| MashBill |
What are my fellow "Pass Heads" using for their DAC? There seems to be much discussion here about amplifiers and preamplifiers, but not much about DACs. I would like a Pass-designed source to go with the rest of my Pass-designed equipment.
Thanks,
Bill |
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| dw8083 |
I've been using an Adcom GDA-750 for a few years. It's a balanced out DAC using BB1702 chips. It is a terrific DAC and can be purchased used for about $250. Evertyhing else I've compared it to is not as good, slightly better, or about the same. This is of couse limiting content to 20 bit material, which is the resolution of the chip.
I'm in the throughs of building a new DAC based on the AKM4396. I've picked-up an eval board and now experimenting with bypassing all the 5534D opamps used as low-pass filters with discrete jfet buffer and filter per channel.
The new delta sigma DAC's are mostly voltage output. There are very good reasons for this as the I/V can be very challenging to develop correctly. There are of course the BB179X or AD195X chips which are current output.
Nelson's contribution was to release his D1 I/V stage which was used in his R2R DAC chip based product. The D1 I/V is really a great design and valuable contribution to the DIY community.
I've seen a number of designs on DIYAudio.com for DAC's that do not have a low-pass filter to reduce all the out of band noise beyond the audio range. It is correct in that you cannot hear it, but the tweeter is forced to deal with it and can more easily over heat and color the sound.
-David |
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