The Extremo 192/24 DAC is the North Star Design's flagship digital-to-analog converter.
This unit is the result of many years experience of our R&D in digital and analogue research.
Each part of this DAC, from digital input to analogue output, is optimized by intensive listening sessions.
The Extremo DAC can be connected via S/PDIF or AES/EBU to any existing digital source like CD-player, DAT, CD-transport.
A I2S digital input allows a direct link with M192 CD-transport for the best audio performance.
When you buy an Extremo DAC you can be sure that nothing similar exist at this price level and you will give a new life at your CD sound.

The DAC Extremo works with the latest generation digital chipset which is a balanced mix from Cirrus Logic, Analog Devices and Texas (Burr-Brown):

• CS8416 - a very low jitter 192kHz digital receiver from Cirrus Logic
• AD1896 - an high dynamic 192/24 upsampler from Analog Devices
• 2 x PCM1792 - 140 dB, 192/24 DAC from Texas

Each IC DAC is set in mono configuration to increase the dynamic and drives a DC coupled double balanced analogue stage; the analogue output is available on gold plated balanced and unbalanced connectors.

This high performance chipset needs a noiseless set of regulated voltage lines to meet the better performances; onboard are present ten independent regulated voltage lines and each digital IC is decoupled from the other one to avoid any interference. Moreover a particular attention in the master clock power supply creates the conditions for a jitter free clock generation.

A I²S fully insulated digital input is present to connect the North Star Design CD-Transport with a direct link for the best audio performance.
On I²S connection the digital signal is directly transferred to the DAC without jitter; digital audio data and clocks are separetly transmitted to the DAC and no mixed in a sigle signal like S/PDIF or AES/EBU; this avoid any jitter problem in clock reconstruction.