CES 2016

Aesthetix's Jim White (above right), along with the company's distributor, Garth Leerer of Musical Surroundings, showed off the new, Aesthetix Saturn Atlas Eclipse monoblock amplifier ($25,000/pair). An evolution of a product first launched 10 years ago, the Saturn Atlas Eclipse sports super-matched output devices that effectively lower noise by 40%. Leerer claims that due to careful matching, even the amp's new, less costly stereo version ($15,000) outperforms the former unmatched monoblock version.

In addition, the Aesthetix Saturn Atlas Eclipse monoblock amplifier offers StealthCap capacitors, better mechanical chassis isolation in the form of shock-mounted transistors, and improved power supply grounding via a star ground. All this amounts to monoblocks that output 350Wpc into 8 ohms and 550 into 4, and can handle loads up to 2 ohms. Note that you can get the amp with either a Saturn- or Jupiter-style chassis to match whichever Aesthetix preamp you have.

Sitting next to the Saturn Atlas Eclipse monoblock was the Aesthetix Metis linestage preamp ($25,000). Alas, both displays were passive, so a report on their synergistic magic will have to wait for another time.