Stellar DAC

Think of the Stellar DAC as the gateway to building a high-performance audio system at a down-to-earth price. Whether your dream system's main source of music is digital, or you're building a hybrid of both vinyl and digital, Stellar DAC offers great sonics that can bring a level of musicality to any system. Stellar DAC supports pure DSD, asynchronous USB, Digital Lens technology, I²S to connect to our best transport, balanced throughout. Replace your preamplifier, your DAC—or both—and be stunned at the level of improvement when the full and rich tapestry of music surprises and delights your senses. The Stellar DAC is the perfect foundation for those on a budget but are unwilling to compromise sound quality. Rich. Lush. Powerful. A music lover’s answer to spiraling cost-no-object equipment without sacrifice. In the more than fifty years of PS Audio’s design innovations and breakthrough products, Stellar’s groundbreaking level of performance as our gateway standalone DAC is unmatched for price and performance by its standalone competitors.

At the heart of the Stellar DAC is its ESS Hyperstream and its fully balanced, class A gain stage. While numerous DACs employ ESS parts, no one but PS Audio surround those parts with our Digital Lens technology at its input and our hybrid class A gain stage at its output. Turns out that much of how a DAC performs and sounds is found in the way its input and output are handled. Engineers can tune an instrument's performance by varying the topologies of these two critical stages. At PS Audio, we focus our sonic efforts on imaging—helping the loudspeakers disappear— and proper, rich, tonal balance. One listen to the Stellar DAC and you'll know you're in good company.

The DAC inside the Stellar GainCell will transform your expectations of what’s possible in resolving all of music's nuance and splendor without a trace of digital harshness. The DAC itself is based on the latest acclaimed 32-bit ESS Sabre Hyperstream architecture, the output of which is passively filtered to reduce transient distortion. The DAC's output stage is a unique Class-A configuration, fully balanced and direct coupled hybrid array, with an extended bandwidth of -3dB at 60 kHz. Stellar DAC features a high-resolution USB path based on the same XMOS technology found in our DirectStream DAC, as well as our exclusive I²S inputs featuring a separate clock and data signal from the source. I²S outputs are sent via an HDMI cable and I²S compatible sources can be purchased from PS Audio as well as other manufacturers. We believe that one audition of a simple CD, played through Stellar DAC, will open your eyes to the magic these design efforts have brought. And once you hear what Stellar DAC does on ordinary CDs, we can’t wait for you to hear what this fine instrument can do for higher resolution PCM and DSD.