TalkAudio – The Only Choice For In Car Entertainment News, Views, Advice And Reviews

This week is a shortie due to the Bank Holiday and we didn’t manage to get the Clarion piece picture-edited last week (nearly twenty images to fold prettily into a running stream of some two thousand words of copy and key features lists) so I’m hoping to see it up this week. One thing that I must tell you about is that as well as doing the reviews here on Talk Audio, I also do stuff for Home Cinema Choice”> magazine and have ended up, after 170 issues  as HCC’s reviewer of the biggest, baddest systems and the hugest subwoofers. (Apart from myself, the editor Steve May is the only one who has been on the mag since issue dot)
I tell you this as I reckon it’s good to know that your reviewer’s ears are also trusted up to the highest level in posh speaker circles, too. I am due Wednesday at the importers of Paradigm speakers”> who have a £16,000 7.1ch Signature system for me to review. I am a lucky stiff to get paid to listen to these things. I swear it’s mostly arisen because they can send me huge speaker systems for me to unpack and try – alone.
The large ones are ‘two-man lifts’ but if I grip a speaker and lean back, it generally comes with, even BIG ones. And the mag doesn’t get sued after they read my work. So, “golden ears?” Can’t be certain but I have heard a lotta stuff…..
Which brings me to the rarest fish I have ever tried. After the 909 Panasonic DVD-Audio player of yesteryear, I reckon these are even more unusual – Sony in car SACD players!
I have had one sent to me by Sony – the MEX-DV1000 and went right out to buy an SACD to try. The system was designed to be an adjunct of high end flavour to CD. The whole high definition digital audio story is one that grips me and one day they will look back upon the times of compressed formats with the quaint affection we feel for the wax cylinder. For we are at the dawn of the universal Terabyte storage and no-compression-needed era.
Meanwhile Sony’s SACD system does 120dB dynamic range versus CD’s more normal 96dB and it sounds just awesome. The review should be up this week with a bit of luck and not too many straws ‘pon my overworked master’s back!
I have a Rockford Fosgate Prime bass amp to try and some speakers from Alpine that look promising, so I’ll see what I can get through for your delectation.
Must just go off and make a video of the fabulous OLED blue scale animation on the front of the Fusion CA-CD500 CD deck still up on the top of the review tree to your upper right……
Adam Rayner – Online Editor
This week’s strap line by thejoose