Many current DACs have galvanically isolated USB inputs, asynchronous USB designs, etc. Nowadays, USB audio has come a long way with the advent of dedicated music servers sporting advanced USB outputs. Several products have been developed to address these issues. Does all this signal cleaning improve the sound?Įarly computer audio had several issues to deal with including “noise” in the USB output. The new source signal with lower jitter and noise should, in theory, improve the sound of the DAC by removing spurious noise and artifacts from the source signal thatĬould interfere with the DAC’s accurate conversion of the signal to analog. The unit sends the “cleaned” output to your DAC. For the IRIS, Denafrips uses proprietary FPGA DSP Processing, a FIFO Buffer & Reclocking, and a USB Audio Interface Solution via STM32F466 Advanced AMR based MCU to clean the digital signal and reduce jitter and noise. While that is simplistic, it does get to the heart of what a DDC is trying to accomplish.

You can best understand the idea behind any DDC (Digital-to-Digital Converter) if you think of it as a “cleaner or scrubber” for a digital signal. The two models above the IRIS offer more varied inputs and outputs and higher precision clocks among other enhancements.

Denafrips offers three models in their DDC lineup, the entry-level IRIS, the mid-level Hermes, and the Gaia, their flagship. The DDC draws on lessons learned while designing the company’s flagship DAC, the Terminator-Plus. Here’s what’s inside the IRIS DDC ( click to enlarge)ĭenafrips introduced the IRIS DDC in June of 2020 after three years of development.

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