Perhaps most intriguing of all were the four ‘knobs’ inserted into the spike wells on the D10 transport. The top-loading design makes a conventional ReFract impossible to use. The individual dampers might have been a stop-gap solution, just for the show, but they were demonstrably effective.
With a whole range of do-dads available, from shelves to suit your rack, down to support cones and pucks in different heights, if you feel like tinkering there’s bound to be something to suit.
Moon Compass 491 Streamer/DAC/Pre-amp and 461 Stereo Amplifier
By Roy Gregory
If the market for middle ground audio separates is dead or dying, clearly nobody told Moon. They arrived in Vienna with a pair of impressively versatile, beautifully styled and extremely keenly priced products which promise amazing performance, overall capability and upgradability – all built into beautifully styled and finished casework. Real separates for the modern age, market and customer? Sure looks like it.
When Moon dubbed the Compass 491 a pre-amp, they weren’t kidding. Not only does it take its full-facilities brief seriously, it also incorporates thinking and technology developed for Moon’s more expensive models, including the MiND 2 streaming platform (for the widest possible streaming compatibility), a fully adjustable, user configurable MM/MC phono-stage (that’s far more serious than the throwaway so often included to fill out the feature count on a product like this), balanced and single-ended inputs and outputs and a large, full-colour display that stretches the width of the front-panel’s centre section. The 491 offers network connection for file replay and the stock array of legacy digital inputs. But there’s also more on the inside, with upgradable architecture (USB input for firmware, modular circuitry for hardware) and Moon’s hybrid linear-regulated, switching power supply technology, all encased in an elegantly updated and executed chassis that makes Moon’s pricier products look distinctly dated. It all adds up to a capable, versatile and beautifully built package and, for those that suggest that you can get a simple feature list at a fraction of the price from other manufacturers, the $6,500 is buying you serious engineering. Moon has always had a solid reputation for the musical integrity and high-value delivered by its products. That value quotient just got hiked by a significant notch.
But for me, as impressively versatile as the 491 pre-amp is, it’s the 461 stereo power amp that really caught my eye. I’ve always had fond memories of the Company’s 400M slimline mono-blocs and this looks suspiciously like their spiritual successor. Replacing the 330A, the 461 offers three times the current capability from a pair of independent power supplies based around the same, sophisticated hybrid technology employed to power the pre-amp. The MDCA distortion-cancelling topology has trickled down from the flagship North series, while the totally dual-mono configuration allows stereo (150Watts into 8Ω), bridged mono (450Watts into 8Ω) and bi-amped operation via a rear-panel switch. This looks like exactly the sort of modern, powerful, versatile, scalable amplifier that a number of companies have been flirting with, but at $5,000 it looks set to undercut the competition. With the same subtly styled casework and superb surface finish as the 491 (I’m afraid the images don’t do it justice) this is an amplifier – or better still, a pair of amplifiers – I’d dearly like to lay my hands on.
