This is a good call. Check all joints, especially the DAC and output stage, reflowing if necessary.
Follow the notes in the bom for minimum parts. I think they are clear except there is an adp151 in the bottom right sector you can omit. I think it is a good idea to get the dac working and then expand. Remember to do the psu ground patch and open j4 and j5 until psu operates properly. Also, the pcb has transformer connection labeled for 15-0-15, but 12-0-12 is the proper size. Good luck. Cheers.
Spartacus. Thanks again. I found a sketchy joint in one of the opamps and now it has been playing like a dream for several hours. Now I can focus on the tps chips. Regards.
Spartacus. Thanks again. I found a sketchy joint in one of the opamps and now it has been playing like a dream for several hours. Now I can focus on the tps chips. Regards.
Can you share some picture ? I haven't started my yet, pending for the parts order.
It was bad soldering by me. Completely my fault. I'm new to smd and will hopefully do better in future. I opted for the smd chips and that's where I found the issue. It was difficult to find since the pressure of my probe made it appear to be a good joint. Good luck. Regards.
Also, if you opt for the adp151 regs, you can omit all of the caps used for the 7150's. I'm not sure that is mentioned in the bom.
Spartacus. Thanks again. I found a sketchy joint in one of the opamps and now it has been playing like a dream for several hours. Now I can focus on the tps chips. Regards.
Great news!. A bad joint can ruin your day.
Can you share any feedback about sound ?Spartacus. Thanks again. I found a sketchy joint in one of the opamps and now it has been playing like a dream for several hours. Now I can focus on the tps chips. Regards.
I have two subbu dacs plus a tda 1543 nos dac, but I haven't had a chance to do serious a/b tests yet. But I will say this is an incredible dac even though I have to use an external lm317/337 psu and used only minimum default setup. Bass, dynamics and overall resolution seems outstanding. I will have hard time unplugging this dac but, I will say more after proper comparisons. Are you building this dac? Regards.
This is a bottom and top view.... with this components, the DAC works, however not perfectly:
- The sound cut sometimes during playing and I don't really know why!
- When the DAC switched on during an spdif flow ON, I suspect the HC1GU04 gate which oscillate. The spdif flow should be off during switch on the DAC.
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Perfect, this is just what am looking for 
many thanks for posting (for freeman too).
are you going to put MCU and other components too in future? Am a noob and still not clear whether this board works as stated as designer might not have tested with all parts populated on this version of DAC.
many thanks for posting (for freeman too).are you going to put MCU and other components too in future? Am a noob and still not clear whether this board works as stated as designer might not have tested with all parts populated on this version of DAC.
Syllable, please man up and give support to the builders. You can not leave them out in the cold.
If you don't support your own product I will consider supporting it as it can't continue like this. Make of that whatever you want but best would be to start investigating the problems.
If you don't support your own product I will consider supporting it as it can't continue like this. Make of that whatever you want but best would be to start investigating the problems.
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Freeman:
I prefer don't give my impressions of sound for the moment because I find a cutoff during playback are not "tolerable"....a good DAC has never cutoff during music playback! However, I just say the sound looks promising (I just test on my home theater system, my HIFI system can't get new DAC)
rredline:
I don't see any correlation about external phenomen!..maybe, a Shielded can help and I try my DAC, bare (naked) on a shelf!
Jean-Paul:
Thank you for your asked about Syllable but I think Syllable is really technically too bad to debug problems!
I prefer don't give my impressions of sound for the moment because I find a cutoff during playback are not "tolerable"....a good DAC has never cutoff during music playback! However, I just say the sound looks promising
(I just test on my home theater system, my HIFI system can't get new DAC)rredline:
I don't see any correlation about external phenomen!..maybe, a Shielded can help and I try my DAC, bare (naked) on a shelf!
Jean-Paul:
Thank you for your asked about Syllable but I think Syllable is really technically too bad to debug problems!
This is a real possibility. Also, when I had the ESS9008 demo board, I sometimes had trouble keeping a lock .... turned out to be a nearby solder station.
Try shielding. Also try turning various appliances, such as washing machines and lights, on and off to see if that triggers losing lock. Try a mains filter with transient suppressor prior to the transformer.
Other things to try too .... such as checking all soldering as Freeman did.
A possibility for further down the line is to use a dedicated low jitter SPDIF receiver, such as the Wolfson WM8804/5. This will sound better too.
If all else fails, it should be possible to loosen the DPLL settings via the uProcessor (if present). This will make the DAC more tolerant of jittery sources. That's a thought .... do you have other digital sources to try it with?
Trouble shooting is part of the fun! Don't worry about Syllable's participation or otherwise, plenty of knowledge and experience around these parts to sort out these problems.
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