On-line User Manual

1 - Introduction to the Modular series
2 - Installing your Perfect Pitch Music product
3 - Technical information on PPM digital products

Chapter 1

Thank you for purchasing one of the Perfect Pitch Music Modular series; a range of unique high-end, modular audio products. This manual is a complete Owner's Guide; offering instructions and advice on the installation of your purchase. For your information, in Chapter 3, details are given of the theory and design of several of the Modular series products. We hope you enjoy many hours of quality listening using your Perfect Pitch Music product.

Chapter 2 - Installation of Modular series products

SRC-1 Jitter Eliminator

The SRC-1 is installed between CD transport and outboard DAC. The unit accepts and outputs SPDIF, coaxial digital signals. Note that the coaxial connectors are BNC, not isolated phono. These connectors are more robust, have less RF leakage and offer superior electrical properties to the phono style connector. If your existing digital cables are phono, RCA phono to BNC adaptors are widely available. Power must be supplied to the unit via the miniature jack socket on the rear panel. Ensure this connection is made BEFORE inserting the plug-style PSU unit into a wall socket. This unit consumes very little power and, since there are sonic benefits from listening to equipment which is fully "warmed-up", the unit is intended to remain powered at all times - even when you're not listening.

Micro-DAC Digital to analogue converter

The Micro-DAC accepts coaxial SPDIF digital input and converts 16 to 20 bit signals to high quality analogue left/right signals. The unit is installed as indicated in the accompanying diagram. Power is supplied via the mini-jack. Ensure this connection is made BEFORE inserting the plug-style PSU unit into a wall socket. This unit consumes very little power and, since there are sonic benefits from listening to equipment which is fully "warmed-up", the unit is intended to remain powered at all times - even when you're not listening.

Francinstien Plus - Passive Stereo enhancement matrix

The Francinstien is connected into your system as shown in the accompanying diagram. The unit is a fully passive device and therefore requires no power. However this places certain requirements on the equipment to which you intend to connect the enhancement matrix; specifically the CD player or DAC feeding the matrix should have a low-ish output impedance (less than 600 ohms) and the following amplifier or pre-amp should have a reasonably high imput impedance (say greater than 20k). Most equipment meets this criteria, but some equipment does not (particularly some exotic designs). Your dealer may be able to advise you as to the suitability of the matrix in your system. Alternatively you can opt for the Francinstien Actif. an entirely buffered version of the Francinstien matrix; suitable for any installation.

FRANCINSTIEN Actif

FRANCINSTIEN Actif adds greater flexibility when installing a FRANCINSTIEN matrix in your system, because inside the Actif unit, the FRANCINSTIEN filter is buffered by high quality amplifiers. An entirely new filter topology guarantees the best possible sound quality from this version of the FRANCINSTIEN matrix. Otherwise, installation is the same except power must be supplied to the unit via the miniature jack socket on the rear panel. Ensure this connection is made BEFORE inserting the plug-style PSU unit into a wall socket. This unit consumes very little power and, since there are sonic benefits from listening to equipment which is fully "warmed-up", the unit is intended to remain powered at all times - even when you're not listening.

RIAA-1 Vinyl Disk Pre-amplifier

The RIAA-1 is a high quality vinyl disk pre-amplifier formed around high-quality operational amplifiers especially designed for sonic purity. Installation is simplicity itself; between LP deck and pre-amplifier, or integrated amplifier; see accompanying diagrams. In normal operation, the RIAA-1 pre-amplifier has a mid-frequency gain of 270 times (48dB @ 1kHz). This should guarantee a healthy output level for all types of cartridge (MM or MC). Power must be supplied to the unit via the miniature jack socket on the rear panel. Ensure this connection is made BEFORE inserting the plug-style PSU unit into a wall socket. This unit consumes very little power and, since there are sonic benefits from listening to equipment which is fully "warmed-up", the unit is intended to remain powered at all times - even when you're not listening.

Control-1 Vacuum Tube Control Unit and Class-A headphone amplifier

The Control-1 functions both as a Class-A, vacuum-tube based active volume control unit, which may be used directly before a power amplifier, and as a high-quality Class-A headphone listening station. Installation is as "the last piece in the chain" before the power amplifier as shown in the accompanying diagrams. Headphones connect at the front via a 3.5mm stereo jack. Power must be supplied to the unit via the miniature jack socket on the rear panel. Ensure this connection is made BEFORE inserting the plug-style PSU unit into a wall socket. Because there are particular sonic benefits from listening to Class-A equipment which is fully "warmed-up", the unit is intended to remain powered at all times - even when you're not listening. Note, however, that the Control-1 runs warm to the touch - this is completely normal.

PSU-1 Modular Series Power Supply Unit

The PSU-1 supplies four sets of individually regulated supplies to power units in the PPM modular range. This has enormous sonic benefits and "tidies-up" a clutter of plug-top PSU units. The PSU-1 is supplied with an in-line, high quality PSU unit with supply specifications equal to or exceeding; +15V DC @ 1.5A. The PSU-1 is installed as illustrated in the accompanying diagrams. Each of the PSU-1's four outputs is monitored separately and the four LED's on the front indicate when power is drawn from each supply.

Le Scarabée

Le Scarabée intercepts the leads between amplifier and speaker. The Scarabée network isolates the destabilising effects of speaker impedance on the driving amplifier and, furthermore, uncouples the dependence of cone velocity on the dynamic changes in the magnetic circuit and lumped electrical impedance. It thereby reduces midrange harmonic and intermodulation distortion due to the loudspeaker. Le Scarabée is suitable for all hi-fi amplifiers up to 100 Watts/channel. For extra safety, it incorporates a warning LED. If this burns brightly all the time (and this will only happen if you are driving an amplifier of more than 100 Watts/channel at grievous party levels - or an smaller amplifier into serious clipping), you should consider removing the Scarabée network. This is because inside the Scarabée unit are precision components which will be getting hot and exposure to very high signal levels may ultimately damage these components.

PSU-1

PSU-1 is installed as in the diagram. Ensure all connections are made before energising the system and before energising final power amplifier. This unit, like all the others, is intended to remain powered at all times.

Chapter 3 - Technical Information on PPM Digital Products

SRC-1 - Sample Rate Converter

The SRC-1 does not employ industry standard digital-audio recever ICs. Instead, it utilizes the AD1892 receiver/sample-rate converter integrated circuit from Analog Devices. The 1892 supports sample rates from 8kHz to 48kHz. Input audio widths of 16 or 20 bits are supported with 120dB dynamic range and -100dB THD+N signal fidelity. The rate converter inherently rejects jitter on the recovered clocks from the incomming biphase mark encoded S/PDIF (or AES) digital audio data stream. Sample-rate conversion is highly synergistic with digital audio reception, allowing the use of a fully digital phase locked loop recovery scheme, with highly robust clock recovery and jitter rejection. The output clock quality is derived from a high-stability crystal oscillator module.

Following the SRC device, raw twos-complement data passes to a Crystal Semiconductor 8402 digital audio transmitter chip which recodes the biphase mark signal and drives the output transformer. Various links are provided internally for configuring the decoding and (re)encoding of channel status data. These are not intended as user configurable under normal circumstances. However, they do offer a number of valuable operational posibilities. Consult Perfect Pitch Music for further details.

Micro-DAC

The circuit of the Micro-DAC is based around the AK4320 integrated circuit D to A manufactured by Asahi Kasei Microsystems Co. This is preceeded by a digital receiver circuit incorporating the CS8412 digital receiver from Crystal Semiconductor. This device offers good rejection to high-frequency data jitter and decodes the composite biphase signal into a twos complememnt I2S form appropraite for input to the AK4320 IC.

The AK4320 is a high performance 1 bit stereo DAC and 20 bit digital filter. Inside the chip, the digital filtr is followed by an analogue-domain swiched-capacitor filter; a technique which in iself provides extra protection against input clock jitter.

Analogue outputs from the DAC pass to two high quality analogue output stages (left and right) which feed the output signal to the connectors.

The unit incorporates two stabilised power supplies.

RIAA-1

RIAA equalisation is performed via precision filter in the feedback circuit around an Analog Devices OP-275 operational amplifier. This devices was developed by AD for superior sound-quality performance and features their unique Butler Amplifier front-end. This device has typical distortion figures of 0.0006% at full output! The device also features a very low 1/f noise corner ensuring a low noise performance in the bass region where the gain is very high. The unit features an internal link which may be used to select an optional low-gain regime (122 times @ 1kHz) thereby ensuring the RIAA-1 is well suited to a wide range of MM cartridges with very high output.

Control-1

Control-1 is a minimalist pre-amplifier incorporating a Class-A vacuum-tube assisted amplifier and Class-A headphone amplifier. The seldom appreciated fact is that for headphone listening, a high-quality, dedicated amplifier is indispensable. Integrated amplifiers which provide headphone output rarely have a dedicated headphone stage. Instead, they have a "potted-down" version of the signal fed to the loudspeakers. Better are the dedicated headphone stages installed in CD players, cassette players and other separates. Yet the quality of these stages is very far from consistent and many produce plenty of, what used to be called, "listener fatigue". This derives from the fact that the majority of headphone amplifiers are Class B in origin. However, the choice of Class B operation for a headphone amplifier is particularly unsuitable. The reason being that the maximum voltage swing required to produce a very loud noise from most lower-impedance headphones is only about 9 volts peak to peak. The cross-over region (about 1.5 volts) thus represents about 15% of the total transfer-characteristic of the amplifier. In other words, most musical information - except the very occasional transient - will occupy the region of the amplifier least able to produce signal without distortion. For this reason Control-1 contains a single-ended, Class-A headphone amplifier; this topology being widely regarded as representing the zenith of purist amplification. The power output available to drive a pair of headphones is about 100 mW. The circuit itself is made up of a voltage buffer stage and Class-A, emitter-follower output circuits. No overall feedback is employed. Control 1 also provides a buffered output of the signal after the volume control. Control-1 consumes approximately 160mA.

PSU-1

The PSU-1 features four individually regulated +12V DC outputs. These regulators are preceded by a bridge circuit and conventional reservoir capacitor arrangement. Input to the unit is via a 2.5mm power jack. PSU is supplied with an external +15V DC regulated PSU with a standard IEC mains input connector Each PSU output is monitored and the four LED's on the front indicate when power is drawn from each supply.

Le Scarabée

In the mathematical relationship which relates cone velocity (sound!) to loudspeaker output voltage, the terms for lumped electrical impedance are present. Unfortunately, the lumped electrical impedance is itself dependant on cone position. In other words, a perfect amplifier will - by default - create distortion in a moving coil loudspeaker! Le Scarabée network partially decouples the dependence of cone velocity on the changes in the magnetic circuit and lumped electrical impedance. This has the effect of securing a reduction in harmonic and intermodulation distortion in all types of moving-coil hi-fi loudspeakers.

Contact:

Perfect Pitch Music Sales and Marketing . 60 Ave d'Iena . 75116 Paris . FRANCE