CES 2018

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).

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…

Sharing the room with Davis Acoustics and also from France, Esprit has been in business for 20 years and produces a complete line of handmade audio cables. The company has only been at CES for two years however and until now has not had much distribution outside its home region.

Michael Fremer over at AnalogPlanet.com will eventually have more, including video, on this beauty, but here are some brief facts for Stereophile readers.

Earlier this year Anthem launched the STR Integrated Amplifier in a return to 2-channel, and representative Devin Zell explained that they have expanded that line this year with a 2-channel preamp and dedicated amplifier. The STR preamp goes for $4,000 and the STR amplifier goes for $6,000 and are available now.

Just so happens the first room I entered this year featured the Wolf Cinema projector in a full-on home theater demo. Curiously, like a fish out of water, Wolf sets up their video equipment at the Venetian high-end audio stomping grounds year after year with an impressive big screen presentation. It must work for them! But as I looked around in the dark, I found Dynaudio's Brian Kjaer also present. This is Dynaudio's only CES showing this year, as the audio provider for the Wolf Cinema room.

Heinz Lichtenegger, Pro-Ject president starts by exclaiming "it's a revolution at the price point!" Built around the ESS Sabre ESS9038 dual DAC chip, the $399 S2 also has full MQA processing, up to DSD 512 and 24/192 PCM, 7 selectable digital filters, jitter claimed as low as 100 femtoseconds, and headphone jack. "It's the lowest jitter you can measure," says Lichtenegger.