Hi-Fi-Insight News and Reviews (3)
Bit Perfect Audio
February 14th, 2009In the last year or so, there has been a flood of standalone digital to audio converters (DACs) that are aimed at personal computer owners who want to improve the reproduction of their music collection stored on computer hard disks. Standalone DACs were all the rage in the mid nineties as they offered a reasonably priced upgrade to compact disk owners without having to replace the whole player providing it had a digital ouput socket which could then be fed to an external DAC.
The same situation now exists with PC’s as the majority of soundcards all provide digital outputs as analogue output. However the analogue output is usually of a poor standard due to widespread use of poor components such as cheap and nasty DACs, not to mention reliance on a PC’s power supply which is not designed for audio applications and is critical if any sort of true hi-fi reproduction is to be achieved.
Therefore it makes more sense to feed the digital output of a PC to a dedicated external audiophile DAC to achieve the best sound quality which leads us on to the topic of this post. One of the most least explained facts about digital audio and one that seems to escaped the various magazine reviews and manufacturers’ promotion material surrounding these new external DACs is question of bit perfect audio, that is that the digital output from the computer soundcard is the same as the digital output from the stored audio file. [...]
Posted in Tweaks | No Comments »
JBL Control One Speakers
February 13th, 2009
If you are looking for a high quality wall mountable bookshelf speaker at a knock down price, then the JBL Control One Speakers may be just what you are looking for. Available from Richer Sounds at a ludicrous £49.99 (half price) these tiny speakers are perfect for home cinema installations where they can discretely hide in room corners.
I had been looking for a replacement pair of rear home cinema speakers as I had recently moved house and the existing budget Eltax bookshelf speakers were slightly too big and deep for wall mounting, not to mention the fact that they were rear ported so an upgrade was required. A quick browse on Richer Sound's website gave me a shortlist of three, but the JBL Control One Speakers won the day thanks to their price, reviews, front bass reflex port and the fact they were already supplied with unobtrusive mounting brackets. [...]
Posted in Loudspeakers | No Comments »
Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ81B Plasma Screen
February 11th, 2009
The Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ81B Plasma Screen is the latest edition to their Viera range of televisions and represents one of the best quality screens you can find for around £2000 in the UK today. Panasonic have achieved a bit of coup this latest range of Viera plasma screens as they are the first ever to incorporate a built in Freesat tuner so watching high definition television on the Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ81B could not be easier especially if you have a Sky satellite dish already installed.
Given that Freesat broadcasts from the same satellite as Sky, no adjustment or re-alignment is required to an existing Sky dish and with FreeSat, you get the added bonus of being able to watch ITV HD which cannot be viewed through a Sky HD box. Unfortunately the Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ81B plasma screen we were watching was not rigged up with Freesat, so we had to make do with Sky HD and Blu-ray both of which were being fed via a triple screened Profigold PGV1002 HDMI cable. [...]
Posted in Home Cinema | No Comments »
Arcam FMJ T32 DAB Tuner
February 8th, 2009
Another Arcam product that was previewed at last month's CES show alongside the forthcoming Arcam FMJ Blu-Ray Player was the FMJ T32 DAB Tuner, which hopefully should be on show at the forthcoming Bristol Sound and Vision Show.
Arcam were the first ever manufacturer to launch a DAB tuner, the Arcam Alpha 10 back in 2000 and have been designing FM tuners for over thirty years and the FMJ T32 follows on this line with a high quality DAB tuner that has some worthwhile extra features to boot. [...]
Posted in Tuners | No Comments »
High Definition Television
February 7th, 2009
We are only in February, but already it is looking like High Definition television will finally catch the appeal of the masses and really establish itself in the UK this year.
Sky was first out of the starting blocks when it announced last month that it was reducing the price of the Sky HD set top box to just £49 as we reported last week and in the process creating about 1,000 new jobs to cope with the anticipated demand. [...]
Posted in News | No Comments »
Hi-Fi-Insight News and Reviews
