MARCH 2O1O

. PLUS 13 pages of music. VINYL RELEASE Neil Young's Everybody Knows... on 18Og vinyl uK €4.00 us 9e.50 Aus $e.e5

. AUDIO MITESTONES Tannoy Dual Concentric . INVESTIGATION Cutting art of vinyl

. ON IOCATION Linn Records o Hl-Fl @ HOME From Bush record player to Oracle Delphi , lllLl[|IfillUUUlLll rfiil'

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cD player and class D integrated amplifier t .. i "; "i . " a///l

Made by: Micromega (Audis sarl) - I € " "" 7///,.Suppl iedby:AbsolutesoundsLtd' . ' " : " / / / / / .

Telephone:02089713909 .' -" r:

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Mrcromega CD-3O/IAIBO (ffizeT)More rapid-fire hits from the returning French squad: an integrated amplif ier andmatching CD player that Brit ish makers would be proud to claim as their ownReview: Ken Kessler Lab: Paul Miller

i-fi rarely gives second chances,and yet here we have a once-moribund brand becoming amajor force in the mid-price

sector. Considering that, in the past, myrelationship with Micromega was frostyat best, I 'm taken aback by its plethoraof new products and especially for the'positive vibe'they seem to exude. No, I 'mnot bewildered because they're French - Iwil l ingly admit that my favourite cheese isBril lat-Savarin, and that I dream of NathalieBaye - but because this company has comeback l ike gangbusters.

From the upper-end of the catalogueis its best CD player, the CD-30, and themost powerful of three integrateds, thelA-180. And yet the two manage to costbelow E3300, despite being manufacturedin Europe. ln the current economic climate,that's not an inconsiderable amount, but itsti l l represents incredibly good value.

What's so clever is how Micromega,in a most Gall ic manner, has balancedperformance, style, build quality andfeatures in such intell igent proPortionsthat the final melange pushes all theright buttons: modern appeal (iPod andheadphone sockets on the front of the lA-180); retro appeal (rotary volume control,phono stage); audiophile appeal (preampout, processor loop, digital output);and convenience (full remote control,assignable input names).

Ar,nrnengArsEReturning to my befuddlement, there'sa plethora of sockets on the back of theamp versus the dearth of output optionson the CD player, the presence of a phonostage yet no earthing tag... I suppose thatthis quirkiness is merely French tradition,harking back to steak tartare or the brakepedals on old Citroens. And yet it all works.

Consider the only daunting elementof the package: a system remote with 46

RIGIITI Micromega's uniform fascias mean thatthe rigtrt-hand halves are nearly identical on thetwo components. Blue LtCDs arc easy to read anddractivq take note, Audio Research!

buttons, all black, all the same size and laidout in straight rows - bland and seeminglyunintuit ive for the techno-fearful. Andyet, because'standby' is red and four bluebuttons switch the remote through thecomponents it operates - CD, FM, AV andamp functions - after a few minutes' usage,there was litt le in the way of operationalhindrance when compared to my equallycluttered All-ln-One, which has i l luminationand buttons in different shapes and sizes.

Proof of this intuitive user-friendlinessis demonstrated by a simple fact: fromopening the two boxes to hearing musicrequired all of six - yes, slx - minutes. I tookadvantage of banana plugs on the YTERcables to connect quickly between thewonderful multi-way binding Posts on thelA-1 80, into LS3/5As and Tannoy AutographMinis, while a set of Atlas phono cables wasall I needed between the units.

I didn't even look at the user manualsuntil the system had been playing for acouple of hours.

So far, I could be describing anythingfrom Arcam to Musical Fidelity toCambridge, to one of another 20 or morehighly competent home-grown contenders.

But there has to be, beyond a deceptiveremote control, pretty blue l ights andridiculously impressive build quality, anelement to make one shout, 'Vive ladifference!'. I hoped that I would find it inthe sound. And, as I learned after a week orso, it is a case of steak tartare versus steakand kidney pudding - a matter of taste.

lf there's a nationwide 'French sound',it 's as impossible to pin down as any:with the exception of much of the gearfrom Germany and Japan, I f ind most ofthe major countries producing serioushardware to be too broad to define glibly.Just as we in the UK have everything fromthe classic BBC sound to the Linn/Naimalternative, French sonics range from theToulouse-Lautrec-fat-bottom lushness ofJadis, to horns so strident that they makeGerman alternatives sound like Quad ESLS.Micromega adds another wrinkle, and itis - to me at least - the disti l lation of ultra-modern detail and hygiene, tempered withovertones of classic opulence.

One supposes that is what Rolls-Royceand Bentley try to achieve with theircurrent, state-of-the-art luxury vehicles, andit 's a tough challenge: making a modern

48 | www.hifinews.co.uk i MARCH 2010

car that sti l l offers the sumDtuousness of acoach-built motor carriage of the 1930s.Simply shoving valves into a CD outputstage, for example, isn't enough. Whenwe reviewed Micromega's top pre/powercombination last December (coincidentallycosting exactly the same as this integratedamp-plus-CD player), I learned thatMicromega's roots and reputation, thoughentirely based in digitalia, had beenrespected in the brand's reawakening. Butthe focus on digital has not been allowedto dominate.

And yet... however much oneapproaches this as a pair of carefullyvoiced and matched siblings, the CD playermanages to overshadow the amplif ier.We'l l get to them as standalone productsin a second, but keep that thought inmind, for it 's all-pervasive. Alternatingmy listening with nice, comfortable vinylsessions and a couole of bouts with otherCD players such as my aged MarantzCD-12/DA-12 and Quad's 99 CDP-2, I keptreturning to the synergy that is the CD-30ilA-180 au naturelle.

r^{Jj} rT's STEAK TARTARE ltrENAs an ensemble, the two create a balancebetween the aforementioned modern-and-retro that wil l mean more to older l isteners.By that, I refer to those who started withvinyl and witnessed CD's evolution fromits launch in the 1980s throuqh to its

maturing to something acceptable in the1990s. (This is not the place to defendCD per se but, trust me, you wl// miss themaligned CD when compressed formatsbecome the norm.) Digital versus analoguesonic differences may never be resolved, soany dEtente comes in the form of behavingrealistically: by treating the two as merelydissimilar rather than as good versus evil.

Using the two with Red Book CDscreates an experience that asks, what is allthe fuss about? | sat there and listened toall three discs in the new Charisma Labelanthology Refugeeswithout stirring exceptto change discs.Ladies and gentlemen:that statement is farmore pregnant withrevelatory import thanidentifying the system'sabil ity to hold my

A coherent,

ABOVE: Minimalism and clean styling endorthe Micromegas with both high functionalityand the kind of lookthatvrcn"t growtircsome;a large rotary volumecontrol aptly dominates

tr ickery and studio gimmickry thatreminded me why I was first blown awaywhen life moved from mono to stereo(which is another can of worms not to beopened here).

Classicists wil l be gnashing their teeth,forthe decade in question - 1969-78 -also represents the era, defined by those

with an ear for naturalsound, as that whenstudios lost the plot,compared to the geniusstudio work of the1950s. Either way, theMicromega system,with Charisma's music.possessed exactly the

ri.chness pervadestopto-bottom

the music'attention for a couple of hours: amongstthe tracks were offerings from artists I'ddrive 100 miles to avoid, l ike Lindisfarne,Genesis and Van der Craaf Cenerator.

Indeed, the music is so utterly,merci lessly, putr idly'progressive' that Idon't even know why I bought the set. Idon't l ike Peter Hammil l fhaf much. Andyet the music is also of the era beforedigital recording made audible art i f icea permanent part of our l ives, so I wascaptivated by textures and detai l , spatial

seductive charms which keep us weddedto vinyl and valves and analogue in i tsmost pure form. Voices, even if weirdlyprocessed in the recording stages, soundedmore real than those which pass for today'scutt ing-edge releases. The l ikes of SimonCowell would do well to look back to theirown early years if they're to salvage thesound of the swill spat forth by X Factor.

Keep in mind that I am discussingthe way the pair behaved without anytweaking or cable chicanery or accessoryindulgence. l t simply works. Just l istento the kick-drum opening to the Black

I Crowes's 'Kept My Soul 'on the subl ime'., Before The Frost; the air, the resonances,. the scale, al l possess the sort of air iness': ?nd authentici ty that keep sending us

- back to our turntables and moving-coi ls.

: Then the band kicks in, and the sheer mass: reminds you that you are l istening to a fast,, crisp and powerful solid-state amplifier, its. Class D technology forgotten in the musical, bl iss del ivered.

Yes, there's a knee-jerk tendency thatsays a Class D amp has no right to soundthis good after all the years the hard-core G,

MARCH 20lO ! www.hifinews.co.uk i 49

Micromega's CD-30 deliv-ers a top-notch performance. offering

a 108dBA-wtd S/N rat iofrom a 2. lVmaximum gulpuaul9 -

H.t:.1T"j:',.::,:1ff L",::iSffi :'Jn',.".'""J3:;'il..iilf ""':'"rJriai."g",

a'.tortion is <0.0 1% over thE top 45dl of its

JV""ri. -'ig"

[see Craph 1, below]. The combination ofCrystal's CS8421 SRC for 3x upsampling followed bV a nli19f.^AD'l 853 DACS [see boxout, p49] yields an exceptional > 1 25dBrejection of stopband images coupled with very low levels ofultrasonic noise and a mere | 15psec of iitter (this is as low as

we can measure with a 1 6-bit data pattern). The playeis outputimpedance is just a litle higher than I'd like to-see.at 600ohmbut its response is only gently rolled away at -O.3dB/2OkHzwhich will have no imPact on its subjective brightness.

The partnering tn-i SO amptitier nas more 'character'.

with distortion that gradually climbs with power output from.0.0015% at 1W8ohm to 0.25% at 90w8ohm' but at least this

trend is broadly consistent with frequency. While the Class Dmodules are rated at 180w4ohm this is somewhat dependenton implementation, in this case reaching 120W/8ohm and170$4ohm. Under dynamic conditions-it's possible to achieve1 50{8ohm and 212$4ohm [see Craph 2, below]' so it\beefy enough. The response rolls away.to -0.7d8/20kHz and,

-7.5d8/1 00kHz from a low 0.023ohm impedance and only thezo.safi s/ru ratio (A-wtd, re. OdBW) is mildly disappointing.

Readen are invited to view a full QC Suite report for theMicromega CD-30 and lA-180 amplifier by navigating to vrww.hifin"*r.io.uk und clicking on the red 'Cowntoaa' button. pu

.63O11E: Simple unbalanced analogue and coaxial digital outputs on the cD

player (top) arc joined by four line inputs, a phono input and tape loop plus

preamp output and a set of unswitched speaker outlets on the amp (below)

have decried such technology. No, i tdoesn't have the warmth of valves,nor the visceral presence of Class Atranny amps. l ts lack of absolutetransparency only becomes apparentwhen you feed the CD-30 into adif ferent ampli f ier, as I found whenplaying i t through the MclntoshC2200/MC2 1 02 combination. Buta sl ight graininess is not enough tocondemn the amp, for i t is so mildas to warrant no more concern thanthe shadings between consecutivegrades of speaker cable from thesame maker.

SPANNING fiIE ERASAm I suggesting, then, that theCD player ' l i f ts ' the lA-180 up anotch? Perhaos it does, but thenthis is not the first t ime source/ampcombinations have benefited fromsuch synergy. Despite any inferencesfrom my ordeal with three discs'worth of Charisma excess, the pair'sprowess is neither music genre norera-dependent.

The Black Crowes'cut, forexample, is recent, grungy, l ive andloud. The same satisfying sound alsoapplied to the CD of Peter Ustinov'sutterly hilarious, 50-year-old GrandPrix of Gibraltar free with a recentissue of Motorsport, the new 4CDHall & Oates box set covering1 966-2009, and the decidedly oddCD of Christmas classics issued byBob Dylan. That's a span of a// thedecades: the Micromegas do notfavour one over another.

While a coherent, top-to-bottomrichness pervades the music -and this certainly enhances theacceptability of recordings madein the post-digital age, whilecomplementing MD discs - no too-fleshy elements are suffered thatwould, for example, soften or stifletransient attack. The rich, fat, yetfast bass is the first thing you'l l hearif you go back to that Crowes track

or any of Hall & oates'classics fromtheir f i rst two decades. Your spinewil l t ingle when you hear the mixof hi-hat, bass and the wash of thesynths that open'She's Cone'.

When the two voices f loat in,the Micromega CD and amPlif ierkeep everything positioned acrossthe soundstage, the parts forming aDerfect whole. And that's down tothe CD player, as this was a prime

element of the performance whenI plugged the cD-30 into anothersystem. You can do i t again with theelectr ic piano in 'Rich Gir l ' , wait ingin anticipation for the rhythmsection to add so much mass to theproceedings that even the smallestTannoys wil l seem huge.

There's nothing part icularly'negative' about the lA- 1 80ampli f ier: i t 's as good as any sol id-stater I can think of at aroundf 1700, while I 'm enamoured ofi ts clean styl ing and terr i f ic f i t-and-f inish. Ergonomical ly? Al l one trulyneeds. But the CD-30 reminds thel istener of what made Micromegaa contender in the f irst place, byminimising digital artefacts anddelivering a si lky, sol id, of-a-wholesound that bel ies i ts price. <)

As anticipated, given Micromega'shistory, the CD player is themarginally superior half of thispair; the percentage below is acombined figure for the two, butthe breakdown would be 77%forthe amp, and 83% for the disc-spinner - yup, it 's that good, assatisfying as Marantz's delightfulKl Pearl. But the amp is no slouch,and the units combine so wellthat they reaffirm Micromega'sreturn to form as no fluke.

Sound0uatig:80%

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ABOVE: Distortion versus digital signal level over a

120d8 dynamic range using CD data at l kHz (black!

and 20kHz (blue)

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ABOVE: Dynamic pol,ver output versus distortion into

Sohm (btack trace), 4ohm (red), 2ohm (blue) and

lohm (green) speaker loads.

Power output (<1 % THD. B/4ohm).

lsow i 212w f. i+sw I oow

Digital jitt€r (CD. l6-bit/44,1 kHz)

l08.1dB i 76.5d8 (re.odBWI

50 ! www.hifinews.co.uk i uRncx zoro