One more TDA1541A DAC

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I just finished off a new DAC using a TDA1541A-S2, CS8414 receiver, Guido Tent's XO clock, and Pedja's AD844 IV stage.

I'll be honest and say that it sounds quite good. Excellent tone and soundstage. Some of my recordings are sounding amazingly realistic. Much less digital. (Sorry.. I'm not so good with the "audiophile" speak.. it's just good sounding)

The XO clock works wonders. I can tell the difference it makes by taking out the 74HC binary divider and putting it back in. Very great resolution is added with the XO clock.

The AD844 IV stage is great too. No more bothering with tubes. I can just put the whole dac in a smaller enclosure. I had built a tube dac before but I just moved the tube section out and am now using it as a separate linestage.

I was hesitant about using opamps but the AD844 is excellent and easy to implement.

No fancy passive parts.. other than Oscons for the digital supplies which are shunt regulated by TL431s.
 

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Here's a closer look at the DAC board.

You can see one of the AD844s on the right.

Big 10uF solen MKPs as output.

Tent clock on the bottom. I'm using the suggested powersupply from the XO documentation for the clock.

That's a 74HC4040 divider which I'll switch to VHC later.
 

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the blue rectanges are bournes multiturn pots. I got them locally.

Most of the heat comes from the 1W resistors that are in series with the TL431. They dissipate about .8W and i measured it with a temp gun at 50degrees C.

The TDA1541 gets slightly warm.

The power supply outputs +/- 16VDC and its regulated down to +5, +5 for the CS8414 , +5, -5,-15 for the TDA1541, +/-15 for the AD844, +5 for the clock.

I built a tube buffered DAC before but I had some hum problems and I couldnt get enough gain out of it. It was based on Thorsten's Adagio dac. I find that with the tube stage external and with the AD844, and clock, it sounds MUCH better than the DAC and tube stage alone.

The sound is very rich and clean without wooliness. The tube linestage gives it very wide imaging.
 
Active surplus caps? No I only got the 74hc4040 and the IC sockets from there. I got several things from Sayal and Supremetronic though. The caps in the AD844 stage are nichicon low ESR caps. They're 100uF and 220uF. The power supply caps are 4700uF/100V I had lying around and they're Panasonic TSHA series from Digikey.

I basically used the schematic from here:

http://www.geocities.com/react_71/audio/tda1541a_dac/tda1541a_dac.htm

for the digital part (excluding the clock).

For the clock power supply, I used the schematic from here:

http://home-4.worldonline.nl/~t708955/pdf/XO%20folder.pdf

I used Doede's method for feeding the clock signal using a 74HC4040 from here:

http://www.dddac.de/files/dddac1543ver22.pdf

Put them all together and that's pretty much it.

By the way, that's a Hammond case from Electrosonic.
 
No fancy passive parts.

Cool, are Xicon and Panasonic components an option here?

other than Oscons for the digital supplies

OSCONs are fancy? All the leaded caps on my cheapo MSI graphic card are OSCONs. People sell them for quite a lot tho...

which are shunt regulated by TL431s.



What transformer have you used? Anybody tried the revised version?
 
Hi, i'm the brother-in-law of the person who built this DAC.. so i can jump and answer some of the questions..

His output caps are 10uf Solens. I would try to get something beyond solen unless you're on a budget. For resistors, I believe he's using Dales if I'm not mistaken. And yes he's using oscons as his digital and analog bypass caps. I've read on many occasions that oscons are not great as analog bypass caps. He's also using 0.1 uf wima caps near the tda1541 s2 chip. He's definitely using shunt regulators, which are quite good. For the diode bridge, he's just using generic bridges and again I would get schottkey type diodes for the bridge if i were doing this. As for the transformer, I forgot which one it is, but it's the one that's listed in the crystal recommended datasheet in the cs8414 section. He bought it off digikey. He's also stated which one it is somewhere in the diyaudio board. Just search for it.

Hope this helps,
300_baud
 
74hc4040 doesn't seem a good choice

I don't understand why people try to upgrade their clock section and use a ripple carry (asynchroon) counter! :eek: :eek:

Their must be better choises for a clockdivider.

Or do they try to create a latency between the 2 clock inputs on purpose? (less harsh ripple on VCC?)


Regards Simon
 
well, he doesn't quite use his dac anymore to my knowledge. He's had problems with the async clock and his denon 3910 transport. Nowadays he just uses his denon 3910 analog outs. I gave him a 27mhz tent XO clock to replace the mater clock on the 3910. That should improve his sound.
 
So here's the post I was about to post:

####
Here's how I think I will connect my TDA1541A ICs to my CDP-295 Sony CDP:

Kwak Asynch Reclocker feeding Sony CXD2550AQ IC @ 33.8688MHz using optional internal buffer from Pedja Rogic revised scheme.

CXD2550AQ's EIAJ output will be converted to I2S using cm's EIAJ to I2S converter. ("Sony to Philips I2S conversion" and "Sharing all my digital work" topics)

The EIAJ-I2S converter's output will go to a Kwak Asynchronous Reclocker, using a 33.8688MHz Kwak Clock as master clock(For CXD IC).

The reclocker output will then go to Pedja Rogic's TDA1541A revised DAC with http://www.dddac.de/files/dddac1543ver22.pdf's 74HC4040 between both(If possible).

I might use the TNT 1541 PSU instead for the DAC(cheaper) but I'm not sure.

I'll build the same thing for a CDP-XE300 using a different reclocker master clock (if it needs a different one) and also 3 other DACs (Are CS841x ICs cheap?) with SPDIF inputs and a TNT decimation circuit.

Are there other/better output stages out there(Not tubes talking)?
I'd like to try TNT's output stage with 2SC1775 transistors, but I would waste money trying both. Which one should I use?

Could someone tell me if there is any converters, reclockers, etc. I should not use or replace? Do you think it will sound good like this(Using Xicon, Panasonic, etc. components)? I'd like to hear(Well... read!) your opinion on this.
####

I now know that I should remove the 74x4040 asynch counter from this. Is there a newer revision of Elso's Reclocker?
 
I2S NOS TDA1541A

This is the DAC that I currently use, where all schematics come from this forum.

Its outer appearance
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Top view
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Main board for TDA1541A
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I-V converter from rbroer's "Less simple I/V for TDA1541"
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Jim Hu
 
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