OVERVIEW
When you form a “dream team” of the world's best audio engineers and industrial designers, then give them carte blanche to create the finest audio components ever made, you end up with products that rise above all others in their category. Case in point: the Altair line stage. The Altair delivers unprecedented sound quality with convenience, versatility, and elegance no other high-end preamp can match.
The Altair incorporates advanced engineering found in no competing product-yet despite its sophistication, its signal path is extremely pure. For example, our engineers replaced the usual mechanical volume control potentiometer with optically controlled resistors that can be adjusted to an accuracy of 0.1 dB. These resistors have no electrical connection with the signals controlling them, so they are as sonically benign as an ordinary resistor-and far more sonically transparent than any potentiometer could be.
The Line Stage Gain Module that forms the core of the Altair represents an almost miraculous engineering achievement. This fully balanced circuit delivers a practically perfect balance between the positive and negative halves of the audio signal, for superior sonic detail and musicality. The circuit uses FETs hand-selected from our “private stock” of the quietest FETs we have ever found (a part that, incidentally, was recently discontinued-so it is highly unlikely to be found in competing products).
The circuits inside the Altair are isolated from external vibration and interference, much like rafts floating on a calm lake on a windless day. The dual-mono circuit boards are mounted on a platform that sandwiches an isolating polymer sheet between sheets of stainless steel. The entire assembly floats on an elastomeric suspension that damps external vibration. A machined, solid aluminum enclosure with 8.2mm walls blocks electromagnetic interference.
Our wireless Pyxis system controller provides the ideal interface for the Altair. Its rotary volume and source controls provide a traditional feel, while its full-color 432 x 230-pixel touchscreen display accesses such advanced features as input naming, minimum and maximum gain settings for each input, and volume control resolution. A set of buttons mounted under the front panel provides additional control options for basic functions, including volume and source selection.
A separate chassis houses the triple-transformer power supply, which delivers isolated power feeds to left and right channels and the control circuitry.
The Altair produces something previously thought impossible: the natural timbre and warmth of the finest tube preamps, with precision, dynamics, and purity matched by no other solid-state preamp. One must hear it-and use it-to appreciate how revolutionary the Altair really is.
