There are more and more good quality audio DACs newly released. But, a good audio source is still difficult to find. On the other hand, UD-10.1 upgrades your PC to be a hi-end audio source. Thanks to the good power supply handling, the high accuracy clock and the sophisticated digital output circuit, UD-10 makes your PC to behave as a high-end CD transport to work with an external DAC. Yet, the UD-10.1 and PC couple provides better sound quality, larger storage capacity and more user-friendly interfaces than a CD transport. (Remarks: computer hard disk is far more better than a CD pickup mechanism no matter in speed, stability, error correction, jitter reduction. They are actually the technology of different eras.)

These are the four main uses for the Trends USB Audio Converter:

1. Audiophile USB Transport (provide a digital interface to connect to your own DAC)
2. External USB sound card for PC and Mac
3. PC/Mac USB Headphone Amplifier
4. PC/Mac USB DAC (the UD-10.1 has been also tested under Linux - Ubuntu 7.10 - where it will be automatically recognized and you only should select it as the audio output device).

The Trends UD-10.1 USB audio converter plugs into your PC or Mac's USB port and lets you connect your computer to your Hi-Fi or Home Cinema system easily, and with high sound quality.

We are offering a 3.5mm analogue output to connect directly to your amplifier, Trends UD-10.1 USB audio converter also offers a choice of optical, two electrical digital (phono and BNC) and a balanced digital output to connect to an existing DAC.

The Charger Kit for battery supply Trends UD-10.1 is included with Trends UD-10.1 audio converter if the option a) is selected or is excluded if option b) is selected. However is highly recommended for the best sound quality giving the music a more spacious and airy presentation. NOTE: The 4 AA size, 1.2V, Mi-Mh rechargable batteries of 2300mA or more are NOT included with this Kit and must be purchased separately.

Features

In the front panel, there are the USB socket and the headphone socket (can convert to a pair of RCA audio output with the bundled adaptor). The back panel is mainly the digital outputs (optical x1, coaxial x2 (RCA & BNC), AES/EBU x1) and the external power supply socket.
- high-end Burr Brown PCM2704 IC for USB audio conversion
- proprietary dual power regulation circuits design (normal implementations are just directly apply the 5V USB bus power). No matter the power is supplied from the USB bus or from external socket, it is regulated before supply to the related ICs. Dual regulated powers are supplied to digital circuits and analog circuits individually.
- separated digital/analog ground. The digital GND (network) and the analog GND (solid) is totally separated except connected via a ferrite bread in a single point. It effectively reduce interference between digital signals and analog signals.
- Option to use USB bus power [convenient] or external power [better sound] (e.g. AA size rechargeable battery 1.2V x4=5V NOT INCLUDED, don't use normal batteries with 1.5V x4=6V, it would be too high for safety and good sound performance). Recommended batteries to be purchased by the customer are n. 4 Mi-Mh, AA Size, min. 2300mA or more.
- 4pins high accuracy crystal clock (±10ppm)
- applied RS422 driving IC to concurrently drive 4 groups of balance & non-balance digital outputs. Audiophiles can compare the differences between these digital outputs instantly or play for the Bi-DACs or even Quad DACs.
- proprietary impedance matching circuits for AES/EBU(110ohm), Coaxial(75ohm) digital outputs
- applied the specially designed pulse transformers for each AES/EBU and Coaxial outputs to further isolated interference from UD-10 to the external DAC. The most pure, accurate, standard digital signal is then regenerated with minimum interference and jitter.
- plug-and-play without driver installation for most PC operating systems, e.g. Windows 2000, Windows XP, etc.

We applied audiophile grade materials and electronic components, including the high-quality Japanese/Korean precise SMD resistors and capacitors. Besides reducing the space, it also reduces the resident inductance (relative to DIP components). The power filtering and decoupling is using Sanyo OS-CON solid-state electrolyte capacitors. The analog signal decoupling and coupling are using ELNA Silmic electrolyte capacitors and WIMA MKP10 film capacitors. The case of the device is the stylish iron-gray whole aluminium one.