The rightmost third is the same silvery-white, with only “DA2” engraved at bottom right. The leftmost third is the same silvery-white as the top and sides, with a Standby/Power-Save button near the bottom-left corner for day-to-day powering on, and the EMM Labs logo engraved at top left. In fact, it’s the best-looking DAC I’ve had in my system surprising, because I usually like less bulky components.Ī lot of the DA2 Reference’s visual appeal is in its clean-looking front panel, which is divided into thirds.
It’s a sturdy beast, finished extremely well - the metal on all sides of my review sample was perfectly finished - and attractively styled. Rapping a knuckle anywhere on the case produces a dull thuck, never a metallic ring. Measuring 17.2”W x 6.34”H x 15.75”D and weighing almost 38 pounds, the DA2 Reference is big and heavy for a DAC, much of its heft accounted for by its solidly built aluminum case - the top and sides are each about 1/4” thick, the faceplate about 1/2” thick, and the bottom varies in thickness from 1/4” at the edges to 3/8” around the circuit boards. Given Meitner’s résumé, I expected a lot from it. The most expensive DAC Meitner has designed to date, the DA2 Reference is claimed to represent all that he has learned about converting digital signals to analog.
Jriver media center 21 bitstreaming professional#
(Direct Stream Digital and DSD are Sony and Philips’s trade names for one-bit processing, aka pulse density modulation.) Meitner then went on to develop numerous professional and consumer audio electronics for EMM Labs, and in 2007, under the EMM banner, revived Meitner Audio to produce a line of lower-priced products.Īll of that only scratches the surface of Meitner’s substantial body of work, but it gives some context for the product reviewed here: the EMM Labs DA2 Reference DAC ($25,000 USD). In 1998, Meitner, through his new company, created for Sony and Philips true one-bit analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters and, eventually, the Sonoma DSD audio workstation. Toward the latter part of the ’90s, he was drafted by Sony and Philips to be part of their Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) project, which resulted in Direct Stream Digital (DSD) and, indirectly, EMM Labs. In 1993, Museatex and other brands became parts of a/d/s/ Technologies, where Meitner became chief designer. It was also where he began working with single-bit converters, starting with the Melior Bitstream DAC and then the Museatex IDAT-44, both released in the early ’90s. At Museatex, Meitner became renowned for his skill in designing high-end CD players and DACs, and registered several patents for the technologies he invented there. Melior, a lower-priced subbrand that included speakers, was under the Museatex umbrella. In 1987, with Kurien Jacob, Meitner cofounded Museatex Audio, and folded updated Meitner models into the Museatex product line. Ed Meitner was designing affordable lifestyle products before most others had thought much about it.
I remember these products well - they were true high-end hi-fi components in small, compact cases, and were all reasonably priced. Meitner’s first shot at consumer audio was with Meitner Audio, which he founded in 1982, and where he developed the PA-6 preamplifier, STR-50 stereo amplifier, MTR-100 mono amplifier, and CD-3 CD player. Every time I measure speakers at Canada’s National Research Council, I see an Amber analyzer he helped create, still in use in the lab adjoining the NRC’s anechoic chamber. Briefly, in the 1970s and early ’80s, Meitner designed audio signal generators and a distortion analyzer for Amber Electro Design, and was also the chief audio designer at Olive Electrodynamics, for a team that developed the world’s first automated multitrack recording console. Edmund Meitner’s experience in audio long predates EMM Labs, the company he founded in 1998.
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