Review of a future of TV - Samsung UA55B8000 LED HDTV

First look
It is no overstatement to state that the Samsung LED 8000 is amongst the classiest large panel TVs in the market today. The sleek black panel, with a delicate transparent frame stands gracefully on a silver stand that will intermingle flawlessly into any Interior setting. With a depth of jus 3 centimeters, the sleek Samsung LED 8000 is the skinniest model on the international ramp. With the optional wall mount, you can hang the TV on your wall like you would do with a delicate piece of art.

Technological aspects:
Samsung LED 8000 is not an LED TV In the true logic. The clarification is straightforward. In regular LCD TVs, they use CCFLs (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps) to light up the liquid crystal layer but in the Samsung LED 8000, they have used LEDs (Light Emitting Diode) placed on the edges in place of CCFLs to light up the liquid crystal layer. Thus basically, LED TVs (as they call them) are nothing but LCDs with a twist.
But the LED twist has a number of reward over the CCFLs, the most significant being up to 40% less power consumption and better luminance. Also, usage of LEDs helps deal with the most prevailing problems of the LCD TVs poor black levels and "smeary" motion.


Just as the 7000 series TV was upgraded from the 6000 series, the Samsung LED 8000 series is also an advanced version of the 7000 in a number of ways. For instance, the Samsung LED 8000 comes with the Auto Motion Plus Technology (AMPT) with which the TV refreshes at a astonishing frequency of 200Hz. This radically reduces the response time of the TV but at the same time, the algorithm of the AMPT might cause motion blur, an issue that ideally you would want to avoid.
A unique feature is that the Samsung LED 8000 comes with a pre-loaded content library of 1GB; that comprises remarkable content like lively images, games, animated picturesque landscapes coupled with relaxing audio and mouth¬watering recipes of delicious world cuisine. Likewise, you can download added content worth 1GB more from Samsung's website. To download, the Samsung LED 8000 comes with a LAN port onboard through which you can connect to your network. Moreover, the TV comes with a cool widget where you can save your favorite websites on the screen for later browsing. You can connect a USB drive or a hard-disk drive and transfer movies, music and photos to the onboard memory that has a 2GB capacity. Another way you can download is by wirelessly connecting a DLNA device like a mobile phone or a camera to the TV. The onboard content library is a great add on with its attractive menu and interactive navigation keys.
When you have to make a TV do all the things that the Samsung LED 8000 can do without leaving your sofa, your only rescuer can be its remote control. Accordingly, the Samsung people have designed a remote that puts the viewer in the captain's seat and enables smooth cruising with a hot key for every important functions like accessing a hard-disk directly or the onboard content. Moreover, the remote complements the aesthetics of the TV and fits at ease in the palm of your hand.

Viewing experience
Apart from superb picture quality, this TV also has equipped with a great user experience. The menu interface is sensitive, whereas other features like that of DLNA or accessing content through USB drives are quite handy to navigate. The best part is that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to use all these facilities. As mentioned earlier, the remote has all the pertinent hot keys for each of its features. So all you have to do is just plug in the devices (pen drives, hard-disks etc), sail through the menus and sit back and enjoy your date with the Samsung LED 8000.

Bottom line
A price tag of Rs 3,50,000 is quite a shock, especially when we are still on the road to recovery from the tremors of the global recession. However, for the premium that the Samsung LED 8000 demands, the UA55B8000 will reward you with perfect picture quality, exceptional black level rendering, and crisp images along with a great user experience and a host of pioneering features that only make viewing your favorite DVDs and Blu-rays an memorable experience.

Review of high end speakers from AAD - Silver Reference 7

Look and Technology
This is what you describe ‘tower speakers’, because of their slim yet very hard boned chassis that soars to the skies like Donald Trump had something to do with It. They present with three proprietary 5" Kevlar/Carbon Fiber drivers with a Helical Conductive Tweeter or HCT on the very top. Unlike standard dome tweeters, the HCT has a flat horn-loaded diaphragm to reduce roughness and improve off-axis response. The tweeter, as AAD claims, can go all the way up to 40kHz without a dip or a rise in the frequency response, something that's exceptionally hard to pull off.

As for the honeycomb bass drivers, they are split over different crossover points to give them their own allocation of the mids to the lows, while the three little bass ports on the back expel the cabinet's role in the acoustics. The reason for using small drivers or rather 5" drivers to reproduce bass rather than larger drivers are primarily for their promptness. The reason why they aren't used in other speakers is because the bass produced by smaller speakers doesn't project as far as that of a large driver.


They are surprisingly heavy for their size, but mass is always a good aspect in floor standers, especially when you see only four little drivers looking at you from the metallic finished front baffle. The speakers come to an end of their height with a curvy top plate that sure perpetuates the largeness of the glossy coat finished cabinet.

Cabinet is braced and dampened at very precise resonance points to reduce internal resonance and coloration.

Bottom line
Everything Phil Jones has claimed about these speakers is right. Using little drivers for low frequency response may just be the greatest thing that's happened to bass, especially with cabinet engineering and delicate crossover technology to boot. The Reference 7s had the added benefit of displaying clean highs and strong mids; but what bolstered its overall worth was its slim but extraordinary soundstage. It is worth the money you spend on them, and judging by their build class, they'll be assets in your living rooms for a long time.

Review of the CD player from Yamaha - CD-S700

First look
Yamaha's CD-S700 is a amazing monster from the time you lift the box. It’s weight makes you wonder whether you're lifting a graciously powered amp or a CD player! Outstanding finish, incredible build quality and impressive weight are the strong point of this player. It is uncommon to find this kind of build quality.

Technological aspects:
Just open the lid of the CD-S700 and you will understand the secret of the build quality and the massive weight. The whole unit is so filled with components that you will hardly find any space is left. Usually many of the CD players at this price range presents with a large chassis only to maintain the standard width, otherwise they could have been much smaller. On the contrary, looking at the innards in this case, you will realize that the Yamaha engineers must have struggled to accommodate all the components inside this box! Each section of the player is on a discretely separate circuit board.


The power supply secondary windings are separately feeding each board. The DSD1792 chip for the D/A conversion is placed below the analogue board and not in the digital section. This chip is 24-blt Burr Brown chip, which is used in different capacities in various components — even the SACD players, AV receivers and DVD players.
Isolation is a proven vital factor in clean reproduction of sound in the electromechanical equipment. The strong construction of the chassis provides good overall isolation to the player. The result of which, the CD mechanism while making movements on the chassis transmits minimal vibrations to the other parts of the player. Better the mechanical isolation and lower you have the jitter (timing error) and finally you have good imaging In the overall sound output. The CD tray glides smoothly on a belt driven assembly and the tray itself has a good rubber damping to protect the CDs while they are being placed. The tray takes the CD deep into the mechanism, which again to have better steadiness.
Another feature is the pure direct switch on the player, which switches off the display and the digital output of the player, keeping only the essentials running to serve the purest and cleanest of sound.

Yamaha, while keeping the Audiophiles happy, also takes a realistic viewpoint and provided a USB port in the front panel. Through this port you can play MP3 and WMA content from the flash devices or the hard disc, Navigating through the musical directory will be a bit difficult as this player doesn't have a video card to connect it to a monitor or, TV.

An elongated stick-form remote control that offers all the functions except power 'On'/’off'. The number pad allows direct access to a track and then there are all the navigation keys in the main area arranged in a five-button circle-and-centre arrangement. There are separate keys for forward and backward queuing and a dedicated button for (de)activating Pure Direct.

Yamaha has three CD players in this series viz. 700 (entry level), 1000 and 2000. It also has three stereo amplifiers by the same number to make the pair. This makes the decision-making procedure for a standard buyer very easy, as one doesn't have to try amps and CD player combos to make a pair.

Performance review of CD-S700
'Sleek' and smooth are two words that come to mind the minute you see the smooth tray operation of the CD-S700. Place your CD on the rubberized supports and this well-oiled mechanism slides back noiselessly deep into the player. The CD reading response is quick.
Incredible resolution — would be the words that even a beginner would be uttering as the first reflex to this player. Undoubtedly, the CD-S700 digs out the detail that is unheard of in the past.

Review of Cambridge Azur series 840E Preamplifier and 840W Power amplifier

First Look
You will love at first sight the rounded edged aluminum chassis the Azurs come housed in. Pointless to say, when you're talking power amplifiers, you're talking heavy and the same holds true for the 840W. But it looks spectacular with an uncomplicated power button and a couple of little dots for the bluish LEDs across the front panel marking the output speaker settings. The top sides of the chassis have wide gaps in it for heat dispersal, but laid out keeping equilibrium in mind so that overall aesthetics of the power amplifier aren't compromised. As for the 840E, its size and weight is a lot lesser than the 840W, and the front panel has a lot more things on it, but not to a congested look. A big bluish LED sits at the centre, with little input buttons lined across both sides of it. The trademark volume knob is on the right-most side with the power button on the other extreme. It is definitely an aesthetic masterpiece that would fit as well in your living room.

Technological aspects
Since this is the highest range of audio amplifier you're going to get from the Azur series as far as amplification is concerned, we're talking of classy and knowing Cambridge Audio, efficient technology as well. Taking the 840W Power amplifier can be bi-amped or bridged-mono, depending on what you'd like to use it as, a single power amplifier that amplifies the highs and lows individually or as a mono block. With 840E you're getting 200-watts pumped through your speakers in totality, but divided Individually between tweeter and the woofer. On the other hand, the 840W converts into 500-watt mono block, which needs to be coupled with another 840W for stereo amplification. All this can be done with a little tweaking of some switches and connections.


The 840W comes with Class XD technology, a type of amplification-technology that switches from Class A to Class B amplification; as the levels are increased through Crossover Displacement.

This reduces levels of distortion radically when compared to Class AB amplification because it is delivering the sound pure Class B technology with the help of an jumbo toroidal transformer with a silicon-steel screen! That explains the weight.

The 840E has some very exciting features inside of it as well. Starting with the cleverly named Terrapin Modules, rather than going in for the conventional op-amps (operational amps) for the low level gain stages, Cambridge Audio had been developing these ten-pin (that's why the Terra-' in Terrapin Modules) low-noise, low-distortion amplifier modules as an independent project. These, as Cambridge-Audio claims will outperform the standard op-amps. This technology couples well with the Class XD rating of the power-amplifier as far as low-level amplification is concerned, as it is a critical level for any amplifier to function in.
Along with this, the 840E has an individual collection of relays and resistors positioned along each channel to perk up the stereo division and imaging performance. At the same time, the volume and balance control are done with a stylish resistor ladder and relay-based attenuator that provides a 1dB incremental volume modification, positioning Mute or the 0 value of the volume knob way down at -95dB. So you're cranking up the volume knob quite-a-ways up before in fact getting the sensible listening level you need.

Like the majority Cambridge Audio controllers, this smooth silver remote resembles the apparatus it is built to control beautifully. The ergonomics of the round buttons could have been better with ease in the controls. As far as range goes, you can function with this remote from any corner of the room, with the gentle most touch of the buttons.

Bottom line
Staying true to the Azur series, the 840E and the 840W are a remarkable pair to listen to. The price is high because of the hi-end technology, but the pair comes housing sure makes it sensible. From an flawless imaging performance to an almost over-the-top sonic display of low-level amplification, they are truly the flagship amplifiers of Cambridge Audio and surely they hold the flag high enough to take on the audiophile-grade competitors across the globe.