The Speaker Shack

New special edition Il Cremonese ex3me uses new speaker technologies for absolute neutrality Just 50 pairs of the new Il Cremonese ex3me are to be handmade in the Vicenza factory ( £48,500) sonusfaber.com 22nd September 2020, Vicenza, Italy: Sonus faber has launched the Il Cremonese ex3me , a tech-rich £48,500 floorstander limited to just 50 pairs, which advances the original thanks to a range of innovative new speaker technologies. The original Il Cremonese was introduced in 2015 with the intention of completing the company’s Homage Collection and was named after a traditional Italian violin, the Il Cremonese, the most famous among the master Antonio Stradivari’s creations. Instead, due to its performance, the Il Cremonese joined Sonus faber’s flagship Reference collection. Crucially, the Il Cremonese developed into a vital internal tool within Sonus faber’s Vicenza factory, becoming a reference for the development of several technologies, due to its innate versatility and neu

New open chassis McIntosh duo combines valve luxury, solid-state power and timeless industrial design C8 Vacuum Tube Preamplifier and MC830 Solid State Amplifier : stunning looks, legendary McIntosh sound quality September 17th, 2020, Binghamton, NY, USA: Following in the footsteps of McIntosh’s retro-styled MA252 and MA352 integrated amplifiers, (which themselves took design cues from the MC275 Vacuum Tube Amplifier), McIntosh has launched two more ‘open chassis’ amplifiers, the C8 Vacuum Tube Preamplifier (£4,295) and MC830 Solid State Amplifier (£4,995 each). With style cues that nod to their 1950s and 1960s aesthetic design heritage, both the C8 and MC830 are full of modern-day technology, with a feature set that’s perfectly suited to the modern music lover. The duo offers direct turntable connectivity, thanks to MM and MC phono inputs, digital readiness for McIntosh’s (optional) multi-input DA2 DAC module, plus a high-quality McIntosh headphone amplifier for late-night and p

Sonus faber and McIntosh come together in the United Kingdom as Fine Sounds UK is born Two iconic high-end brands join forces to become the foundation of a great new British high-end audio distributor 3rd August 2020, Glenrothes, Scotland: McIntosh Group, the leading group in the high-end audio sector comprising some of the biggest and most iconic brands in the industry, including McIntosh Laboratory, Sonus faber, Audio Research and Sumiko, has launched Fine Sounds UK, a new high-end audio distributor set to specifically focus on further developing McIntosh and Sonus faber in the United Kingdom. Fine Sounds UK is a joint venture between McIntosh Group and McIntosh Laboratory’s British distributor of 15 years, Jordan Acoustics. Fine Sounds UK will be headquartered in Great Britain, where it will have warehousing and customer service facilities.  Starting life with two giants of the audio world, both of which value hand-made craftmanship, uncompromising quality and ultimate performance

Melco’s EX Series to become Roon Ready The world’s most advanced digital music libraries are set to add Roon Ready convenience to complement Melco’s no-compromise Intelligent Music Library (MIML) software suite 14th September 2020, Surrey, UK: Melco’s new EX Series of digital music libraries will soon benefit from Roon compatibility. The Japanese specialist’s five-strong EX Series product line up, which saw the introduction of the powerful Melco Intelligent Music Library (MIML) software, vTuner Internet radio and web control at the start of 2020, will gain Roon Ready convenience following a firmware rollout (4.04) downloadable from the Melco Audio website (USB download) from Monday the 14th of September 2020 . A further over-the-air update (4.10) is expected later in the year. EX Series Melco owners will be able to update to 4.10 firmware from the front panel OLED display as soon as the update becomes available. Legacy Melco owners can also access the new firmware with an EX Series

Roon Ready status instantly upgrades Leema’s handmade-in-Wales streaming-capable range A key software upgrade adds Roon and enables the best-performing Leema Acoustics streamers to date 15th September 2020, Wales, UK: Leema Acoustics has upgraded its streaming-capable products to include Roon playback. Several products are primed to benefit from the upgrade including the company’s recently launched Stream IV streaming CD player (£2,295), Elements Streamer (£1,295) and Quasar streaming amp/DAC (£2,995), which will now ship Roon Ready; the company’s Sirius (£3,995) streaming music server is already compatible.   The Roon upgrade follows the rollout of a key software update for mconnect, Leema Acoustics’ recommended DLNA/UPnP control point app for Apple and Android. The update also brings gapless and DSD playback, improved operational performance and more. Roon compatibility joins an already impressive mconnect feature list including Tidal, Spotify and Qobuz integration, plus vTu

  A Clearway for better sound: new ClearwayX Multi-award-winning Clearway speaker cable now even better, thanks to new XLPE technology upgrade 14th July 2020, Wiltshire, England: One of Chord Company’s most decorated speaker cables, Clearway, ( What Hi-Fi? Best Speaker cable 2015, 2016 and 2017 ), has been made even better, thanks to an upgrade to the A/V cable specialist’s recently launched XLPE insulation technology. The new ClearwayX (available from today) is a direct replacement for Clearway and introduces a number of sound quality benefits over the original design. Chord Company has been hand-building high-performance A/V cables in Great Britain since 1985 and the new ClearwayX builds upon the original time-proven Clearway construction, making improvements to the critical dielectric (insulation) by upgrading to XLPE. Cross-Linked Polyethylene (XLPE) introduces benefits in phase stability over previously used materials, bringing noticeable sound quality improvements during the

  8th September 2020, Vicenza, Italy: Iconic Italian loudspeaker manufacturer Sonus faber has launched a new collection of luxury speakers, Lumina. Designed to bring the company’s legendary handmade-in-Italy craftmanship, artisan design and natural sound quality to a wider audience of design-conscious music lovers, Lumina is also perfectly positioned to make Sonus faber ownership more achievable than ever. sonusfaber.com The latest collection to emerge from the Vicenza factory, the new three-strong Lumina speaker range enables complete flexibility for a range of A/V applications, including music, movies and gaming, all from just £799 . The Lumina collection comprises the Lumina I standmount, a compact bookshelf speaker that looks great as an individual stereo pair or as surround speaker in a home cinema set-up, the Lumina III floorstander, which ensures powerful, distortion-free music with advanced speech intelligibility for games and movies, plus the Lumina Center I , a ce

Martin Logan are a well renowned speaker manufacturer and especially when it comes to their Electrostatic Line of speakers for which they are one of the finest in the world. For them to take the route of making the normal box type speaker is something out of the norm for them. It took me by surprise that they had a range of speakers called the Motion series and that they had a full range, from the smallest which I have for review here to a full size floor standing speakers. And the best part is that they all feature Martin Logan's unique Folded Motion™ tweeters which have sonic benefits for which I was about to find out. The Motion series are inspired by Martin Logan's Electrostatic range of speakers which are sensational speakers in every way offering high end performance but with a high end price tag. The Motion series has taken some of their technology and trickled it down in the form of the Folded Motion tweeters and have utilized them in a way that gives an amazing amount