I’ve been in contact with Frank Pietersen before and during our correspondence, we have exchanged the views about the high-end audio brands and products. He and his business partner Daniel Gottschalk are running the Highend Scout (Gottschalk & Pietersen GmbH) that imports and distribute companies and products that they’ll feet to stand out of the crowd.
Frank and I share quite similar views about the brands and products. My reference digital front ends as well as the system are all in the upper echelon league and Frank suggested that I should try out the Playback Designs. Although it’s always hectic before the Munich High-End Audio show I’ve couldn’t keep my curiosity bottled. And as you can read on it was more than worthy to explore the Playback Designs Dream Series MPD-8 DAC.
ANDREAS KOCH
Andreas Koch Founder and CEO of Playback Designs needs no special introduction, but still let us look into his vibrant and impressive work…
Andreas Koch got his start working for Studer ReVox in Switzerland back in 1982. It was his task to build the world’s first fully asynchronous digital audio sample rate converter, patent granted in 1984. Also, in 1984, he designed one of the first filter banks for digital audio. 512 banks were used to per- form digital noise reduction for old recordings. Some of the same ideas were used later in audio compression algorithms such as MP3, AC-3 and others.
Following his accomplishments at Studer Revox, he went to work with Dolby Labs in San Francisco. In 1985 he built all the digital signal processing of the AC-1 encoder and decoder (delta modulator). This was a professional digital audio compression scheme used for television transmission. It was Dolby’s first digital audio product and was sold quite successfully. In 1986 he built the hardware for the very first incarnation of what is today the widely used AC-3 compression algorithm.
In 1987 Studer ReVox in Switzerland required his return. Andreas managed the development of a professional digital audio tape recorder which was a 48-channel DASH format on 1/2 inch tape. For the next two years he was involved in the market and technology research for hard disk (PC) recording in professional ap- plications. This job required visiting many high profile recording studios worldwide which helped to establish his solid base in this industry.
Andreas continued his great work in Switzerland until his transfer to Studer Editech in Menlo Park, CA, in 1989, where he was tasked to manage a group of engineers designing the ultimate hard disc recorder for professional post production applications, launched “Dyaxis” in 1992 which is still used today. The user interface was so revolutionary that it was copied by many competing products still produced today.
In 1993 Sony in Florida needed his services. He oversaw product development for professional audio products and launched various mixing consoles. Sony recognized Andreas’ great successes and asked him to relocate to San Francisco in 1997 where he started and managed the development for the world’s first 8-channel DSD recording / editing / mixing machine. “Sonoma” is still used today in studios throughout the world and has been used for most SACD releases. He designed all the digital parts of A/D and D/A converters that helped establish DSD as a superior sounding audio format in SACD. He followed that up by expanding the Sonoma to 32-channels of DSD on a single PC. Andreas also participated in all standardization committees for SACD in conjuntion with Philips.
During 2003 Andreas decided to go into business for himself as an independent contract engineer. For the next four years he designed all of the digital componentry, algorithms and architecture for EMM Labs digital audio products; professional and audiophile. He designed and implemented various revolutionary algorithms for sample rate conversion (SRC), as can only be expected from one of the original inventors of SRC. He also developed a discrete D/A converter and unique architecture for clock management from digital audio transmission inputs.
In 2008, Andreas Koch formed Playback Designs and launched an integrated SACD/CD player with a variety of digital inputs that incorporates all the experience, knowledge and algorithms Andreas gathered and developed over the last 25 years, right from the onset of digital audio.
BERT GERLACH
All analog circuitry of the Playback Designs products are developed by Bert Gerlach, a young German engineer. He is not only an audiophile with years of listening experience in several recording studios, but being a musician himself he also brings lots of enthusiasm to his work with audio products.
After his medical studies, which gave him a deep insight into the human anatomy, including the functionality of the ear and its analyzing part that we call the brain, he received a diploma in electrical engineering – together a perfect combination for building high end audio gear.
In 2004, working together with Andreas Koch for the first time during his semester as an intern, he embarked on creating a digital format converter. After finishing his studies in 2005 he started building his own products, foremost the analog pre-amplifier Puralio, which he showed at the High-End show in Munich in 2007. As a lucky coincidence, Andreas Koch also visited this show and became enamored with the impressive sound of the Puralio. Once Andreas decided to start Play- back Designs, Andreas brought in Bert to design an analog output stage for what would become the Playback Designs 5 Series. During this process Bert also re-designed the D/A converter right where digital becomes analog.
With its discrete filtering and discrete output stage without any chips or OP-amps Bert’s analog circuitry fits well into the discrete architecture of the 5-series D/A converter. By carefully selecting each individual component Bert has total control over each single parameter of the analog signal processing path which utilizes technologies developed for the Puralio. The extremely high bandwidth and zero-phase design far beyond the audible range reveal all aspects coming from the digital domain giving the Playback Designs products tremendous image and richness of detail. With its low output impedance the highly neutral sounding amplifier can drive all kinds of wires, therefore minimizing the influence of cable characteristics on the sonic performance. Special care is taken in the linear analog power supply which is totally isolated, giving the four symmetrical output stages the “3-dimensional” characteristics.
Since 2005 Bert has been working also as Head of Electronic Developement at ILA in Jülich, a company developing solutions for optical volume flow measurement based on Laser Doppler Velocimetry and Particle Image Velocimetry. This specialized equipment requires challenging analog HF designs, digital FPGA systems and board layout techniques. This unique experience helps Bert in the design of the PCB layouts for the analog and digital circuits for Playback Designs with optimal attention to signal integrity far above the audio range.
DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
Let us look what makes makes the Playback Designs MPD-8 so different yet so interestingly potent….
Playback Designs had a Dream…
The from-ground-up new architecture is the result of multiple prototype generations over the last two years where the experience of digital and analog algorithms and circuit designs from Andreas Koch’s and Bert Gerlach’s expertise refined over many decades has been combined and perfected to create a truly no-compromise, flexible and programmable product platform that can deliver ultimate performance and can grow for many years as technology keeps evolving.
SEPARATION
It is well known that the core D/A circuitry and its associated analog output stage are one of the most sensitive links in the digital playback chain. They are susceptible to various influences from clocked circuits (such as processors, displays etc.), power supplies and external sources that are connected to it via galvanic (copper) cables. Only the slightest modulation of the digital sample clock will result in jitter and can contribute to what audiophiles often describe as “digital sound”. Often these subtle disturbances, especially related to clock jitter, are very hard or even impossible to measure. Only experience and tedious listening tests with prototype circuits can help the designer in optimizing the general architecture and detailed circuit design. This is exactly what the Playback Designs team did over the last few years after accumulating valuable experience over the last 30+ years.
As with any critical part in any product design, it needs to be well shielded from any harmful influences and embedded in an environment that lets it perform at its best. In order to control negative cross talk and inter modulation effects between the stereo output channels the new Dream Series MPD-8 DAC is designed with two completely separate circuits for each channel. The core D/A and associated analog output circuitry is completely separate and on a separate printed circuit board for each channel.
This separation alone helps much already, but a further significant optimization can be achieved by adding a separate power supply to each channel. Playback Designs went even further and designed each power supply with two separate and parallel circuits so that the small digital parts in the core D/A can be powered from a separate source than the analog part. This may sound like design overkill (and maybe it is), but the benefits in sonic performance are very significant – and Playback Design team were able to clearly measure and hear them.
A DAC product wouldn’t be complete without a digital front end, digital inputs and a front panel display. These are all purely digital circuits that can have a significant negative impact on the DAC’s overall performance if not carefully laid out and integrated into the product.
The experience in earlier products from Playback Designs has shown that it is best to physically isolate all digital circuitry and power it by a separate power supply. Playback Designs took this same proven philosophy for the Dream Series and drove it even further by powering the display with its own separate supply. Front panel displays are a significant source of power consumption and therefore should be isolated even further.
In addition Playback Designs make extensive use of mechanical shielding between power supplies, analog and digital circuits. The three dual power supplies in the MPD-8 DAC are housed in a solid metal cage that shields any electric fields from the sensitive analog circuits. The same applies to the two dual power supplies in the MPS-8.
While the Dream DAC MPD-8 has its own digital inputs and digital signal processing built-in, it can also be combined with the MPT-8 transport that offers the same digital inputs, plus an array of other digital sources, such as CD/SACD drive, music server, streamer and network bridge. The link between MPD-8 and MPT-8 is via a fiber optical cable that natively supports all digital formats and sample rates. This is a proprietary technology by Playback Designs that is a vital element in the separation between digital sources and the DAC. By connecting all your digital sources to the MPT-8 and then connecting the MPT-8 with a single fiber optical cable to the MPD-8 achieve the most significant separation between analog and digital.
AUDIO SAMPLE CLOCK AND DISPLAY
It may not appear empirical to group these two subjects into the same paragraph, but unfortunately, they are very much related, and in a negative way. Most available displays are driven by internal processors or refreshing circuits with simple built in clock generators that run freely at frequencies that are not related or coupled to any audio sample rate.
It is also well known that two independent clock generators within the same product that are not coupled or synchronized in any way, will “beat against each other” and create inter modulation distortion. This doesn’t matter so much for the display clock, but for the audio sample clock it does very much.
Therefore, it is Playback Designs’ strict design rule to only use one single clock generator in the most critical element, the DAC. But this limits the choice of front panel displays drastically. Where most competing products show off fancy graphic color displays, all Playback Designs products use somewhat simpler displays that can be driven with an external clock that can be then synchronized with the audio sample rate. This eliminates a significant performance issue right at the source.
The MPD-8 and MPS-8 products use a single clock source to drive every circuit from control processor, to signal processor, to digital input, to display.
The MPT-8 is designed to allow multiple clock generators: drive, server, streamer, network bridge etc. but then re-clocks all digital signals through Playback Designs’ proprietary high precision clock generator before sending the signal out to the DAC via its fiber optical interface. This prevents any inter modulation effects from reaching the DAC.
For the audio sample clock Playback Designs uses a proprietary generator designed to eliminate any correlated jitter that can negatively impact the sonic performance. This is one of the most critical technologies in a DAC and Playback Designs is constantly innovating new algorithms on the same basic concept that was started already 20 years ago.
Special attention was given to the analog circuitry for the clock generator by refining it with the lowest noise linear regulators available in the market today. The result is the cleanest clock generator that Playback Designs have ever designed and its performance cannot easily be matched with any competitor’s design.
DIGITAL INPUT PROCESSING AND D/A CONVERSION
The Dream Series DACs incorporate the same basic digital signal processing algorithms that made Playback Designs’ earlier products famous and well liked all over the world already. New frequency and time based filters are working in concert to optimize performance during transients in the music signal – and the music signal is generally full of such transient signals. This helps bring out performance of redbook CD’s that is normally hidden when using conventional DAC chips and algorithms. On top of that an apodizing filter is used which can remedy some of the side-effects caused by the A/D converter used in the studio during production. A recently launched music format makes similar claims about this feature, but Playback Designs has implemented this filter already in 2010 and has constantly been improving it since then.
All PCM inputs are upsampled through this series of algorithms to a very high sample rate from where they are converted to DSD at an even higher sample rate. All DSD inputs are also upsampled to this intermediate sample rate.
What follows then is a proprietary digital process that further upsamples the signal to around 50MHz. At that point the sample rate is so high that a conversion to analog becomes quite trivial. The significant advantage of this is not only a drastic simplification of the analog part of the DAC, but also the prevention of any non-linear distortions that are common with most other DAC structures.
While the core DAC is built with discrete components (i.e. no off-the-shelf chip sets), just like all previous products by Playback Designs, the DAC of the Dream Series is built with a much more elaborate architecture and layout, more precise and powerful components, and with strict separation between sensitive circuits and anything that could impact its performance negatively.
POWER SUPPLY
All power supplies used in the Dream Series products are linear and a new from ground-up development. One power supply is actually two-in-one as it has two parallel circuits to help further separating individual power domains. Each supply has its own transformer that is custom built for Playback Designs with integrated Mu-metal shielding.
VOLUME CONTROL AND ANALOG OUTPUT STAGE
The analog output stage of the DAC is designed with the finest components of 0.1% metal film resistors and film capacitors combined with lowest noise precision impedance converters. This from-ground-up new design features a true double differential structure which means, that one channel of audio is actually built out of four fully differential digital signals that are driven by a FPGA dedicated to the analog section only! The data transfer to this FPGA from the digital board is also differential without any galvanic ground connections.
Again, the concept of maximum separation and isolation is applied to the analog section of the DAC to achieve maximum performance.
Simplified block diagram of Dream Series DAC to illustrate the discrete architecture with its various proprietary processing steps all designed by Playback Designs
In the past, Playback Designs DACs had no volume control. The Dream Series now incorporates a very high quality analog volume control which has been developed and refined over many years. Even the volume control is laid out differentially. This way, the output of the Dream Series DAC can be adjusted to any level from zero to an amazing level of almost 25 volts peak in fine steps without compromising noise and distortion performance.
A critical part in any analog circuit is its power supply. So Playback Designs gave it their special attention too and applied the same principles again of separation by designing it with ten (!) of the lowest noise linear regulators for each channel. No expense was spared to achieve the highest performance the most transient friendly power for the analog output stage.
THE MUSIC
After all the years of continuous playback, it seems how anything from John Coltrane won’t get worn out. My Favorite Things surely belongs among those precious jazz gems. It’s not simple to fully capture the spirit of Coltrane from any of the records, but to a certain degree, even an entry level setup will ensure some of the Trane’s magic.
With this particular album, there is a simple test that determines the front end ability to help with transcending the typical speaker’s box sound. The test starts with playing the album title song at the real world level. Here both the source and speakers are at stress with the amount of the energy and the density of acoustical space needed to be rendered. I’ve heard many systems (or products) that were proudly claimed to convey anything anytime.
The reality instantly strikes with even such “simple” (in terms of instrument count) recording. Then again, there are not many DACs on the market that can offer enough energy consistency and amount of spatial cues to really form a disappearing act…
The Playback Design MPD-8 caught me by surprise even on the first few note strikes. There are lots of attributes needed to properly render and distribute instruments into space. The saxophone (and all the instruments) necessitates a previously mentioned cue density in order to form both three-dimensional scope and a believable timbre.
I needed to comprehend on how easily the Trane’s sax detached from the speakers and cut through the air with a familiar tin grip. Oh yeah, I was instantly hooked with a serious low hour marathon ahead…
While My Favorite Things do pitch a certain depth and reasonable atmospheric sonic wall a real test for a wider soundstage is exceptionally apparent with Anne Bisson – Blue Mind. September in Montreal is a complex song that challenges any DAC as well as the system to a serious degree within the first minute and a half. MPD-8 has exceeded and prolonged the usual horizontal and vertical depth by far. Feat alone worthy of all the praise.
Marcus Miller – Renaissance and especially the track Detroit offers an obvious foray into discovering the real potency of the digital front end. Marcus‘ rhythmic pulsations that traverse and seamlessly blend with the funk can at once reveal any DAC’s execution withdrawal. MPD-8 eschew mediocrity with a grander leap and pinpointed at the very essence of the rhythmic inner core. With the Detroit in play, DAC really needs to serve the music’s energy with a fuller scope and the Dream DAC has proven its dynamic versatility and virtuosity also with Batik. Dharma from Headland is on the top of my reference tracklist for the examination of the digital front end’s ability to render Dharma’s dangerously dynamic intro. Yes, this track can be a driver killer!
MPD-8 has captured Batik’s almost scary, ghastly atmosphere and sonic detail squads without a problem. The complex sonic scenery was drawn with an impressive relief like structure letting the song to really breathe and extend deep into my listening room. Notably, with this album, I’m not quickly impressed with the digital source yet Playback Designs MPD-8 scattered sound with it’s pliant, chameleon-like nature from track to track. 
Completely diverse Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro, K. 492 – Teodor Currentzis, MusicAeterna – Le Nozze di Figaro: Sinfonia fast interplays between the vocal, orchestra and piano are extremely hard to portray in a credible manner. Dream DAC’s effortless essence has accouched steadfast performance without frequency drifts. In the absence of the quite common vocal’s nasality (even in the upper echelon DAC league), the MPD-8 depicted beautiful, human-like gravity. The Dream DAC’s impeccable tonal balance with ease mimicked the formants, notes with the greater sense of real-world momentum, that is essential for the high-level high-end audio reproduction. 
What about the airiness? Hans-Martin Linde, Konrad Ragossnig – Hans-Martin Linde & Konrad Ragossnig: Musik für Flöte und Gitarre. MPD-8 beautifully rendered the guitar and flute with majestic holographic space and easily follow Hans-Martin Linde’s constant moving while playing the flute. Despite being translucent in nature MPD-8 has shown that its not the victim of artificial transparency. The guitar and flute on this recording grant a remarkably warm tone that was not hidden or saturated by any drop of sonic tint. Notes overlapped easily without losing the delicate vibrancy. This particular remark in my listening notes was triply highlighted in with the red marker.
A more multifaceted interplay was further challenged with Aldo Ceccato, Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra – The Best of Saint-Saëns. MPD-8 handled Piano Concerto No.4 in C minor, Op.44: 2. Allegro vivace- Andante- Allegro with surpassing ease. With the Dream DAC piano notes and orchestra seamless integrations sounded unified and were not bestowed as stacked sequences of mathematic deciphering, that is too often the case even with some of the top tier DACs. The MPD-8 surprising affluence of a feather like sonic particles momentum has allowed exciting handling of the dynamic shifts and sudden attack strikes conveyed a mightier portion of aural traits that are crucial for inscribing of our perception of live music. When dynamic constraints are removed the sonic canvas can be evenly painted with potent strikes. Playback Designs flagship DAC ability to impersonate the complex momentums of Saint-Saëns’s really captured the orchestra and piano inner nucleus, often making me shake my head in disbelief. Yes, the Dream DAC ability to deliver multiplex sonic collision was quite a sobering experience. 
With Herbert von Karajan – Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta – Hindemith: Symphony (Mathis der Maler) Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz. 106: II. Allegro the subtle and lyrical interchangings of the string instruments, timpani and the rest of the orchestra surely call for a nonordinary digital player. The Dream DAC really stepped forward with the spot on tempi. It’s not only about the silence between the notes as often advocated. These days this is realitvly easy to achieve. A true high-end audio front end should ensure the tempi that is natural to follow and engaging as with the live performance.
One more remark from my review sketchpad noted the deliverance of a sheer drama. There is a certain submarine like depth threshold needed to be met for yours truly to induce the right amount of excitement that send the shivers down my spine. And here you have it. The Playback Designs MPD-8 elongated needed lower register fundament far deeper from what I’ve expected.
MPD-8 had easily established the lower register dynamic foundation that is crucial for the development of the convincing mid and high-frequency propagation.
Yes, this is psychoacoustic in action. The cryptic populous acoustical nodes and rules in play. There is no objective and harmonic sonic synergy possible without these properties set accurately and Playback Designs MPD-8 is exceptional in this regard!
CONCLUSION
You’ve might notice a dream catcher patterns in one of the MPD-8 background images. I do like the subtle correlation with the Native American mysterious artifact, but MPD-8 won’t act as Asibikaashi or apotropaic. Playback Design MPD-8 will instantly entrap the attention and captivate the senses into the exploration of the endless music’s web.
Playback Designs flagship DAC offers a stand out immersive performance, that delivers an impressive holographic music presentation. Although I’m a big fan of ladder-based DACs, MPD-8 belongs to the category, that I have quite a problem to define precisely, but in no way, I can object the Dream DAC fantastic performance. It clearly proves the point that when the technology is properly implemented at the end of the day what matters is know how.
The real world application of theoretical idea or concept is not always successfully trickled down into the actual product yet MPD-8 shines on so many fronts that it really deserves wider recognition.
So what makes MPD-8 so different from other Playback Designs DACs and competition? Everything was designed from the ground up with utmost attention to a perfect separation of digital and analog. That included dedicated power supplies, numerous power regulators, etc.
As you’ve most probably deciphered all of the incoming signals are internally converted to DSD128. The similar approach was adopted by Nagra for their Classic and HD DAC (hence the AKDesign modules) but Playback Designs implements an apodizing filter and their own algorithms. Also, in the last stage before final conversion to analog takes place MPD-8 again Playback Designs’ unique algorithms transform the signal to a DSD2048. Yes, you read it correctly…
So in the era of FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) where proprietary software offers a mind-boggling variety of programming this is exactly where Playback Designs uses they long-standing know how.
Playback Designs MPD-8 DAC has delivered one of the best, if not the best remote response, volume handling and gain distribution one box solutions I’ve had the luxury to experience. The splendid preamplifier/DAC synergy delivered an abundance of super healthy gain. This let me to directly drive my Lamm M1.2 reference hybrid monoblocks with splendid lock and load performance. MPD-8 has provided an unmatched synergy with Lamms, something I’ve surely didn’t expect! At least nowhere near this scale. Then again… This is one of the real luxuries of so much product circulations. We all benefit from such endeavors…
Of course, the Dream DAC is not tied to the internal volume. In its absence it can be set to one of the fixed values (-6db, -3db, 0db, +3db, +6db). I’ve compared the MPD-8 internal volume control with a few of my preamplifiers and while it was not as utterly refined and transparent as my The Bespoke Audio Company Ultimate Silver preamplifier, the difference was not as far as one might assume. It’s really hard to beat the Bespoke’s straight wire gain signature less impact, but the MPD-8 still brought an impressive amount of gain translucency that its hard to find in the standalone preamplifiers costing as much or more as the Dream DAC’s preamp/DAC combo.
It’s hard to pin down the exact nature of MPD-8 natural, easy to immerse in sound. The 1bit way of handling of the signal and the double differential output stages are surely among the key point solutions.
The MPD-8 absence of mingling with spatial distortion in the wrong way allows stand out, stress-free, fatigue less listening that is both exemplary and most highly engaging. Even on the upper echelon DAC plane the transparency and natural openness are not always connected with the proper delivery of tone, timbre, and color. Well, not with the Dream DAC. MPD-3 offers a scenic sonic canvas with the radiant and earthly tone colors, way above its price sticker.
Rarely the spot on neutrality is partnered with proper tonal balance, timing and spot-on neutrality. The result is a digital sonic marvel that not only represents what 21st-century digital audio is capable of but pushes the “bits” per $ performance to the new level!The MPD-8 Dream DAC aesthetics simply cannot be confused with any other DAC. The contemporary dark grey sort of metallic aluminum finish offers an industrial, kind of Blade Runner look (in a good way), that project the quality and prolonged CNC machining timing even at a casual eye glance. When the high-end audio product crosses a certain price threshold, there should really be no reservations with the quality of the chassis. As we all know this is not the always (what should be the rule) the case. Playback Dream DAC captivates the attention with the contemporary, minimalistic, yet substantial design that is bold enough to not get out of the style quite soon.
Considering it’s given price and the quality of the built-in preamplifier module, the DAC feels like a gifted sweetest cherry on the top of the already exquisite cake. For the money and beyond this is truly stand out exemplary DAC with one of the best if not the best volume implementation I’ve had a pleasure to experience. For what it represents and especially at what price I’m wholeheartedly given out the Mono and Stereo 2019 Upper Echelon Product award!
Matej Isak
PRICE
- RRP is EUR 24.900,00, net RRP is EUR 20.924,37
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Digital inputs:
- USB (PCM up to 384kHz, DSD up to 11.2MHz) AES (PCM up to 192kHz, DSD via DoP)
- Coax (PCM up to 192kHz, DSD via DoP) TosLink (PCM up to 96kHz)
- PLINK optical (PCM up to 384kHz, DSD up to 11.2MHz)
- PLINK optical (reserved for direct connection of MPT-8 transport)
Analog outputs:
- Balanced on XLR connectors
- Unbalanced on RCA connectors
- Both analog outputs can be set to fixed values of -6db, -3db, 0db, +3db, +6db and variable for full analog volume control.
Power Supply
- North America model………AC 120V, 60Hz
- Asia, Europe model………. AC 230V, 50Hz
- Japan model……………… AC 100V, 50/60Hz
Consumption
- 100W max.
Weight
- 19kg / 42 lb
Ext. dimensions
- (W x H x D) 46 x 13 x 43 cm 18.1 x 5.1 x 16.9 inches
Analog Audio Outputs
- XLR, RCA @1kHz full level:
Fixed settings:
- -6db: 2.1V rms
- -3db: 3.0V rms
- 0db: 4.2V rms
- +3db: 6.0V rms
- +6db: 8.4V rms
- Variable setting: 13.5V rms max.
Output impedance
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Operating Temperature
- +5°C to +30°C
DAC architecture:
- Discrete with Playback Designs’ own proprietary digital algorithms and dual differential analog output stage. Each analog output stage (for each channel) is completely separated on its own printed circuit board with its own independent linear power supply for maximum performance.
- An ultra high end analog volume control can be activated for each channel.
Volume control:
- An ultra high end analog volume control can be activated for each channel.
Software update:
- Playback Designs already created an excellent reputation with its program to offer free software upgrades with new features or new algorithms that the end user can upload into the DAC without the need to return it to the dealer or manufacturer. This will keep the product always up-to-date with the latest trends and, therefore, will help in keeping the value high for this product.
Remote control:
- A hand-held IR control set is provided in a sleek case with lit buttons. The MPD-8 is also equipped with a network interface for remote control via networked apps (future expansion).
CONTACT
Highend Scout
Gottschalk & Pietersen GmbH
Gervinusstr. 21
10629 Berlin
Web: www.highendscout.de