Less is more?

The wallwart will be regulated internally. Adding dedicated regs will increase the rejection of noise from the psu, and anything picked up by the wire from the supply, so you might improve SNR somewhat.

 

Cool, so I could get the same improvements by using a better PSU?

Michael.

 

Yes. Regulation and low noise is part of what makes a psu "better".

 

A rather presumptuous remark, as, as far as I'm aware, we've never spoken or met. I'd prefer to listen to the music from my current set-up, using a DAC that sounds different from the one it replaced.

 

I found that my old Cambridge DAC Magic was a major improvement over my Marantz CD6000OSE LE's internal DAC at first but after a few weeks of listening I found that it was rather harsh and revealed far too much and vocals didn';t have much weight.

Micheal do you think it may just sound so good because its 'different' rather than better?

It wouldn't surprise me if it did sounds the same as a £1500 DAC though. The small HIFI companies probably only sell about 100 units a year so they have to expensive to cover their R&D costs.

It looks so simple though even I could probably just about build it (if I had a circuit diagram and a freind who is handy with a soldering iron )

 

PS I assume this entire thing is passive and requires no external power supply at all? Is the signal from the transport strong enough? Won't the signal propogate through the ICs?

 

Are you sure it doesn't have regs, Michael? Otherwise what are those two TO-92 format things? Right about nonOS generally having rich and powerful bass, which is more noticeable and predictable than what it does to the top end. The sound is in the associated components and it seems pretty random as to what actually sounds better.


Whilst WM wasn't too impressed with his version, I love mine. Loads of bounce and groove, very open and musician-in-the-room presence. Check out the Thelonius Monk Columbia 3 disk set, or the remaster of The Grateful Dead's American Beauty. Phwoar.

Unsympathetic speaker placement still kills the whole thing dead though, so the dac obviously doesn't do anything "magic" that can overcome a problem elsewhere. The appropriate attitude is probably to regard digital as a solved problem, and look for the fireworks elsewhere in the chain.

 

Kit has a point... there are three TO92 package devices, in conjunction each with a couple of caps and couple of resistors... perhaps discrete regulator circuits, as there's little else to go in the DAC.

 

In response to a post I made about DAC's all sounding the same, you questioned
"To the aurally (is that a word?) impaired?". As you can hear the differences between DAC's then you will find astonishing benefits to be gained by upgrading power cords, having mains spurs installed, upgrading your supports (to mana, fraim, quadraspire etc), discussing the relative merits of different shelf material (acrylic or wood), the right way up for such shelves and whether the balls on your fraim should be polished or not. Then you can move on to different guages of wire and different RCA connector arrangements. Someone once told me that they could hear the difference a single rizzla could make under each foot of a naim CDS2 - I have no idea whether they had any weed or not..

If you cannot hear these changes, you will find hoardes of people who will assert that you are aurally challenged.

Which DAC's have you been using? Perhaps you could give us a few words describing each one and it's sound...

 

OK - I don't know what a TO92 package is so I'll bow to Isaac and Kit's superior knowledge here, so perhaps it does have regs after all :shame: .

oedipus - when comparing my DAC64 to the NOS DAC I did actually go to the trouble of crude level matching using an SPL meter. The DAC64 output is significantly higher. However, my passive pre has discrete volume steps quite a bit bigger than 0.1dB so precise matching is not possible. OTOH it does mean I can always get the same exact level every time without needing to measure it.

Even with the levels roughly matched the difference in sound between the DAC64 and the NOS DAC is quite marked. The more I listen to the NOS DAC the more I like it. It's certainly a less "in your face" presentation but beyond that it is just so much more natural and "real" sounding. It also (surprisingly) seems to be more dynamic than the DAC64. Certainly "Loads of bounce and groove, very open and musician-in-the-room presence" as Kit described. It's funny, because that's what I always considered the DAC64 had in spades but this little DAC just has it so much more. Also incredibly dynamic. It seems actually to have more dynamic range than the DAC64 allthough I may be imagining that.

I've been listening acutely to see if I can detect any audible top end distortion and haven't been able to. Solo flute will usually show up high freq. distortion pretty quickly and in this DAC it's as pure as you'd expect, not a hint of distortion.

Michael.

 

Oedipus, have you actually heard one of these non-oversampling non-filtered DACs? Why not build one for yourself?

-- Ian

 

Oedipus - FFS it's only a £100 DAC, not the cure for cancer. And are you sure that we can all hear difference of 0.1 dB? I want prroof

Still it's nice to see you are getting out and enjoying life as you never know what tragedy might happen

 

Surely no need to listen to one Ian. Simply measure it.

This will show beyond all doubt that it sounds the same as all other Dacs.

Along with your amplifier which sounds the same as all others when used within it's limits, and some simple wiring, you can have a reference system for no more than £500 plus speakers. Surely that's good news for all music lovers?

I have no idea how the industry has got away with false marketing for so many years without consumer groups and the ASA getting on their backs.

 

Well, I do in general have quite a lot of sympathy with oedipus's scepticism. I don't have the required tools to run the tests he suggests, but I suspect he does, in which case, given how cheap and easy it is to build one of these DACs, I think he should give it a go and report the results.

The volume matching thing is, of course, pretty ABC stuff. All my volume matches were approximate, but in all cases the DAC64, which has a higher output than the 47 Labs DAC, was a fraction louder (I do this on purpose, when in doubt about precise level matching, err on the side of putting the new component at a slight disadvantage), yet I still preferred the 47 Labs. I wouldn't claim this as particularly scientific, but it'll do for me.

-- Ian

 

To-92



Discrete regs eh? That dac sounds like a very good deal for the money. Buying all the compents individually, I think mine cost about £50, though spent a lot more on prototypes and hours of tweaking labour.

How sturdy is the plastic case?

 

I do as well to a certain extent Ian - after all, I find the differences in CD players in general to be subtle like you. But I cannot for the life of me claim that no differences exist - my ears won't let me.

I just get bored to be honest. Oedipus is right in many ways. Take a great sound system out of one room and place it in another, and the sonic differences will typically swamp most changes heard when swapping boxes let alone cables and the like. So most hifi lovers have their priorities wrong IMO. Level matching is interesting. I level match CD & Vinyl and at lowish levels find the percieved advantage of vinyl largely evaporates.

I guess I find the scientific absolutism to be depressing. Scientists are always right until another one comes along to prove them wrong.

 

My scepticism about the sceptic in this case is based on this: given that both oversampling and filtering are attempts to push digital noise out of the audio band, removing both, as these DACs do, suggests digital noise will exist in the audio band. This fact alone would suggest these DACs are likely to measure differently (purely in measurement terms they may well be worse than the competition), and, therefore, there is a possibility they might sound different too, unless the presence of digital spuriae in the audio band is inaudible and the designers of CD audio were completely wrong to believe they needed to implement filtering in the first place.

FWIW here's the Stereophile measurements of the 47 Labs Shigaraki:

http://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/800/index5.html

Edit: of course, the fact that something which may measure worse is subjectively preferred to something which measures better is a different question.

-- Ian

 

The DAC64 is widely regarded (not universally as we know, but widely) as being very good indeed. The thing that is special about the 64 is the filtering, the WTA (Watts' Time Alignment) filter, which emulates an infinite tap-length FIR filter. Since so many people regard the DAC64 as being rather different to most DACs in terms of sound, this suggests that the filtering has an effect...

 

Despite what the movies tell you though, that doesn't actually happen all that often.

 

I also, largely, agree with oedipus's scepticism but TBH I really can't be bothered to go the lengths he's suggesting. I don't agree that if two DACs have the same frequency response they must necessarily sound identical.

Kit - thanks for the TO92 pic. I'd somehow completely failed to spot those transistors, so I guess it does have discreet regs. 3 of them. Cool. There are more pics of the DAC on the seller's MSN page and on one of them you can see one of those TO92 jobbies is labelled VR3 on the PCB.

The acrylic case is very sturdy and quite clever. The front, top, bottom and sides are glued together to form the main case. The front and sides are at least 3mm think. The sides have a groove on the inside into which the PCB slots nicely and the rear panel then just screws on.

Michael.