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Talk is cheap, especially in this business. Let's get straight to it.
Scroll down to catch a glimpse of the Model 1200 in action and then click on the thumbnails to the left for some in depth analysis on the 1200 vs:
- A wireless audio transmitter
- A Professional 20 bit DAC
- A self-powered USB audio gadget
- A 24 bit DVD player
Here is a spectral (frequency) plot for a typical soundcard.
A clean, digital, 10 kHz tone was played through the card, using a 44.1 kHz sampling rate - the same rate as on an audio CD. You can see its peak in the middle of the plot. There's also a peak at 20 kHz; this is harmonic distortion, but you're not likely to hear it.
But what's that peak between 12 and 15 kHz? This is an artifact caused by the soundcard "resampling" the data to 48 kHz and not doing a very good job at it.
Also, look at the plot between 0 and 6 kHz. You can see that there are actually two plots here. The higher, noisier one was measured with the soundcard connected to a home stereo system. This connection produced ground loop problems and other noise which was not there when the soundcard was not hooked up to anything (lower curve.) This kind of "connection" noise is one reason we developed stereo-link products.
Here's another plot. This time, we're measuring the Line Out from a laptop computer.
What a mess! You can see the desired 10 kHz peak in the middle, but there are several other major peaks which just shouldn't be there. We won't even dwell on the noise everywhere. Moving right along . . .
OK, here's the stereo-link Model 1200, playing the same test signal.
What a difference! A nice clean 10 kHz peak, a small harmonic at 20 kHz (which a young dog can hear, sometimes), and very low noise everywhere else.
There are no resampling artifacts because we don't resample - we play at the original sampling rate of the music!
Notice that there are two curves, again - connected to a stereo vs. not connected. You can barely tell the difference! This is the Model 1200's isolation circuitry keeping the world safe from the evil ground loop.
Sold?
Not yet? Read on, see what real world reviewers have to say.
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