Soulution Audio has announced that they will be launching their new 560 D/A-Converter at the Hi-End Show in Munich, mid-May 2014.  The new 560 DAC provides five different digital inputs (AES/EBU, SPDIF, optical, USB and LAN).  The USB interface is an asynchronous design based on a high performance DSP and is clocked internally within the 560, using a high precision master clock that is powered its ultra stable power supplies, as opposed to USB bus power.  The LAN connection has a separate dedicated DSP, which manages communication with a local area network, as well as buffers and decodes incoming music signals.

Digital format compatibility includes: PCM (16bit/ 32kHz up until 24Bit/192kHz); DXD (24bit/352.8kHz); DSD (1bit/2.82 MHz) and double DSD (1bit/5.62 MHz).

The upsampling module of the 560 D/A-Converter has been further developed and is now based on a much more powerful DSP (32bit floating point) than was used for the 745 and 540.  The additional power allows for much higher precision of the polynomial upsampling calculation process, the integration of a state of the art apodizing digital filter and has still enough computation headroom for soulution’s innovative Zero-Phase-Technology.

Every D/A converter requires an analog low-pass-filter in its output in order to suppress high frequency noise and aliasing signals.  The 560′s 3^rd order bessel filter, with a cut-off frequency of 120kHz, would show a phase shift of up to 15° in the audio band; however, due to Zero-Phase-Technology the phase error of the analog output signal remains below 1°, 20Hz - 100kHz.  Soulution claims that the Zero-Phase-Technology resolves one of the biggest problems related to digital-to-analog conversion.  With the introduction of the upsampling technology low-pass-filters could be less steep than it was required with a sampling rate of 44.1kHz.  But still the cut-off frequency is by far too low for not having any impact on the phase response in the audio band. Upsampling improved but did not fully resolve the issue - but Solution Audio claims their Zero-Phase-Technology does overcome these short comings for the very first time.

The new Soulution 560 DAC is expected to have a MSRP of $26,000.  Avaiability has not yet been announced.  Look for more information to become available at: http://www.soulution-audio.com/.