T+A MP 3100 HV

SACD PLAYER/STREAMING DAC

- JIM AUSTIN

More than any other component I’ve had in my system, the MP 3100 HV radiates attention to detail.

At the 2019 AXPONA, I took part in one of my first official meetings, as editor of Stereophile, with members of the manufacturing community: the German company T+A. They were presented in the room of Texas dealer Lone Star Audio, which was owned by the late Jim Hench. They had a corner hallway to themselves: two rooms and, at the time when I arrived, a hallway table brimming with coffee and pastries. Fortuitous timing.

In one of those rooms I saw some of the company’s less expensive gear: I stopped in briefly—yet I spent so much time in their high-end room that I lost track of my coffee cup, setting it down somewhere while freeing up a hand to take some pictures.

It was an impressive room. Attractions included the unusual T+A Solitaire loudspeaker, with its line-source electrostatic tweeters and its array of midrange drivers, and the very architectural M 40 HV monoblock tower, with its heavy tube cages on top.

Yet I was most taken by two big, beefy, silver cases sitting on a component rack. Both were new components from the company’s reference HV series. One was a CD/SACD transport, the PDT 3100 HV; the other was the Reference streaming DAC/Preamp: the SDV 3100 HV. The scale was impressive: the casework, the sheer quantity of aluminum on display, the apparent engineering.

I was also impressed to learn that the DAC/Preamp had a built-in FM tuner. I love FM tuners, even though—perhaps especially because—I can’t use them. More on that later.