I was looking forward to seeing Antelope's recently announced Rubicon Atomic AD/DA Preamp at CES, but so is the company. At the time I visited the room, DHL still hadn't found and delivered it, so we have Director of Sales and Marketing Marcel James standing next to the poster.

Projected release date is sometime around March/April for $40k. The Rubicon will feature a built-in analog to digital converter that can be driven from an internal phono preamp, several sets of regular line level RCA jacks, or balanced XLRs. Digital inputs include 2 SPDIF, 2 Toslink and AES/EBU. Analog and digital outputs are also available.

This is clearly a statement DAC/Pre that is based on products Antelope has developed for the pro recording industry. Central to the company's approach is the use of a 10MHz rubiduim atomic clock driving 384kH converters.