LATEST ADDITIONS

One of the great pleasures of CES is discovering new music. People come from all over the world, and often bring surprising choices.

Such was the case when distributor/retailer GTT Audio's Bill Parish asked what I'd like to listen to, and I turned it back over to him. I'm not sure who made the choice, but between Parish and Mola Mola's Bruna Putzeys, who had walked over, a track from Christine and the Queens emerged. New to me, and I've already ordered the disc on Amazon.

First shown at Rocky Mountain in October, the soulution 760 DAC was again on hand and is now expected to ship at the end of January for startling $72,000. I say startling not only because this is pre-owned Aston Martin DB-9 territory but also because soulution tends to go with a minimilist esthetic with their casework. So the focus is on what's inside, not the fancy metal.

Making good on the prototype that Great Britain's Prism was showing last year, the new Callia DAC will finally be released for retail this month at $1,895. It will handle 32/394 PCM and double DSD via USB, optical and SPDIF inputs on back. There will be both balanced and unbalanced audio outputs with digital volume control along with low-impedance headphone output with sensitivity adjustments on the back panel.

Questyle's Bruce Ball was on hand to demo the R or Reference version of their player that John Atkinson just reviewed for Stereophile. You can check the review for details, but here are the basics: the QP1R is available now for $899 and essentially offers more internal memory and higher quality components than the regular QP1 ($599). Check out the photo below of all the parts inside the new player. Gorgeous!

The Pandora is a tube-based DAC with one USB and three SPDIF inputs, which also forms the basis for the Romulus CD player that I reviewed favorably a couple years back. Aesthetix has now updated both products with what they call Eclipse upgrades, which include StealthCap capacitors, improved chassis damping and isolation, and upgraded grounding design in the power supply. The Pandora DAC is now $12,000 with the Eclipse updates.

I first encountered Levinson's new No.526 preamplifier ($15,000) when I visited the Mark Levinson Engineering Facility on September 30, 2015. The company embargoed any mention of the product until CES, so I went over to the Harman exhibit at the Hard Rock Café to take photos and get information. I was greeted by Levinson's Director of Engineering, Todd Eichenbaum (left) and Jim Garrett, Director of Product Development (right). They walked me through the design of the No.526. Jim presented the inner circuitry as a layer cake, with identical digital control board and DAC digital boards to those in the No.585 Integrated amplifier that I had reviewed in December 2015.

Audio Research's Director of Marketing, Brandon Lauer, gave me a tour of the company's new value-oriented components, including the $16,000 GSi75 tubed amplifier rated at 75Wpc; $14,000 Reference Preamplifier 6; and the Reference Phono Preamplifier 3. Audio Research has replaced the KT-120 output tubes in all their amplifiers, including the GSi75, with the Sovtek KT-150 because of its superior reliability and longevity.