Border Patrol SE-i USB

About the Border Patrol SE-i USB

The BorderPatrol Border Patrol SE-i USB is a compact, single-ended digital-to-analog converter built around a Philips TDA1543 R-2R DAC. It uses a non-oversampling, non-upsampling architecture with no digital filtering and no output buffer. The asynchronous USB input accepts PCM data up to 24-bit/96 kHz. The SE-i version incorporates BorderPatrol’s enhanced power supply with a twin-transformer arrangement, choke-input filtering, an EZ80 tube rectifier, independent regulation for the digital-input and DAC sections, an ELNA Cerafine power-supply capacitor, and high-quality film-and-foil signal coupling capacitors; later examples may use Jupiter Beeswax capacitors. The unit provides a stereo RCA analog output and is intended to feed a preamplifier or integrated amplifier with a relatively high input impedance. It does not decode native DSD or perform MQA unfolding, although it can reproduce the PCM rates used by Tidal Masters after any required software-side processing. Some listings and reviews describe USB-equipped versions with a coaxial digital output, but this should be confirmed for the particular unit because configurations and revisions varied.