SHOW REPORT
48 AustralianHi-Fi http://www.aushifi.com
Chord Electronics has used the dual
feed-forward error correction topology and
ultra high-speed switching power supply tech
developed for its range-topping Ultima power
amplifier in two new Ultima monoblocs. The
Ultima 3 is a 480-watt design with Chord’s
usual options on side panels for £11,000 per
channel, while the Ultima 2 ups the power
to 750-watts and the weight to 86kg for an
£18,360 asking price.
Chord isn’t just about digital sources,
it has produced a new phono stage called
Huei (apparently the traditional spelling has
already been taken by a helicopter compa-
ny!). This is microprocessor controlled and
comes in a compact ‘Qutest-style’ case. It
offers variable loading, a rumble filter and theround switches indicate status with different
colours. It’s yours for £990.
Michi is an aspirational sub-brand that
Rotel created in the nineties, and at an off-
show site a new range of Michi was being
used with Bowers & Wilkins 800D D3 speak-
ers in a room that was created for looks rather
than sound. The new Michi amplifiers have
OLED displays including power meters on the
mono and stereo power amps. The P5 pream-
plifier has digital and analogue inputs plus
Bluetooth and will sell for between $US3,500
and $US4,000. The S5 stereo power amplifier
is specified with an output of 500-watts per
channel for $US6,500 and the M8 monoblocclaims 800-watts for $US6,500 per channel.
So lots of bang for big bucks.
PMC took the opportunity to show what
Dolby Atmos is capable of if you pull out all
the stops and play some Miles. The company
set up 19.2 channels including Wafers for the
height channels and three of the big Fenestria
floorstanders at the front and played brand
new, unreleased Atmos mixes of Miles Davis’
Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain that
sounded extraordinary to say the least. The
engineers that had made these mixes ex-
plained how they set up Atmos mics in a live
room and played the original three-channel
mix through stereo speakers pointed at a glass
wall and captured the reflected sound on
multiple mics. PMC brought over Miles Da-
vis’ son Erin and his drummer Vince Wilburn
to enthuse about the results, they did a good
job but it can’t have been hard.
Melco’s Alan Ainslie has a bee in his
bonnet about metadata. Alan is a classical
music lover and has never been happy about
the way that most network servers deal with
metadata for music that doesn’t follow the
standard artist/album/track protocol. Audio Solutions from Lithuania showed the most
ambitious speaker it has built to date. The Virtuoso has
a cabinet within a cabinet for maximum stiffness and
three crossover settings to suit different rooms. Au-
dio-Technica introduced a new range of MC cartridges. The Auralic Sirius is designed to enhance the perfor-
mance of any DAC by upsampling to a sample rate that
hits the ‘sweet spot’ of the particular converter being
used. It can output signals up to 384kHz and DSD512
and convert PCM to DSD or vice versa for £5,499.PMC took the
opportunity to show
what Dolby Atmos is
capable of if you pull out
all the stops and play
some Miles