Owner`s manual

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I spend a lot of time at work, and since I grew tired of swapping CDs in and out of my ROM drive, I have switched over to MP3s to keep me
entertained. (It makes me really appreciate the sound of CDs when I listen to them at home.) The resolution enhancement built into the 1A can’t
cure all the ills of MP3s, but it does go along way to remove the glare that is a result of throwing away most of the data. The upsampling to 96
kHz and high quality DACs found in the P-3A also help a great deal too!
I have had the 1A and 3A for quite some time. We were shipped a couple of pre-production units to use in our DVD Benchmark. What we did
was compare the analog outputs of a DVD player to the digital output feeding a high-quality DAC like the 3A. The differences were very
startling in both listening tests and measurements.
Using the Apex A600D DVD player as a CD player was frightening. It produces some of the poorest quality music that I have ever heard. I get
better sound quality from my portable Radio Shack CD player that is several years old. Plugging the 3A into the digital output of the Apex
transforms the music wrecker into something very enjoyable. The noise floor alone dropped several dB revealing small nuances in music that
were not there when listening to the analog outputs of that player with no 1A and 3A in the path.
Frequency Response on Digital output of Apex, using P-3A DAC
Notice how the frequency response stays close to 0 dB throughout the audible range. Red and blue lines in the graphs represent left
and right channels.
Frequency Response using Analog outputs of the Apex player (no P-1A or P-3A)
Using the analog outputs of the Apex player, and no P-1A or P-3A, the frequency
response is terrible.
P-3A DAC Linearity with Digital output of Apex