Columbia 82876834391
Bgo Records B00
000DB3J
Ronald Corp
conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.
Dutton Epoch CDLX 7233. Released 2009 More »
Michael Erxl
eben (violin), Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester, Claus Peter Flor conducting.
Berlin Classics CD 0183632BC . Released 2003.
Naxos 8.572554. Released 2010. More »
Opus 3 SAC
D Cat 19421
Earlier this month Hifi Pig reported on the “Pie Fi Show” – the Hifi show organized by the Hifi Wigwam forum. The show will take place at the Scalford Hall Hotel in Melton Mowbray on Sunday 4th March, from 10 am – 5pm and is certainly the one that you should really make the effort to attend.
This is not your usual hifi show by any stretch of the imagination and offers people the opportunity to listen to forum members own real life systems. You can buy advance tickets on the dedicated website (linked above) for just £10 if you want to avoid the queue, or you can pay on the door.
Scalford Hall the Venue for this year's Pie Fi Show.
Hifi Pig is pleased to announce that we have just got wind that the owner of the Hifi Wigwam Forum, James, will be getting interviewed on radio 103 The Eye this coming Tuesday morning around 11.30am on the station’s Steve Edwards Show.
You can tune in on 103.0 FM in Leicestershire & Nottinghamshire “if wind is in the right direction”. Or listen online www.103theeye.co.uk where you’ll find a listen live button, top right, on their home page.
Now, Hifi Pig would love to be at the show as he was last year, but alas this year pigs are not destined to fly and he’s a bit afraid he may well become a pie himself.
Onkyo recently announced the release of the first models from its 2012 range. These comprise four receivers all engineered to deliver superior sound quality, better features, and value for money, compared to their outgoing equivalents.
Onkyo's TX-NR616 AV Reciever.
The receivers are:
TX-SR313 5.1-channel home cinema receiver
TX-NR414 networked 5.1-channel home cinema receiver
TX-NR515 networked 7.2-channel home cinema receiver
TX-NR616 THX Select2 Plus-certified home cinema receiver
Beginning with the affordable TX-SR313 (100w per channel) this boasts WRAT (Wide Range Amplifier Technology), a low negative-feedback design philosophy that Onkyo says “reduces signal noise and guarantees superb performance with minimal distortion”. Discrete output-stage components – not cheap ‘all-in-one’ chips – are said to significantly improve audio quality. More »
A new CD compiled by IsoTek, the pioneering brand of power conditioning products for hi-fi and home cinema systems, aims to improve the sound of audio systems by ensuring they are set up correctly and ready to perform at their best.
The Ultimate System Set-Up Disc comprises 20 tracks to test and fine-tune key elements of two-channel system performance, and is designed to be both practical and easy to use. The CD includes a selection of superbly performed, recorded and produced music from the legendary Opus3 audiophile record label, each one chosen to test specific elements of audio performance, together with a unique sequence of specially prepared sounds and test tones to help with things like speaker positioning and system optimisation.
Isoteks Ultimate System Set-Up Disc
The disc begins by testing stereo and phase, with further tests for basic speaker positioning, then stereo and front-to-back soundstage depth. These tracks (1 to 12) help to fine-tune the way a system is set up, in order to optimise its performance.
Tracks 13 and 14 provide a frequency range test – a useful way to examine the bandwidth that a system is able to deliver. The disc then concludes with six music tracks that have been specially selected from the Opus3 catalogue, each one capturing a certain quality associated with two-channel replay, be it timing, atmosphere, soundstaging, dynamics or bass depth.
The six music tracks from Opus3 include an interpretation of Frank Zappaʼs Dog Breath Variations/Uncle Meat by the Omnibus Wind Ensemble, Everybody Loves My Baby performed by Eva Taylor, Bachʼs Toccata and Fugue in D minor with organ played by Matthias Wager and a track from Eric Bibbʼs new album, Blues, Ballads & Work Songs.
The Ultimate System Set-Up Disc is available now from IsoTek stockists, priced at £19.95.
Hot on the footsteps of the DacMagic Plus, Cambridge Audio announces another arrival to the DacMagic family. The DacMagic 100 is an entry-level digital to analogue converter designed to enhance a whole range of digital audio devices.
Based on the same compact chassis as the iD100 iPad / iPhone dock, DacMagic 100 is said to be the ideal partner for this digital dock and it claims to significantly upgrade the quality of audio stored or streamed from a docked Apple device. In addition, there are three digital connections for connecting a wide range of products including TVs, network music players and Blu-ray players. DacMagic 100 is equipped with Cambridge Audio’s latest USB audio input which allows studio master, uncompressed 24-bit / 192kHz files to be upgraded from any Windows or Apple computer. 
More »
Computer Based Hifi and Me
Now don’t get me wrong I do like computers. I use a computer daily. I’m even using one now to write this article. Computers have enabled me to work from home, do that away from the UK and even allows me communicate in real time with folks all over the world at the push of a mouse button. I get computers and I use one daily despite my sausage fingers and one fingered typing style!
More »