UD-10.1 Lite USB Audio Converter

Trends Audio developed the Trends UD-10.1 USB Audio Converter, which works as an external sound card with various formats of digital output and decoded headphone output. It effectively isolated the serious interference from within the PC/Mac case. e.g. the high frequency data signals, the switching-mode power supply and the FAN motors, etc

On the other hand, Trends UD-10 upgrades your PC/Mac to be a hi-end audio source. Thanks to the excellent power supply handling, the high accuracy clock and the sophisticated digital output circuit, the Trends UD-10 makes your PC/Mac to behave as a high-end CD transport to work with an external DAC. Yet, the Trends UD-10 and PC/Mac combination provides better sound quality, larger storage capacity and a more user-friendly interface than most standard CD players. (Remarks: computer hard disk is far superior to a CD player, no matter the 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 Trends UD-10 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 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 Battery Charger kit is an optional items and is highly recommended for the best sound quality giving the music a more spacious and airy presentation.

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, don't use normal batteries with 1.2V x4=6V, it would be too high for safety and good sound performance)

- 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/Mac operating systems, e.g. Windows 2000, Windows XP, VISTA and Mac OS X

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.