AA Capitole Mk II - what the evaluaions brought?

I had a couple of the MK II's in NY at the HE Show and to be honest, they were fresh out of the box with no break-in time. I thought they were quite good but not where I wanted the sound to be.

It was not until I got back home that I really had a chance to spend some quality time with the MK II. I had a customer bring his over and we sat and listened for about 4 hours. This unit had roughly 200 hours on it. Although it still needed quite a bit of break-in, the difference between what I heard in NY and in my system was remarkable. There is so much transparency and resolution with retention of great musicality from top to bottom. The bass is greatly improved over the former model as well.

I am a dealer for the Audio Aero products as well many other digital products. While there are many great digital products out there, some that I do not sell, I have not heard anything that can come close to the Capitole MK II.

As a dealer, I would like to sell preamps and separates as there is more profit to be made that way. However, not to take away anything from Artistic Audio's findings, in EVERY case when any of my customers have bypassed their preamps, the Audio Aero Capitole excelled even more on it's own. Preamps that were used are as follows:

Atma-sphere MP1
Aesthetix Callisto Signature
Audio Research Ref 2 MK II
BAT VK-50SE
CJ ART 2
CTC Blowtorch
Joule Electra
Lamm L2 Reference
Levinson 32 Reference
Presence Top of the line
Thor

I would say these represent some of the finest preamps in the world. In all cases, the preamps were sold and replaced with just the Audio Aero Capitole. Some of the digital gear that was replaced are as follows:

Accuphase 75
Accuphase SACD player
Audio Research CD3
Audiomeca Enkianthus
Burmester
dCS Elgar / Purcell
Dodson DAC / CEC combo
Goldmund
Levinson 30.6 / 31.5
Marantz SA-1 SACD Player
Sony SCD-1 SACD Player
Wadia (various top of the line models)

Again, all of the aforementioned components represent some of the worlds best and in each case, the Audio Aero unseated them. My customers care about money, but care more about having the best they can find regardless of cost. In 90% of the cases, each customer ended up with better sound and quite a bit of money in their pocket. The savings on interconnects and power cords alone was substantial.

I can also share with you that there are some out there that after hearing the Capitole, have sold there top notch analog systems.

Hard to believe? Let your ears decide.