A NEW AFFORDABLE DAC FROM BRITISH HIFI BRAND DECO AUDIO PRODUCTS

Deco Audio Products has announced the launch of the Deco Audio TRANSFER Standard DAC, an all-new digital to analogue convertor designed to offer performance at an “exceptionally reasonable price”.

The Deco Audio TRANSFER Standard DAC is a valve design using dual triodes, with a novel switchable output stage, and is hand-made in Great Britain.

DECO AUDIO TRANSFER STANDARD DAC

In today’s world of increasingly high sampling rates, bit rates and buzz words like up-sampling it is very unfashionable to launch a DAC that goes in the opposite direction.

Deco Audio told us: “Following extensive auditioning and experimentation over many years we have found that, within reason, how you process the digital audio signal is far more important to sound quality than what you process in terms of numbers on a data sheet. For us nothing gets close to the sound of a multi bit DAC chip when used correctly, so the heart of our DAC is the classic TDA1543 chip, a simple R2R (ladder resistor) DAC which allows us to run it without over-sampling and up-sampling”.

VALVE OUTPUT STAGE

The unfiltered output is then fed through Deco Audio’s novel switchable impedance valve output stage using ECC82 and ECC83 dual triodes, meaning it can drive both low and high-impedance amplifiers.

Multiple inputs means it has the flexibility to be used with a wide variety of sources, including four S/PDIF Coaxial, one S/PDIF Optical (Toslink), and one USB (USB-B).

THE SWEET SPOT

Deco Audio says that they have carefully selected all components to find the sweet spot between performance and value for money.

The Deco Audio TRANSFER Standard DAC comes in a neat half width aluminium chassis, with acrylic fascia and portal window. It has a linear power supply with oversized toroidal transformer.

Read more about the other recently launched from Deco Audio Products here.

DECO AUDIO TRANSFER STANDARD DAC PRICE

Retail price £549 inc vat

HiFi PiG Says: Great to see these accesibly priced products being made in the UK.