Headed up by designer Cees Ruijtenberg, best known for his previous work founding and developing products for the much-adored Metrum brand has set his sights on even high performance and better value with the Sonnet brand.

The first product out of the stable is the Morpheus, a high-end DAC with integrated volume control. Sonnet says it developed brand new R2R DAC modules with a very compact form factor and extremely high performance along with a newly designed custom Sonnet Digital input module.

The Morpheus DAC houses all the latest input standards making the DAC ready for prime time and use with any upstream music server or renderer of choice, or Sonnet's own soon to appear Roon Endpoint. An optional MQA module is available for those seeking to explore the new file format as MQA's popularity continues to grow through the MQA specific masters widely available through streaming services such as TIDAL.

Cees Ruijtenberg told StereoNET:

The Sonnet range will give you more weight, body, tonal richness, and a more natural sense of the space of the recording. Or to put it more plainly, it fleshes out your music more! This new range does a wonderful job of presenting even the most complex music in a natural and inviting manner with every last ounce of nuance intact.

Continuing:

There's no artificial sounding edge, no sense of a flat cut out image, basically none of digital audio's nastier stuff. In some cases, this can also come with a somewhat dark and muddy sound, but that is absolutely not the case with the new Sonnet range. It allows you to hear deep into the recording and the recording's quality. This is somewhat of a good news/bad news proposition in that you'll really hear what's there.

Beyond its compact form factor and innovative fully balance R2R topology, Sonnet's lossless volume control that is directly integrated within the DAC architecture is said to aim for the absolute highest performance possible. For those with digital-only HiFi systems, the Morpheus removes the need for a traditional analogue preamplifier, or those with active loudspeakers, any further components at all.

Sonnet Digital Audio's Morpheus DAC is available now and sells for $5,695 RRP.

For more information, visit Sonnet Digital Audio.