At the Tokyo Headphone Festival, Beyerdynamic presented a new mobile USB digital-analog converter (DAC) “Impacto essential”. It provides Beyerdynamic high-end headphones with a digital interface, thus enabling loss-free digital transmission. The DAC inserts itself into the audio transmission chain between the player and the headphones and handles the player’s full audio signal processing. This means that the sound quality no longer depends on the components of the playback device. Instead, the DAC converts the high-resolution music data back to analog format and amplifies it – with a precision that fully exploits the acoustic potential of compatible high-end headphones from Beyerdynamic. Impacto essential works on all devices that have a USB host function. It’s suitable for PC, Mac, notebooks and most of the latest Android smartphones and tablets. Impacto essential will be available from June 2017.