The Renaissance Schaumburg played host to a number of announcements at AXPONA this year, of particular interest to me was PS Audio‘s room on the ground floor in the Journey/Creation suite right before you entered the Expo Hall. Why was I so interested you ask? Because PS Audio was introducing their brand-new line of Power Plants: the brute-force P20, with 2,000-watts of capacity, and 20-amp chop capability with an MSRP of $9,999 USD (Which I have in for review, and I have to say is an impressive improvement on what I already considered to be a benchmark audiophile product in the P10), the P15, with 1,700-watt capability, which builds upon the company’s aforementioned P10, and carries an MSRP of $7,499 USD (P10 currently under review, and being compared to the new P20), and the P12, with 1,250-watt capability, which comes in at $4,999 USD.
Also on display was a prototype of the latest addition to the Stellar line, the Stellar Power Plant 300, which Bill Leebens of PS Audio said would be launching this summer with a target price of $2,000 USD.
Active displays consisted of the global premiere of the next-generation Sprout100 playing through ELAC B6 speakers. The new Sprout100 carries an MSRP of $599 USD, and has doubled the power output of the original. Muscled up to 100 Watts/channel into four ohms, now including an oft-requested remote control.
There was also a Stellar-based system with a hot-rodded Mac Mini acting as source, feeding into a Stellar Gain Cell DAC (MSRP $1,699 USD), and Stellar M700 mono power amps (MSRP $2,998 USD/pair. The P12 Power Plant with DSD waveform generation was in charge of the go-juice in this set-up. Speakers were GoldenEar Triton Reference (MSRP $8,498 USD/pair) with cabling a mix of PS Audio/MG Audio Design. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time here, but what I did hear was what I’ve come to expect from the Boulder, Colorado-based company which is power, dynamics, linear smoothness across the frequency range, and most importantly – musicality. You actually just listen to the tunes, and don’t focus on the gear with PS Audio.
