"Everything you see on this turntable is made out of material used to make the instruments in the orchestra," notes Pro-Ject president Heinz Lichtenegger. The tonearm lift connected to the headshell is an actual "key" from a clarinet, the control buttons are real flute parts and the turntable plinth is made of the same brass used for trumpets. And of course the wooden case…
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Since they are based in Vienna, Austria, Pro-Ject decided to commemorate the Vienna Philharmonic's 175th birthday by creating a bespoke limited edition (175 units made of course) turntable, priced around $8,000-9,000.
Pro-Ject has launched several new models of turntables this year intended for the budget conscious market. Company president Heinz Lichtenegger explained that after helping to kick-start the analog resurgence, they introduced the new entry level models in response to "analog transitioning to a feature-driven market dominated by Chinese brands" bringing out ever cheaper all-in-one feature-laden products.
Pro-Ject has decided to offer specific features in a family of different budget 'tables so you can get exactly what you need without money going to features you won't use. The…
Pennsylvania-based distributor/exporter Dyson Lai proudly presented the gorgeous new TPC-1HP tube preamp from Seattle, Washington-based Increcable Acoustic Lab. Retail will be $6,000 when the preamp is released in the next couple months.
Lai explained that the preamp features a separate tube-regulated power supply (the chassis on the left), two output transformers on the main chassis, and a dedicated headphone amplification section. All Increcable products are point-to-point wired by hand, with no circuit boards used.
As far as I know, Stereophile has yet to review any of the…
Thanks to automated manufacturing, Audeze has produced its first "affordable" in-ear phones, the iSine LX ($199), currently sold via their website. As explained by Audeze COO Sankar Thiagasamudram, the company's far more expensive LCD-i4ear phones have much thinner diaphragms, as thin as a white blood cell, and need amplifiers to drive. The iSine LX also works with Audeze's free plug-ins that were designed for professional mixing and recording digital audio workstations that use Pro Tools and other programs on Windows and Mac platforms.
With Warner, Universal Music Group, and Sony as major shareholders/partners, it's no wonder that MQA figured so prominently in the CES Hi-res pavilion. MQA wasn't everywhere—Qobuz hasn't seen fit to embrace it as yet, and the majority of audio manufacturers have yet to get on board—but it has certainly come to mobile phones and players.
The latest portable playback device to incorporate MQA decoding and playback is the Activo CT10 from Astell&Kern's parent company, Iriver. This device uses Astell&Kern's new Teraton sound module, which can handle up to 24/192 PCM (with or without…
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). Shipping in February, the Clef joins the Brooklyn DAC+ ($2195—review to come from Jim Austin) and the Brooklyn power amp as the latest products in the company's line.
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. The Discovery comes with a subscription to Tidal, and a forthcoming firmware update will include Sonos integration.
It may look like any other smartphone, but LG's V30, shown by Vanessa Marrero, is smart enough to incorporate ESS's Sabre 32-bit Quad DAC. The V30 can record at PCM sample rates up to 24/192—note that the sign in the photo is incorrect—and play back MQA and FLAC high-resolution files. You can even take selfies while zoning out to hi-rez music (but hopefully not while navigating traffic in ridiculously congested Las Vegas).
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.
Marc Finer (left in photo), President of the Digital Entertainment Group and Executive Producer of the Hi-Res Pavilion, began a well-attended press conference by declaring, "This isn't about Hollywood; it's about music, and the…
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. There is also the option of adding a DC filter between the power supply and the preamp, which Gross says lowers the noise, for $6,000 extra.
There is also a matching power amplifier called the Taurus, which comes in both a stereo or mono configuration (stereo version shown in the photo…