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Features
- USB Digital Input
- Dual Toroidal Power Transformers
- Premium Output Transformers
- SuperTubeClock
- SuperTubeClock
- Dual Mono Topology
- AC Offset Killer
- Vacuum Tube Rectified
- Point-to-Point Wiring
- Premium Parts
- Remote Control
- 24bit/192kHz Upsampling: Burr
Brown SRC4192
- Premium DAC: Burr Brown PCM1792A
Introducing the world's first
tube-based data clocking device: the
SuperTubeClock
By incorporating a low-noise
mini-triode vacuum tube into the
digital clock, this boldly conceived
design provides vastly superior
resolution, detail retrieval,
improved clarity, increased
definition and detail from top to
bottom.
AC OFFSET KILLER
AC Offset Killer is about goose
bumps. The ones you get when music
comes out of a background so quiet,
you may say to yourself “Just how is
this possible?” PrimaLuna
custom-winds our own massive
toroidal power transformers that are
low in hum and EMI. But we wanted
more. Our engineers designed the AC
Offset Killer to lower transformer
noise to a place no other
manufacturer dreams of going,
regardless of how bad your
electricity is. The result? Sense of
space. Texture. The resonance of an
acoustic guitar or violin string
that seems to trail on forever. The
AC Offset Killer will amaze you.
Premium Parts
Premium parts including
polypropylene coupling caps, triple
pi power supply filters, custom
designed isolation transformers
which separate the analog and
digital devices, resulting in
decreased signal degradation and
improved sonics from top to bottom.
Many DACs weigh in at ten pounds or
less. The EVO 100 Tube DAC weighs
nearly 29 pounds!
Point To Point Wiring
You spend a lot of money on
interconnects. So why have the
signal go right from the RCA jacks
or speaker terminals into circuit
boards with copper traces so thin
you can hardly see them? What’s
high-end about that? PrimaLuna
employs Point to Point Wiring on all
products. The entire signal path,
including resistors and capacitors,
is painstakingly hand wired with
heavy-gauge cable by craftsman.
Dual Mono Topology
Per channel dedicated tubes. While
it is fine to use a single tube as a
buffer for both channels and claim
your DAC is "tube", it can't be
compared to the PrimaLuna design and
what it does for the music.
Vacuum Tube Rectified
Vacuum tube rectified power supply
incorporates eleven separate power
supply regulation circuits. Tube
rectification is synonymous with
organic sound, especially when
compared to DACs being known as
sounding like "a computer".
USB Digital Input
USB digital input allows using your
computer for storage and playback of
your music with all the benefits of
features like playlists and easier
access to your whole music library.
Rather than just add in an USB input
as an afterthought, PrimaLuna
engineers searched endlessly looking
for the best-sounding USB interface
we could find. Our USB input
converts the jitter-filled USB
digital signal to S/PDIF,
dramatically improving the digital
signal quality before it gets to the
SuperTubeClock. This USB input is a
true high-resolution digital input.
 Our Digital Difference: The
SuperTubeClock™
This is where the magic happens...
the SuperTubeClock™ replaces the
solid state oscillator normally
found in a DAC with a mini triode
vacuum tube. By using a tube, we
have significantly lowered the
amount of jitter and noise,
resulting in superior detail
retrieval. This in turn yields
superior detail and dynamics from
top to bottom, and improved overall
musicality. First a note on the tube
itself: The tube is a very rugged,
long-life Russian military Triode
specifically designed for
oscillation purposes... which is its
function here. It is running very
conservatively so life expectancy is
roughly 5 to 10 years of operating
time. The small glass envelope
guarantees very low microphonics.
Triode tubes are inherently low
noise devices, and extremely linear
when used properly. This means that
the oscillation frequency wave it
produces is very pure and clean. The
noise in the sidebands, from 10Hz to
100kHz on either side of the
oscillation frequency, is extremely
low. This is the important spectrum
for audio. Everything below and
beyond that can be ignored. When you
reclock the inputs, any noise that
is generated here appears unfiltered
and unattenuated at the input of the
conversion chip, and injects jitter,
which from then on is an
indistinguishable part of the
digital audio stream. No amount of
cleaning will ever be able to remove
this noise once it reaches this
point; it has become part of the
audio signal. This noise "rides" on
the audio signal, so you do not hear
it as noise, but as smearing of
notes and masking of detail. There
is a distinctive loss of dynamics,
tonal purity, inter-transient
silence, and sense of timing. We
call this "noise modulation." This
is why the low noise, especially in
the 10Hz-100kHz sidebands of the
oscillator, is so crucial. Again:
below and beyond these frequency
extremes is trivial, because it will
not affect the audio, and will not
reach the analog outputs. When the
clock is used to clock the DAC chip,
a similar situation occurs as
described above: the noise appears
at the location where the digital
audio stream is converted to
successive steps in a staircase
wave, which represents the analog
audio signal. Each step has to be
EXACTLY 1/441000th, 1/96000th,
1/176400th, or 1/192000th. The
injected noise introduces a
deviation in time which is the exact
replica of that noise. This means
that the audio signal at the outputs
of the DAC chip has the noise riding
on it, again as an inherent part of
the signal. No amount of filtering
will remove the noise once it
reaches this step. Again we
experience that smear and detail
masking, with that distinctive loss
of dynamics, tonal purity,
inter-transient silence, and sense
of timing. Here you see how much
sense it makes to reclock BOTH the
inputs AND the DAC chip. The
oscillation frequency wave a tube
produces is a sine wave. That's no
good: It has to be converted to a
square wave. This is a very delicate
procedure: when the rising and
falling edges of a square wave are
not steep enough, there exists a
certain window during which the
actual transition of the data bit is
not exactly time-defined. It leaves
room to be either too late or too
early. This is a partly random
process, and partly dependent on
surrounding conditions; such as
power supply voltage variations,
ground noise, inherent CMOS or chip
crosstalk in the decoder or DAC
chip, etc. All these timing
variations are noise, and are called
jitter from various sources. The
steeper the edges, the more exactly
defined the transition moment will
be, resulting in less noise (jitter).
When a clock produces a very stable
frequency with such low jitter,
there will be a more accurate
reproduction of the original analog
waveform of the music. Here are a
few real SuperTubeClock™ pictures of
what it can do: experts will
certainly like them. No other
commercial clock on earth will
produce a square wave as this one.
Each square wave seen below is
measured on a Philips PM3295A analog
400MHz oscilloscope using LeCroy
10:1 probes. These probes attenuate
the signal by a factor of 10, in
order to not load the device under
test with any load, resistive or
capacitive. So the vertical
resolution on the scope image has to
be multiplied by 10. For instance
when you see ~0.1V, then it is in
reality measuring ~1V(AC). The
SuperTubeClock™ generating a square
wave at 8.4672mHz. The vertical
slope is measured at ~500mV (each
black horizontal line represents
500mV counting from top to bottom).
The vertical peak-to-peak travel of
the square wave at this frequency is
3.5 Volts, which is excellent. Each
black vertical line going from left
to right represents 10 nanoseconds.
The faster a clock can go from peak
to peak, the better. Square waves
present themselves more and more
like sine waves the higher you go in
frequency. So an 8.4672mHz wave like
the one above is still identifiable
as a square wave, but as we approach
42.2mHz, typically a square wave
will be almost fully rounded off and
appear as a sine wave. As a square
wave begins to round off, it means
the timing of the digital
transmissions has become more
insecure, allowing for the
introduction of more noise and
jitter that is then presented to the
DAC. Here we see the square wave
generated by the SuperTubeClock™ at
42.2mHz. As you can see, the square
wave still has a very discernible
square shape. This means the clock
is VERY fast, leaving very little
time to introduce jitter and noise
which can interfere with sound
quality as mentioned above. Look
closely at the image on the left
(click to enlarge). Each black
vertical line running from left to
right represents 5 nanoseconds. The
time it takes the slope to go from
the top bar to the bottom takes up
roughly 1/3 of that black square,
which is about 1.67 nanoseconds.
Think about it.. that's 1.6
BILLIONTHS of a second. Each black
horizontal line in this measurement
represent ~1V from top to bottom.
Just as in the first wave above, the
peak-to-peak travel at 42.2mHz is
about 3.6 Volts, which again is
excellent. This kind of speed is
crucial to ensure accuracy in detail
retrieval. This in turn introduces
less noise and jitter, resulting in
better transients, increased clarity,
improved dynamics, and a pure,
musical tonality.
Specifications
- Inputs: USB, AES/EBU, Coax,
Optical
- Outputs: Stereo RCA
- PCM (all inputs): 16bit-24bit,
44.1kHz-192kHz, DSD (USB)
- DSD (other inputs) DSD64-DSD128 (DoP),
DSD64 (DoP)
- DAC: TI (Burr Brown) PCM1792A
- 24bit/192kHz Upsampling: TI (Burr
Brown) SRC4192
- Tube Complement: 2 - 12AX7, 2 -
12AU7, 2 - 5AR4
- Dimensions (W x H x D): 11" x 7.5"
x 15.9"
- Weight: 28.7 lbs |
