Streamers — T+A SDV 3100 HV

The SDV 3100 HV from T+A of Herford, Germany, puts a network streamer, a D/A converter and an analogue preamplifier with relay-controlled volume and headphone outputs into one HV series chassis. Its launch price was EUR 24,900. T+A adds an optional tuner covering FM from 87.5 to 108 MHz and DAB+ in Band III from 168 to 240 MHz, internet radio through Airable with more than 11,000 stations, and Bluetooth with aptX, MP3 and SBC codecs over A2DP and AVRCP 1.4.

Key specs that matter

PCM runs through a Double-Differential-Quadruple-Converter with four 32-bit sigma-delta converters per channel, up to 768 kSps via USB. DSD takes a separate T+A True-1Bit path reaching DSD 1024 at 49.2 MHz. The preamplifier section spans 0.5 Hz to 300 kHz at -3 dB, with signal to noise of 108 or 112 dB, channel separation above 108 dB and THD below 0.001 %. The DAC reaches over 117 dB signal to noise, with response from 2 Hz to 80 kHz at 192 kSps and 2 Hz to 120 kHz in DSD 1024. The case measures 17 x 46 x 46 cm and weighs 26 kg.

Engineering and use context

Four upsampling algorithms can be selected - FIR short, FIR long, Bezier/IIR and Bezier - followed by a phase-linear third-order Bessel filter set to 60 or 120 kHz. The rear panel offers AES-EBU, a pair of standard coaxial sockets, a pair of BNC sockets, two optical ports, two USB DAC ports, two USB master-mode ports for storage and two HDMI inputs, plus one HDMI output with ARC and a coaxial S/P-DIF output. Networking uses gigabit Ethernet or 802.11 b/g/n wireless, with UPnP AV playback of FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC, WMA and OGG Vorbis and Tidal, Deezer and Qobuz built in. Analogue inputs accept 250 mV to 9 V on RCA at 10 kOhm and 500 mV to 18 V on XLR at 20 kOhm. Separate mains sections with their own supplies serve the analogue and digital circuits, drawing 2 x 40 W in use and under 0.5 W in standby. The casework is solid aluminium, partly machined from billet, finished in silver or titanium lacquer.

Pairing

The analogue outputs deliver a nominal 1 V on RCA and 1.45 V on XLR, rising to 9.5 V and 19.6 V at maximum, all at 50 Ohm, so the unit can drive a power amplifier directly. Headphones connect by a 6.3 mm jack or a 4.4 mm Pentaconn socket, each with 6 Ohm source impedance. The F 3100 remote control and a BNC adapter are supplied with the unit.

Alternatives

The T+A SD 3100 HV uses the same converter design without the preamplifier section.