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Class A
Capable of producing the best…

A+

OMA K3: $363,000 including power supply and K3 tonearm
See Michael Fremer's review in this month's Analog Corner. (Vol.44 No.10)

SAT XD1: €150,000 without tonearm
This extraordinary and extraordinarily expensive Swedish turntable begins life as a Technics SP-10R direct-drive motor system, which is stripped down to a handful of essential components, reimagined, reengineered, and rebuilt to much higher mechanical standards. Mark Gomez focused on isolation from external disturbances, speed stability, rigidity, and vacuum hold-down. There are "pods" for…

A+

SAT CF1-09: €48,000
SAT CF1-12: €50,000
In 2018, after selling 70 of his original Swedish Analog Technologies Tonearms, designer Marc Gomez discontinued it and replaced it with two new tonearms. The more expensive, the CF1-09, is now the company's flagship. The CF1-09's tapered, hand-lapped, "naked"-carbon-fiber armtube has an effective length of 9" and incorporates a number of parts machined from solid stainless steel—including a new vertical bearing yoke that's far more massive than that of the original SAT arm and makes the CF1-09 too heavy for turntables…

A

Air Tight PC-1 Coda: $9500
Manufactured for Air Tight by Yoshio Matsudaira of My Sonic Lab, the PC-1 Coda MC cartridge has a very low impedance of 1.7 ohms and an output of 0.5mV, the latter higher than the moving coil norm. Its body is made from an alloy of aluminum, magnesium, and silicon, plated first in nickel and then in chrome. Compliance specs aren't supplied for the 12.7gm PC-1 Coda, but the tracking-force range is given as 2-2.2g; MF found the lower number insufficient and declared the cartridge's tracking capabilities only "moderately good" at…

A+

Auditorium 23 Hommage T1 & Hommage T2: both $4995 ★
Over twice the size and weight of the less expensive Standard transformer, the Class A+ Hommage T1, designed as a companion to Auditorium 23's Solovox loudspeaker, is a statement product. It has a textured-paint finish, attractive white-oak endcaps, and input and output resistances of 3 and 2530 ohms, respectively. The Hommage T1 shared the Standard's excellent timing, flow, and overall drama, but produced a much larger soundstage; and while the Audio Note AN-S8 was slightly richer, the Hommage T1…

AcousTech The Big Record Brush: $36.95
With grounding wire: $52.99
This large-handled brush has soft bristles of both natural hairs and conductive synthetic fibers, and makes dusting LPs nearly foolproof. The 5.5"-wide bristle area easily spans the width of any LP's grooved area. Version with ground wire ($52.99) does "a pretty effective job of dissipating static electricity," Mikey said. (Vol.31 No.9)

Acoustical Systems Arche 5D headshell, Regular: $695
Acoustical Systems Arche 5D headshell, Lite: $795
Acoustical Systems Arche 5D headshell,…

Editor's Note: SACD and DVD-A player ratings are based on how they sound with their respective hi-rez media, not CD.

A+

Antipodes K50: $15,000
See Jason Victor Serinus's review in this issue. (Vol.44 No.10)

Aurender N10: $8000 with 4TB storage ★
Designed in California and manufactured in South Korea, Aurender's N10 is a computer running a modified version of the open-source Linux operating system, and is dedicated to retrieving audio files from an external NAS drive, or a drive plugged into one of its USB ports, or its internal…

Editor's Note: The sound of any particular CD transport/digital processor combination will be dependent on the datalink used-see "Bits is Bits?" by Christopher Dunn and Malcolm Omar Hawksford, Stereophile, March 1996, Vol.19 No.3 (WWW). Unless mentioned, processors are limited to 32/44.1/48kHz sample rates. To be included in Class A+, a digital processor must be capable of handling DSD or 24/96 LPCM data.

A+

Benchmark Media Systems DAC3 HGC: $2199 ★
Benchmark's DAC3 HGC—the last three letters designate this as the audiophile version, with a…

A

Devialet Phantom I 108 dB: $2990 each (available in 2 finishes) ★
In a setting as idyllic as it was ideal, at least in a commercial sense—the samples were auditioned in an apartment on the rue des Ursulines in Paris, the city of their manufacture—Devialet's top-of-the-line Phantom powered speaker whetted JCA's appetite, and on returning home to his superior-sounding NYC apartment he requested review loaners. There, auditioned with Devialet's Tree stands ($375 each), Dialog dedicated router ($329), and Remote remote volume control ($149), a stereo…

A+

exaSound s88: $6500
See "Digital Processors."

A

exaSound Sigma Streamer: $750
To those who already own an exaSound DAC, the exaSound Sigma Streamer offers an affordable and tidy alternative to the company's PlayPoint digital-source components. The simple Sigma, which streams via wired or wireless LAN, is a Roon-ready endpoint, can function as an HQPlayer network audio adapter, and is compatible with UPnP, OpenHome, and AirPlay protocols. It supports PCM to 32/384, DSD to DSD256, and MQA (full unfold). KR found the Sigma to be…