"You know," Alon Wolf told us. A lot of what you liked about the sound of my music server was the Pacific Microsonics Model Two DAC I was using. But that's no longer manufactured, <I>this</I> is even better and only $5000."
We were listening to Magico's fabulous V3s ($25,000/pair), which John Atkinson will be reviewing in the May issue, when we noticed a large music server. "What's that?"
We glanced into Oracle's room to see what was new. We'd seen the Delphi, we'd seen the CD 1500 and CD 2500 before. "Nothing new?" we asked.
Audio Space's DAC-1 US ($3000) is a hybrid tube/Mosfet DAC with a difference.It has two pairs of RCA analog outputs: One deriving its signal from the tube DAC; the other taking its signal from the discrete Mosfet DAC.
The Lyngdorf Server 1 is a music and video server had us drooling. Lyngdorf, of course, loves to keep signals digital until the last millimeter, building DACs into their active DSP-driven loudspeakers. The Server 1 sounded great—there was just one problem: It isn't available. Yet.
The PS Audio Memory Link ($1695) is a CD/DVD/RAM drive. It's a mechanical player (<I>ie</I>, it still spins the discs), but it has an unusually large cache. Conventional players have caches of around 8–16MB, the Memory Link has a 64MB cache. Why is this better?
We'd been told to check out Boulder's new music server, but that's not exactly what the $24,000 1021 Disc Player is. It's a CD player (with a few other formats "to be announced") that uses a computer disc drive to feed a one-minute buffer to "preserve the integrity of the audio signal delivered from the drive. "Also," confided Steve Rockwell, "the clock is about <I>this</I> far [<I>pinches fingers together</I>], so jitter is phenomenally low."
We're stunned at how few exhibitors spend money for the larger rooms on the 35<SUP>th</SUP> floor of the Venetian, since they are so sonically impressive. Sumiko's room with the $28,000 SME 2012, $6000 Audio Research PH7, $10,000 Audio Research Reference 3, Audio Research Reference 210 monoblock amplifiers ($9000/each), and brand-spanking new $25,000/pair Vienna Acoustic <I>Die Musik</I> loudspeakers had us glued to the sweet spot.
Sumiko had a new Pro-Ject turntable on display, the "approximately $2000" Perspex, which sports the new 9CC Evolution tonearm.
Sumiko was showing the $2495 Primare DVD110 DVD/CD player/reciever. It's a two channel unit with a class-D 102Wpc amplifier and a couple of features you don't see on most stereo components: a subwoofer and 1080p video outs.