John
From Michael Sallustro: “Allow me to introduce our company borg.audio GmbH. We design and manufacture unique and innovated high-resolution audio players, multiroom streamers, amplifiers & other quality devices. We have a full range of ultra-high quality audio devices with innovative functions not seen yet on the market. Please have a look: Borg.Audio. Just for you to know we always spell borg.audio in small letters – no capitals – and the name of the products also always in small letters.”
Sallustro and his business partner Christian Gunther’s talents with another kind of casework are likely to be more successful. This German company’s range of audio electronics come from another planet. The Planet Aesthetic Major.
Take, for example, Borg.Audio’s flagship amplifier (seen above and below) — a 50kg block with “6000 W power supply” called Edge: fully balanced Class A, switchable into Class A/B (Pricing TBA). Its enclosure isn’t ostentatious but, to these eyes, an exercise in cool understatement.
The Zoom (€18,000) is a pre-amplifier loaded like no other I’ve encountered to date: fully-balanced and dual mono with 256-step resistor ladder volume control, phono stage, ADC, ESS 9038PRO-powered D/A converter plus 5TB music server/streamer! Augmenting its balanced XLR and single-ended analogue inputs are a trio of coaxial inputs, 4 x HDMI inputs with audio extraction and an HDMI output for GUI display. On its retro-futurist fascia we spy digital VU meters:
The Zoom Stereo (€23,000) takes the best of the Zoom and Edge for a super-super-integrated amplifier that houses media server/streamer, phono stage, ADC and DAC, complete with HDMI in and outs. Also rolled into the deal is Borg.Audio’s auto-load impedance detection system that (presumably) ensures the right amount of power is delivered to the loudspeaker at the right time.
That auto-load detection system shows up again in the Float portable player (€3000) where a 2 x 1.5W headphone amplifier output follows (again) a 256-step resistor ladder volume control and an ESS Labs 9038PRO DAC dual mono implementation, all fed by a media player/streamer that plays from a pair of microSD slots or Tidal / Qobuz.
In an almost too-good-to-be-true feature set that could trouble product category leaders Astell&Kern and Sony, the Float additionally offers dual AMOLED display (for VU meters and cover art), analogue and optical inputs and a 10,000mA battery with wireless charging.
You can see these models – and more – in the flesh at Munich High-End this coming weekend: Hall 4 Stand R16. Resistance is futile.
Further information: borg.audio
