Cary 6 Measurements and Analysis - Part 2

Unweighted THD+noise at -3dB FS was 0.01%, and the corresponding A-weighted figure was 0.002%, which is slightly better than the 0.003% quoted in the manual:

Intermodulation distortion (based on 70Hz + 7kHz fundamentals) was also very low: 0.01% unweighted and 0.0025% A-weighted:

Based on swept tones, IMD was well below -78dB for 0-48kHz (D-VCR analog in, preamp out):

Finally, stereo crosstalk was extremely low for the preamp output, but rose to around -72dB FS at 48kHz for the Zone 2 output:

These are Audio Rightmark results of the Cinema 6 when fed a digital signal via the D-VCR coaxial input at 44.1, 48 and 96 kHz sampling rates (the E-MU 1212M in external analog loopback mode is provided as a reference):

The Cinema 6 only managed around 93dB S/N ratio as a digital to analog converter, which is mediocre (corresponding to about 15 bits of effective resolution) but the THD figure of around 0.0005% is extremely good. Stereo cross talk was higher than the analog pre-amplifier figures but still excellent. For the above measurements, the master volume control was set to 0dB (and the pre-amp attenuation level was set to -8dB), corresponding to a preamp voltage output that was closest to reference, down by only around 0.3-0.4dB.

The figures are slightly different when the pre-amp attenuation level was set to the maximum of 0dB and the master volume control reduced to -8dB:

As can be seen, this resulted in slightly lower noise levels but at the expense of higher distortion.

The following graphs and measurements all relate to performance at a sample rate of 96 kHz 24 bits.

The Cinema 6 was flat to 20kHz, but then dips to -1.5dB at 40kHz: