EMMLABS

EMM Labs – world’s premier designer and manufacturer of high end and professional digital audio converter systems.

EMM Labs offers hi­end audio equipment: CD/SACD players, CD/SACD transports, DACs and preamplifiers.

CD/SACD PLAYERS: Meitner MA­2

DACs: Meitner MA­1, EMM Labs DA2

EMM Labs was founded in Calgary by Ed Meitner in 1998, who came from A/D/S and has been contracted by Sony to build high quality audio converter systems as a key enabling technology in Sony and Philips´s strategy to create a new professional and consumer audio format called Super Audio Compact Disc or SACD.

In its launch strategy for the SACD format, Sony realized it needed the ultimate in converter technology and contracted Ed Meitner to design a first prototype. It took him only 3 months to design a 2­channel converter system for SACD, which was then evaluated in high profile recording studios around the world by the best and most critical music producers and engineers, more often called the “Golden Ears” of the industry. The outcome of these tests was unanimous, the Meitner converters were the best that the “Golden Ears” had ever heard. Sony commissioned 140 sets of the original 2­channel SACD converter systems from EMM Labs and placed them in world renowned studios throughout the world.

The most decisive factor for the success of the SACD format came when Sony extended its contract with Ed Meitner and EMM Labs. Ed and his team at EMM Labs successfully improved the converter´s design and functionality, positioning it in the high end audio consumer market. It is with this leveraging technology that Sony and Philips have been able to further develop lower priced SACD systems for the general consumer market.

Currently the 8-­channel converter system is the de­cisive factor reference of many recording studios and mastering houses and can be used with many of the available SACD digital audio workstations including Merging Technologies Pyramix and Sadie. With it´s unparalleled fidelity and functionality, including supporting sample rates of up to 24bit/96kHz, the converters are also used in many studios for CD and DVD production.

During the design of the SACD converters, EMM Labs also built a one­-of­-a­-kind pre­amplifier and surround source switcher for demonstration and A-­B listening test purposes. This new pre­amplifier design would allow precision level matching of 6 audio channels between 4 different sound sources with a level of transparency unheard of in the audio industry. The Switchman was born!. It was so transparent that many of the “Golden Ears” and industry professionals regarded the Switchman as the closest product to come close to being “a straight wire with gain”.

The Switchman with its exact signal and gain matching plus, multi­channel source switching would make it the ideal reference stereo and surround sound switching pre­amplifier for CD, DVD, DVD­-Audio and SACD mastering.

Within weeks of its launch EMM Labs received orders for more than 50 sets of the Switchman. Sony and Philips also ordered many more units for a lot of their high profile mastering studios around the world.