Many modern CD and SACD players use computer-style DVD or 'universal' disc drives, simply because it's increasingly difficult for manufacturers to source dedicated 'music drives', purely designed for SACD/CD playback. The Marantz solution? If you can’t buy it off the shelf, design it and have it made: at the heart of the SA-10 is an all-new SACD-M3 transport mechanism, engineered solely for the best possible experience.

Not only does this new mechanism promise the very best sound quality from conventional CD and SACD discs, its extended ability with the playback of music files stored on DVD-ROM discs makes it possible for users to create their own high-resolution audio compilation discs using a computer DVD burner. The SA-10 can play FLAC files from 44.1kHz to 192kHz at up to 24-bit resolution, and DSD2.8MHz and DSD 5.6MHz, well as ALAC (Apple Lossless), AIFF and MP3 files through USB. That means making and playing hi-res disc compilations is now just as simple as it’s always been to make such discs in CD quality.

In addition the player's digital input section includes a USB-B asynchronous input for the direct connection of a computer, and this is compatible with PCM and DXD music files at up to 384kHz/32bit, as well as DSD2.8MHz, DSD5.6MHz and DSD11.2MHz.

That means the SA-10 is not only equipped to handle all the commonly-available high-resolution audio formats available, but also the ultra-high-resolution files becoming available from a number of specialist labels and outlets. In other words, the SA-10 player is entirely futureproof.

What's more, the digital input section is completely isolated, to avoid any electrical noise from connected components - a particular problem when computers are used as a source - from finding its way into the signal-path.

The MMM-Stream section of the process replaces the oversampling filters normally used in digital to analog conversion and allows the implementation of the Marantz Musical Mastering filtering. These filters - one providing a slow roll-off and very short impulse response, the other offering the option of a medium roll-off with short pre-ringing and longer post-ringing - are essentially the same as those found in the Marantz SA-11 disc player and NA-11 network music player, but here they're implemented at a much higher oversampling rate, thanks to that up-conversion to DSD11.2.

In fact, two system clocks are used, to ensure the most accurate up-conversion of the incoming signal, whether its from disc or the digital inputs: the 44.1kHz of CD, and its multiples - 88.2kHz, 176.4kHz and so on - are up-sampled to 11.2896MHz, while 48kHz and its multiples are taken up to 12.288MHz. This is done for maximum precision, and to avoid any need for sample rate conversion of the kind were the system to have to convert, say, 192kHz audio to DSD12.2MHz.

In addition, all of this conversion is now done in Digital Signal Processing with 32-bit floating-point precision, rather than the 24-bit integer method used in such systems in the past.