Bryston's $9590/pair Model T subwoofer
"This is our new top-of-the-line subwoofer," said James Tanner, as he proudly showed a non-playing Byrston Model T subwoofer that will retail at $4795 each. He described why Bryston built a 110' tower to confirm that sub's anechoic response does actually reach down to 12Hz.
Burmester 151 Musiccenter Music Server
Burmester's Ref Line Musiccenter 111 now has a little brother that dumps the big screen on the front panel for a more low profile and less expensive version at half the price: $25k.
Inside are two 2TB SSDs in a RAID 1 configuration, plenty of networking options and web and iPad control. On the front is a slot for ripping or playing CDs and the internals handle anything PCM up to 24/192. Available now.
Burmester's New Loudspeakers
Burmester's upbeat and gregarious CEO, Dieter Burmester, was eager to give a live demonstration of his two newest loudspeakers, the $60,000/pair BA-71 and the smaller $30,000/pair BA 31 (above). The larger BA-71 uses four 160mm woofers while the BA-31 employs two woofers.
Burson
I visited the Burson room because I retain a strange interest in this Australian company’s innovative discrete op-amp modules even though I am long past my DIY years. (JA has a pair of Burson's op-amp modules in for evaluation.)
Burson Conductor Virtuoso Preamp/DAC/Headphone Amp
Sporting beautiful casework for relatively modest pricing, Burson's Conductor Virtuoso will be shipping in two versions: one with a Sabre ESS9018 DAC chip for $1,995 and the other with the BurrBrown PCM1793 for $1,495. Inside is a 4 watt headphone amp section along with PCM processing up to 24/192.
On the back are digital inputs for USB, SPDIF and optical and also analog RCA jacks. Also on the back are the digital and analog outputs
and on the front a 100-step volume control and 1/4 inch headphone jack. Remote control is included.
Calyx M Portable Player
This is a handsome iPod like player with 4.65 inch OLED display on the front and a pair of memory slots on the top (as shown in the photo below). The slots included are one micro SD and one regular SD with current maximum capacity of 512GB. The company says that they should be able to accept cards of up to 2TB in the future.
Calyx PaT DAC/Headphone Amp
Though they only had a prototype board (in the photo below) as well as the poster (in the photo above) in the room, Calyx were announcing the new PaT DAC which should hit retailers in February for $99. Handles PCM up to 16/48, but no DSD. One interesting feature is the buttons on the panel can control your play, volume and skip features on the connected phone.
Cambridge Audio 851N Preamp/DAC/Network Player
I was mightily impressed by the Cambridge Audio 851D Preamp/DAC when it was in my system last year, especially at its price point of $1,695! So seeing a new flagship streaming/preamp/DAC product piqued my interest.
A Cambridge rep explained that the new 851N is essentially a CXN and 851D put together, which is surprising since the price only jumps one C-note to $1,799 when it becomes available in March. See details on the 851D in my review and check out the CXN in the post below.
Cambridge Audio CXN Network Player
If you only need to add networking functionality to your system, the CXN will provide wired UPnP, wi-fi, USB Audio, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, aptX Bluetooth, and internet radio which is sent to either a digital out for your DAC or through its own dual Wolfson 24 bit DAC section. It will handle both PCM and DSD sources and upsamples all inputs to 24/384 for digital filtering if using the built-in DAC.
Price is $999 and it should be here in March.
Cary Audio DAC 200ts
Both DSD 64/128/256 and PCM up to 32/384 are covered in the new DAC 200ts as well as aptX Bluetooth. There are five digital inputs on the back and both balanced and unbalanced analog outs. But what I found intriguing was a switch on the front that lets the listener choose between tube and solid state output stages.
The DAC 200ts should be available in February for $3,995.