Australian HiFi – July 2019

Australian Hi-Fi 49

hIGh End 2018

Brinkman showed its new Voltaire integrated amplifier, a

300wpc hybrid valve design rated at 300-watts into 2Ω.

It also showed its Taurus direct-drive turntable, which

represents the next step up from its Bardot and derives

its design from the Balance turntable.

ChordElectronicsshowedtwonewUltimamonob-

locs. 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 for

£18,360. It also showed its new Huei phono stage.

The next firmware update for all Melco
music servers will include SongKong software
that uses multiple resources for metadata and
can be customised to suit different require-
ments and theoretically tidy up any music
library from the front panel of a Melco. They
are also changing the server software from
Twonky to MinimServer, which is also savvy
to the differing requirements of classical and
can sort by work, orchestra and composer
among other variations. The more obvious
news is that all of Melco’s servers are now
available in black.
Kondo (Audio Note Japan) specialises in
valve electronics that in the case of power
amps have always had exposed valves, the
new Melius power amplifier is bucking that
trend with a more conventional enclosed

case. It has a solid-state power supply with an

EL34 push-pull output stage and an output

of 32-watts per channel; it also uses a new

generation of Kondo capacitors said to be

very close to the best they make. Price will be

in the region of $38,000. Kondo also showed

the M7 Heritage which is a variation on one

of its best-loved preamplifiers but with a big-

ger power supply and onboard phono stage.

It has two phono inputs and both balanced

and SE inputs, but no price at the time of

writing.

Engineer Todd Eichenbaum was on hand

to say something about the Mark Levinson

No.5101 SACD player/streamer launched

at High End 2019. All four digit Mark

Levinson components are entry-level

by their standards and the No.5101 is

therefore the most affordable digital source

in the range at $US5,500. It’s fully featured

with wired/wireless streaming using the

Arcam Music Live control app (they’re in the

same group), digital inputs and a suspended

slot-loading disc drive. There are also two

new integrated amplifiers in the line, the

5802 ($US7,000) has only digital inputs but

is a Class-A/B design with 125-watts of power,