Specifications

ManualsBrandsMSB Technology ManualsAmplifierPlatinum DAC III

Brown DF1704, which at the time was the best Digital Filter on the market. Our new Digital Filter is built to our specifications and standards,

and is designed to get the most out of the Platinum DAC modules.

This new Digital Filter is available as an user installable upgrade for the Platinum DAC, Platinum DAC Plus, Platinum DAC II, as well as the

Reference CD Station II. This filter is standard equipment in our

Platinum DAC III and Reference CD Station III.

The performance of this new Digital Filter is amazing. Immediately

you’ll notice the lack of fuzziness around voices and instruments of

all frequencies. This new filter also dramatically increases the reso-

lution and dynamics of the machine. This filter is also completely

customizable; By playing a special .wav file on a CD new filter coef-

ficients, either temporary or permanent, can be loaded into our DSP.

The Digital Filter is a 16x oversampling, single stage filter with 32 bit

input resolution, 80 bit computation, and 36 bit coefficients.

About the Clock / Jitter ControlAbout the Clock / Jitter Control

About the Clock / Jitter Control

Jitter control devices (and inputs on most DACs) normally reclock

the input signal in attempt to lessen the jitter of that incoming sig-

nal. The DAC III does no such re-clocking. We actually pay no

attention to the clock on the input signal (or the input from the

internal drive). All internal clocks are generated by an extremely

accurate +/- 2.5 ppm temperature compensated clock. Since the in-

put clock is no longer related to the clock of the Platinum, an intelli-

gent ½ second buffer is used to maintain data synchronization.

The MSB 16x Digital Filter is an ultra high-resolution digital front end. The combination of a high-speed on-board computer and carefully

optimized software and hardware result in the best possible music quality. During the development of this peerless digital audio system

MSB has accumulated a wide body of unique knowledge allowing us to design the ultimate digital filter.

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One of our primary goals at MSB is to provide the music lover with the most accurate musical experience possible. During years of careful

design and improvement of our custom discrete DACs, which form the heart of your Platinum DAC, we realized that the Platinums sound

quality was no longer limited by them. We soon narrowed the problem to the Digital Filter which was feeding our DACs. While the excellent

Burr-Brown (Now owned by Texas Instruments) DF1704 Digital Filter had served us well in the past, it had became the bottleneck once we

started using our new Second Generation DAC modules. After a thorough search of all the available off the shelf and custom DSP based

Digital Filters we realized that little improvement could be had from any of them. With no other option in sight we decided to build our own

solution.

Converting the ones and zeros of Digital Audio into music is an enormously delicate and critical process. Each individual sample that makes

up the audio stream must be converted into the high resolution, continuous analog voltage that can be transformed into the sound that you

hear. Any misstep can corrupt the final result ending with audio that does not sound anything like the original recording. Errors in

translation can make a harsh, veiled, muddy, and/or tonally colored result. Minimizing each potential problem allows the original recording

to shine through.

Audio reproduction starts when the DAC receives the binary coded information from the source. The first step requires recovering the

audio samples, which represent the final output voltages, and the timing, which tells the DAC when to output those voltages. Next the

sample rate is raised and the data is digitally filtered. While it is possible to feed the DAC with the original audio samples thereby avoiding

the use of a digital filter skipping this step has many unintended consequences. After being digitally filtered the digital stream is feed to the

DAC. The DAC receives the digital audio samples and converts them into a continuous analog voltage. The best DACs, such as our

Second Generation DAC Modules or Signature DAC Modules, instantly convert the data into a precise continuous voltage waveform with

timing determined by the DACs conversion clock.

The digital filter is necessary because mirrored image frequencies created during the conversion process must be removed. If the DAC did

not have a digital filter, an analog filter with an aggressive response must remove these image frequencies. These brick wall analog filters

seriously damage the signal by corrupting the original phase of the sound and cannot fully remove the high frequency images. This results

in harsh or rolled off high frequencies and poor soundstage focus.

Traditional digital filter designs consist of cascaded FIR (Finite Impulse Response) filters, each of which raise the sample rate by two. The

intermediate data between the filters is usually stored at less than 40 bit resolution. Since the next filter works with previously computed

data the resolution decreases with each filter pass. This limits higher quality digital filters to a low oversampling rate (usually 8x) before the

output starts to deteriorate. The loss in resolution is typically not apparent when using the best conventional digital filters with standard