Pre/Power Amplifiers

While the DMP-A8 [HFN May ’24] was equipped with Asahi Kasei’s flagship AK4191EQ upsampling/noise-shaper and AK4499EXEQ DAC, the new DMP-A10 features ESS’s top ES9039SPRO DAC, premiered in Matrix Audio’s Element X2 Pure [HFN Dec ’23] and seen latterly in HiFi Rose’s RS151 and the ‘digital’ board inside Gryphon’s Diablo 333 [HFN Dec ’24]. Eversolo’s implementation extracts a typically superb performance, the DMP-A10’s balanced analogue output realising a maximum 4.12V from a very uniform 49ohm source impedance. Distortion is spectacularly low at just 0.00003-0.00035% (20Hz-20kHz), falling to 0.00002-0.00025% over the top 15dB of its dynamic range [see Graph 1], and complemented by a wide 116dB A-wtd S/N ratio and low-level linearity that’s true to within ±0.2dB over a full 110dB dynamic range. Jitter, meanwhile, is squeezed down to a state-of-the-art sub-7psec with all sample rates.

The ES9039PRO includes seven filter coefficients, the default Minimum Phase filter [black traces, Graph 2] actually being a hybrid type with similar time domain properties as the ‘Slow Low Dispersion’ filter but with a superior 73.5dB vs. 7.9dB stopband rejection. The three linear phase filters [Slow, Fast and Apodising – blue] have pre- and post-ringing but reduced phase distortion while the latter two, and Minimum Fast, all have sharp roll-offs with good stopband rejection. By contrast, Linear Slow [red], Minimum Slow and Low Dispersion afford gentler treble roll-offs and poorer stopband rejection. These filters come into their own with higher sample rate files. The –3dB points with 192kHz media are 91kHz (Min, Lin Fast & Min Fast), 84kHz (Apodising), 79kHz (Lin Slow, Min Slow & Low Dispersion). PM