Jon Iverson

On the front is a slot for loading or playing music from discs and a clever flush-mount receptacle for putting your iPod Touch which then acts as a touch controller and display. There is also a free iPad app.

All the usual inputs and outputs are included: AES/EBU, SPDIF, USB, Ethernet, WiFi and HDMI which supports a full video player. The HDR 6D handles a wide variety of file formats up to 32bit/384kHz (on the 6DA) and the company says that sound quality is enhanced by a process that entirely caches each track for playback. Also included is upsampled Web Radio and multi-room playback.

Shown above is the heart of their new product line, the L1000 File Player, which is controlled by either a wireless iPhone/iPad type device or networked web browser and runs Linux. The company says there are no moving parts in the L1000 which boots from a Solid State Drive and has an AES/EBU output for connecting to your DAC. The L1000 Outputs up to 24 bit/192kHz and can handle FLAC, WAF and AIFF files. Price is around $3,000.

They had the first option on hand, which includes a 40GB solid state OCZ Vertex drive to replace the factory drive, Amarra 2.1.1 installed and set up, 8GB RAM installed, cables from Most Beautiful Sound (they cut the power lead in the Firewire 800 cable) and a power cable from PI Audio Group.

Also included, but missing from the photo above due to shipping issues, is a PI Audio Mac Sandwich clamp system. Dayton Audio Brass Speaker Spikes (shown in black) complete the package which retails for $2,995 through the end of this month. All you need to add are external hard drives, a monitor (or iPad/iPod control device) and music.

Under the HD2 is the $1,200 HD10 which offers USB, coax and optical digital inputs as well as both balanced and unbalanced outputs. To the left of the HD10 is the newest DAC from Hegel, the HD20, which in addition to the inputs and 24/192 conversion found on the HD10, offers remote control and display for $2,000.

What we do know, however, is that it will have 6 zone outputs each with S/PDIF, SpeakerLink, and fixed and variable analog outputs. Each zone also has an independent clock which means different sample rates are possible at the various outputs. The multiple zone clocks are also slaved to a central clock, keeping the multiple zones in synch in case sound bleeds from one to another.

It has both balanced and unbalanced outputs in addition to Meridian SpeakerLink.