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Sony STR-DA7100ES Technical Background

Sony STR-DA7100ES Technical Background

Es series receivers
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ES Series Receivers
Technical Background
Version 1.1; May 25, 2005

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Summary of Contents for Sony STR-DA7100ES

  • Page 1 ES Series Receivers Technical Background Version 1.1; May 25, 2005...
  • Page 2: Table Of Contents

    The engineers of Sony ES Series don't simply answer these questions. They help drive the technology that brings these questions into being. Thanks in part to this expertise, Sony's ES Series receivers have been praised by equipment reviewers, cherished by home theater enthusiasts and scrutinized by an entire industry.
  • Page 3: Digital Home Theater And Sony Es

    ES Series The engineers of the Sony ES Series haven't simply witnessed the digital home theater revolution. They've been driving it forward. After all, it was Sony that launched and spearheaded so many of the entertainment formats that define digital home theater.
  • Page 4: S-Master Pro Amplifier With 32-Bit Dsp

    "airy," "delicate," "pure," "relaxed," "open," "fantastic," and "a revelation." Not content with establishing a new benchmark in A/V receiver sound quality, the engineers of Sony's ES Series continue to press ahead with an upgraded, 32-bit S-Master Pro LSI, redesigned MOS FET transistors and a fresh approach to transistor cooling.
  • Page 5 "inevitable." Resolving these issues means accepting massive heat sinks, tolerating circuitous signal paths and chasing down transient distortions. Sony engineers sought a better way. Sony's S-Master Pro circuitry overcomes these fundamental constraints by completely replacing analog amplification with digital technology.
  • Page 6 The Low Pass Filter (LPF) converts the amplified pulses to a smooth, continuous analog waveform. The S-Master 1-bit pulse stream has much in common with the Direct Stream Digital signal that Sony developed for Super Audio CD. If you look ES Receivers v1.0 Analog...
  • Page 7 Inside the S-Master Pro process While Sony's S-Master Pro amplifier is simple in principle, the fidelity of the output signal depends on getting each pulse exactly right. That is, the leading and trailing edges of each pulse must have the right timing—and the height of each pulse must be carefully controlled.
  • Page 8 • Pulse Height Volume Control. Most digital volume controls work by Digital Signal Processing, an approach that sacrifices detail in the least significant bit. Sony's Pulse Height Volume control adjusts the 1-bit C-PLM stream by adjusting the regulator that supplies voltage to the power pulse generator.
  • Page 9 Where the acclaimed STR-DA9000ES took advantage of 24-bit S-Master Pro processing, Sony's latest design boasts the superior precision of Sony's 32- bit processing. Sony proudly presents a masterpiece of integrated circuitry, Sony's CXD9773Q Large Scale Integrated circuit (LSI).
  • Page 10 As a primary manufacturer of Large Scale Integrated circuits (LSIs), Sony has the freedom to pursue innovative thinking like S-Master Pro and then express this thinking in silicon. The result is Sony's own CXD9773Q. • Superior dynamic range. The previous S-Master Pro LSI achieved 24-bit processing at 1024 fs.
  • Page 11 • Built in DC Phase Linearizer. Where Sony's 24-bit LSI required a second chip to contain the DC Phase Linearizer, this circuitry is built right into Sony's 32-bit design. The process is performed by Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) calculation, which processes more data in less time.
  • Page 12 Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors (MOS FETs), four per channel, for the STR-DA7100ES. The result is another measure of signal integrity. A detail of the power amplifier circuit board of the STR-DA7100ES. The twelve black chips are the MOS FET output transistors for three channels (4 MOS FETs per channel).
  • Page 13 Sony's S-Master Pro digital amplifier. Sony takes advantage of this thermal design by coupling the heat sink to the top of the MOS FET transistors, leaving the bottom to face a four-layer circuit board, on which the transistors are surface mounted.
  • Page 14 MOS FETs are located where the circuit topology is shortest and simplest—lined up side-by-side, right in the middle of the power amplifier circuit board. In fact, the transistors can be so close together that the STR-DA7100ES amplifier section is some 70% smaller than the DA9000ES amp section! And the board itself is located in the middle of the DA7100ES chassis.
  • Page 15 MOS FET is cut in half. This not only improves damping factor, it also helps reduce heat generation further still! Illustration of the bare transistor of the STR-DA7100ES MOS FET, showing connections for Source (S), Gate (G) and Drain (D). Sheet metal molecular bonding provides the Source connection at 80% reduced resistance, compared to the MOS FETs of the DA9000ES.
  • Page 16: Hdmi Inputs And Switching

    This greatly simplifies system set-up, replacing as many as ten analog and digital connections with just one cable! In addition to providing 480p, 720p or 1080i, the HDMI output of Sony ES Series DVD players can support digital video in both RGB and Y/Cb/Cr form.
  • Page 17 The options for audio are equally rich. For example, the HDMI output of Sony ES Series DVD players can support a full range of digital audio, including 2-channel stereo PCM, Dolby Digital® and DTS® 5.1-channel compressed audio...
  • Page 18 OK. I can output those signals. We've considered just a DVD player and a television. But the dynamic changes when you insert the STR-DA7100ES into the reproduction chain. In this case, the source component DVD player can only talk to the next component in the chain, the receiver.
  • Page 19 6.1 channels of very high quality. As you would expect, the television can only handle two channels at somewhat more modest quality. The question: which of these requirements will the receiver communicate back to the source component? Two settings on the STR-DA7100ES receiver let you choose. DVD player...
  • Page 20 Now the DVD player can satisfy both the television's request for 720p and the receiver's request for 6.1-channel audio. The audio is available on the receiver only. Since 6.1-channel sound is beyond its capabilities, the television cannot play sound.
  • Page 21 DVD player with HDMI output Once again, the DVD player can satisfy both requests. However this time, the 2-channel audio is available for playback on both the STR-DA7100ES receiver and the television. HDMI AUDIO [AMP+TV] HDMI AUDIO [ AMP DVD player...
  • Page 22 HDMI switching and upconversion The STR-DA7100ES can switch between two HDMI sources and send the selected signal to a television, using two HDMI inputs and one output. But there's more. The receiver will also upconvert any composite video, S-Video or analog component video source to the HDMI digital output.
  • Page 23: I.link Ieee 1394 Interface

    While SA-CD players have included coaxial and optical digital outputs, these outputs handled CD signals exclusively. The SCD-XA9000ES was Sony's first SA-CD player to provide an i.LINK digital output for the 1-bit DSD signal. And the STR-DA9000ES was Sony's first receiver to incorporate an i.LINK digital input.
  • Page 24 3. Command signals from the receiver to the player, controlling transmission speed. DVP-NS9100ES With Sony HATS, audio data flows from the player to the receiver's buffer memory, according to rate control commands from the receiver. Reproduction in the receiver achieves the full time base accuracy of the receiver's quartz crystal master clock.
  • Page 25 Sony cannot guarantee proper operation. The proper connection is shown on the right. The i.LINK processing of the STR-DA7100ES can also handle a variety of digital audio formats, including Dolby Digital® and dts® compressed streams and DVD-Audio.
  • Page 26: Other New Features

    Just as important as the choice of DSP chips is the way it's integrated into the overall system. To elicit the highest performance, Sony positions the SHARC processor on its own separate circuit board, in Sony's "DSP isolation" design.
  • Page 27 The resulting system has 30% higher coding efficiency than conventional C compiling. The STR-DA7100ES converts all analog audio inputs into digital, using a proprietary Sony A/DSD converter, the CXD9856. The device integrates A/DSD conversion and a decimation filter, and makes it possible to change the operation mode based on the signal type and subsequent DSP processing.
  • Page 28: Performance Series Receivers

    STR-DA3100ES STR-DA2100ES Audio/Video Performance Series Receivers ES Receivers v1.0 Page 28...
  • Page 29 Sony's Optimum Preamplification (OP) design is featured on the STR- DA3100ES, DA2100ES and DA1000ES. The system varies the preamp negative feedback according to the volume control setting. In this ways, Sony balances gain and volume control settings to achieve a 10-dB improvement in signal-to- noise ratio across most of the volume control operating range.
  • Page 30 OP design controls volume with twice the resolution of our previous design—0.5 dB steps instead of 1 dB In Sony's previous OP design, the volume control operated in precise 1 dB steps. However Sony found during critical listening at high volume levels that smaller steps are sometimes useful.
  • Page 31 Amplifier designers often assume that the various circuits inside the chassis all "see" a common ground. Unfortunately, slight differences in grounding can have a subtle impact on the sound. That's why Sony created a Spider Grounding Plate for the STR-DA3100ES and DA2100ES. The plate establishes a "standard reference ground"...
  • Page 32 In this way operating temperatures and current fluctuations remain perfectly balanced. It's another way that Sony fights thermal modulation distortion. As a further protection, Sony mounts these transistors on oversized extruded aluminum heat sinks.
  • Page 33 Low-filler speaker terminals The engineers of Sony's ES Series try to look at everything that influences the sound quality, however subtle. Their examinations have prompted us to reconstitute the chemical composition of the speaker terminal lugs. We discovered that a resin with reduced fillers and pigments helps suppress resonance, especially when the audio program gets loud.
  • Page 34 When Sony's engineers discovered that the speaker terminal pigments and filters actually compromised anti-resonant properties, we took the fillers out. ES Receivers v1.0 Page 34...
  • Page 35: Continuing Features

    6.1-channel sources, the Surround speakers are driven in three groups (SL, SB and SR). • Full complement of digital and analog surround decoding (all models). Sony provides decoding for all of the following sources: o Dolby Digital® surround sound o Dolby Digital EX 6.1-channel sound o Dolby®...
  • Page 36 • A/B speaker terminals (all models). Real estate on the back panel of modern A/V receivers is severely limited. At the request of ES Series dealers, Sony found a way to add a set of B speaker terminals. Beginning with the PCM-701ES digital processor in 1982, the engineers of Sony's ES Series have been extending the capabilities of digital audio.
  • Page 37: Features And Specifications

    Features and specifications Feature Power output, all channels driven into 8 ohms, 20 to 20,000 Hz S-Master Pro Amplifier 32-bit S-Master Pro process Power MOS FET output transistors, four per channel DC Phase Linearizer Dolby Digital® EX decoding dts® ES decoding dts 96/24 decoding Dolby®...
  • Page 38 Blu-ray Disc Founders. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. 1. i.LINK is a trademark of Sony used only to designate that product contains an IEEE 1394 connector. All products with an IEEE 1394 connector may not communicate with each other.