Sonnet Digital Audio Pasithea
In stock
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The new Sonnet range does a wonderful job of presenting even the most complex music in a natural and inviting manner with every ounce of nuance intact. There is no artificial sounding edge, no sense of a flat cutout image, basically none of digital’s nastier stuff. In some DAC designs, this type of presentation comes with a somewhat dark and muddy sound, but that is not the case with the new Sonnet range. Pasithea and Morpheus Mk II allow you to hear deep into the recording, as well as the recording’s quality.
Pasithea - the personification of relaxation and meditation.
It is fair to say that in Cees Ruijtenberg's latest creation, this has been achieved. Sonnet's long awaited Pasithea, residing in their line-up as a new flagship model, above the highly acclaimed Morpheus Mk II, boasts even better specifications and enhanced versatility. But above all, Pasithea produces a beautifully natural sonic soundscape as if it had come directly from the recording engineer's mixing console, without any degradation. There are few words to describe a product that does its work so neutrally. This is the Pasithea in a nutshell.
Because of immensely energy-efficient electronics, there was room to add even more high-end technology within the dimensions of Sonnet’s standard, footprint friendly enclosure. Eight DACs are employed with a proprietary Field Programmable Gate Array, which is used to take Sonnet's stellar specifications to even greater heights.
Unbelievable linearity, and ultra-low distortion, even at extremely low levels with a noise floor a full 10 dB lower than Morpheus! The eight custom SDA-3 modules developed for this design collectively have a vanishingly low output impedance so virtually any load can be driven. Flexibility has also been increased with RJ45 based I2S and USB inputs both included as standard options, without having to swap modules.
Special attention is paid to linearity. The philosophy here is that a high performance digital to analog converter ideally should have zero errors. When achieved, this enables the data in the digital domain to match the value in the analog domain, dictating best possible sonic performance. Noise plays another important factor in Pasithea's design philosophy. When noise is this low it becomes possible to realize real 24 bit performance.
Pasithea includes Sonnet's Pure & Simple Digital to Analog conversion with Volume control
What more can you do after designing two of the very best sounding DACs available today? 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.
The Bottom Line: Sonnet Digital Audio’s Pasithea is the perfect DAC to call your end-game digital source, at a price that is sending $10K, and beyond DAC designers back to the drawing board!
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)
Dimensions 290 x 250 x 60 mm
Weight 3.5 KG
