The goal for this new XDS1 CD/SACD Reference Player/Converter is nothing less than a quantum leap in sonic performance. Inside its sculpted aluminum chassis is a silky smooth Esoteric drive mated to the industry’s most sophisticated Meitner electronics. EMM Labs started by purifying its analog circuitry. Instead of the two to three gain stages typical of most player output sections, the XDS1 features just one cohesive gain stage from DAC to output. The circuitry is discrete (no chips), balanced, hand-matched, and operates in pure Class A.

EMM develops and manufactures its own proprietary conversion circuitry in-house. For the XDS1, EMM created something truly extraordinary – the cost-no-object MDAC-1 module. In tandem with its new MCLK-1 clock module which sets a new benchmark in sub pico-second jitter performance, the result is musically astonishing.

The XDS1 also features EMM’s most refined Meitner Digital Audio Translator (MDAT™) processing yet. Conventional digital players convert a digital signal (the ones and zeroes) to analog by processing it through a reconstruction filter that uses interpolation (oversampling) to smooth the analog waveform. The process works beautifully in the frequency domain, but in the time domain, errors are introduced in the form of pre and post ringing. With MDAT processing, there is no pre and post ringing. This is why MDAT – unlike any other processing technology extant – is unique in its ability to preserve the phase, frequency and dynamic integrity of the waveform. Once you’ve heard this level of improvement in terms of resolution, nuance and dynamic shading, there’s no going back.

Most converters use PLL (Phase Lock Loop) circuits to lock onto the incoming data stream. For the XDS1, EMM developed the MFAST™ (Meitner Frequency Acquisition System) technology. MFAST has two distinct advantages over PLLs. It’s a high-speed asynchronous system that acquires any data stream almost instantaneously. Secondly, unlike PLLs that merely attenuate jitter, MFAST is immune to incoming jitter and strips it out of the audio stream completely. Hook a digital audio or video source to the XDS1 – computer, music server, MP3 player or whatever you like – MFAST ensures that you’ll enjoy pristine sonic clarity no matter what the source.

Not only is EMM’s new high-isolation resonant-mode power supply the greenest EMM has ever built, it is also the quietest, outperforming even the best linear power supplies. All of this encased in our sculpted aluminum chassis, together with a remote control machined from a solid ingot of aluminum.

You know how it is. Digital audio data isn’t the sole domain of digital transports any longer. Today, digital audio streams from sources as diverse as your PC, music server, satellite receiver, mixing board and portable player. Which is why EMM Labs has created one very simple, very convenient way to get state-of-the-art sound from all of them.

Introducing the DAC2–the next generation two-channel reference D/A converter from EMM Labs, the perfect companion for our TSD1 CD/SACD Transport. Not only is the DAC2 equipped with a multitude of input options, it’s the first converter to feature EMM’s proprietary new MFAST™ (Meitner Frequency Acquisition System) technology.

MFAST™ vs. conventional PLLs

Most converters use PLL (Phase Locked Loop) circuits. MFAST™ has two distinct advantages. It’s a high-speed asynchronous system that locks almost instantaneously to any data stream. Moreover, unlike PLLs that merely attenuate jitter, MFAST™ strips jitter out of the audio stream completely. Enabling you to enjoy pristine sonic clarity whether the incoming data stream is pure or anything but. The DAC2 also features:

MDAT™: 2x DSD upsampling

Meitner Digital Audio Translator (MDAT™) upsamples to 5.6 mHz, double the SACD standard sampling rate.

Proprietary discrete dual differential D-to-A conversion circuit

EMM is not willing to accept the inherent non-linearities of every mass-market chip created to date. Neither should you.

If there are two absolutes in digital audio, they are that: 1) Jitter never, ever sounds good and 2) Ed Meitner has zero tolerance for jitter. In fact, Ed has spent a lifetime finding innovative new ways to eliminate jitter. Nowhere are the sonic benefits of his work more astonishingly clear than in the new EMM Labs TSD1 CD/SACD disc transport.

Like the DAC2, its companion converter, the TSD1 transport has been endowed with Meitner Digital Audio Translator (MDAT™) signal processing technology. Connect transport and DAC via the single-cable EMM Link interface and your CDs and SACDs are automatically upsampled to 5.6 mHz, double the SACD standard sampling rate.

MDAT™ also dynamically adapts to the transient nature of musical signal instead of addressing it conventionally, as a series of sine waves. This technology enables the TSD1 to do something unheard of in the world of digital audio: preserve the phase and frequency integrity of the original signal.

We think you’ll find EMM’s hardware every bit as impressive as its software. EMM’s new German drive, for example, featuring a hybrid metal composite tray with two stabilizing rods for vibration control. EMM also uses proprietary new technology to isolate the laser assembly from vibration.

Then there’s EMM’s crisp new LCD display. With CD text data and four brightness levels. There’s a silky smooth new machined aluminum chassis too. And a remote control machined from a solid block of aluminum.

All told, we can’t imagine a more perfect way to transport you to the musical event.

EMM Labs has always been known for thinking outside the box. That thinking has produced several patents, dozens of innovations and countless plaudits from the consumers, professionals and critics who have listened to, and ultimately purchased, EMM’s products. So what was the next logical step for EMM? Putting all that thinking and technology inside one single, absolutely groundbreaking, box for you.

Introducing the EMM Labs CDSA SE CD/SACD Player. It’s a single-box, dual format player that doesn’t merely upsample CD audio to SACD, it upsamples to double the SACD standard sampling rate.

Pop a CD into the CDSA SE, in other words, and the player takes the 44.1kHz signal and upsamples it to 5.6448MHz. Making CDs, not surprisingly, sound remarkably like SACDs. This seemingly impossible task is made possible by EMM’s unique Meitner Digital Audio Translator (MDAT) signal processing technology.

MDAT is unlike anything the industry has seen or heard before. Here’s why: Rather than address the digital signal as a series of sine waves—as is standard convention—the MDAT-equipped CDSA SE processes (and upsamples CD audio to DSD for conversion to analog) by dynamically adapting to the transient nature of the musical signal. In this way, the CDSA SE is utterly unique and singularly able to preserve the phase, frequency and dynamic integrity of the original signal. Once you’ve heard this level of improvement in terms of resolution, nuance and dynamic shading, there’s no going back.

Another important development that distinguishes the CDSA SE from its competition is the world’s first and only discrete dual differential D-to-A conversion circuit. Rather than depend on mass-market, off-the-shelf converter chips—with all their inherent compromises and limitations—EMM developed its own proprietary conversion circuitry.

This is a monumental technical achievement. The sonic results are no less impressive. EMM’s new conversion circuitry is utterly free from the differential non-linearities present in every D/A chip created to date. The CDSA SE also features our new aerospace-grade composite laminate circuit boards. These provide several performance advantages over conventional boards:

• Copper traces are microscopically smooth on top and bottom, significantly reducing skin effect issues
• Naturally damped sandwich construction offers superior strength and vibration resistance
• Lower dielectric losses and superior heat conduction ensure a more uniform temperature gradient across the circuitry, increasing stability and longevity

All of this makes the CDSA SE the most innovative and sophisticated CD/SACD player ever created. These are things you can’t necessarily see. But they sure are easy to hear.

EMM CDSD SE Disc Transport

Upon hearing the CDSD transport, Harry Pearson commented, “You simply don’t get this kind of improvement in part of the component chain of anything in audio more than once in a decade or so and now that day has come.”

Harry Pearson, The Absolute Sound
February/March 2005, Issue 152

The CDSD Signature Edition transport is, quite clearly, a breakthrough product. After all, it’s the product of Ed Meitner’s pioneering work in the field of jitter reduction and data recovery. He received a patent for this work in 1995: A new clock-recovery scheme that exhibited no sensitivity to input data patterns.

Rather than rely on data stream triggered bit-clock recovery, Ed’s revolutionary new circuit derived the clock from the timing of the preambles within the data. Pretty heady stuff. But it laid the groundwork for the development of the proprietary interface we now build into the CDSD SE transport. Which, as is standard convention in professional audio, separates clock and data stream transmission. We use a wide bandwidth ST Glass interface for this purpose because it has two inherent advantages:

• It enables galvanic separation between the source and converter.
• It comfortably allows cable runs of up to 500 feet without any sonic degradation.

The CDSD also features an external clock input so that it can be driven from the master clock of your EMM Labs converter—eliminating transport and interface-related jitter. The result is unparalleled sonic clarity. With PCM data from CD, instead of merely transmitting it via optical outputs, the data stream is first upconverted to DSD at a rate of 5.6448MHz via our proprietary MDAT algorithm. This process significantly improves the sound of standard compact discs.

The SE Advantage

Several important developments distinguish the new Signature Edition components from their much heralded and award-winning predecessors. The CDSD SE, for example, incorporates our new Meitner Digital Audio Translator (MDAT) signal processing technology.

MDAT technology is unlike anything the industry has seen, or heard, before. Here’s why: Rather than address the digital signal as a series of sine waves—as is standard convention—the MDAT-equipped CDSD SE processes (and upsamples CD audio to DSD for conversion to analog) by dynamically adapting to the transient nature of musical signal. In this way, the CDSD SE is utterly unique and singularly able to preserve both the phase and frequency integrity of the original signal. Once you’ve heard this level of improvement in terms of resolution, nuance and dynamic shading, there’s no going back.

The DCC2 SE is admired as much for what it does away with as what it does. It gives you the option to use it as a standalone converter or as a converter/preamplifier—eliminating the need for a separate preamp, attendant buffer stages and additional set of cables. The result is a more direct signal path. Not to mention a more direct connection with the music itself.

The converter is a direct descendant of the state-of-the-art DAC6e. Which means it takes CD and SACD reproduction to an entirely higher level. Hook it to a transport, any transport, and immediately the PCM input is up-converted to 5.6448MHz DSD. The sonic benefit of which has garnered equally high praise from both the professional and audiophile communities.

To use the DCC2 SE as a DSD converter, simply hook it to our CDSD SE transport via the proprietary OptiLink connection. OptiLink also gives you the ability to use the DCC2 SE in master clock mode—eliminating jitter completely and resulting in the finest possible CD and SACD reproduction.

On the analogue side, the DCC2 SE is derived from the highly acclaimed Switchman—a preamplifier of incredible flexibility. It features two analog and six digital inputs, infrared remote control and, most importantly, stunning transparency. Due, in no small part, to the extraordinarily sophisticated (and completely proprietary) volume control. Software based and controlled, it operates in the analogue domain. Thereby preserving the resolution, purity and integrity of the original signal.

The SE Advantage

Several important developments distinguish the new Signature Edition components from their much heralded and award-winning predecessors. The most revolutionary of which is the world’s first and only discrete dual differential D-to-A conversion circuit.

Rather than depend on mass-market, off-the-shelf converter chips—with all their inherent compromises and limitations—EMM Labs decided to take a different approach. It developed its own proprietary conversion circuitry for the Signature Edition products. This is a monumental technical achievement. The sonic results are no less impressive. EMM’s new conversion circuitry is utterly free from the differential non-linearities present in every multibit D/A chip created to date.

The DCC2 SE also features our new composite laminate circuit boards. These provide several performance advantages over conventional boards:

• Copper traces are microscopically smooth on top and bottom, significantly reducing skin effect issues
• Naturally damped sandwich construction offers superior strength and vibration resistance
• Lower dielectric losses and superior heat conduction ensure a more uniform temperature gradient across the circuitry, increasing stability and longevity

Positive Feedback’s David Robinson sums it all up this way, “The EMM Labs Signature Series is an unparalleled design accomplishment, and sets a new global benchmark for SACD and CD reproduction. Ed Meitner, Andreas Koch and company have exceeded their own previous work by a considerable margin.”

The DAC6e SE had a unique advantage bestowed upon it from the moment of its creation. It is directly derived from the world’s standard-bearer of PCM and DSD sound quality: the EMM Labs DAC8.

Like the DAC8, and quite unlike any other converter brand in the world, the EMM Labs DAC6e SE takes the PCM inputs and immediately upsamples them to 5.6448MHz DSD. The sonic benefits of which were abundantly clear to David Robinson of Positive Feedback when he categorically stated:

“Let’s keep this simple: The Meitner makes CDs sound better than I’ve ever heard them. The Meitner makes SACDs sound better than I’ve ever heard them… which means that they have a notable tendency to embarrass Red Book playback of the same title.”

The DAC6e SE is also notably immune to jitter thanks to Ed Meitner’s unique, patented jitter reduction circuitry. Further, connecting EMM’s CDSD transport confers yet another technological advantage upon the DAC6e—the ability to work in the master clock mode, eliminating jitter completely. A fact which, perhaps, contributed to the inclusion of the DAC6e on Jonathan Valin’s list of the ten most influential audio products of the last thirty years. Says The Absolute Sound’s Valin, “and, if contemporary products are allowable, the EMM Labs DAC6e, which certainly will set the standard for all future high-rez digital playback devices.”

Jonathan Valin
The Absolute Sound
Dec/2003-Jan/2004, Issue 145

The SE Advantage

Several important developments distinguish the new Signature Edition components from their much heralded and award-winning predecessors. The most revolutionary of which is the world’s first and only discrete dual differential D-to-A conversion circuit.

Rather than depend on mass-market, off-the-shelf converter chips—with all their inherent compromises and limitations—EMM Labs decided to take a different approach. It developed its own proprietary conversion circuitry for the Signature Edition products.

This is a monumental technical achievement. The sonic results are no less impressive. EMM’s new conversion circuitry is utterly free from the differential non-linearities present in every multibit D/A chip created to date.

The DAC6e SE also features EMM’s new composite laminate circuit boards. These provide several performance advantages over conventional boards:

• Copper traces are microscopically smooth on top and bottom, significantly reducing skin effect issues
• Naturally damped sandwich construction offers superior strength and vibration resistance
• Lower dielectric losses and superior heat conduction ensure a more uniform temperature gradient across the circuitry, increasing stability and longevity

David Robinson concludes his review of the Signature Edition products this way, “So once again, for a whole new generation of equipment, my answer for SACD and CD playback is a simple recommendation: Get thee to a Meitner!”

Leave it to the guy who developed the recording industry’s most respected digital converters to design a multichannel analogue preamplifier of equally stunning sonic merit. How is this possible given the disparate nature of the disciplines?

Eminent recording and mastering engineer Tom Jung explains: “Ed Meitner is the only guy on the planet who has an equally good understanding of both digital and analog circuitry.”

The Switchman-3 is a control center consisting of a main unit, which features four sets of 6-channel inputs, and a wired remote that draws its power from the main unit. It’s a product that’s equally at home in a state-of-the-art stereo system, multichannel music set-up, high-end home theater or recording studio.

Incorporating balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs, the Switchman-3 combines the versatility of a Swiss Army knife with the sonic purity of the proverbial straight wire with gain. You can program it to accommodate virtually any multichannel configuration imaginable.

Yet many of our customers choose the Switchman, above all else, for their dedicated two-channel systems because of its unmatched sonic purity. So just how good is the Switchman? James Guthrie used it in the remastering of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon SACD. Steve Rosenthal utilized it as well when he remastered twenty-two Rolling Stones SACDs. We could go on, but you get the idea.