Baetis AES Upgrade Now Available

The following is a press release issued by Baetis Audio.

November 16, 2015 – Baetis Audio, makers of the highly reviewed Baetis™ Reference media server (see Andrew Quint’s article in TAS, December 2015), has Great News for the audiophile community.  Mr. Quint’s testing has confirmed that the AES/EBU output of the Baetis Reference model performs significantly better than its SPDIF output, with some of the better DACs or pre/pros.  This confirms our own testing, and we think this is because some of these DACs are designed to take advantage of the inherently higher voltage (amplitude) of AES over SPDIF.  We are pleased to know that others hear what we have heard, and this improvement in audio quality is being heard only by Baetis Reference customers.

Therefore, effective immediately, the other two Baetis models – the Revolution III and the XR3 – will now be available with an AES option for an additional $895.  As you may surmise, this requires a special milling of the rear of the chassis on these models, but we assure you that the effort is worth it.  The new output will use our special, fully EMI-shielded handmade wiring, and our proprietary daughterboard, just as with the Reference model.  Furthermore, previous Revolution III and XR3 owners can also upgrade to the AES option (+$895) by sending in their Baetis units and paying for shipping both ways.  The option is not available for previous XR2 and Revolution II models, nor on the Prodigy.

For those of you who follow our progress in bringing the very best audiophile computers to market, you know that our XR3 model has the very same motherboard, cpu, and RAM as our Reference model.  And the two computers with AES would utilize the same critical daughterboard that takes an already great SPDIF signal from the motherboard and significantly improves the audio quality.  Therefore, yes, an XR3 with the AES option would perform exactly as the Reference in The Absolute Sound review!  The XR3 misses only the StillPoint footers on the Reference, and the 3 years of our special MDA™ training and support (instead of the 1 year of support on the XR3). 

So, oh my, what does that mean for the Reference model?!?

Ah, Baetis will never rest on its laurels.  Stay tuned for an announcement about the new Reference 2, coming soon.