Merging PLAYER (NADAC MC-8 w/ built-in Player)

MERGING+NADAC was born out of the repeated request from Merging’s mastering and recording engineer customers to provide a DAC for the audiophile market. This would be for their own customers, the music lovers, the high-resolution lovers, the purity lovers, a DAC able to reproduce the same experience, the same transparency they, as engineers, enjoyed in their studio when working on their Masters.

The universally acclaimed sound quality, transparency and precision of the Horus and Hapi professional converters was something these engineers were dying to offer to the people who were purchasing their music, their chef d’oeuvre.

NETWORKING

NETWORK ATTACHED DIGITAL TO ANALOG CONVERTER

Nice acronym, but what is it all about? The modern world has become dependent on networks and the technology has been designed to be reliable and scalable. As the network capacities have increased, the possibility of using IP networks for video and audio became an obvious choice. Clearly Gigabit Ethernet had sufficient capacity for high quality audio but it was not optimal without an additional protocol adding the required precision and management. Merging needed to move away from the PCIe technology that had served us well for many years and we looked at alternatives that could offer sufficient accuracy and reliability with high channel counts and Hi-Res Audio data rates. Other IT based point-to point connections such as USB or Firewire were either not optimum or obsolete for audio even though other manufacturers had pressed them into service. There was only one choice that made sense: RAVENNA.

RAVENNA

This open and published IP network technology had been created to meet the demands of national broadcasters and focused on essential requirements of extremely accurate clocking, high resistance to packet loss and very low latency. Initially it did not encompass high PCM sampling rates and certainly not DSD. However, itwas not difficult to make changes to allow that, so Merging worked closely with the developers to make sure that sufficient channels at up to DSD256 could be handled with an accuracy that exceeded anything previously available. It remains the only logical choice for the professional and theaudiophile and is now available in MERGING+NADAC. The added bonus to using an advanced networking solution is being able to send and receive control information as well as audio data. This opened up exciting possibilities in the studio and now you can enjoy these same benefits in your own home.

COMPATIBILITY

The RAVENNA protocol comes with absolutely standard drivers for any computer operating system. ASIO for Windows, CoreAudio with DoP support for MacOS. As easily installed and configured as any other driver for USB or Firewire, the MERGING+NADAC RAVENNA driver allows use of any application of your choice to playback your music files, Emotion, JRiver, Audirvana, iTunes, etc… as well as any music server or streamer able to communicate through those standard ASIO or CoreAudio drivers.

MERGING+NADAC and MERGING+PLAYER share the exact same audio specifications and features as described below.

However MERGING+PLAYER enjoys an additional CPU that allows running RoonCore on Linux RoonOS and implements a Roon Endpoint. It connects internally through Ravenna to the MERGING+NADAC hardware and enjoys then the exact same characteristics and flexibility as an external computer running Roon.

SUPERB SPECIFICATIONS

OUTPUTS

BALANCED ANALOG OUTPUT

•  Connector: gold-plated male XLR
•  Impedance: 40 Ohms
•  Max output level: 18 dBu (6.1 Vrms)
•  Multichannel dynamic range: 124 dB(A)
•  Multichannel THD+N @1kHz: -113 dB (0.00022 %)
•  Stereo dynamic range: 130 dB(A)
•  Stereo THD+N @1kHz: -116 dB (0.00016 %)

UNBALANCED ANALOG OUTPUT

•  Connector: gold-plated RCA jacks
•  Impedance: 20 Ohms
•  Max output level: 8.8 dBu (2.1 Vrms)
•  Multichannel dynamic range: 120 dB(A)
•  Multichannel THD+N @1kHz: -113 dB (0.00022 %)
•  Stereo dynamic range: 123 dB(A)
•  Stereo THD+N @1kHz: -114 dB (0.0002 %)

HEADPHONE

•  Connector: 3.5mm jack + 6mm jack
•  Impedance: 40 Ohms
•  Max output level: 14.4 dBu (4.0 Vrms)
•  Dynamic range: 123 dB(A)
•  THD+N @1kHz: -111 dB (0.00028 %)

INPUTS

AES INPUT

•  Connector: gold-plated female XLR
•  Input impedance: 110 Ohms
•  Sample rate: 44.1 kHz – 192 kHz

S/PDIF OPTICAL INPUT

•  Connector: Toslink
•  Sample rate: 44.1 kHz – 96 kHz

S/PDIF COAXIAL INPUT

•  Connector: gold-plated RCA jack
•  Input impedance: 75 Ohms
•  Sample rate: 44.1 kHz – 96 kHz

NETWORK INPUT

•  Connector: Neutrik EtherCon RJ45
•  Bitrate: 1 Gb/s (Gigabit Ethernet only)
•  Sample rate: 44.1 kHz – 384 kHz, DSD64, DSD128 and DSD256

WORDCLOCK INPUT

•  Connector: BNC
•  Input impedance: 75 Ohms
•  Termination: 75 Ohms, software selectable
•  Sample rate: 44.1 kHz – 192 kHz