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.
We carefully listened and designed MERGING+NADAC based on the Horus and Hapi architecture and principle, but with a lot of improvements expected by the audiophile market, like channel summing, dedicated headphone DA, unique ergonomics and of course a superb aluminum chassis.
Not only did we deliver state of the art music listening in an audiophile environment, but also introduced some radical design enhancements to MERGING+NADAC, like tablet and smartphone remote control as well as some of the recipes which made Horus and Hapi such a great success and revolutionary in their own market. Most notably, the network audio communication through RAVENNA. You will find below some details about the benefits of this technology.
MERGING+NADAC has been immediately acclaimed and adopted worldwide and is now distributed in most territories. Please refer to our Sales section to find a distributor near you.
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.
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 %)
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
MISC
Dimension
435 W x 435 D x 95 H mm
Weight
11 kg
AC voltage
100V-240V/47-63Hz (IEC socket)
DC voltage
10V-14V (Hirose HR10A-7R-4S)
Power consumption
< 30W
Front panel display
OLED, 160x128 pixels, 16 bit colors