Electronics Overview
Electronics Overview
We add this section to all of our Guru3D source reviews to help the reader gather a clear understanding of what exactly they are paying for if they decide to buy this product. Let’s open the hood of this sonic hot rod and have a look at what you get for your hard earned audio dollars. Nurse, it is time to operate…
The Essence Audio products have always used a specific approach to their output sections and have used the same designs in their products. The circuits utilize a high end current output Digital to Analog Converter, followed by a differential output Current to Voltage conversion section, finished with a single ended LPF/Buffer section. Let’s break it down in a similar order…
Digital to Analog Converters (DAC’s)
- STX II Card – PCM 1792A
The PCM1792A is a premium quality 24/192 KHz stereo Digital to Analog Converter. Flexing audio muscle with a dynamic range of 129dB and a THD+N of 0.0004% these are excellent quality converters used in many high end designs from external DAC’s to HT receivers.
PCM1792A Specification Sheet “http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pcm1792a.pdf”
- Daughter Card – PCM 1796
The PCM1796 chip used on the daughter card has a dynamic range of 123dB and a THD+N rating of 0.0005%. We have seen these chips on the ST 7.1 and HDAV 7.1 Deluxe. On the daughter card, this stereo DAC are used for each output stereo pair, Rear channel (L&R), Side channel (L&R) and Sub/Center (L&R).
PCM1796 Specification Sheet” http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pcm1796.pdf”
