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RE: We'll be making one soon

> > What is going to be retail price for the new dac? < <

Not really sure. The original plan was to make a super-simple, inexpensive box for around $1,000. But then "featuritis" has been creeping in. Not the normal "feauritis" as far as whistle and bells, but extra circuitry that will make it sound better.

All I've been doing for the last two months has been listening to different digital filters. I was hoping that non-oversampling would sound great, because that would keep the price down. But while it did some things well, it didn't really pass muster compared to some other approaches. The next best thing would have been if the digital filter built into the DAC chip sounded good, as it basically is thrown in for free. But it turns out that it has some definite sonic limitations.

When we build a product, we end up building the way we would want it to be if we were buying it. So we are going to include a custom-programmed FPGA digital filter. We'll also include opto-isolators so that the noise inside your computer won't contaminate your entire audio system. And that will drive up the price.

It's too early to even give anything more than a rough guess. But right now my rough guess is that it will be under $2,000.

> > And when is the planned product release date? < <

If everything goes perfectly, we should be shipping by March. But don't hold me to that. At this point, I think we've nailed down all of the critical issues. We have a new chassis design, as this will be the first product in a new series. We will be licensing Wavelength's special technology that puts the DAC in charge of the computer for radically reduced jitter. We've got the digital filter figured out. The isolation can come pretty much straight from what we had developed for our DVD player ten years ago. So now all that's left is a couple of choices regarding the analog stage.

But that said, there's always something that can go wrong and delay the plan. For example, we were supposed to be shipping the DPS turntable with our power supply two months ago. But when we thought everything was all finished, we tried it at 45 rpm and found out that it didn't work right. In retrospect it all made sense -- the motor is an inductive load and has different current and voltage requirements for different speeds. But it required a complete re-design of the power supply. It's just that we had never built a power supply for a 3-phase synchronous motor before -- so there's always something new to learn. If all goes well, we'll be shipping that by the end of the year.

That's one thing about us. Everything we do is usually pretty darned good. But it isn't always done "on time". It just gets done when everything is finished. Since we always do something that's never been done before on each of our products, it tends to take longer than just stuffing the same old circuit into a new box and presenting "this year's new models".

> > By the way, the CX-5e and the top of line Ayre preamp & monoblocks and Sonus Faber Stradivari Homage system I heard was one of the best system I had ever experienced. That definately changed my perception about solid state can never sound as good as tube! < <

Thanks for the kind words. We're finally reaching our goal -- making solid state gear that offers the same musicality as tubes. It's taken us 15 years to get there, but it's finally happening. We're stubborn, and we don't give up until the job's finished.

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  Kimber Kable  

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