Sound + Image

SOUND + IMAGE magazine offers a comprehensive package focused on lifestyle home electronic entertainment. It provides easy-to-read information about audio and video equipment and how ordinary consumers can assemble extraordinary systems that look and sound fantastic.

Metaconversations • Asking questions is part of our job. And it’s harder via webcam.

SOUND + IMAGE

Aventage for a new decade

Studio sound from JBL

Transparent offers $112,050 speaker cables

Cambridge goes all-in-one

Grado’s ‘x’ factor

Reserve roll-out from Polk

What price high-res streaming? • Qobuz & Apple

Little Lindemann Limetrees

JBL’s Bar 5.0 MultiBeam

New Nodes

Two shiners from Sony

Spot the speakers

Klipsch Real Custom Cinema

New Age, new decade • Aventage meant ‘AV entertainment for a new age’. As this award-winning series of receivers enters its second decade, we review the first and most affordable release from the range.

Game on • Grab your SMG and prepare for action – BenQ’s TK700Sti is a next-gen gaming-optimised 4K DLP projector.

Entertainment extension • Considering a home extension? Why not make a Statement? We asked Wavetrain Cinemas’ David Moseley to explain some of the secrets behind this stunning home cinema with 165-inch screen.

Enter Elementi...

Packing up • The JBL floorstanders in this group won a Sound+Image 2021 award for their performance in straightforward stereo. So what happens if we place them at the front of a full multichannel speaker package and start kicking out movies?

Hisense hits 8K • Once you get to 75 inches of premium TV, is 4K UHD resolution enough to make the most of your screen real estate?

The Director’s Chair • Signature Cinemas transformed this space from concrete bunker to a screening room good enough to satisfy a movie industry client.

WIRELESS STEREO LOUDSPEAKERS • They can be systems in themselves — stereo loudspeakers with built-in streaming and amplification, inputs for TVs and other sources. But how do they sound?

Ruark MR1 Mk2 Bluetooth speaker system • Usefully compact powered speakers with a sound larger and more ‘hi-fi’ than expected.

Klipsch The Fives • No networking here, but profoundly solid sound from TV, computer, Bluetooth and vinyl.

KEF LSX • The ‘mini me’ of KEF’s wireless Uni-Q-equipped speakers proves anything but mini in its delivery of hi-fi sound.

DALI Oberon 1 C • DALI takes a pair of good hi-fi speakers and makes them active and wireless. Easy.

Q Acoustics Q Active 200 • Very different, yet rather beguiling; Q Acoustics doesn’t merely convert an existing speaker to active wireless operation, but rethinks the breed from scratch.

ELAC Navis ARB-51 • They play wirelessly, but it’s a whole lot easier if you don’t, and you’ll then get the best from these brilliant speakers.

KEF LS50 Wireless II • KEF takes its successful LS50 Wireless and makes cunning revisions to deliver impressive sonic improvements.

Bowers & Wilkins Formation Duo • Recent changes have improved ease of use for the Formation stereo pair, while their sound quality was never in question.

Respect your vinyl • The best gift you can give your turntable is a high-quality phono stage which will treat its output with respect. Musical Fidelity delivers a fine example in its new M3x Vinyl.

Head first • Naim’s new Uniti player focuses on headphones first – but it’s also a brilliant streaming preamplifier.

Boya band

Philip Swift, SPENDOR • Before he bought the company, Philip Swift had been a fan of Spendor speakers, right back to the company’s very beginnings.

LEGEND: Jean-Luc Godard • Has any director...