M1DAC – DAC

The M1DAC is a digital to analogue converter for music and other entertainment sources.

We’ve been making top-performance digital-to-analogue converters since the early days of CD. That means the M1 DAC benefits from almost 25 years of continual development, drawing on successive acclaimed DAC designs.

Whatever your digital source – from CD to computer to TV set-top box or DVD/Blu-ray player – the M1 DAC can upsample and convert it, producing stunning 24bit/192kHz resolution audio. In comparison, CD resolution is a mere 16bit/44.1kHz.

The M1 DAC features four digital inputs: balanced, USB, optical and coaxial. It is an asynchronous design with awesome performance: from its low-distortion, noise levels and jitter-minimising technology to its high-quality power supply, the M1 DAC surpasses the standards of DACs costing many times its price.

The M1 DAC has been met with incredible acclaim. Stereophile’s review said it “offers performance that is close to the state of the art”, calling it “a piece of kit that can transform your system ” and “a stunning bargain”.

Meanwhile, the review from computer-audio specialist, AudioStream described the M1 DAC as “a wonderfully musical-sounding DAC, and one that offered many hours of pure enjoyment.”

Design and Build

At the heart of the M1 DAC is a pair of Texas Instruments Burr-Brown DSD1796 DAC chips in dual-differential mode, supported by their sibling SRC4392 sample-rate converter chip, which enables all digital sources to be upsampled to 24bit/192Hz.

It’s a versatile design, offering coaxial, optical, balanced and USB inputs. It will lock onto any S/PDIF signal at 32kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz, with the front-panel display clearly showing the input frequency.

The M1 DAC boasts minimal distortion – typically less than 0.005% across the board – while its signal-to-noise ratio is uncannily low, making the M1 DAC one of the quietest DACs in the world, regardless of price.  In addition, our smart data-reclocking system ensures there is virtually no audio-damaging jitter imparted to the signal.

Such an accurate, low-noise approach has not gone unnoticed. In his review for Stereophile, Sam Tellig states:  “I heard a degree of low-level resolution I’d never before heard from a DAC. I think this may have had to do with the M1’s astonishingly low noise floor: an absence of hash, of electronic grunge, of anything that compromised purity or sweetness of tone”.

The M1 DAC offers a choice of outputs: stereo balanced or RCA connections.

Completing the stunning specification is a high-quality power supply, complete with choke filtration on the mains input – effectively a mains-signal conditioner that purifies the performance further still.

Performance

• Jitter: <12 picoseconds peak to peak
• THD(+ noise): <0.0025% 10Hz to 20 kHz
• Frequency Response: +0, –1dB, 5Hz to 100 kHz

Inputs

• 1x XLR AES balanced digital input
• 1x RCA coaxial connector SPDIF 32-192 kbps (16-24 bit stereo PCM)
• 1x TOSLINK optical connector 32-96 kbps (16-24 bit stereo PCM)
• 1x USB type ‘B’ connector for computer/PDA – 16-24 bits, 32-96 kbps (Determined by source file/computer settings)

Outputs

• 1x line level RCA (phono)
• 1x line level XLR (balanced)

General

• Dimensions – WxHxD (mm): 220 x 100 x 300
• Weight (unpacked / packed): 3.4 kg / 4.1 kg