LATEST ADDITIONS

Largish one-box streaming systems have taken off it seems, and I guess we shouldn't be surprised. First the Sonos and inexpensive Bluetooth systems took hold and then inevitably high-end audio saw an opportunity. Naim and Bluesound (among others) come to mind and we can now add Technics to the list.

Michael Fremer over at AnalogPlanet.com will eventually have more, including video, on this beauty, but here are some brief facts for Stereophile readers.

Hailing from the Champagne region of France, Davis Acoustics has been making speakers for over 30 years. The company produces OEM drive units that they sell to other manufacturers (including Goldmund and Avant Garde), but also sells their own extensive line of products.

The new $18,000 Pictor preamp is part of Constellation Audio's new Revelation Series, which is one step up from the company's entry-level Inspiration Series. Constellation's Irv Gross explained that the Pictor uses the same basic chassis as the Inspiration version, but has a separate power supply.

For John Atkinson and me, CES began with a trip to the Hi-Res Pavilion in the Las Vegas Convention Center's enormous Central Hall. John must have been a dog in a past lifetime, because his ability to find the booth in the middle of that huge glittering morass, which could be euphemistically characterized as high tech on steroids, smacked of a sixth sense.

Elac, which has been around for many more years than Andrew Jones has been designing speakers for them, has now released their Roon-friendly Discovery DS-S101-G music server ($1100), which allows you to play your own music files via an external HD or NAS…

With Mytek's Michal Jurewicz in the background, the company's Chebon Littlefield showed the new Clef high-resolution, MQA-equipped, Bluetooth-equipped, mobile USB DAC/headphone amplifier ($299).