CEC DA SL - Audiophile DAC with SuperLink

CEC opened a new chapter in music reproduction in 1991 with the world‘s first Belt Drive CD Transport, the now famous TL 1. Creative mastery of planar and rotational vibration control techniques resulted in landmark products whose uniquely analog musicality has been hailed as nothing less than revolutionary in digital audio.

CEC has continued to improve design expertise and launched a cascade of highly acclaimed and awarded products. The CEC DA SL SUPERLINK D/A Converter, has been designed as the ultimate D/A converter to bring out the full performance of CD’s using the “Superlink“ connection, the original digital transmission way with ultra low jitter.

Designed specifically for CEC Transports and CD Players with “Superlink” connections. Your CD’s will be reborn with “Superlink”. CEC SUPERLINK Digital Signal Transmission System is a proprietary digital signal transmission system that transports music signals and synchronization (clock) signals with separate cables.

The SPDIF (Sony Philips Digital InterFace) and AES/EBU (Audio Engineering Society/European Broadcasting Union) transmit both the music and clock signals through the same signal conductor and are prone to jitter effects caused by the signals interfering with each other and signal processing errors.

CEC SuperLink

CEC SuperLink system transmits control, data, and clock signals separately with four cables, requiring no encoding or decoding process. Eliminating “coding”, helps minimizes deterioration of the music signal during transmission. The SUPERLINK transmission paths deliver/receive the following signals:

• MCK (Master Clock): Master clock signal from the D/A converter. The transport functions as a slave to the DA converter, enabling synchronized transmission of audio data.

• BCK (Bit Clock): Sends bit clock signal, required for digital data bit identification (e.g. sampling frequency) or signal readout, from the CD transport to the D/A converter.

• LRCK (L/R Clock): Sends left/right identification clock signals from the transport to the D/A converter.

• DATA: Sends audio data from the CD transport to the D/A converter.

The SUPERLINK, ultra low jitter transmission system, uses the 4 labeled BNC terminals for the CEC TL0 3.0, TL1N, TL2N and TL3N, and D-SUB-9 for CEC TL2 and TL51 series transports.

Digital-to-analog conversion is performed by the ESS Hyperstream DAC 32 bit chip ES9028PRO from the flagship SABRE PRO series. Extra wide dynamic range (NDR) and ultra low total harmonic distortion plus noise (THD+N) results in music reproduction with unbelievable breadth and depth. Word clock input of 44.1kHz is regenerated to 16.9344MHz for the SUPERLINK master clock.

The SUPERLINK BNC-BCK input is also used for SPDIF coaxial input.

High resolution signal upsampling by CEC TL2N is functional. Analog output: Both conventional type RCA and balanced XLR connections are available. We recommend the balanced output of DA SL superior circuitry for peak performance of your system.

Support

• Datasheet
• Catalog

Reviews & Awards

• HiFi Stars