TentLabs XO DAC Upgrade

External DACs need that same low jitter clock! Industry solutions do not offer jitter at the levels a serious audiophile need. XO-DAC retimes the regenerated clock and delivers a new clock: equal frequency but at least 20 times less jitter! The complete board is ready to mount, it is a little bit more cumbersome compared to mounting XO-2 or XO-3 but the result is definitely worth the trouble.

PURPOSE

XO-DAC is specifically designed as an upgrade for external audio DACs. It generates a new, low jitter clock, which in turn clocks the DAC chips. This will yield lower distortion figures in the audio spectrum, which directly pays off and results in:

• Lower grain
• More resolution
• Better transparency
• Cleaner sound
• Better bass

Most commercially available DACs contain industry standard clock recovery circuits, producing typical jitter values up to, and over 200 ps. XO-DAC potentially reduces this to 8 ps.

TECHNOLOGY

XO-DAC module contains a secondary PLL, with a carefully designed low frequency low-pass filter. Within that loop a low noise opamp drives a Tentlabs VCXO with low intrinsic jitter (3ps rms, 3-sigma). The resulting clock is one that nearly matches that VCXO jitter. All electronics on board of XO-DAC are fed with a low noise power supply. It now exhibits a staggering low 5 nV/Sqrrt. Hz noise level within the critical range of 20 Hz to 100 kHz. That is 30 times quieter than an average LM317 based voltage regulator! Just to give you a hint of what I mean with "low noise"... All active stages have their own decoupling capacitor, and a novel compound RF series impedance towards the supply rail. It keeps it clean from RF currents generated by the clock and the logic circuitry on board of XO-DAC. XO-DAC sits on a double-sided PCB with ground-plane, to ensure signal integrity and maintain low jitter levels.

APPLICATION

XO-DAC is a small module, intended to be retrofitted in your DAC. It offers a plug and play solution to effectively reduce the clock jitter in DACs. When your CD player or drive contains an XO3 clock board, TENTlink mode can be applied in conjunction with XO DAC.

Specifications

Electrical

• Supply input: 12 to 25 Vdc, 30mA typical
• Clock input: Specified frequency +/- 100ppm
• Clock outputs 1 &, 2: Specified frequency equal to input frequency (when locked)
• Clock output 3: Specified frequency divided by 4 (when locked). This supports non oversampling DACs like many Audio Note types. New!
• Output jitter, standard mode: < 8ps rms, Tentlink mode: < 3ps rms
• Clock output drive: each can drive an HCmos gate
• Jitter suppression: wideband noise > 1 Hz >30dB
• Jitter suppression: data related noise >40dB

Mechanical

• Size 60*90*20 mm^3
• Weight 50 gram
• Mounting M3 bolds or stand-offs (not included)
• Mountinghole pitch: 51,0 x 81,0 mm

Price (each)
£203.66 +vat+p&p