Crane Song HEDD Quantum

Description

HEDD, acronym for Harmonically Enhanced Digital Device, has been engineered to provide musically pleasing sound with the capability of generating tube/analog sounds within the digital domain.

The HEDD QUANTUM has a new clocking crystal. It’s Crane Song’s 5th generation design, like the ones used in Avocet IIA and Solaris and has less then 1pS jitter. This results in extremely accurate imaging, a very open 3d sound and detailed transient response.

Jitter is one of those “black art”, hard to explain phenomena. The artefacts caused by jitter are blurred, harsh and unfocussed sound. It also results in a loss of image stability, depth and space. Jitter, basically a time deviation in the clock timing, is caused by many factors. The main culprit being the frequency of the clock varying during the conversion process.

The newly developed crystal clock within the HEDD QUANTUM has reduced this jitter to the ,currently, lowest possible value, resulting in a well defined low end and clear top end. This will allow you to judge your work more accurately and will provide you with a much stabler image making panning, EQing a lot faster and truer.

In addition to the new AD, DA, Clocking, I/O (Toslink Optical has been added) and extra WC outputs, HEDD QUANTUM still comes equipped with the same great DSP emulation of Triode, Pentode tubes and Tape emulation from the original model. The operational modes now allow the DAC and the ADC to be used simultaneously and at different sample rates. When set to the DIGI setting, the unit will run Digital in from one of three sources and output on all three digital outputs and the analog output at the same time. In the ANA mode the input is analog and it outputs on all three digital outputs as well as the analog output.

The A/D, D/A and ASRC (Asynchronous Sample Rate Convertor) chips are high-end AKM 32-bit components, coupled with proprietary analog filtering and clocking. Coupled with ultra low jitter, HEDD QUANTUM gives any user who works digitally the ability to sound more analog.

The HEDD QUANTUM controls allow the user to select input source, sample rate and continuously variable tape, triode and pentode sounds. The HEDD can operate as an effects device or as separate A/D and D/A convertor with the harmonic generation process applied to either convertor respectively.

The signal processor performs 24 Bit Processing on digital or analog sources.

HEDD Quantum has transformerless balanced analog inputs and outputs, transformer isolated digital inputs and outputs and uses separate power transformers and supplies for the analog and digital sections.

The HEDD QUANTUM output now has a higher maximum output level +24.5 dBu whereas the original HEDD 192 was around +18.5 dBu. The max input range is adjustable from +16 dBu to +26 dBu for digital zero.

The unit is 1U rack space tall and operates from 110V, 115V, 230V or 240V mains.

The HEDD QUANTUM operates at sample rates from 44.1K to 192K

Additional information