We’ve just published our list of the 40 best 1990s albums to test your speakers, taking in everything from shoegaze to jungle, but which records topped the charts at the time?
We had a look and found plenty we remembered, and many we couldn’t for the life of us recall. So we thought it’d make quite a decent quiz.
The premise? Well, there were 33 studio albums that spent three or more weeks atop the UK charts during the decade, and we want you to name the 31 groups and solo artists who released them. We’ve given you the names of each record below to help you out, but we’re sure you can get a good few just by naming the biggest acts you can think of.
Compilations, soundtracks and live albums don’t count for this quiz – so no Titanic or ABBA Gold – but there are also a few self-titled entries that should help get you started.
Your time begins when you hit the play button, where a box will appear for you to type your answers. Each time you enter a correct answer, it’ll be added to the board. If your answer remains in the box then it is simply incorrect.
Don’t worry too much about punctuation, and shortened versions of some of the longer names will also be accepted, but correct spelling is a must.
Once you’ve filled in as many answers as possible, just wait for the timer to tick to zero, or click ‘give up’, and the rest of the board will be revealed. Then pop over to our social media channels or the What Hi-Fi? forums to let us and other readers know how you got on.
Good luck!
MORE:
40 of the best 1990s albums to test your speakers
15 of the best 1990s movies to test your home cinema
The iPod Touch is not only the last official surviving member of Apple’s iPod music player dynasty, it’s also the only model Apple ever released with wi-fi connection. But what if the old iPod you’ve got in a drawer somewhere could be modified to add Bluetooth and wi-fi connectivity as well as access to streaming services such as Spotify? That’s exactly what developer Guy Dupont has achieved with the 4th-generation iPod he got from his mother-in-law.
This particular iPod Classic was introduced in 2004, making it 17 years of age (yes, that makes us feel old too). It was designed with a really rather small (by today’s standards) display, a Click Wheel and no wireless connections, but by changing all of its innards Dupont has managed to bring it more or less up to date with the modern world. The player can now access Spotify’s entire catalogue and stream it to your Bluetooth speaker or wireless headphones.
So how did he do it, you ask? Those interested in repeating his feat, or anyone looking to spend their lunch break a little differently this Friday, should definitely check out his video below.
As noted by 9to5Mac and Engadget, precious little of the original 4th-gen iPod Classic remains in this modified version, bar the original case with a functioning clicky wheel (which now includes haptic feedback). But the final results are still quite special.
Dupont has named his masterpiece “sPot,” which now has a colour screen and an internal 1000mAh battery. A $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W and a Micro-USB connector were also used to create and install a version of Spotify (using Spotify’s official APIs) that harks back to the classic iPod interface.
The upcycling project apparently cost Dupont less than $100 in total, but the thrifty developer has no intention of trying to renovate and sell more Spotify-enhanced iPods. To prove it, he’s actually shared details about how he built the sPot on Hackaday and also the source code of the software he created on GitHub – presumably in case you want to have a go yourself.
Might Apple take a few pointers and release an iPod Classic line with updated features under a retro hood? Improbable, perhaps – but then again, not impossible.
MORE:
Read up on the best portable music players 2021: from budget to hi-res music players
Check out our new Astell & Kern Alpha hi-res portable player review
Got the player but need new music? See 10 of the best albums coming in 2021
Documentary films were originally called actuality films, and were less than a minute long. Thankfully this ever-evolving form of filmmaking has continued to thrive, bringing us feature-length movies that document life, human or otherwise, in an effort to educate and entertain.
The best documentaries observe without obstructing, let the viewer think for themselves rather than forcing an agenda, and deliver stories worthy of being told to a wider audience than they might naturally find.
Our pick of the best documentaries on Amazon Prime Video cover sport, space, science, music and more, and should deliver highs, lows and food for thought in something approaching an equal measure.
Find out how to watch the football on Amazon Prime: free Premier League live streams
The Act of Killing
Universally heralded as one of the best documentaries ever made, The Act of Killing is equal parts inventive and shocking. Director Joshua Oppenheimer challenges former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and lavish musical numbers. And the results are every bit as disturbing as you’d imagine, making for a truly challenging, powerful watch.
View The Act of Killing on Amazon Prime Video
Gleason
This powerful documentary follows five years in the life of Steve Gleason, a former American football player who is diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a rare and incurable neurodegenerative disease that slowly robs the afflicted person of their motor functions.
Expect no sugar-coating of the condition, the deterioration of Gleason’s body or the strain on his relationships and family. While it’s not an easy watch, the attitude of all involved, and especially Gleason, make for a predictably emotional but surprisingly uplifting film.
View Gleason on Amazon Prime Video
The Farthest
Voyager I and II are perhaps NASA’s finest moments: mind-boggling missions that continue to this day. Remembered by many for the Golden Record – a 12-inch gold-plated copper disc full of music, sounds and voices to document the human race – the legendary launches are documented here through the voices of many of the people behind those contributions.
The Farthest puts a witty, imaginative spin on what is by now a well-told tale of an incredible achievement.
View The Farthest on Amazon Prime Video
Long Strange Trip
Martin Scorcese directs this Grateful Dead docuseries, which mainly focuses on reluctant spokesman, Jerry Garcia. Few bands have inspired quite so cultish a following, nor been so central to such a powerful cultural movement, and Long Strange Trip does its best to get to the bottom of not just what made the band tick, but also what made them so alluring.
With the band often ignored by non-believers, this is worth a look for anyone interested in the history of popular culture through the eyes of a counterculture phenomenon.
View Long Strange Trip on Amazon Prime Video
The Secret Life of Chaos
Are you finding yourself thinking a little more about what life is all about at the moment? This might be for you, if you have the spare brain capacity.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili has a way of making complex scientific theory, if not simple, at least understandable and interesting to those of us less up-to-speed with human life as we know it and how it came to be. The Secret Life of Chaos attempts to make sense of how we’re all here, if not exactly why.
View The Secret Life of Chaos on Amazon Prime Video
All or Nothing: A Season with the Atlanta Cardinals
This behind-the-scenes documentary series (which is now a series of series) follows the Arizona Cardinals through the 2015 NFL season, and, as with each All Or Nothing edition, is a fascinating insight into the ecstatic highs and desperate lows of professional sport. There’s humour, emotion and previously unseen sides of both the game and the world-famous players.
View All or Nothing: A Season with the Atlanta Cardinals on Amazon Prime Video
As Good As It Gets
If massive units in body armour throwing themselves at each other doesn’t do it for you, then how about massive units throwing themselves at each other minus the body armour?
If you’re jaded by moneyed megastars and sport as a business, then this documentary on the 2015 Leeds Rhinos rugby league team will reignite your passion for sport’s ability to inspire, unite and entertain and reward those who work together to give their all in the honest pursuit of victory.
View As Good As It Gets on Prime Video
City of Ghosts
Another tough but rewarding entry on our list, as Matthew Heineman tells the story of courageous activists turned citizen journalists in Raqqa, Syria, who coordinated to reveal the atrocities being carried out by ISIS.
Harrowing footage reveals the lengths to which ISIS went to find new recruits, who were often children, alongside the horrific violence of the terrorist group’s attacks. Thankfully there’s some hope to be found in the bravery of the activists.
View City of Ghosts on Prime Video
The Little Count
One of the top-rated documentaries on Amazon Prime is this unlikely DIY effort from three friends in Durham, England. As the synopsis goes, “One building leads three friends to unearth a local legend. 99cm tall and 97 years old. They discover the amazing story of Joseph Boruwlaski.”
Intrigued? A 9.3 rating on IMDb (the Internet Movie Database), suggests you’ll be entertained, too.
View The Little Count on Amazon Prime Video
Diego Maradona
Whether you’re well-versed in the life of Diego Armando Maradona or have barely a passing interest in football, we think you’ll find this biopic fascinating.
Constructed from more than 500 hours of previously unseen footage, it focuses on the years Maradona spent playing for Napoli in Italy, and the incredible rise and fall of a complete one-off.
View Diego Maradona on Amazon Prime Video
Andy Irons: Kissed by God
Sport throws up countless examples of strength in adversity to win against the odds, which makes it ripe for documentary makers. Steve and Todd Jones have explored this rich seam in more than 40 films, and this might just be the best.
Surfing champion Andy Irons was used to winning, but few knew the behind-the-scenes battles he was facing, which only made his exploits all the more impressive. An exploration of bipolar disorder and opioid addiction through the eyes of a world champion surfer: it’s an eye-opening, powerful film.
View Andy Irons: Kissed by God on Prime Video
Midnight Traveller
A moving account of a migrant family traveling from Afghanistan documented using mobile phone footage. Highlighting the terrible uncertainty of a family forced to move from place to place, country to country, the expertly edited-together footage makes for an incredible document of the refugee crisis, and how people can not just persevere but also find light in such a seemingly dark existence.
View Midnight Traveller on Amazon Prime Video
The Class of ’92
One of the Man U fans out there, The Class of ’92 chronicles the rise to prominence of six Manchester United players in the early 90s: David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Phil and Gary Neville. Between them, they came to dominate the game, and propelled Man U to unprecedented success over the next two decades.
View The Class of ’92 on Amazon Prime Video
9/11 The Falling Man
This documentary tells the story behind one of the most arresting images from the 9/11 terror attacks: a man who jumped from the North Tower of the World Trade Centre falling with the building in the background. But how did it come to be taken? And who was the man? All is revealed in this illuminating look at one of the darkest days of recent times.
View 9/11 The Falling Man on Amazon Prime Video
Check out 10 of the best sports films on Amazon Prime Video
Muso? Here are 10 of the best music-related shows on Amazon Prime Video
Become an Amazon Ninja: 18 Amazon Prime Video tips, tricks and features
Or just veg out with 22 of the best TV shows on Amazon Prime Video
With the superb construction, elegant design and perfectly natural sound of the Michi P5 and S5 combo from Rotel, the only question left to ask is ‘how much?’ The pair offer awesomely low noise with huge output and do so in a gorgeous package.
For
Superb sound
Prestige appearance
Great built-in DAC
Against
No AES/EBU input
Cross-talk between each unit’s remote
Incredibly heavy and bulky
Aus Hi-Fi mag review
(Image credit: Future)
This review and test originally appeared in Australian Hi-Fi magazine, one of What Hi-Fi?’s sister titles from Down Under. Click here for more information about Australian Hi-Fi, including links to buy individual digital editions and details on how to subscribe.
Rotel Michi S5 tested at £3299 (AU$5999). Rotel Michi P5 tested at £5399 (AU$10,399).
Can a famous brand be a victim of its own success? Ask any professional marketing person that question and their answer will be a resounding “Yes!” Take, for example, one of the world’s most famous motor vehicle manufacturers, Toyota.
Toyota is not only one of the most famous car companies in the world, it also sells more passenger vehicles than any other car manufacturer. But when it first tried to enter the luxury vehicle market to compete against the likes of Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz and Daimler, with its fabulous – and famous – Century model, it could not gain any traction on the world market.
No-one wanted to buy one, despite its technical superiority and the provision of luxury fittings no other vehicle had, such as reclining rear seats with built-in massage systems, and doors that opened and closed electronically at the touch of a button. Still in production, the Toyota Century is the vehicle that is used to transport both the Japanese Emperor Naruhito and the former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzō Abe.
It wasn’t the money that stopped those who could afford it from buying a Toyota Century (the current model will set you back more than AU$250,000), it was the badge on the bonnet. Because anyone could own a Toyota, it seems that the rich didn’t want to be seen in one. Motoring enthusiasts didn’t want to be seen in one either. Imagine if, when asked what type of exotic vehicle they drove, they had to answer “a Toyota”.
So what did Toyota do? It started building luxury vehicles that didn’t have the Toyota badge on them, but another one. That name?
You know it already: Lexus. And they sold like hot cakes (and still do), because, quite frankly, not everyone can own a Lexus.
Which brings us to Rotel.
At the start of the hi-fi era, in the 70s, Rotel was by far and away the best-selling hi-fi component manufacturer in Japan and, indeed, in all probability the best-selling hi-fi brand right around the world, with a well-deserved reputation for delivering top quality at reasonable prices.
However, as more and more manufacturers entered its particular niche in the hi-fi market, Rotel’s market share diminished, so that in the early 90s, the company decided to start building high-powered, high-performance ‘luxury’ models to compete against the likes of Luxman and Accuphase in its home market, and against the likes of McIntosh and Audio Research on the world stage.
The models it built were undeniably fabulous and were certainly completely different visually from all other Rotel products, exemplified by the appearance of the RHC-10 preamplifier and RHB-10 dual mono power amplifier, to name but two. The company also learned from Toyota’s marketing faux pas and branded the models ‘Michi’, which is often translated from the Japanese as meaning ‘Righteous Way’. But instead of leaving it at that, it marketed the brand as ‘Michi by Rotel’. You can guess the rest.
This time around, twenty years into a new century, the Michi brand name is just ‘Michi’, the marketing is for ‘Michi’ and the brand writ large on the front panels is also just ‘Michi’. It’s only if you look around the back that you’ll find small lettering that says ‘By Rotel’. “Michi is taking Rotel’s values of excellent performance and value into the high-end segment with models that offer new levels of engineering, build and design while setting new reference standards for audio performance,” says managing director Peter Kao. “We have used all of our 55 years of design and manufacturing experience to create our best-ever products.”
Best stereo amplifiers: best integrated amps for every budget
Michi S5 preamplifier
The front panel of the Michi S5 Control Preamplifier’s austere exterior, with its black glass plate and two large rotary controls gives absolutely no clue as to the complexity of what’s inside it… at least it doesn’t until you switch it on and its brilliant full-colour OLED panel springs into life.
Then, if you spin the left-most control to see what sources might be on offer, you’ll discover that the P5 has no fewer than six line level inputs, four of which are unbalanced (via RCA inputs) and two of which are balanced (via XLR) plus a single phono input which you can switch between being most suitable for either moving-coil or moving-magnet cartridges.
On the digital side, you get six SPDIF inputs, three optical and three coaxial, as well as USB and Bluetooth. Curiously, there is no AES/EBU input.
The Michi S5’s extensive menu system allows owners sophisticated customisation options for all inputs, so you can switch off the ones you’re not using so they don’t appear when you’re scrolling through inputs, rename any or all of the inputs to more accurately reflect whatever component you have connected to them, plus you can use the Michi’s bass and treble controls to make specific tonal modifications attach to the specific input you’re using.
You can also fix a specific volume level to each input that will override any other volume setting and cannot itself by changed using the front panel volume control or the infra-red remote control’s up/down buttons. Michi says of this feature: “This is useful for input sources that include their own volume setting like common Apps on phones or tablets.”
Look around the rear of the amplifier and you’ll find some additional digital connections, but the network port is only for firmware updates and control over IP, and that USB-A socket is only there to power external devices. It has no digital signal capability. The RS232 connector is there, of course, to facilitate custom installation integration.
Also on the rear panel are six pairs of stereo line outputs, labelled ‘Line Out’, ‘Mono Sub Out’, ‘Pre Out1’ and ‘Pre Out2’, ‘Balanced Out1’ and ‘Balanced Out2’. The ‘left’ and ‘right’ subwoofer outputs are not stereo: as the labelling suggests, each one outputs a summed signal derived from both channels. You also get two digital outputs, one coaxial and the other optical.
The USB input supports 16-bit and 24-bit PCM from 44.1kHz up to 384kHz as well as DSD64 and DSD128, but to do this via a PC, you’ll have to load a Windows Driver, which Michi helpfully supplies on a USB stick. Mac users, of course, don’t need a driver: their computers will just work properly with the Michi. The SPDIF inputs support 16/24 PCM up to 192kHz. Digital decoding is accomplished using an AKM4490EQ 32-bit/768 kHz dual DAC, one of the best of the currently available devices.
Whereas Rotel equipment was once manufactured in Japan, like the great majority of Japanese hi-fi manufacturers (and many other hi-fi manufacturers around the world), it is now manufactured in China, and the same is true for components bearing the Michi name. However, Rotel retains a point of difference from most manufacturers because it owns its own factory in Zhuhai in China, which it established in 2005. Rotel says that although Michi components are manufactured at that same facility, they are made in a separate section of one of the factories.
(Image credit: Rotel)
Best phono preamps: budget to high-end
Michi P5 power amplifier
Me saying earlier on that the front panel of the Michi S5 was austere doesn’t leave me much to say about the Michi P5 stereo power amplifier’s front panel because, as you can see for yourself, it’s even more umm… austere.
There’s just a single button at the bottom centre of its front panel, which is actually a standby power switch, since the main power switch is on the rear panel. Since power amplifiers consume a lot of power even when they’re not being used, and particularly so in the case of the Michi P5, which is rated with a power output of 500-watts per channel into 8Ω, you can choose to have the Michi P5 switch itself off automatically after a no-signal period of 20 minutes, 1, hour, 2 hours, 5 hours or 10 hours. Alternatively, you can disable the automatic power-down circuit completely so it never switches off.
As with the S5, the P5 has a very bright OLED display whose primary feature is its ability to act as a spectrum analyser, showing the spectrum of the music being played in your choice of 8, 12 or 16 bands, or you can choose to have the display act as a VU meter, for which there are four different options (VU/x2/x4/x8). For either setting you can choose between four different brightness levels, or you can choose to switch the display off entirely.
The display also shows the input voltage at the top right of the display and the temperature of the heatsinks at the top left. The voltage shown on the display (240V) didn’t actually reflect the mains voltage in my home at the time, which was 244V, so it might just show the intended operating voltage, rather than the actual voltage being delivered to the amplifier.
Being a power amplifier, all the action is around the rear, and you should be able to see from the photograph that the Michi P5 has two sets of inputs, one balanced (XLR) and the other unbalanced (gold-plated RCA). The rocker switch that selects which of the two will be active is located above them, with a network port and RS232 to its left, and 12V trigger inputs and outputs to its right.
There are two pairs of high-quality speaker terminals that are colour-coded and have collars that make it very easy for the knobs to get a grip on bare wire, plus you can also use banana plugs. In a really welcome move, the knobs are completely removable, so you can use ultra-secure insulated eye terminal terminations on your speaker cables if you like.
As you might have guessed from the size of the Michi P5’s chassis, the rated power output into 4Ω (800-watts) and the relatively limited amount of heatsinking – along with the fact that the heatsinks are covered by a protective layer of aluminium – the output devices are fan-cooled, for which purpose there are two large (90mm diameter) holes in either side of the rear panel.
These holes are the exits for air-cooling ducts at the other end of which are located ultra-quiet, low-speed fans that switch on when the output transistors reach a temperature of 39°C. These fans are so quiet that when they’re operating you’ll only be able to hear them by putting your ear up to the duct exit, and even then you’ll hear only a very soft sound; one that sounds uncannily as if someone is exhaling softly through their fully opened mouth.
As for those output transistors, there’s quite a few of them to be cooled – 32 of them, in fact. The power delivered to them issues from a pair of 2.2kVA transformers made in-house by Rotel itself. This is not surprising, because Rotel has been making its own mains power transformers for many years. What is rather surprising is that the four 47,000µF capacitors linked (two each via regulators) to each of these transformers are made in the UK.
I say “surprising” because Rotel is also famous for making its own capacitors, but its website informed me that it “always sources the best capacitor for each specific application”, which means that in the case of its Michi components, it uses slit-foil and T-Network electrolytic capacitors from the UK; Rubycon electrolytic capacitors from Japan; and LCR polystyrene capacitors from Wales. The integrated circuits come from Analog Devices, Texas Instruments and Burr-Brown, companies that are all domiciled in the USA.
Can I warn you in advance not to attempt to lift – or even manoeuvre – a Michi S5 on your own? Its dimensions (485x238x465mm) would make it an awkward lift at the best of times, but no matter what its dimensions, its dead weight of 60kg would make it impossible… unless you’re an Olympic weightlifter.
Performance
Rather unusually these days, Michi includes interconnects with its components. I say “unusually” because most manufacturers try to cull favour with their retailers by not including interconnects, so those retailers can make additional profit by adding interconnects to the sale.
While I have to admire Michi for doing this, the quality of the interconnects it supplies would have me asking my friendly retailer what other interconnects he might have available. The quality is, however, a moot point, because Michi provides only unbalanced interconnects, and given the choice between using balanced or unbalanced connectors to link a pre-amplifier with a power amplifier, I’d choose balanced connectors every time, so that means I’d have to spring for balanced interconnects anyway.
Each component comes with its own remote control, but the two are identical, so you can keep one for a spare. The remotes are of extremely high quality and very attractive. If only Michi had seen fit to supply high-quality name-brand alkaline (or even lithium) batteries to install in them rather than the ones it does provide. I didn’t chance it, and used my own Eveready batteries instead. Why Eveready? Because the company guarantees that its batteries will not leak, and a remote control can be ruined by a leaking battery as, to my chagrin, I once discovered.
Both units not only have identical remote controls, those controls also use identical infra-red remote codes. This has the advantage that the same remote signal turns both units on and off, and adjusts display brightness, for example. But in this case it also introduces a curious quirk so that when you’re using the remote to tell the P5 to do something, the same remote signal will tell the S5 to do something completely different… which may be, for example, to switch the display from spectrum analysis to VU.
Since any changes implemented on the P5 by this behaviour are completely benign (i.e. they have absolutely no affect on the amplifier’s sound quality or its performance or, in fact, anything that could affect the music playing at the time) I didn’t worry about it and just regarded it as a quirk. However, if you’re particularly bothered by it, you could just obscure the P5’s IR receiver so it couldn’t receive the signal.
Set-up is quite intuitive, so you are unlikely to have reason to have recourse to either of the two Owners’ Manuals, but if you do you’ll be pleased to find that they’re well-written, well-illustrated and highly informative. During set-up please resist the temptation to place the P5 on top of the S5, despite the obvious physical and visual temptations to do so. Both devices will return better performance if they’re placed side by side, or one above the other on separate racks of a proper hi-fi component shelving system.
My review units were obviously relatively new, so I made sure to burn them in continuously for several days using pink noise at relatively high volume to do so, avoiding any sonic annoyances by wiring one of the two speakers out of phase then facing it directly in front of the other loudspeaker so almost everything cancelled out. (If you haven’t ever tried this, it’s not only a great burn-in aid, but also a great party trick!)
After the long wait I was pretty eager by the time the listening sessions were scheduled and I’m here to tell you it was well worth the wait. The sound was absolutely enthralling, totally realistic and completely captivating.
I knew I was in for a treat because there was no need to acclimatise myself to anything or work my way into the listening session. Right from the outset it was all just wide smiles and toes a-tapping and allowing tracks to play right through, rather than switching to other tracks to evaluate different areas of performance.
The result of all this was that I spent rather more time listening to the Michis than I really should have given the time constraints involved in preparing a review for this issue, but there were no complaints from me. If the Michis had been performers, I would would certainly have been on my feet calling for an encore.
This same high level of performance proved true for whatever input I used, because the Michi P5’s digital and phono stages are truly excellent. If you’re a true vinylista you’ll want to use an external phono stage that enables greater precision with cartridge matching than the P5’s ‘one input fits all’ phono stage, but if you play vinyl only irregularly, I think you’ll be more than happy with the sound of the phono stage… I certainly was. I couldn’t fault the digital inputs either, whether I used SPDIF or USB. They’re so good that there would be absolutely no need to invest in an external DAC unless you’re one of those audiophiles that actually likes fiddling with different filter settings and oversampling rates. So full marks to Michi here as well.
What did I find so enthralling about the sound? Everything really. But overall, I’d have to say that what’s most impressive is the totality of the very real and tangible feeling that a musical event is taking place right there in your own room. The sonic presentation is so lively and so true-to-life it will take your breath away.
And if you’re into trying to achieve true-to-life listening levels, then the Michi S5 is amongst those very few amplifiers that will be able to realise this for you effortlessly, without stress, without distortion, without impacting on your mains power bill… and without its chassis becoming so hot you need to ruin the ambience by turning on the air-conditioning.
That said, the Michi S5’s chassis can become warm if you work it very, very hard, so do give it some room to breathe, but that said, I found that it runs far cooler than most amps of its ilk.
‘Massive’ would be the best descriptor for the bass I heard from this Michi combo, but it was at the same time delicate and tuneful. I can think of no better demonstration of these twin virtues than to suggest that you listen to the tympani in the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth, the famous Choral Symphony.
Yes, their sound is impactful, impressive and thunderous, but many high-end amplifiers can do this. What most can’t do is reveal that there’s only two being played, or that they’re tuned an octave apart. But using this Michi duo, I could hear this instantly… and that’s a metric I’d call not just revealing, but a revelation.
But if the Michi’s ability to reveal minutiae in the bass regions is impressive, its ability is equally impressive across the midrange… if not more so. And if you want to check the midrange ability of any component, one of the best albums to use is the one that debuted Chick Corea on electric keyboard but also has two of my favourites, Joe Farrell and Flora Plurim. Despite being recorded in 1972 (or perhaps because of it), the recording is stunningly good, whether it’s Plurim’s rich scat singing or the clarity with which Corea’s staggeringly lyrical electric piano playing is revealed, and the Michis revealed everything with crystal clarity.
On this album, you can really hear how an amplifier’s ability to deliver air in the midrange aids one’s ability to hear multiple instruments clearly, no matter how closely they compete for space. Whereas I think that many of the once-revered jazz fusion albums now sound dated, ‘Return to Forever’ sounds as though it could have been recorded yesterday.
The Michis’ high-frequency performance didn’t disappoint either. I’m generally a great fan of Ludovico Einaudi (though perhaps not of his more minimalist stuff) and his album ‘Elements’ from 2015 is one of my favourites for testing the extreme highs, and most particularly the second track, Night. Just listen to that ethereal opening synth as it loops and then the way Einaudi layers all the other sounds over it. The stabbing piano notes are interjected at the perfect moments. It’s a great example of why timing is everything, and why component-chain timing is crucial for an authentic high-fidelity listening experience.
Great stereo separation and magnificent stereo imaging are crucial to tricking the ear and the brain into imagining the reproduced sound is ‘live’, and the Michis demonstrated both to perfection when replaying Canadian chanteuse Holly Cole’s Train Song, from her 1995 Tom Waits tribute album ‘Temptation’. Although it’s also a great tester of bass, I prefer to use the myriad sounds of Cyro Baptista’s tinkly percussion to evaluate high-frequency reproduction, stereo imaging and, for amplifiers, channel separation. And what I heard from the Michis was as good as I’ve ever heard from any pre/power combo. Bravo!
(Image credit: Rotel)
Final verdict
You need to see the Michi P5 and M5 in the flesh to see how superbly they’re built. Words can’t really begin to describe that. But you also need to hear for yourself how music that’s played through them sounds, because words can’t even begin to describe that… though if you started off by saying “totally and completely natural”, you’d be off to a very good start.
This Michi P5/S5 combo gets it right. Really nails it, in fact. If you want good looks, insanely high power output, low noise, superb performance and, most importantly, great sound, you’ve arrived at your destination.
Best DACs: USB, portable and desktop DACs
Laboratory test report
Before going into detail about the results of Newport Test Labs’ test results, it’s extremely important to note that for the purposes of this test, Australian Hi-Fi specified that all tests had to be conducted with both the Michi S5 and Michi P5 in the ‘test loop’. Therefore there are very few results that can be compared with Michi’s own specifications, which are gained by testing the components individually, or indeed against the results from any other audio test laboratory that has not tested the two amplifiers as a ‘combo’.
It means that, in effect, we’re reporting ‘worst case’ results because for results such as distortion, the inherent distortion of the Michi S5 are here added to that of the Michi P5, which obviously does not occur if the components are tested individually.
One of the few outcomes that would not change is power output, of course, and Newport Test Labs measured the power output of the Michi S5 at 612-watts per channel (27.8dBw), both channels driven into 8Ω, when it was delivering a 1kHz test signal. It was also able to deliver this exact same power when delivering a 20Hz test signal.
However, when Newport Test Labs used a 20kHz signal to test power output, the Michi P5’s protection circuitry kicked in when the output voltage reached 45 volts RMS, which is around 253-watts (24.0dBW) into 8Ω, and around 506-watts (27.0dBW) into 4Ω. The fact that the protection circuit kicked in was not a surprise in itself, because 20kHz is a very high frequency to use for testing power output, and the power spectrum of music is such the Michi P5’s rated output power (500-watts into 8Ω) would never be required at this frequency.
But because the protection kicked in a little earlier than we expected, we checked with Michi, which told us: “The S5 has been engineered and tested for continuous power output of 20Hz–20kHz but as you noticed we have protection circuitry to monitor what is considered abnormal operating conditions including short circuit, d.c. voltage on the outputs and over-current. As normal operations would not typically have a signal of this type (frequency/power) we do shut down the unit into protection at high power outputs at high frequency. We found it best practice to monitor and use an abundance of caution with the power output generated by the S5.”
When Newport Test Labs tested the power output of the Michi S5 into 4Ω loads, the same protection circuitry kicked in with 20kHz test signals, but the Michi S5 easily delivered 1052-watts (30.2dBW) per channel with 1kHz test signals, both channels driven into 4Ω and 1,024-watts (30.1dBW) per channel with 20Hz test signals (both channels driven into 4Ω). These independent laboratory test results at 1kHz and 20Hz show power output levels that are well above Michi’s power output specification for both loads.
It should also be noted that if Newport Test Labs had tested dynamic (short-term) power output, the Michi S5 would have delivered its rated power output, because the test signal used for this purpose is so short-term that it would not have triggered the protection circuitry, but the Australian amplifier power measurement standard specifies that the power output of high fidelity audio amplifiers must be measured (and stated) on a continuous, rather than a dynamic basis.
Frequency response is one test that would certainly be impacted by measuring both the P5 and S5 as a combo, yet as you can see from the tabulated results, the Michi combo delivered superlative performance, with Newport Test Labs measuring a response of 5Hz to 480kHz –3dB. The Michi combo’s frequency response across the audio band, which is shown in Graph 7, was measured as 20Hz to 20kHz ±0.18dB, which is self-evidently an excellent result.
The frequency response measured when the Michi S5 was driving a test load that simulates the load that would be presented to it by a typical hi-fi loudspeaker system is shown by the black trace on Graph 7, below.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
You can see that it tracks the response gained with a non-inductive load almost perfectly, which shows that the Michi S5 will sound the same no matter what speakers you connect to it, and will also be able to perfectly control the back-emf from speakers that have large bass drivers. Although the Michi S5’s damping factor was more than will be required by any speaker system, it’s not overly high, with Newport Test Labs reporting it as DF61, on the back of an output impedance (at 1kHz) of 0.13Ω.
Channel separation was outstanding at low and midrange frequencies, as shown in the tabulated results, with the Michi combination returning test results of 105dB at 20Hz and 98dB at 1kHz. The 72dB result at 20kHz is excellent, and more than will ever be required in order to deliver perfect stereo imaging and separation, but a little short of what I might have expected.
However, this could easily have been influenced by where the amplifiers were placed on the test bench relative to each other, as well as by the interconnects connecting the two, so even-better results might be achieved under different conditions. The same could be said for the inter-channel phase results, even though these, too, are really excellent results.
Channel balance was amazingly good. Taken merely on its value of 0.019dB, no-one would ever have guessed this would be the result of testing a pre/power combination; It’s more like you’d get by testing a state-of-the-art stereo power amplifier on its own. This is a superb achievement by the engineers responsible for designing the Michis.
Newport Test Labs measured the A-weighted signal-to-noise ratio of the Michi P5/S5 combination as 76dB referenced to an output of 1-watt, and 103dB referenced to rated output. The 103dB result is excellent, but further suggests that the result at 1-watt, although good, could be further improved by careful component placement and interconnect routing.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Graph 1 shows the total harmonic distortion measured by Newport Test Labs when the Michi combo was delivering 1-watt into an 8Ω load. You can see there’s a second harmonic component at –95dB (0.00177%) and a fourth harmonic at –110dB (0.00031%) and that’s it: otherwise the noise floor above the fundamental is perfectly clean, and also sitting right down at –115dB (referred to one-watt). This is an excellent result, as both harmonics are harmonically related to the fundamental, which will ensure good sound.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Graph 2 shows the total harmonic distortion measured by Newport Test Labs when the Michi combo was delivering 1-watt into a 4Ω load. You can see the second harmonic component has increased slightly, to –88dB (0.00398%), and the fourth to –112dB (0.00025%) plus a third harmonic has appeared at –108dB (0.00039%) and a fifth at –113dB (0.00022%). Once again, this is excellent performance.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Graph 3 shows the total harmonic distortion measured by Newport Test Labs when the Michi combo was delivering 20-watts into an 8Ω load. As you’d have expected given the increase in power output, additional distortion components have been introduced, but the essential structure of the lower-order components is maintained, with the second harmonic component at –93dB (0.00223%), the third at –110dB (0.00031%), the fourth at –112dB (0.00025%) and the fifth at –115dB (0.00017%).
The difference in the visual appearance of the graph is due to the noise floor of the amplifier having dropped down to around –130dB, which speaks for itself.
You can see that the noise that contributed to the overall result mentioned previously and tabulated in the results is low-frequency in nature, as evidenced by the spikes at the extreme left of the graph.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Graph 4 shows the total harmonic distortion measured by Newport Test Labs when the Michi combo was delivering 20-watts into a 4Ω load.
Essentially the distortion components are the same as when driving an 8Ω load, but interestingly, there’s a slight increase in the noise floor. This, together with the one-watt results, would seem to suggest you should prefer 6Ω or 8Ω designs when choosing loudspeakers to partner with the Michis.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
CCIF-IMD distortion (19kHz and 20kHz test signals at equal levels) into an 8Ω load is shown in Graph 5. As you can see, there’s nothing to be seen at all. Sensational performance! Not only are there not any of the side-bands around the high-frequency test signals I normally expect to see, there’s also no sign at all of a regenerated difference signal down at 1kHz.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
When Newport Test Labs used the same CCIF-IMD test signal, but increased the power output to 20-watts (Graph 6, above), both the side bands and the regenerated signal were introduced into the output, but at very low levels: around –90dB (0.00316%) for the two primary side bands at 18kHz and 21kHz, and at around –105dB (0.00056%) for the regenerated signal. Once again, these are all outstandingly good results.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
The tone control action of the Michi P5 is shown in Graph 8. You can see the bass control delivers around 11dB of boost that is nicely shelved at 20Hz, then rolls off below this, which is excellent design. It delivers rather more cut: around 17dB. This same graph also shows the action of the treble control, and you can see it offers 9dB of boost that shelves nicely at 20kHz. Again, this is excellent design.
As with the bass control, the treble control offers rather less high-frequency attenuation, but still a more-than-adequate 13dB at 20kHz. If you attenuate both bass and treble you will also reduce the overall volume slightly across the midrange, but this is of no import, as it could be easily corrected by increasing the volume slightly.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
The Michi combo’s distortion at the S5’s rated power output (500-watts per channel into 8Ω) is shown in Graph 9. Once again, Michi’s engineers have excelled themselves, with distortion completely under control, such that the second-order component is at 93dB (0.00223%), all the even-order components are more than 100dB (0.001% down, and all the odd-order components are more than 120dB down (0.0001%).
All these distortion components are too low in level to be audible, but even if they were, even-order distortion is pleasing to the ear, so it wouldn’t be an issue. Note on this graph that the noise floor right across the audio spectrum is now down at –140dB, and even the low-frequency noise at the left of the graph, which is higher in level, is still more than 110dB down. Once again, excellent performance.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Square wave testing using a 100Hz square wave revealed what the frequency response already showed, with the tilt on the waveform indicating the Michi combo’s frequency response rolls off at low frequencies and does not extend to d.c. The slight curvature in the tilt also shows a tiny amount of group delay.
The overshoot on the leading edge shows that there is a rise in the Michi’s frequency response at an ultrasonic frequency. Further investigation into this by Newport Test Labs revealed that the rise was 3dB, and that the frequency of the peak was at 302kHz. This is interesting, and obviously measurable, but will have zero affect on the amplifier’s sound quality.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
The 1kHz square wave shows the same h.f. overshoot, and some slight tilt on the horizontals, so it’s not a perfect result, but it’s so close to perfect as really doesn’t matter.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
The 10kHz square wave’s horizontals are on the other hand, perfectly flat, and the rise-time is super-quick, so if it were not for the overshoot caused by the high-frequency rise to 302kHz, it would be a perfect result.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Newport Test Labs determines amplifier stability by placing a 2µF capacitor in parallel with an 8Ω load and driving the amplifier into this load using a 1kHz square wave as the test signal. As you can see from the oscillogram, the Michi was beautifully behaved, with just a quarter wave height overshoot that was completely damped within three cycles, so I can say that the S5 will be completely stable into even the most highly reactive loudspeakers.
When both units are in standby mode, they will still draw 2.41-watts from your mains power supply, which is rather higher than the Australian Government’s mandate for standby power consumption, but low enough that it would have almost zero effect on your utility bill.
When you’re using this Michi combo to listen to very loud music, the two will pull somewhere around 200-watts from your power supply, which is surprisingly modest considering the S5’s power rating. Combined power factor was measured at +0.627.
Overall, Newport Test Labs measured outstandingly good performance from this high-powered, low-distortion pre/power combination.
The revival of G4, a network focusing on video games with programs like X-Play and Attack of the Show!, is underway. The company announced today that it’s launching weekly series B4G4 on Friday, January 29th. The series will air on Twitch and YouTube.
B4G4 is part of the lead-up to the network’s return this summer. It will feature original sketches, music parodies, game reviews, and more. Viewers will also be able to provide feedback on that content via the network’s Reddit community.
Twitter accounts for Attack of the Show! and X-Play teased G4’s revival last year during the digital version of San Diego Comic-Con; both shows are expected to return. The network has been hunting for talent via a Twitter campaign.
Discord is now helping the r/WallStreetBets team moderate its new server. The company originally banned the group yesterday due to “hateful and discriminatory content” and revealed it had sent repeated warnings to the team managing the community.
Those warnings, for whatever reason, were ignored, but now the r/WallStreetBets team and Discord are working together. Discord staff are actively working with the server’s team to help with moderation. At least one Discord staffer, who is now in the new WallStreetBets server, is also helping with infrastructure problems related to the rapid growth the community is experiencing.
“WallStreetBets members have set up a new server and we are working with them,” says a Discord spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “We will welcome the group back so long as they improve their moderation practices and follow our Community Guidelines. We have reached out to the moderators to provide them with support and advice, like we do for many of our large communities.”
Discord was left in an awkward position yesterday, after the largely unmoderated server suddenly grew in size and got out of control. It could either let hate speech continue in a community it wouldn’t normally ban or act to shut it down after repeated warnings. The ban appears to have worked to get the r/WallStreetBets moderators to respond.
Hours after the ban, the moderators of the subreddit criticized Discord publicly. “We blocked all bad words with a bot, which should be enough, but apparently if someone can say a bad word with weird unicode icelandic characters and someone can screenshot it you don’t get to hang out with your friends anymore,” said the r/WallStreetBets subreddit moderators.
The new WallStreetBets Discord server currently has 296,000 members, and it continues to grow every second. It has played a central role in the subreddit’s ongoing mission to drive up the price of GameStop and AMC stock. We’ve been following the Discord server growth over the past few days, and while it was full of profanity and racial slurs yesterday, whatever work Discord is doing behind the scenes appears to be working to reduce that content today.
There are now fewer people screaming in calls, using racial slurs, or blasting music to the hundreds listening in. The memes are now mainly emoji and text, rather than images that often included offensive material.
We’ve asked Discord exactly what is being done to improve moderation for text-, image-, and audio-based communications and how the company was able to resolve its differences with the WallStreetBets. The company wasn’t able to provide details at the time of publication.
Philips has produced a brilliant OLED television, but the partnering soundbar isn’t quite at the same level
For
Tidy and appealing build
Punchy HDR and SDR pictures
Fabulous 4K detail
Against
UI a little dated
Mediocre motion processing
Sonically short on dynamics
Combining a television with an integrated soundbar can be a double-edged sword. It’s the height of TV sound convenience, but unless the soundbar is top quality, then you’re stuck with it. Enter the Philips 65OLED935 – a sleek, powerful television that aims to get around this inherent pitfall by having hi-fi specialist Bowers & Wilkins design and build the speaker system.
This isn’t Philips’s first combined television and soundbar. The company’s 2019 flagship OLED, the OLED934, was a similar creature, but with a far bigger Bowers bar built into a large floor stand. It proved to be a match made in AV heaven, so why break up the partnership?
This time, looks and price tag are considerably more modest, but its fresh take on the 3.1.2ch Dolby Atmos soundbar design makes this a tempting solution for those who like to keep things simple to use and easy on the eye.
But to describe the Philips 65OLED935 in those terms alone is doing it a disservice. Underneath that sculpted steel exterior, there is a TV with impressive specs that could even outperform its soundbar-less sibling, the five-star-rated Philips 65OLED805.
Now with a dual AI engine inside its top-of-the-line P5 processor, Philips is confident enough to describe the performance of the 935 as “OLED+”.
Build
(Image credit: Future)
Philips 65OLED935 tech specs
(Image credit: Future / Modern Love, Amazon Prime)
The Philips 65OLED935 is a classy looking set. It comes with a choice of two different chrome brackets in the box, one for wall-mounting and the other to use as a stand. The cable tidying system means that the join between the soundbar and the TV itself is seamless, leaving only your HDMI cables and power lines to tuck neatly away behind.
The stand and bracket are pretty heavy and highly polished, so take care they don’t slip out of your grasp when you’re putting this together. Fortunately, the wafer-thin OLED panel is nice and light. The stand needs a surface that’s at least 88cm wide and 26cm deep to accommodate it and if you choose to use the bracket, it stands 15cm proud of the wall.
There’s little to no bezel, just an even 2mm metal bead around the edge of the glass. On the back of the panel, you’ll find four HDMI sockets. Next-gen HDMI features are thin on the ground, though: there’s no support for 4K@120Hz (also known as HFR), VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) or eARC (Enhanced Audio Return Channel), although standard ARC and ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) do feature.
As well as the HDMIs there’s an optical audio-out, ports for connecting headphones and an external subwoofer, plus two USB slots. It’s Bluetooth-enabled for audio, too.
The soundbar houses ten separate drive units. There are two 5cm midrange cones plus a 19mm titanium-dome tweeter for the centre channel, one of the same cones and tweeters each for the left and right, and then a single racetrack-style 10cm x 6.5cm subwoofer unit on the top surface, ported to the rear. Also along that top edge are the two 5cm height speakers facing upwards for that Dolby Atmos effect.
The tweeters are decoupled from the main enclosure, with the centre one in a metal case of its own in B&W’s tweeter-on-top style. There’s a micromesh to protect those drivers on the upper surface and Philips’s acoustically transparent wool blend cloth, Kvadrat, across the front of the array.
Made from glass fibre-reinforced polycarbonate ABS, the enclosure is braced with internal rib sections to control resonance. It’s mounted to the TV with a stiff metal plate. If that sounds like an appealing level of attention to detail, you’ll also be pleased with the remote control, which is backed in Muirhead leather and feels very much the part for a premium OLED TV.
Features
(Image credit: Future)
Functionally, the remote is the same as we’ve had from Philips over the last few years. Much like the Android 9.0 operating system itself, all the right options are there but they’re not presented in a particularly wonderful, intuitive or user-friendly fashion.
Other manufacturers such as Samsung and LG are slicker and more progressive on this front and while it’s just about acceptable here, we’d expect to see the company up its game on this front before it falls too far behind the promised UI advances from Google TV and LG’s webOS 6.0.
The benefit of the Android OS is its app offering. All the UK catch-up services are present, along with Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. During testing, we experienced a little bit of crackling through the speakers when using the Netflix app, but restarting the app sorted that out.
There’s no Apple TV or Apple Music on Android TV. For that, you’ll need to add an Amazon Fire TV Stick, Apple TV or other media streamer. Instead, your pay-as-you-go film and TV options are Rakuten and Google Play Movies & TV, neither of which is up there with the Apple TV app. You’re better covered for sport, though, with BT Sport and Now TV both on board.
In terms of picture technology, the OLED935 gets one or two bumps over the soundbar-less OLED805 thanks to the improved Philips P5 processor with its AI dual picture engine. The big one is AI Machine Learn Sharpness, a local level picture sharpening tool that enhances the textures and patterns of specific parts of the image, rather than applying a blanket tightening up across the whole display.
Another is AI Smart Bit Enhanced 2.0, which should remove colour banding without sacrificing detail. Last, but not least, is a boost for the Philips Perfect Natural Reality processing which aims to boost standard-def material so it looks more like Full HD.
The other picture tech of note is an anti-burn-in logo detection feature, which recognises permanent screen logos, such as those of TV networks, and dampens their effect. In testing, this works very well – we try out a Dolby Atmos test disc and the bright white intensity of the Dolby logo in the corner of the screen is dropped to a level that won’t tire the pixels so rapidly.
On the sound front, the big news is the 3.1.2 speaker arrangement, the Dolby Atmos support and upmixing, and the involvement of hi-fi specialist Bowers & Wilkins. The TV is also compatible with the DTS Play-Fi hi-res streaming standard, meaning you can set-up your soundbar to work as part of a multi-room system along with any other Play-Fi-enabled kit you might own.
No review of a top-end Philips TV is complete without a tip of the hat to Ambilight. The company’s delightful LED lightshow tech comes in its four-sided variety for the OLED935. You can set it to change colour according to the on-screen image, to music or even to mimic a national flag for sporting events. It’s a great feature and long may it last.
Picture
(Image credit: Future / Modern Love, Amazon Prime)
The Philips 65OLED935 supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ alongside HDR10 and HLG. We see what it makes of the first of these by slotting Spider-Man: Homecoming into our 4K Blu-ray player and the results are impressive.
Using the Dolby Vision Bright setting, the upgrades to the picture quality over the Philips OLED805 are small but clear. The scene where Peter gets stuck in the Deep Storage Vault has plenty of monochrome textures, bright colours and a large depth of field, but right from the off, the Philips AI processing works alongside the Dolby metadata to make a brilliantly punchy and vivid HDR picture.
The spidey suit really pops against a nicely detailed and defined set of greys in the background. The AI Machine Learn sharpening tech enhances the textural differences between the rough raw concrete slabs of the hangar entrance, without doing the same to the soft marbling of the polished floor. There’s a strong sense of colour precision to the hero’s mustard yellow backpack and the different red and blue shades of his outfit.
All the same, we prefer Philips’ take on the film with the TV’s HDR AI preset, which is an excellent quick-fix solution for getting the most out of Dolby Vision films. This setting keeps things simple but leaves the user with the five main Philips processing modes to experiment with. Keep the Perfect Motion and Perfect Contrast settings at a minimum and you won’t go far wrong.
The HDR Personal mode squeezes every last drop of the excellent picture performance from this TV. Once balanced for brightness, the OLED Contrast slider offers the best customisation. The higher you go, the more zing you’ll add to the colours, however, you lose a little of the sense of depth to the picture.
Heading to the film’s climax, there are some healthy levels of dark detail on show alongside some lusciously deep OLED blacks. We can still make out the folds and the feel of the material of the Vulture’s leather jacket and sheepskin collar. Those details are just shy of the best LED-backed TVs, but the trade-off for those blacks is worth it here.
(Image credit: Future / Modern Love, Amazon Prime)
Philips has upped its motion processing game for its most recent TVs by adding a couple of extra modes. All the same, the actual quality of the underlying tech is similar to what we’ve found in previous years – perfectly decent, but not in the same league as the likes of Sony and Panasonic.
We prefer the light touches of either Pure Cinema or Movie mode, although many will prefer to turn the processing off altogether. Watching Peter rush to the rescue of his friends in the Washington Monument, we’re happy to put up with some judder in the faster panning shots in order to avoid the soap-opera aesthetic.
That decision is harder when watching SDR, where judder can be more significant. Viewing the opening scenes of Jack Reacher in Full HD on Blu-ray, there’s a case for setting the motion to Standard to avoid the over-processed look, although there are plenty of artefacts every time the car disappears and emerges again under overhead freeway signs.
Philips recommends its Vivid preset as a good starting point for SDR material, but you’ll need to step back quite far on most settings to get the right blend. Colour, Brightness and Sharpness should be below their halfway marks and the Perfect Natural Reality (fake HDR) and Perfect Contrast filters are best switched off.
Once stripped back, you’ll achieve a watchable picture. The overhead shot of the riverside crime scene is excellently handled. There’s a good feel to the paving stones, a believable colour palette to the nearby flowerbeds and plenty of dark detail as the uniformed SWAT team arrives on the scene. For SDR, it has a remarkably punchy look.
Watching standard-def material is obviously less of a treat, and you’ll struggle to pick up Philips’ good work on colour blending and image sharpening. No TV can work miracles, of course, but watching BBC News, the colour of the clothing appears faithful and the newsreader’s skin tone retains a natural feel.
Sound
(Image credit: Future)
Our expectations of TV sound are usually tempered, but here things are different. While there are small picture quality advantages of the OLED935 over the OLED805, the integrated soundbar makes up most of the difference in price.
There are plenty of sound presets to choose from, including Personal mode, which allows access to an EQ. ‘Movie’ gets our vote for the majority of our viewing. It’s not quite as clear as the AI or Original modes, but this is a speaker array with plenty of precision and we’re happy to sacrifice a little of that for the extra spatial boost.
We watch the bombing raid sequence of Unbroken in Dolby Atmos and the B&W soundbar projects an excellent soundstage, adding plenty of height and breadth to the sound. Even with our eyes closed, it’s easy to picture the planes flying across the screen and the bullets zipping by.
The agility of the drivers makes for a good separation of the effects, unveiling all the details in the clicks and clinks of the military equipment, and the creaks of the pilots’ leather jackets. But clarity isn’t quite everything when it comes to great TV sound and this set-up is missing one of the other crucial ingredients – excitement.
Dynamically, there just isn’t enough going on, with differences in scale between the various sounds too small to deliver much in the way of drama. Everything’s rather flat and lacking in impact. We hear the bombers fly over our heads, but without that level of involvement, we’ve no urge to duck whatsoever. The bullets offer little threat from our perspective, even as the cockpit becomes riddled with bullet holes.
Similarly, voices lack expression, which sells short the tension of the sequence. The young servicemen seem all too relaxed on their mission deep into the heart of enemy territory, rocked by the lifeless pops of flack exploding just inches from their heads.
The audio from the OLED935 is clearly superior to the OLED805. You won’t struggle to hear dialogue or appreciate music with more rhythm, but the results are far less enthralling than those of even a relatively affordable soundbar, such as the Sonos Beam. Compared with a more expensive Dolby Atmos-supporting soundbar, such as the Sonos Arc, the contrast is even less flattering.
Verdict
Philips has done a superb job to make improvements on what was already a first-class picture performance with this OLED+ TV. Watch 4K material on this set, whether Dolby Vision or otherwise, and it looks stunning. The picture is sharp and colourful with deep blacks and a great level of tonal detail – however, you can get almost all of that joy with the far more affordable OLED805.
Integrating a soundbar into the design of a TV brings the expectation of audio excellence and the OLED935 doesn’t quite deliver that. While there are plenty of plus points for the spatial smarts and the coherence and clarity of the sound, there just isn’t enough impact or drama.
Ultimately, while the price gap between the two TVs remains this wide, there’s a strong case for recommending opting for the OLED805 and investing in a dedicated soundbar, such as the Sonos Arc or even the much cheaper Beam. The 935 is clearly a more elegant solution and a step up in picture quality but, currently, that comes at too high a premium.
The power of sport to thrill, entertain and enthrall is right up there with music in our book. To follow our recent suggestions for some Netflix home fixtures, here are ten winners from Amazon Prime.
As so often, sport, while the hook to draw the viewer in, isn’t the overriding theme of most of these films. These are movies, series and documentaries about the human condition – drama, politics, tragedy and comedy are all here.
The sports fan will embrace them of course, but we’re sure there’s more than something in these shows for everyone.
10 of the best sports films and documentaries on Netflix UK
Diego Maradona
There are worse ways to mourn the passing of one of the world’s greatest footballers than by watching Diego Maradona. This brilliant HBO Original eschews all the usual tired footballing cliches in favour of gangsters, goals and god.
Filmmaker Asif Kapadia – who won an Oscar for Amy – traces Maradona’s life from favelas to flashy mansions. Using archive footage and interviews with close friends (and Pelé), Kapadia paints a compelling picture of a 5ft 4in legend with a fragile ego.
Things get really interesting when Maradona arrives at Napoli and becomes one with the down-and-dirty city of Naples, home to the deadly Camorra mafia. As his career begins to peak, so his personal life starts to crumble…
The fact that Maradona publicly decried this documentary seems to say a lot for its veracity. If you like ‘flawed genius’ sports docs, this one’s a cracker.
All Or Nothing: A Season With The Arizona Cardinals
There are a number of the All Or Nothing series around now, in a variety of sports including rugby, cricket and football – and all of them are excellent.
So we thought we’d go for the first of the American football offerings (but do, please, check out all the rest, especially the New Zealand All Blacks, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur varieties).
This behind-the-scenes documentary series follows the Arizona Cardinals through the 2015 NFL season, and, as with each series, is a fascinating insight into the ecstatic highs and desperate lows of professional sport.
How to live stream every NFL game
Andy Murray: Resurfacing
Britain’s greatest-ever tennis player’s long, painful, emotional journey pretty much all the way back from career-threatening injury.
An inspirational look at what it takes to be a professional sportsman, this documentary, with remarkably frank interviews and behind the scenes footage, shows quite clearly why most of us could never cut it as a pro athlete.
Building Jerusalem
The story of the England rugby team’s epic journey to the pinnacle of the world game in 2003.
Jonny Wilkinson, Martin Johnson, Clive Woodward et al explain and explore just what it takes to win a World Cup in one of the toughest games there is. At this level, it’s about the small things adding up to give just the slightest advantage. But you’ve got to get the basics right first.
Fire in Babylon
“I intend to make them grovel.”
South Africa-born England cricket captain Tony Greig’s words about the touring West Indies cricket team in 1976 couldn’t have been more incendiary – and, of course, they would haunt him for the rest of his days.
West Indies captain Clive Lloyd barely needed a team talk after that, and a sporting dynasty was born. In a time when no cricketer wore a helmet, the England team were genuinely in danger for their lives – some of the footage is truly terrifying.
The legendary West Indies team of the 70s and 80s, with its seemingly endless conveyor belt of scarily fast bowlers, would become surely the most dominant force of all time in sport – any sport.
Fire in Babylon is more than a sports documentary; it highlights the importance that this team of disparate men from many Caribbean nations had politically and socially in a time when apartheid was still almost 20 years from ending.
This is an important film, and certainly not just for the sports fan.
Fastball
From one form of intimidatory ball delivery to another: the fastball is the pitcher’s ultimate weapon in baseball. And while, unlike in cricket, the body is not officially a legitimate target, you try telling MLB batters that; intimidation is just as important a factor in America’s game as it is in the other bat and ball pastime.
When there’s a potentially lethal projectile travelling towards you at 100mph+, you need nerves of steel and world-class hand-eye coordination to cope.
This film, narrated by Kevin Costner, looks at the history, science and psychology of the fastball from the early days of the game through to the present day, and is well worth a watch.
Marvellous
Another fantastic life-affirmer, this one is a Bafta-winning BBC drama. It’s the true story of Stoke City’s beloved kit-man Neil “Nello” Baldwin – among other things also a registered clown.
Starring Toby Jones as Neil and Gemma Jones as his mother, the film also includes cameos from (among others) Nello himself and the wonderful Lou Macari, the Manchester United legend and Stoke City manager who employed Neil in the first place.
This is a lovely film about an irrepressibly optimistic man who simply will not allow life to get him down. Inspiring.
Mr Calzaghe
The story of Joe Calzaghe, Wales boxing legend. Coached by his father, Calzaghe fought his way up the rankings to become a true boxing great, and along the way forged a remarkable relationship with his dad.
With appearances from Chris Eubank and Michael J Fox among others, this is classic behind the scenes fare about one of the toughest sports in which you can participate.
Fittest On Earth
Oh my; what on earth possesses people?
These super-fit, super-committed athletes are each desperate to prove they are the fittest person in the world.
The single-minded dedication required to undertake these challenges has to be seen to be believed. Normal sporting activity, this most certainly is not.
Road
The story of the Dunlop family, two sets of brothers from Northern Ireland, and motorcycle-racing royalty.
Narrated by Liam Neeson, this film is a revealing insight into the high-adrenaline, high-speed, high-danger life of the motorcycle racer. With interviews from many of the great and good of motorsport, including the inimitable (and yet so imitable…) Murray Walker.
10 of the best movie scores to test your system
10 of the best music-related films to watch on Amazon Prime Video UK
A real-life trading floor is noisy. You can find traders shouting at each other, especially when the markets are volatile and stock is moving fast. That same environment has been replicated online this week, thanks to Discord.
Getting inside offers a surreal look at an emerging virtual trade floor where people are yelling at each other to invest into GameStop or AMC stocks. Dozens of people join the server every second, and one channel has a stream of memes that looks like pure chaos.
Welcome to the world of r/WallStreetBets.
The r/WallStreetBets Discord server.
Discord is usually the tool of choice for gamers to communicate with friends, Twitch streamers to grow a community, or just small groups of people to share similar interests. It’s a hugely popular app, with more than 100 million monthly active users. The Reddit community r/WallStreetBets has turned to Discord in recent weeks to organize and communicate in real time, as it seeks to force hedge funds into losing millions of dollars on their bets against struggling retail companies like GameStop and AMC.
Amateur traders are flocking to the Discord server to discuss stock movements, share memes, and participate in what feels like an online game. Every post is littered with emoji reactions that fly off the page within seconds, and the calls are full of people shouting “buy GameStop” or “hold GMC” as stock prices go up and down throughout the day.
At times it feels like it only takes one person to shout something on a call or spam a meme enough times for it to catch on and everyone to run with it. I witnessed hundreds of people hit Twitch yesterday to spam “save AMC” in a variety of live streams. Rapper Soulja Boy’s Twitch stream was swarmed with the messages, after calls to visit his stream. But the group failed to convince him to tweet about the struggling theater chain.
The Discord calls and many of the memes are often full of profanity or racial slurs, leading Discord to ban the r/WallStreetBets server last night. It quickly came back to life a few hours later, though, and has already amassed 200,000 members.
“Can we just get one minute of therapeutic silence,” asked someone on the main Discord call yesterday. A few seconds of silence passed before the ask was met with fart sounds, high-pitched music, and sound boards. The members often joke about the FBI or SEC listening in, which prompts many to spam the “FBI, open up!” audio meme.
After last night’s Discord server ban, r/WallStreetBets is rebuilding its Discord community, but a split has emerged. There are now two Discord servers, with an unofficial one at 88,000 members.
Misinformation is common throughout these Discord servers. In the official one, a discussion broke out about the potential for a US-led war to impact stock markets. “There is going to be a war, 100 percent,” claimed one Discord user. “I’m going to bring my gaming chair into the war,” joked another. Fake Elon Musk memes are also as popular as the man himself among this group. “The only thing I want in life is for Elon Musk to tell me I’m beautiful,” said one Discord user praising the Tesla CEO.
Among all the chaos and fake Elon Musk memes, there is some relative organization on the server with calmer heads providing tips to amateur traders. “Only put money in that you can afford to lose,” is a common piece of advice. New members often join and want to know what stock to invest in, but are quickly met with “we are not financial advisors” or “buy what you feel like buying” responses.
I’ve also witnessed what sound like day traders teaching people the basics of options, market retracements, and how to create charts with technical indicators and overlays. Robinhood has made buying and selling stocks as easy as posting a photo to Instagram, and those new to this experiment are eager to learn more.
Others, who have clearly been part of the r/WallStreetBets community for more than a few days, are also quick to advise new members not to try trial broker accounts with fake money for too long. “You need to get used to the emotional reality of a market open,” said one Discord member.
The advice is often interrupted by excitement as GameStop or AMC shares reach new highs. At one point this morning GameStop hit $420 a share in premarket trading, which was met by cheers and surprise on the Discord call.
I personally spend large parts of my day on Discord, but I’ve still never seen anything quite like the r/WallStreetBets server — even in groups with 300,000 members. Dozens of people join every second, and at times it has forced Discord to crash on my high-end gaming PC or take up lots of CPU resources. Even on my iPhone it kills my battery and makes my phone hot to touch.
The question now is how long this mass organized movement can continue on Discord, and the amount of time left in the grand GameStop stock price game. After a ban for “hateful and discriminatory content,” the official r/WallStreetBets Discord server seems less chaotic. But r/WallStreetBets describes itself as “like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal,” and a lot of the Reddit comments contain offensive language.
r/WallStreetBets feels like The Button, an online meta-game that first appeared on Reddit for April Fools’ Day in 2015. Redditors rushed to push a button on a 60-second timer that would reset every time it was clicked. It inspired devotion and obsession much like this GameStop stock rally, and even spawned religions and cults.
The Button ended more than two months after its introduction when the timer finally hit zero with no attempts to reset it. There’s no timer here on this Discord and Reddit trade floor experiment, and nobody really knows exactly how and when it’s going to end.
(Pocket-lint) – Philips frequently refreshes its TV lineup, with new designs and updates, and 2021 will be no different.
A new range of Philips OLED TVs are coming soon. While, at the top end of its LED TV range, it will also introduce Mini LED tech for the first time.
Here then are Philips’ top TVs, from the new 2021 models to 2020 sets you can still buy now – sometimes at a discount.
We’re not covering all of them, just those that stand out based on their features and positioning.
Philips OLED TVs
TP Vision
Philips OLED 806/856
Available: TBC
Screen sizes: 48in, 55in, 65in, 77in
OLED, 3840 x 2160 pixels, HRD10+ Adaptive, Dolby Vision, HLG, Filmmaker Mode, Dolby Atmos, DTS Play-Fi, Android TV
Philips will stick with its OLED+ 935 as the flagship model for the foreseeable future, but last year’s 805 and 855 will be replaced with OLED TVs with a few new features and improved picture processing.
The difference between the 806 and 856 is largely aesthetic – coming with different stands, basically. In addition, the 856 will only be available in 55 and 65-inches. The 806, on the other hand, adds 48 and 77-inch variants – the latter being the largest OLED TV from the Philips brand yet.
One of the main additions is the P5 AI Intelligent Picture Engine – a processor that analyses images and cross references different picture situations to apply the best settings. It also has a superb anti-screen burn technology that recognises and dims static logos on screen.
In addition, each of the new OLEDs come with 4K 120Hz and variable refresh rate (VRR) technology for gaming. Those combined with ALLM (auto low latency mode) ensure that those with next-gen consoles get the most from their machines. HDMI eARC and Dolby Atmos are on board too, for audio support.
The final string to each set’s bow is four-sided Ambilight.
While it has been around for a while, the current flagship comes with many of the tech functionality of the newer models above. That includes the anti-screen burn technology that can greatly help to reduce screen retention.
This TV also comes with a class-leading Bowers & Wilkins sound system that provides a 3.1.2 surround effect, including two Dolby Atmos elevation speakers that heighten audio.
Like the 806/856, the 935 has Filmmaker Mode. It is also DTS Play-Fi enabled, which means it can link to other Philips Wireless Home System speakers to either create a wider home theatre (with rear channels) or sync music around the home.
Philips Mini LED TVs
TP Vision
Philips MiniLED 9506
Available: TBC
Screen sizes: 65in, 75in
Mini LED, 3840 x 2160 pixels, HRD10+ Adaptive, Dolby Vision, HLG, Filmmaker Mode, Dolby Atmos, DTS Play-Fi, Android TV
Philips has embraced Mini LED technology for its top-end LCD/LED TVs this year. That means the backlight uses thousands of tiny LEDs in its backlight, which are grouped into 1,000 zones. These zones can be turned off, brightened or dimmed idependently, leading to more accurate colours and better contrast than previous LED panels.
ALso, thanks to the size of the LEDs, there is less light bleed, so black levels can be much deeper and darker than ever before. It’s the closest the tech can get to OLED, yet remains more affordable.
The MiniLED 9506 comes with four-sided Ambilight and the same P5 AI Intelligent Picture Engine as the 2021 top-end OLEDs. It is also 4K 120Hz, so is capable of playing PS5 and Xbox Series X games at their best. VRR and ALLM are on board too.
HDR10+ Adaptive is added to the HDR suite of standards, which adapts the picture depending on lighting conditions.
TP Vision
Philips MiniLED 9636
Available: TBC
Screen sizes: 65in, 75in
Mini LED, 3840 x 2160 pixels, HRD10+ Adaptive, Dolby Vision, HLG, Filmmaker Mode, Dolby Atmos, DTS Play-Fi, Android TV
The MiniLED 9636 is almost identical to the 9506 above, apart from the fact that it also comes with a Bowers & Wilkins sound system built into its stand.
This 3.1.2 system provides 70W of power across all channels, while two upfiring units provide extra height for Dolby Atmos tracks.
Like all of Philips premium models in 2021, it comes with DTS Play-Fi so can hook up to other wireless speakers around the home and become part of a multiroom audio setup.
Apple today reported its fiscal Q1 2021 earnings, which cover the final calendar quarter of 2020 and the holiday sales season. That means this is the first time we’re getting a real indication of how the new iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max are faring with consumers. As it turns out, they’re doing very well. Apple crossed $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in the company’s history: it brought in $111.4 billion in total, with earnings per share of $1.68.
The latest iPhones went on sale a bit later than normal, and Apple has had to again close some of its retail locations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But despite those obstacles, the iPhone business did extraordinarily well, tallying over $65 billion in revenue. The previous all-time record for iPhone revenue in a quarter was $61.58 billion, which Apple hit in the first quarter of fiscal 2018.
Alongside a tweaked, flatter design, the iPhone 12 series is the first to include 5G mobile data, which some have speculated could result in a so-called “super cycle” of upgrades from people who are still using iPhones that are a couple years old at this point. The strong early interest is certainly there; now we’ll have to see if it holds.
Apple’s Mac and iPad lines have seen rocketing sales during the prolonged period of working at home and remote education as a result of the pandemic. The momentum continued in this latest quarter, with iPad sales up a staggering 41 percent — during a holiday quarter, remember — and Mac sales up 21 percent year over year.
iPad sales were up a staggering 41 percent year over year.Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
The company’s MacBook Air, base-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini are now powered by its own M1 processors. Those three products officially kicked off a transition away from Intel chips that will extend to Apple’s other Mac products over the coming months. The popular iPad Air was also updated in the fall with a more modern design similar to the iPad Pro.
During an earnings call with investors, CEO Tim Cook said Apple crossed 1.65 billion active devices worldwide during the quarter. iPhones account for over 1 billion of those devices.
Unsurprisingly, AirPods / AirPods Pro and the Apple Watch were a holiday hit for another year running, boosting the wearables division up 30 percent year over year.
Just as 2020 came to a close, Apple launched its latest paid subscription service, Apple Fitness Plus, which joins Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple TV Plus, and Apple News Plus as ways of getting recurring profits from consumers who buy Apple hardware. The company has continued to extend the trial periods for some of those services — namely, Apple TV Plus — but the services unit as a whole continues to perform very well and was up 24 percent.
Executive shifts at the company also continue. Just this week, Apple announced that longtime hardware engineering SVP Dan Riccio will now focus on a new, unspecified project; John Ternus — who has publicly introduced well-received products like the revamped Mac Pro, iPad Pro, and M1 Macs — has replaced him as Apple’s hardware boss.
The company has also pushed forward with its social initiatives, announcing a number of racial equity investments earlier this month. Apple also removed conservative social media app Parler from the App Store, citing insufficient moderation policies and calls to violence from some users on the app.
According to Philips, nearly two thirds of active sports enthusiasts (and over 90 percent of 16-24 year-olds) are using headphones while exercising, and in a bid to take the lion’s share of that market, the firm is releasing a new dedicated sports series focusing on sports-worthy fit, durability, great sound plus new safety and hygiene features.
The Philips Sports Headphones range will start with four products, which should hit shelves in April. All of them feature USB-C fast-charging, Bluetooth 5.0 and dust, sweat and waterproofing – but the firm promises there are 10 headphone models in the pipeline for the first half of 2021.
Ready for a quick breakdown of the incoming models in the Philips Sports Series lineup? The range rollout will comprise the A7306 flagship true wireless in-ears, A6606 wireless neckband bone conduction headphones, A4216 sports on-ear wireless headphones and a neckband in-ear proposition called the A3206.
(Image credit: Philips)
The new flagship Philips A7306 true wireless headphones (above) combine heart rate monitoring and UV cleaning technologies, meaning they can apparently be cleansed with ultra-violet rays in just 20 seconds, simply by popping them back in their case.
You get three different coloured wing-tips and three detachable ear-hooks for a run-worthy fit, 9mm drivers, two mics per earpiece for clear audio, an IP57 rating (meaning that as well as dustproofing, the buds can survive submersion in water up to a metre deep, for 30 minutes), tap-controls for playback and call-handling plus up to six hours of battery life on a full charge, with an extra 18 hours on hand from the charging case. Thanks to fast charge, you can get a claimed hour of playback in just 15 minutes too.
Sports enthusiasts can also track their performance with the A7036’s built-in heart rate monitor, which Philips says is compatible with most popular fitness apps currently available.
In addition, Philips promises users can stay safe out there thanks to a special one-tap awareness mode feature giving instant access to external sounds.
In terms of voice assistance, the A7306 supports Google Assistant and Apple Siri, and they’re compatible with Philips dedicated headphones app – which, says Philips, works with the most popular sports tracker apps.
(Image credit: Philips )
The Philips A6606 sports bone conduction headphones (above) offer a different way of listening. Unlike traditional headphones, the A6606 wireless model transmits sound vibrations to the ear via the user’s cheekbones, thus allowing you to enjoy music while leaving your ears free to hear background sounds, especially in busy environments or while running alongside traffic, say. It’s the first time Philips has produced such a design – and the company proud to present it.
The A6606 is designed to fit perfectly under a cycle helmet, and as an additional safety feature the headphones include a high visibility LED light that can be controlled via the Philips Headphones App.
Expect nine hours of playtime from a single charge, 15 minutes of charging to get one-hour playback, and a full charge in two hours.
The lightweight (but Titanium reinforced) neckband design completes a sleek aesthetic, which also boasts IP67 water, sweat and dustproofing.
You also get a carry pouch for easy storage and two built-in mics for calls on the move.
(Image credit: Philips )
The Philips A4216 (above) is a sports on-ear wireless option, boasting good passive noise cancellation and large 40mm drivers.
The model has been ergonomically designed for extra comfort, featuring memory foam inserts with a special cooling gel for those high intensity sessions, all covered in removable and washable fabric sleeves for extra hygiene protection. They also fold inwards for easy, compact storage in your gym bag.
A huge 35-hour playtime and quick charge feature (which boasts two hours after 15 minutes of charging) should ensure the A4216 are always ready to use, even for the most extended of workouts.
The IP55 rating means they can’t be fully submerged in water but they’ll survive a sweaty (or rainy) run, and there’s also a built-in microphone with echo cancellation for clear audio.
(Image credit: Philips)
Last but by no means least, for now, the Philips A3206 offers a wireless neckband design, ie. with a cable tying the two buds together so it’s nigh-on impossible to lose one when cycling or running.
A choice of three interchangeable comfortable wing-tips and three ear-hooks should ensure an unshakable fit, while a Kevlar reinforced, light reflective cable promises extra safety in low light.
Also on the spec-sheet is a 13.6mm neodymium acoustic driver in each earpiece, an IP57 sweat, dust and waterproof rating, three user friendly buttons on the remote control and shirt clip, and a push button to trigger voice control – with either Google Assistant or Siri at the helm.
All models will be available in black, from April 2021. At the time of going to press, prices are still to be confirmed, but as and when we know. so shall you…
MORE:
Read our pick of the best sports headphones 2021: keep active with these earbuds
See all our Philips reviews
Not looking for a sports set? Check out the best wireless headphones on the market right now
Be it at work or at home, a lot of us spend a whole lot of time at our desks. For many, a 9-to-5 job is likely to have you sitting in front of your computer for upwards of 1,500 hours every year.
But look at it another way: that’s enough time to listen to a couple of thousand albums, and there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be listening to them in style.
While it’s easy enough just to jam a pair of headphones into your laptop, or even play music and video through built-in speakers, there’s no denying that better sound is attainable through just a few simple upgrades.
These seven tips don’t involve massive investment, and you don’t have to spend money on every aspect to achieve a great-sounding desktop set-up. Follow a few of them, though, and we’d like to think your time at your computer will be greatly improved.
Music for self-isolation: the What Hi-Fi? lockdown playlist
Invest in good desktop speakers
(Image credit: KEF)
If you’re still using the speakers built into your laptop for listening to music, then this is how to transform your desktop music experience in one single step.
Like with televisions, computer audio wasn’t always quite this bad when we had big box computer monitors, often with decent-sized speakers tacked onto the side. But ultra-thin screens and lightweight laptops have meant we now receive ultra-thin and lightweight sound.
There are loads of options out there – check out our round-up of the best desktop computer speakers for decent and affordable options. They usually have a good range of connections, too, including Bluetooth compatibility for easy wireless set-up.
Try home-specific headphones
(Image credit: Grado)
You certainly don’t need a different pair of headphones for every separate task, so if you’ve just spent a few hundred on a pair of five-star wireless noise-cancelling headphones then your wallet can remain closed.
If you’re only using the bundled in-ears from your smartphone, however, then this is another easy win. Most of us are fine with compromised sound when we’re out on a run or on a busy train – textural insight is less important here than just having something to drown out the world’s noise – but that is less the case at home or in a quiet office.
Forgoing portability and features such as noise cancellation and wireless connectivity means you can get a lot more performance for your money from a pair of home-specific headphones. Open-backed headphones leak sound, which makes them better suited to home use and the design allows the best models to offer up a lot more space in a presentation.
Best audiophile headphones 2021
Upgrade your DAC
(Image credit: Audioquest)
Think of all the tasks your computer is asked to perform, and that four-figure sum you paid for it rapidly starts to appear great value for money. But that also means that not a huge amount of production costs can have been budgeted for absolutely every feature.
So, while you have a digital-to-analogue converter in your device already, it means you don’t have to spend much at all to achieve a significant upgrade. The aptitude and accuracy with which digital files are translated into analogue signals can have a huge bearing on sound quality, so it is also one of the areas in which you might hear the greatest difference.
From USB sticks to components that would feel just at home in a traditional hi-fi system, there are portable DAC and headphone amp combinations to suit all budgets. Just make sure to pick one that complements the talents in the rest of your chain. Our round-up of the best DACs should help.
Boost your wi-fi
For the best streaming experience you’ll need a strong and stable internet connection. That means wiring your computer by its ethernet connection is highly preferable, but it isn’t always all that convenient or even possible.
So whether it’s via a signal booster, or as a last resort upgrading your internet plan with your service provider, pimping your wi-fi is a good way to make sure you’re always getting the highest-quality streaming experience possible.
Use a hi-res music streaming service
(Image credit: MQA, Tidal)
The above entry only really matters, of course, if you’ve subscribed to one of the web’s many hi-res streaming platforms. It appears the rest of the world is finally agreeing with us that MP3 is a dirty word, not to mention a grubby little performer.
We use Spotify for a lot of things – its catalogue is unparalleled and the ubiquity of its users makes playlist sharing relatively hassle-free – but there’s no point spending a load of money on new speakers and headphones if all you’re going to do is expose its highly compressed streams.
Our Award-winning hi-res streaming service for the past few years has been Tidal, which offers CD-quality and MQA streaming, so its trial offers are as good a place as any to start.
Best music streaming services 2021: free streams to hi-res audio
Download music rather than stream
(Image credit: Qobuz)
Though we are all quite taken by the convenience of streaming – especially now it doesn’t necessarily mean deficient audio quality – you will still achieve better sound from hi-res files downloaded and stored on your computer or separate hard drive.
Certain streaming services such as Qobuz also offer hi-res downloads, with a healthy discount in their download store for those who take up their premium annual plan, which – though we have our issues with it as a streaming platform – could be a cost-effective way of experiencing both worlds.
And until 15 May, Qobuz is offering What Hi-Fi? readers 29 free hi-res and CD-quality album downloads.
Make sure your desk is sturdy
Regular readers are likely sick to their back teeth of us going on about this kind of thing, but stable and rigid support for your electronics is something you ignore at your peril.
It doesn’t mean you have to go out and buy a specifically treated desk or else your speakers will sound like you got them out of a bin, but it shouldn’t be buckling under the weight of your computer or tipping on wonky legs as you type.
And keep it as clear as possible. You don’t want books covering your speakers or newspapers heating up on your DAC. Try to organise your desk around your audio set-up, rather than the other way round.
After that, our best advice is to keep listening to new music and try to enjoy work time as if it were play.
The bike arrives at a time when many people want to work out at home
Last year was the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the year sweatpants become acceptable workwear, and the year Peloton peaked. Mid-pandemic, the company announced two new devices: the pricier Bike Plus and a less expensive treadmill called the Tread. The Bike Plus started shipping in September and includes significant updates to the company’s signature hardware during an especially critical time when many people have shifted their fitness routines from gyms into their own homes.
I, for years, have been a dedicated Crunch gym-goer, usually taking five classes a week. But with gyms closing off and on and classes generally being canceled, I moved my routine indoors. First, I started with Peloton’s app workouts, using resistance bands and bodyweight. I then switched to Zoom classes taught by an instructor I enjoy from Crunch. For the past few months, I’ve been testing Peloton’s Bike Plus. To put it simply: I’ve loved my time with the Bike Plus. It’s become an important tool for my well-being. Anytime I need to sweat out stress or transition my day from work into leisure, the bike is my go-to. Peloton has built a truly reliable spin bike, but at $2,495, the price is still hard for me to accept, especially considering its ecosystem lock-in.
The main thing to keep in mind when assessing Peloton’s products is that you’re paying solely for new hardware. The Peloton software remains the same across both the old and new internet-connected bikes, similar to how most old and new iPhones receive the current iOS. You can also access that app content without any official Peloton equipment. To get people to upgrade, though, Peloton has to offer real hardware innovation in order to justify the Bike Plus’ nearly $2,500 price versus the original bike’s $1,895 cost. This time around, for the extra $600, riders get a new swiveling display, a fresh speaker system, automatic resistance calibration, and Apple Watch GymKit support.
Before fully assessing the bike investment, though, let’s first break the Bike Plus down by what’s new and how those features work:
THAT SWIVEL DISPLAY
The most obvious change with the Bike Plus is the new 23.8-inch HD touchscreen. The prior model included a 21.5-inch HD touchscreen with thick bezels on all sides. It effectively looked like an iMac bolted to a stationary bike. The Bike Plus places a speaker across the top of the display, augmenting those bezels. To be clear: there are definitely still bezels on the new display, but they feel unobtrusive. It’s a massive screen solely for workout content, and your attention is firmly planted at the center of the screen most of the time. However, for a display this size and at this high of a cost, its lack of an ambient light sensor is questionable. I work out at various hours of the day but particularly love an evening ride in a dark room. The screen should dim itself rather than me having to manually do so. (There’s a camera at the top of the display for video calls with friends, so it could easily detect light.)
As for the new swivel function, the main idea is people can take Peloton’s floor classes without having to uncomfortably stand behind their bikes. You can swivel the display out and away from the bike to face the rest of the room, allowing you to move around to complete yoga, strength, or meditation classes.
Peloton also launched a new class format, called Bike Bootcamp, to coincide with this bike’s release. The bootcamp is designed to give cyclers a chance to do it all — bike and strength train within the same class — without having to complete two separate workouts. And while the swivel display makes this option feasible, I still found these classes difficult to pull off for the first few weeks, namely because of the Peloton cycling shoes. When you ride on a Peloton, you clip into the bike with cycling shoes, and these shoes take time to clip out of the pedals, which requires lots of practice. For context, the Peloton employee who delivered my bike recommended leaving my shoes in the pedals and slipping my foot in and out to avoid a hassle.
Bike Bootcamp classes expect you to clip in and out to complete various portions of the class, which took me a while to get used to doing. Adding to the quick transition stress was the lack of a pause button, meaning that I often missed the demo portion of the strength routine and fell behind. Peloton says the missing pause button is because the bike is “designed to give you a great workout and ensure that you work as hard as you would in a live indoor cycling class,” but in a home context, it’s more of a pain than anything else. You can exit the class, but this means you’ll have to reenter it, which takes a while and is annoying to do. And if you accidentally tap that you want to restart the class entirely, there’s no forward or back button.
I also found the angling of the display to be slightly off. Working out on a mat means you want the display to tip as far down as possible to provide a good view of the content. But this display doesn’t angle far enough down, meaning I had to crane my neck to see the instructor. This didn’t prevent me from using the screen for mat workouts, but it did annoy me (and kind of hurt!) at times.
Still, the swivel is an essential upgrade, especially if you use your bike’s display as your main one for other workouts. I don’t have a TV, so I need the swivel, but Peloton also offers a suite of options for broadcasting to a TV, including a Roku app, Fire TV app, and AirPlay and Cast compatibility. If you have any of these options available to you in your home gym, the swivel screen likely won’t do much for you and isn’t worth the upgrade cost.
THE NEW SPEAKER SYSTEM
The new bike comes with 26-watt, front-facing stereo speakers, as well as woofers that face away from you. The prior bike only included rear-facing stereo speakers. The new speakers sound great, although I preferred to bike with Bluetooth-paired wireless earbuds. (There’s also a headphone jack for anyone who might want wired options.) Peloton lets you select between different audio mixes, either prioritizing the music, the instructor, or finding a balance between the two in the original mix. I always work out with the music prioritized and when I do this through my AirPods Pro, I have no problem also hearing the instructor. But when I listen through the speaker, I find the music mix to be almost unusable; I sometimes can’t hear the instructor at all and miss my cues. The music is loud and sounds fantastic, which is perhaps what Peloton wanted, but finding the perfect balance between thumping music and hearing directions was complicated. (I’ll also note here that the bike is remarkably silent. My roommate would ride next to my bedroom door, and I couldn’t hear anything apart from his breathing. It’s a great bike for a shared home where people want to exist in their own spaces.)
AUTOMATIC RESISTANCE DETECTION
This feature is undeniably cool. Typically, in a spin class, the instructor offers a range within which the riders should aim to set their resistance level. Spinners reach down to their resistance knob and turn it to the desired resistance whenever a new range is called out. The Bike Plus now adjusts the resistance automatically. It’s slick and convenient and absolutely the neatest feature of the Bike Plus.
I did encounter some bugs, though. Sometimes the cues were off, either with the resistance setting itself between a different range than the instructor called out, the timing of that resistance change being off, or the resistance dropping at times when it should have stayed consistent or even increased. This seemed to happen more frequently in older archive classes than new ones. With that said, though, the few times I ran into this problem weren’t a huge issue. I adjusted the knob myself and waited for the bike to catch the next instruction. I still find this feature hugely helpful, allowing me to concentrate more on the class rather than adjusting the knob to get to the right resistance, especially during climbs when the resistance can go up suddenly during an energy push.
APPLE WATCH GYMKIT
The Bike Plus is also the first device from Peloton to directly integrate with the Apple Watch through GymKit. I had a couple of problems with this functionality at first: the Watch wouldn’t pair with the bike, but then Peloton issued an update which seemed to correct the issue. Only one other time did I have a problem with pairing and had to restart my Apple Watch. Although these issues only came up a couple of times, they were particularly upsetting because when the bike is paired with the Apple Watch, your heart rate shows up on-screen during a workout, which I look to monitor as I’m moving through a class. With the Apple Watch paired, workouts are also tracked in Apple’s Health app with all the bike’s own data taken into account, like energy output, so the functionality not working 100 percent of the time is frustrating and actively takes away from my exercise. But on the whole, it’s remained mostly reliable.
The watch only directly syncs with the bike for spin or bike bootcamp workouts, meaning you won’t be able to see your heart-rate on the screen while you complete a strength or pilates class, for example. This isn’t great and feels like it defeats the purpose of having GymKit compatibility in the first place.
IS THIS THE BIKE FOR YOU?
The Bike Plus is an expensive, tough sell for Peloton and one that needs to be pulled off flawlessly, especially as new software competitors, like Apple Fitness Plus, enter the market, as well as cheaper hardware competitors like Echelon and Bowflex. The Bike Plus feels like the iPhone of spin bikes — it’s intuitive to use and works right out of the box. (But actually, there is no box because Peloton offers white glove delivery and setup with every purchase.)
For the person who doesn’t want to fiddle with a bike that isn’t totally built for Peloton’s software, meaning it doesn’t monitor output and all the other fancy fitness metrics, Peloton’s bikes are tempting. But buying one means committing to a $39-per-month subscription. The app itself only costs $12 per month but doesn’t include multi-account support, live classes, the leaderboard, and full metrics.
For some people, that $39 is a savings compared to what they used to spend for gym access, especially considering it provides access to an unlimited number of different profiles. For others, it’s a significant investment in their health and life. Either way, you’re committing to Peloton and its subscription plan forever. The display is useless without the subscription, meaning if you ever wanted to try Apple Fitness Plus or SoulCycle or any other on-demand cycling classes, you’d have to ignore the massive display and instead get a TV or laptop to watch.
As much as I loved my time with the Bike Plus, the high price and software lock-in is difficult to accept. Peloton has built undeniably great hardware. I just wish I could use it with any software I liked rather than only Peloton’s app. If I had a TV, this might bother me less because I’d plan to use whatever fitness app I liked on my TV and wouldn’t sweat losing the subscription. Although, of course, I’d then be saddled with a massive HD display that literally does nothing.
The question of whether I’d recommend this bike depends on how much you love Peloton’s classes and how much you want to work for your exercise bike. Other spin bikes exist, many of which are cheaper and allow you to swap in your own tablet. You can even use Peloton’s app with them, albeit with some compromises, like losing your place on Peloton’s competitive leaderboard.
There’s also Peloton’s notorious delivery delays to consider. The New York Times notes that buyers’ delivery dates are being rescheduled day-of with the actual equipment showing up months after the date they were first quoted. All of this is to say, if you’re considering this bike purely for pandemic workouts, prepare to wait.
Still, to me, the Bike Plus is a must-get for anyone who lives the true Peloton lifestyle and sees themselves loving the company and its software far into the future. It’s reliable, works well, and, broadly, my gripes didn’t take away from the experience; I’ve been riding nearly daily for months now.
I just can’t predict whether I’ll want to go back to the gym post-pandemic or if I’ll get used to working out at home indefinitely. To Peloton’s credit, however, I can’t imagine myself readily giving this bike back; it’ll hurt a little to watch it leave. That feels like a victory for the brand and an admission for me that I do want a Peloton bike in my life.
Carl Pei, the OnePlus co-founder who parted ways with the company last year, has announced the name of his next venture: Nothing. It describes itself as a “London based consumer technology company” and counts the likes of iPod inventor Tony Fadell, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and YouTuber Casey Neistat as investors. It plans to release its first “smart devices” in the first half of this year.
“Nothing’s mission is to remove barriers between people and technology to create a seamless digital future,” says Pei, Nothing’s founder and CEO, in a press release. “We believe that the best technology is beautiful, yet natural and intuitive to use. When sufficiently advanced, it should fade into the background and feel like nothing.”
Carl Pei, who previously co-founded the smartphone brand OnePlus.Image: Nothing
What’s unclear at the moment is exactly what products Nothing plans to release. In an interview with The Verge ahead of today’s announcement, Pei declined to offer specific details on what form Nothing’s first “smart devices” will take. He also declined to say which companies Nothing plans to compete with.
Pei does confirm, however, that Nothing plans to release products across multiple categories, with the eventual aim of building up an ecosystem of devices.
“Right now… the team is being built, so we want to focus on simpler categories,” Pei says, “but as our team gains capabilities and skills we want to start moving up. The ultimate vision of having everything connected in a seamless way, that can only happen when you have multiple categories of products that are connected.”
During Pei’s tenure at OnePlus, the company released everything from smartphones to headphones and even TVs. Last year, Wired reported that Pei’s new company could focus on music and might include manufacturing headphones. When asked, Pei declined to confirm whether headphones would be among Nothing’s early products. When asked by Wired, he said the company’s plans were “so much more than that.”
While there’s been speculation that this could point toward Nothing developing an accompanying music service, Pei tells The Verge that Nothing plans to make most of its money by selling hardware rather than software subscriptions, at least initially. “We haven’t spent too much time thinking about the software portion of it,” Pei says. “It definitely needs to be a good user experience if you are to generate revenue from software.” In the long term, however, he admits that a “healthy business” requires both good hardware and good software.
Pei’s new company plans to differentiate itself by using “custom made” components in its products right from the start. Pei suggests this will stop Nothing’s products from looking too much like its competitors. “There’s a reason why a lot of products on the market look quite similar,” Pei observes. “It’s because they share a lot of the same components and the same building blocks.”
In contrast, OnePlus’ phones have faced frequent criticism over the years for the similarities they’ve shared with Oppo’s phones. In a recent video, Marques Brownlee outlined a series of Oppo and OnePlus devices with strikingly similar hardware, like the OnePlus 5 and Oppo R11, the OnePlus 6T and Oppo R17, and the OnePlus Nord N100 and Oppo A53. The two brands even use similar fast-charging technologies. OnePlus has Dash Charge, and Oppo has VOOC.
While OnePlus and Oppo are widely reported to exist under the same Chinese corporate giant BBK Electronics, Pei says Nothing is unencumbered by such an arrangement. “[Nothing is] a completely independent company owned by our founding team and our investors,” says Pei, with its own R&D department. And despite using contract manufacturers to build its devices, Pei says Nothing won’t just “relabel somebody else’s products.”
But while Pei hopes Nothing’s early products will feature “differentiated” designs without feeling “different for the sake of being different,” the eventual hope is for them to fade into the background.
“I kind of envision a grass field with people having a picnic and there’s no screen, there’s no laptop screen, there’s no phone screen, there’s no smartwatch screen, there’s no billboard screen,” Pei muses. “That’s kind of the end state.”
Verge columnist Walt Mossberg referred this future state as ambient computing in 2017. Pei admits that it may take 20 or 30 years to arrive, but he says the future his company is aiming for is one where its technology resembles… well, nothing.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
