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SOUND TRAVELS
NN: I currently have a love-hate rela-
tionship with my new Magnepan 1.7is.
They are incredibly revealing of flaws
up-stream. So I find myself nit-picking
about source-material quality, room
acoustics and other flies in the oint-
ment. My Emotiva power amp sounds
good and has been very reliable...
so much so that making the decision
to buy their preamp was very easy.
Emotiva is such great value because in
the U.S. (where they are manufactured)
they don’t sell through dealer channels,
but favour internet sales. The sales
model is a bit different for overseas
sales but still very competitive. Their
dealer here has a minimal mark-up.
TW: What do you see as your next hi-fi
purchase or upgrade?
NN: The Magnepan 1.7is have great
performance from 100Hz up, but below that
they are pretty thin. So the next step is beef-
ing up the bottom end with some 12-inch
servo woofers and an electronic crossover.
Then there is the new preamp on order. I’m
quite happy with my Enspire PC music serv-
er—it’s a purpose-built PC that runs Windows
10 and JRiver. It was built by David Kong in
Marrickville. It talks to the eight Drobo drives
I have in my office. As I mentioned earlier, I’ll
then need to work on the room acoustics to
control some nasty room-modes I’ve noticed
using REW.
TW: Your entire system is digital, would
you ever consider a turntable?
NN: I used to have a turntable, but in
the end, it’s such an effort. You have to be
really passionate about vinyl for it to work,
and these days I just don’t have the time or
patience. Turntables are complex and fiddly.
It’s all too hard!TW: What’s the most memorable pair of
speakers (or system as a whole) you’ve ever
heard?
NN: I recently heard a friend’s Quad ESL-
2912 speakers and fell in love with the open-
ness of panel speakers like Quad, Magnepan
and others in spite of their obvious flaws.
I also heard the B&W Nautilus speakers at
a high-end dealer overseas—that was a
fantastic demo, but not long enough. I like
these designs because they sound less ‘boxy’
to me. It seems that you usually have to
spend big bucks to get rid of the boxy sound
in many box speakers.
TW: Is there any component you have
owned in the past and sold that you now
regret selling?
NN: When I migrated to Australia I gave
away my entire hi-fi system of Tannoy 15-
inch Monitor Golds, solid-state amp, Garrard
401 turntable, SME 12-inch arm, Shure V15
cartridge. I just gave it all away to friends...
along with hundreds of albums! What a
dumb-ass move that was! And to rub saltinto the wound, I recently discovered that all
my precious gear ended up being discarded.
TW: Do you use the same music for com-
paring components as you do for listening
pleasure?
NN: Generally not. I have some go-to
high-res files I use for system evaluation but
having over-played them, I prefer to listen to
other music. I tend to go to Pink Floyd and
other high-res stuff that I have. I love tak-
ing my test tracks to other people’s homes
because it gives me such a great reference
point.
TW: What genres of music do you listen
to mostly and can you tell me some of your
favourite artists?
NN: A mix of classical and rock/pop. I was
a bit of a hippie in the flower power ‘daze’
and listened to lots of Pink Floyd. These days
I listen to Adele, Carole King, James Taylor,
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Rachmaninoff and
this guy that most people have never heard
of, Leo Delibes (A French classical composer,
1836–1891... T.W).I currently have
a love-hate
relationship
with my new
Magnepan
1.7is. They
are incredibly
revealing of
flaws...