Opalum active wireless speakers.

Even wireless active speakers needs power to drive the build-in amps.
Opalum has a very specific solution.
The speakers are fed (24 V) by a dual wire connected to a hub.
The signal is transferred over the same wire.
You can connect the speakers parallel or daisy chain them.

The hub takes care of the connectivity.
Analog and SPDIF inputs
Wireless b/g with Airplay and DLNA.

Website: Opalum

DACs

You like DACs?

An impressive compilation can be found here: DACInfo

Genelect G-series

Genelec is well known in the pro-world.
In 2013 they launched the G series targeting the home.
I do think active speakers for home use is becoming a new trend.

Website Genelec

For your ears only

You can buy custom molded in-ear monitors.
You go to an audiologist.
He makes an impression of your ear.
Send it to the factory.
Wait until they ship your custom-fit IEM.
Oh yeah, you have to pay a substantial amount of money too.


Why not rolling your own!


Take a pair of Sonomax Eers headphones.
Put them in your ears while attached to the thingy below.

Pull the trigger and don’t move your jaw for 5 minutes and you have your custom mold.
Source: eers™ custom fit earphones

Active crossover

Almost all speakers at the home are passive.

You have an amp, a box and inside the box there is a passive crossover.

It split the signal in a part for the woofer and a part for the tweeter.

Studio monitors are in general active.

Each driver has its own amp and the crossover is done on the signal before it enters the power amp.

Onkyo has released a couple of AV receivers enabling you to implement active crossovers using DSP.

A clear explanation of how it works.

A bit more: active crossover

Parrot Zik

You won’t find headphones in this blog as there is nothing digital about two drivers and a wire.
The Parrot Zik is a “digital” headphone.
Not only is it Bluetooth enabled but it comes with DSP (Digital Signal Processing) allowing you to tailor the sound.

The Parrot Zik is designed by Philippe Starck.

Design is often about minimalism. Those elementary shapes like a cylinder, a cube, etc.
Starck is one of the few who can create beauty using organic shapes.
The Zik is no exception to this rule; it looks swell, is light, and wears nicely.
However, if you argue that one does not buy a headphone for the looks only, you do have a point.

The Zik is a Bluetooth headphone.
I do think Bluetooth is not exactly an audiophile Walhalla but fortunately you can connect it with a wire too.
This gives you a couple of options.

1-Wired only

I plugged the Zik into my Benchmark DAC 1.
Sound is really horrible, the plastic ear buds that comes with your mobile probably sounds the same. To make sure nothing was interfering I even removed the batteries but the same hollow sound remained.
Very weird, the simplest possible connection, just a wire sounds worst.

2-Wired+power

Put on the power and after a delay of a couple of seconds all of a sudden you have a decent sound. It’s a bit mellow and compered with my Etimotics ER4P lacking a bit of detail but it is decent. At least it is not bass heavy as so many modern headphones are.

3-Wired + Power + Smartphone

You can download the Parrot Audio Suite from Google Play.
This allows you to change the settings of the Zik.

ANC (Active Noise Cancellation)

I toggled between on/off.
The first thing I noticed was a dropout of about a couple of seconds, then the DSP sets in.
This happens all the time you change the settings using this App.
Bit surprised that it takes that long.
ANC slightly changes the sound but not as worse as in case of my Sennheiser PXC 360 BT.

Parrot Concert Hall

You can change the angle between the speakers and the reverb of the room.
Reducing the angle between the speakers is a nice feature as stereo over a headphone sounds like STEREO. It works more or less like a crossfeed.

Equalizer

I simply set it to flat.
Unlike many modern headphones, the Zik isn’t bass heavy.

4-Bluetooth

Tried a couple of devices

Android

No problems to pair the Zik with my Galaxy 2.
It uses A2DP with SBC for audio.
No APT-X here. I do think this a bit of a pity as APT-X sounds better than SBC but I wonder if this headphone is revealing enough to hear the difference.
Using the Parrot Audio Suite, you can invoke all kind of DSP as mentioned above.
This time there isn’t the delay as in case of a wired connection

Transmitter

I have a Bluetooth dongle to listen wireless to the TV.
The Zik cannot be put into pairing mode so no way to connect the Zik to the Bluetooth transmitter.
I asked Parrot support and they confirmed this is simply not possible.
You need a master device with and interface like a mobile to pair the Zik.

Win7

Win7 sure has an interface.
The Bluetooth of my HP sees the Zik and pairs flawlessly.
The moment you try to play some music, Win complains.
It is missing a driver. No sound at all.

Win Update cannot find the driver.
Could not find one at the Parrot website either.

According to the Parrot forum

unfortunalty your Asus is using Atheros Bluetooth stack which is currently not compatible with Parrot Zik. That is why when you connect your Zik in Bluetooth to your Asus, it fails on the last step.There are no solutions at the moment and we strongly recommand to use your Zik with Line-in on this specific computer.
http://forum.parrot.com/usa/viewtopic.php?id=25447

After trying all kind of things, I simply opened the properties of the Zik.

The Bluetooth Peripheral Device driver is missing.
Went to the Service tab.

Disabled the Parrot RFcomm service.
This turned out to be the trick to get it to work in Win7.
Obvious Parrot needs to improve on the Win side.



The Zik now pops up in the Win audio panel.
As mentioned before the Zik can be configured with the App.
There is no Win version available.
If you want to change the settings when connected to the PC,you have to:

1. Disconnect the Zik in Win
2. Connect it with the smartphone
3. Use the Parrot Audio Suite to change the DSP settings
4. Disconnect from the phone
5. Connect to Win

A tedious procedure but unavoidable as the Zik can’t communicate with 2 devices at the same time.

Conclusion

What happens if an ace designer and a Bluetooth car kit manufacturer joins forces?
You spend € 350 and get a beautifully styled headphone with too many glitches.

Firmware

Zik: 1.03
Android App: 1.0

Lector D i g i t u be D S D

 DAC with a tubed output stage (ECC-81/12AT7)





Asynchronous USB support up to 32 bit / 384 kHz. Driver for Windows
Supports DSD over USB

Inputs

- Spdif IEC-958 as RCA connector / 192 Khz 24 bit
- Spdif IEC-958 as BNC connector / 192 Khz 24 bit
- AES-EBU AES-3 as XLR connector / 192 Khz 24 bit
- Opto toslink digital input / 192 Khz 24 bit
- Asyncronous USB / 384 Khz 32 bit
- Word Clock

Unbalanced output / 2.5 volt 250 ohm

Website: Lector
Price:  € 1990

KEF X300A

Active speakers dominate the studios.
At the home, they are rare.
However recently a couple of companies released active speakers targeted at the home or at least at the desktop.


KEF X300A
Active 2way speaker with 24/96 asynchronous USB input.

Website KEF
Price: $799 (pair)

Monitor Audio WS100

Wireless active desktop speaker.

The wireless connection is done using SKAA, a proprietary protocol.

It can transmit audio lossless up to CD quality.

Range is about 10 m so pretty much like Bluetooth but lossless.

A review by Audiostream.

Frequency Response:	80Hz - 25kHz
Maximum SPL (each @ 1M):	99.5dBA
Power output (RMS):	Bass 2 x 20 watts Tweeter 2 x 10 watts
Drive unit complement:	2 x 75mm (3") C-CAM Cone Bass Driver 2 x 19mm (3/4") C-CAM Gold Dome Tweeter
System configuration:	Sealed box
Auxiliary input impedeance/sensitivity:	10k ohms/300mV
Wireless system:	SKAAtm 2.4GHz
Wireless range:	Up to 10 metres
Signal to noise SNR:	>95dB
A.C. input voltage:	90-264V (auto range)
Amplifier category:	Class D - high resolution amplifiers
Power consumption:	<0 .5=".5" 14.5="14.5" ax="ax" standby="standby" td="td" watts="watts">
Electrical approvals:	ErP, CE, CB, cTUVus, FCC, IC, GOST
Dimensions (each) (H x W x D):	125 x 120 x 120mm (415/17 x 43/4 x 43/4")
Colour/Finish:	Silver cabinet with black glass top and black grille
Weight (each)	1.8kg (4lb)

Website: Monitor Audio
Price: $399.00

Elispson Planet LW

You won’t find many speakers in this blog.

A box, a couple of drivers and a passive crossover have nothing to do with digital.

This one is different.

It is an active speaker so each driver is powered by a dedicated amplifier.

What sets it apart is that there is no analog input.

It uses a wireless connection to get the data from a PC or a iSomthing using a dongle.

Elipson calls it WELL. Wireless Elipson Lossless Link, the internet says it is based on KLEER technology so lossless audio up to 16 bit/44.1 kHz over a 2.4GHz radio link.


2-way active speaker with coaxial driver
2 x 50 W / 4 ohms ICEpower amplifier
Mid-bass driver: 6.5 " (165 mm)
Fabric dome tweeter
Frequency response: 42 Hz - 20 kHz

Website Elispson
Price €1690 (pair)

Bryston BDA 2

Another DAC with the almost mandatory asynchronous USB input.

 

 • Dual 192K/32Bit AKM DAC’s
• Independent dual power Supplies
• Discrete Class A analog output stage
• Selectable synchronous upsampling (176.4K/192K)
• Independent analog and digital signal paths
• Inputs: 192/24 USB (1, asynchronous), COAX (2), OPTICAL (2), AES-EBU (1) BNC (2)
• Fully differential balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA stereo outputs
• Transformer coupled SPDIF and AES EBU digital inputs
• SPDIF COAX bypass loop output

Website: Bryston BDA 2
Price: US$ 2395,-

BNC connectors

You need a true 75 Ohms cable for SPDIF over coax.
Best is to terminate it with true 75 Ohm connectors.
If you don’t you still have an impedance mismatch.
RCA connecters are not 75 Ohm.
That is the reason why BNC connectors are recommended.
Some go as far as to change the RCA receptacle on the DAC by a BNC and buy a cable terminated with BNC.
Be careful because many BNC connectors are 50 instead of 75 Ohm!

Wellshow - BNC Connector Introduction
Digital cables - The Well-tempered Computer

Ayre Acoustics QA-9 USB A/D converter

AD converters are typically for the pro world.

You need one to record digitally.

The music lover does playback only so needs the reverse of an AD, a DAC.

More and more people start to use a PC as a source for play back.

Why not digitize all of your analog sources?

Ayre Acoustics thinks we will do and launched an AD converter targeted at the home.

A review by JohnAtkinson

Website: http://www.ayre.com/

Price: $3950

iFi iDAC

Small pre-amp with line out and headphone out.
24 bit / 192 kHz asynchronous USB input
ESS Hyperstream Chipset

Specifications:
Signal to Noise Ratio:	>111dB(A)
Dynamic Range(-60dBFs):	>111dB(A)
Crosstalk:	<-102db td="td" z="z">
Total Harmonic Distortion(THD):	<0 .005=".005" td="td">
Jitter:	Below measurement limit
Frequency Response:	3Kz to 33KHz + 0.1dB/0.3dB
Headphone section:
Output Power:	>150mW(15Ω)
Signal to Noise Ratio:	>97dB(A)
Total Harmonic Distortion:	<0 .003=".003" mv="mv" td="td">
Noise:	<-86dbu td="td">
Output Impedance:(Zout):	<10 td="td">
Power Consumption:	< 2.5W
Dimensions:	158(l)x68(w)x28(h)mm
Weight:	193g(0.43lbs)

Website: iFi
Price: US$ 299

Electrocompaniet PI 2D Integrated Amplifier

2 x 100 Watts integrated amplifier with digital and analog inputs.
Digital inputs: two Coax, two TOSLink and one 24/192 async USB
Analog input: 1 balanced XLR input and four single ended RCA inputs.

Technical specifications:
• Input impedance ( Single Ended ): 60 kOhm
• THD + N: < 0.005%
• Output Impedance: < 0,03 Ohm
• Frequency response: 1 – 225kHz
• Channel separation: > 120 dB
• Noise floor ( 1Vrms, 20 - 20 kHz, balanced): <-130 br="br" db="db">• Damping factor: >300
•Rated output power
8 ohms 2 x 100 W
4 ohms 2 x 165 W
2 ohms 2 x 220 W


Website: Electrocompaniet
Price: €3.150