Cambridge Audio DacMagic 100 - Digital to Analogue Converter with Toslink, S/PDIF, and USB Inputs Featuring 24-bit Wolfson DAC - Silver

Product Information

There's an intimidating range of audio products available to us and whether its headphones, smartphones, speakers or even streaming services, they’re all promising you incredible sound. But there’s an undisputed way you can make your existing setup simply - better. By adding a DAC. One tends to associate rhythm particularly with music for dancing or marching but, of course, it's no less important in a string quartet or ballad, just in a different way. The whole right-hand side of the Cambridge’s facade is dedicated to displaying the sampling rate of the audio signal being fed into it. Several LEDs each labelled with a sampling rate –‘44.1kHz’, ‘48kHz’, ‘96kHz’ and ‘192kHz’, for example – light up to signify it. So if you’re playing a CD-quality file, the ‘44.1kHz’ LED will illuminate. Likewise, LEDs for MQA and DSD light up when those types of files or streams are detected. Minimum phase filters do without the pre-ringing, but do have some phase shift in the audio band. The actual frequency response is, to all intents and purposes, identical to that of the linear phase filter. The 'steep' option, meanwhile, is another linear phase filter, but with faster roll-off above 20kHz so that, effectively, no aliasing occurs. Generalmente, los convertidores de digital a analógico de los dispositivos digitales habituales carecen del nivel esperado y no permiten obtener toda la calidad de audio de las fuentes de sonido. DacMagic 100 toma directamente la señal de audio digital del dispositivo para omitir la tarjeta de sonido o el DAC del mismo. Procesa digitalmente la señal de audio mediante nuestra tecnología de diseño personalizado para mejorar enormemente la calidad del sonido y reducir los niveles de distorsión. Esto produce mejores niveles de detalle, una claridad espectacular y un escalado muy profundo de toda su música. COMPATIBILIDAD

We hook the Cambridge up to a Macbook Pro via USB type-B, feed it Arab Strap’s Fable Of The Urban Fox (16-bit/44.1kHz) and are instantly impressed by the articulacy of Aidan Moffat’s trademark poetic storytelling through the 200M. It not only communicates his unmistakable Scottish accent but also the masterful cadence of his delivery.A DAC, or digital toanalogueconverter, is the device that translates digitally stored information from a laptop, iPod or other such device into theanaloguesound that we can hear. Since then, the DacMagic has existed in one form or another in the Cambridge Audio range. Recent attention has been more focused on adding digital inputs to the amplifiers themselves though so the 200M is the first new DacMagic in a rather long time. Is this still a fine way of boosting your digital capabilities or have the changes that the DacMagic name started moved to the point where you don’t need a standalone DAC any more? Introduce the 200M into a more expansive system, and a lot depends on the quality of integrated DAC you’re replacing and the ability of the overall system, of course. An accomplished (and almost certainly pricey) CD player, for example, may show relatively gentle gains in performance. But when you route a TV or set-top box, a games console or a Blu-ray player through the Cambridge Audio, all of the positivity of performance we noted in its desktop performance comes through loud and clear. The improvements in rhythmic expression and fine detail retrieval, in particular, can be genuinely startling.

That smoothness clings to the violins leading Ólafur Arnalds’ Spiral (Sunrise Session) (24-bit/96kHz) in a way that makes it enjoyable without clouding the textural finesse or dynamic undulation of the strings that communicate the piece’s beautiful fragility. The Cambridge rides the dynamic ebbs and flows nicely, showing its grace in the quieter moments and its authority in the louder ones. Power on the unit and select the input source that you wish to listen to using the source button located on the front panel. Prices valid in stores (all including VAT) until close of business on 26th November 2023. (Some of these web prices are cheaper than in-store, so please mention that you've seen these offers online.) On the inside, business is taken care of by a pair of ESS Sabre ES9028Q2M digital-to-analogue converter chips. These make the 200M compatible with PCM digital audio files up to 32but/784kHz standard, as well as DSD512. With MQA compatibility on board too, there isn’t a digital audio file worthy of the name that the Cambridge Audio can’t handle.

Devised by software specialist Anagram Technologies of Switzerland and licensed – exclusively, to date – to Cambridge, this uses high-power digital signal processing technology to perform the digital filtering function. In the advanced tab you will be given the option to change the Windows output sample rate. If you are using your DacMagic 100 in USB Audio Class 1.0 mode, set this to ‘24-bit, 96000Hz’.