Rega DAC – Black

Here we have a DAC (Digital to Analogue converter) from British company Rega. Known primarily for their budget turntables Rega have now garnered much praise for their more upmarket offerings including a superb range of electronic equipment. One of their earlier products was this their DAC which first appeared in 2011. Ours is in good fully working condition with just a little light wear on the front panel. It comes suitably packaged with mains cable, manual and our standard 3 month warranty.
Rega Say….
The Rega DAC is a 16/20/24-bit at 32kHz to 192kHz digital to analogue converter incorporating an enhanced version of the Rega designed circuit. Developed to be simple to set up and use, the Rega DAC is designed to optimize performance from any two channel PCM digital audio source.
With the PC (although a somewhat contentious issue in hi-fi circles) now widely accepted as a creditable medium for storing and streaming music. The use of high quality lossless files such as WAV, FLAC and ALAC offer performance through the DAC 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 DACs on the market today.
The Rega DAC housed in a custom aluminium and steel case boasts a pair of Wolfson DAC IC’s and 5 user selectable digital filters, two isolated Co-axial inputs, two TOSlink SPDIF inputs and an isolated USB input.
The Rega DAC has been designed and engineered to achieve the highest performance in its class.
The 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 of a pair of parallel connected Wolfson WM8742 DAC’s, which 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 (Rega’s reference CD player).
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 Nichicon FG 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 Nichicon FG capacitors. There is a power supply for the control microcontroller, separate from the digital & analogue audio stages. Special attention being paid to the inter IC control signals ensuring the control data noise is kept to a minimum.
Specifications:
DAC: Wolfson WM8742
Frequency Response (100 kΩ load): Low data rate 44.1/48 kHz Filter 2: 10 Hz -0.05 dB to 20 kHz -0.1 dB; Medium data rate 88.2/96 kHz Filter 2: 10 Hz -0.05 dB to 30 kHz -1 dB; High data rate 176.4/192 kHz Filter 2: 10 Hz -0.05 dB to 41 kHz -1 dB
Total Harmonic Distortion (24-bit 96 kHz): 0.006% @ 1 kHz
Signal To Noise Ratio: -105 dB (relative to maximum output level with a 100 Hz to 22 kHz bandwidth)
Maximum Output Level: 2.175 V into 100 kΩ load
Bit Resolution: 16 to 24-bit (USB is limited to 16bit)
Supported Data Rates: 32, 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192 kHz
Digital Inputs
USB Isolated (16bit 32/44.1/48 kHz)
Input 1 & 2: Optical/TOSlink (24-bit 32/44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/192 kHz)
Input 3 & 4: Isolated 75 Ω Co-axial (24-bit 32/44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/192 kHz)
Digital output (via receiver & PLL) – SPDIF
Optical TOSlink Isolated 75 Ω
Co-axial/SPDIF
Power: 230 v/115 v/7.6 W
Dimensions: 215 (W) x 270 (D) x 80 (H) mm
Weight 4.0 kg

For a review from US publication Stereophile please click here