Mr White's "Opus", designing a simple balanced DAC

[BrianDonegan]

you should drop the labelling People needs a little challenge

I usually recommend blind-folds in these instances...

[Russ White]

Nice Job Freak. I dig it.

Lot of case to spare in there for sure.

Steen,

I have not forgotten you, I just killed a receiver I meant for you (trying some experimental stuff before I sent it off) and I am awaiting parts for a rebuild.

Marc, I also have a little something coming your way, just a small token of my gratitude for all the lovely heatsink you have sent me. Here is a hint, no need to order an Opus for you...

Thanks to everyone, and especially thanks for the progress report on the build Freak. Very very cool.

Cheers!
Russ

[Spartacus]

Hi Russ,

do you have an ETA for the Wolfson based receiver? Also, have you thought about doing a board with sample rate conversion or specialist PLL?

Ta,
Dan

[fierce_freak]

Thanks, Russ! Sorry for the late reply guys...I've been away from the computer the past several days, driving down to Maryland and going to the meet. My impressions on the sound (preview: very positive) will have to wait until I get back to my home on Monday, but I can say that many that listened to the DAC at the meet were very impressed.

[SamL]

Originally posted by fierce_freak
My impressions on the sound (preview: very positive) will have to wait until I get back to my home on Monday, but I can say that many that listened to the DAC at the meet were very impressed.

Looking forward to the writeout from those who treid this DAC.

[thomaseliot]

This is possible

Today I tryed an internal PC sound card together with DDDAC USB converter. ASIO4ALL software assigns two ASIO channels to each sound card and Foobar sees and plays on all 4 channels.

So there is a way to have as many ASIO channel you want and use software Xovers.

My couple of OPUS DAC are on the way, the problem is to wait for USB converters still to be released.

[Russ White]

Originally posted by thomaseliot
This is possible

My couple of OPUS DAC are on the way, the problem is to wait for USB converters still to be released.

It won't be long now! Working to finalize the boards/BOM right now.

Cheers!
Russ

[4real]

Originally posted by fierce_freak
Yep

[... great pics ... ]

The heatshrink on the power entry module and power switch were taken care of after these shots. Also, you can see I left myself room for additions like an output stage (a la zapfilter) or for a clock.

Looks very nice! One comment though: Should you not have used shielded wiring, at least a decent coax cable for the SPDIF input?

I'm still wayting for the new SPDIF board, USB interface, and multimexper boards to be finished. SPDIF is great, but a decent USB interface is even better

[fierce_freak]

I went with spdif so I could use the X-Fi for EAX hardware acceleration for when I want to play games. With USB I'd be stuck with EAX 2 at best and a higher cpu utilization.

I did actually use a 75 ohm coax cable's core for the spdif connection, but I did use some shielded wire to connect ground to the spdif in's shield.

[planet10]

Originally posted by 4real
but a decent USB interface is even better

And Firewire would be better yet... Brian/Russ, any chance we'll see a FireWire module (i do know it is a considerably greater challenge then the USB)?

dave