The Music Hall DAC 25.3

Today an increasing number of music lovers are buying storing and listening to music through their computer, media server, or personal music player (iPod). Many are also digitally distributing their music using a sonos, squeezebox, or one of a host of digital music distribution systems available on the market. This is a great way to explore and appreciate music but generally it's done at the expense of sound quality. Until now music lovers have been forced to rely on the inferior digital to analog converters (DACs) and sounds cards contained in those devices. As a result, their musical enjoyment has dramatically suffered. We designed the dac25.3 to directly address this problem and to significantly improve the sound quality of the music played on these systems.  

By uniting a state of the art digital to analog converter with a tube output we produce the clarity and precision of a 24bit DAC with the warm rich open sound people love of tubes. The dac25.3 has 4 digital inputs which can accept any coax (s/pdif), optical, XLR (AES/EBU), or USB digital input from an iPod transport, computer, media server, sonos, squeezebox, CD/DVD in stereo transport, or music hall's own cd35.2 compact disc player, and it will output two channel stereo analog. 

The dac25.3 features the latest texas instruments (formerly burr-brown) PCM 1796 24bit/192kHz, advanced segment, stereo audio digital to analog converter. This processor features 123dB dynamic range an 8 x oversampling digital filter and just 0.0005% thd. The dac25.3 upsamples to either 96kHz or 192kHz which is user selectable on the front panel. To achieve the best sound we use an advanced asynchronous reclocking and anti jitter control system upstream of the PCM 1796 DAC. For this system we are using the philips 74HC574 in conjunction with the ti SRC4192 asynchronous sample rate converter whose master clock is a high precision active crystal oscillator. The dac25.3 also features a large r-core high current oversize power transformer. A headphone output is provided for convenient personal listening.

• usb input accepts 24bit/96kHz signal
• electro-harmonix 6922 tube single-ended (rca) output
• solid-state differential balanced output
• ti PCM 1796 24bit/192kHz DAC
• ti SRC 4192 asynchronous sample rate converter
• high precision active crystal oscillator master clock
• user selectable 96kHz or 192kHz upsampling
• asynchronous reclocking and anti jitter control system
• 8 x oversampling digital filter
• 4 digital inputs: coax (s/pdif), optical, XLR (AES/EBU), or USB
• 2 gold plated outputs; single ended (RCA), balanced (XLR)
• headphone output with adjustable analog volume control
• large high current oversize r-core power transformer
• thick brushed aluminum fascia and solid chassis
• 110v/220v voltage selectable transformer
• detachable power cord

Owner Manual