Industry Update

Antipodes Audio Completes Oladra Platform and Establishes Oladra as Distinct Brand

Christiaan Punter 3 April 2026 No Comments

Antipodes Audio has completed the Oladra Platform, established Oladra as a distinct brand for digital audio sources built on that foundation, and introduced two new Oladra models.

The Oladra Platform emerged from more than a decade of listening-led development focused on how digital systems shape musical experience. Over time, this work exposed the limits of adapting general-purpose computing architectures for audio.

Digital playback requires substantial computing capability at the source, yet conventional architectures introduce electrical noise and system behavior that persist in the signal they generate.

The response was to design the digital audio source from first principles, centered on a purpose-built audio computer within a total system design. Hardware, firmware, and a dedicated software stack were developed together as a single architecture, enabling structural coherence from the outset and its sustained maintenance.

New Product Line

As this work reached maturity, its findings could no longer be contained within an evolving product line. Oladra has been created to stand on its own terms, with its first expression taking the form of two models: Sentia and Presence.

Oladra Sentia

Sentia presents a complete realization of the Platform, demonstrating what becomes possible when the source is treated as a system in its own right.

The Sentia reaches a lower price point than the Presence through carefully chosen parts that reduce cost while preserving as much performance as possible. One of the eye-catching differences is that the Sentia’s enclosure is constructed from separate front, top, and side panels, smoothly seamed to form a lush, organic form.

Oladra Presence

Presence further extends the Sentia’s performance, with every decision made in service of musical realism, allowing greater physicality to emerge from the same foundation.

The Presence’s topmost position in the Oladra lineup is visually expressed through a smooth and seamless milled-from-solid aluminum enclosure, compared to the Sentia’s relatively simpler enclosure, composed of separate aluminum front, top, and side panels.

Details for both models

Both the Precense and the Sentia support streamed music services and local libraries via a range of storage options. Both support Lyrion (LMS), Roon, and UPnP/DLNA, and more.

Oladra offers a standard audio output option for most users, and additional dealer-swappable options for systems with more specific needs. With the introduction of the new Oladra range, USB Audio is the standard audio output. For the majority of users, this is the best solution: it is supported by nearly every DAC, accommodates the broadest range of formats and sample rates, minimizes live ports, power rails, and interfaces, and provides the most universally capable connection between source and DAC. The USB option is available now.

Oladra will also offer other dealer-swappable output configurations such as USB + AES3 and USB + S/PDIF, with S/PDIF available on RCA, BNC, or TOSLINK as required. These are provided as alternatives, not additions, and they will become available in time.

Both models are available in black and silver anodized.

Above: Sentia, Below: Presence

Antipodes continues development of the Kala range

Antipodes Audio remains the originating company and continues to develop its Kala range of digital audio sources, with new models and upgrades planned for existing owners. Oladra is not a change in direction, but a formalization of an approach that had already separated itself in practice.

“Oladra reflects a point of clarity in the work,” said Mark Jenkins, Founder of Antipodes Audio. “It allowed us to give proper form to an approach that had been guiding our decisions for some time.”

Oladra will make its public debut at AXPONA 2026 in Chicago, Illinois, in partnership with Rutherford Audio (Room 1 – Schaumburg C).

Why establish Oladra as a Distinct Brand?

Antipodes Audio has spent more than a decade focused on a single point within digital playback: the first step, where the file or stream becomes a timed signal. This focus emerged through listening. Systems that met the same specifications could produce markedly different musical experiences. That difference was not fully explained by output alone.

Over time, a deeper understanding was developed. Behavior at the source shaped the structure of the signal before it reached the DAC. Once established, that structure could be refined but not reset, with direct consequences for how music is perceived. When timing relationships hold, the elements of a performance remain coherent and resolve as a whole. When these relationships are disturbed, that coherence breaks down, and the sense of the performance diminishes.

Progress within existing architectures brought improvement, but also exposed a limit. Systems adapted from general-purpose computing could not fully govern how the signal took form. Variability remained, and with it, a loss of predictability in how music would be conveyed. The work shifted to a different approach, centered on creating the right conditions from the very beginning.

This required a system designed specifically for digital audio, where behavior could be defined and maintained, rather than managed after the fact.

Oladra is the expression of that shift. It brings the formation of the signal into a controlled and predictable state, so that what leaves the source retains its structure. When this is achieved, everything that follows operates on a stable foundation, and its contribution becomes additive rather than corrective.

Antipodes Audio remains the originating company and continues to develop its Kala range. Oladra carries this work forward as a dedicated platform for digital audio sources, representing the point at which the approach could be realized in full.