My final conclusion on my two dddacs: four boards, red main board, 5V New Class D, ccs, standard caps versus one board, blue main board, 5V New Class D, ccs, oscons + elna silmics. Four boarder wins: direct out is smoother, fuller, more realistic. Through the cinemags the sound is even better, but not by a huge amount. This means neither the blue main board nor the oscons/silmics are essential or can at least be bettered by four boards. I should be honest here: four boards are a big outlay. The really essential upgrade is the ccs and any dddac owner should install it.
Thanks for this quick review! As we have seen several CCS version, it would be nice if you could publish the one you used ?
I never feel this output will be the same for everyone. I say this as many DDDACs have been compared by Doede and the guys and each has their opinion what is best. The joys of our different hearing and what we like 🙂
Nice work, but I don't think you're close to getting the best out of either of your DDDACs and making a final conclusion if you haven't tried either with better voltage regulators to replace the LF33 and LF80 on each dac deck.
Give it a go, I think you might like it 😉
My CCS consists of a 1K Welwyn RC55Y precision resistor, a 2K Bourns 3296X cermet trimmer and a Toshiba TO-92 2SK246Y JFet.
I made the same one board DDDAC for my son, with as only differences 3V and 8V Bellesons, but no CCS. I haven't heard it for a while, but as I recall the sound quality was comparable to mine. The question is would adding CCS to the DDDAC with Belleson regulators result in yet another significant improvement.
I made the same one board DDDAC for my son, with as only differences 3V and 8V Bellesons, but no CCS. I haven't heard it for a while, but as I recall the sound quality was comparable to mine. The question is would adding CCS to the DDDAC with Belleson regulators result in yet another significant improvement.
I see someone of us here are already having TA Hermes-BBB/Botic hook up with DDDAC. Please share your feedback?!
@James/Stijn - You both have had Acko S03 and are also going for TA Hermes/Cronus. Please let us know which one you would prefer better and why?
I still waiting for mine. 🙂
Chanh
@James/Stijn - You both have had Acko S03 and are also going for TA Hermes/Cronus. Please let us know which one you would prefer better and why?
I still waiting for mine. 🙂
Chanh
Sorry a bit of topic...
I've not ordered one, I don't have sufficient space left in my build. I might give it a try when we start playing with DSD properly, but who knows there might be a BBBv2 with a 4 core SoC out soon, will the pinout/header/clocks change, do we need a new driver by Miero?? (I hope not). 🙂
I only just added the BBB > Hermes > Cronus yesterday, so it's a little early to say, but I got a chance to listen to a couple of tunes last night and I'm quite sure it's the best my dddac has sounded so far 🙂 I'm getting my Cronus 5v from the dddac mainboard now rather than the additional DIYINHK supply I used for the S03, not sure how much of a difference that makes.
The Cronus uses the ADM715x voltage regulator doesn't it? I can see how that would work real well for a high frequency digital device.
I have both the CCS and 3.3 and 5v bellesons. The CCS improvement is significant and is definitely worthwhile doing.
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Thanks for the feedback naimster. In your opinion which one of these two upgrades is the most significant? I'm asking this of course because of the big difference in cost. It would be great if the extremely cheap CCS would also be the greatest step up in quality🙂
IMO the CCS is the winner, and don't forget the buffer and Cinemags for a one boarder too
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Hi Chanh
I wrote some lines about the sound of BBB-cronus / rpi-S03 (asynchronous) a few weeks ago. Difference is quite big and the cronus wins easily. But the difference compared with a synchronous running S03 will probably be smaller.
As far as I know only James has both synchronous set up so I hope for an extensive report from him soon 😉
Regards,
I think it is best to use not more PS than strictly necessary. You will probably end up with more noise on ground.
And as ground is connected from cronus to dac there will be no need to use separate PS. Cronus has its own regulator so raw unregulated power like we have learned from dddac will also benefit here, you might try this.
Regards,
This maybe an un-answerable question, but here goes.
I currently have a two DAC board DAC, the only upgrade to the DAC itself is the use of Tent labs shunt regs. I also have two more spare DAC boards so I could have a four board DAC.
One of my questions is......
Should I keep to a one board DAC and totally mod that with the addition of the buffer board as well.
Or should I go for the four board DAC and obviously carry out the same mods to each board?
Has anyone tried the buffer board with a four board DAC?
Thanks!
I currently have a two DAC board DAC, the only upgrade to the DAC itself is the use of Tent labs shunt regs. I also have two more spare DAC boards so I could have a four board DAC.
One of my questions is......
Should I keep to a one board DAC and totally mod that with the addition of the buffer board as well.
Or should I go for the four board DAC and obviously carry out the same mods to each board?
Has anyone tried the buffer board with a four board DAC?
Thanks!
Hi,
During my adventures in audio I have always had good results when things can be made more simple in the sound path: less is more. In that view I would think using 4 boards is better than using a buffer stage. I am very satisfied with the clear and detailed sound that the balanced output of the 4 board dac can display, putting a buffer inbetween will inevetably take away some of the detail and dynamics.
You will also benefit from the avariging effect that parallelling the dac outputs brings.
Regards,
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I have 11 stacks unmodded into the sowter transformers. I uprated the original power supply with extra heatsinking, 225va transformer and 10000uf Mundorf capacitors.
This dac needs time to settle in. I have about 500 hours on it and you can hear the improvements happening.
So just a thought, do you leave sufficient time after mods for it to settle down i.e. 6 weeks before deciding what works or not.
Mine has been untouched for 6 months now and has settled down to being a reference quality dec 🙂
This dac needs time to settle in. I have about 500 hours on it and you can hear the improvements happening.
So just a thought, do you leave sufficient time after mods for it to settle down i.e. 6 weeks before deciding what works or not.
Mine has been untouched for 6 months now and has settled down to being a reference quality dec 🙂
James,
You certainly need to do the CCS mod to all four boards to get the ebst out of them. But also you are building a Buffer output board, so for the effort of making a (temp or otherwise) 12v + - psu you can try the experiment with your board. You might get a surprise, rather than relying on our opinions. I too believe in simplicity but by that token a passive pre should be better than an active one, and IME is rarely so.
David
David