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When music is digitally stored on a CD, hard drive, or digital audio tape [DAT], it's stored as a series of numbers. Each number represents the voltage of the audio signal at a particular point in time. String 44,000 voltage points together and you get one second of music signal. (The audio geeks in the crowd will point out that 96,000 and 192,000 numbers per second are also common sampling rates.) The job of a DAC [Digital-to-Analog Converter] is to convert the digital strings of numbers into an analog audio signal that can be amplified to correctly drive your headphones.

In our superb HeadRoom Micro products, the digital to analog conversion is done within the Micro DAC and Ultra Micro DAC devices, which then sends the fresh analog audio signal (via 3.5mm line-out) to the partner Micro Amp or Ultra Micro Amp component for the final power amplification needed to properly drive headphones. In the case of our other amplifiers, the DAC options are an internal circuit board that is optionally available installed within the amp unit. All our DACs accept both optical and coaxial S/PDIF inputs plus USB input from any computer. The front panel of the Micro DAC and the rear panel of our other amps have the switches that allow you to select between the various digital & analog inputs. With the exception of the Micro circuitry, all our DACs use very high-end four-layer circuit boards; The Micro DAC device(s) don’t need it because it lives in it’s own dedicated enclosure and has its own decoupled power supplies as well!