Music Matters at Listen Up

On Thursday, May 26^th I went to Listen Up’s
Boulder store to see some of the latest gear from B&W, Classe Audio, Prima
Luna, Sonus Faber, Musical Fidelity, GoldenEar Technology, Peachtree Audio,
Project, Sim Audio, and McIntosh at the Music Matters Open House. My old boss,
Stereophile’s John Atkinson was the featured speaker for the evening. It was a very entertaining evening

Somewhere between sixty to seventy people with a crowd mix
that was on the older and maler side of diverse were present by the time John
began his first of two presentations for the evening. Anyone who didn’t attend
his first session could choose one of three other rooms to hear a wide range of
very good sounding systems. I was especially impressed by what I heard from Sandy
Gross’ GoldenEar speaker in the Musical Fidelity demo. The GoldenEar speaker
projected an image that filled the room with the environment of the original
recording. The speakers themselves simply disappeared.

Musical Fidelity’s Lee Sosby also showed me a working
prototype of their next “music server” or digital hub product for handling a
wide variety of digital sources and routing them to a DAC. It’s so new that no technical
info was available yet.

Another product debut was from Peachtree Audio. Their new
DACit is sort of a scaled down iDac. It will look perfect nestled next to a Mac
Mini. Notice how the MacBook Pro computer dwarfs it in the photograph. 

Specifications from Peachtree are as follows, “The
DaciT features three digital inputs, USB, Optical, and Coaxial.  All three
inputs take advantage of the 24/192 ESS Sabre 9022 DAC chip with patented
jitter reduction technology.  An all metal chassis houses the
electronics.  A remote control with discreet input selection is included
with the DaciT.  The DaciT will be available June 2011 from all Peachtree
Audio resellers for $449.”