Classe Audio DAC-88, Owner'S Manual

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TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION
The DAC-88 is a digital-to-analog processor that will accept digital audio data from up to five
different digital sources. It provides balanced and single ended stereo analog outputs capable of driving
the inputs of a preamp or home theatre processor. All internal power is provided by four fully linear
regulated power supplies. The DAC-88 features an HDCD decoder that, in addition to allowing full
HDCD decoding, functions as a state of the art 8x oversampling filter if the input data is not encoded in
HDCD format. The DAC-88 employs an ultra low jitter AES21 AES/SPDIF receiver from UltraAnalog,
Inc and dual 20-bit digital-to-analog converters (DAC's) implemented in a fully balanced configuration.
Front panel switches allow control over display brightness (off, low, medium, high), phase inversion,
input selection, and standby. The DAC-88 is designed to comply with UL safety and FCC interference
regulations for consumer audio equipment.
The power supply is a fully linear regulated design using an ultra high current 88 VA rated
toroidal transformer. Separate supplies are used for the digital and analog circuits providing optimum
isolation. There is over 200% power margin in the analog transformer which combined with over
32,000uF of capacitance in the power supply assures that there is plenty of reserve power to handle any
transient signal. The use of our highest quality polypropylene film bypass capacitors distributed
throughout the circuit ensures that the peak currents are localized to the most demanding circuits. The
analog left and right channels have their own linear regulator circuits, and an additional two more linear
regulators provide power for the digital processing circuits as well as the front panel control and display.
The large high grade rotary switch on the front panel selects one of five digital inputs to be used.
The rotary switch passes only DC levels that are used to control special relays that do the actual signal
switching. There is one Toslink optical input, two coax (SPDIF) inputs, one XLR (AES) input, and one
fiber optic glass ST input. The coax inputs accept nominal 0.5Vpp input levels and are terminated in