Anagram Sonic 2 and Timelock evaluation boards

[plep]

Dear All,

I came across this http://www.anagramtech.com/shop/

The Sonic 2 evaluation board is a fully functional dac without power supply and with the Anagram upsampling algorithm (384Khz) and some more interesting features.

Timelock is a high precision clock (.5ps jitter).

As I understood it there will be no Sonic4 evaluation board.

All this seems to me like interesting toys to play with. I learned some ideas reading the sonic2 user’s manual. Could this be better than, say a Benchmark? I’ll easily believe it.

Also are those .5ps jitter figure comparable with the 2 to 5 ps jitter given by other current best products like Trent Lab or the way they are measured makes these numbers meaningless ?

Best Regards.
Philippe (who don’t know if he’ll have the time try theses boards and who has nothing to do with Anagram).

[sq225917]

could be worth a purchase, the cambridge 840c player has replaced my very very heavily modified cd17ki.

so if CA can make a decent player out of it, it must be a decent baoard.

[greierasul]

very interesting subject. I have a Harman Kardon HD970 cdplayer wich have the same technologies, from Anagram. The potential of that is huge, but are some problems with D/A converter, AD1955, it is very hard to work with in that conditions, I mean AD1955 without internal digital filter. Anagram "remove" digital filter and the D/A converter (AD1955), so will appear many "garbages" unfiltered at the optput of AD1955 in the Mhz range and 200khz(imaging, aliasing). There are 3 low-pass analog filters in the output stages (1-st order I supose) but do not work very well. I remove them and the sound is very rich, spacious, dynamic like a hammer, transparent sound, incredible , but in the same time it is a little(or more) colder, not in the low and medium register, but on the high frecvencies.

I supose the higher rate of resample, at 768 khz, like Sonic 4, the "garbagies" ar gone more far away to the audio band , from 350 khz to few Mhz. I try to remove Mhz garbage band wit..... ferrite rins and the sound it is a little warmer.

[Terry Demol]

Originally posted by greierasul
very interesting subject. I have a Harman Kardon HD970 cdplayer wich have the same technologies, from Anagram. The potential of that is huge, but are some problems with D/A converter, AD1955, it is very hard to work with in that conditions, I mean AD1955 without internal digital filter. Anagram "remove" digital filter and the D/A converter (AD1955), so will appear many "garbages" unfiltered at the optput of AD1955 in the Mhz range and 200khz(imaging, aliasing). There are 3 low-pass analog filters in the output stages (1-st order I supose) but do not work very well. I remove them and the sound is very rich, spacious, dynamic like a hammer, transparent sound, incredible , but in the same time it is a little(or more) colder, not in the low and medium register, but on the high frecvencies.

I supose the higher rate of resample, at 768 khz, like Sonic 4, the "garbagies" ar gone more far away to the audio band , from 350 khz to few Mhz. I try to remove Mhz garbage band wit..... ferrite rins and the sound it is a little warmer.

They haven't removed the digital filter - just replaced the internal
one with their own higher performance version.

cheers

T

[egonnaud]

I've got one Sonic2 eval board and I'm planning to test different output stages with it :

- the onboard one (opa275 and opa2104)
- ZapFilter II
- any other ideas ?

I'll power the board with JSR. More info one the project here : http://egonnaud.backpackit.com/pub/1239098

I may also try their local clock evb (will be avalaible in a few weeks according to thier sales dep).

[sq225917]

i'd consider the burson discreet hdam stages, they have a good reputation.

[poynton]

Originally posted by sq225917
i'd consider the burson discreet hdam stages, they have a good reputation.

do they ?




I'd try these :-

http://www.audioupgrades.co.uk/discrete.shtml

[Spartacus]

Another option is Greg Ball's SKpre modules. These are discrete class A op-amps that can be configured in a number of ways, i.e I/V conversion, balanced to single-ended, headphone drivers etc.

The also include on board discrete high performance regulators. Supplied ready built and tested or as a kit. I've built them and they sound fabulous.

SKpre