The Peachtree Integrated Amplifiers for Digital Music
June 22nd, 2010 by Rob N
“Without music, life is a mistake.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
But shouldn’t it sound good?
When the choleric German philosopher listened to music, it was in parlors and concert halls and there is nothing as moving in music as a live performance. The digital revolution has given us access to a huge archive of music at the touch of our fingertips, but the quality is suspect. When played through a good stereo or home theatre system, the MP3 cannot equal the quality of a good CD player. It is fine for background music, but most of us want something more than what we hear at the dentist office. Concurrently, more and more of the music available to us is stored on a hard drive or streamed on the internet. It is like having an endless supply of food, but it is all McDonald’s.
The Peachtree Audio Nova, iDecco and Decco 2 Integrated Amplifiers offer a solution to provide near-audiophile quality to your digital music. The heart and soul of these units is the ESS 9006 Sabre DAC. According to the Peachtree web site, the Sabre DAC has a patented jitter reduction circuit that re-clocks the digital signal to almost zero jitter before passing it through a high-resolution 24/192 upsampling processor that’s also capable of 122dB s/n ratio. It will take even the most compressed digital signal and make it sound as if it were playing through a high end CD player. If you are still thinking about food, it will turn whatever it is McDonalds serves into grass fed beef.
All three models can be used as a standalone DAC with multiple inputs. Though the DAC is the same in all three models, they differ in the number of inputs and power. All three models have USB inputs to allow you to play digital music files directly from the computer, and optical and coaxial inputs for digital sources like a CD player, musical streamer and music server. All have pre-amp outputs to use with a powered subwoofer or outboard power amplifier. All have a class A tube in the pre-amp to take the edge off of digital music and a class A tube headphone amp that will rival the best headphone amps on the market.
The iDecco is ideal for the ipod user. It has a built in iPod dock with true digital to digital connectivity. All the iPod docks on the market today have analogue outputs forcing you to use iPod’s internal power supply and DAC. The iDecco has a high current 40 watt amplifier.
The Decco 2 is similar to the iDecco, but it does not have the built in iPod dock. It has a 50 watt amp and an internal bay for the Sonos ZonePlayer 90 for wireless connectivity with a Sonos system
The Nova has an 80 watt amplifier and additional optical and coaxial digital inputs. It also has a third analogue output the doubles as a “home theatre bypass” so you can integrate the amplifier with your home theatre system. Like the Decco 2, the Nova has an internal bay for the Sonos Zone Player 90.
The iDecco and Decco 2 are available in special priced kits with the Peachtree DS4.5 speakers. Both kits offer an outstanding all in one solution for the office or small room. The DS4.5 speakers provide great sound and a small footprint.
