I first heard about Sonnet Audio from my dear friend Alex Halberstadt who wrote about their Morpheus DAC for Stereophile. Careful readers will have spotted a mini theme.
I was also impressed with the Sonnet Morpheus, which I reviewed in these pages, especially for its natural, easy sound. And anyone who has been involved in digital replay for a while will recognize Cees Ruijtenberg, the man behind Sonnet, from his days at Metrum Acoustics.
The new Pasithea DAC is the flagship in the Sonnet line. Inside reside eight custom Cees-designed SDA-3 R2R DAC modules while a host of digital inputs including I2S over RJ45 join the balanced and single-ended outputs. The company claims the Pasithea has a noise floor a full 10 dB lower than Morpheus.
The Pasithea (the personification of relaxation and meditation) also includes a volume control that’s tied to the reference voltage of the DAC. Sonnet explains:
The idea of having a capable volume control to take the place of an analog preamp is always a big plus. However, such an attenuation device in the signal chain can also have a negative effect. After exhaustive testing, Cees discovered the best way to achieve this was to change the output voltage of the DAC itself by changing its reference voltage. With the SDA-3, a new generation of R-2-R Ladder DAC modules was designed to get the purist voltage regulation possible. The result of this process is an extremely high linearity, right down to -160 dB, giving Pasithea a realistic 24-bit dynamic range.
I can’t wait to get my ears on the new Pasithea to hear how less (noise) may equal more (music).
Sonnet Digital Audio Pasithea DAC
Price: $4995 | $5285 w/MQA Module
Company Website: Sonnet Audio
US Distributor Website: Art Audio Cable
Specifications
Balanced, Non oversampling DAC
Four SDA-3 DAC modules per channel, Eight total, in differential mode
Power supply: 30VA 110/115V AC 220/230V AC 60/50Hz. Power required max 16 Watts
Input: 1x optical, 1x coaxial and 1x AES/EBU, 1x I2S and 1x USB input.
Output: 1x stereo pair single ended 2 Volts RMS. In -10dB mode 0.66 Volts RMS
Output: 1x stereo pair XLR balanced 4 Volts RMS In -10dB mode 1.33 Volts RMS
Frequency Response: 44.1 kHz sampling 1Hz – 20 khz -1dB
Frequency Response: 192 kHz sampling 1Hz – 65 kHz – 3dB and 384kHz (USB)
Distortion: 0.001% THD
Channel separation 125dB
Noise Floor: -160 dB related to 4 Volt RMS
Output impedance: RCA 100 Ohm, XLR 16 Ohms, Physical -10dB setting 8 Ohms
Sampling rate: Optical 44.1 – 96 kHz
Sampling rate: Coax and AES/EBU: 44.1 -192 kHz
Sampling rate: USB 44.1 – 384kHz (Windows)
Aluminum six button remote control included.
Possible options: MQA module (standard not included)