This review page is supported in part by the sponsors whose ad banners are displayed below

..." The U3 contributions were easiest apparent on the Burson HA-160D/DA-160 machines. Their earth/wood voicing of powerful bass, rich colors, high density and good flow leaves room for improvements along the metal/air axis of crisper transients, more upper-harmonic energy and more specific micro soundstage cues. In digital, lower jitter/noise seems to most obviously benefit the treble. That's exactly what the U3 did. It injected more light. Spiderwebby stuff of piano decays, bowed string action, venue reflections, wasted air rushes on wood winds and performer auras stepped up and the perception of detail and finesse increased. Space became more audible. Releasing more top-end energy also served cymbals and transient incisiveness in general. It's fair to think of the U3 as a bit of a blood thinner and accelerator like a shot of caffeine. It strips away fine layers of sluggishness and opacity. More detail and dimensionality follow. Articulation refines..."
..."a a friend put it, "the CEntrance is very matter of fact." Indeed. And it really should be about the facts and nothing but. With upscale hifi the facts simply often turn out to have multiple layers or 'hidden meanings' which give them greater context and completeness. Here I'm not talking about the silly but mythical artists' intention as though anyone could really know what that was. I'm talking about what occurs acoustically around and between the performers in the recorded space. More of that enriches the timbres. It also makes the presentation bigger and denser. Take these sentences. Mary walks her dog. Mary walks her nervous dog. Mary walks her nervous dog under an ominous sky. The first sentence has all the facts relevant for a police statement. The last paints a more complete moody picture for a psychologist looking for meaning. Music and mood are inextricably intertwined. The pure music facts are just tones in proper amplitude and time. The mood facts need more subliminal tertiary data. That in essence was the difference between Eximus and CEntrance..."

"...During the show Mike and Nikos enjoyed themselves playing music and explaining how the Pnoe came to be whilst meeting for the first time various industry people like Devialet’s Manuel de la Fuente and Siltech’s Edwin van der Kley. The spot Arcadian occupied was smack in the main exhibit pathway so attendees could not avoid passing by. Upon noticing the Pnoe everyone reacted in a physical way. Men came up to the horns and ‘studied’ the material by knocking on the horn, looking inside the mouth and at the back. Women could not avoid smiling. The smooth, organic and definitely erotic shapes appeared to them very attractive. Who would have imagined huge loudspeakers to have such an effect?..."
"... The miking of this performance is incredible. There is an uncanny balance of the immediacy of the band members spread across the stage, crystal clear miking of Benny and other soloists and a wide-eyed and exuberant audience in the background. On Volume 2 side 1, Benny does a number called Gershwin Medley. Towards the end the whole band starts to jam with the drum set just belting it out while Benny wails away. The energy can only be described as spine-tingling. At the end the audience goes completely wild. Listening to this through the Benz LP-S ranks as one of the most memorable experiences of my entire listening career..."

"...Here is where the asynchronous vs. adaptive argument breaks down. In either of the two clocking schemes, jitter is present during transmission. It's inevitable and okay if properly cleaned up prior to D/A conversion where it matters most. Neither clocking scheme is superior. Both are capable of performing well if you know how to reassemble the bits prior to the DAC. How do you actually do that? There are many ways. The oldest and simplest is buffering. Irregular data comes in, regular data goes out. The most important part is to make sure that samples leaving the buffer on the way to the DAC are clocked accurately. DACport employs JitterGuard™, a proprietary two-stage clock management system that does just that. It cleans up the jitter on the USB bus so that samples are virtually jitter-free at the D/A conversion point..."

Enlarge!