4
SPL takes pride in being the fi rst audio manufacturer to have developed a multi-
channel mastering console that provides a complete spectrum of engineering solu-
tions to multi-channel sources for surround mastering. The purpose of this devel-
opment was the creation of a console that would be superior in audio quality to all
known and foreseeable audio formats, whether analog or digital. Such a console
would achieve two important goals of fi rst, an unaltered reproduction in sonic quality
of SACD and DVD-Audio, and second, through such quality, of remaining for many
years a safe capital investment.
The MMC 1 is conceived as the center of a mastering environment that can fulfi ll the
tasks of speaker management, source connectivity, audio metering, channel assign-
ment, master and monitor level setting and automated 8 x 8 channel insert routing of
external processors.
Digital audio formats have undergone continuous development and change and will
continue to do so. The degree of incompatibility created by the “format war” between
PCM and DSD has persuaded us to opt for a technology that is superior in dynamic
range, headroom and sound quality to either—or any other—such format. It consti-
tutes discrete analog technology in its most advanced implementation.
Moreover, there are additional prerequisites which speak for the employment of high-
performance analog technology:
1. The number of necessary AD/DA conversions should be reduced to a minimum.
With the MMC 1, digital sources can be connected to a digital router, which outputs
the selected source through the preferred DA converter. This ensures that the
sound quality remains comparable and is not affected by converter differences.
2. From a purely aesthetic standpoint, high quality analog outboard processing
consistently proves itself superior to digital processing. The analog concept allows
for problem-free integration of such analog processors.
3. Monitors and power amplifi ers are almost exclusively analog in design. Yet another
converter at this point in the chain could only degrade the fi nal monitoring
quality.
New Technologies
SPL’s new SUPRA operation amplifi ers are used throughout the MMC 1‘s design. They
perform at an industry benchmark 120 volts and were developed during a four-year
period during which SPL searched for a new generation of superior discrete analog
op amps. The SUPRA op amp achieves a signal-to-noise ratio of 116 dB with a head-
room of 34 dB. The dynamic range amounts to 150 dB with a frequency bandwidth of
200 kHz.
With such specifi cations, the MMC 1 rides comfortably beyond the requirements of
either the current maximum 24 Bit/192 kHz PCM format or 1 Bit/256 fs DSD format.
It is simply not realistic to expect at any foreseeable future date, a digital technology
environment in which the MMC 1 could become a “bottle neck”.
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