2012the signals yearbook - issue fourteen

Signals UK Ltd6 St Maryʼs ParkBuckleshamIpswichSuffolkIP10 0DY

tel : 01473 655171fax: 01473 655172

email: enq@signals.uk.comweb : www.signals.uk.com

www.signalshifi.co.uk

Welcome to the latest edition of ʻIntercon-nectʼ, our irregular indoctrination booklet. My name isAlastair Gardner and I started Signals back in 1993.For the last eight years, Andy Heavens has been partof the business too.

Thanks, as ever, to all our customers forkeeping us afloat. We have experienced a terrificamount of loyalty over the years which I hope wemanage to reciprocate. Thanks also to Garry Yeowell,talented photographer and valued customer, for allow-ing us to use his photograph for the cover.

It is two years since the last ʻyearbookʼand, sitting here typing, trying to be interesting, I re-alise why! In 2009 I was saying that all had been well,so far, given that the world was apparently ending. Imight as well give the same reassurances again. Andyet again with the same sense that the next 12months could well be the most challenging of all.Looking on the bright side, our exports to Italy,Greece, Spain and Portugal have always been prettysmall.

Stand-out successes since the lastnewsletter have been the Naim Uniti and NDXstreaming products. The Uniti all-in-one system saleshave been particularly interesting to us because theyhave often been to new, non-hi-fi, customers. On acouple of occasions they have turned those fresh lis-teners onto the joys of proper music replay to the ex-tent that they have purchased much higher-endsystems, pushing the Uniti to another part of thehouse or passing it along to offspring.

Addiction? No-one is immune. Thankgoodness.

Que? what’s occuring

Signals supply and install audio, hometheatre, smart lighting, control andmulti-room products.But mainly just really good music systems.

Brands include:

Arcam, Audio Technica (ʻphones), Dynavec-tor, Epson, Focal, Grado, Hutter, Isoblue,Kudos, Linn, Lyra, Magneplanar, Naim, Neat,Nottingham, Ortofon, PMC, Primare, Rako,Rega, Simple, Something Solid, Stax &Sumiko

cover picture © Gary YeowellDeath Valley Dunes 2011

With almost 24 months of change, hereis a quick run-down of what is new at Signals:

After all these years, we now stock LinnProducts. Itʼs early days. We have all the ʻMajikʼstuff, some ʻAkurateʼ but, most significantly, we havethe LP12 turntable in a variety of configurations.

Truth be told, they are working rather wellwith the ʻentryʼ Majik version giving more than a hintof the refined musicality for which the LP12 is fa-mous and our almost ʻfully loadedʼ LP12 soundinggreat. Probably the best results that we have everhad from vinyl. Mind you this is the most expensiveturntable we have ever had too . . .

On the loudspeaker front, PMC rejoinedour portfolio in 2010. The fact 8 has made a numberof friends with its crisp clean and open performancefrom a slim, compact scandinavian-looking enclo-sure. The fact 3 is a stylish alternative for smallerspaces. The new ʻtwentyʼ series offers a fairamount of the ʻfactʼ performance at a lower pricepoint and we have been very impressed with them.

Kudos remains a firmfavourite with the new high end Titan T88 landingextremely well. A large, fast, natural speaker withstunning bass quality thanks to its isobaric designand surprisingly room and placement-friendly Wehave even sold some!

Linn have resurrected the iso-barik name for the new Majik Isobarik loudspeakeran affordable tour de force capable of impressiveresults.

Naim have added the S400 Ovator to theS600 and seem to have hit the spot for size, price

TheNaim Uniti

range and LinnMajik DSi are

bringing an apprecia-tion of quality music re-

play to a lot of new people.If there is a theme running

through this issue, itʼs stream-ing. At a higher level, the new

NDX and ND5XS are bringingpurist music streaming to a Naim sys-

tem near you and the Linn Majik DS,Akurate DS and Klimax DS are doing the

same for a Linn system. And yes there issome crossover potential here.

On the amplifier front, things have been alittle quieter. The Primare i32 is a gem. Rega havelaunched the mind blowingly-lovely-on-a-budgetBrio R amplifier and their hints-like-bricks depart-ment seem to be indicating that there is some morenew amplification due during 2012.

Beyond that, we can report that the RegaDAC has been a delight, bringing easy musical ac-cess to computer-based audio and an upgrade totheir (and other peopleʼs) CD players.

Regaʼs Ios phono stage has had a stonk-ing update (not least to the price!). Now housed inthe larger and much heavier ʻreferenceʼ caseworkthe Ios has had some significant development workunder the lid. A very significant product in our view.

Along with many in Essex, Rega havetheir peddle to the metal. Not, in this case, driving awhite van on the A12 but in keeping up withturntable demand. You would think that they wouldhave learned by now but a constant stream of newmodels (RP1, RP1 performance pack, RP3 and

andperform-ance. TheS600 is nowavailable in activeconfiguration (S400should join it later in2012) and the results areextremely convincing.

We continue to stockthe full Naim range right up to 500series components, including CD555ʻmaxed out with twin 555PS.

We have added Magneplanar to ourrange. These ribbon designs look like electrostaticsbut require no power. Serious qualities lie within!

Rega have given the RS series of loud-speakers a make-over. Mostly it is simply an aes-thetic improvement but the RS7 has been properlyupgraded with a new cross-over design too.

Neat acoustics have revised the Ultima-tum range, produced a Motive SE2 and a revisedversion of the Petite, the SX, that has been a bit ofa surprise ʻhitʼ. Late 2011 they have added a com-pact stand-mount called the Iota. It ʻs aimed at thenew compact ʻstreamerʼ audio system market.

Oh yes, streamers. We have dedicated acouple of pages in this booklet to explain all this.

RP6) are keeping demand sky high and quite a bitahead of supply speed. More is to come too.

Staying with analogue, Lyra- have pro-duced the Kleos, which sits between the very suc-cessful Delos and Skala cartridges. Along withDynavector, Linn, Ortofon, Sumiko and Nottinghamwe have a lot to show you.

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Good old CDs are effectively a foldercontaining a collection of music files. Itʼs data andthe job of the CD player has always been to col-lect this data via laser (essentially an analogueprocess) and to present it as a stream to the in-built or external Digital to Analogue Converter,producing a (hopefully) musical result.

In the last few years it has be-come popular to ʻripʼ CDs, I.E. to harvestthe data, and to store this in a number offormats, the most popular of which hasbeen MP3 compressed files. These com-pressed music files were so much smallerthat it has spawned a new industry sellingmusic as an internet download.

With music files freed of the re-strictions of the CD packaging and the in-ternet speeding up, the situation has turnedon its head and we now have access to farhigher than CD quality recordings too.Downloads are easy to do and stashingyour prized music on a centralised self-backing up “NAS” hard drive is simple evenfor mere mortals.

A corollary of this has been theease with which music can be shared(whether compressed or not) and access-ing music throughout the home has become bigbusiness. What was called multi-room audio hasbecome the near-exclusive domain of a relativelyyoung brand called Sonos.

Sonos is very good at what it aims toachieve too. Itʼs easy to set-up, the user interface ,be it on iPad, iPhone, Android devices or their own

Limitations? It plays uncompressed for-mats but is limited to no more than standard CDresolution. Quality can be improved by using anexternal DAC but it is never the Nʼth degree (not,in fairness, that it was ever intended to be).

There is no rule that says that you canonly ever use one system and devices such as

Sonos can also be used in a householdwhere the standards for the main listen-ing room(s) are a whole lot higher. Highend in the sitting room, a more basiclevel in the kitchen study, bedroom etc.

Sonos is not the only fruit either.Squeezebox is a very popular product,although it requires slightly more com-puter know-how to set it up and it lackssome of the user-friendly features.

A new arrival is called Simple Audio.Based in Glasgow, Simple is a fairly sub-stantial start-up business with properfunding behind it. The range of productsis small but it is effectively a higher qual-ity version of the Sonos idea. WhereSonos uses a wireless link or wired Eth-ernet, Simple uses Ethernet over mainsas an alternative to standard wired Ether-net. This removes the main restriction to

higher quality files and Simple can handle 24 bitHD music. It sounds pretty damned good too andthe control interface is not unlike Sonos (loomingcentre page).

Astonishingly Simple is not just UK de-signed but is actually manufactured in Scotland.Letʼs celebrate and each buy ten of them . . .

handsets is superb. Sound quality through theirown ʻConnect Ampʼ is roughly a match for stan-dard multi-room kit and you can use their ʻCon-nectʼ with an external amplifier or run it digitallyinto a DAC for a further uplift in quality. In additionto their amplifier they offer all-in one speaker /amps which can be used individually or in pairs.

Their recent re-naming of the products ʻconnectʼ,ʻbridgeʼ and ʻplayʼ has rendered it nigh on impossi-ble to write about sensibly! Still, we have it all hereand can explain better face to face.

Their combination of wired Ethernetand proprietary ʻmeshʼ wireless operation is verystable. It does the Apple thing and ʻjust worksʼ.

just data

So itʼs not garbage then. The principalsof streaming audio are good but the execution mat-ters. Simply plugging a PC into the mains nearyour Naim system squeezes something significantfrom the audio quality. Even the switch-mode sup-ply in a consumer grade network audio device cando the same thing.

Get it right, on the other hand, and itʼsnot just high end CD quality that can start to feelthreatened. High resolution audio can challengeanalogue too.

It is easy to download music in 24 bitformat with sample rates as high as 192 khz. TheLinn and Naim devices are ʻelasticʼ to the formatchoice and can play the music at the native resolu-tion.

A typical hard disc based system re-quires a server for the music, a ripper to place theCD data onto the hard drive, and a streamer (prob-ably more accurately described as a renderer) toconvert the digital files received via the networkinto an analogue music signal. Ideally, all of thesewill be linked together via a wired local network, al-

learnedto set the net-work parameters on aZoneripper to give excellentresults.

Armed in this way, the computer can bepretty much ignored. The control interfaces, LinnʼsKinsky (above), Naimʼs n-stream on the front coverare a joy. This is not computer audio, itʼs simply thenext logical development of an existing path.

though some can work wirelessly. Ideally,too, the local system will have a good qual-ity router and switches and will have aseparate system for the music distributionto keep normal internet / printing /games traffic away from the audio feed.A subtle gain but tangible.

There are a number of rip-per / servers available. Both Linnand Naim require UPnP (UniversalPlug and Play) servers. These rippersstore the CD data in an uncompressed format(WAV is what was on the disc), find the titling andartwork from the internet and file the information ina way that you can find by artist, genre or albumtitle either through the front panel of the musicplayer or through an ʻappʼ on the iPad, iPhone orsimilar device.

There are a number of suitable server /ripper/ storage points available from around £600

upwards. With the Naim equipment, the very bestsounding are their own UnitiServe, NS01 or HDXunits but we stock Ripcaster too and have

just music

All-in-one systems are hardly new, itwas how the whole audio thing started, after all.For the last three decades, though, quality has re-ally meant separate components.

The gentle rise to audiophile credibilitystarted in 1997 when Linn produced the Classik, aCD player, radio and amplifier in a single box. Itbrought decent quality to a new audience.

Networked, or streamed, music has be-come a catalyst for the new wave of compact sys-tems. With Linnʼs Majik DSi and the Naim Uniti,single box music systems have become worthy ofdiscriminating listeners. In the case of Naimʼs Uniti,the feature count has also gone straight off thescale. A single box offering CD, FM, DAB and in-ternet radio, iPod access and digital inputs, net-worked music via wired or wireless Ethernet areally good amplifier and control from a handset orapple iPhone or iPad.

The Linn Majik DSi connects via an Eth-ernet cable to the domestic network and allows ac-cess to music files located in a wide range ofcompressed and uncompressed formats on your

ideaof con-

necting over£3kʼs worth of loud-

speaker to a single boxsystem but in this case it is per-

fectly rational. Verily we have the all-in-one for grown-ups!

Every feature that you have ever wantedin a sensible quality music system and none of thebits you didnʼt; wires and clutter. Sure, you can up-grade with a power amp, add sources like a phonostage for a turntable or maybe even a CD player.You can route digital audio into it directly from theTV or PVR. But none of this needs to be done.

Sitting on a network with good qualitymusic available it can bring unmitigated joy.

network. It can also access internet radio, be con-trolled via PC ,MAC, iPhone etc. The killer additionis that it allows various rooms to be synchro-nised in what they term ʻparty modeʼ. Neat.

The Naim Uniti range hasexpanded from the original allsinging Uniti to the morecompact UnitiQute(no CD,slightly

less

power).

New for 2011-12 we havethe Naim SuperUniti and it is yet

another significant step forward.It is hard to get your head around the

new world order

from the slightly boxy sound we associate witholder LP12 decks.

The phono stages have been arevelation and the £2000 Uphorik is a terrificdevice with sufficient adjustability to match theloading of any MC you are likely to find as wellas work with a more prosaic moving magnet.Urika is better still. As for the Linn Adikt, itʼs al-most certainly the best moving magnet car-tridge we have come across.

Beyond the ʻSondek LP12ʼ, wehave the full Majik range: LP12, integratedamplifier, active boards, power amp, DS, DSi,the 109 speakers and the new Majik Isobarikspictured right. We have Akurate DS and willdevelop our involvement with the full Akuraterange in the fullness of time.

I recall that, when we took onNaim, almost a decade ago and mainly for ac-cess to the CD players at the time, that it took

a while to get ourheads around theproducts.

We canʼt add a brand with thestature of Linn to our portfolio without dedicat-ing some space to the fact. I think it is fair tosay that Linn have something of a reputation,one hinted at by the tongue in cheek heading.

Our involvement has come aboutpartially as a result of a campaign waged byLinn-owning customers and mainly by thelogic in offering buyers access to the two pre-mier manufacturers of networked audio de-vices plus the most iconic turntable on theplanet.

We have hit the ground runningmore with the turntable than anything else. Itʼseasy to dismiss the LP12 as an old design butjust about every component has been revisedand refined over the years. We have an al-most full-spec LP12, only the Urika in-builtphono stage would be an improvement, and itreally is very good indeed. At least as good aswe have ever had from themedium and along way

This new arrival is nodifferent. Weʼve had the trainingon the turntable and Andy wasalready very clued-up on settingup the decks. Certainly, the re-sults that we are getting indicatethat we have the turntablesproperly on song. Indeed, theMajik LP12 is attracting ears in away that we did not expect.

We have visited thefactory at Eaglesham and hadthe full tour. It is an astonishingplace. The sight from the win-dows of the main assembly floorof cows grazing was particularlymemorable. There is a stagger-ing amount of automation yet ahigh level of human input too,with an individual signing offeach item. Linn make just abouteverything on site, even con-structing casework and applyingall finishes in an impressive se-quence.

Most striking of allwas the human aspect. Thewarmth, pride and enthusiasmwas infectious. So far, so good.Orders that we have placed arebeing fulfilled with remarkablespeed. As an organisation, thisone takes some beating.

tap feet, talk about tunes

OK, Iʼm guessing that the heading willhave set a few teeth on edge. Itʼs not entirely seri-ous anyway. CD players might be feeling underthreat but the good old turntable soldiers on. No,strike that, turntables are selling extremely welland, perhaps most surprising, are still improvingtoo. This is not a case of treading water.

We have a pretty expansive range ofthem, too:

Rega covers the ʻbudgetʼ to ʻsensibleʼground and they have the most newproducts in 2011-12.

The first of thenew-wave decks wasthe RP1 and atwell under£250 in-clud-

inga car-tridge, it isone of thegreat audio bar-gains. Upgradableeither at the point ofordering or subsequentlywith the Performance Pack

And pushing the boat out is something withwhich Linn can help. As mentioned elsewhere, theentry level Majik LP12 has turned out to be an unex-pected delight, so the leap into the iconic turntableneed not be too much of a financial drain.

Cleverly, it can be upgraded to the highestSondek LP12 specification incrementally. We havecome to the conclusion that Linn have actually beenimproving most aspects of the decks (just like theyʼvesaid they did) because even without Keel, RadikalTrampolinn II etc, etc, it is still a lovely-sounding andvery sophisticated source component, far more com-pelling than quite a few of the higher spec, breathed-on-by-gods trade-ins that we have had over theyears.

A couple of years ago Lyra launched the Delos, theirsub-£1000 cartridge. It has gone down a storm and istheir most successful product to date. This used to bethe second up the range with the entry point being theexcellent Dorian. Sadly, it has been dropped. Somestocks still remain but when they are gone it will be nomore. This years new product is the £1750 Kleos andit is yet another stunner.

(better cartridge, white belt, thicker mat) it offers allthe sound quality that many will ever need.

The new RP3 (right) is even more con-vincing for not a massive amount of extra outlay.Replacing the P3/24 (and sounding appreciablybetter too), the RP3 can be upgraded with a PSU.There is a package deal with the excellent Elys IIcartridge.

Above that, the new RP6 replaces theP3 gloss and RP5. Again, proper progress. Thenwe come to the P7 and P9 with an über deck (at anextremely high price) under development too.

Nottingham Analogue have not had anyfresh developments in the past year or so. De-

spite this, they do still find new buyers quiteregularly and the Ace Space deck re-

mains the sweet spot of the range.Add a heavy kit and it is ex-

tremely close in abilityto the much more

expensive Hy-per-space.Add the

Wave Me-chanic PSU

and it really ishard to beat almost

regardless of price. TheRoksan Nima is a terrific

affordable arm for it and it canjustify some eye-wateringly ex-

pensive cartridges if you really wantto push the boat out.

legacy replay

it’s all just Greek

Primare is yet another brand that has beenworking rather hard recently. There is a new productrange in place and here we have some of the fruits oftheir labours: The radical i32 amplifier and CD32player. The pairing even won EISA product of theyear 2011. The amplifier is a particularly novel propo-

sition not least because it has a port which willallow for the intriguing option of adding

UPnP music streaming aswell as FM and

DAB

proving very successful. Hey, wemight get to sell some 'spensive ca-bles again! The Tellurium Q cables have suited themreally well too, and these seem to the fave wires ofthe moment with good reason.

The i32 uses what Primare call UFPD. It'sa class D design and the design brief can be down-loaded from their website.

The upshot is that the I32 is very green in-deed. Stand-by draws just 0.2W and almost no en-ergy is wasted as heat when it is playing. On top ofthat, warm-up is rapid too. All too good to be true?

After a previous bad experience in reunit-ing with a brand that appeared to be back on form,we took the trouble to listen to a few samples to becompletely sure that the first 'good' example wascompletely representative. We have sold a few unitsover 2011 too and consistency (and reliability) hasproved to be good.

An area that used to elude Primare wasthe quality of the displays and control logic. Both arenow excellent and the CD player and amp can displaytheir settings clearly. This bodes well for when youare searching for music files or internet radio on thei32 fitted with the upgrade board. Mind you, there isan iPhone ʻappʼ for this. For now, the amp allows youto 'trim' individual input levels and to name themspecifically. Even the colour of the text can be ad-justed via settings - so it can actually look green too.

The new range includes AV processor,multi-channel amps and a BluRay / SACD / CDplayer. All share the super efficient power delivery.

If black simply wonʼt suit, Titanium finish isan option too.

radio. Oh yes, and digital inputs plus the inevitableiPod interface too. Claims are high but we have yet tohear or see how this feature performs. It should arriveearly 2012.

For now, we have the CD player and 'bare'amplifier and they really are very good indeed. Clear,refined and open as before but also agile, transparentand powerful. Tonally neutral, seemingly slightly ʻcoolʼbut with remarkable bass power and control. A worldaway from the blandness that increasingly seemed todefine the previous i30 model.

The sense of 'coolness' probably stemsfrom the absence of bloom and blur.

With some PMC Fact 8speakers which are them-selves quite 'cool' in bal-ance, the Primare actuallycomes over as tonallyricher, warmer overall, thansome mid range Naimcomponents. The resultsutterly belie the relativelylow cost of the electronics.Combinations, eh?

The timing is good,as are scale and dynamics.The bass delivery is quiteunlike any previous Pri-mare but the important bitis that it is musical and en-gaging.

As usual, cablechoice is relevant, withsome of the Nordost cables

back in black

PMC discover stylePMC are becoming a force to be reckoned with. Their

products have always been very capable and some even down-right astonishing, but they have never been objects that youwould desire for looks alone.

The fact 8 was (pictured right) changed all this when itwas launched a couple of years ago. The combination of a clean,fast and open sound allied to crisp good looks made them an in-stant success, suiting a wide range of listeners and musicalstyles. The success is all the more surprising when you considerthat the pricing is far from ʻbudgetʼ. The ʻ8 has now been joinedby a slightly smaller fact 3 stand-mount with an integral pillarstand.

The latest arrivals are at the more affordable end ofthe scale and celebrate PMCs 20 years in business as does thenew 20 year warranty, and they bear a more than passing re-semblance to the facts.

The new twenty series (eyes left) comprises twostand-mounts and two floor-standers. As with the facts, thegrilles are attached via hidden magnets and cover the entire faceof the speaker. The good news is that they sound even betterthan they look. The higher quality crossovers and the new bassdrivers share quite a lot of the fact DNA. All use the advancedtranmission line loading (ATL) and the results are visually pretty,compact and very easy to drive speakers with remarkable reso-lution, scale, imaging and bass extension. As with the fact, theyalso manage a level of punch and drive that used to elude theirʻconsumer productsʼ in the past. Well thatʼs our take on the mat-ter.

The 21, 23 and 24, to give the model numbers, haveleft a huge impression on us. Using even a Naim SuperUniti, weare getting results that belie both price and size. They look great,work fairly close to boundaries and sound fantastic whether play-ing orchestral, jazz, rock or simple acoustic material. The largest24 floor-stander could well be the ʻkillerʼ product. Great stuff!

thin, flat & roundedMagnepan is an American loudspeaker manufacturer. Their full ribbon

and quasi ribbon designs are called Magneplanars and there is a substantialrange of models. The affectionate nickname within the hi-fi world is to call themMaggies and they have been around for years. They are now distributed in the UKby Decent Audio - I know, one of us really ought to have a word with him about thename - and we have been impressed enough to invest.

The more affordable panels are ʻquasi ribbonsʼ (coated mylar film). Lestyou expect scary numbers, I should point out that the smallest full range free-standing model, the MG12 is priced at £1500 per pair. When you consider thehandmade in America element plus import duties, shipment etc, this is surprisinglymodest. The next model up, the bewilderingly heavy MG1.7, pictured right,comes in at £2500 / pair with an aluminium frame, wooden trim is £100 more.

Sound quality is not unlike electrostatic designs, which is not all thatsurprising given that both involve a light, thin membrane and are open front andback. Placement is incredibly critical, as is the amplifiers ability to drive a 4 ohmload. Beyond that, the load is not reactive or difficult in any other way. Where elec-trostatics involve the signal going through a transformer,these ribbons are far more directly linked to the amplifier.

I say ʻevenʼ better because there are some en-gaging qualities evident here, the lack of boxiness, stagger-ing detail retrieval and obvious speed of delivery being themost obvious. Bass is not as punchy as with conventionaldesigns but it is far from lacking. It is fair to say that theirbias is towards ʻnaturalʼ acoustic recordings but that is as faras it goes. The positive aspects are so dramatic that youcould argue that no conventional speakers can sound asnatural.

The Naim amplification seems to have broadlythe right qualities, bizarrely, old solid state Quad gear seemsto as well, so these might not be quite as difficult as the rep-utation suggests. At the time of writing we have had theMG12s for less than a month and are just bedding in the MG1.7s, having sold the initial demo pair to the first person totry them, so knowledge is still developing.

rega updateAs mentioned on the opening page, Rega

have given their RS speaker range a make-over. Forthe RS1,3 and 5 this amounts to neater grilles andnicer feet on the floor-standers.

For the RS7, there is also a redesignedcross-over. The previous RS7 was not at all bad butthis version is substantially better. More spirited, openand dynamic, simply more musical. The entire rangeremains very well matched to Naim electronics aswell as Regaʼs own and continues to hit the spot for awide range of listeners.

For 2012, the RS10 looms. It will feature aNaim-like BMR but this time with a tweeter.

The Naim Ovator400, smaller brotherto the larger ʻ600, fi-nally arrived at theend of 2010. Thishas proved to bethe loudspeaker

for which buyershave been waiting.

Good as the ʻ600 is, it istoo large for many peopleʼs

rooms. The ʻ400 is just right.There has been quite a lot of debate out

there as to how good these new-generation Naimspeakers actually are. The shift in style brought about by theBMR midrange-to-infinity driver is quite marked. It can seemquite dull in balance, at least initially, not something that aidsquick-fire comparisons.

Paradoxically, owners seem to become increas-ingly hooked on them over time and their most obvious attrib-ute is the amount of spirit and energy they bring to music. At£3250 (until April 2012) the ʻ400 is impressive value formoney. It needs a little bit of room to breath, but as little as 20cm from the wall has been fine. They are far more critical ofpreamplifier and source than power and small adjustments totoe-in, even vertical azimuth can make dramatic and worth-while changes to tuning.

The active crossover for the Ovator 600 arrived latesummer 2011 and it elevates the speaker to a completely dif-ferent level of ability. One of our customers has them in a fine,large room and the sense of realism they achieve, of an actualperformance taking place, is mesmerising. As he has saidthey “donʼt sound of speakerʼ” yet they punch in a way that nopanel ever could. If the 400 improves by even half as much,this will be the must-have upgrade for any existing owner.

Neat Acoustics have had a fairly productive timeover the past 24 months. The popular Motive 2 compact floor-stander has been joined by a more refined sibling, the MotiveSE2. Yup, letter / number order something odd with. The ex-cellent Motive 3 stand-mount continues with very minor pro-

duction improvements and there has been a more significantrevision (most obvious is the new soft dome tweeter) to the

evergreen Petite, now Petite SX (right) and, guess what? Peo-ple really like ʻem. Stand-mounts uncool? Certainly not.

Where the Motives 2 and SE2 are probably themost engaging and musical ultra-compact floor standing

speakers out there, there really is something about a stand-mount. As with most Neats, the Petites need careful siting and

are very critical of stand choice (not necessarily the Neatone). Set-up correctly, they are capable of top-notch per-formance. Neat have always been good partners for Naim

electronics and good matches for the Petite SX have includedthe Uniti and the Nait XS system.

Revelling in the continued interest in speakers-on-sticks, the new Neat Iota, at 2.6 litre size, a sub-miniature, isdue to be in production for the end of 2011. Weʼve not heard

them yet but the ingredients look promising with a ribbontweeter and smaller driver from the same stable as used in

the Motive series. Priced at £650 / pair, they are surely a cultproduct in the making.

life force reet neat

much kudosWeʼve known Derek Gilligan for around ten years now and have

been keen supporters of his products from the day he branched out tobuilding loudspeakers as Kudos Audio over five years ago. The Cardea C10stand-mounts continue to be one of our mainstay speakers and the ʻSuperʼversion that I mentioned two years ago in ʻInterconnectʼ looks like it will fi-nally make production in 2012. So fast, Derek!

In the meantime, he has been working on more compact floorstanders and on his flagship piece, the T88 Titan.

When he brought along the pre-production Titans in spring 2011there was some unease. Truth be told, his hitherto ʻtopʼ speaker, the C30floor-standers, had never been all that good a match for our larger listeningroom and was far too bass heavy for the smaller one. On top of that, theyreally need a lot of power to control them. The larger Titan might just be. . .

. . . utterly brilliant, as it turned out. Our fears were obliterated inan instant and the demo pair ordered soon after. Far more placement-happy, far more room-friendly and, unexpectedly, far easier to drive too.From top to bottom the T88 is smooth without being smoothed, has bassthat can stop on the edge of a precipice (you need to hear what I mean)with a level of extension that defies belief. They image, they do dynamics,they time. They manage to be revealing whilst being generous enough to letyou play the music in less than stellar recordings. Can you feel the love?

As you can see from the two pictures of them in this issue, theyare a two box design. The larger upper cabinet is effectively a full rangespeaker and the lower one a very well-judged passive sub-woofer usingtwin back-to-back bass drivers in an isobaric configuration. Each cabinetcontains the relevant cross-over and they can be can be bi-amped withease. They come with Chord Signature link cables and this was the onlyissue for us. In a system where the Signature is the right cable (not in ourcase with the Naim 500 system) it may be fine. With NAC-A5 replacing theChord here, we finally got the full Titanic experience.

If the exposed plywood styling is too much to take, high glosslacquer is an option. One of the pairs we have supplied are finished in thisway and they look fantastic. Price? At just under £13k, they are cheaperthan a lot of less good alternatives!

positioned under electronics sited on simple shelv-ing. In fact, they can be bewilderingly effective.

Use something more focussed on thecharacteristics of the equipment, such as the NaimFraim with Naim equipment and the pads give amore mixed in result. IE they can make thingsmurky. Nevertheless, with caveats in place, weheartily recommend trying the Black Ravioli prod-

ucts and have awide selection instock available onsale or return.

On the signals /speaker cable front, we have had some stunning re-sults from the Linn Silver interconnect in quite a fewapplications. Itʼs not stupidly priced but sounds re-freshingly clean, open yet refined. Itʼs funny how amanufacturer trying to make a single good cableseems more likely to hit the spot than one making ahuge range of them. The Naim cables are anothercase of this but they are very specific to Naim elec-tronics. Again, we carry demonstration samples ofjust about everything.

For more general use, we also have theTellurium Q cables. The most successful for us have

been the Black and Ultra Black. De-spite quite a few Naim owners

choosing this cable (even for all-Naim systems too), our own feel-ing is that this is not the best longterm match. Other brands of elec-

tronics, Primare, ATC, AudioNote,Arcam and Electrocompaniet are

known good matches and, withthem, these cables have been ex-

traordinary.

Hi-Fi is a passion for a lot of people andthe lure of the tweak has been big business formany years. A certain Mr Andrews probably has thecontact details for every hi-fi enthusiast in thecountry, such is the interest in cones, cablesand cure-alls. There is a lot of stuff outthere from a lot of places!

Signals will soon betwenty years old and Iʼd like tothink our understanding hasmatured, that weʼve grown upa little over this time. It hasnever been our way to simply listall the products out there, passalong the manufacturers claims andsit back. We are sad and pathetic enoughto actually want to have some faith in whatwe sell.

Truth is that just about everything makesa difference. A case in point is mains cabling. Swap-ping between various brands of mains cable willchange the character of the sound. Some will seembetter, some worse. Even the ones that are deemedto be an improvement can often seem like a badidea a week or two later. And if you get past thispoint, changing a single component in the systemcan bring it all crashing down.

With Naim equipment we are happy torecommend the Naim Powerline as being worth atry. Reassuringly, it is more about mechanicaldamping than a change in electrical behaviour. It issupplied as standard with the 500 series compo-nents anyway. In 90% of the situations it increasesresolution, refinement and scale. If a single cable is

being considered, then it canmake sense to feed the systemfrom it and use a passive mains

block with an IEC input. We have two:Our ʻbestʼ is the Music Works reflex lite

pictured left. Not cheap but very success-ful 99% of the time (note the endless

caveats!). The Wireworld Matrixblock is about a quarter the

price and more than halfas good, if you canquantify such things. It

is also usefully compact.Both are available for

home trial before you buy.Large chunky transformers (as

often used by Naim) are prone to me-chanical hum when there is a DC offset

in the mains supply. The problem oftenonly occurs at specific times of day or when

certain devices are running. A hairdryer or dish-washer pump can stimulate some very noticeablehum here. One device that has been known to helpis the Isotek Syncro power lead. Unusually, it hasnot produced any negative effects, just areduction in noise.

Equipment support choiceis rather more crucial to the resultsthan many will expect and the rel-evance or otherwise of isolation /energy management devices isinfluenced by the support sys-tem in place. For example,the nifty little black raviolipads, the more professionallooking Big Foot (right) ornew stick-on feet can be terrific,

artistic differences

New arrival of 2011 on the support frontwas the Naim Fraim Lite looming large below.Hideous name aside, it does exactly what youwould expect, performing slightly less well than theʻfull fatʼ version of Fraim for quite a lotless money. Theironic sales resulthas been to sellmore of the ʻproperʼstuff!

The mostinteresting compari-son for us was whenplacing a middlingNaim system on afew levels of Isoblue:Results were verygood, musical, dy-namic and spirited.Transferred to theFraim Lite and it be-came cleaner, morerefined, definitelymore musical andcompelling. Then ontothe good ʻole full Fraim andgot pretty much the same im-provements all over again.

Quite how they have engineered some-thing to inhabit the sonic high-to-middle ground, Ihave no idea, but this is exactly where it resides.You can upgrade by adding the ball and cups andglass shelves from the full Fraim and, in this re-spect, it makes tremendous sense. Results with

ular system. Aluminiumand / or wooden up-rights of many optionallengths are used toconnect the levels.

The shelvesare made from a decep-tively complex sandwich ofthree layered cross-grained firblockboard and are double veneered(again cross-grained) with the finallayer in a wide variety of woods.There are even two cherry finishes,American and European. The qualityis full-on furniture grade and theconsistency, within the con-straints that these are realwoods, unusually high. Huttermake high quality furni-ture anyway and theseaudio stands were a spin-off developed by Hut-ter Jr.

This isa very musical solu-tion at a price sub-stantially lower than

Fraim. The op-tion of the

50cm wideshelvingmakes thisideal forwhere spaceit at a pre-mium.

other electronics brands mayvary.The other popular products for

us have remained Isoblue and Hutter. Isoblue (bub-ble right) is a UK manufactured modular system.The ʻVʼ section uprights are solid wood and it isavailable in three grades: Graphite painted finish 60

series, real wood 60 series with natural ash or oakshelves veneered shelves

and edges in stainedMDF to match. Top ofthe range is the Special

Branch with higher qualityveneer and solid edging

even to the groove thatruns front to back toalign the uprights.

Pictured at thepage edge are examples ofthe Special branch finishes

from the left, walnut,quilted maple, cherryand pippy oak. At some

stage, Isoblue stopped stain-ing the standard oak finish

on the more basic 60series and this has be-come a very pop-ular choice.

Itʼs not quite a fig-ured as the specialbranch version but

when itʼs full of audioequipment . . .

Hutter Racktime stands (bubbleright) are made in Austria to exact-ing standards and are another mod-

stands that deliver

S i g n a l s U K L t d 6 S t M a r y ’ s P a r k B u c k l e s h a m I p s w i c h I P 1 0 0 D Y t e l 0 1 4 7 3 6 5 5 1 7 1 e n q @ s i g n a l s . u k . c o m

signals

hi-fi for grown-ups

My personal goal in setting up Signalswas to make a living doing something I find inter-esting and rewarding. It is encouraging to see thatour most successful suppliers seem to have an en-lightened approach to their own businesses.

You donʼt need to spend a lot of timewith the manufacturing staff at Linn, Naim, PMC orRega to see that there is an intense level of prideand enthusiasm for what they do. Even a factory asspectacularly automated as Linnʼs at Eaglesham isfull of people with real sense of fulfillment in whatthey achieve. This is perhaps less surprising atsmaller concerns such as Neat, Nottingham orKudos where the staff are much closer to the ʻcoreʼand itʼs there just the same.

Your investment in quality is supportingsomething that, over time, supports you. Superla-tive musical quality, software and even hardwareupdates, high residual worth, reliability, long war-ranties and long term support are the pay-off.

Genuinely involving music systems gobeyond simply bringing pleasure. They improve ourwellbeing too. In the current climate is there anybetter investment opportunity than this?

So . . . is Signals now entering the foodbusiness? Curiously, there are parallels. With UKInc constantly being criticised for having become aservice rather than manufacturing economy, it isheartening to note that a high proportion of whatwe sell is actually made here in the UK by real livehuman beings.

Quality audio is a tiny industry in globalterms yet the UK brands have a spectacularly highreputation. The products manufactured by the com-panies that we support represent some of the veryfinest anywhere. Not bad that you can access itfrom a tiny operation located just outside Ipswich!

The last two or three of years have seencolossal changes in the way that people have cho-sen to handle their music. Holding a centralisedstore of ʻrippedʼ CDs and downloads, frequently atultra high resolution ʻstudio masterʼ level has be-come a reality and there has been a burst of freshand exciting technology to make the most of this.

The quality of the user experience incontrolling accessing streamed music has beenraised significantly by the widespread adoption ofthe iPad and other such devices. Hair shirt audio,this is not. But truly high uncompromised quality itnevertheless is, and both Linn and Naim are at theforefront.

I would never suggest that we should bebuying products made in the UK for that reasonalone. It is, however, a very nice thing when thebest that you can get just happens to come fromwithin our own shores.

fresh, local, healthy

Working with Hitachi Capital, we arepleased to offer interest free credit on purchasesover £750.This must be of brand new items (notused or ex-dem, I'm afraid). Deposit is 10% (ormore if you're very keen) and we reserve the rightnot to make interest free finance available in addi-tion to other offers.

Example :Purchase price £2795. Deposit of

£279.50 amount of loan £2515.50 12 monthly pay-ments of £209.62 APR 0.0%

Alternativity we can offer 12 month de-ferred credit: Sign up for a three year credit dealwith Hitachi which starts 12 months from the pur-chase date. If you settle the full outstanding beforethe commencement of the credit term, no interestapplies. They write to you to remind you of the sit-uation prior to the interest-bearing period com-mencing.

Example:Purchase price £2795. Deposit of

£279.50 amount of loan £2515.50 36 monthly pay-ments of £107.84 APR 19.9% Monthly paymentswill commence after 12 months and be payable onthe same date in each subsequent month.