Sonnet Morpheus DAC

No oversampling digital filter stands in the way of music, giving you near-perfect time-domain impulse with excellent phase response, helped by frequency response that doesn't truncate abruptly confined to obeying Nyquist laws.

But don't let Sonnet's unprocessed lack of digital additives detract from its technical prowess – Ruijtenberg's and Co-Founder Lion Kwaaijtaal's technique of splitting a datastream's Most-Significant Bits (MSB) from its Least-Significant Bits (LSB) and decoding them separately for extreme dynamic range is proprietary.

With a forward correction technique first employed to great effect at Metrum Acoustics, Ruijtenberg repeated the trick at Sonnet. Each of Morpheus' four SDA-2 DACs contains an FPGA that separates the LSBs from the MSBs. Then, Morpheus increases the level of LSBs and decodes them as if they were MSBs, routed to the same, optimal top half of the SDA-2's resistor ladders.

In this way, Sonnet's LSBs are not forced to be decoded at the nominally low bit level where they struggle and are otherwise swamped by switching noise. Splitting and boosting LSB level to be the same as the MSBs – before the former's very loud output is attenuated post-decoding and sewn seamlessly back together to form the whole signal at the right volume – yields an extremely linear DAC.

Ruijtenberg's proprietary take led to a DAC that resolves a digital signal down to -140dB, effectively making Morpheus capable of achieving 24 bits of dynamic range without the use of DSP trickery like dither or noise-shaping. This additive-free approach yields a sense of real quiet and realistic space between notes, as well as top-to-bottom phase correctness.

Micro and macro-dynamics snap into place helped by the slew rate prowess of Morpheus. This kind of natural transparency is preserved by Sonnet's special volume control, achieved by adjusting the reference voltage of its SDA-2 DACs instead of normal attenuation, to preserve its resolution no matter how low or high its pre-amp is set.

The extremely analog nature of Sonnet's operation extends to a jumper switch that lowers output by -10dB for use with downstream amplifiers that suffer from excessive gain. Direct-coupled outputs from Morpheus also means frequency response extends down to DC for deep, natural and taut bass plus all its harmonics.

Clever Dutch decoder design continues to keep discrete R2R DACs at the cutting-edge of digital audio in 2025, something only surpassed by the flagship Pasithea here. Check out all of Sonnet's products here, or our other DACs here.