Thanks Sonic_real_one for a good answer
I will upgrade to parallel sooner or later, but wont be doing it just now! Maby changing the caps to
So the dac has a OP275. I havent heard it yet, but i want to buy other opamps that are compatible and try them out!. Any ideas on whats good out there? i have been searching a little and found that many liked these:
AD825AR
AD8620
OPA2132
LM4562
AD8599
Any thoughts?
I will upgrade to parallel sooner or later, but wont be doing it just now! Maby changing the caps to So the dac has a OP275. I havent heard it yet, but i want to buy other opamps that are compatible and try them out!. Any ideas on whats good out there? i have been searching a little and found that many liked these:
AD825AR
AD8620
OPA2132
LM4562
AD8599
Any thoughts?
This looks quite similar for 438 RMB or about 70 USD. Add Chinese internal postage plus about 7.5% Taobao agent fee and it would still end up being cheaper than eBay. But what is that little add-on board in the upper-left corner of the eBay photos?
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=13378154810
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=13378154810
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Here is the link again.
WM8741Ä£ÄâζDAC½âÂë°å£¬´øCS8421ÉýƵ£¨Í¬Öᣬ¹âÏËÊäÈë°æ£©-ÌÔ±¦Íø
Yes, it must be the USB board. It is not shown in the taobao photo, but the text says it includes the USB board at 438 RMB. I guess if I were to order from taobao, I'd first check for sure that the USB board is included. Thanks!
WM8741Ä£ÄâζDAC½âÂë°å£¬´øCS8421ÉýƵ£¨Í¬Öᣬ¹âÏËÊäÈë°æ£©-ÌÔ±¦Íø
Yes, it must be the USB board. It is not shown in the taobao photo, but the text says it includes the USB board at 438 RMB. I guess if I were to order from taobao, I'd first check for sure that the USB board is included. Thanks!
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Dhalbakken, you have noe need for the usb board, since it has an outdated Usb chip, your better of buying the Tenor 7022 board from ebay and use that board insted. Yo see on the top left corner of the board, the two free pins behind the pulse thingy that says cn2 is where you should connect it. The tenor board is sold complete with coax out, but just remove that and solder in on this board
Tenor board.
eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices
Got my tenor board today! But as seen in some of these photos, what are all the connections? many short names i dont understand anyone who knows?
Tenor board.
eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices
Got my tenor board today! But as seen in some of these photos, what are all the connections? many short names i dont understand anyone who knows?
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I did try the last three.
LM4562 is my preferred OpAmp (mainly because it has also a DIP8 capsule), but I have left the AD8599 (surface mount) in a Denon 2910 because it performs well too. Didn't feel the need to replace it with LM4562 (I do have plenty of those in SMD).
OPA2132 was... ok. But for some reason didn't make me want to keep it.
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The DAC arrived!
Ok, the DAC that the OP showed, NOT the one just spoken of, arrived a few days ago. Today I got it fired up. Had to find appropriate transformers in my iron mine. Since the epay seller did not include the requested schematic, and the one on the sale page is too low res to be readable in detail, I played it safe with the voltages and spent the time to find the required 10-0-10 AC transformer for the two lower voltages, and a 15-0-15 for the higher voltage supply. Took a while to pick 'em out.
I decided to slap the whole affair on a square bit of Luan plywood I had sitting in the warehouse. True breadboard style... and to make it right, I picked out some nice 3/8" x 3/8" nylon spacers to put between the PCB and the wood board.
All went well, and I brought it from the lab over to the listening room (LR), and fired up Jimi Hendrix Albert Hall boot CD on my usual DAC. That's a BB, the last linear type they made, geez I can't recall the stupid number now sorry, with the BB DF and a Crystal SPDIF receiver, gyrator filter on the analog side and a jfet/mosfet x-coupled buffer on the ootput.
Then I switched over to the China DAC. Nada. No output.
Brought it back to the bench. Figured I check the soldering.
Oooops. User error. The 3/8" diameter spacer had shoved the edge of the TI SPDIF input cheep over and cracked the solder off many of the pins. Ooog. So I shoved the chip back into place, slammed my head against a wall two times, and brought it back to the LR. Nada, nothing, zilch. No SPDIF LED.
Brought it back to the lab. Hmmmm... maybe I missed a pin? Sho'nuff! Missed a pin. Repeated scenario. Nada. Grrrrr... maybe i blew it up? Try the USB in? Right, good idea. Tried the USB. USB LED lights. Nada. Hmmmph. Ok, forgot to PLUG IT IN!! Plugged it in, voila! Music in the lab.
Ok. Turned it off. Flipped it over after removing the SCREWS AGAIN... 5x eye loupe. Bright light, exacto knife on chip pins. Yikes! Some are not soldered!! Resoldered the ones not connected.
Repeat. NADA!! Back again. Reinspect. Grrrrr... change perspective, rotate board, look again. Gosh darn one pin looks soldered but isn't! Resoldered, with fresh solder on tip...
Back to LR. Ahhhhh... sound!
Ok, virgin unit, zero hours run time, no look at schematic to see if there are ANY caps that need changing for the better, or resistors for that matter. Stock JRC4558 opamp in output hole.
Here's what I heard.
Not bad. Nothing glaring, nothing glaringly bad, highs are smooth enough. Decent sound stage.
However, the unit emphasizes the upper mids, lower highs, or fails to reproduce (either way) the lower mids and bass. Dynamics seem ok with a quick listen.
Compared to my reference unit, this one is a bit anemic and lacks a certain warmth, although it doesn't do anything terribly objectionable that makes me want to run from the room screaming (as so many DACs have made me feel like doing, fyi).
This is a work in progress report. Not run at all, opamps need to be changed out for sure, and maybe the PS could be changed for the better too.
I was going to run the thing off an outboard regulated bench supply rather than the AC in it normally takes, and see how that works out, but I had to repair the unit first, which I did. But second, not first.
Conclusion: My take on it is that for the money, it does nothing bad, save the tonal balance part, so might be ok for what it is. With changes in the output opamps and maybe the PS it may or may not sound rather better than it does now. But the good part is that it does not spit or sound hard and mechanical. I think the JRC4558 are contributing significantly to the perceived sound now. Conjecture at this point, but I think that will be borne out.
Pretty good for <$100.
(it's not a horse race with my main DAC at this point, fyi)
CDs used for brief listening:
Leann Rimes "Blue"
KD Lang - gosh, I dunno, the one with "Pulling Back The Reins"
Fairfield Four - the one with "There Must Be A City" (think it is the 2nd album?)
And a bit of the Hendrix at Albert Hall...
_-_-bear
EDIT: SMT workstation - high on my things to buy.
Ok, the DAC that the OP showed, NOT the one just spoken of, arrived a few days ago. Today I got it fired up. Had to find appropriate transformers in my iron mine. Since the epay seller did not include the requested schematic, and the one on the sale page is too low res to be readable in detail, I played it safe with the voltages and spent the time to find the required 10-0-10 AC transformer for the two lower voltages, and a 15-0-15 for the higher voltage supply. Took a while to pick 'em out.
I decided to slap the whole affair on a square bit of Luan plywood I had sitting in the warehouse. True breadboard style... and to make it right, I picked out some nice 3/8" x 3/8" nylon spacers to put between the PCB and the wood board.
All went well, and I brought it from the lab over to the listening room (LR), and fired up Jimi Hendrix Albert Hall boot CD on my usual DAC. That's a BB, the last linear type they made, geez I can't recall the stupid number now sorry, with the BB DF and a Crystal SPDIF receiver, gyrator filter on the analog side and a jfet/mosfet x-coupled buffer on the ootput.
Then I switched over to the China DAC. Nada. No output.
Brought it back to the bench. Figured I check the soldering.
Oooops. User error. The 3/8" diameter spacer had shoved the edge of the TI SPDIF input cheep over and cracked the solder off many of the pins. Ooog. So I shoved the chip back into place, slammed my head against a wall two times, and brought it back to the LR. Nada, nothing, zilch. No SPDIF LED.
Brought it back to the lab. Hmmmm... maybe I missed a pin? Sho'nuff! Missed a pin. Repeated scenario. Nada. Grrrrr... maybe i blew it up? Try the USB in? Right, good idea. Tried the USB. USB LED lights. Nada. Hmmmph. Ok, forgot to PLUG IT IN!! Plugged it in, voila! Music in the lab.
Ok. Turned it off. Flipped it over after removing the SCREWS AGAIN... 5x eye loupe. Bright light, exacto knife on chip pins. Yikes! Some are not soldered!! Resoldered the ones not connected.
Repeat. NADA!! Back again. Reinspect. Grrrrr... change perspective, rotate board, look again. Gosh darn one pin looks soldered but isn't! Resoldered, with fresh solder on tip...
Back to LR. Ahhhhh... sound!
Ok, virgin unit, zero hours run time, no look at schematic to see if there are ANY caps that need changing for the better, or resistors for that matter. Stock JRC4558 opamp in output hole.
Here's what I heard.
Not bad. Nothing glaring, nothing glaringly bad, highs are smooth enough. Decent sound stage.
However, the unit emphasizes the upper mids, lower highs, or fails to reproduce (either way) the lower mids and bass. Dynamics seem ok with a quick listen.
Compared to my reference unit, this one is a bit anemic and lacks a certain warmth, although it doesn't do anything terribly objectionable that makes me want to run from the room screaming (as so many DACs have made me feel like doing, fyi).
This is a work in progress report. Not run at all, opamps need to be changed out for sure, and maybe the PS could be changed for the better too.
I was going to run the thing off an outboard regulated bench supply rather than the AC in it normally takes, and see how that works out, but I had to repair the unit first, which I did. But second, not first.
Conclusion: My take on it is that for the money, it does nothing bad, save the tonal balance part, so might be ok for what it is. With changes in the output opamps and maybe the PS it may or may not sound rather better than it does now. But the good part is that it does not spit or sound hard and mechanical. I think the JRC4558 are contributing significantly to the perceived sound now. Conjecture at this point, but I think that will be borne out.
Pretty good for <$100.
(it's not a horse race with my main DAC at this point, fyi)
CDs used for brief listening:
Leann Rimes "Blue"
KD Lang - gosh, I dunno, the one with "Pulling Back The Reins"
Fairfield Four - the one with "There Must Be A City" (think it is the 2nd album?)
And a bit of the Hendrix at Albert Hall...
_-_-bear
EDIT: SMT workstation - high on my things to buy.
For clarity,
the seller is "zoe_tsang" on ebay
below are pix of the board.
mine was slightly different, no trimmers for one thing,
and mine is V2.0
he did not include the schematic despite several requests.
the ebay links others have posted, over time will go away and not be viewable any longer.
Upper left in the bottom side pix is the input chip that ran into the spacer...
oh, the two vregs upper right on top side run a bit hot, will need heatsinks...
_-_-bear
the seller is "zoe_tsang" on ebay
below are pix of the board.
mine was slightly different, no trimmers for one thing,
and mine is V2.0
he did not include the schematic despite several requests.
the ebay links others have posted, over time will go away and not be viewable any longer.
Upper left in the bottom side pix is the input chip that ran into the spacer...
oh, the two vregs upper right on top side run a bit hot, will need heatsinks...
_-_-bear
Attachments
I also had ordered a kit for zoe_tsang on ebay. Took over two months to get here, wasn't very happy. Anyways, the kit sounded fine once I threw away the JRC opamps and replaced them with some OPA637s. This kit was version 1.5. I also ordered the "same" kit from a different vender on ebay and it was version 2.0, again I threw out the JRC opamps and replaced with OPA627 on this model. Both sound great (I use them as USB sound cards for my PCs) but I feel like there's more these can produce. Maybe a total re-cap with some known genuine parts?
I will change the chips next time I get some time to muck about... would be cool if just the chips made it turn into equal or similar to my main DAC...
Shipping from China is always an unknown... mine came within the expected time. Sometimes it never comes - there is some fellow somewhere with a TON of stuff, eh?
_-_-bear
Shipping from China is always an unknown... mine came within the expected time. Sometimes it never comes - there is some fellow somewhere with a TON of stuff, eh?
_-_-bear
For clarity,
the seller is "zoe_tsang" on ebay
below are pix of the board.
mine was slightly different, no trimmers for one thing,
and mine is V2.0
he did not include the schematic despite several requests.
the ebay links others have posted, over time will go away and not be viewable any longer.
Upper left in the bottom side pix is the input chip that ran into the spacer...
oh, the two vregs upper right on top side run a bit hot, will need heatsinks...
_-_-bear
Schematic attached ...
Tenor 7022
Please, don't forget pictures of how you connected the Tenor 7022 board to the DAC.
Thanks
PEMO
Sorry for the wait
I have tried listening to it just a little, and i must say it sounds good. But i will come more back to that when i have really testet it when im 100% done!
Please, don't forget pictures of how you connected the Tenor 7022 board to the DAC.
Thanks
PEMO
How is it going? I'm qurious, how doses it sound?
This DAC sounds excellent!!!
But I must mention that at the beginning I had problem with it. The DAC worked from very beginning, sound was not bad but not as good as I expected. This is my second Chinese DAC which I bought for one of my friends being extremely happy with well known CS8416+CS4398+CS8421 DAC. When I connected oscilloscope and had a look at sinus signal coming out of this DAC I was shocked. This is how it looked like.
I did not had schematic because seller did not have it either. After looking at signal coming out of Vout of both channels of the WM8741 I guessed that digital part of DAC works properly and something must be wrong power supply of analogue part of the chip. It was impossible to put oscilloscope probe on chip pins due to their size and I decided re-solder all components which were on the way to those pins. Doing that I was wondering how it will sound after problem elimination. Finally the job I did helped and signal shape become as real sinus. Sound quality very much improved. After a week of intensive listening I modified the DAC by connecting transformers Monacor LTR-100 via 220R to WM8741 Vout. With new Monacor transformers sound become slightly better than with my favorite OPA LME49720 which I put in the DAC in at the first day.
Today I made sound comparison of these 2 Chinese DACs. Outputs of both DACs were connected to separate inputs of a very good tube 300B SET amplifier. DAC inputs were interconnected together and connected to PC via coax cable.
I was playing different kind of music using high quality recordings including 24bit/96kHz SACD rips with Foobar2000 and doing amplifier input switchover with remote control. Signal level from CS4398 based DAC was perhaps 2-3% higher than from WM8741 based one. Sound quality of the CS4398 based DAC was also slightly better. Most probably just because transformers in that DAC (UTC A-20) are better than Monacors. After 3 hours of doing A-B test I can conclude that either both DACs provide near the same outstanding sound quality or my old ears are not able distinguish the difference.
Build quality of CS4398 based DAC is sufficiently better than the 8741 based one. PCB quality is superb. I do not like PCB quality of the 8741. Obviously not good PCB quality or bad soldering caused the problem I described above.
So i tried connecting the Tenor board from the Rca out to USB in one the DAc board.. Got No sound... hmm.. i need to test more tomorrow! I will report back!
Valeri100, on my dac the components seem to be Soldered good, is there anyway an amature like me can see if its soldered bad?
Valeri100, on my dac the components seem to be Soldered good, is there anyway an amature like me can see if its soldered bad?
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Perhaps you have forgotten switch input to coaxial by pressing twice small button on the small board connected by flat cable. I noticed each time you turn on the DAC, input selector switches to optical input.
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