UK Pro Audio Supplier Prism Bows Callia, Its First Consumer Product

British-based Prism Sound, which for 25 years has supplied pro audio equipment to recording studios and mastering houses around the world, is now selling its first consumer product. Called Callia, it’s a small tabletop pre-amp box that takes in digital audio by USB or SP/DIF optical, and outputs analog audio to headphones or by line sockets to a conventional stereo amp or active speakers. Callia handles PCM from CD-quality 16 bit/44.1 kHz to 32 bit/384 kHz and DSD 64 and DSD 128. Prism demo’d the Callia during a recent media briefing at the British Grove Studios built in West London by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, using a wide selection of music ranging from old Telarc recordings to recent tracks from Eric Clapton and Knopfler. Content was played from a Windows 7 laptop through a Callia box to the studio control room’s stereo pair of three-way active speakers. “We don’t want Callia to sound warm or clinical or any other words from the hi-fi vocabulary,” said Graham Boswell, Prism’s sales and marketing director. “We want nothing added and nothing taken away.” Prism has priced the Callia at 1,500 British pounds ($2,004 U.S.). The company confirms it will sell the Callia in the U.S. at $2,595 through Prism Media Products, the American distributorship it runs in Rockaway, New Jersey.