Virtue Audio is back!

Da silver surfer Sab 28 Dic 2013 - 16:31

Ma cos'è successo a Virtue Audio? si domandava in un vecchio thread Silver Black.

A distanza di un annetto da quel post, il buon Seth Krinsky ha pensato bene di dare sue notizie via posta elettronica aggiornandoci sul suo operato.

Qui di seguito la mail appena ricevuta riguardante tutte le novità Virtue Audio...

Customers, friends, and future customers:

Right now, I’m now tapping my toes to the new ONE.3 and WOW, it sounds awesome. I’ve waited a long time to write this email so be prepared to read a while ;-)

I will be back online Saturday night so please excuse delays in replying to your questions.

The new units borrow layout concepts from Sensation so they have slightly less distortion and are more tolerant of FM/AM radio interference. They also use our second-generation Propeller Posts, a new pre-amplifier buffer, and microprocessor to eliminate pops and handle exceptions gracefully. Stepped potentiometer? Gone. But what I like most about them is what I’ve always liked about them: their musicality which is as expressive as ever.

It’s no secret that development has been rough going. I had a dream of supporting dealers and that meant a higher price and more features. Basically, we lost our way and stumbled along the way. But I didn’t give up and we’re on our way.

Last week I wired a big check to our metal factory. The tooling has been wheeled out of storage and is being positioned in jigs. Metal will flow, be cut, de-greased, de-burred and sandblasted. Beautiful bones will come to life and be shipped over to my OEM for final assembly.

To raise enough cash to finish production, I’m opening pre-orders now, with a very special offer exclusively for those of you who have bought from us or joined our mailing list.

The first batch to ship will be 120 “classic” ONE.3 units built on top of metal-work that we have in storage. We can make those quicker and they’re absolutely incredible. To make sure they sell out fast, you can pre-order one today for $350 with low, fixed-price shipping: $15 local, $30 international. I will review orders and if you are in the USA and the shopping cart charges you $30 for shipping, the difference will be refunded.

As an added bonus, orders processed before Monday morning, December 30th, will include a 2ft pair of Nirvana interconnect cables free (custom made by Jason!). Expect delivery in March 2014.

But wait, there’s more.

The second batch (the one for which new metal production has begun) will be built on our new iMake platform. For starters, it will have a more customizable pre-amp section and a great big hole on the back of the unit. What this means is that every variation will have a custom back plate that screws in simply. If you change around the input and output fixtures, you just need to replace a small aluminum plate which in some cases we can ship with connectors pre-attached.

So let’s say you buy the ONE.3 Tripath amp and then decide that what you really want is the more powerful IRS2092 blade or our new tube pre-amplifier. Rather than buying a whole new amp, you can buy the iMake module (“the guts”) which will ship with a new back-plate. You’ll unscrew the old back plate, unscrew the amplifier board and unhook a few wires. Then, you will take the board, screw it in and fasten up the back plate. Then you can keep the Tripath amp board for a DIY project, 3D print your own enclosure, or sell the board on a marketplace we will create. Cool, right?

What if you want to change out the pre-amplifier? You can. What if you want to put a Twisted Pear DAC or miniDSP or SURE Blue Tooth module (among thousands of other pre-made daughter-boards) inside? You can. What if you want to reprogram the micro-processor to support your favorite I2C peripherals? You can.

Although all of the units will look the same from the front, they will be what you want them to be inside. We’re going to be doing “semi home-made” right. We were the first to offer “BUILD YOUR OWN” amps with our Sensation product and perhaps the first to offer this new level of upgradeability with the “iMake” platform. There’s more to the platform that I will share closer to ship date. You’re going to love it.

So the second batch of ONE.3s will have more features and will be built on the iMake platform. The first one to ship will include a Tenor 24/96 USB daughter board (analog inputs also provided), DIY scratch area (inside), dual headphone outputs (one high and one low power), and user upgradeable +/-12v headphone pre-amplifier op-amps.

We will start with 500 of these units and hope to sell these out quickly. You can pre-order one today for $450 with fixed, low-price shipping.

Orders processed before Monday morning, December 30th, will include a 2ft pair of Nirvana interconnect cables. Expect delivery in April 2014.

Here are some other iMake options that we have prototyped and will make when there is enough interest:

XMOS 24/192 USB daughter board

ICEPowerASX2-50 board adapter

IRS2092 power amplifier (requires +/- power supply)

Tube pre-amplifier

Transformer output DAC

More to be announced later…

Please email me with the subject line “iMAKE request: XXXXX” to vote for a particular daughter board. I will put a poll feature on the website next week.

Starting in 2014, payment will be by PayPal exclusively. We will not ship without seller protection, which requires a confirmed address with PayPal. If you decide to cancel your order after 30 days but before shipment, we will issue a refund MINUS the PayPal fee (nearly 4%), which they will not refund us.

Per completezza di informazione, all'interno della mail erano contenuti due link promozionali per il preordine delle referenze che per ovvi motivi ho deciso di rimuovere.

Nel caso siate interessati, consultate il sito.

Stay tuned...

Da Silver Black Ven 3 Gen 2014 - 19:54

Già, ricevuta anch'io l'email di Seth. Tenendo conto come va il Virtue.2 se il .3 è ancora un miglioramento non oso immaginare... So in love

https://store.virtueaudio.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=VRTU-IA-VAONE.3-PBF-1

Comunque è proprio fondamentale la PSU adottata, ci vuole almeno il 30v/130w.

Notevole poi che ci sia l'offerta iMake che strizza palesemente l'occhio al DIY. Ottima per tutti i DIYer incalliti del T-Forum!