By 3D do you mean it needs to have good depth portrayal? To me it seems easy to represent left-right space (coz all DACs do that) but much harder to get depth. I recall that my AD1955 board which I spent some time optimizing gave a kind of 'acoustic bloom' which I initially lost when I ditched it in favour of TDA1543. When I first started playing with 1543 it sounded 'flat', not very much depth at all, But that turned out to be fixable.
Good bass is definitely a function of having a low impedance supply IME. So lots of caps - but a low impedance supply is only worthwhile when the PSRR of the DAC and its analog stage is optimized. DACs with CMOS opamp output stages need not apply.
I'm a huge fan of transformers - my current setup has ten of them, excluding the mains trafos.
Hi and i think you are very right.
And the high prices i see for 2nd hand units confirm.
This is really sad and makes me wonder what the professional do.
They have got used to the new sigma-delta without a complaint.
However, if the best new dacs around use the same sigma-delta chip, that should not be that bad.
I know of at least two TOP dacs using the AD1955.
And maybe there are some nice and cheap boards out there with decent sound. I cannot afford top sound.
Thanks, gino
Hi ! and yes of course. A good depth. A real challenge with digital based sources. Much easier with analog, decent analog of course.
This is exactly my humble experience. And a good depth for me is also the evidence of a kind of intrinsic linearity and consequently also dynamics.
The ability to render soundstage depth is too much overlooked, but instead is extremely telling about the quality of a source and more in general of a playback system.
So this would speak in favour of the AD1955. As i said above the fact that talented designers have selected this part means a lot to me. A lot indeed.
At the point that i would be willing to venture to try some boards.
Hoping to find a drop of that "bloom".
Yes ! for me a very solid bass is fundamental. It is like fundations in a building. Give body to the sound. The piano is a piano. The organ is a realistic organ and so on ...
I know that transformers are objects of cult, the good ones.
But when i see what they do with some test signals ... i am perplexed.
In a dac i think that the real important part is the digital.
Get that right and the output stage is less of an issue.
For instance i have nothing against op-amp.
The incredible MBL 6010D preamp shows what exceptional sound can be obtained by cheap op-amps rightly implemented. A monument of a line stage.
I listened to it and found absolutely perfect.
How they say ? a wire with gain ? That is it !
Thanks again for the very valuable advice.
Kindest regards, gino
AD1955 gave bloom yes, but I didn't experience real depth until I installed a passive filter on the output of a TDA1387 multibit DAC. I figure the bloom of the AD1955 is an artifact - rather akin to the artifact of DSD creating artificial depth (auditory smoke effect).
In my experience the opposite of what you said - the DAC part is important but most of what we hear going wrong happens in the analog stage. D-S DACs can do decent depth I reckon but they're poor for timbre in my estimation and timbre can't be corrected with a good output stage. Nor can artifacts due to half-band filters - they are normally baked into the DAC. Hence I prefer DACs without on-chip filters.
I agree that cheap opamps in a line stage - with the right implementation - can sound subjectively transparent. After all I'm listening right now to a string of TL074s and can't hear anything amiss. But cheap opamps after a DAC is a much more demanding application so I don't normally recommend them. I do mean to try though a TL074 and see how it does sometime.
In my experience the opposite of what you said - the DAC part is important but most of what we hear going wrong happens in the analog stage. D-S DACs can do decent depth I reckon but they're poor for timbre in my estimation and timbre can't be corrected with a good output stage. Nor can artifacts due to half-band filters - they are normally baked into the DAC. Hence I prefer DACs without on-chip filters.
I agree that cheap opamps in a line stage - with the right implementation - can sound subjectively transparent. After all I'm listening right now to a string of TL074s and can't hear anything amiss. But cheap opamps after a DAC is a much more demanding application so I don't normally recommend them. I do mean to try though a TL074 and see how it does sometime.
Hi and thanks for the interesting information.
Actually i have no direct experience of this TOTL dacs using the ad1955.
I cannot say if this bloom is artificial or not.
One thing is sure ... this dacs are very expensive.
One reviewer commented
Never heard that dac of course ...
Is this one the dac with suggested mods you mentioned ?
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/abraxalito/1204-tda1387-octal-dac-looks-like-good-modding-base.html
the mods look for expert people ... there is always so little space for them that is unbelievable.
Thanks again, gino
Actually i have no direct experience of this TOTL dacs using the ad1955.
I cannot say if this bloom is artificial or not.
One thing is sure ... this dacs are very expensive.
One reviewer commented
quite of a statement indeed. The reputation of the reviewer is at stake here.
Never heard that dac of course ...
Is this one the dac with suggested mods you mentioned ?
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/blogs/abraxalito/1204-tda1387-octal-dac-looks-like-good-modding-base.html
the mods look for expert people ... there is always so little space for them that is unbelievable.
Thanks again, gino
Last edited:
