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 variations.

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:

1. It enables galvanic separation between the source and converter.
2. 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.

We incorporate circuitry that decodes the DSD data from SACD discs and transmits it via the aforementioned optical interface. The circuitry also decodes PCM data, but 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 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.

And if you think all that sounds good here, just wait till you get the CDSD SE home.

Key Features:

• Meitner Digital Audio Translator (MDAT) signal processing technology
• Optical output for 6 channel DSD (either from SACD or 2 channels upconverted from CD)
• AES/EBU output for PCM from CD
• Optical and BNC clock input for external clocking
• Power factor corrected power supply with universal voltage input 85-260V, 50/60Hz
• Chassis extensively treated with vibration control material consisting of a highly-damped, low-rebound, rapid-settling polymer composite