HE 2007

We got to talking to Bel Canto's John Stronczer and he pulled us into an empty conference room to talk. "I did something interesting," Stronczer said.

"I wondered if you always need to reclock digital signals when you distribute them, so I ran upsampled data into two S/PDIF outputs into two separate converter/amplifiers and measured the group delay over several days and got no drift. It sounded noticeably better for reasons I don't completely understand, but here's the part that startled me, if I used one channel only from one amp's output and then the other channel on the other one, we had major sonic improvements. I offer no explanation —yet. But it does have me thinking about digital distribution on an entire other level."

Isn't that getting kind of complicated?, we wondered.

"No," Stronczer was emphatic. "Analog connections are complicated, unpredictable, and prone to many ills. Getting rid of that can of worms is a no-bainer."

Put that way, we await future developments with bated breath.