Two days ago, I receive a new opamp to test with my 1.04 board: muses01
I already tested opa627 and a dexa discrete opamp.
The muses01 costed me 36€(expensive for this card).
the muses01 changed many things in terms of SQ(that is only my humble perception):
The timber and tones are really more beautiful and more natural.
The basses are more controlled, like "degreased" and they "slam" very dynamicaly.
The voices are less foggy but maybe a bit dry.
The instruments separation is improved.
this is more "analytic" sound than "ambient" one.
The downside is the music is less 3D, less in the air, less central stage
Sounds like it is litteraly comming out of each speaker and no more in front of the listener like with the opa627 and the dexa(which has a great soundstage and is well balanced but wich is way too more expensive for this card.
If some of you already heard this opamp, do you have the same feeling about strange stereophony?
I will next receive opa1622 and THS4012CD.
everybody seems enthousiats about them so I ordered them.
I already tested opa627 and a dexa discrete opamp.
The muses01 costed me 36€(expensive for this card).
the muses01 changed many things in terms of SQ(that is only my humble perception):
The timber and tones are really more beautiful and more natural.
The basses are more controlled, like "degreased" and they "slam" very dynamicaly.
The voices are less foggy but maybe a bit dry.
The instruments separation is improved.
this is more "analytic" sound than "ambient" one.
The downside is the music is less 3D, less in the air, less central stage
Sounds like it is litteraly comming out of each speaker and no more in front of the listener like with the opa627 and the dexa(which has a great soundstage and is well balanced but wich is way too more expensive for this card.
If some of you already heard this opamp, do you have the same feeling about strange stereophony?
I will next receive opa1622 and THS4012CD.
everybody seems enthousiats about them so I ordered them.
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Ok. After one more day, it seems that it was a burning time problem.
Today, soundstage is bigger, and voices and instruments find slowly their right place.
Absolutely my opinion too..i described almost the same behaviour on some post on the essabre-90xx-site..
great musicality, but something is missing..see above..
okay, and now here comes this "burn-in"-time thing..i really don´t know how much effect could this have on this "combo"..
i´ve ordered here some OPA2134 because i´ve read elsewhere that Topping or similar uses these OP-Amps (with the ES9038Q2M).
could maybe then post some impressions..(and btw. the OPA2604s are really,really bad,bad on this board)
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I must have missed the muses01 review on your blog.
I don't know if it's "brun-in" or some other factor but after 3-4 days, the soundstage became much larger and central.
But, not the best I heard for sure.
Do you think there is something to do to make the soundstage better?
Please share the results when you'll receive them
I think that... they are pricey for that cheap chinese card
I ordered the ultimate model(100 V/uS) which costs about 100€
I will try them on a more qualitative board in the future.
They are a real improvement after 5532 and opa627 but not as much as muses01. but maybe it's only my taste.
They produce a great soundstage(really better than the Muses one), music is in the air, very 3D and they are well balanced between clarity and entertainment music.
They have more gain that any other opamp I tried. I had to plug a 10k pot. in the card to lower the volume.
To my taste, the tones and timbre are less accurate than muses01.
The basses are more boomy and less controlled and the slam from percussions is bit less neat and beautiful.
It sounds more round and "velvet" but gives good clarity too.
It is maybe more subtle and complex than muses.
But for now, my favorite is Muses.
I will plug them back in a week to give me a new perspective on it after the muses01. And I think, that they maybe desserves a better dac board.
To finish, I have to say that Lars from NewClassD is a very nice guy who was very helping.
btw,
What output stage board are you building for your new allo Dac?
Will there be different ones to choose?
I think that... they are pricey for that cheap chinese card
To start (we might release more in the future) , we are releasing a discrete opamp stage based on SparkosLab opamps . Everything is discreet , IV stage and summing. All filters on analog stage are film smd . (cog is good technically but I prefer the sound signature of film..its more "analog")
All opamps on the board are manually trimmed for DC offset ..
Dual rails +- 15V are made using DC/DC connector , filtered and the passed through LDOs (less than 1mV of noise)..we took inspiration from the "silent switcher"
THD+N was tested hundreds of times we are under the noise floor of our AP machine (can go up to -106 THD+N)
One important thing thats usually forgotten with ess sabre..is clocks. Running the IC in ASRC (like everyone does), while great for jittery sources like RPI, is not good for great sound. Best way is synchronous. Even on our last dac , we used a great clock source to feed the pcm5122 and it elevated its performance.
Our ess9039 is running is Master mode. The first design (that I am aware of) that does so. As for clocks we are using dual NZ2520SDA (ndk calls them ultra low phase noise), feed using a triple filter (ldo , lc and some type of capacitance multiplier)
Have you tried Sparkos opamps ?
Hi madds1,
I've made your change but now the output volume is lower than before.
To raise it I have to change the resistance value 2.4k?
I saw the photo you posted on your other thread. Very nice. When do you expect it to be available? (and do you have a projected price). I've been looking for an output board I can use to convert(aka Hack) my 9038Q2M board from SE out to Balanced and your's looks like a great candidate.
no, unfortunately not by now..came it by chance as said, from this hungarian-based site->audiodiyers.hu • Tema megtekintese - ES9038Q2M panel a ringben
i oversaw it first..these connectors must be only on the "Green"-ones, V1.06 and up..i have the "Blue"-one..there is none of these connectors on the back..
but thx for asking; i will post here some info asap
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We are advancing as fast as possible , but first we had about 70 voltage rails to measure and tweak . For example on one rail we found that going from 10uH film inductor to a 4.7uH wirewound , decreased the noise by 25%.
Every single rail was measured and every single one has noise under 1mV (most have it at about 600uv) using a good smps. Thats over.
Clocks were tested at 400femtoseconds (jitter). Thats measuring floor at our test equipment .Its final.
Second was the analog stage , we tweaked the filters for best THD. We still have some tweaking but final board is being prepared.
At last control + 15v board its final as well.
I would estimate the mass production at about 8 weeks. Price will be under 250$
Try 3K. I am uncertain why 3K which is nearly a 3.87 gain gives 2V RMS. Theoretically if output impedance is 774 ohms 1.5k should be sufficient. I meant to investigate this a while ago but didn’t get the chance
For some time I have wanted to see how far I upgrade one of the ebay Sabre DAC boards to sound as close to a Benchmark DAC-3 as possible. I'm getting pretty darn close, but I think there is a little more that can be done. More on that later, but for now a couple of photos attached below. As can be seen, output stages are fully balanced IV, power supplies are considerably cleaned up, and a low phase noise oscillator has been fitted.
Attachments
I have split the supplies into digital/oscillator and analog for my board. The analog supply 3.3v regulator is mounted on the bottom of the board. It feeds the AVCC+ supply amplifiers and the 1.2 volt stepdown regulator for the DAC chip analog Vdd supply. Don't know why more people aren't choosing to do something like that.
Also, the +5 volt regulator that feeds the 3.3 volt regulators has been upgraded to an LM1086-5.0.
Mark you did quite a lot... but still room for improvement.
I would*t press whole dac on that board...if you will measure gnd you will see that is very dirty... i will move analogue stage on another board, supply it independently maybe gnd filtered...maybe also cut some gnd that digital gnd not completely polute the analog dac gnd and power lines...
But if it is worth ...i can*t say.
I would*t press whole dac on that board...if you will measure gnd you will see that is very dirty... i will move analogue stage on another board, supply it independently maybe gnd filtered...maybe also cut some gnd that digital gnd not completely polute the analog dac gnd and power lines...
But if it is worth ...i can*t say.