Reviews

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday July 30, 2007

Dan Fallon, David Flynn, Dan Kaufman, Greg Borrowman

SONY LINEAR PCM-D1 RECORDER

$2990

www.sony.com.au

Rating: 3.5/5

This Sony device looks like a prop out of Star Trek, with its analog gauges, dual microphones and curved metal pick-up guard. However, it has far more than hip retro appeal going for it - the PCM-D1 is an excellent portable digital recorder. It is the type of device that musicians can use for several applications. It would be a great way to record music lessons for review later, as a practice tool to monitor improvement or to capture musical ideas to aid the creative process when writing songs. You can record a band playing live, too.

The device features two sensitive condenser microphones. These sit on the top and pick up sound in two paths, from the left and the right. For best results, the PCM-D1 should sit with the screen facing up and be pointed in the direction of the music source. (The manual recommends placing it about two to three metres away.) The PCM-D1 has 4GB of internal flash memory, which can record between two and 13 hours, depending on the sample rate (higher quality means less time). The record time can be boosted significantly by using a Memory Stick PRO. The PCM-D1 is easy to navigate with its large function buttons and screen, which tells you the record time, battery life and sample rate.

The device records WAV files that can be easily divided by pressing the "Divide" button. The analog gauges indicate whether the level of sound being picked up is adequate - if the volume is too high the needles will move into the red. To get around this, you can adjust the sensitivity of both microphones. The PCM-D1 recorded acoustic instruments brilliantly (we tested saxes, pianos, vocals and guitars), picking up nuances and providing excellent sound quality when the instruments were played separately. The recording was less impressive when it was left on stage with an eight-piece rock band, with many more sounds coming from multiple directions.

Transferring the WAV files to your computer is easy via USB and the device comes with four rechargeable AA batteries and charger or can be plugged into the mains using a supplied adaptor. It can be used with a tripod, although this is sold separately. Plug in your earphones to listen.

Dan Fallon

3 MOBILE BROADBAND USB MODEM

$399

www.three.com.au

Rating: 4/5

If you need fast internet access from your laptop while you're out and about, you'll welcome the competition raging among the carriers.

3, which prefers its name to be written as a number (and reminds us of that fact every time we spell it out as a word), has chosen to take a lead by providing Australia's cheapest mobile broadband prices.

For example, the company's mid-range plan gives you 2GB of data for just $49 a month; that's five times the downloading fun for less than half the price of Telstra's Super G Fast plan on its BigPond Next G mobile wireless network. Similarly, 3's excess charges of a modest 10 cents a MB are a third of the amount Telstra levies. Finally, if you sign up for a year the pocket-sized USB modem is yours for only $5 a month.

So why haven't Australia's mobile mavens fled the big orange T for 3's budget-minded broadband? One reason is that while Telstra's shiny new Next G network provides almost coast-to-coast coverage, 3's turbocharged 3G network (the boffins call it HSDPA) is available mainly in the capital cities. If you are outside one of these hubs, or in one of the unavoidable coverage black holes in greater Sydney, you can only keep in touch if you let the modem roam onto Telstra's much slower GSM phone network, for which you're slugged a stratospheric usage fee ($1.65 a MB).

Going online in the Sydney CBD and North Sydney delivered consistently high speeds around the 1Mbps mark, with reliable peaks to 1.4Mbps. However, when we moved to Chatswood and suburbs further north and west the signal headed south - to less than 600Kbps.

Even so, it's mobile broadband at a killer price: just disable the GSM roaming and don't stray too far from the heart of the city.

David Flynn

ALTEC LANSING INMOTION iM500 PORTABLE SPEAKERS

$199.95

www.alteclansing.com

Rating: 3/5

When your portable music player is so small that you can stick it in your pocket and not even feel it there, it's a shame to lug around large speakers. So what do you do if you have an iPod nano and want to unshackle yourself from its headphones? One option is to consider Altec Lansing's inMotion iM500 speakers, which are designed for the nano.

The main attraction is their portability. On the packaging it claims the speakers are "impossibly thin". Icon believes the word "impossibly" is stretching it but these speakers do have a depth (or thickness) of just 1.8 centimetres, making them little larger than a single DVD case and slim enough to pack into almost any bag without taking up much room.

To remain slim while travelling, the iM500's docking station and stand are hidden in the main body and fold out at the click of a button, allowing the unit to lie flat when not in use. It is also light enough to carry around, as it weighs only 340 grams without batteries. Talking of which, the iM500 runs off either six AAA batteries (which are supposed to last more than seven hours) or an external power adapter. International plug adaptors are provided.

As impressed as we were by the attractive and compact design, the sound quality didn't blow us away. Despite using what it calls MaxxBass technology, we found the bass lacking and the overall sound slightly tinny, distorted and occasionally with background noise. However, the amplification is powerful enough for you to crank it up to a respectable volume.

The iM500 will charge your nano while it's in the dock and a USB 2.0 socket is provided so you can synch it with your PC. There's also an auxiliary jack to allow you to plug in other devices such as CD players and laptops.

Whether or not we recommend these speakers depends on how you use them. If they're primarily for travel, the compact size might make up for the less-than-stellar sound quality. Otherwise, however, we suggest you find a better-sounding set of speakers.

Dan Kaufman

HALO A21 AMPLIFIER

$4500

www.networkav.com.au

Rating: 5/5

Mention the Halo A21 amplifier was designed by John Curl and you'll have audiophiles swooning at your feet. Paradoxically, Curl became world famous for building a preamplifier that bore someone else's name, though his initials were used in the model number. That amplifier was the Mark Levinson JC-2.

His most recent preamplifier design was for the US company Parasound, which decided to capitalise on the fame of the original by recycling the model number, even though Parasound's JC-2 is superior in every way to Mark Levinson's JC-2.

Curl became involved with Parasound when the company wanted someone to design a new high-end range under the Halo brand name. All Parasound's Halo amplifiers were supposed to be designed exclusively by Curl but their early success made this impossible.

The A21 power amplifier, however, was designed by Curl.

Rated at 250-watts per channel into eight ohms and 400-watts into four ohms, it easily produced these power levels when tested by Icon, topping out at 680-watts per channel into two ohms.

The A21 is entirely solid-state but Curl avoids the hard sound quality usually associated with solid-state amplifiers by using metal-oxide field-effect transistors to drive four pairs of 60MHz-15-amp Sanken bipolar output transistors.

This odd coupling completely removes harmonic distortion and extends the amplifier's frequency response well beyond 100kHz. Instead of using blocking capacitors or trim controls to prevent unwanted direct current appearing at the speaker terminals, Curl uses a fast direct current servo. This enables speakers to move around their exact midpoint, rather than an arbitrary offset position.

The A21 has volume controls, so you can connect a CD player to it directly, but their awkward rear-panel location makes a preamplifier mandatory. We used Parasound's P3 ($1895). Both performed brilliantly but the Halo A21 was clearly the star of the show, delivering perfect performance at all volume levels.

Greg Borrowman

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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