Hello,
I got an email from Millennia Media saying their Immersive DAC won an SAE award. I have no idea how meaningful that award is, but I
am interested in audiophile DACs and I believe Millennia is a great company.
So I went over to their technical marketing link:
https://imersiv.com/the-d-1-dac/
It looks impressive and groundbreaking to me. But I really I have no idea what I'm reading- I don't have the technical expertise. Specs like:
"40 nanovolts of broadband noise, which is around 40 dB lower — 100 times quieter — than today’s best DAC designs."
"+22dBu (10 volts) of ISO-free headroom"
"dramatically lower distortion+noise (THD+N) performance"
"dynamic range is 180dB, from 0dB to 180dB"
I'm hoping somebody (Scott Dorsey please!!!) who understands this stuff can read the +/- 10 paragraphs of technical talk at that link, and let us know what they think.
John La Grou from Millennia had this DAC box as a prototype at AES a few years ago. I thought it was still in development. But apparently you can buy one right now for $12,000. The DCS Lina DAC is $14,000. So it's up there in the exotic category.
The Imersiv marketing page makes it sound like all existing DAC structures are now old-fashioned. This implies the DCS Lina DAC is second-rate compared to the Imersiv D1. I find that difficult to believe. But who knows?
"The original AES Engineering Paper is now open access:"
https://aes2.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=21106
It's a five page white paper. I don't have the technical expertise to critique the paper. All I can do is read it and say "That looks amazing!"