LATEST ADDITIONS

No less than four new Nordost products received their first showing at Munich High End. The Valhalla 2 Tonearm Cable + ($5000), due by early June, is a monofilament design that contains four silver-plated solid-core copper conductors, in a twisted-pair arrangement that creates a left and right channel, each individually wrapped in a silver braided shield to eliminate crosstalk. This cable comes with two detachable silver-plated ground whips designed to enhance grounding and eliminate hum.

As someone accustomed to thinking of Auralic components as little boxes, the size and casing of their new Sirius G2 upsampling processor ($6000) suggests to me that the company is exploring new territory. It sure sounds that way from this product's description. Due late summer or early fall, the Sirius G2 is intended for placement between a streamer and DAC—any company's DAC—and is claimed to upgrade both "the processing power and the original performance envelope" of the DAC. Auralic's press literature says that by handling a DAC's data processing burden, the Sirius G2 "dramatically reduces the amount of distortion and jitter" of a DAC in its sweet spot, regardless of the incoming resolution of the file.

Just some tonearm sweetness from Thales. Photo taken through a window. Enjoy.