The SPL Mercury is a mastering DA converter with 120V rail technology, dual-low pass analogue filtering system providing a huge dynamic range.
The SPL Mercury offers both PCM and DSD conversion and boasts a total of seven digital inputs including Two AES/EBU, two SPDIF, two TOSLINK and USB. Each of the digital sources has a dedicated and illuminated switch for instant selection.
At its heart, it uses an AKM AK4490-Velvet Sound DAC-IC which offers up to 32-bits and 768kHz PCM sampling rates as well as DSD4 and DSD256 for direct stream digital signals (USB) This chip is then fed to SPL’s Dual Low Pass circuit (DLP120) module which provides different filtering for the PCM and DSD signals. These filters are powered by SPL 120V technology and unfold with huge dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio offering objective superior performance.
The Mercury offers stereo output which can be calibrated to all common reference levels as well as a continuously adjustable output level. As a result, it can be used as a state-of-the-art monitor controller with analogue volume control to ensure optimum bit depth resolution. The volume control uses ALPS RK27 Big Blue potentiometer to provide a nice tactile feeling with superior channel synchronisation.
The Mercury can be changed to precisely define the analogue level of a digital signal ranging between 0dBFS = 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22 and 24dBu