HEED AUDIO
OBELISK DT ( TRANSPORT )
Finally, after many years of research, it’s done - We have our very first optical disc player!
Built from the ground up as a dedicated compact disc audio transport, the Obelisk DT will read both conventional CDs as well as the technically and sonically superior HDCD coded format and output near-perfect digital data to any high quality D-to-A processor.
The Obelisk DT is designedto be one of the best value-for-money optical disc playersever made, a true rarity in today’s hi-fi market with DACsgalore but with CD-transports thin on the ground!
Its astonishingly sophisticated technical approach, usually found only in prohibitively priced products, makes it ideally suited for partnering with a wide variety of DACs, from our unbeatably keenly priced Dactilus DAC, way up to seriously expensive high-end devices.
If you are a music lover with a decent CD collection on the look-out for a truly musical player, even by the highest analogue standards, which can convey the musical message in an organic, true-to-life fashion and serve you reliably over many years, don’t look any further.
The Obelisk DT may well be your ultimate CD-playing device. Just talking in technical terms will hardly help you to get behind the secrets of this exceptional player, therefore we strongly suggest that you to go and have a serious audition.
But for the technophobes, the following information is dedicated to you technically adept readers!
Not only laymen, but very often even electronic designers, labour under the misapprehension that digital data is not prone to interference and therefore CD-transports, which only read and relay binary data, just play a subsidiary role in a digital frontend. However, the main job of an optical disc player is the recovery of the digital data! The very first information being read out by the laser-head is analogue, and it’s common knowledge that analogue circuits are very susceptible to interference. In order to supply the signal processor (DSP) with a “clean” analogue signal flow (any interference would irrecoverably“scramble” these extremely low-level data signals), we paid special attention to the power supply arrangement.
All relevant task areas of signal reading, transporting and processing have their own individual power supply rails with no interference across the sections. It is a linear-type power supply being divided into two principal parts, with one feeding only the optical receiver while the other the digital signal processing. The generously sized, custom made, Noratel transformer with its very low electromagnetic dispersion and generous power reserves plays a pivotal role here. Substantial heat sinks are used for all voltage stabilisers to avoid interfering noise caused by heat.
Instead of a single sampling, or the typical up to 8 times oversampling at 44,1 kHz commonly used with the CD-format, our signal processor (DSP) works at 27 MHz and can detect and sample signal changes many hundred times.
By comparing time-related characteristics of these ’samples’, it creates and transports a precise digital signal with constant periodicity and thus resulting in up to 500 times lower jitter than conventional CD-players can achieve.
A 32MB buffer stage provides thenecessary storage space for this particular processor job.
The created S/PDIF signal has 10 times higher amplitude than conventional standards and can be transported completely noise-free to the output stage. The latter is based on four parallel-switched line drivers with a total output high enough for driving coax cables in excess of 20 metres.
A Toslink connection is also available and is fed by the very same line drivers.
Needless to say, all operational stages are filtered and operated at frequencies with different overtones to the frequencies ofdigital signal data inside the unit and therefore cannot affect the latter.
As opposed to most VFD types, our LED display does not generate noise due to its very low voltage requirement and static operational mode
