Developed to be simple to set up and use, the Rega DAC-R is designed

to optimise performance from any two channel PCM digital audio source.

With the PC now widely accepted as a credible medium for storing and

streaming music,the use of high quality lossless files such as WAV, FLAC

and ALAC offer performance through the DAC-R equal to, and in some

cases better than, Red Book CD. Great care has been taken to remove

noise generated by the PC and other input sources. (During development

this was identified as a major drawback with many DAC’s on the market

today).

The DAC-R is housed in a custom aluminium and steel case and boasts

a pair of Wolfson DAC IC’s, three user selectable digital filters and one

isolated asynchronous USB, two isolated Co-axial inputs & two Toslink

SPDIF inputs.

The DAC-R has been designed and engineered to integrate perfectly into

any system and achieve the highest performance in its class. We hope

you enjoy this Rega product for many years to come.

The optical and coaxial input stage comprises a Wolfson digital receiver

with a high stability, low jitter clock driving the receiver PLL. The receiver

and PLL have their own dedicated power supplies.

The DAC stage comprises a pair of parallel-connected Wolfson WM8742 DAC’s,

that are driven via a buffer stage, which ensures the integrity of the data being fed

to the DAC IC’s similar to the arrangement used in the Isis reference CDP.

The USB input stage is comprised of a bit perfect XMOS USB Audio 2.0

with asynchronous clocking. The USB input stage feeds the Optical and

Coaxial input stage via an isolating transformer giving total isolation from

the host computer.

The output amplifier employs a discrete differential, multiple feedback

filter and output amplifier, with a high cut-off frequency for use with higher

sample rates. We decided not to use a sample rate converter and process

the data at the incoming sample rate which keeps the signal processing to

a minimum. Jitter was minimised by synchronously clocking the digital data

with our receiver PLL (removing any jitter from the input signal).

All the capacitors associated with the analogue signal path are audio grade

bypassed with MMK polyester capacitors, and low impedance conductive

polymer capacitors are used for DAC decoupling. The power supply

utilizes a toroidal transformer, fast rectifier diodes and again audio grade

capacitors. There is a power supply for the control micro controller, separate

from the digital & analogue audio stages. Special attention being paid

to the inter IC control signals ensures the control data noise is kept to a

minimum.