Hifi Pig

In his first review for Hifi Pig Richard Joyce takes a listen to the interesting looking and cleverly designed Pluto Ultimate loudspeakers.

“The finish on the speakers is impeccable, and the gloss lacquer flawless. Their bases are made from a single piece of aluminium, machined from billet into which the adjustable floor spikes are screwed. Setting up, and having them working, is but a matter of a few short minutes’ work – no more than any other conventional amp/speaker combination in fact.”

Read the full review of the Pluto Ultimate loudspeakers.

After making its debut at RMAF and the Tokyo Headphone Festival, the nano iDSD from ifi is now almost ready for shipping.

The portable battery powered DAC (with headphone amp) plays ALL hi-rez formats including PCM (44.1-384kHz, DSD (5.6/6.2MHz) and DXD (352.8/384kHz) on pretty much any pad, iphone or computer operating system you can mention.

“Its 1400mAh lithium-polymer battery and powerful headphone outputs transform Smartphones as well as computers into fully-fledged, high end digital sources in a palm sized package” say ifi.

It has a digital output (PCM only, up to 192kHz), a pair of audio outputs and a 3.5mm headphone output.

Price is $189 (ex tax) or €189/£165 (including VAT)

We got a message from Surrey based Magna Audio to tell Hifi Pig they are now offering a range of bespoke products and services.

Their range of services includes making Tannoy GRF-R and GRF-R reduced footprint version replica speaker cabinets from top quality Scandanavian ply with choices of finish and with crossover customisations being available too.

For those of you looking to upgrade your Technics 1200 turntables Magna Audio also make made to measure solid ebony tonearm boards custom-built to your specific tonearm’s fixing. They are also offering custom tonearm counterweights in either brass or Tungsten Copper with Steve from the company saying they can accommodate even the heaviest of cartridges.

If you’re looking for a multi-way horn speaker system then Magna will source drivers, build and install them and to take things really low they’ll also build you tapped horn sub bass loudspeakers that will go down to 20Hz +/- 0dB.

Hifi Pig is immensely pleased to welcome our newest reviewer to the team, Richard Joyce.

Richard often says that he started to learn to read music before he could read the written word, and whilst at Infant School took up the Clarinet, aged 6 and then Piano when aged 9. In 1979, aged 13, he won the coveted Mayor’s Cup for the finest soloist performance at the Cambridge Festival and 2 years later attained a Professional Performer’s Diploma (Clt) from the Royal College of Music. He had a change of heart when leaving school at 18, and instead of doing the ‘normal’ thing and going on to Music College, he joined the Royal Air Force as a Direct Entry musician. During his long career in the RAF, he was Principal Clarinettist of the Central Band for 21 years and now holds a Professional Diploma in Music Directorship/Conducting from the Royal College of Music.

He has performed as a soloist in some of the finest concert halls in the country, namely Symphony Hall Birmingham, Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall amongst many others. He’s also worked with such names as Brian May, Ron Goodwin, Frank Renton, Donald Hunsberger, Frederick Fennell, Kenneth Alwyn and performed for the BBC as a soloist on Radio 3 and played with the BBC Concert Orchestra. He also has a huge amount of recording experience, working in some of the finest studios in the UK including CTS Wembley, Air Studios, BBC Maida Vale, Angel Studios, and live recordings for radio at BBC Golders Green. Since leaving the RAF he has received requests for solo work, and teaches Clarinet at home in Lincolnshire.

His interest in hifi began at a very early age (approx aged 6 he thinks) when his father bought the first ‘proper’ hifi system into the house. This consisted of a Lenco L75, Sugden A21 and Celestion Ditton 15. Richard couldn’t believe the sound a pair of boxes could make, so got hooked on the whole idea of ‘music in the home’ and hasn’t shaken the habit since!

his first review for Hifi Pig will be live very soon.

For two days Custom Cable of New Malden, Surrey will feature a “Sennheiser Headphone Circle” where five models from Sennheiser, including the range topping HD800 and popular Momentum models will be available for you to try. Connected to the company’s HDVD800 headphone amplifier and playing high-resolution music from computer or audio CDs, this will be a rare opportunity to audition multiple models under identical circumstances.

The event takes place on 6^th  (11:00 – 21:00) and 7^th December (10:00 – 17:00)

Berkely Audio Design have announced their latest DAC, the Alpha DAC Reference Series.

The Alpha DAC Reference has been three years in development and uses bespoke components which the company says gives an “immediacy and presence of music reproduction that is simply real”

Weighing in at over 40lb the unit is precision machined from a solid billet of 6061 T aluminium alloy.

Berkely have paid careful attention to DSD playback and a special software package is included to provide either real time conversion of DSD 1x and DSD 2x to 176.4 kHz 24 bit PCM during playback or conversion to 176.4kHz 24 bit AIFF or WAV files. Essentially the 1-bit DSD to multi-bit conversion is done on the computer rather than in the DAC itself.

The Alpha DAC Reference supports 32hHz to 192kHz 24-bit PCM through four inputs: Balanced AES. Coxial SPDIF 1, Coaxial SPDIF 2 and Toslink optical.