A NOS 192/24 DAC with the PCM1794 (and WaveIO USB input)

Interesting work on the power supplies here guys. We seem to now have two ways forward for powering this dac. Stevan has shown what can be done to get the best out of the shunts, whilst I and a few others are planning on experimenting with larger regulators powering the analogue and digital aspects of the board independently.

Arriving soon at my house are enough super regulators for discrete left / right 3.3v and 8v supply plus another for the mainboard. The biggest question in my mind is: where do I attach the +ve/-ve output of each regulator in order to power those parts of the board individually?

Hi Thommy,

I would put the 3.3v digital power supply on the live soldering hole of C14 and C16, you can leave out these caps and wire through all boards if you are using a stack. (Forget my remark on the 22r resistors, this is the analog one as Rick mentioned)
For analog you can enter on the normal entry holes, just do not connect them to the mother board.

The mother board shall also need his own supply, or you can feed it from the digital supply.

This does also implies you removed the LF regulators.

It might be good to add some decoupling locally, you can solder a cap on the spot where the LF33 regulators were. Your analog supply is untouched so you only need to remove te LF80 and solder a jumper on their spot.

There is one ground plane so you can connect the power supplies to a nice star ground, for instance on the power supply of the analog stage as this is the most current consuming one.

I am very interested in the results of this operation!


@Rheinhard,

Hi,

We are busy building some more dacs. When these are ready I will send you a pm for a visit in the Netherlands.


@bones13,

The Salas can be used to 1,5amps but you need big cooling and big current setting resistors.

Regards,
 
Awesome looking PS!

I'm curious with what/how you are planning to replace the onboard shunts.

Also Russ/ Twisted peartree does a I2S switching module. Or how are you planing to switch between the two I2S feeds?

Hi Stijn,

I use the Alix streamer only as back-up, so I will switch power supply and i2s cables when needed. If I want a permanent i2s switch the twisted pear is nice but you can also misuse the spdif channel on the motherboard.

I am not planning to replace the shunts, I only need to migrate them to new dac boards.
 
Hi,

So here are the pictures of my new power supply. It's quite elaborate so I needed to rearrange the complete layout. I put the wave IO on top of the Pi, I still use two streamers, the Alix and the Pi; Alix through Wave IO and Pi I2S connected. I like the Pi more. Just waiting for Russ White to release the cape for the BBB.

On to the supply: on the left side there is a big 200VA transformer (sec. 2x12V), a friend of mine had ordered these specially manufactured to order for use with other Dacs and CD players. This is a really awesome transformer!

It is a simple CLCLC supply using two Silmic 2200uf caps parallel and Lundahl filament chokes.

This supply surpasses all supplies I have used up to date, including the one from Bernd during the visit at Klaus!

It's been a long time since I had so much goose bumps listening to music ;)

Advantages: dynamics, openness, forcefull, detailed, more space, did I mention dynamics?

This one will stay for sure!
The Salas supply is for the Pi and Wave IO.


Regards,

nice psu!
i have my choke input psus in operation...hooked up to c3=33.000µF Mundorf elytic on the dddac supplies
C4 replaced by panasonic Fc 1000/35v
12 v supply get 26v to regulate on and the 5 v for WaveIo gets 14v
enormous difference imo
best
Leif
 
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Hi Thommy,

I would put the 3.3v digital power supply on the live soldering hole of C14 and C16, you can leave out these caps and wire through all boards if you are using a stack. (Forget my remark on the 22r resistors, this is the analog one as Rick mentioned)
For analog you can enter on the normal entry holes, just do not connect them to the mother board.

The mother board shall also need his own supply, or you can feed it from the digital supply.

This does also implies you removed the LF regulators.

It might be good to add some decoupling locally, you can solder a cap on the spot where the LF33 regulators were. Your analog supply is untouched so you only need to remove te LF80 and solder a jumper on their spot.

There is one ground plane so you can connect the power supplies to a nice star ground, for instance on the power supply of the analog stage as this is the most current consuming one.

I am very interested in the results of this operation!

Regards,


Could the 8 volt Super Reg be connected after L4 perhaps at C17/C19?
 
Hey Leif,

There is a share icon thats a sideways y looking thing, click that, send a link to yourself in an email, then reply here adding a hyperlink, which is thw little earth pic with a chain across the bottom under tge smiley face above, then copy and paste each link in its own hyperlink. If in a folder of its own, link the folder and save some drama.

Hope that helps!

Chuz,

Drew.
 
That will happen automatically

Interesting work on the power supplies here guys. We seem to now have two ways forward for powering this dac. Stevan has shown what can be done to get the best out of the shunts, whilst I and a few others are planning on experimenting with larger regulators powering the analogue and digital aspects of the board independently.

Arriving soon at my house are enough super regulators for discrete left / right 3.3v and 8v supply plus another for the mainboard. The biggest question in my mind is: where do I attach the +ve/-ve output of each regulator in order to power those parts of the board individually?

No trick in getting the individual regs to power their specific section, that is going to happen unless you do something that makes it not happen - the (easy) trick is powering the specific reg.

Unless you cut the trace to the 3.3 v reg from the main input you will not be able to (raw) power them separately. If you do not cut this trace and attempt to use two supplies you will have a mess!

You can use the exiting input for the analogue supply. The digital supply can easily enter the 3.3 v reg by cutting the trace and leaving a little extra from the capacitor lead to attach the power lead. Might even be a good idea to leave extra at the negative also and attach both + and - there. Remember this must be duplicated on the other side of the board.
 
Hi Thommy,

I would put the 3.3v digital power supply on the live soldering hole of C14 and C16, you can leave out these caps and wire through all boards if you are using a stack.

The mother board shall also need his own supply, or you can feed it from the digital supply.

I am using the same raw supply for all digital sections - mainboard and DACs.

You must cut the digital supply trace somewhere to disconnect from the analogue supply. There is no other way around it! If you connect to those capacitors without cutting the trace you will have both raw supplies feeding the WHOLE DAC board. I am not sure what would happen but I doubt it will be good!

Take care,
 
Rick, you misunderstand my question, am talking about external super regulators powering multiple boards in parallel, rather than shunt regulators or the ones on the pcb. The answers from Supersurfer and Ian have cleared up the confusion about where to attcah the +ves from said superregs. And yes, it was taken as a given that the 3.3 & 8v circuits need to be separated from one another.
 
Well, maybe you do but ...

Rick, you misunderstand my question, am talking about external super regulators powering multiple boards in parallel, rather than shunt regulators or the ones on the pcb. The answers from Supersurfer and Ian have cleared up the confusion about where to attcah the +ves from said superregs. And yes, it was taken as a given that the 3.3 & 8v circuits need to be separated from one another.

Using the cap holes without cutting the trace will not separate the supplies.

"Taken as a given", yes, but I see nothing where it is made clear that there is understanding that what was said above is not enough to affect separation. If it is "given" I would prefer it given more explicitly for the sake of others considering the option.

Just trying to be sure there is not disappointment.

I am of the belief that local regulation is superior to larger regulators supplying multiple DACs. The path length alone settles the issue.
 
@G600,

As the dac has one ground plane the ground of all power supplies are connected to each other. I use i2s connected raspberry pi so this is also on the same ground.
So theoretically there would be no advantage connecting the ground through the chokes.

I might try it out anyway, you never know what happens..............

@ Rick,

Thanks for your explanation, I understand you want to keep others from making mistakes. I adviced to desolder the lf regulators, that will brake the connection from analog supply. I agree with your motivation that local supply is best. But: a bad local supply is worse than a good global supply :D

Regards,
 
Ok so I have just powered on the single deck dac newly fitted with "Tekdevice" local regulators, which are approx 40% of the cost of the Tent labs version at $96 for a set of 4.

At this point I question the wisdom of a fancy regulator on the mainboard 3.3v circuit as this is just to delay the I2S signals for parallel processing, and i don't see how a better reg would improve that task.

The power supply arrangement for this particular dac are 12v & 5v super regulators, each fed by their own trafo directly into the mainboard and waveio respectively - so fairly close to Doede's original spec.

I guess that these will take a while to burn in but there is an obvious and immediate improvement in dynamics, separation and bass weight. The high end is also a little smoother but not by as much as i would have expected. Hopefully that will improve, but already 'holographic' springs to mind when listening.

Give me a couple of weeks and I will have the alternative ready for testing; another dac with localised super regulators powering the analogue & digital circuits independently (as discussed above).
 
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Great thommy !
Those regulators (series I guess) are really cheap compared to the competition.
I'm leaning towards Belleson series (low heat, very small, not expensive with the actual €/$ rate, great custommer support), but you are raising a doubt !

By the way I've done the PSU trick. What an improvement ! As expected the tonal balance is not very good now, treble is quite edgy and compacts the rest of the spectrum. But the DAC is on a very positive way to be amongst the best I've heard -still much work left-.

The DAC plays everything right, I haven't found a track sounding like hell with it. The least I can say is I'm satisfied with it. A very rewarding experience to build and now tweak. Doede, thank you !