ES9018 32bit Audio DAC kit USD89.95

[Overkill Audio]

I agree with Enjoybiking.

His suggestions sound great to me.
A high quality pin / plugin set up with modular boards offering different options is perfect for DIY.

Thanks and all the best
Derek.

[glt]

Originally Posted by enjoybiking

I...

I also would want easy access to V-out differential if there is such a thing with ES9018 or later in the circuit. I am a big fan of the Broskie Unbalancer and the Broskie Cathode follower both tube circuits. I am also a big fan of direct out no caps, since next stage usually HAS caps, that cuts the component count down by about 1/2 or more. Maybe bring that audio out with coaxial cable? I have some Twinax small style from 10Gb ethernet cable. Does ES9018 output I or V natively? differential V-OUTs would be GREAT somewhere on the board. I would not use anything further. Well...has anyone seen SSM2141 used in a DAC? Inferior or great? It would be an IC that does differential to single-ended conversion very precisely? Or am I wrong?

...

You can take the raw differential Vout from the input pads to the opamp. I use standard Cat5E cables to connect from DAC to amp. Works great.

[enjoybiking]

Originally Posted by glt

You can take the raw differential Vout from the input pads to the opamp. I use standard Cat5E cables to connect from DAC to amp. Works great.

Bravo! SO maybe a V3 or V4 of the board, a full piggyback or daughter card, the USB receiver and clocks? Isolated I2s I think you MAY be doing soon... Sometimes items like that 5-pin+3-pin harness are too much work to go find, we DIY... [I use Kynar wire-wrap wire a lot] and degrade... If you have peeked inside some models of Audio GD DACs you see he uses modules he can change [very short leads as a result too]. Does DIYINHK sell a class-A module that runs headphones? If your module plugs in as a piggyback or daughter... [optionally] I think people would buy the easiest thing that is known to work [if they need it]. Then you can come along later and offer a display with remote control...that plugs right in, FEW of us would DIY that [we'd pay you]. I thought of the Raspberry Pi board -- HDMI out? Dac now plugs into TV ? Computer noise though, back to that again. Or can the USB stream and driver contain info to soft-config the DAC registers somehow? [say XMOS USB???]

Now Mr Klipsh mentioned the parallel caps trains... I have been looking at any schematics I can see and often I DO see say 4 caps in parallel .001 .1 1 2uF? If you are playing with ES9018 board artwork... us DIY junkies would love the extra pads! One ES9023 design has those caps also on the DAC internally-generated 1.8V and on the NEG charge-pump.

Another handy item to offer is a chassis mounted USB jack [like XLR] or feed-through, and a short USB B-B or A-B style pigtail to the receiver. I think I saw the bulkhead jacks at Parts-express in USB, they probably get made in CN.

Neutrik NAUSB-W Feed-thru Reversible USB A/B Adapter D Panel 092-278

10cm USB A-b or B-B cable... [to piggy-back USB daughter card]

Thanks for listening, this is looking like it will be much fun!!

[glt]

Originally Posted by enjoybiking

Bravo! SO maybe a V3 or V4 of the board, a full piggyback or daughter card, ...

Thanks for listening, this is looking like it will be much fun!!

BTW, I am just a customer like you and have no control on the development of the board other than provide suggestions. I am the "hifiduino guy" in case you didn't know :-)

[gwikse]

A stacked card with superregs, digital input termination etc could perhaps be something to add later on. I will wait until I get the boards since I allways seem to get the ideas when I have cards and start stuffing.

Some things have been mentioned that I would like to see in future revitions though:

1. No edges on the digital lines (still there on the input lines as far as I can see by glt`s images showing rev2). **
2. Digital Termination pads along the inputs (could be left open when using external termination).
3. Seporated inputs but with jumper pads next to them for those that only will use i2s input and no external control unit (not using the mux).
4. Balanced output

I very much like the fact that it is naked. No components that I will not use since I will use an arduino controller.

**Edit: to get curved traces instead of direct angles

[enjoybiking]

does anyone here have V1 or V2 of this board actually running? Was the silk-screening enough to get it going, or did you have any odd parts procurement issues? Puzzles to solve? I have more parts on hand than most, hah, but where?

I will be trying the $29 CM6631//ES9023 this weekend.

[KlipschKid]

Hi

I got my v2 and cm6631 today. Thanks !

I plan to use an adp151 3.3V reg for the digital supply, and this can fit across FB2 pads, so it would seem to be an easy change to simply add the gnd and enable pads around FB2 for v3 of the board so there is the option for the builder to use FB2 or an adp151 there.

How do I switch between asynch and synch ? In synch, is there an automatic way to switch between the output clocks on the usb board for the DAC board ? Do the NDK oscillators have an enable pin ? It will seem quite inconvenient to manually switch clock jumpers to go from playing 44.1 to 96 Khz tracks.

For the USB board - there's no termination resistors (on either board; they should be at the transmitter) - the power jumper is good but there needs to be two jumpers so the dirty gnd from the PC can also be isolated.

The BOM seems to be :

Resistors
20R x8 (4 on the board plus 4 extra for I2S input as there is no termination)
100R x8
140R x4
470R x6 (4 on the board plus 2 more for the LEDs - board indicates smd 270R but the datasheet shows a higher value and I think Multicomp MF12 resistors will fit here too)
680R x4
3.3KR x1
10KR x2 (might need to be matched for low output DC offset)

Film caps

100pF x4
10nF x4
0.1uF x4
1uF x5

Ceramic X7R

0.1uF x26

Electro

10uF 16V x15
470uF 16V x4

6x op amps lme49990 or ada4627 etc
6x op amp sockets

Did I miss anything ?


A comparison with AMB S11 regulator



and with the usb board (US$49 with 2 regulators, clock outputs, and power jumper)




My flickr photos are here - just quick snaps - GLT's are much better :

Flickr: coughinhk's Photostream

I'll order the parts later today and start a build thread if no-one else has by the time the parts arrive.

Cheers,

Tom

[luxury54]

Hi, why have you bought another CM6631 board if you already had one? just for the extra connection of the clocks to the ES9018 board for the synchronous mode?

check out in this posting how did GLT manage to tie up together the 2 clocks from the amanero board with some resistors and fed the DAC with the reclocked clocks directly without having the MCK being generated through CM6631's output (more jittery than direct connection straight from the clock)

Amanero USB Synchronous Reclocking H i F i D U I N O

maybe the CM6631 clock design also uses the enable pins controlled automatically so you don't have to switch manually the clocks for both 44.1 and 96 khz family...also maybe a similar reclocking would have benefits .

after this modding would be interesting to compare the results with the asynchronous mode

[sex]

Hi KlipschKid,

Did you start a build thread?

I'm very interested in this DAC, I linked to it at anther forum as well - ? yourdiary.net! ? • View topic - Audio DIY kit links

[KlipschKid]

Originally Posted by luxury54

Hi, why have you bought another CM6631 board if you already had one? just for the extra connection of the clocks to the ES9018 board for the synchronous mode?

check out in this posting how did GLT manage to tie up together the 2 clocks from the amanero board with some resistors and fed the DAC with the reclocked clocks directly without having the MCK being generated through CM6631's output (more jittery than direct connection straight from the clock)

Amanero USB Synchronous Reclocking H i F i D U I N O

maybe the CM6631 clock design also uses the enable pins controlled automatically so you don't have to switch manually the clocks for both 44.1 and 96 khz family...also maybe a similar reclocking would have benefits .

after this modding would be interesting to compare the results with the asynchronous mode

Actually I have 3 of these cm6631 - one US$30 in my AMB y2 DAC by my bedside for headphone use, another US$30 in the dual AD1955 DAC (actually still working on this DAC and various isolation... too many projects !) and so this last one is for the ES9018, which can use the clocks from the usb board; so it makes sense to get the one with the clocks already available rather than hacking it like bigpanda et al did... they are more skilled than me... and it has a convenient 5V input, and two of the low noise regs, not just one, so in theory the clocks get cleaner power. However, the gnd is still connected so I'll have to remove the usb socket, so not completely hack-free.

BTW, if anyone wants any Tenor TE7022L devices like Teralink X2 etc... they are for sale ;-) I have a very nice ocxo 12mhz too ...

The best way to clean up the mclk etc is to use IanCanada's fifo. For what it is, it isn't expensive and will give far better results than any hack I can manage. However, I already have an fpga asrc to 384Khz with Crystek CCHD-957 in the dual ad1955 DAC, so for this es9018 dac, I want to see if the es9018 can beat the dual ad1955 without any expensive extras or hacks. The dual ad1955 cost around US$200 so it's become my benchmark for an affordable high quality DAC.

Anyway, I will test the usb board's clock outputs tomorrow and see if they are both on at the same time.

cheers

Tom