The best sounding audio integrated opamps

[Andrea:]

I feel that I have a little gem of a DAC now.


I'd still like to buy me a Poppulse PCM1796 DAC, just for the fun... and because I have many noble opamps yet to use, like my two browndogs with 2 (each) LT1028ACN8 on them

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by Andrea:

I remember the OPA-Sun V2 to be nice, meaty sounding... but somewhat colored, not very differently from the LT1363. One opamp that always imposes its interpretation.

yep! like majkel said...it only plays one song, but it plays it really well.

SS is amazing, but there's definitely some tonal nuances this simply cannot reproduce..sounds like something's muffled/missing

[Andrea:]

Originally Posted by leeperry

yep! like majkel said...it only plays one song, but it plays it really well.

SS is amazing, but there's definitely some tonal nuances this simply cannot reproduce..sounds like something's muffled/missing

Who's this majkel?


I don't call them nuances - to me it has an apparent personal sonic signature, mainly tonality wise. It kind of sounded yellow - even more than the LT1363.

[Andrea:]

Nevertheless, it's the Audio-GD opamp I liked the most. The others were even more imperfect (haven't tried OPA-Moon). But they all distort too much for my taste... If I wanted distortion, I'd go for the nice sounding LT1363.

[Andrea:]

On head-fi they're currently talking of the $90 OPA128SM that given its cost should make miracles... They make me laugh some truly genuine lauughs.

Let me count how many modern opamps I could try with that amount... LT1028, OPA1611, AD797, ADA4898-1, AD8597, ADA4627-1, and on...

[leeperry]

ahhh, I've put back the 1364

sun v2 was too dual-mono to my taste and felt crippled somehow...1364 has an holographic stereo SS, it's more stereo coherent and mind blowing in movies. Earth amplifies it into stellar territory.

well, I'm expecting a new burson w/ a mundorf cap...from what Slash47 says, it's even better than Earth as final buffer on my soundcard. time to find out!

[Andrea:]

The LT1364 is nice. I'm still of the opinion that you should try the LME49723.

[leeperry]

well, it's SOIC8...and browndogs have crappy design(low EMI shielding) so they can't really be used in a PC case.

I'd have to order those higher grade adapters from HK...and well, the"LME" serie would be a nocebo for me

BTW, I plan on using DIP8 single op-amps on adapters...and possibly keep the Audio-GD extension leads, so I'd have to add decoupling caps to avoid oscillating I guess?

and I want four *******' AD797BN...just can't locate any reseller.

[Andrea:]

No please...avoid using the extension with the regular chip opamps. The Audio-GD seem to work even-with-those-extensions just because they're slow and appear to be compensated to be very stable. I don't dare to imagine what would happen if you try them with the LT1028 or the AD797...


I must insist that a Browndog is far, far less a problem than those extensions with those unshielded flying individual wires. Also the LME49723 is not that fast, 17 MHz instead of the 55 MHz of an LM4562. It will work quite well... and sound equally good.

Edit: Also the AD8599 (10 MHz) would be fine in your application... though the LME49723 would have lower THD.

[Mooly]

Andrea, can I ask, are you doing any measurements (at a basic level) such as how well each opamp performs with say a 10khz squarewave applied and looking very closely at the rising and falling edges of the waveform ?

IMO you MUST optimise the circuit for a given device

Just an observation, that's all.