Hey, this is Drew Baird from Moon Audio and I'm really excited today to talk about
some new products from Matrix Audio. Back in the spring I ventured over to the
CanJam Singapore show. Jude Mansilla was gracious enough to give me a heads up on
a couple of new, really exciting products. He did a bunch of measurements and was
amazed at the low noise floor that their products were providing. So I went to the
show, gave all their products a listen, and so the primary product that I'm most
interested about is this piece right here. This is the element X headphone amp,
preamp, DAC, Wi-Fi network connection, I mean just to do-it-all, everything piece
of equipment. The most important part of it to me, because I'm really into
headphones, is the balanced headphone amp and the DAC architecture. They're using
the ES9038Pro Sabre chip. This is one of the most popular and exciting new
DAC chips that are around right now. And the way that they've implemented it is that
they're using a very low noise regulator ES9311 chip in unison with it, which
is why I think Jude was getting such low noise floor measurements. Everything
about this is quiet, quiet, quiet. They've overbuilt the chassis, they've
done so much with the architecture of the design of the circuits to really
make it quiet. They're also using a Crystek CCHD-950 Femtoclock. This has
helped in doing all the reclocking and processing of the incoming digital
signals to make sure that the DAC gets the cleanest possible digital transfer
from your sources. Like I said, there are a lot of inputs on this device. So you've
got a USB input. This will get us all the way up to 512 native DSD. It'll get us
384 PCM resolution. If you switch to an I- 2-squared input via an HDMI connection
-- very similar to what PS audio is doing -- you can actually get it up to 1024. That
being said, there aren't any I-2-square devices that I know of right now that
will output that resolution but they're forward-thinking. My guess is
it's very possible that they'll be adding a server that has an I-2-s
squared output that'll provide that resolution. Now Matrix also came out
with a do-it-all connection device to do some conversions for you, not just for
their devices but for other devices on the market.
This is the SPDIF-X and it has a USB input and I-2-squared output, an
optical output, s/pdif, coax, RCA output, and AES. Now, this won't get you that 1024
DSD resolution. It'll get up to 512 and really this was designed not so much to
use with the element X but with some of their lesser priced products. But also,
let's say you've got an existing product that you need to do a bunch of different
conversions because you don't have a good USB connection or you have an I2s squared
and no way to get i-2-s squared into your DAC and your DAC does better
with i2 a squared. So this little box will help you out. Now, it is unpowered,
however, you can add on a linear power supply which they provided a DC jack.
This unit doesn't come with a linear power supply but they're talking about
creating some linear power supplies for some of their products, which leads me
into the next piece that they've come up with which is a USB audio card for your
computer for getting the best signal possible to your element X. This is
heavily shielded, it's got a heavy casing around it to ward off all the noise
and interference that goes on inside of your computer. Computers are very noisy
animals, and they've done a lot to do noise floor reduction from the power
supply in the computer. They've also put a switch on here so that you can use an
external linear power supply and negate the power supply in the computer. Once
again, Matrix is working on some linear power supplies to go with these
accessories, but back to the element X. We already know it's got the USB and the
i-2-squared inputs but not only can it do USB audio from your computer but you can
also connect a hard drive to it. In fact, you can connect two hard drives because
there are two USB inputs on the back of it. Now
be careful with hard drives if the hard drive is a very large, high terabyte
capacity portable drive you may run into power situations as this wasn't designed
to power every possible hard drive configuration out there. Smaller drives --
and I've tested my 4 terabyte Passbook by Western Digital on it and I've had no
issues, but I'm assuming there are drives out there that just
really need an external power supply. So in those situations make sure you're
using an external power supply hard drive if you see some problems happening
with getting audio data transfer on to your element X to listen to. Not only
does it have the USB input for hard drives, but it's also got two different
network connections. It's got Wi-Fi, it's also got cat-5. It is not Roon Certified,
but I've tested it with Roon and it works fine in both Wi-Fi and
network connection base. It's also got two COAX inputs, two Toslink inputs, and I
won't get into every little difference in the resolution inputs that it allows.
Make sure to check out the Matrix Audio website for more detail on those.
It also has XLR and RCA analog outputs, so you can use it as a preamp. Getting to
the preamp function, let's talk about the volume control. They've done a hybrid
design on the element X that it's both a combination of a digital volume control
and an analog volume control. You will notice as you turn the volume control
-- and I can't remember how many steps it is -- as you go up, and we'll say ten steps,
you'll hear a clicking. That's the relay switching over to increase the gain
on, like I said, a combination analog and digital volume control. Very nice sounding.
The element X also has two little brothers. There's the element P
and the element M. Now the M version is a scaled-down version where we have a
single-ended instead of a balanced headphone amp in here.
They've also changed from the ES9038 PRO Sabre DAC to the ES9028 Pro. Still
a great DAC chip, but because they don't have the balanced architecture the 38
really wasn't required. That's why they went with this chip. They're not using
the same Crystek Femto clock in that unit. They've switched to a low noise clock
for taking care of your incoming digital signals. The element P is, instead of a
headphone amp section, they removed it the single-ended headphone section and they
put in an amplifier for speakers. So you've got three great models, all with
different possibilities depending on your situation, whether you're a
headphone guy or an amplifier guy.
Now let's take a look at the back of the unit.
So here we are at the back of the unit. As you can see here, first there is
both balanced and RCA analog outputs so that you can use this as a preamp
going to speaker amp and use it with speakers as a full-fledged preamp.
There are no analog inputs on this device, they're all digital, so you won't be able
to connect any analog-based products to it. When it comes to digital we're chock
full of all kinds of connections. So we've got two coax digital inputs, two
optical. Here are the antenna for doing a Wi-Fi connection. You can also use your
iPhone with Airplay with this. You can do UPnP apps from your Android device to
send music from your phone here or your tablet. It's very flexible. Matrix has
their own Android app. They're working on an iOS app so that you can send music
and your streaming services from your Apple iOS to the matrix M. We then have
our i-2-squared HDMI input at the bottom there. Next to that we've got USB
input. Now this is the USB input for your computer. This is using an XU216 XMos
processor. This processor allows you to do MQA unfolding. So there are two
unfolding stages when it comes to MQA. Your software, such as Tidal, will do the
first unfolding to get you to 24/96, and then any other resolution above that
you've got to have hardware unfolding. So the Matrix products all come with MQA
unfolding to get you 24/192 and potentially higher depending on what
Tidal or other streaming services come out with. The unit's firmware upgradeable
so that they can make improvements as new and exciting formats come to market,
as well as to improve the internal workings of the unit for changing different
curves. You'll notice when you go through the controls on the front you can pick
different digital curves for doing a sharper slope or a smoother slope to
make your music sound a little more musical or a little more analytical and
so forth. A lot of options on the front to play with. So that's what the USB-B
connection is used for. You'll see that there are two USB-As.
This is what I was talking about earlier with being able to connect hard drives
to the device. Then moving over, we've got the cat-5 network connection for not
only doing UPnP but also, as I said, not certified by Roon yet
-- I'm not sure what their plans are as far as getting certification -- but it does
work with Roon. I've tested it on the input selection. The cat5 has a hierarchy
over all the other inputs, so if nothing is playing on other inputs and you turn
on your Roon it'll automatically sense that and play that as a default. You can
also turn off the USB input on the selector switch for choosing your inputs
to totally turn it off to further reduce noise floor. The less digital components
that are running in the processing will make other digital inputs quieter. So if
you're not using it you can turn it off and that way the cat-5 or the coax or
Toslink, i-2-s squared have that totally taken out of the
scenario to improve sonic qualities on the other digital inputs. This unit is
both AC capable of 220 and 115. If your unit comes and it turns on fine and
everything seems to be working but you're not getting sound make sure,
if you're in the US, to check that setting because it may be set for 220
since these are shipped from Asia. Like I said, on the input selector switch
there's all kinds of different things you can play with. You can change the
response curves, dithering for shaping the digital signals that are
incoming, volume control, input selection, turning USB on and off, some other things
to deal with DSD frequency rates. It's chock full of a lot of different options.
I definitely recommend taking a look at our webpage. We've got the entire manual
there so you can skim through it and see all the possibilities that you can do in
this unit. I'm really excited about this, love the sound. I think it's going to be one
of the hottest components this year. We'll hope to do some more videos on the
other two pieces, the element M and the element P, but this is the king of the
hill in terms of their products. I hope I've informed you a little bit about it,
and enjoy.