Naim Audio DAC, SPDIF and IPod Compatible
High-End British Digital to Analogue Converter for Better CD Sound
Jul 26, 2009
Naim Audio have waited a long time to produce a DAC. Indeed, the company's earlier CD players generally did not feature digital outputs up to 2009, but their new DAC is a break from the closed box tradition.
Naim demonstrated their DAC in the Naim Summer Sounds roadshows in July 2009. Modern Hi-Fi systems have to handle a wider range of sound sources than in the past, and high-resolution music downloads are becoming available at higher than CD sampling rates and bit depths. Naim have addressed this with the DAC, which can receive a signal in three ways
- SPDIF in for optical and electrical on phono and BNC
- Apple iPod. The Naim DAC is one of the few products licensed by Apple to take the digital data from the iPod, or even streamed via an ITouch. Generation 5 and above iPod models are supported
- USB memory stick - the DAC can do some track selection via the source selection buttons is a USB stick is connected to the front panel socket.
SPDIF Playback Without Jitter or a Phase-Locked Loop
One of the problems that has dogged the consumer SPDIF audio interface is the need for the receiver to recover the digital clock from the data. Though it is trivially easy to do this well enough to recover the digital audio data perfectly, it is hard to do this without the digital clock having some signal-dependent jitter.
The digital-to-analogue converter needs a stable clock signal otherwise it may produce unwanted noise in the output. Up to now Naim have held back from using SPDIF because of this, but the company claims that the Naim DAC does not use a phase-locked loop, buffering the signal and choosing an oscillator frequency close enough that the buffer will not be under- or over-flowed.
Naim demonstrated the DAC fed with their updated CDX2, and the DAC seemed to be a significant step up from the CDX2 on its own. The same track ripped from the very CD they played was played from an Ipod - the rip was lossless, of course.
The result was better from the CD player fed in via SPDIF though the Ipod was also rather good. This demonstration was made made to highlight that though the DAC will play digitally from an iPod and give very good results, for the best results all components and their power supplies have to be designed to audiophile standards. The Ipod power supplies have to be designed to be both compact and get good battery life, which may not be aims that are coincident with Naim's.
Naim demonstrated their HDX streaming and hard disk player with the DAC, and the DAC seemed to offer a worthwhile improvement with this too.
Naim DAC - Conclusion
The Naim DAC is a very versatile component in Naim's line-up - it can switch a number of digital SPDIF sources allowing an AV system or digital set-top boxes to be taken digitally (in stereo) into the system. High-resolution digital files sampled at 44.1kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz can be replayed at 16 and 24 sample bit depths from SPDIF or USB.
It does an excellent job as a true digital interface to the Apple iPod and Itouch digital audio players and brings a CDX2 player close to the performance of Naim's flagship CD555 CD player - to some ears at least. It will retail at nearly £2000, and can be upgraded with an outboard power supply of the same type as the CD555 player.
Readers might also like to read How to Play an iPod on a Home Audio System to compare listening solutions.
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