T+A DAC 200 Digital to Analogue Converter

Path Separation Technology

T+A believes in reproducing music unadulterated. That’s why they eliminate even the smallest disruptive factors during development, no matter how minimal they may be. The joint processing of PCM and DSD files in one converter is exactly such a disturbance: Supposedly insignificant and with a nevertheless decisive influence on the sound. The unique T+A Path Separation technology was developed to eliminate precisely this influence: separate converters, specially tailored to their requirements, are used for PCM and DSD, which not only exclude negative sound influences, but also make optimum use of the potential of each format.

T+A’s quadruple converter is used for PCM signals, while DSD files are processed by T+A’s globally unique True 1-bit converter.

De-jitter master clock

The belief in unadulterated music means an enormous effort in the elimination of the smallest disturbing influences. The T+A De-Jitter Master Clock was developed to free all T+A DACs from such interference signals, especially those arising from computer use. These disturbances, called jitter, are minimal time offsets in the clock, which nevertheless negatively affect the sound experience unless they are removed before conversion to analog signals.

The De-Jitter Masterclock developed in Herford is the consistent audiophile answer to jitter: In a multi-stage process, the incoming signals are examined and cleaned of even the strongest jitter artifacts. In the first step, a raw clock is obtained from the incoming signal, which is closely examined by microprocessors: Only if the frequency position and stability meet strict minimum criteria is the signal switched to the master clock.

If the criteria are not met, the signals are cleaned again by a 2nd PLL stage in a specially constructed second jitterbug until the residual jitter is reduced by a factor of 4. Signals that meet the purity requirements are completely decoupled from the input jitter by switching to the master clock and are further processed by two precisely adjusted crystal oscillators. Each oscillator is reserved for a single clock family, so both the odd 44.1 kHz clock up to 354.8 kHz and the even 48 kHz clock up to 762 kHz are covered by the master clock.

Transducer & Filter

The T+A True 1-bit converter is also absolutely unique because it broke with a paradigm: ordinary converters process DSD signals by converting them to PCM and playing them back via PCM mode. It is precisely this conversion that contradicts T+A’s conviction and laid the foundation for the development of the True 1-bit converter. It processes DSD files natively without any harmful conversions and plays them back absolutely pristine in the true 1-bit stream.

PCM conversion is handled by the T+A quadruple converter. Its double-balanced circuitry with eight 32-bit BurrBrown converters compensates for tonal non-linearities to an above-average degree and drops the barely present noise rustling by another 6 dB. This effort results in amazing dynamics and linearity with equally amazing freedom from distortion.

Although T+A believes in unadulterated music reproduction, the in-house Bezier filters in the quadruple converter allow the sound characteristics to be adjusted to individual taste. Using these polynomials creates a perfect time domain response for each of the 6 available filters, two of which are NOS stages.