Classe's New CP-800 Pre-amp/DAC. Impressions?

We had a demo in the store for a few days when the rep was in town. It really is an amazing piece! And for $5500? Come on...that is a ridiculously good price. Classe says it is the best sounding preamp they have ever made. And support for Airplay is coming soon. ;)

Would be interesting to audition this new CP-800 and compare it with the McIntosh C48 and C50.

I had a prototype to play with for a couple of weeks a month or two ago. A production unit is being shipped to me on Monday. I'm very anxious to see both the performance and the features. My impression of the preamp function was extremely good. I want to spend some time with the DAC and get a better feel for it. In terms of design it is fairly unique and certainly has great potential. My present USB DAC is 5k, same as this whole piece.

Oh, obviously I'm a dealer. I think consumer pieces will be shipping very soon. A couple of software items to tidy up and then it's ready. Mine won't have Zone 2 or EQ until I get the new upload.

It suppose to have digital cross over. Is the cross over done before the signal gets converted to analogue or does it convert the anologue signal produced by the DAC chip back to digital then crossed over back to analogue? Am I making sense?

It would make no sense to use the output of the DA if one is going to reconvert for digital processing. I think Classe (Alan Clark) is smart enough to know that.

Kal