News - March - 2010

LOUDSPEAKERS

Building on the legacy

B&W has launched the 800 Series Diamond that includes a diamond dome tweeter in every speaker in the seven-model range. Designed for the home, the 800 Series is also used in Abbey Road Studios in London and Skywalker Sound in California.

The diamond dome tweeter is a quad-magnet design, which increases efficiency and improves dynamic range. A new surround material aids dispersion, and provides a more stable stereo image while increasing openness. At the other end of the scale, bass is also improved with a new dual, neodymium magnet motor system. The design improves the linearity of the bass drivers and reduces harmonic distortion.

New oxygen-free copper speaker terminals and links optimise incoming signal quality and the crossovers feature a new capacitor using a silver, gold and oil construction. B&W says these provide a dramatic increase in sound quality. B&W's proprietary Kevlar midrange drivers, Nautilus tube-loaded tweeters, Matrix enclosures and sphere/tube heads on the two largest speakers in the range, all remain key to the series design.

The 804 is the smallest floorstander in the range, and has a similar footprint to the 805 when placed on a stand. The 803 provides many of the benefits of the 800 Series top-end models, but in a floorstanding design. It uses three 18 cm bass drivers instead of 802's twin 20 cm cones. The 802 includes a new voice coil that improves bass performance.

The 800 is the flagship of the range and a new voice coil and bass realignment delivers improved bass. Two dedicated centre channels are provided for home theatre use. The HTM2 is the centre channel speaker for the larger speakers, while, the compact HTM4 centre is designed for use with the 805 or 804.

All seven speakers are available in a choice of rosenut, cherrywood and a new black gloss finishes.

B&W Loudspeakers SA: 011-869-0135

iPOD DOCKING STATIONS

Rock your iPod

B&W has introduced the Zeppelin iPod speaker system.  There are two models including the original Zeppelin all-in-one sound system and now the streamlined Zeppelin Mini, designed for big sound in smaller spaces.

The Zeppelins give you access to B&W’s Society of Sound where you can download better than CD-quality music. You can sign up for a free trial, and get a six-track sampler to demonstrate the Zeppelins’ potential. Members receive an album a month, plus access to an ever-increasing high-quality musical archive.

The Zeppelin mini will be priced at around R3 999.

B&W Loudspeakers SA: 011-869-0135

MEDIA CONTROLLERS

No costly wiring installation

Crestron products are installed in more homes than all other brands combined and now offer Prodigy, which it says offers affordable, simplified control of the home from any room in the house or anywhere on the planet. It keeps music, movies, lights, thermostats and security at your fingertips wherever you are and wherever you go. Prodigy products are designed to work seamlessly together with connection solutions, so any home system can be setup quickly without costly wiring installations.

Prodigy is built on a flexible, scalable platform, so you can start with home theatre and then add music distribution, lighting and climate control, and even remote control from laptops and mobile devices. Prodigy can also dim lights or turn them off automatically when the room is vacant. You can also install thermostats to create smaller zones for heating and cooling.

The Media Controller supports touchpanels, remotes, keypads, thermostats, dimmers and switches, even from PCs, laptops and mobile devices. In-wall touchpanels provide control of music, lights and climate control. The handheld touchpanel provides additional control. The LCD handheld remote features two-way RF with programmable buttons. Prodigy also provides an iPod interface so you can watch videos and listen to music from the iPod throughout the home. You can also view cover art, select titles, artists and albums, and scroll through playlists. Audio from the built-in AM/FM/XM tuner can be sent to any room in the house.

Prodigy’s PAMP-4X100 processor/amp provides stereo and home theatre audio to multiple rooms. Six audio sources to four rooms at 50 Watts per channel can be expanded to twelve rooms.

Electrosonic SA: 011-770-9800,031-568-4422

INDUSTRY NEWS

Real Cable arrives

3D Sound Investment has been appointed distributors for Real Cable products in South Africa.

French company Real Cables was established in 1997. They produce four product ranges, including AVS, Evolution, Innovation and Master Range, for speaker cable, audio and HDMI.

They also manufacture HDMI switchers, splitters, accessories, an HDMI wireless system and the Streamline range of power filters. The entire Real Cable HDMI product range is 1080p certified and mostly HDMI 1.4 compatible.

The company is said to be France’s leader in high-level hi-fi and home theatre cable and received the Audio Excellence Award in 2009 for its CA-REFLEX and PSOCC products.

3D Sound Investment: 012-665-0185

POWER CABLES

Let your current free

Audio equipment uses electricity to generate signals, amplified by more electricity to drive loudspeakers. The quality of the electricity that feeds an audio system has a direct impact on the resulting quality of sound.

Enter IsoTek’s Syncro - a mains cable that incorporates electronics designed to synchronise the mains supply and promote a symmetrical sine wave. Its primary function is a ‘pre-filter’ device. It takes the mains electricity supply and realigns its waveform, prior to filtration of contaminants like RFI, EMI, etc., by the conditioning unit, which then feeds each hi-fi component and thereby improves the performance of the links in the audio chain. Syncro features heavy-gauge, triple-screened, 20 Amp oxygen-free copper conductors coupled to quality connectors at either end. The mains plug and the IEC connector are machined from high-purity copper, plated in 24ct gold, deep cryogenically treated and then demagnetised.

Synchro DC-blocking technology also offers a universal solution to remove the damaging DC component from the mains supply, while allowing the maximum possible current to pass. So as well as removing any audible hum from a power amp, its synchronising effect results in greater bass depth, improved timing and a more palpable sound. Furthermore, these improvements don’t come at the expense of dynamic ability; in fact, in some cases dynamics are considerably improved. The Syncro also helps the amplifier to consume less electricity, freeing up power for dynamic transients.

Lowveld Audio: 013-758-1836