T.H.E. Show Newport 2013

The second Aaudio Imports room I visited featured the German-designed but China-manufactured components from BMC. The Arcadia bipolar speakers ($36,300/pair with external crossovers) were being driven by AMP M2 monoblocks ($15,980/pair), connected with Stage II speaker cables and interconnects. Front-end components included a Hartvig battery-powered Gramophone ($28,400 plus $5400 for battery supply) and BMC’s MMCI current-input phono preamplifier that Michael Fremer raved about in the June 2013 issue ($3890). I have a sample of the MCCI in for a follow-up and provisionally, my reaction echoes Mikey’s.

In other news, writer Paul Bolin of AudioBeat.com and for many years a valued contributor to Stereophile has joined BMC to provide marketing support, and is moving from Minneapolis to China. We all wish you the best, Paul; the audio reviewing community's loss is BMC's gain. As I was leaving this room, Paul showed me this neat D/A headphone amplifier, the Pure DAC (above), being fed audio data via asynchronous USB. The Pure DAC is scheduled to sell for a very competitive $1600 when it is available in the US later in the year.