Sonnet Pasithea

Pasithea, the personification of relaxation and meditation. It is fair to say that in our latest design this has been achieved. A new DAC above the Morpheus, with better specifications and more versatility. But above all, a soundscape as if it had come directly from the recording engineer's mixing console, without any degradation. There are few words to describe a product that does its work so neutrally. This is the Pasithea in a nutshell.

Because of the enormously energy-efficient electronics, there was room to add even more high-end technology within the dimensions of our standard enclosure. Eight DAC modules were used to take various specifications to greater heights. Better linearity, lower distortion even at extremely low levels, and a noise floor 10 dB lower than the Morpheus. The eight SDA-3 DAC modules developed for this design collectively have a very low output impedance so that any load can be driven. Flexibility has also been increased and inputs such as I2S and USB are standard without having to swap modules.

To drive very sensitive amplifiers, it is possible to attenuate the signal by 10dB from the menu, in addition to the physical attenuator which can realize a 10 dB attenuation as well. And all this with an extremely low output impedance (XLR output) so that any amplifier with whatever sensitivity can be driven.

In designing the Pasithea special attention was paid to linearity. In addition to the fact that a DAC should have no errors so that the data in the digital domain matches the value in the analog domain, noise plays another important factor here. If the noise is low it will be possible to make the last steps visible so that there is a real 24 bit performance.

The linearity plot below was made on the Pasithea. These low noise figures allow a better dynamic range to be obtained and it should be clear via measurements if the last bits become visible. The linearity plot is set to a range of -160 dB. If the DAC module is capable as a result of its low noise and high linearity, then the first bits should show up as stair steps. The more bits involved the smaller the steps become until they are no longer visible and the plot changes to a straight line.

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