Quad's Artera Play offers a substantial 4.95V maximum output via its balanced XLRs with a wide 114.5dB A-wtd S/N ratio. Its 'cleanest' performance is via USB, incurring a mere 14psec jitter against 565psec (CD) and 65psec (S/PDIF). Otherwise, the 'sound' of the Play is heavily influenced by your choice between its four digital filters, the default 'Fast' setting trading little or no pre/post echoes (minimal time domain distortion) for poor stopband rejection and significant intermodulation distortion in the frequency domain at OdBFs. The response also rolls away to -0.8dB/10kHz and -3.3dB/20kHz (or -3.9dB/45kHz and -5.5dB/90kHz with 96kHz/192kHz audio). The 'Narrow' filter is especially aggressive with 96kHz audio - hitting -7.9dB/20kHz and thus not recommended. THD is highest at HF with the Fast filter but this also depends on sample rate (0.35%/20kHz at 48kHz; 0.017%/20kHz at 96kHz and 0.004%/20kHz at 192kHz).
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