During Las Vegas CES 2013, Playback Designs was not only showing their current line of products, they were also showing a first-ever constructed and approved sample of their new IMS3.

You might start hearing some rumors of this new product they will be launching somewhere this summer. Although, due to the target shipping date, it was very premature to show it at C.E.S. / T.H.E. Show this year, the pre-production unit was completed and passed all tests just prior to leaving for Las Vegas and they could not help themselves. It was actually the first time anyone really got a chance to listen.

Thursday and Friday, the final two days of the show, we disconnected everything and pretty much ran the new product exclusively. So, what is it? It is an integrated analog amplifier, preamplifier and DAC built in one chassis. It is identical in size to any of our current 3 Series products. Here are some preliminary specs:

130+ Watts per channel RMS into 8 ohms / 260+ Watts per channel RMS into 4 ohms

7 inputs: 1 – USB / 1 – AES/EBU / 1 – S/PDif / 1 – RCA / 2 – XLR / 1 – PlayLink (Proprietary)

As soon as more information is available we will post it here and send out further announcements. Look for its release somewhere this Summer. And as you know with this kind of things, often it is delayed, so let’s say “later this year”.