10
Special Design Features
Congratulations on your purchase of the Nº30.6 Reference Digital Au-
dio Processor. The Madrigal design team is confident you will enjoy the
outstanding performance of the Nº30.6 for many years. In case you are
interested in technical details, what follows is a brief outline of some of
the key technologies in your new processor.
Powerful DSP
Your Nº30.6 employs four powerful SHARC
®
digital signal processors
to deliver exceptional flexibility and versatility. Together, they form a
single DSP “engine” that can handle the myriad of processing duties
required in today’s rapidly-changing world of digital audio. These du-
ties include decoding HDCD
™
and “24/96” decoding, and may be ex-
panded to include many other signal formats over time.
“24/96” & HDCD
®
In addition to the common 16 bit at either 44.1 and 48 kHz sampling
rates used by digital sources such as CD and DAT, your Nº30.6 also
supports the two channel 24-bit/96 kHz signal that was defined as part
of the DVD-Video standard (and which will certainly be included as
part of a larger DVD-Audio standard when the industry agrees to such
a thing). As of the writing of this manual, such “24/96” material is just
beginning to become available, and we expect availability to grow
quickly over time.
In addition to true 24-bit capability, the Nº30.6 also incorporates High
Definition Compatible Digital
®
decoding to take full advantage of the
increased resolution available from HDCD-encoded 16-bit CDs. The
High Definition Compatible Digital
®
format retains much of the reso-
lution inherent in professional twenty bit recordings, by encoding this
information more efficiently within the sixteen bit space available
within the Compact Disc format.
An Intelligent FIFO™
Unlike previous processors which were highly dependent on the quality
of the digital signal they were fed, the Nº30.6 Reference Digital Audio
Processor delivers outstanding performance with even less-than-ideal
digital signals.
“FIFO” stands for “First In, First Out.” It describes a simple buffer in
which the digital information is stored temporarily on its way to being
converted to analog. Just as a large water tower can provide a steady
source of water to a small town, despite hour-to-hour variations in the
supply of water from the well, a FIFO can provide a steady, consistent
source of digital data to the converters which are responsible for chang-
ing that data into music. Even if there is significant “jitter” (inconsis-
