Sound + Image

Welcome to our Awards issue! That celebration starts on page 17, so I won’t bang on about it too much here, except perhaps to note that I was pleased to find so many Australian products this year making it through the strongest competition of international manufacturers new and established, with all their various possible advantages of market conditions and global mass production and possible local support, and well, I won’t mention tariffs (a print magazine is hardly the place to comment on policy that changes by the hour). But despite that, or perhaps taking advantage of that to offer value locally, we have nine Australian winners, and several others which might fairly boast some useful Aussie content. Don’t it make you proud!* I suppose it is almost inevitable that our…

Encel Audio has been building an attractive range of affordable classic hi-fi with a modern twist: the Melbourne company says it aims for “exceptional sound and fun aesthetics”. That certainly continues with a new second bookshelf speaker, the ‘Raw Gelati’, impressively priced at $479 a pair, joining the original Gelati standmount speakers ($629), the Brains amplifier ($899), and the Harald V2 Bluetooth receiver ($149). The new standmounts, though cheaper, are not smaller: they are the same size as the original Gelati: 30cm high, 22cm deep. Their lower price has been made possible by Encel using a different mid/bass driver and some simpler materials, notably releasing them in a single colour — liquorice black — rather than the choice of multiple colourful baffles available for the original Gelati. But the ‘fun’…

Google and Samsung have collaborated on a new audio format to rival Dolby Atmos. Called Eclipsa Audio, it is set to debut in Samsung’s 2025 TVs and soundbars, and potentially more widely in Google TV and Android TV interfaces for any number of other devices. Google promises future support within the Chrome browser and potentially within Google Cast/Chromecast streaming. The format makes use of IAMF (Immersive Audio Model and Formats) as previously developed by Google, Samsung and others within the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), and Eclipsa is being released as an open-source alternative to Dolby’s immersive audio format, just as HDR10+ video is an open-source rival to Dolby Vision. The IAMF specification has indications that this is not, like Atmos, a format with no real limit to channel count;…

Epson Australia has debuted both its new office and Experience Centre in North Sydney, together with a brand-new high-end projector, the EH-QL3000, now its top home cinema projector at $24,999. It distinguishes itself over the $8999 EH-LS12000B primarily by bringing in some of Epson’s skills in the commercial sector at providing projectors able to deliver giant images in well-lit spaces, and to that end this is also the brightest model in the range, raising the LS12000’s 2700 lumens to here a blistering 6000 lumens: sufficient, says Epson, to turn any space, including well-lit living areas, into a cinema. The laser light source should be good for 20,000 hours viewing. At the event, which Epson Australia tagged ‘New Beginnings for a Brighter Future’, Epson also explained how a series of different…

Two new and very differentlooking products are on the way from Musical Fidelity, and the first brings with it a wave of 1990s nostalgia — the company is putting tubes into tubes again! The newly-announced X-Tube revives the company’s X-profile aluminium die-cast chassis. In the late 1990s this was developed to contain a whole range of componentry: several DACs, a preamplifier, power amplifiers, a separate power supply — they all came encased in Musical Fidelity’s radical tubeshaped enclosure. We remember loving many of this range back in the day: indeed one of our reference systems remains able to employ Musical Fidelity’s X-Pre preamplifier and a pair of X-A50 power amps, still going strong. Our enthusiasm for the relaunch is tempered just a little by the first choice for revival. The…

Pro-Ject has done a good few special edition turntables for bands and anniversaries: ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, a ‘Ninja Star’ Metallica, a Beatles-themed Yellow Submarine spinner. But we think this is the first Aussie band to score a special: please welcome Pro-Ject’s new AC/DC belt-driven deck! As with the Metallica design, this is less about direct branding and more about referencing a key shape, here the ‘lightning bolt’ which is central to AC/DC’s logo, along with glowing red lighting highlights. The 28mm MDF plinth forms the first lightning bolt, housing the stainless steel axle of the acrylic subplatter sitting in a bronze bushing, and supporting the heavy and supposedly “zero-resonance” 10mm glass platter, which is driven by one of Pro-Ject’s flat silicone belts. The tonearm is unique, with a…