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iFi Audio

In my last three columns, I wrote about how streaming is changing the ways people discover and experience music. In my January feature, “The State of Streaming,” I looked at streaming services that deliver lossless CD-resolution and high-resolution music. In “The Name Game,” published February 1, I wrote about how streaming has given rise to whole new classes of audio components, and set out to establish some definitions. And in my March feature, “Rules of the Game,” I discussed the software protocols that enable these new components to talk to one another, and compared their benefits and drawbacks.

A half-century ago, when I got into audio, most amplifiers had front panels that looked like jet cockpits. And the higher a model was in its manufacturer’s product line, the more knobs and switches it had.

Is there a hobby that’s less domesticated than home theater? Ever since people began connecting their TVs to their stereos in the late 1970s, audio manufacturers have been encouraging them to add more and more speakers -- and it’s gotten a bit crazy.

Reviewers' ChoiceLast November in Warsaw, Poland, at the Audio Video Show 2019, I saw several products that fit Simplifi’s mandate to cover “convenient, lifestyle-oriented hi-fi,” many of which I knew I wanted to get in for review. At the top of the list were two new active loudspeakers from Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries (DALI): the Rubicon 2 C stand-mount ($5799/pair, all prices USD) and the Rubicon 6 C floorstander ($7999/pair). DALI’s passive Rubicon models are just one tier below their flagship Epicon series, so the prospect of reviewing these new active versions was mighty appealing.

In last month’s feature, I looked at the various kinds of components that can make up a Simplifi’d music system. As I noted then, networked music systems include three broad classes of components that traditional hi-fi systems don’t: servers, which send audio data (and metadata) over a home network; streamers, which receive and render that data; and controllers, with which users select music and control its playback.

The audio world knows of Pro-Ject Audio Systems as a major brand of turntables, but this Vienna-based company also makes an extensive line of electronics that lately have been winning all kinds of awards. For the past three years, Pro-Ject has received awards for its turntables and its electronic components from the Expert Imaging and Sound Association (EISA).

“You want to put those in our living room?” Over the years, words like these have scuttled countless plans for new home-entertainment systems. If the components themselves didn’t push the spouse acceptance factor into the red zone, the cables needed to connect them did.

I sometimes wonder if the name of this site, Simplifi, contradicts its stated mission to cover “convenient, lifestyle-oriented hi-fi,” per the blurb on the SoundStage! Network portal.

At a press event last May at High End 2019, in Munich, a chorus of oohs and aahs rippled through the audience when iFi Audio unveiled, for the first time, its Aurora tabletop music system ($1399, all prices USD). A glance at the photographs accompanying this review make it easy to understand this reaction.

Reviewers' ChoiceWhen Naim Audio introduced a new version of its acclaimed Mu-so wireless music system in May 2019, at Munich’s High End, it seemed inevitable that an updated version of the Mu-so Qb would soon follow. And so it did. In early August Naim announced the Mu-so Qb 2nd Generation ($899, all prices USD), and in late October my review sample arrived.

It’s the start of a new year -- and, depending on your math, the beginning of the 2020s or the end of the 2010s. Do the 2020s officially begin on January 1, 2020, or on January 1, 2021? Whichever, it’s time to look at the top audio trends of the past year and the past decade.

These days, it’s becoming increasingly common for audio manufacturers to offer integrated amplifiers with built-in, high-resolution DACs. For audiophiles who want a low-footprint system to use in real-world living spaces, that’s a very good thing. Add a pair of speakers and a digital source component like a notebook PC or network streamer, and you have most of the world’s music at your fingertips.

Judging by the crowds at Audio Video Show 2019, held Friday-Sunday, November 8-10, in Eastern Europe hi-fi is a family affair. The 23rd edition of the show was held in three venues in central Warsaw, in Poland: the Radisson Blu Sobieski and Golden Tulip hotels, and the PGE Narodowy, or National Stadium.

To my knowledge, in the 24 years of the SoundStage! Network only one product has ever been retroactively granted a Reviewers’ Choice award. That product was the Hegel Music Systems Röst integrated amplifier-DAC, reviewed for Simplifi by Al Griffin in February 2017 -- in fact, the Röst was the first integrated amplifier to be reviewed on this site.

In his coverage of CEDIA Expo 2019 for SoundStage! Global, Brent Butterworth called DALI’s Katch One soundbar ($999, all prices USD) the “product at the CEDIA Expo that I’d most like to have right at this very minute.” I found this surprising -- not because I had any doubts that the Katch One is a fine product, but because there were so many other lustworthy products at this year’s Expo, including several Brent outlined in his four show reports. A few highlights were Revel’s PerformaBe speakers, NAD’s T 778 nine-channel A/V receiver, and MartinLogan’s 40XW in-wall speaker, each of which has 40 driver-units. There were also lustworthy video products, including 4K laser projectors from Epson, JVC, and LG, and Sony’s modular Crystal LED wall display system.

Reviewers' ChoiceIt’s been just over five years since Canada’s Lenbrook Industries Limited launched the Bluesound brand of streaming multiroom products, and many of the decisions Lenbrook made during Bluesound’s formative stages now seem prescient. These include developing the underlying BluOS technology in-house, rather than sourcing it from a third party, and supporting high-resolution playback right from the start.

What would you rather do on a glorious Canadian autumn weekend: Go for a hike in the woods? Do some urban exploring? Listen to great audio equipment in a suburban hotel?

Over the weekend of October 18-20, 3500 people chose the third option, spending hours or days at the second edition of the Toronto Audiofest, held at the Westin Toronto Airport Hotel in Mississauga, Ontario.

Based in Coquitlam, British Columbia, on Canada’s left coast, Kanto Audio has made a name for itself with budget-priced powered stereo speaker systems. These include the YU2 ($219.99/pair, all prices USD), a two-way desktop speaker with USB DAC and 3.5mm stereo analog input; and two bookshelf models, the YU4 ($329.99/pair) and YU6 ($399.99/pair), both featuring Bluetooth connectivity, a built-in phono preamp, a TosLink digital input, and a line-level analog input. The YU4 has a 4” Kevlar woofer and a 1” soft-dome tweeter, driven by a 35Wpc RMS class-D amp; the larger YU6 has a 5.25” woofer and a 50Wpc RMS class-D amp. Kanto’s most ambitious design yet is the Tuk powered minimonitor ($799.99/pair). Inside each rear-ported enclosure is a 5.25” aluminum woofer and a 28 x 45mm Air Motion Transformer (AMT) tweeter.

On the various websites of the SoundStage! Network you’ll find reviews of all kinds of source components -- CD players, streamers, DACs, turntables, cartridges, and phono stages. But to my knowledge, in its 24-year history SoundStage! has reviewed only one smartphone: the LG G7 ThinQ.

Do you have to be a propeller-head to enjoy Simplifi’d hi-fi? The question might seem nonsensical, but when you think about this site’s mandate -- to cover “convenient, lifestyle-oriented audio” -- it makes a perverse kind of sense, and the product reviewed here illustrates my point.

Like many music-lovers, I’ve changed my listening habits drastically in the last ten years. A decade ago, all of the music I listened to at home was stored on shiny discs. A decade later, those discs are long gone. My music library is now stored on a LaCie 2Big Thunderbolt RAID system connected to an Apple Mac Mini computer in my second-floor office. The Mac Mini runs Roon Core, and streams music via Wi-Fi to the music system in my main-floor living room.

Reviewers' ChoiceIn her song “Big Yellow Taxi,” Joni Mitchell famously observed “That you don’t know what you’ve got / Till it’s gone.” There’s a lot of truth in that. The converse is equally true -- you don’t know what you’ve been missing till you experience it. Both thoughts occurred to me as I reviewed Elac’s Navis ARF-51 active floorstanding speakers.

Is classical music in danger of dying “a digital death”? That prospect worries Thomas Steffens, CEO of Amsterdam-based Primephonic, a streaming service that specializes in classical music. “The world is moving toward streaming, where there are no CD stores anymore, and download stores are disappearing,” Steffens told me in an interview. “At the same time, classical music is massively underrepresented on streaming services. Classical music accounts for 5% of all global music consumption, but only 1% of streaming music, and 0.5% of streaming royalties.”

Cute, adorable, funky -- you rarely read those adjectives in reviews of serious audio products, but they do describe the appearance of Devialet’s Phantom Reactor active loudspeakers. Perched on their matching tripod stands, the Reactors evoke memories of R2D2 from Star Wars (though each Reactor is much smaller), or characters from the game Angry Birds (the Reactors look way friendlier).

Is a music-management application that costs $499 USD expensive? That’s what you’ll pay for a lifetime subscription to Roon, and I’ve occasionally called it “an expensive option.” If you don’t want to plunk down half a thou, you can pay $119 for a one-year subscription.

As regular visitors to this site surely know by now, I’m a big proponent of active loudspeakers. My reference system is built around a pair of Dynaudio Focus 200 XDs, which have dedicated 150W class-D amps for their 1” tweeters and 6.5” woofers. This choice was driven by domestic considerations -- it would be almost impossible to fit a system of audio separates into the living room of the century-old row house I share with my much better half.

Reviewers' ChoiceIt was a deal that left many audiophiles scratching their heads. In May 2016, the venerable British loudspeaker manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins was sold to California-based EVA Automation Inc. If few people had ever heard of EVA Automation, that’s not surprising -- the Silicon Valley startup had been founded only two years before, and had never released a product.

If anyone made a list of the 21st century’s most successful hi-fi speakers, that list would surely include the KEF LS50, introduced in 2012 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the BBC LS3/5a minimonitor. Since then the LS50 has received countless honors, including Reviewers’ Choice and Product of the Year awards from SoundStage!.

Reviewers' ChoiceFive years ago, if someone had asked me if there was a market for a tabletop all-in-one music system that cost $1499 (all prices USD), I’d have replied, “You’re kidding, right?” For that kind of dough, you could get a nice integrated amp and speakers, or a really good set of powered speakers. I had nothing against all-in-one music systems -- not then, not now. But for serious listening, I want the immersive experience you get from a stereo pair of speakers spaced several feet apart.

When most people think of audio components from McIntosh Laboratory, they think of serious high-end separates: preamps and big, powerful amplifiers. But there’s another side to this iconic brand, which this year celebrates its 70th anniversary. McIntosh now offers several lifestyle audio products, including integrated music systems, streamers, headphone amplifiers, and the subject of this review: what they call an integrated turntable.

  1. High End 2019, Simplifi'd
  2. Yamaha WXA-50 MusicCast Streaming Amplifier
  3. NAD Masters M10 BluOS Streaming Integrated Amplifier
  4. Active Voices, Part Two: Axiom Audio's Andrew Welker
  5. Primare SC15 Prisma Streaming DAC-Preamp
  6. Montréal Audio Fest Simplifi'd
  7. Naim Uniti Core CD Ripper/Music Server
  8. Elac Navis ARB-51 Active Loudspeakers
  9. Active Voices, Part One: Elac's Andrew Jones
  10. Bluesound Pulse 2i Wireless Speaker
  11. SVS Prime Wireless Active Speakers
  12. Let's Keep it Simple
  13. Totem Acoustic Kin Play Powered Speakers
  14. A Roon of One's Own
  15. KEF LSX Active Loudspeakers
  16. Bluesound Vault 2i CD Ripper-Server-Streamer
  17. Pro-Ject Audio Systems Stream Box S2 Ultra Music Streamer
  18. How I Simplifi'd My Wi-Fi
  19. Kii Audio Three DSP-Controlled Active Loudspeakers
  20. Aurender S5W Battery-Powered Wireless Active Loudspeakers
  21. Are Downloads Dead?
  22. Cambridge Audio Yoyo (L) Wireless Speaker
  23. Hi-Rez Streaming: Tidal vs. Qobuz
  24. DALI Callisto 2 C Active Speaker System
  25. Toronto Audiofest 2018 Simplifi'd
  26. Kanto SYD Bluetooth Speaker
  27. LG G7 ThinQ Smartphone
  28. How I Simplifi'd My Hi-Fi
  29. Pro-Ject Audio Systems Juke Box E Turntable-Integrated Amplifier
  30. Time to Celebrate: Five Years of Google Chromecast
  31. NAD D 3020 V2 Bluetooth Integrated Amplifier-DAC
  32. How Good Can Voice Recognition Get?
  33. Polk Assist Wi-Fi Smart Speaker
  34. Are Smart Speakers Any Good for Audiophiles?
  35. MartinLogan Unison Wireless Preamplifier
  36. High End 2018, Simplifi'd
  37. Dynaudio Music 7 Wi-Fi Speaker
  38. Musical Fidelity M6 Encore 225 Music System
  39. Cocktail Audio X35 Music System
  40. Is the Smart Speaker a Dumb Idea?
  41. Peachtree Audio decco125 Sky Integrated Amplifier-DAC
  42. Technics Ottava f SC-C70 Music System
  43. What's Up with Apple AirPlay 2?
  44. JBL Link 500 Wi-Fi Speaker
  45. The Spotify Dilemma
  46. Trinnov Amethyst DAC-Preamplifier-Processor
  47. Control4 Triad One Streaming Amplifier
  48. Elac Discovery Z3 Wi-Fi Speaker
  49. CES 2018, Simplifi’d
  50. Klipsch Heritage Wireless Three Wi-Fi Speaker
  51. Farewell, CES
  52. Paradigm PW 300 Wi-Fi Loudspeakers
  53. Thiel Audio Aurora Home Wi-Fi Speaker
  54. Room Tunes
  55. Hegel Music Systems H190 DAC-Integrated Amplifier
  56. Social Streaming
  57. Yamaha R-N803 Network Stereo Receiver
  58. Onkyo TX-8270 Network Stereo Receiver
  59. CEDIA 2017, Simplifi’d
  60. Dynaudio Focus 20 XD Active Loudspeakers
  61. Riva Audio Festival Wi-Fi Speaker
  62. Naim Audio Uniti Atom Wireless Streaming DAC-Integrated Amplifier
  63. Classical Prime Time
  64. NAD Masters Series M50.2 Digital Music Player
  65. Bryston BryFi BW-1 Wi-Fi Speaker
  66. The Röst Reconsidered
  67. Arcam rPlay Music Streamer
  68. Auralic Polaris Wireless Streaming DAC-Integrated Amplifier
  69. High End 2017, Simplifi'd
  70. Simaudio Moon Neo ACE DAC-Streamer-Integrated Amplifier
  71. Vinyl: There's an App for That
  72. Metadata: Life with Roon
  73. NAD C 368 DAC-Integrated Amplifier
  74. The Internet and Audio: The Good, the Bad, and the Impossible
  75. Lumin M1 Integrated Amplifier-Network Music Player
  76. Arcam Solo Music DAC-Integrated Amplifier-Universal Player
  77. McIntosh Laboratory RS100 Wi-Fi Loudspeakers
  78. The State of Streaming
  79. Hegel Music Systems Röst Integrated Amplifier
  80. CES 2017, Simplifi'd
  81. Naim Audio Mu-so Qb Wi-Fi Speaker
  82. Why "Simplifi"
  83. Bang & Olufsen BeoSound 2 Wi-Fi Speaker