Audiophile manufacturer Naim’s long-touted DAC is finally with us, and promising audio quality like you’ve never heard.
Never ones to take the road most travelled, Naim has introduced several elements which differentiate its DAC from others. For one thing, it’s the first high-end DAC to receive approval from Apple for its iPod dock, which can be controlled via the controls on the front or by remote, as can music from USB sources through two ports (one on the front, one on the back). The USB port can also be used to update the machine’s firmware in the future via internet download too.
But the digital-to-audio converter’s biggest selling point is that it promises to reduce the possibility of jitter to zero. Rather than attempting to recover the master clock signal from the source through the digital inputs, as other DACs do, Naim’s model stores the signal in its internal memory and resends it using a series of fixed-frequency local master clocks to increase precision and eliminate the possibility of timing errors.
The SHARC DSP runs Naim’s own software and is designed to simply ‘tick over’ in the main, leaving the majority of its huge processing power available to deal with elements that most DACs couldn’t attempt to handle. It can process hi-res data up to 24-bit/768kHz and performs upsampling too on less than pristine sources.
The DAC features no less than eight inputs – four digital, two BNC connections and two standard phono. It’s possible to turn off iPod charging while playing to improve the audio quality and it can also be upgraded using Naim’s external power supplies such as the XPS or 55PS.
The Naim DAC will cost £1,995 when it goes on sale towards the end of September.