PCM5102, 2VRMS ground centered direct output with two digital filters

[Extreme_Boky]

Originally Posted by jean-paul

Hi Boky, there has not been a worse receiver than YM3623B. Good old CS8412 was way better. You also needed to stop the external clock when the receiver locked which was not provided in the chip so the external clock interfered (AFAIK as this was many years ago). Elektor published oscilloscope pics of what happened and introduced the "diode-mod" which was very effective.

I've moded few Audio Note DAC's that used this receiver; together with current out DAC's ... they are still the most musical, analog-sounding DAC's available while providing neutral insight in to music presentation that only current-out DAC’s can give. The receiver measurements may be mediocre – but it just worked really nice with AD and BB current-out DAC’s of that era.

Boky

[jean-paul]

We were talking SPDIF receivers here and IMO not many will agree that YM3623B was a good product. I used both YM3623B, CS8412 and CS8414 and the Crystal products were better just as they are better than the newer CS8416. The same DAC you mention sounds better with a better receiver (or front end if you like as the SPDIF transformer is curious too). Less jitter will give better results in most DACs.

The choice of current-out DAC chips was always right at AN, no doubt about that. Also their tube/transformer outputs make a analog sounding warm experience. It is unto the listener to decide if the latter is true to reality or not. It sounds musical to me although distortion might be the reason for that

I am very curious how an AN DAC will sound with Wolfson WM8804/5 (if possible, I haven't checked). I have not seen such mods yet.

[Extreme_Boky]

Originally Posted by jean-paul

We were talking SPDIF receivers here and IMO not many will agree that YM3623B was a good product. I used both YM3623B, CS8412 and CS8414 and the Crystal products were better just as they are better than the newer CS8416. The same DAC you mention sounds better with a better receiver (or front end if you like as the SPDIF transformer is curious too). Less jitter will give better results in most DACs.

The choice of current-out DAC chips was always right at AN, no doubt about that. Also their tube/transformer outputs make a analog sounding warm experience. It is unto the listener to decide if the latter is true to reality or not. It sounds musical to me although distortion might be the reason for that

I did not want to admit, but this is exactly my finding as well... too clean and jitter-free sounds too sterile..... however, getting the least power supply / ground plane noise and lowest jitter can be offset by using foil capacitors and other "soft-sounding" components - the whole process is way to expensive for “ordinary” mods that do not cost arm and leg to implement.

Boky

Originally Posted by jean-paul

I am very curious how an AN DAC will sound with Wolfson WM8804/5 (if possible, I haven't checked). I have not seen such mods yet.

[UnixMan]

Originally Posted by jmartins

Can I use a microprocessador to have a usb assync 24/192khz like this: Open-source USB interface: Audio Widget?

here comes the answer: USB5102 now available. George just did it.

[linuxworks]

fwiw, here's a link to a hand-built pcm5102 demo board that I have running from the 'audio widget' i2s lines:

Open-source USB interface: Audio Widget

there's no software interface; its just receiving i2s data and converting it to analog. sounds good, though! took me the better part of the day to hand solder all this mess

using 3 lm1117 3.3v regs, as per the spec sheet. lots and lots of bypasses, too, of course.

fwiw.

[linuxworks]

update: moved the pcm5102 over to its new devel home; a wm8805 chip on a fiio DAC (commercial made) board. I'm stealing its 3 i2s lines.



this was NOT EASY, lol.

I really don't know why I torture myself like this soldering where you can't even see anymore. well, flux and solder wick are my new best friends.

sound wise, I'm very impressed. I think this dac chip has a future to it.

[linuxworks]

some rmaa test results:

RightMark Audio Analyzer test: comparison

I took the unit over to AMB's place and we did an rmaa test. in that web link is a compare to his gamma2 (wolfson chip) vs this pcm5102 of my own chip-carrier build.

it compared well, overall. the numbers are a bit better on that high end wolfson dac chip but the 'foam dac' (lol) did a pretty respectable showing.

test setup was an m-audio firewire rme box as digital-out and analog-in using rmaa freeware.

[linuxworks]

update: am now using my own wm8804 spdif receiver perf board (chip carrier) and that's connected to the pcm5102 via the 3 wire ribbon cable.

it sounds good to me. the previous build was showing some strange bass distortion but this version of the build sounds fine.

what I like about this 8804 chip is that it takes in spdif and creates a clean spdif out *concurrent with* i2s, to drive a dac. I can get analog *and* digital out from this at the same time. I think that's cool

[glt]

Very nice!. Is the gamma 2 with a WM8741?. Did you redo the tests with the 8804? Thanks for sharing...

[linuxworks]

I think he has an 8741 in his y2.

I have not re-run the tests.

I may also have spoken too soon about this being such a great chip ;( I'm seeing some clipping going on when the input reaches 0db (as seen on various spdif monitoring meter displays).

I'd like someone else to check for this and see if its just me or if this dac chip is extra sensitive to near-zero db values.