Audio Alchemy Dac's 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 etc

[Puffin]

I wondered if anyone had any of these and the up-graded Power Station power supplies for them. I would like to know what the voltages of these Power Stations were. They were a split rail design.

[Puffin]

I can forget about up-grading the PS for the time being. I picked (DDE 1.0) this up for £10, so I shouldn't have got too excited. I get the status LED on power-up but no Digital Out (Coaxial or Optical) I read somewhere that the build quality of these was a bit flaky. Someone had to replace the 74H......IC to cure the problem of it not locking on. I will need to investigate.

[Kurt von Kubik]

The DDE 1.0 and 1.1 runs on a +- 14V DC powersupply, if you buy the upgrade (PS ONE) for them. Otherwise the original PSU is +- 12V.
Both are unregulated, but rectified and smoothed with 1.000µF electrolytic caps. Be aware that the voltages are somewhat higher unloaded, i.e +-18V and +- 14V or something like that.

I wouldn´t know what you are going to use the digital out for, but I could suggest that you buy a DTI, which has digital out, but the coax are then to be used for feeding the DDE 1.0, which then leaves the optical for other use.

The DDE 1.0 features a Philips bitstream chip and also a Philips reciever. The DTI features the CS8412, which will lower jitter to about 150 pico sec. Which was very low for the early 90´s, and actually still is.

Btw. the 1.0 is the first DAC from Alchemy, it was cheap, upgradeable (PSU) and provided a fair soundquality at that time (around 1990).
A bit later they launched the 2 box set DTI, XDP which also have separate PSU´s and are thus upgradeable. The XDP is the only Alchemy DAC with a discrete output stage and analog deemphasis.
Both 1.0 and XDP´s analog stages are engineered by mr. Bascom King, and might well be the reason for the rich, smooth and powerfull sound of the early Alchemy products. Later on they went on doing like everyone else, namely designing output stages featuring normal opamps, and without mr. King´s assistence.
I.e. they made 1.1 with a 6 or 8 pole analog filter using coils
Digitally they persued to be and stay on the cutting edge of technology, thus the many changes in vendors. I.e. 1.0 and XDP features Philips - XDP even TDA 1547 with external noise shaping, then 1.1. and I think 1.2 and 2.0 also used Crystal semi and later on Analog Devices came in.
The cheap ones - DACman and DITB - I think is also AD. So they tried out almost anything but BB.

To me the DTI, XDP in combination with PS ONE and PS Four (2 voltage PSU for XDP) are the very best of Alchemy. The 1.0 + DTI is a kind of charming, but resolution is somewhat lower than DTI, XDP. The later models became just duller and duller, ending with DTIpro and DDE 3.0, which I happen to dislike.
The upgrade PSU called Powerstation TWO is a regulated 2 voltage PSU providing 12 and 18 V I think, but this is not really an upgrade, since both XDP and DTI runs a lot better on the PS FOUR and PS ONE, probably because of the higher voltages. Btw the regulators are just simple 7812/7912 and 7818/7918 types, so don´t waiste your money and attention on that.

Compared to more modern DACs the DTI, XDP still is of interest to audiophiles, probably because of mr.Kings single ended design.

[regal]

The DDE v1.2 was the real sleeper with its PMD100+AD1862 and a much better analog stage than the more common 3.0. I built a power supply for it with 4 treads feeding +/- 15V.