I have been fiddling with my CS4397, trying to get it to sound it's best. The answer was right under my nose:
I had been running it direct, but with the volume control on my amplifier full open, and the DAC chip turned down by way of my PC. After trying various things on the ouputs, I came back around to nothing on them, but this time, used the volume control on my amp, and ran the DAC wide open. THE HEAVENS OPENED UP. It went from good sound to the most emotional and powerful sound I have ever heard come out of my hifi.
It is loud, it is clear, it is involving and emotional, it digs DEEP into the details, and the bass pretty much EXPLODED.
If you have things on your outputs, take them off. Run a signal directly from the output pins on the chip. Feed the chip full force. It will knock your socks off! To sound it's absolute BEST, the CS4397/8 needs nothing at all, not even both of it's differential outputs.
CS4397-->Gainclone with good input caps. That is all.
CHEERS!
I had been running it direct, but with the volume control on my amplifier full open, and the DAC chip turned down by way of my PC. After trying various things on the ouputs, I came back around to nothing on them, but this time, used the volume control on my amp, and ran the DAC wide open. THE HEAVENS OPENED UP. It went from good sound to the most emotional and powerful sound I have ever heard come out of my hifi.
It is loud, it is clear, it is involving and emotional, it digs DEEP into the details, and the bass pretty much EXPLODED.
If you have things on your outputs, take them off. Run a signal directly from the output pins on the chip. Feed the chip full force. It will knock your socks off! To sound it's absolute BEST, the CS4397/8 needs nothing at all, not even both of it's differential outputs.
CS4397-->Gainclone with good input caps. That is all.
CHEERS!
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not hard to imagine heavens opened up . You were throwing away 1 useful bit for every 6dB attenuation in PC. Now you have around 15 bits worth of useful signal out of your DAC, (thats without an ASRC chip I guess).
thats a simulated plot for a similar multilevel d-s DAC, you can go below 50 using an ASRC.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
thats a simulated plot for a similar multilevel d-s DAC, you can go below 50 using an ASRC.
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Running your amps balanced bridged
Search the chip amps forum for BPA200, BPA300. There are many threads about running multiple 3886/75 chips in bridge parallel based on the application notes from National Semi. The big hang up for most people is how to create a balanced source from single ended but your dac chips are already balanced so it would be easy for you and will double the power and bias current versus one amp chip alone.
the main thing here is that I really dislike op-amp gain stages, and I am much happier without it. Even if the CS4397 does already have an integrated op-amp... oh well, very easy to use.
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