We have been experimenting in our office with various speaker setups to try and find a great sounding 'small' speaker system that offers superb sound AND not too expensive. I think we have found it!


Last week we setup the little Usher S-520 bookshelf speaker with the smallest sub-woofer we know of, the Velodyne SPL-800R.

We have always known that the little Usher S-520 was a good speaker, and this time we connected them up to the high-end Usher P-307 pre-amplifier and ran that through the new Murano 500 watt per channel monoblocks.

The sound they produced in this setup was truly amazing, excellent clarity and detail, which for a speaker that costs less than $700 is just insane value for money.

Of course, they lacked any real deep bass extension, but on certain material, it was not missed at all. However when you want to listen to Marcus Miller, you need to have a system with extended bass performance, and a sub-woofer is the right tool for the job.

We connected the pre-amplifier output to the inputs on the sub, and then out of the sub and into the Murano amplifiers. We did this so we could use the inbuilt crossover of the Velodyne to remove the bass material from the Usher's, leaving them to do the upper bass/mid/high duties without worrying about Marcus blowing them up at high levels.

We set the crossover point to 80Hz, adjusted the level by ear, and then ran the Velodyne's automatic room setup. For some reason this system just worked straight away, better than other bookshelf/sub systems we have tried.

We had beautifully clear mid and treble detail, with very good dynamics and as expected deep deep bass extension. With any system using a sub-woofer you have to get the level right on the sub or it will dominate the overall sound, but when it is set up correctly, it can really make a small system like this sound monsterous.

At less than $2500, this system provides a very big and detailed sound, with a very small footprint and minimal impact on your interior decor. The Usher's are beautifully finish in Birch or Piano Gloss Black and the Velodyne comes in Cherry which matches very well with the Birch, or Gloss Black for a perfect fit with Usher's Piano Gloss finish.

Now we are the first to admit, the amplifiers we used had a part to play in the quality of the sound this system produced, but I think given a good quality Cambridge Audio amplifier and you should be able to achieve a very similar result, for far less, but we really do recommend the Usher/Murano combination we used. So give us a call to arrange a listen and be amazed!

Tags: Speakers

I recently had the opportunity to sit in on a CD Mastering session with Australia's mastering guru, Don Bartley. There are few artist's he has not worked with, and has even applied his amazing skills to an Audiophile release of The Beatles 'Sgt Peppers', so the man has the credentials.


A good friend of mine Karl Taylor has been working for the past three years with a brilliant young engineer Richard Hundy, and an Apple laptop to produce a brilliant album called 'Voodoo Town' which has just been released on iTunes around the world and CD Baby.

It was then mixed at Rocking Horse Studios in Byron Bay on and old Neve console, before ending up at Don Bartley's 'Benchmark Mastering' to have the finishing touches applied prior to release. I have always known roughly what a mastering engineer did, but seeing a master at work was a real eye opener in many ways, particularly in how we 'Audiophiles' look at the final CD we buy.

So let me start by telling you the equipment the audio goes through to get mastered, as this in itself is quite amazing. We brought the final mixes in on DVD which was inserted into a Mac, with the digital audio sent from there into a Prism Sound ADA-8XR multi-channel modular AD/DA converter which is a very high end AD/DA converter used to get a high quality analog signal from the digital audio tracks we supplied.

From there the sound goes into an 8 channel 'Tube' Mixing console and then out to a number of racks with some of the very best compressors and equalisers that money can buy, including the Manley Massive Passive tube equaliser and the stunning Avalon Design AD2077, a Dual Mono, Pure Class A Mastering Equaliser.


There were a few other devices in the racks, but almost everything was a compressor or an equaliser. So let's step back to the very start for a minute....The recording process involved capturing the sound through a quality mic, then applying EQ and recording it. The mixing process then ran every track through a very old Neve console to add some warmth to the sound, and every track was EQ'ed again to make every instrument sit within the mix without crowding any particular frequency range etc. Now at the mastering stage, we are yet again applying EQ.

As well as EQ, compression is applied not to the overall sound, but only to certain sections of the sound, they are what are known as frequency band limiters or compressors. They allow you to pick a range of frequencies and apply compression only to the selected frequency range. This is very useful when you want to make the vocal stand out a little more or to even pull it back in the mix a little. This is where the skills of Don really blew me away. He can hear in an instant a vocal that is a little peaky in places and is able to pull it back in line, amazing.

But anyway the point of all of this is to realise just what our precious CD has gone through before we get it. There is so much EQ applied in every step of the way, by many different people involved with it's creation, and all of it is done in an 'ideal' environment. In other words, the room that the mixing and mastering are done in are acoustically right, and EQ can be applied knowing they are hearing 'just' the music and not the room.

What happens when we get that CD home and play it on our high end audio systems in a less than ideal room? We arrogantly sit back and say 'That is how it is recorded so that is how it is meant to sound, and I will not do anything to the sound to change it'. Well the reality is, that is NOT how it was meant to sound, and the ONLY place that CD will sound how it was meant to sound is in Don Bartley's mastering suite, and none of us have an acoustically treated listening room to match Don's mastering suite.

So, why shouldn't we try to get our listening room to sound a little better by EQ'ing out the room resonances and other 'peaks' in the frequency bands that exist in every listening room? Many of us probably have an open space on one side and double glass doors on the other side, so the sound we are getting is different from each speaker and neither is correct. A quality equaliser can certainly assist in getting more out of our audio systems, it is a matter of choosing a high quality EQ and knowing how to adjust it correctly.

I will have another article for you to read soon, with some suggestions on which gear to add to our systems to do this and more. Stay tuned. In the mean time, I would like to publicly say a huge 'Thank You' to Don, for allowing me to sit in on what was an experience of a lifetime. Cheers Don!

There is a very interesting article about MP3 encoding using the LAME encoder. The author puts his reputation on the line by coming out and claiming that MP3 files encoded at 320KBs using the LAME encoder sound BETTER than the original CD in most cases.

As he says himself, Just mention "mp3" within esteemed audiophile circles and watch how it causes nothing but disdain, discomfort and (ultimately) disinformation being shared by those very same high-end "experts."

So for him to come out and make this claim he must have a true belief in the claim. He even provides a rather interesting interview with the man behind the LAME encoding engine, have a read and feel free to post your comments here.

Click Hear to read full article

Usher Audio was the first to market with a beryllium tweeter in their Dancer series of high-end loud speakers, and in the top of the line model, a beryllium midrange driver seals the deal. These speakers provide amazing midrange and high end detail approaching that of an electrostatic speaker.

So it was only a matter of time before this technology trickled down to lower end models, and very soon we will have the first Usher Be-718 stand mount 'Tiny Dancer' as it is being called.

Usher took the cabinet shape of the Usher X-718 as its form, which according to Dr. D’Appolito, has the advantage of perfect time alignment. According to global reports from some of the big guns in high-end audio, it's sound is stunning.

Stereophile had this to say: "Have you heard the little Ushers?" I was asked Friday. "Have you heard the little Ushers?" I was asked repeatedly on Saturday. No!, but not because I hadn't tried. I just couldn't get near the room. It was that packed. Finally, on Sunday I not only got in, I got the sweet spot.

Hmmm, I see, umm, hear, what what people were buzzing about. And, again, it ain't just the speakers, of course, but the Oracle Audio Technologies gear and JPS Labs cables as well—yet even we sophisticated audiophiles tend to think of that last link in the chain as being what we're hearing. In one sense, it is—in that speakers either let through all that shiny goodness (and thereby sound good) or mess it up (thereby sounding bad), but really good-sounding audio systems are complex entities and ... what was I saying? Oh yeah, the system sounded good, man.

System, what system? I'm so glad I asked. From front-end down, I was listening to the Oracle CD 1500 CD player ($5800), Oracle S1 integrated amplifier ($9250), JPS Labs Aluminata interconnects ($2999/1m pair), speaker cables, $7299/6' pair), and the Usher Dancer Be-718 loudspeakers (approx. $2500/pair). The Be-718 combines a 6" mid-woofer with a 1.5" beryllium tweeter.

The little Ushers, I mean the system, sounded good, with a fabulous sense of body and an extremely tuneful midrange. Maybe they lacked a little bass impact, but they sounded robust for a 6" two-way. These speakers may have my number—they definitely have my area code. I hope they can come to my house to play."

So we wait with great anticipation for them to arrive. Just imagine, a small speaker with amazing high end and midrange detail, with dynamics to die for...I for one can not wait! We should have a display pair in house shortly!

Tags: Speakers

Remember in the late seventies when you simply had to have a graphic equaliser in your stereo or it simply was not a good system? They were cheap additions into most amplifiers and added far more problems than they solved.

The problems were two fold: one they added phase shifting errors to the sound, noise and distortion in most cases, but the greatest problem was with how they were adjusted. Almost everyone would boost the bass and treble end, creating the classic 'canyon' curve, thus removing all midrange detail.

Well we have all matured since then and learned an awful lot more about quality audio and have far better trained ears. So we 'should' be ready to use an equaliser properly this time around. But hang on a minute I hear you say, "I thought equalisation was a big no no in high end audio?"

Well it still is in many people's eyes, but I am at the point in my own system with speakers that are so accurate and revealing, that I am sick of most of my CD collection not sounding that good. Sure the Steely Dan and Lee Ritenour CD's sound fabulous, but put on just about any CD from the 80's and you get bright, almost harsh sound that is lacking in any serious bass content.

Add a good quality equaliser into your system and you can at the very least, EQ out the harshness and boost the bass end to provide an overall smoother sound. But, it has to be a good quality equaliser otherwise we will end up with the dreaded phasing issues again, so forget about running down to your local Retravision to pickup a $200 equaliser. Quality audio requires quality products EVERY step in the chain, but you knew that already...

So what have I put into my system you ask? Surely I have grabbed one of those Manley Massive Passive Mastering Equalisers right? No I can not afford it, plus it is an analog equaliser which is perfect for mastering, but it has no presets and I want to be able to save the EQ settings.

So I have ordered myself a Mackie Quad EQ (around $2000) which is a pro product, but it offers four channels of EQ, balanced audio in and out, 30 bands of equalisation with no-compromise 24-bit/48kHz processing and 99 presets. The fact that it is digital equalisation it should not suffer from phasing shifting issues at all, hopefully.



It arrives next week, so I will set it up and start testing it out, stay tuned for updates on just how well this works out.

UPDATE: The Mackie arrived today, it is a well made box and I have to say the specs of this thing are impressive. After connecting it to the test system it sounds rather transparent which is good. Took a little while to learn how to work it but it is very simple to use, in true Mackie style.

Thankfully it has a bypass button on the front panel which makes it easy to AB the settings against flat or no EQ. So it was straight to an 80's CD and I started to tweak the EQ curve. This was where the RTA (Real Time Analyser) really helped. You can visually 'see' where those pesky mid range peaks are and the truly lacking bass regions. So a simple cut and boost here and there and the CD suddenly sounds more listenable on a high end system.

I intend to experiment further with this box, try to get a bunch of presets that work for 70's and 80's music etc, and with up to 99 programmable storage places, it will be easy to recall when required. As it has 4 channels of EQ, I also intend to play with the built in noise generator and the supplied microphone to analyse the room and see if I can get this box to 'tune' the speakers to the room. More soon!

UPDATE 2: Well this morning I have spent my time putting the EQ between my pre and power amplifiers. I then setup the supplied microphone to analyse the room acoustics effect on the sound. What I found was some peaking in the mid range area between 80Hz and 1.6kHz, it was a rather bumpy EQ setting that pulled it back in line but it did it.

I then put on Dannielle Gaha's "You don't know me" CD which is a beautifully recorded album of standards. I used the  'Honeysuckle Rose' and 'Blue Skies' tracks for reference. Being a very well recorded album I did not need to use any EQ for it other than the room adjustment EQ between the pre and power amp.

The resulting sound was still very open and very very clean, the EQ is doing nothing other than what it is asked to do which in this case is to smooth out the peaks in the room. Fabulous!

My next test disc was a very well recorded CD produced by Charles Fischer from 1989, Gyan's self titled debut album. Although well recorded it does have some peaks in the upper midrange area which when listened to loudly is a bit grating. Simple adjustment of the EQ curve and all was fixed!

I have found the solution to my audio problems, at last. If I want to listen to my 'gear', then I can turn it off and put Lee Ritenour's 'Wes Bound' CD on and enjoy, but if I want to listen to some classic old music from my youth, then I turn on the Mackie, put Pat Benatar's classic 'In the Heat of the night' CD on and bliss out!

Equalisation does belong in high-end audio!

Tags: Equaliser

There is a revolution happening in the audio industry, and it is to do with power amplifiers. This revolution is coming from a rather unexpected source: Bang & Olufsen of Denmark, with their ICEPower amplification modules which are being sold to some seriously high end audio manufacturers for use in their own products.

These modules provide massive amounts of power output, with little heat being generated, high quality sound and they come in sizes which will astound you.

ICEpower technology offers the best of two worlds, ultra efficiency and high audio quality. ICEpower technology is based on unique and groundbreaking modulations and control mechanisms, enabling superior audio quality and efficiency than conventional amplifier technologies.

ICEpower technology aims to revolutionise efficiency of the entire audio amplification chain, from audio power supply, audio amplifier to the audio transducer - what B&O call the complete audio power conversion path.

So who is using them? So far the likes of new comers Murano and Red Dragon Audio, but also big name high end manufacturers like Jeff Rowland and Bel Canto. All of which means, very soon, you may well own a very efficient, SMALL and beautiful sounding power amplifier!