Naim DAC, DAC Keitiklis Naim

The Naim Audio DAC is the end result of several years of research. It introduced several original digital music technologies that have since gone on to help inform the development of an entire range of streaming products.

The DAC overcomes the jitter issues of S/PDIF by reading the music into a “rotating” data RAM buffer independently of its timing signal and reading it out again clocked by one of ten extremely low noise, fixed frequency crystal sine-wave oscillators. The data entering the downstream digital filtering and DAC chips is then completely isolated from the incoming S/PDIF jitter. The Naim Audio DAC also suppresses RF noise from S/PDIF through electrical isolation of its DSP front end from the digital to analogue converter and analogue circuits. Each element is also run from separate power supplies.

The Naim Audio DAC’s digital filtering is handled by a powerful SHARC DSP chip running unique Naim Audio authored code to create an ultra-high precision 40-bit floating point filter. The filter over-samples by 16 times on 44.1kHz data and provides stop-band attenuation of 180dB on all data. Following the digital filter are the two mono Burr-Brown digital to analogue converter chips, as used in the CD555 CD player. Finally the Naim Audio DAC features a very high performance, low noise, and low distortion fully discrete analogue output stage.