Playback of DSD files from a computer via USB is a hot topic right now, but at AXPONA Mytek upped the ante by playing 5.1 multichannel DSD files, using three of the preamp version of their Stereo192 DSD-DACs ($1595 each)linked together, with the files played with J River Media Center. The system included five of the Sony SS-AR2 speakers that I had liked so much in my review last September, driven by Pass Labs amplifiers, with Sony's new SA-NA9ES subwoofer fleshing out the bottom octaves. Not that the system needed a subwoofer—with multichannel playback, the low-frequency "room gain" is greater than it is with two-channel.

I listened to conventional multichannel recordings, like a live Alison Kraus concert, where the band was in the front and the audience in the rear, and recordings like Beck's Sea Change, where instruments came at me from all directions, and each was presented with a natural tonality and sense of ease. But nothing equaled the sheer shock value of the start of the final movement of the new Channel Classics Mahler Symphony 1 in surround!