EMM XDS1 REFERENCE CD-SACD Player/DAC

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.