Munich 2019

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.

According to the company's Alex Brinkman, the Sirius G2 has a dual processing structure. Its Proteus G2 processing platform is FPGA-based; if used with a chip-based DAC, "it bypasses the processing of the DAC itself," Brinkman said. The unit can output PCM up to 32/384 and DSD up to 512 on multiple outputs; it can even output DSD over USB.

Shown with its cover off, Auralic's Altair G1 ($2499), also available in later summer or early fall, replaces the previous Altair DAC/streamer. This baby uses the company's new Tesla G1 processing platform and ESS Sabre 9038 Q2M chip, and offers more sophisticated processing than previously available.