D1 I/V with 4x TDA1543

[FYC]

I plan to build a DAC using 4 TDA1543 in parallel, coupled with a Pass Lab D1 I/V stage. The concept schematics is attached and would like to invite advices and comments.

These are my considerations in making the schematics:
The full scale current (sink) output of TDA1543 is 2.3mA, so with 4 in parallel, this will be close to 10mA. With a 1.5k Ohm drain resistor in D1, this will give 15V voltage swing, which is too much. Also, the D1 bias setting would not allow such a voltage swing. So a scaling process is required. Instead of using a scale factor of 4x (which looks obvious by with 4 DACs in parallel), I use 3x to get a bit more gain
The drain resistor is hence reduced from 1.5k to 500 Ohm. I use 3 1.5K resistor in parallel to get the 500 Ohm effective resistance. I believe this will statistically reduce the deviation and give a more accurate 500 Ohm for the I/V conversion (matching between L and R will be better)
The bias current of 10mA in D1 will give a voltage drop of 5V across the 500 Ohm, this is too low. I increase the bias current to 30mA. This can maintain the output DC level at 15V, also should improve the linearity by biasing the IRF610 harder.
With a 30mA bias, the source resistor of 3.3k in D1 should be reduced to 1.1k. This appears to be quite low and I believe this will reduce the robustness of the constant current flow from the source pin to -30V. I change this to a CCS.
The output LPF is kept after the 10uF blocking capacitor. The values are taken from the Zen I/V design
In the original D1, there is a input capacitor of 0.01u at the input. I am not sure if this is required (C4 in my schematics)
The TDA1543 would like to see its output biased to a voltage at Vref (2.2V). By trimming the pot at the gate, I will set the source potential at 2.2V (or measured 0V between this pin and the Vref pins of TDA1543)

The input to the DACs will be from 2 I2S sources: a USB input via PCM2707, and a SPDIF input via CS8414.

[Nelson Pass]

How does it sound?

[FYC]

I would like to know also, unfortunately the project is still at the drawing board stage. Will take a while to get the parts and have it built up.

[Roscoe Primrose]

Four TDA1543s in parallel are just fine on their own just driving a resistor....

[FYC]

Yes, this method is very much documented in the web and in fact I do own 1 TDA1543 based DAC now which use a single resistor as I/V. I am however not impressed by the sound and hence would like to see if changing the I/V setup can bring something new. Of course there can be other reasons behind the dissatisfaction, but this I/V stage change can serve as step 1 of the exploration.

[FYC]

Some upates.

I finally build the DAC and make some audition today.

Compared to the single resistor setup, I found this D1 I/V stage to be less "grainly". Depth and transparency are good, and I am very happy with the result.

With the component I got at hand, the bias current of the IRF610 is almost 40mA now. They are really working hard.

[zygibajt]

Originally Posted by FYC

Yes, this method is very much documented in the web and in fact I do own 1 TDA1543 based DAC now which use a single resistor as I/V. I am however not impressed by the sound and hence would like to see if changing the I/V setup can bring something new. Of course there can be other reasons behind the dissatisfaction, but this I/V stage change can serve as step 1 of the exploration.

Go for TDA 1541A and you will be happy. You ill never be happy with TDA1543 when it comes to serious music listeing expirence.