interesting. I think its the sub 300$ dac to beat. theres so much on the market. But I would trust the designer of AMR cd-77, thorsten loesch, way before anybody else when it comes to a DAC. But I'm highly biased on that, Ive been building my entire system following Loesch recommendations.
Which model of audio-gd dacs you mentioned?
Last week I've got a change to audition:
- TEAC UD-501 Product: UD-501 | TEAC
and
- Audio-gd reference 5.32 ºÍ§Ó*µ响
Using Mac Mini and USB connection for both DACs. I and my friends all agreed that TEAC is the better one, although it's the cheaper one.
the dac looks just like every other unremarkable ES9023 based dac, uses a basic LDO regulators for both clock and dac supplies; it doesnt have much by way of power supply enhancements full stop and doesnt seem to have a buffered dac output. just looks like a datasheet application on the dac side, so i'm not sure the value is there at all tbh.
for what it is, its sins are mostly of omission, layout is OK, nothing really drastically wrong with the design as such, but I dont see anything much that sets it apart from other, cheaper ES9023 dacs. the custom USB driver may be good, but the fact the clocks are on a separate board from the dac and the clock+i2s expected to traverse a standard 2.54mm pitch pinheader is really very pedestrian and somewhat flawed. jitter will not be great as a result.
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I think I would try one of those $135 ES9018 kit on Ebay as a basis of my first ES9018 project. Many parts look like fake, but the layout itself does not look terribly wrong. Real bummer is it doesn't support I2S bus. (USB board out is actually spdif)
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its horrible, sorry with ES9018 dacs, you get what you pay for. there is no way around it, its power supply requirements are complex and demanding, just as its analogue output stage. as you say many parts look like fakes or just bad choices, but I disagree; the layout is terrible and every corner has been cut.
Thank you for your honest opinion. Two questions:
1. Which ES9018 kit you would recommend regardless of the price, and why?
2. Can you give me a bit more concrete explanation about the disadvantage of the layout with this board? As far as I can tell from the pictures, the layout of this board is more reasonable than infamous $99 board on Ebay. I also have a feeling that its small dimension and close LDO placement should have a fundamental advantage than separate PSU design, although LDOs themselves should be replaced with LT or something better.
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I put together a post, but havent posted it. honestly i've been through all this before with the other 'famous' dac you mention, you say its better, I disagree; this is worse and I didnt think that was easy to achieve. its a mess, maybe i'll PM the post to you, I dont want to spend the time to argue the point of something that is so blatantly obvious to me.
the es9018 has quite bad PSRR on its analogue stages, so relies strongly on good layout and high quality power supplies to get good performance. this was a deliberate choice by the designers, because it is not easy (maybe not possible) to make an on chip truly low noise voltage reference with 1024 1bit dacs onboard. thats just one of the 20 or so points in my post.
it looks like they just put all the parts on the layout and clicked the autoroute button ...
even LT regs are significantly higher noise than the best LDOs from Ti, Ad and Micrel, theyve fallen behind and havent released anything new for some time. but I wouldnt use either of those for the analogue supplies either.
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thank you for this clarification, although seller doesn't give these details;
I was thinking of buying a kit like this but now, I definetelly WON'T !
thanks for letting us know about this MINOR detail, saves such great pain in the a** that would have come afterwards
they also seem to have shorted all the 8 SDATA pins together by putting a big solder blob across all the pins, directly on the chip... lazy. looks like a soldering mistake until I checked the datasheet to make sure.
i'll have to do the post again plasnu, which isnt going to happen tonight, had to force quit my browser after a stupid flash movie of some sort on a site was taking all the memory and didnt have the post saved, it was just in a post window. sorry, will do again when I can, probably this weekend, but probably not with as much detail. its not fixable with mods, put it that way.
i'll have to do the post again plasnu, which isnt going to happen tonight, had to force quit my browser after a stupid flash movie of some sort on a site was taking all the memory and didnt have the post saved, it was just in a post window. sorry, will do again when I can, probably this weekend, but probably not with as much detail. its not fixable with mods, put it that way.
The later versions of the $99 board has a solid ground plane...
Also, some more detailed photos of the finished DAC here: http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a1z10.1.w4-8708918231.3.G2gMqp&id=24058024059
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one pic I saw seemed to have more than 3, didnt count individually, but since there is no MCU only 1 spdif input can be present at a time anyway, so as you say, no biggie, its just that it looks like a hack with blob, theyde have to work out a way to splice in something like arduino.
glt, I gather the seller actually told them i2s cant be used, but maybe hes not considering mods sending i2s in on flying wires though... not the best solution even if it can be done.
I would hardly call the board that has lots of holes punched all over the place a solid ground plane, even if it doesnt have that cut all the way across the board anymore.
glt, I gather the seller actually told them i2s cant be used, but maybe hes not considering mods sending i2s in on flying wires though... not the best solution even if it can be done.
I would hardly call the board that has lots of holes punched all over the place a solid ground plane, even if it doesnt have that cut all the way across the board anymore.
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hi qusp, please also send me the post please?
What do you think of the buffalo DAC?
What would be the 300$ DAC you would recommend?
I trust thorsten Loesch, therefore I know that his dac, the ifi dac cannot be bad, maybe not a reference at all, it is not meant for it either, but I am sure it should sound good. It compared favorbaly to 500$ DAC's.
BTW, I even think that hifimediy sabre dac is pretty good and its clearly not the optimal way to get the best performance out of the chip, but still I like the performance and the sound is enjoyable.
I have compared the hifimediy to the buffalo dac and to the ECdesigns new sdplayer. and well, while the sdplayer laughs at those two, the buffalo is better, but I could definitely say that the hifimediy is still great sounding. How good do you think the buffalo is, and what would be better then a buffalo when we talk about the sabre chip...
What do you think of the buffalo DAC?
What would be the 300$ DAC you would recommend?
I trust thorsten Loesch, therefore I know that his dac, the ifi dac cannot be bad, maybe not a reference at all, it is not meant for it either, but I am sure it should sound good. It compared favorbaly to 500$ DAC's.
BTW, I even think that hifimediy sabre dac is pretty good and its clearly not the optimal way to get the best performance out of the chip, but still I like the performance and the sound is enjoyable.
I have compared the hifimediy to the buffalo dac and to the ECdesigns new sdplayer. and well, while the sdplayer laughs at those two, the buffalo is better, but I could definitely say that the hifimediy is still great sounding. How good do you think the buffalo is, and what would be better then a buffalo when we talk about the sabre chip...
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