Hi-Fi

How many hours do you spend in your motor each week? It’s small wonder so many cars offer upgraded hi-fi systems these days – and often, the sound on offer is a revelation

If you think upgraded car audio is all about sound-off competitions and battered Beemers booming their way down the high street, you’re out of date.

Serious car hi-fi is one of the biggest growth areas in audio right now, with respected brands such as Bang & Olufsen, Bowers and Wilkins, Dynaudio and Naim working alongside some of the most illustrious names in motoring to deliver sound quality even a hardened audiophile would consider impressive.

So why is this happening? According to Richard Leopold, Bentley’s head of product marketing, “A few years back there was a lot of talk about people being able to use their cars as somewhere to work – but in reality, our cars are being used as an escape route from the hustle and bustle.

"In that sense, the audio experience 
is a big part of the pleasure factor. You can listen to music without being distracted by other sources of sound and, of course, you’re also able to benefit from a very controlled environment”.

Sound is important once again
Naim’s managing director Paul Stephenson concurs: “Sound quality used to be great in cars. I remember listening to in-car valve radios that were superb. But somehow, over the years, sound got worse; it became less of a priority. 
"Now, it’s coming to the fore again”.

So, what drives a car manufacturer to approach an audio brand in the first place? In some cases, it’s a simple case of choosing a name that prospective buyers are likely to identify with: it’s no surprise that Bose, surely one of the most well-known names in audio, has also achieved such success in the car audio business, and to an extent Bang & Olufsen’s rise to prominence is equally easy to understand. But what of Bowers and Wilkins, Dynaudio and Naim?

“We searched for a natural technical partner, and Bowers and Wilkins met our requirements perfectly,” says Matt Jones, Jaguar technical specialist for audio systems. “We wanted an audio system with no compromise, one that could transparently play back any material faithfully. We realised that, from the start, the audio team at Bowers and Wilkins wanted to deliver exactly the same thing.”

High-quality, hand-crafted and engineering-led

Bentley’s infotainment manager Ian Kendall agrees: “A key task was finding the right partner to deliver our vision. We wanted someone with high-quality, hand-crafted, engineering-led solutions, and Naim seemed an ideal fit. The fact that they were British and relatively local was helpful, too. And we’re immensely proud of the results. What we’ve created is a hi-fi in a car, not a car hi-fi in the traditional, clichéd sense”.

Packaging's the problem...
Once the correct technical partnerships are in place, it’s time to address the key obstacles  to delivering good sound in a car. Some of these are obvious – noise, for example – but by far the biggest hurdle is packaging. Here, a lot depends on how early in the day any prospective audio system can be planned into the development process of the car itself. 

According to Naim’s Stephenson, “When we first got involved in the Bentley project, it was almost a finished chassis, so most speakers were in a pre-defined position. Kendall adds: “We had to work around the speaker location constraints that were already there in our existing cars. You might find it hard to believe, but there’s a lot of stuff to get into a car like this. However, as we look to carry on this process in future cars, we’ll be able to bring Naim’s expertise into our designs at an earlier stage.”

The Bowers and Wilkins development team encountered similar issues working on Jaguar’s XF saloon, but in the striking new XJ luxury car (above) things are set to be very different.

Says Jones: "In the past, we've designed a car and then added speakers. This time we haven’t done that: from day one, we’ve worked to create a fully integrated system”.

...Positioning is the key
Stuart Nevill, applied research engineer at Bowers and Wilkins, echoes that: “With the XJ, we had a large influence in key factors such as speaker location, as can be seen in the final design of the car’s cabin. We were able to put our speakers in the near-optimal locations to provide ideal soundstaging, complete with large grilles that don’t obstruct the sound at all”.

B&W's distinctive Kevlar drivers in the new Jaguar XJ

This apparently simple development should confer huge benefits. A car’s interior actually offers loudspeaker engineers some advantages: its acoustic space –the total volume of air that the loudspeakers have to drive – is constant and predictable, as is the acoustic make-up of the space itself.

To ensure that this advantage 
is fully exploited, you need to place speakers where acoustics dictate they should best work, which doesn’t always sit well with the aesthetic and packaging considerations facing car designers.

But not with the new Jaguar: according to Jones, “Getting all 20 speakers in their ideal locations really sets the foundation for what we’ve delivered with this car”.

Of course, even if the speakers are correctly located, you might not be. Here, DSP (Digital Signal Processing) can help, by working to shift the soundstage to the driver’s advantage.

Bentley is proud of the ‘Naim Audiophile’ mode it offers: it provides the most recognisably ‘hi-fi’ sound we’ve heard in a car – and one that should impress even a hard-nosed enthusiast.   

Jaguar is equally bullish about the new XJ’s powerful suit of DSP and surround processing (as a world-first in a car, it offers Dolby Pro-Logic IIx and DTS Neo:6 modes), but it’s the Audyssey MultiEQ XT equalization, as found on high-end AV amps, that should help lift this system on to an even higher plane.

We’ll be the first to test it later this year – watch this space.

This article, along with reviews of in-car systems from VW and Volvo to Jaguar and Bentley, appears in the new issue of the What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision Ultimate Guide to High End Entertainment, on sale now.

You can find it at Asda, Borders, Sainsburys, WH Smith and WH Smith Travel, plus selected independent newsagents.

Or you can subscribe online.

More information on, and pictures of, the new Monitor Audio Silver RX range. announced this morning. Below is the complete line-up, comprising two standmounters, two floorstanders, centre and surround speakers and a subwoofers.

All the speakers use new versions of Monitor Audio's ceramic-over-metal C-CAM driver technology, the developments being brought about by improvements to the Finite Element Analysis the company uses to model the way drivers behave.

The tweeter now has higher sensitivity and wider bandwidth, while the speakers use fine-tuned versions of the Rigid Surface Technology C-CAM mid/bass drivers originally developed for the Gold Signature range. The dimpled profiles are  now even more resistant to break-up effects when driven hard.

Also derived from the GS models is the HiVe II reflex port, designed with gun-barrel-style rifling to accelerate the airflow and reduce turbulence.

Single-point driver mounts
The speakers also use single bolt-through driver fixings, mounting each driver on a tensioned through-bolt. This both reduces coloration, by increasing cabinet rigidity, allows the drivers to be decoupled from the front baffle and allows a clean design with no fixings visible from the front.

The £400/pr Silver RX1 speakers combine the C-CAM tweeter with a 15.25cm mid/bass unit in a compact enclosure, while the slightly larger RX2s, seen below in white and selling for £500/pr, use a larger 20cm mid/bass unit.

The RX6 floorstander combines tweeter, 15.25cm mid/bass unit and a bass driver of the same size. It's a two-and-a-half-way system, with a dual chamber bass reflex design, differential tuning and twin HiVe II ports. Selling for £750/pr, it comes with a plinth to add stability...

...As does the £1000/pr RX8 (pictured), which adds a second C-CAM bass unit and uses the newly-developed gold dome tweeter. It maintains the same slim profile as the RX6, but has a taller, deeper cabinet to aid in air-shifting duties.

All the Silver RX speakers are designed to mix and match in surround systems, and there are three speakers in the range to enable complete multichannel systems to be built.

The Silver RX LCR, or RX Centre, sells for £300, and uses a sealed cabinet in which are mounted tweeter, mid/bass and bass units, while the £400 RXFX uses a single mid/bass driver and twin tweeters to create a switchable dipole/bipole surround speaker.

Completing the range is the RXW12 subwoofer, selling for £750 and combining a 500W Class D amplifier and a front-firing 30cm C-CAM driver.

It has a sealed enclosure for speed, a large 7.5cm voice coil, triple suspension for the driver and a a 'double stack' motor system for high power handling and low distortion.

A 12V connection allows remote switching, and the controls are mounted on the top-plate for easy access.

Monitor Audio plans to offer several packages based around these speakers: you can see the RS1AV12 system on our news story, and this is the RX6AV12, based around the smaller of the two pairs of floorstanders.

Spot the hi-fi component.

Found it yet?

Just in case you're a shade distracted, you should be looking at what looks like a flute sitting on a rack on the wall.

This is the new BeoTime from Bang & Olufsen, a combined alarm clock and system timer, going into your local B&O shop right now with a £300 price-tag.

Yes, it's shaped like a flute, but then what did you expect from the company responsible for the 'organ pipe' Beolab 8000 speakers, and the phone handset with a ring-tone based on the sound its main aluminium casting makes when dropped on the floor?

Here's a close-up view of the device, designed to sit on your bedside table – or indeed hang on the wall on that magnetic bracket – and wake you with either its own chime, or with sound from TV, radio or CD. There's also a sleep timer, enabling it to turn off your complete Bang & Olusfen entertainment system after anything up 120mins.

It runs off three AA batteries, good for a year or so of operation, and is designed to be held in one hand and operated with your thumb. A built-in tilt sensor lets it know which way it's orientated, and adjust the displays and controls to suit.

So why the flute shape? Seems designer Steffen Schmelling was inspired by Mozart's Magic Flute, and its theme of light defeating the dark. Waking up, you see?

The alarm button is in the shape of a trumpet  – when you're this far into the fantasy world of this strange anodised, polished aluminium object, that makes perfect sense –, and the three displays show time, alarm time and wake-up source. Oh, and the backlight switches on when you touch the BeoTime.

And just for the B&O completists, no this isn't the first BeoTime from the people at Struer: the one below is almost 30 years old, and was designed to match the Beosystem 8000 and Beogram 8000.

Couldn't wake you up, though...

Yesterday, Pioneer revealed a new range of AV and hi-fi products at Air Studios. Being ahead of the game, we’ve covered most of it here, but there were  new speakers unveiled and a chance for Pioneer to explain the links between themselves and the famous studio.

Based in the middle of Hampstead, Air Studios is located in a converted church. To get there, we were greeted with a Pioneer branded rickshaw (below) which swiftly transported us to the studio to the station on a very wet Tuesday morning.

Once inside, we met studio staff and ran through the history of the studio which was opened in 1969 by George Martin. Originally based in Oxford Street, the studio moved to Hampstead in 1991.

Since then, movies and music have flowed through the studios – from classical music to Bond film scores to albums from Paul McCartney, Oasis, Coldplay and George Michael. We’re talking both recording and mixing and we’ve erased the thought that we ate in the same staff canteen that Robbie Williams did when recording.

Talking about the future of Pioneer after the exit from the plasma market with the legendary Kuro, Pioneer were keen to stress that the Kuro represented a small part of the business and that the company was, first and foremost, an audio company. Yoshitaka Yaeguchi (pictured) said “audio is in our DNA, It’s our core – we’re serious and passionate about sound”.

Showcasing the new range of AV and hi-fi products, Bertrand Mellot explained that the development and planning of products starts at Pioneer HQ in Japan before heading to France for design input and then to Air Studios for tuning.

It’s worth noting that all products with an Air badge are the same all around the world and not tuned for individual markets. Mellot also proudly pointed out that Pioneer speakers are featured as design icons at MoMA in New York.

Finally, we spoke to Studio man Tim Vine from Air Studios and we were given a tour of the studio from grand recording rooms to the mixing desks which produced the impressive sounds you hear in Quantum of Solace, a favourite Blu-ray test disc of ours.

In terms of kit, we spotted quite a few pairs of modified Dynaudio M4s and a £50,000 pair of giant Pioneer speakers (below), used to test vinyl re-masters of classic albums like Highway to Hell.

Needless to say, with AC/DC vinyl remasters on the menu, we selected the album of the same name and began to turn the giant green volume knob to the right...

Had lunch with Eric Kingdon, Sony's European Technical Marketing Manager, the other day.

He was delivering to our test team the review sample of the new STR-DH800 AV receiver. It's due to be tested in the September issue, on sale in three weeks' time. Or scarily soon, if you ask our production desk...

Anyway, very pleasant lunch, during which a plain brown envelope changed hands. Yes, I know I what you're thinking, except I paid for lunch, I'm not involved in the reviewing of the receiver – oh, and what the envelope contained wasn't the bundle of crisp twenties some would have you believe accompanies most review products, but a Blu-ray Disc.

Eric had just got back from Japan, and the disc was a 'must hear' from Takashi Kanai, Sony's Chief Distinguished Engineer and noodle-making fanatic.

And when Kanai-san says something is worth a listen, you'd better believe it: this, after all, is the man with a custom-designed listening room complete with seven B&W 801 speakers in a space about the same size as a modest living room.

Not to mention the knack of knowing just what's the best sounding material around at the moment – be it CD, Super Audio CD or Blu-ray.

In this case, Kanai-san is again bang on the money with the recording he sent: live concert performances of Seiji Ozawa (left) conducting the Saito Kinen Orchestra in performances of Mahler's First and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. The former was recorded last September, the latter exactly a year before – and both performances are sensational.

As is both the sound and vision. The disc gives a choice of stereo 48kHz/24-bit PCM, Dolby five-channel or 5.0 LPCM 96kHz/24-bit, and with the last of these three in particular the concerts sound just jaw-droppingly good, with stunning soundstaging and ambience, massive bass power and slam, and bags and bags of detail.

It helps, too, that the orchestra, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, is in sparkling form under one of its co-founders – Ozawa leaps into the orchestra to shake every one of the players by the hand at the conclusion of the Berlioz, knocking the odd music-stand skewiff, and the expressions of delight are apparent all round.

Mind you, that didn't stop me going back to the beginning of the disc and enjoying it all over again, from the delicate playing of the opening through to the clanging bells and glittering harps and thundering percussion and silky strings.

And again. And again.

Not to mention the fascinating rehearsal footage – also in HD – provided in the disc's extras, along with some novel routines to check sound and vision synchronisation. In Japanese, of course!

I said the concert looks as good as it sounds, and it does, in '1920x1080i Full Hi-Definition', as the box describes it.

Yes, this is a TV broadcast, recorded and released by the Japanese national broadcaster NHK on its NHK Enterprises label, and really showing what both HD TV and hi-rez sound can do.

And what it can do is deliver absolutely spine-tingling, demonstration-quality material from the simplest of things – an orchestral concert.

The Proms start in little more than a week's time – over to you, BBC...

In Japan, the country that gave us the Walkman, the iPod is proving popular with middle-aged and senior buyers. And that's leading to strong demand for devices able to convert analogue music formats, such as cassettes and CDs, to digital for pocket storage.

One company reports having shipped 3000 USB-equipped tape decks in just two months. Novac's retro-styled Cassette to Digital unit, which sells for around £50, not only digitises music, but detects silences and makes track breaks automatically.

All the user needs do is insert the cassette, hit 'play' and the Novac unit does the rest.

And USB turntables have been doing well, too: Denon DP-2000USB, which sells for just over £200, has a USB slot to transfer music direct to a memory device without a computer, while Sony's PC-attachable PS-LX300USB (below) is also proving popular.

And teens and twentysomethings, the traditional fans of all things 'i' and Poddy?

Well, in Japan they're certainly buying the Apple players, but they're as likely to be streaming or surfing using their mobile phones.

CDs have been with us for just over 30 years, so it’s hardly surprising that we’ve seen more than a few attempts to get more out of the format in that time.

Trouble is, anyone wanting to change the basic set-up runs the risk of falling foul of the Red Book, which defines what makes a CD.

More than one attempt at enhanced CD has been ruled ‘not a CD’ in the past, and that’s no bad thing: the standard ensures you can buy discs confident that they’ll play in any CD hardware, from your home system to the car or computer.

Even HDCD discs, developed by Pacific Microsonics and now part of the mighty Microsoft empire, had to be compatible with standard CD players, yielding their extra quality when the player has an HDCD decoder.

So if you can’t mess with the encoding or the physical properties of the disc, why not try to find ways of making discs sound better in all CD players? That’s what’s been going on in Japan recently, with the result that we now have three new disc ‘formats’ on sale, each claiming enhanced audio quality.

I say ‘formats’ in quotes, simply because these new discs are entirely standard CDs, needing no new hardware to play them; in fact, all that’s been done is that the discs have been designed to be easier to play.

CD players make mistakes
Very simplified science bit here: all CD players make mistakes when reading discs, whether as a result of vibration, marks on the disc or whatever. And with the disc spinning at speeds of up to 500rpm at the centre, slowing down to 200rpm as the optical system reaches the edge, some misreading of the data on the disc is inevitable during the 5km+ journey from start to end of the data spiral.

The reason you don’t hear glitches in all but the most extreme cases is that the player has built-in error correction to take account of problems.

Easy reading
So if you can make a disc easier to read, the error correction has less work to do, and the result should be a better sound, right?

That’s the way Denon/Nippon Columbia, Sony and Universal Music have been thinking, and while there was understandable hilarity over the very expensive optical glass Crystal Disc CD process released in Japan earlier this year by JVC/Victor and Memory-Tech, the three companies are currently releasing discs which are about the same price as standard titles.

The difference is clearer
So what’s new? Well, in the case of two of the new disc technologies, it’s largely down to materials. Nippon Columbia’s HQCD uses a higher quality polycarbonate for the data side of the disc, along with an improved material for the reflective layer within. The combination of greater transparency in the clear material and a more reflective layer means more light is bounced back from the disc to the optical pickup, making it possible to read the disc more accurately.

The same principles apply to Universal Music Japan’s SHM-CD system. The name refers to the use of Super High Material, in this case a polycarbonate with greater transparency, though unlike HQCD, no claim is made of quality improvements in the reflective coating.

 


A conventional CD pit (left) and the Blu-spec version

Finally, there’s Sony, which of course has taken a different approach for its Blu-spec CD. In this case, it’s using Blu-ray Disc technology to make more accurate CD masters: specifically, a blue laser is used to ‘cut’ the pits and lands carrying the disc’s data. As the promotional pictures above show, the result is more sharply-formed pits on the disc, again increasing the accuracy of the reading, as you can see from the beam patterns below.

 



The beam pattern when reading a standard CD (left) and a Blu-spec title

And once again, in case anyone’s confused by the Blu-spec name, these discs are playable in any standard CD hardware.

In other words, while much of the record industry is giving up on physical media sales in the face of digital downloads, the Japanese labels are actually doing something to tempt enthusiasts back to CD-buying.

Compare and contrast
So is this the next big audio breakthrough? Or just a way of rehyping the back catalogues? Only way to find out was to get hold of some discs. The good news is that all three systems have sampler albums combining a new-spec disc and the same material on standard CD; the bad is that they’re Japan-only releases, so some credit card flexing was in order on the CD Japan  site.

Hmmm… the shipping for the clutch of discs we ordered was almost as much as the cost of the discs themselves – all three series are bargain-priced at around £6  a pop – and insult was added to injury when we had to pay the post office a £13 handling fee to take £9 of VAT off our hands before it would deliver the package. However, the discs arrived in just over a week, and I’ve spent the past few days taking a listen to everything from Dylan to 10cc, and from Bach to Wagner, with a bit of classic jazz along the way.

Daft names, but...
OK, so the samplers have daft names – Feel the Difference of the Blu-spec CD Selection, Have You Ever Been Experienced? from the SHM-CD camp and the snappily named Denon Remastering and HQCD Sampler – but each of them makes a convincing case for the technologies employed.

Of course, cynics may suggest that the accompanying standard CDs may have been ‘tweaked down’ to make the Blu-spec, HQCD and SHM-CD versions sound better by comparison, but having played all of the tracks repeatedly, and compared them with existing copies of some of the same recordings, I have to say this doesn’t seem to be the case. The standard CDs sound very good indeed, but the ‘new-spec’ versions just have a bit more of – well, everything, really.

Greater impact
The greater impact is what immediately gets the attention; everything from big-band Wagner to a live Allman Brothers Band track just seems to hit harder, and there’s more detail in everything from guitars to drums, while voices have more presence and body. The silly smiles started with the opening riff of The Kinks’ You Really Got Me, and were still in place as a spot of James Brown powered out of the speakers.

I was hoping to be impressed with the classical and jazz stuff, and I was, but was less prepared for how good these new techniques could make old rock and pop recordings sound.

Better on any player
And the strangest thing of all? The differences between standard and new-spec CD were apparent on piece of CD-playing hardware I could lay my hands on, from Sony’s SCD-XA5400ES SACD/CD player to the NaimUniti, and from an elderly Marantz CD-63MkII KI-Signature to the line-fit system in the car. I tried the discs on Blu-ray and DVD machines, and it seemed that the less promising the hardware, the more striking the effect.

Clearly giving so-so disc-reading mechanisms an easier time plays dividends, and while the analogue electronics in some of the DVD hardware I tried was a limiting factor, running a digital feed out to the NaimUniti showed that the ease with which the disc was being read was a major factor in the sound.

Which new system sounds best? Hard to say, given that the same material isn’t available on all three, but the advantages of each are clear enough to have me searching through the CDJapan site for a few more purchases.

So what can you buy?
It’s not just tinkly audiophile stuff available: all three are strong on classical and jazz recordings, as you might expect, but it goes much further than that. HQCD, for example, has an extensive Tangerine Dream selection(!), stacks of King Crimson, and a couple of Fripp and Eno albums.

Blu-spec CD has an extensive Bob Dylan catalogue, the whole of Billy Joel’s output, Michael Jackson, Elvis, Simon & Garfunkel, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Deep Purple and much more.

SHM-CD, meanwhile, has Rush, Pink Floyd, all of Rick Wakeman’s solo albums, and the likes of Steely Dan, Guns N’Roses and T Rex. And we’re talking entire catalogues here, not the odd album or two.

Oh, and there’s a 15-disc Carpenters 40th anniversary package, yours for just under £250 plus shipping. Good luck with the VATman on that one…

Bang goes another good reason for a trip to the States: as Virgin Media here announced the launch of its music download service, the last of the USA's Virgin Megastores, the flagship branch in New York's Times Square, closed down at the weekend.

That means the end of the chain, which at its peak had 23 shops in the States,  but by last weekend was down to just two: the split-level New York landmark, its illuminated logo signalling a well-known meeting-place, and much more compact store in Hollywood, California, which had easy parking and a great selection of music last time I was there.

HMV, then Tower, now Virgin
It's the latest in a series of high-profile record store closures in the States over recent years: HMV pulled out five years back, and Tower Records' 89-strong chain bit the dust in 2006.

The latter wiped out one of my favourite record shops: the poster-covered Tower store on the way down to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, where you could park right outside and browse the slightly dusty bins for new releases and treasures alike, before crossing a busy intersection to the dedicated classical shop across the street.

Now gone, too, is the Virgin Megastore just off Union Square in San Francisco, where I spent too much time working out how many of the then brand-new DVDs I could fit into a suitcase already overburdened with new clothes, while my wife marveled at the range of Japanese pop music on offer in the world section, and hinted that a trip to the cafe at the top for iced coffees might be in order.

I used to like the ambience: the music was loud, there was an in-store DJ playing an eclectic range of tracks and – when you wanted a spot of P&Q – a soundproofed classical section which also happened to be the coolest place in the whole store.

Forlorn and empty
That one bit the dust back in April, and I gather the former Virgin Megastore now sits forlorn and empty on the corner of Market and Stockton, within the sound of the clatter and clang of the cable-cars. Sad...

The reasons? Well, they're all the obvious ones, really: the Current Economic Situation, and of course the falling sales of music. And it's not all to do with the demon iPod, although that's eating into the sales of physical media, or CDs to you and me. From a peak of 785m per year in 2000, US album sales had fallen 45% by the end of last year. but even now CDs account for over three-quarters of those sales.

Blame it on the markets
So is it down to online sales of CDs? Again no – the real villains of the demise of the huge entertainment stores are the major retail chains, with up to two-thirds of all CD sales going through the likes of Wal-Mart and electrical retailer Best Buy.

As the head of Virgin Entertainment in the States, Simon Wright, told the New York Times at the weekend, “It’s clear that the model of the large entertainment specialist working in a large space is not going to work in the future.”

So now it's down to the independent record shops in the States, with the splendidly named Almighty Institute of Music Retail reporting that there are still at least 2000 of those still in business across the nation.

Brings back memories of a rather enjoyable record-shop crawl from a press event out in the smart residential areas of Chicago back to the central hotel where I was staying. Hot afternoon, record shops seemingly on every block, and a bag, already carrying a bulky Harman/Kardon press-pack, growing heavier with each stop. That must've been the better part of 15 years ago...

However, my absolute favourite is still going strong: San Francisco's branch of the self-proclaimed world's biggest independent record store, well worth the long hike down Haight Street through what would be 'the former hippy central' if it wasn't still lined with shops selling Indian textiles, crystals, sandalwood soap and wholefood. You get plenty of time to admire the sights, sounds and smells as the traffic creeps along...

Amoeba Music is located in a converted bowling alley right down the end of Haight, where the street reaches Golden Gate Park heading toward the Bay.


It sells new and obscure, it sells mainstream, it sells CDs, LPs and DVDs, not to mention VHS tapes, 45s, 78s, Laserdiscs – in fact anything able to carry sound or vision, new and used.

It has live appearances, it has reproductions of classic concert posters – and it has by far the most enthusiastic and knowledgable staff you're going to meet in any record shop.


The rules of engagement are simple: shirts and shoes are required, so no ambling in from the park on a hot day, and if your bag's big enough to hold anything they sell, you check it at the desk on the way in.

Oh, and if you're going to find the best stuff you have to do more than just flip through the bins. Get yourself down on your knees and – no, don't pray, but start trawling through a whole stack more stuff on the floor.

The chain actually started across the Bay, in the university city of Berkeley, and since 1997 has had this second store in San Francisco, with another opened in LA, on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard, in 2001. The LA one carries the 'world's largest' title.

These stores are huge, and the exterior has moved on a bit from the dingy premises I first encountered when I followed the buzz from a hi-fi show all the way down Haight, driving a carful of fellow Amoeba virgins, some half a dozen years back.

Kids in sweetshop mode
Inside, we went into 'kids in sweetshop' mode, and spent far too much time seeking each other out to show the treasures we'd unearthed – and far too much money.

This was real record-shopping: not some soulless clicks on a mouse, but down among the music, inhaling that unmistakable smell of pre-loved vinyl.

And you know what? Just sitting writing this has the bin-flipping fingers itching again. I'm off to click the mouse – but this time on Expedia, not iTunes.

I mean, look at the pictures below and tell me you're not tempted...

In best Arkwright from Open All Hours tones, I have to say "It's been a funny old day...".

This morning the news media was all abuzz with a survey saying Britain's favourite 'hi-fi' would leave you change from £20, the assumptions behind which had me clapping metaphorical hand to forehead in disbelief; this afternoon I learn about  audiophile CDs selling for over £1000 a pop.

Oh, and the world's most expensive CD, at a sniff under £70,000. That's CD as in disc, not as in player...

The £1000 CDs come from Japanese record company Victor, or JVC as we know it here. There's a rather small range available at the moment, with three new titles due to join the catalogue next week, including a recording of Rodrigo's Concerto de Aranjuez, with soloist Kaori Muraji.

And why are they Y180,000, or about £1225, a time? Well, using a process developed by Japanese company Memory-Tech, and called CrystalDisc, the CDs use a specially tempered glass as the base layer on which the data-carrying substrate is fixed, then finished off with ultra-violet hardened resin.

Just like those dental glues your favourite drill-jockey moulds into place on your gnashers then zaps with the clicky light thing.

The metal forming the reflective surface? That's gold, rather than the more conventional aluminium.

The discs, which are mastered using Victor's K2HD mastering, involving near-fanatical attention to detail at every stage, can only be put together using a process which involves a lot of user-intervention. There's no chance of hammering these out on a production line as happens with conventional discs.

So why does it sound better? Well, translating a translation of CrystalDisc's Japanese site suggests that the company says both the optical and physical characteristics of the disc are better than those of conventional mass-made CDs. Oh, and the rapid hardening of the resin makes it set more accurately than the usual process, which relies on natural cooiling.

That makes the discs easier to read, meaning the optical pickup drive, servos and error-correction have a lot less work to do.

Just to make sure you get the point that your new disc has just cost you over a grand, the Victor/CrystalDisc titles come in a very superior jewel case – right-hinged, of course, just like Japanese books.

It comes complete with a plaque on which will be engraved a serial number, showing where your disc sits in the very limited production run – and it looks like there's space, if required, for the owner's name.

Seems like just the thing no well-heeled Japanese audiophile would want to be without – even if, thanks to the craftsman manufacturing process, you'll have to order your disc in advance and have it made for you. You're unlikely to find these on sale in your local Tokyo Tawarekodo.

On the subject of very expensive Japanese CDs, a compilation disc entitled Woman has recently gone on sale in the Takashimaya department store in Tokyo's Nihonbashi – imagine a Japanese Selfridges, Oxford Street, and you'll have the general idea – for a cool Y10m, or around £68,000.

It's so expensive because the jewel-case is made of platinum, and further lives up to its name by being studded with getting on for two carats of diamonds.

Or if you prefer you can have the disc in its standard packaging, and save yourself Y9,998,000!

It's a long-running audiophile argument – how do you know whether your system sounds as good as it can? Are you listening to an inferior copy of what was recorded in the studio?

The only answer, some say, is to get access to the studio masters – used to be 'master tapes', but we've moved on a bit since then. Trouble is, that's not something most people can do.

Now, audiophiles in the States are being offered the chance to buy one-to-one copies of 192kHz 24-bit master discs from Chesky Records, in the form of Gold Studio Master DVD-R discs.

Each disc contains up to 4.7GB of data, and they're designed to be copied to your computer's hard drive, and then played back through a DAC able to handle 192kHz/24-bit audio, an amplifier and speakers.

Chesky makes it very clear that the discs won't play on DVD-A, CD or SA-CD hardware, making these releases just like Linn's Studio Master downloads, or Naim's high-resolution packages.

Where the Chesky recordings differ from the Linn offering, however, is that the disc you buy contains uncompressed .WAV files, whereas Linn gives you a choice of lossless FLAC or WMA. Naim, meanwhile, combines 24-bit/88.2kHz .WAV files on a data disc with a separate CD of the same music.

Only two problems I can see with the Chesky recordings. First, they're only available to buyers in the States, at $45 (£30) a pop. And second, the choice of music in the initial releases isn't exactly inspiring.

A jazz quartet version of the whole of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, anyone...?

And one more thing: Chesky says 'these discs are not limited editions".

In which case, I suggest you have another look at your packaging, chaps...

Onkyo has announced a brand new pair of two-channel hi-fi products for the UK.

A new CD player, the C-S5VL, and integrated stereo amplifier, the A-5VL, will both hit these shores in June. While exact prices have not been set, Onkyo says both units will be 'below the £500 mark, possibly well below'.

        The new Onkyo A-5VL stereo integrated amplifier

 Both products have been developed from scratch, with particular attention paid to the UK market. The sub-£500 hi-fi market is, of course, extremely competitive. But Onkyo is bullish about weighing into the fray against what is by any estimation some very tough rivals.

As for the products themselves, smart silver fascias with relatively traditional designs are offset by sleek, slightly slimmer dimensions than usual for this type of product. At first glance, this makes for an attractive aesthetic proposition.

          The Onkyo C-S5VL CD and SACD player

The products will hit the UK market in June, and we look forward to getting them in to our listening rooms and putting them through their sonic paces in a thorough testing.

What have I learned about Denmark in the last day or two? It takes a year’s apprenticeship before you can even pretend you serve a decent Smørrebrød (elaborate open sandwich); the wind will find the slightest gap in your overcoat and exploit it, so ensure you’re fully sealed up before you venture outdoors; a Danish Danish pastry even smells better than an English Danish pastry.

Other valuable information: Danish loudspeaker’n’electronics firm Tangent has renewed cause for optimism as the year progresses. Like many companies around the world, the last weeks of 2008 found Tangent under not-inconsiderable pressure from forces which, for the large part, it couldn’t control.

Now an autonomous division of PHC, the firm’s a leaner and more focused proposition than perhaps it was six months ago. I found all these things out on a flying visit to Tangent’s HQ in Aulum, western Denmark.

A flight from Stansted to Billund delivered me to the calmest international airport I’ve ever visited, and an hour’s drive west (on roads used by what are surely the world’s most considerate drivers) brought me to Aulum.

It’s a modest little town with, as Churchill said of Atlee, much to be modest about. The Tangent facility is a series of remarkably long single-storey buildings, which seem to cling to earth in an effort to escape the wind – it’s a long way from one end of the factory to the other but at least there are no stairs.It’s as clean, tidy and hospitable as the country at large, and as likely a place as any to find the manufacturer of some of our favourite desktop radios.

There was time to admire the handsome new Prestige loudspeaker (pictured above), which is, visually at least, a very Danish example of harmonious proportions and clean-edged design, and a chance to nudge What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision to the top of the list for a review sample of the NET-200 (pictured below).

This is a full-size Internet radio intended to slot into a hi-fi separates system, so as an evangelical advocate of the format I’m looking to schedule a First Test as soon as it arrives.

What else? Peter Schmeichel presents Champions League highlights on TV like some gigantic, blond Gary Lineker. Danes like to get the business of going out for dinner, eating and then asking for the bill out of the way by 8.30pm, in order to enjoy more time in the pub. And Horatio, friend of the most famous Prince of Denmark of all, wasn’t kidding when he said the middle of the night was dead and vast.

You may remember a couple of months back I reported from the huge record shops I found in the Yongsan Electronics Market in Seoul, Korea.

Well, this just in from a Scottish reader, and it may explain how all those empty bins are being filled.

 Donald Mackinnon writes that:

"I read your piece about LPs in Seoul with mixed feelings.

"A few months ago, I went into my favourite secondhand record (ie LP) shop in Glasgow, looking forward to a happy hour or so of browsing, only to find the shelves in the classical room completely empty. In alarm, I asked the owner if he was abandoning classical LPs.

"No, he assured me, it was just that a Korean gentleman had been in the shop a few days before, and had bought up literally everything, without even a cursory look at what he was buying. The shopkeeper described it apologetically as an offer he couldn't refuse.

"I know we live in the global economy, but I was saddened by this. I am happy to visit websites all over the world (and thank you for the Korean website address you printed), but I hope they aren't going to drive local shops out of business."

It seems there are South Korean record dealers out there, travelling the world and buying up LPs in bulk, to keep shops like this supplied. So if your local secondhand music store suddenly looks like a giant Hoover has hit it, now you know why.

Mind you, given how inexpensively the records seem to sell once they get to Korea, and the reasonable exchange rate of the Korean Won against Sterling - though even this has changed a bit since I was there back at the beginning of December -, LP bargain-hunters should probably start planning their holidays now...

One fascinating thing about my day spent in Seoul's Yongsan Electronics market was the huge amount of vinyl on sale. I found this massive store full of secondhand discs, with the staff busy unpacking boxes and pricing up more stock to fill the empty bins in the centre.

And there are bargains to be had if your taste extends to the kitsch. The K-Tel compilation below, from the glam rock era - 1976, to be precise. Complete with what looks like a period Spirograph attack on the cover, it would probably have the Guilty Pleasures fans foaming at the mouth: It contains hits from the likes of ELO, Elton John, Thin Lizzy and Diana Ross, and it's yours for the princely sum of W500, or about 20p.

There are more upmarket used vinyl stores, with a more selective display of prized records. This is the window of 33RPM, with discs including a 1960s Brian Hyland album, Nirvana's Nevermind and Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother alongside the classical discs.

But even in the general music/DVD stores here there's a massive selection of used vinyl for sale

and bargains to be had, whatever your taste in music...

Bang & Olufsen chose the Copenhagen Opera as the venue for the launch of its new BeoSound 5 digital music player, due on sale in March next year.

The player itself comprises the striking-looking  main control unit, with its stacked aluminium controls on the post to the right and a comprehensive display panel, and a hideaway black box containing the 500GB hard drive and connection panel for audio and data.

Rotating the main dial on the top scrolls through the options on offer, while a lever below it operates a 'light beam' display used to select modes, Below that a third ring, with a knurled edge, accesses volume control.

Concept and prototype developer Oliver Wallington, seen above demonstrating one of the development units used in creating the system, explained that the first concept of the system took just two weeks to put together, using items such as tablet PCs, computer mice and bits of Lego.

Another week was spent implementing the MOTS (more of the same) software at the heart of the system. Developed by the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, this system allows the user to 'sow a seed' by selecting a track or album and allow the system to programme more music based on an analysis of that track and the other content stored in the system's memory.

The MOTS system isn't something the user needs to select: it runs all the time, and will just keep on making selections unless you overrule it.

The company enthuses about having friends round and letting them 'sow their own seeds' by choosing a track, then seeing where the system takes the party. It's all part of the concept of freeing users' music collections, it says.

Wallington talked about the feel of the controls, and the way the electronic display and mechanical controls appear to be one and the same. and he also discussed usability issues - apparently it's important that the system can be worked with a glass of wine in one hand - perfect for late-night listening.

Another presentation was given by designer Anders Hermansen, who gave us an insight into the concept of the user reaching into the unit to operate it. That's what that wireframe model at the centre of the picture is all about, and shows how deeply the company considers the way its users will interact with its products. 

Finally, we heard from Geoff Martin, B&O's Tonmeister and sound design specialist, who gave an enthralling primer on data-reduced music, including demonstrations at the piano in the Opera's huge orchestra rehearsal room, and a demonstration of what's lost when different levels of MP3 data reduction are employed.

His personal belief? That 256kbps MP3 is good enough for most listeners, with minimal losses to the music.

And he answered those critics who were already muttering that a 500GB hard disk was no longer enough on a product of this kind.

As he said, at full CD quality the system will hold 79 days of music, while at 256kbps that rises to just under 190 days of non-stop playback, which should be more than enough for most users.

More on the company behind the BeoSound 5 here.