Shigaraki Drive and DAC images

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johnm

johnm

Member
Joined 2003
This review sheds further light on the inards used in the DAC:

http://www.sakurasystems.com/reviews/reviews13.html

In particular:

"...the Shigaraki DAC contains a grand total of only 20 parts: 7 resistors, 3 capacitors, 6 inductors, 2 voltage regulators, and 2 chips. Everything is soldered together on a circuit board that measures 1.25 by 1.4 inches... One of the Shigaraki's two chips is the Philips TDA1543T, a 16-bit dual DAC which its manufacturer describes as their "economy" model. The other is the ubiquitous Crystal CS8412, which serves as the Shigaraki's self-clocking input receiver..."

Hope this is of some help.

Cheers,

- John
 
G

Gobble

Member
Joined 2010
Based on the many reviews online, this DAC is said to require a very good transport. I am curious about how it would fare with a dedicated home audio PC with a sound card like ESI @Juli and running foobar+kernel streaming with FLAC files? Or will only a $$$$ transport do justice ?

I am contemplating this DAC for its purported "virtues"

1. Of not causing sensory overload, focusing on the music
2. And I imagine - not providing what is ultimately a disjointed portrayal of music where we listen to the lows mids and highs distinctly in terms of their impact on our senses, react to and get distracted by the sensory load, but miss out on the flow and the whole picture (trees vs forest).
3. Supposedly brings out the musicality even in bad recordings (of which I have many). Actually the stuff I listen to there are few audiophile quality recordings. As is obvious 1 and 2 is useless with bad recordings.

Am I off the mark in my assessment of this DAC from my readings and without a listening test?

--G0bble
 
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G

Gobble

Member
Joined 2010
lohk said:
Second the DAC opened:

Here the image does not reveal the complete secret, but a lot of details nevertheless. The pcb looks very much "47labs-style", a bit DIY too much, considered to the efforts of some of you here. It is a mixture of p2p and pcb, it has to be like that, I think, although some details (the blue wire!) looks like an afterthought.
The DAC uses a single regulator (a 7805 perhaps), smoothing caps are either non-existent or not visible. SPDIF input (with a carbon 75R resistor) goes into a CS8414 directly. The pll filter uses an elcap (or is it the smoothing cap for the digital supply side?). The ShagirakiDAC uses a TDA1543 not in the DIP8 case, but in the 16minipack smd size, recognizable by the 8 "outside" feet soldered together, although the exact number on the chipcase is not fully readable. Maybe the heat dissipation of this package is better the smaller DIP8 chip. Two 3k carbon resistors are soldered on top of the TDA, maybe the IV conversion resistors. Another stripped cap is visible, maybe one of the output caps.

That is more or less what I can see. Now it is up to you for conclusions and further analysis.
Click to expand...

So does this thing not have a transformer on the input side of the spdif? I am considering the jkspdif mk3 usb-spdif convertor and it does not have a transformer on the spdif output for galvanic isolation. I thought one on the input side would help. What do you folks advice for this dac - Should I stick to a convertor with galvanic isolation only? Given the bad measurements described here 47 Laboratory 4715 D/A processor & 4716 CD transport Measurements | Stereophile.com I am quiet apprehensive.

Of course the measurements dont um "measure up" to the real listening experience. Its a nice natural sounding dac with no audible noise as displayed in the measurements. But I dont want this lack of galvanic isolation to be the proverbial last straw on the camels back which will fail to transport me to the promised heaven audiophools yearn for :)

Thanks for your advice.
--G0bble
 
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