Since the birth of the CD player Arcam has been one of the industry’s leading innovators. It was the first to add outboard digital to analogue (DAC) conversion as a sonic upgrade, resulting in dramatic increases in performance and its’ “Black Box” DAC went on to define a whole new generation of products.
Over the last few years computer and streaming audio has added to the popularity of the outboard DAC. As a response to this Arcam have underlined their position at the cutting edge of this technology with the new rDac.
The rDac is a fantastically simple design with sleek cast aluminum casework which hides some of the most up to date digital conversion technology. At the heart of the Arcam Solo rDac is the outstanding 8741 IC from Wolfson Microelectronics. The rDac renders music with stunning accuracy and clarity and offers coaxial, optical or digital input which helps deliver a truly thrilling performance.
One of the best things about the rDac is the almost endless possibilities that it can be used for. Be it internet radio, set-top boxes or game stations these can all be connected via coaxial or optical leads to help receive a dramatic increase in sound quality and performance. The rDac is also perfect for PC's and Mac computers running music programs such as iTunes® or Windows Media Player. They can feed the rDac via its USB input for fantastic results helped by the special re-clocking circuitry which almost eliminates the timing inaccuracies and noise which can often be associated with music in the computer environment.
To help them achieve this Arcam has licensed the Asynchronous USB Technology from dCS (Data Conversion Systems) making for a near flawless system. The unique asynchronous USB technology is usually reserved for ultra high-end HiFi and professional audio applications but is used here to full effect. Arcam and dCS have had a long and fruitful relationship that goes back to the highly innovative Alpha 9 & CD23 versions of dCS’s Ring DAC
The dCS technology is a massive improvement over the standard USB adaptive systems used in most products. The dCS uses a precision clock to drastically reduce the level of jitter from USB music sources. The design of the precision clock circuits and general digital and analogue audio engineering are some of Arcam’s key strengths and it is certainly no different here with the results from the highly affordable rDac stunning regardless of the digital audio source.