Rega DAC

Here we have a fine 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 marking on the front panel. It comes in original factory packaging with mains cable, reprinted manual and our standard three 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 (100KΩ load): Low data rate 44.1/48KHz Filter 2: 10Hz -0.05dB to 20KHz -0.1dB; Medium data rate 88.2/96KHz Filter 2: 10Hz -0.05dB to 30KHz -1dB; High data rate 176.4/192KHz Filter 2: 10Hz -0.05dB to 41KHz -1dB
Total Harmonic Distortion (24bit 96KHz): 0.006% @ 1KHz
Signal To Noise Ratio: -105dB (relative to maximum output level with a 100Hz to 22KHz bandwidth)
Maximum Output Level: 2.175V into 100 KΩ load
Bit Resolution: 16 to 24bit (USB is limited to 16bit)
Supported Data Rates: 32, 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192KHz
Digital Inputs
USB Isolated (16bit 32/44.1/48KHz)
Input 1 & 2: Optical/TOSlink (24bit 32/44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/192KHz)
Input 3 & 4: Isolated 75Ω Co-axial (24bit 32/44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/192KHz)
Digital output (via receiver & PLL) – SPDIF
Optical TOSlink Isolated 75Ω
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