Experience with this DIY DAC ?

[piero7]

Originally posted by Mush
Hi Piero7,
Do you have the UTC A-20 shields grounded to the power supply ground?
I switched out the Edcor I was testing and the UTC sound magical. It's the best DAC I have ever heard. The UTC are wonderful.

Yes!

[Mush]

Toss the signal from the UTC into a good 845 SET. It will blow your mind. We could use it to cure heroin addicts.

[McGyver]

Originally posted by Mush
Toss the signal from the UTC into a good 845 SET. It will blow your mind. (...)

And I prefer 2A3 SET

[mlihl]

I'd love to try this DAC with output trannies. Is anyone willing to make one board for me assembled with output transformers? These are a bit hard to source for me...I will pay a reasonable price.

[piero7]

Originally posted by mlihl
I'd love to try this DAC with output trannies. Is anyone willing to make one board for me assembled with output transformers? These are a bit hard to source for me...I will pay a reasonable price.

It's too hard desolder four caps and wiring 4 cables?

[McCrackers]

It shouldn't be. However I've been experiencing all kinds of frustrations. At first I had no sound at all with Edcors on a 4398 board. Then, this morning I switched everything over to a 4397 board and it worked beautifully. All that remained to be done was to install a couple of 0.001uf caps on the primaries and enjoy which I did as soon as I got home this afternoon. Suddenly I was getting no sound from one channel so I removed the cap on that channel but still no sound. At one point sound became very faint so I unplugged it and decided to remove resistors and caps on secondaries and check all connectors - everything looked OK. I plugged it back in and now there's still no sound on one channel and the other is back to "normal" but appears to have lost some of its presence(probably due to removing caps and resistors on RCAs). I don't know where to go from here. Board specifies 8-10v - I'm using a10v transformer. Edcors where originally hooked up to 4 x 500r and 2 x 0.001uf caps across primaries. RCAs were with 1K resistors and 0.001uf caps. The caps were PIO (if that makes any difference)
One thing I can say is that for the brief time it was working I did sense the enormous potential vs modded opamp version. I'm awaiting a couple of UTCs which should be arriving any day and would really like to have this thing figured out by then.
I know this is DIY but as a newbie I am getting desperate and would probably be willing to pay someone with more experience to fix it so that I can relax and start listening to some music.

[Bill Fuss]

I hate to say it but it does sound like bad solder joints, Mike.
You can send it to me unless you can find someone closer.

[McCrackers]

Could be Bill. I have very little soldeding experience but have nonetheless managed a few successful mods in the past. The Edcors are $9.00 PCB mount type and the soldering pins fall inwards and appear to become loose when heat is applied. I'm losing patience with these. I'll wait and see how things work out with the UTCs.

[mlihl]

Originally posted by piero7


It's too hard desolder four caps and wiring 4 cables?

Nope, but the trannies are hard for me to source...where in Europe can I get these Edcors, Monacors at a reasonable price?

Oh yeah - I was about to buy an Asus Xonar Essence soundcard before I read this thread. Does anyone have experience how well this modded DAC fares (with output trannies) vs the soundcard?

Thanks again,

Mike

[piero7]

Originally posted by mlihl


Nope, but the trannies are hard for me to source...where in Europe can I get these Edcors, Monacors at a reasonable price?

Oh yeah - I was about to buy an Asus Xonar Essence soundcard before I read this thread. Does anyone have experience how well this modded DAC fares (with output trannies) vs the soundcard?

Thanks again,

Mike

Oh, now I understand. Do you want my couple of Digitec trannies?