Channel Islands Audio (CI AUDIO) is a small US based audio manufacturer “dedicated to bringing the sound of live music into your home”. CI Audio products were developed for Audiophile enthusiasts demanding musicality, simplicity, quality craftsmanship and reliability.



The company uses Innovative design and constant advancements in semiconductor technology to achieve performance levels previously unobtainable at what can only be considered a ‘reasonable cost’.

Vistra Australia will be relasing a small range of their products here in Australia, including their superb amplifiers, passive preamp controller, USB DAC and most interestingly, the dedicated power supply for the Squeezebox. Of course, these amps are the perfect partner for a Squeezebox base dosund system too!

Tags: Audio, Amplifiers

Sonic Euphoria is a small high-end audio manufacturer out of California in the U.S. who makes one product, a very highly regarded passive line pre-amplifier known as the PLC (Passive Line Controller) and is available in a single ended or fully balanced design.

This is not just another passive preamp, but a unique design using an autoformer attenuator. There are no resistors, potentiometers, or capacitors in the circuit at all. Sonic Euphoria’s design approach is to use the simplest circuit with the highest quality parts. They believe this to be the true path to Audio Nirvana. The sound is transparency redefined; all the clarity, detail, high and low extension, with a wonderful harmonic balance. The autoformer design maintains bass and dynamics where most resistors based passives will disappoint. The performance of this preamp is in the class of the very best made, yes even those cost no object $10,000 + units.

The good news is that a new model of the PLC is one the way to Australia, and will be distributed here by Wicked Digital. Keep an eye on the Wicked web site for up coming reviews and pricing.

British loudspeaker manufacturer ATC unveiled its Limited Edition EL150 SLP Tower speakers in Hong Kong in November 2007. Billy Woodman – MD and founder of ATC (An Australian Expatriate) – gave a short introductory talk prior to the demonstration of the loudspeakers. The loudspeakers have taken almost a year to complete and are set to become ATC’s flagship for the next few years.

Billy Woodman used computer-aided design techniques and one of Britain’s top furniture manufacturers to build the loudspeaker cabinets. The pure elliptical shape when viewed from above is a structured combination of wood plys and MDF with a veneer layered over the top. Shown here is a Burr Magnolia veneer, although any finish will be available to order.

The drive units comprise a 25mm HF neodymium tweeter, ATC’s famous SM-150 75mm soft dome for midrange, plus a 375mm Super Linear bass driver. Frequency response is quoted as 25Hz-22kHz (±6dB), or 60Hz-17kHz (±2dB), and a pair matched response of ±0.5dB, with sensitivity at 91dB. Cabinet dimensions are 1315 x 650 x 290mm and each speaker weighs a massive 82kg.

The speaker can be tri-wired or tri-amped, thanks to a three-way connection panel at the speaker’s base. The EL150 three-way passive speaker represents the first of a series of seven, with an active version planned in the near future. Price for the EL150 passive speakers will be around £24,000 in the UK and they come with a lifetime guarantee. This is surely a first in the audio industry, bettering Brystons 20 year guarantee.

I will say it up front, I am not a fan of dedicated music servers, with a few exceptions such as the QSonix model. Now, the news here is that NuVo Technologies have released a new model, the NV-M3 pictured below.



The NuVo Technologies NV-M3 has a full half-terabyte of space and an even more astounding price tag, more on that in a minute. On the unit itself, you'll find a polycarbonate, capacitive touch front panel interface with a tiny OLED display and a bunch of ports on the back. Now, the price.... US$2,999!

When it lands here in Australia, this will translate to a whopping $4999. Sure it is cheaper than an Imerge Music Server, just, but who cares? For $5000 you can buy an Apple Mac Pro, load it up with 2TB of storage and either connect it to your LCD/Plasma screen, or buy a nice Apple display and still have change. The benefit?

An infinitely better music server and cataloguing system, far more flexibility, and a continually upgraded operating system and user interface, something which every single dedicated music server rarely ever gets.

Tags: Audio

The Taiwanese based amplifier manufacturer MURANO, who used the excellent B&O IcePower amp modules to provide excellently priced power amplifiers, has totally vanished, or so it seems. The company is no longer answering emails or phone calls, and all calls for warranty go without reply.

Tags: Audio

The Australian headphone market has been booming ever since the iPod started to dominate the portable music player market. For many years the market was dominated by two major players: Sony and Philips. This begs the question: "Why is the market dominated by two non-specialists, instead of the big name specialists such as Sennheiser and AKG?"

The answer is pretty simple really: Sony and Philips do deals with the major chain stores to sell their headphones in place of other brands, so the general public is 'force fed' inferior products purely because the stores in question have little concern with offering the best product, and of course they want to retain the ability to sell the other products which these two companies make.

However, through substantial marketing by Sennheiser both globally and locally through it's Australian distributor Syntec, Sennheiser has now become the number one headphone brand, not in the number of units sold, but in the dollar value of those sales. I have to say, they deserve it too, as they have a massive range of quality product and their packaging is the best in the business.

So between Sennheiser, Sony and Philips, they own about 90% of the Australian Market, leaving around 10% for ALL the other players. This is staggering considering the big names in that small group, names such as AKG, Beyer Dynamic, Audio-Technica and Shure, all of which are specialists, and then there are the many other brands that are not headphone specialists.

The one big mover in the last year has been Audio-Technica. Formerly distributed by Yamaha Australia they were virtually unknown to the Australian Consumer due to no effort being put into advertising the brand. Since being taken over by TAG (Technical Audio Group) the sales and awareness of Audio-Technica has soared. In the last two years sales of Audio-Technica has gone from virtually nothing to 3% of the Australian market. I would expect that to grow to at least 6% in 2008 if current sales are anything to go by, so hats off to Max at TAG for doing a great job in marketing this great brand.

So what happened to brands like AKG and Beyer? Well, Beyer I am not sure about, but I can certainly shed some light on the failure of AKG in Australia. The problem is their distributor, Audio Products Group. APG are very particular about who they give their products to, and prefer not to go the 'box mover' path of the major chains, instead focussing on the independent stores, you know, the ones which are going out of business at a rate of knots!

Have you ever tried to buy an AKG headphone? Try finding someone who sells AKG and you are likely to give up in frustration, particularly if you search online, because AGP hate online resellers with a passion. Instead, they tread the well worn path of: "If we ignore it long enough it will go away". (The same path the Independent resellers have been treading up until the day they went out of business) They also detest anyone discounting the products they sell, so combine discount price with online sales and you have not got a chance.

AGP it seems will continue to limit the sales of AKG through ignorance of how consumers want to buy. This of course forces the Australian consumer to buy AKG online from an overseas vendor, bypassing both the local resellers and their own distribution. So long as AGP and other distributors continue to ignore online vendors in Australia, sales of the products they distribute will continue to be limited at best, and at worse, decline.

This situation is a real shame, because AKG make great headphones, all they need is a great distributor with a contemporary view of selling, an understanding of the global economy we are now working in, and the declining relevance of geographical location to the end user.

Tags: Headphones

Building on the success of the award-winning ATH-ANC7 (which has sold like crazy since it's release here in Australia), Audio-Technica's ATH-ANC3 QuietPoint Active Noise-Canceling In-Ear Headphones reduce distracting background noise by 85% while offering the superior sound that makes Audio-Technica a world-leading pro audio company. Engineered to create a comfortable listening environment in areas with high ambient noise, these in-ear headphones feature a miniature microphone in each earpiece that picks up ambient noise (such as traffic, air-handling systems, etc.). The added bonus of this new model over the ANC7, is that it fits in your pocket making it the easiest noise canceling headphone to carry around with you. RRP $249

Tags: Headphones

The very popular Audio Technica ATH-CK7 ear canal headphone is now available in a black titanium finish, to compliment the standard titanium finish. The popularity of this model is in part because it offers great sound, but also at the price, it is the only non plastic model around, with the entire body of each earpiece made of solid titanium.

Tags: Headphones

"Listen to the music you love in any room in your home. Browse and play songs from your personal collection, online music services, and Internet radio. Enjoy crystal clear, CD-quality audio in your home theater, the stereo in your bedroom, the mini system in the kitchen — anywhere you have audio gear."

That is the blurb on the all new Logitech Squeezebox Duet launched at CES this January in Las Vegas. This product takes the ever popular Squeezebox to the next level, making it the first real competition for the Sonos music system.

The great advantage it offers over the previous Squeezebox is that the remote has ALL the information on it's colour display, making it very easy to select songs or playlists etc. Make no mistake, the Squeezebox is now set to go mainstream!

Tags: Squeezebox

With the enormous success of the Audioengine A5 in Australia and around the world, it was only natural that a new model would soon follow, the surprise however is the fact that they have produced a smaller model in the Audioengine A2. Designed primarily as a desktop audio system, it offers sound quality that truly defies it's size and more importantly it's price.

Stereophile magazine, the bible for true audiophiles, claims that every reader should rush out and buy a pair, not something they normally do for a $300 pair of speakers. So if you are looking for a very compact, high quality speaker system for your PC or iPod, look no further. The Audioengine is distributed throughout Australia by Vistra Australia, through a limited dealer network.

Tags: Speaker

In case you have not heard of them, the Qsonix digital music management system delivers a complete set of intuitive and easy to use features that make loading, organizing, browsing and playing music fun and simple.

This is a Rolls Royce solution for music archiving and playback, with a superbly designed system that is both easy to use and offers fabulous sound quality. Naturally it works with all control systems as well for those mega house installs.

The Qsonix systems will be distributed throughout Australia by Vistra Australia, through a limited dealer network.

Tags: Music Server

You are probably asking who is Lipinski Sound? Ask any audiophile classical music lover and they will know the name of Andrew Lipinski who is one of the finest classical music producers in the world. Andrew was frustrated with the equipment used in studios and set about making his own. With the help of his son Lukas Lipinski, they setup Lipinski Sound to produce some of the most accurate speakers available for recording studio and mastering suite use, plus of course high end consumer audio.

The big interest is in the loudspeakers, and in particular the L-707. The Lipinski Sound L-707 is currently the most talked about speaker in the world, with it's design being developed over many years of professional sound engineering by a true industry legend, Andrew Lipinski. As the only audiophile oriented manufacturer professionally active in both, recording arts and engineering sciences, Lipinski Sound aim to advance the art of music recording and playback to the next level of reference.

Find out more about the Lipinski Sound range at the Australian web site: www.lipinskisound.com.au

Tags: Speaker

The long awaited Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7 Noise Cancelling Headphones were released in Australia back in February 2007 and they are taking the market by storm ever since that time. They provide extreme silence in even the noisiest of environemnts, are beautifully made, and priced to eliminate the other players on he market, at only $449 retail, they beat boh Sennheiser and Bose at their own game.

These lightweight, compact headphones effectively reduce distracting background noise by up to 85% while offering the superior audio quality that has made Audio-Technica a worldwide leader in electro-acoustic technology. Get them today and enjoy your next long haul flight in silence!

Tags: Headphones

The ATC brand in Australia has always had two distributors, one for the pro speakers and one for the domestic hi-fi product. TAG (Technical Audio Group) continue to distriute the ATC professional studio monitors, but the domestic hi-fi product has been handed over to Wicked Digital.

The difference for the end user is huge, firstly the products are no longer being distributed to dealers, instead all ATC hi-fi speakers are now available directly from the distributors web site, removing the usual dealer margins, making ATC more accessible than ever before, with speakers starting as low as $1495.

The draw back of course is that you must buy on the reputation of ATC (which is huge) rather than by listening to them in the dealer showroom as you would normally do. Personally I do not see this as a problem in light of ATC's massive reputation of amazing accuracy, detail and dynamics. They are one fo the few products which could safely be bought of reputation alone.

You can check out the range at the ATC web site: www.atcloudspeakers.com.au and of course buy directly form the Wicked Digital web site here: www.wickedidgital.com.au

Tags: Speaker

Music isn’t all zones, terabytes, and signal-to-noise ratios. The amazing thing about music is how it enhances our experiences, and Sooloos does that like nothing else. With Sooloos, you create the right recipe for every situation. Even with a huge music collection, you can quickly and easily get to the perfect mix of selections for any occasion. Using Focus, you control the criteria for the music you want to hear, ensuring that you play the right song at the right time, every time.

Sooloos isn’t a product, it’s a system and unlike any other Music Server you have seen before. Designed with your needs in mind - whether you have a one-room apartment or a thirty-room estate, one hundred albums or ten thousand - Sooloos is tailored to meet your specific requirements. Using components from the three Sooloos product series (store, source, and control) anyone can have the ultimate music experience

Sooloos Store Series:
The Sooloos store series is offered in mirrored component pairs with capacities of one, two, or three terabytes (providing up to 2,000, 4,000, and 6,000 albums of storage, respectively). Additional pairs can be added at any time, to accommodate even the largest music libraries.

Sooloos Control Series:
Every Sooloos system includes a control : one, which provides master control, import, and configuration functions on its big, bright 17" touch panel display. The control : one allows you to import CDs in minutes using the world’s most advanced error detection and correction algorithms. Add control points with additional control : ones, with the 7" control : micro, or with the wireless 7" control : remote.

Sooloos Source Series:
Sooloos offers source : one, source : five, and source : micro components to provide up to 32 discrete zones of audio in a variety of network and distribution configurations.
The source series features:
• super low-jitter design ( < 1 nanosecond)
• DC-coupled signal path
• ground-free transformer-coupled digital output
• servo-balanced analog outputs
• 192 kHz / 24 bit converters
• SNR 110 dB RMS unweighted, 113 dBA

Tags: Music Server

Slim Devices' Transporter™ was designed to appeal to the most discerning audiophiles and music lovers. It streams digital music with sound quality that surpasses even the most exotic compact disc players. At the heart of Transporter is a "no compromise" attitude to component selection and electronic design.

Feel Your Music—The new TransNav™ controller uses dynamic tactile feedback to provide fast access to any song even in the largest music collection. The sleek, backlit, infrared remote and dual fluorescent displays make it easy to use from anywhere in the room.

Quality Connectors—Transporter's back panel features a complete set of professional-grade connectors, including both balanced and unbalanced signals for its analog and digital interfaces.

Astounding Analog—The AK4396 "Miracle DAC" was chosen for its high dynamic range and low distortion. Its low out-of-band noise allows for the use of low-order output filters with higher cutoffs, resulting in preservation of phase and reduced distortion in the audible band. This extraordinary accuracy at higher frequencies allows Transporter to resolve the exact staging of instruments and the finest details of any recording. In addition, Transporter's digital inputs allow its built-in DAC to be used with other sources.

Accurate Digital—Transporter's digital path is not only "bit perfect", but also extremely accurate in timing precision. Clock signals in Transporter are handled not as ones and zeroes, but as precision analog signals. Specialized crystal oscillators, careful clock management, and linear-regulated logic supplies ensure the lowest possible jitter throughout the system.

Clean Power—Transporter's DAC and output amplifiers are powered by Super Regulators, based on the legendary design by Walt Jung. These regulators offer lower output impedance, faster response, and better noise rejection than standard three-terminal regulators. The result is an incredibly natural sound, with a pitch-black background and a shocking level of detail.
Transporter is the network music player audiophiles have been waiting for.

The Slim Devices Transporter will be available in Australia sometime in October 2006.

Tags: Squeezebox

You have to hand it to Apple, with the new iTunes 7 for Mac and PC, they have just released what is without a doubt the best entertainment management system on the planet. This is a major upgrade, the most significant release of iTunes for some time and has many new features.

One of the new features that is truly brilliant, is the addition of 'Coverflow' which was a stand alone application which Apple bought the rights to. It allows you to browse your CD collection by album covers, in a three dimensional array. Apple have also added the feature to do the same for your books and movies as well.

Other new features include a revamped menu system, which separates the library into categories of Music, Movies, TV Shows etc, to simply library browsing. But, without a doubt the most requested feature they have added is that iTunes will now retrieve album covers. Before you get too excited about that though, remember you have to have an iTunes Store account to be able to use his feature, which you can do at no charge it must be said. So all in all, Apple have released a superb application which together with a Mac mini or iMac, provides you with a killer home entertainment solution.

Tags: Music