Musical Fidelity says its new V90-DAC, set to sell for £199, has 'no unnecessary flab, no excess packaging, no excess anything, anywhere': instead, the company says, it's all about 'pure, unadulterated, state-of-the-art performance'.
Explaining that 'Most high-end products, and DACs in particular, have, at the most, five per cent of their cost in the electronic components that define the performance', it adds that, 'In our view, manufacturers have a duty to give their customers value for money – and putting just five per cent of the product cost is not acceptable.'
The V90-DAC has an asynchronous USB input able to handle content at up to 24-bit/96kHz, one electrical and two optical digital inputs able to handle up to 24-bit/192kHz, and will upsample all lesser signals to 24/192kHz to push any digital noise way out of the audible band.
Claiming 'state of the art' technical performance – 'jitter is about 12pps, s/n ratio is -116dB (‘A’ weighted), linearity is +0.2dB at -116dB, stereo separation is -104dB at 1kHz, frequency response is ruler flat and distortion is 0.00025% at 1kHz and 0.0003% at 20kHz' – the V90-DAC is housed in custom extruded casework, and finished in 'crystal bead shot blast, fine texture moonstone'.
Written by Andrew Everard
