The Rock Anthem! Full FM Acoustics Set Up.

I've known this system owner(like many others, he also wishes to remain anonymous!) for a few years now, back then he was the biggest, meanest Naim boy in town. I remembered he had racks full of Naim gear plus ancillaries and that bad ass pair of full active Naim DBL speaker. That Naim system was probably one of the loudest and proudest of hifi systems I've ever heard.

However, with age catching up and the desire for something decidedly more up market, he opted for the whole she bang of FM Acoustic hifi gears! As one may already know, FM Acoustics products are Swiss made, with watch like precision. There's also another incentive to getting FM Acoustics gears. You see, these are not your usual available in stock kind of hifi gears. One has to put down a size able deposit, wait for it to be lovingly hand made to spec, could be anything from 3 to 9 months before your brand spanking new FM Acoustics gear arrives your door step. However, knowing that moneyed audiophiles can't stand the long wait, sometimes people whom had earlier booked an FM Acoustics equipment can opt transfer that booking to another impatient audiophile for a fee. And because there are also so few of these hand made beauties floating in the used market, I've heard some people actually made a profit when they sell their FM Acoustics gear after using them for a few years! It's reputation is that FM Acoustics is one of the best value investments when it comes to hifi equipments(Just like a Rolex!).

Such is the legend of FM Acoustics. Oh! By the way, many famous music industry people uses FM Acoustics hifi gear at home too, one of them includes the famous orchestra conductor Leonard Bernstein!



The full Esoteric/FM Acoustics system is placed in the living quarters of the house, hence the need to have some decor friendly touches to please the other significant members of the family.


Alright, back to this system here, which the Hifi-Unlimited team had a chance to sample. The system starts with a CD/SACD source in the name of top drawer Esoteric X-01D2, with it's internal jitter clock by passed with a G-03X Master Clock which is stable to +/-0.1ppm accuracy, according to the spec sheet on the Esoteric web site.

The signal then goes to a FM 255MKII pre amp, which is a full balance design. I did find it odd that for a pre amp costing the price of an apartment in the city does not come with remote control of any kind! FM Acoustic obviously believes in keeping the audio signal free from unnecessary frills(Big E, get your big fat ass off the couch! That bit of exercises will do you good, my left brain tells me). Now, does the words "Pure Audio" come to mind?

The pre-amplified stereo signals than goes to a pair of active x-overs which comes with the FM Acoustics XS-3 loudspeakers. However, there are no attenuation allowed at this point. The x-over just accepts one XLR line input, and then splits that signal to a hi-freq output and another to lo-freq output, both pairs of output being XLR too, of course. Two pairs of FM 111 power amps are used to vertically bi-amp the pair of XS-3 speakers.


The FM Acoustic XS-3 loudspeakers are the smallest in the range of loudspeakers offered by the company. There's another two bigger boys in the range.


The FM XS-3 speakers continues that pyramid shaped tradition and a special feature of these speakers are the two knobs and a tweeter located at the top of the sloping pyramid, facing towards the back wall. The two knobs allow for volume and bandwidth attenuation of the said back facing tweeter. There's the usual front facing high-mid-low drivers located at the front baffle as well, which strangely do not allow the removal of the speaker cloth grills, much to the common audiophile chagrin! However, this system owner is no ordinary audiophile, who is female vocal obsessed, listening to girl/guitar music, or finely crafted for sound kinda music. He is quite the rockerfella instead!

As per most full FM Acoustics system, all cables are also supplied by the same company, which are optimised to perform as a one. No cable play, plays allowed here!


The FM 111 power amp puts out 230W @ 8ohms and 360W @ 4ohms. It ran very cool through out the night as we pump up the volume. This lucky system owner probably has closet rock music lovers as neighbours or at least, very understanding ones!


As we listened away in to the night, vino in hand, dark Swiss(what else?) chocolate' melting in mouth, sound in ear, but music warming the heart and soul, ahh....... The next most sinful things known to a music lover after perhaps, love making? Make no mistake, the experience of such an encounter is surreal. If there's ever a graceful rock music system, this has gotta be it!

FM Acoustics signature sound is lightning fast transient and dynamically proud, if a little on the cool side of neutral. There is no noise floor in the system to speak off, despite never resorting to the use of power conditioners. There are high levels of analytical prowess at play here, with big scale presentation and the illusion of wide, deep sound stage. The system easily dispenses the recorded music venue's ambient cues if at first the highs appears to be slightly dry, but on closer analysis, it's probably just a little less dark in the back ground. The mids are full bodied with chest and high mids to reproduce the rock guitar which will bite when necessary. The harmonics, texture and tone of the bass and electric guitar with pedal notes well sustained. Bass have slamming quality if doesn't quite go as deep as a speaker this size and ambition should.

Compared to his previous Naim system, which this FM Acoustics set up share many common traits, but with richer, denser mids and more refined highs. Where the Naim system starts to sound strained, the FM Acoustics just coolly strutting it's stuff. The system owner may have grown up in his hifi taste and status, but his penchant for rock/blues based music remains, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Metallica, Megadeath(?, maybe not) but you get the idea. All of those artist mentioned were on rotation during our listening session that night.


The front end consisting of Esoteric X-01D2 CD/SACD player enslaved to G-03X Master Clock. The FM 255MKII pre amp completes the volume control duties. Note that little box on the left, which is the x-over of the XS-3 speaker, which takes a signal from the pre amp and then splits it in to hi-freq out and lo-freq out to facilitate bi-amping by the four FM 111mono blocks.


At this level, it would be churlish to even talk about prices anymore. For a blue collar worker like me, it'll be mission impossible to even dream of having something like this. However, thanks to the system owner's generosity in sharing his musical experience with us, you our dear readers, get to know that such a fine and shining system exist, in Bolehland.

Paranormal! Parasound JC 3 Phono Stage.

Would you believe me if I told you this review took nearly half the year in the making? It's a long story, as you shall see. One of my buddies took delivery of his unit(one of the very first to reach Malaysian shores) sometime in March 2011. He instantly alerted me that this Parasound is something out of the ordinary, and that I should let the word out to our dear readers. I began arranging for a review unit instantly with the kind folks Center Circle Audio. Unfortunately, I was called away for an assignment, and when I returned, I found out that another reviewer from a local daily had beaten me to it. Like my buddy, the said reviewer was so... impressed with this Parasound JC 3 that he decided to keep the review sample! By then stock had run out and I had to wait for the next batch that came in last month.



A look at the innards of the Parasound JC3 will make almost any vinyl/hifi lover and DIY-ers knees weak. John Curl's attention to detail and production execution is first rate and will certainly put some of the more expensive rivals to shame! 


Post KLIAV, the review sample is in my man cave waiting to slot in to my LP playback chain. It replaced my 2 box Pass Labs X-Ono and here's what I found! But first, I must take the opportunity to admire the sumptuous build quality of the JC(designed by the same John Curl, of previously Mark Levinson JC series phono stage fame) 3. It's solid battle cruiser like build quality is re-assuring for reliability. Parasound's www proudly displays the very thoughtfully designed innards of the JC 3. A few touches stand out, like the huge AC input power factor filter cap on the right side of the casing, feeding clean power to a C-core transformer for low flux leakage. The power supply/regulator board and the C-core transformer is isolated from the AC input and both the dual mono audio signal boxes to further shield the venerable low level audio signal from the cartridge. Like most sub RM$10k phono stages, the Parasound JC 3 does not offer much flexibility when it comes to signal gain and cartridge loading choices.It's either MM @ 47db gain with default 47k ohm loading or MC @ 68db gain with 100 ohm loading. One may leave the MC loading option wide open at 47k ohm too, however I did not need to try. The Parasound, like my Pass Labs, offers RCA only input, with a choice of RCA or XLR output, which I used for the course of this review. My resident Linn Sondek LP 12 turn table mounted with Benz Micro LP low output(0.34mv) cartridge rounds up the partnering ancillaries.


The front panel of the Parasound JC3 only has two buttons. The one on the left is an ON/OFF switch, and the one on the right is a MUTE switch. The Parasound logo in the middle glows a healthy red when powered.


The Pass Labs X-Ono had ruled supreme the phono stage world within it's price range for almost a full decade, and the Parasound JC 3 show us just how far that world has progressed sound wise. I noted that even though the Parasound only had 68db of gain, it sounded as loud as my Pass on maximum 76db gain. I was also surprised that my cartridge sonically mated well with the Parasound on 100ohms of loading only. I was immediately impressed by the dynamics, and sense of urgency that this Parasound projects, it's very nearly equal to that of the X-Ono. Tonal quality aspect, the Parasound very much follows today's trend of absolute neutrality, as compared to my warmer sounding Pass. However, that absolute neutrality does not necessarily mean boring either! The highs are open and highly extended, never failing to convey a sense of top octave energy, if not as overall liquid as the Pass in presentation as I witness when playing Charlie Antolini's Crash LP. The mids are solid, but never beguiling like the Ayre P-5xe phono stage which plays the violin instrument like no other I've heard. The bass is fast, articulated and never short on impact. If anything, I found the musical presentation with the JC 3 when playing the Crash LP more up front and energetic compared to the warmer, more laid back X-Ono. 

The Parasound JC 3 is also impressively transparent with ultra low noise floor to boot(an area which the Pass X-Ono lost out). The Pass at maximum gain had some white hash in the quiet back musical grounds compare to the dead silent Parasound. Despite the up front musical presentation, I never felt fatigue or any ill effects of jarring highs. In fact, there's a real sense of musicality on offer here, which makes me look forward to every vinyl listening session during it's two weeks in my system. I think I spun nothing but vinyl during that whole two weeks!

The rear panel only has one RCA input and a choice between RCA or XLR output. The toggle switch selects cartridge loading.

There are few credible contenders in the phono stage market for less than RM$10k today. In fact, I counted three, from established high end marques.
1) PS Audio GCPH
2) Ayre P-5xe
3) Parasound JC 3
From the list, PS Audio sits right at the most affordable end, but still puts up a set of impressive hifi performance. Both the Arye and the Parasound offers more high end performance for a reasonable top up, the difference being the Ayre has lower gain for MC cartridges, and that makes it rather selective for partnering cartridges. While the Ayre's sound is definitely smooth with mid centric beguiling, it's slightly weak dynamics and lack of drive will works against it, unless partnered with a suitable medium output MC cartridge like the Clearaudio Concerto V2. The Parasound is the best sonic and musical all rounder, that balances speed, transparency and accuracy with musicality, that makes it a great partner for medium to low output MC cartridges like the Dynavector Karat D3(also sold by Center Circle Audio) or any of the higher range Benz Micros, like my LP. However, all three phono stages on the list does trade off adjust ablity for sound quality. I guess one has to pay more when looking for phono stages with higher flexibility but not necessarily better sound either. Do note that the Ayre P-5xe was never formally reviewed here either, but I had the opportunity to play with it in my system for a few days, sometime ago.

Should one wish, the other phono stages available at RM$10k or less are the various versions of FV Euroaudio's Pipit phono stages by Frank Acoustics(or simply Frankie, if you know tha man!) and the various versions AIME's from Audio Image, all locally made with pride!


Charlie Antolini's Crash LP is a very dynamic drum recording. It was know as a speaker buster back then in the 80's! This cover art represents the original pressing. My LP copy is a recent JETON re-issue, which looks slightly different on the cover art.


That more or less sums up my impression of the Parasound JC3 phono stage, priced at a very reasonable amount of RM$9,200.00 only.  Due to the very successful product sales world wide, Center Circle Audio tells me there is currently a waiting list for the Parasound JC3. If one dabbles in to the black arts, one should really check this Parasound out!

Parasound is sold by Center Cricle Audio, contact Sky, or Nelson at 03-77282686.

Official Launch of TAD's Complete System

TAD, or Technical Audio Devices, is Pioneer's subsidiary focusing on supplying high fidelity audio equipment to the professional world and the highend audiophiles.

Products bearing that 3-letter name have impressed us tremendously, including the TAD-D600 SACD/CD player and the TAD-C2000 pre-amp. We had the good fortune of getting loan units to listen in our own systems and I hope our lucky star continues to shine, so that a couple more TADs will come our way.

TAD's product line is finally complete. One can now put together an entire hifi chain with all TAD equipment. All the products, from digital frontend to loudspeakers, are now available in Malaysia. This complete TAD line-up was showcased in the TAD official launch in Malaysia held by Pioneer Malaysia and AV Designs in the latter's showroom.

The complete TAD system...

consisting of (from top to bottom) TAD-D600 SACD/CD Player (RM129,000), TAD-D600's power supply, TAD-C2000 pre-amp (RM128,000), TAD-M2500 poweramp (RM115,000)...

...and the TAD Compact Reference loudspeakers (RM148,000)

Mr. Low of AV Designs kicking off the listening session

A section of the attendees listening intently

Mr. Kazutoshi Takahashi, MD of Pioneer Malaysia, was on-hand to field questions from the hifi scribes

Here, he was talking to our very own Big E and Lam of Hi-fi Avenue

One for the album. Mr. Kazutoshi with a section of the Malaysian hifi bloggers

The sound from the TAD system was smooth and musically very inviting no matter the music genre, from vocal to classical to rock, as was heard in the demo session.

The complete TAD system can be auditioned at AV Designs now. Contact James Tan at 03-21712828.

www.hifi4sale.net Event, CAS Introductory Session For Forum Members.

Over the weekend, CMY Audio & Visual at Sunway Giza Mall, Kota Damansara branch graciously hosted the Hifi4sale CAS Introductory Session for forum members numbering to nearly 30 by head count. The session conducted in 2 parts started off with the forum administrator, who wishes to remain anonymous, demonstrating the differences between the PC based and a Mac based CAS setting up parameters and the resulting sonic differences.

Part 2 of the session fetures local hifi guru Jo Ki demonstrating the various isolation options available to take any CAS sonic performance to a higher level altogether. The key point of the day was not if any or each idea/implementation is superior, but rather those present are asked to witness and form their own conclusions, and perhaps even further explore on their own resources.

The session ended with a "Lucky Draw" where two lucky winners were allowed to pick up a CD each from CMY's music selection library.

I leave you with some pictures of the day!



Hifi4sale administrator(right), doing his PC vs Mac CAS demo session.



Jo Ki takes over and furthers the concept.



Jo demo-ing various isolation options which raised more than a few mind boggling questions!



I spotted this neat system on demo in CMY Audio & Visual, Sunway Giza Mall branch.



This Audio Pro LV-3 wireless powered speaker caught my fancy, because it looked really pretty, and reminded me of the ol' Bose 501 speaker from the 70's!

The Audio pro LV-3 is supplied as a mirror image pair. That means both speakers require it's own power cord! However, no other wires are required since this baby works with a wifi transmitter supplied.



This to add a little promo value for CMY's friendly and accommodating efforts.



Absolutely Beguiling – Vitus Audio SCD-010 CD Player

The Vitus Audio SCD-010 CD Player surprised me. If anyone were to tell me that this entirely-solid-state CD player was tube-based, I’d have believed him.

I had listened briefly to Vitus’ amplifiers in showrooms and in hifi shows, they gave me the impression that they embodied the best qualities of solid state gear, their sound being clean, balanced and well controlled. However, they were less likely to be associated with terms like ‘warm’ or ‘honeyed’. So when the local distributor, Swedish Statement, brought the Vitus Audio SCD-010 CD Player over to my place, I had the same expectation too. (At the same time, they also brought a pair of Marten Design Getz loudspeakers, that is a story for another day)

Indeed, during the first couple of hours of listening, the SCD-010 seemed to re-affirm my expectation. The sound was clean and clear, everything was there, but the music seemed a little detached emotionally.

After that, as my normal habit, I put the player on repeat for a few hours then I put it on standby when not playing. The SCC-010 in the standby mode was warm to the touch, and indeed when it sprang to life from standby, it was ready to perform in its top form. After a full warm up, the other side of this player came to show itself, and it was an astonishing transformation...

The SCD-010 is one hunky piece of gear. It weighs a very heavy 26kg. The build has the tank-like quality of the best high end gear; yet undeniably its line also has the clean-cut, minimalist and softer touch of the Scandinavian – Vitus Audio is Danish. I like the look very much. I would complain about its display window though, being too small to read from 5-6 feet away. This handsome machine lists just a shade shy of the RM100k mark at RM91,995.


The Vitus SCD-010 is a top loader, the cover manually slides open and close very smoothly. After the disc is placed onto the spindle, you’ll use the magnetic puck to weigh it down. The transport is a Philips CDPro2 LF that Vitus says it has also heavily modified by stripping it ‘down to its basic mechanical and electronic parts and totally rebuilt. This ensures a lower level of errors in reading the digital information on the discs, which leaves the error correction system in the drive with much less work to do’. The SCD-010 is a CD only player.

Digital outputs and inputs on the left, analogue outputs on the right

It has the normal analogue outputs, 1 RCA pair and 1 XLR pair that Vitus builds with its own amplifiers’ topology. It has 2 digital outputs, 1 RCA and the other XLR. It also has a couple of interesting features. Firstly, it has 2 digital inputs (1 RCA, 1XLR), I had no way to verify the resolution that they could accept as I did not have any external high res digital source, however the local distributor told me that they accept up to 24bits/96kHz. Secondly, there is a built-in volume control. Used in conjunction with the digital inputs, it means that you can do without a pre-amp if you are running all digital gear.

Comparing the SCD-010 running straight into my monoblocks to having the signal through my pre-amp, I preferred the straight through method a little more, though it was a close call. Straight through, there were slightly clearer details. With the pre-amp in the path, there was slightly more body to the sound. I ran it with the pre-amp in the chain most of the time as I needed its pass-through feature for my home theatre setup.


After the initial run-in warm-up period, the SCD-010 settled down to a stable sound. Boy, was I in for a treat! This player caressed female vocal like no others. It was the most seductive I have ever heard from Stacey Kent from a compilation of her songs (Stacey Kent - Collection). Her voice was in turn sultry, creamy and yet powerful, her performance was dripping with emotion. There was an inner glow to her voice that just pulled the listener’s attention in. I bet everyone who heard this can’t but fall in love with it immediately.

The SCD-010 also turned piano music from a mere recording into a great performance. My favourite piano reference CD – George Winston’s ‘Autumn’, was transformed. A few things stood out, first was the definition and delineation of the notes, each note was cleanly enunciated, the slight smearing of one note to another in the lower register that I used to hear was gone. Each ping of the piano key was illuminated, like it was surrounded by an aura. Details were excellent, I could hear into the minute changes as each note came into being, progressed and finally dissolved. Reverberation and air in the recording were aplenty, whether it was natural or added as it may be. They all added so much more musical information to the performance itself as to bring the recording up another level.

The SCD-010 sounded totally in control all the time even as it tackled complexity, speed and dynamics. It did them pretty well, though in this regard I think some other players could out-slam the SCD-010, especially some high-enders from the US of A. However, I am pretty certain they could not match the Vitus’ beguiling charm.

The Vitus SCD-010 came across as peerless with vocal, acoustic music and small scale ensembles. It has a very natural, very analogue and rich sound, not unlike the kind we attribute to tube gear. With the Vitus SCD-010, you’ll listen more with your heart rather than your head.

This CD player has a musical soul.

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Addendum 19/9:

I neglected to mention that the Vitus SCD-010 CD Player comes standard with Vitus Audio's own Andromeda power cord.

The Andromeda is a sturdy and very well constructed cord. More importantly, it matched the CD player extremely well, adding to its virtues. Compared to my Shunyata power cord, when used on the SCD-010, the Andromeda made the CD player sound quieter, the background was pitch black. It also added further to the silky smoothness and richness of the SCD-010's sound (Haagen Dazs ice cream came to mind :-) ).

Since the Andromeda matches the SCD-010 perfectly well, I don't think there is any need for the owner to go seeking for another power cord, really.

Vitus is carried by Swedish Statement. Please contact Koo at 012-2891682 or email info@swedishstatement.com.my