The Grace Design m903 reference headphone amplifier is being billed as ‘a reference-quality DAC and system preamp’ for music recording, postproduction and live sound.

Among the improvements on offer, a new volume control provides higher headroom and lower distortion and noise, alongside new generation DACs and improved s-lock PLL circuitry that lower phase noise and jitter. An improved power supply isolates headphone amplifiers, line amplifiers, DAC's and digital logic, resulting in lower noise and distortion.

There is also a new high speed USB interface using asynchronous data transfer for bit-perfect USB playback with zero interface induced jitter. This new interface affords standard driverless USB Class 1 operation on Windows and Mac up to 24bit/96kHz and USB Class 2 audio for 24bit/192kHz operation on Windows and Mac (drivers needed for 192kHz operation under Windows).

The successor to the earlier m902 and m902B, the m903 is housed in a 1U-high, half-rack enclosure, and offers headphone as well as stereo main monitoring from both analogue and digital stereo inputs (balanced, unbalanced, AES3, S/PDIF, TOSLINK and USB) which are selectable via a rotary front panel switch.

More: www.gracedesign.com