The fourth floor of the Flamingo offered my second opportunity to experience Bully Sound Company electronics and my first to hear Bricasti Design's MI dual-mono DAC. Paired with Vivid B-1 loudspeakers, the system produced an absolutely astounding sense of air on John Atkinson's recording of male vocal ensemble Cantus' performance of Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque. The acoustic was so much more air-filled than I'd ever heard it before that I realized that either the DAC added air to recordings, or I had never heard this recording as JA intended it to be heard. The timbre of individual voices, and the clarity of presentation were also spot on. Wow!

BSC projects an April release of its Trident preamp (approx. $10,500). With a base shaped like a Trident, this three-chassis preamp includes its power supplies on the left, control switching mechanism and the right, and its critical analog components in the middle. Bret d'Agostino tells me that the volume control is motorized linear, the encoder controls a discrete ladder network, and each chassis is individually suspended. The preamp will have two balanced and three single-ended inputs, balanced and single-ended outputs, and a fixed theater throughput.