Audio displays are excellent for listening to new factors and systems—of system they are. But they can also be good for encountering new strategies. About two times at AXPONA, I encountered the exact same curious notion from two suppliers.

Initial arrived the Aurender suite, with a passive exhibit of quite a few of the company’s server/streamers and server/streamer DACs, which vary in rate from $6000 (in addition the price tag of storage) for the A 200, just one of a few new A-series styles (“A” denotes Aurender products and solutions with an onboard DAC) up to $24,000 for the N30SA, Aurender’s flagship server/streamer that will come with 8TB of onboard SSD storage additionally an expansion slot if you require even far more storage.

All the DACs in Aurender’s A-sequence products and solutions can totally decode MQA in other respects, they change as you go up the line. The DAC in the flagship A30, for occasion, is dual mono and utilizes the AKM AK4497 chipset, with discrete linear energy supplies. The A30 has a defeatable quantity command, so you can use it with or with out a preamplifier, and a developed-in course-A headphone amplifier.

Audio servers are pcs pretty much by definition, yet personal computers are significantly from perfect for significant-stop audio: They’re much too electronically noisy. Aurender’s software program engineer Eric Shim, who I spoke to for the duration of my pay a visit to, instructed me that Aurender arrives at server design from a non-computer point of look at. Aurender is very anxious about electronic noise and noise reduction, such as in the energy source.

As I examined many Aurender devices on exhibit by transparent plexiglass covers. Shim explained one, the $24,000 W20SE, as a “legacy product” it has been in the lineup in a single kind or yet another for a long time but stays well-known with consumers it it was current to “SE” standing 3 or 4 many years back. One particular matter that sets it apart from the company’s far more latest goods is its battery-based mostly power source.

Sitting up coming to the W20SE on the static show was 1 of the firm’s newer streamer/servers—I’m not positive which one particular it was, potentially the $6000 (furthermore storage) N200—in which the electricity supply appeared completely diverse. Listed here, Aurender was applying an A/C supply, reflecting the firm’s hottest thinking. Pointing to the battery offer in the W20SE, Shim explained, “that’s what you want if you happen to be genuinely into nuance.” Then, pointing to the newer, A/C source, he claimed, “that’s the one for ultimate dynamics and slam.” Tends to make feeling, I thought to myself batteries, following all, are extremely quiet—low noise—but battery materials normally are not able to accomplish the high rail voltage that an A/C supply can supply.

I experienced remaining the place and was going for walks down the hallway when it hit me: Hold out a minute: People had been pure digital parts. Their only output is a electronic sign, regardless of whether it is AES3 to USB: no analog output stage in sight. How could the electrical power supply have that variety of impression on the audio of a purely digital machine?
The adhering to early morning, just before the opening bell, I met with the individuals from CAD (Computer system Audio Style). I try to remember fairly clearly the time I put in in the CAD room at the 2019 AXPONA I thought that place (with Trilogy electronics and Verity loudspeakers) was among the the pretty finest in display.

CAD was one particular of various firms I listened to about that knowledgeable shipping and delivery-related glitches. The Vivid Audio S12 loudspeakers that they intended to exhibit arrived shattered, rattling all over inside their containers. Late Thursday prior to the Friday opening, a great deal of the rest of their equipment—including the Aesthetix Mimas built-in amplifier—had not arrived. (Aesthetix’s Jim White carried a 2nd sample with him on the aircraft. The unique cargo arrived in time—barely—and they finished up with two.)

CAD is 1 of the more authentic organizations on the hi-fi scene, run by CEO and main designer Scott Berry, an American expatriate living in England, with his spouse Isabel. A single of CAD’s principal products is the TDA1543 Mk.II DAC ($12,000), which takes advantage of 16-little bit, 1543 DAC chips—16 of them. (Those well-informed about digital-audio historical past will acknowledge “1543” as the designation of a DAC chip introduced in 1989, the Philips TDA-1543.) A Mk.III version of the DAC is forthcoming look for a assessment in Stereophile in the following couple months.

CAD also gives a server—the CAT, which stands for CAD Audio Transportation ($17,500)—which features SSD storage, automates CD ripping, and outputs facts in excess of USB only.

Wherever some server firms are utilizing additional computing energy for a lot more upsampling and DSP capabilities, CAD has gone in the other way, aiming to make a server that does as tiny computing as probable in order to cut down the total of sound radiated and transmitted in excess of electrical connections, including, primarily, the floor line. Which is why CAD’s other items are a specifically grounded USB cable (Berry was exhibiting a new model, value not nevertheless identified but almost certainly all around $1500 for every meter) and quite a few sizes of “Ground Controls), which are passive gadgets for absorbing noise on the floor line. Floor Controls selection in value from $2250 to $29,500. See Michael Fremer’s procedure of the Ground Controls listed here.

To return to the concept of this submit: As I chatted with Scott and Isabel, anything he reported struck a chord. He was discussing the result of the new linear electric power supply CAD has just released, now supplied with the CAT server and obtainable as an up grade to former customers, on the seem the server generates. The new electricity provide is produced in the exact same facility that generates Constellation Audio amplifiers. “It is remarkable how much variance it would make,” Isabel stated. “It always surprises me,” additional Scott, “how in a totally electronic item does quite identical points as it would do in an analog device—pace, rhythm, timing—even although there is certainly only USB coming out of that there is certainly no analog.”

So there it is: The exact issue created independently by two individuals from various organizations (Aurender and CAD) around the class of 24 hours: A power supply update on a purely electronic part can reach considerably what it would in an analog unit.

Cynics, of course, will be cynical. All those with open up minds will go out and listen for by themselves.