enjoying watching. Lots of views, and gives you that little bit of a visual sum up as I mentioned earlier. So until the next episode, which will be an interview with someone that we spoke to at the show and it’ll. There was a. There’s a handful of more than a handful of really interesting guests. So it doesn’t matter who we choose first. It’ll be great. Talk to you then.