Aussie Conductor the Third – Burson's latest "took over three years to design" and is a 7.5wpc class A DAC, headphone amp and preamp in one chassis [$1'800 US, introductory price $1'399 incl. shipping). Digital-to-analog conversion is via dual ESS9038 chips preceded by an XMOS USB transceiver with German Thesycon driver. File acceptance is up to 32/786 PCM and DSD 512. Bluetooth is version 5.0. The power supply with 170kHz switching frequency shows up 5 times to independently feed the display, housekeeping chores, DAC and left/right analog outputs. There's an OLED display and metal remote control. Four V6 discrete Burson op-amps in the output stage can be rolled for other Burson versions to change sonic flavor to taste. The display layout can be adjusted from horizontal to vertical as shown. "The C3 Reference drives any headphone under the sun."
