The more I listen to this no-dac the more I'm amazed that it can sound so good! 🙂
I spent ages carefully building, researching and modifying a dac which was my pride and joy and this new solution has just knocked it into the weeds in terms of clarity and ambient micro-detail for a fraction of the cost and time. Amazing! Get your boards built people 🙂
I spent ages carefully building, researching and modifying a dac which was my pride and joy and this new solution has just knocked it into the weeds in terms of clarity and ambient micro-detail for a fraction of the cost and time. Amazing! Get your boards built people 🙂
Another example of why simpler is often better! 😛
Should I go for the single-ended one and use it as is with my SET Tube amp or should I go for the balanced one and retrofit a balanced input to my SET Tube amp? 😉
All depends the gain you need. If you need gain Balanced flip-flop + other stage for balanced to unbalanced if the rest of your system is SE, if you don't need gain SE is wonderful.
Hey Merlin, thanks for the response.
I was focusing on the signal integrity preservation of balanced interconnects as compared to the normal RCA interconnects, because since I am doing a lot of work on the power side (AC Filter box, dedicated line, etc...), it seems very bad to use unbalanced interconnects and hence lose all the benefits gained in those interconnects.
My tube amp is single-ended though (as is my current DAC), so perhaps I could envision retrofitting at least one of Neurochrome's THAT drivers to the amp with the balanced PCB here? And then I could use XLR interconnects between the PCB chip-less DAC and the amp?
So, all in all, I would say preserving signal integrity takes priority over gain for me.
Another solution is a transformer for balanced to unbalanced conversion plus de benefit of galvanic isolation.
If you're planning to use my PCBs plugged into the JLSounds USB board it is very easy to try both approaches.
As I don't need the gain for my power amps I'm planning to 'audition' both approaches with the project I'm building at the moment.
Ray
Will do, though it'll be a couple of weeks as I'm waiting on a transformer.
The project will use my Silk TVCs coupled to a Broskie Aikido buffer.
Ray
Hi Ray,
I have an XMOS board that I could possibly test with it, or else I was eyeing the new diyinhk board because of even higher rate DSD capability.
Tubed I/V was exactly the preferred implementation I was looking for. No doubt this is going to sound stellar.
Would love to hear your listening impressions.
It's not really I/V, the output from a 'no-dac' will drive an amplifier of the right sort of sensitivity without any buffer/gain stage. Single-ended puts out something like 700mV and balanced doubles that.
The Silk TVCs act as a balanced to SE converter and provide very high quality analogue volume control. I did try the Silks without a separate low-pass filter to see if their roll-off would provide the LP filtering but I experienced white noise so now use a separate LP filter; some people have had success with Llundahl transformers providing the filtering though, see post #1.
I'm using the Broskie Aikido buffer simply to get more current to drive interconnects and because my amplifiers seem to sound a bit better that way. YMMV.
I already have a project up and running that uses balanced 'no-dac' but outputs single-ended to my amps;
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-line-level/273474-best-dac-no-dac-125.html#post4676991
Ray
Hi pegasus21,
I am getting similar result like yours on my SE board. The music play beautifully without any noise however i am unable to get the mute working properly. Turning the pot doesn't make any changes. The pop sound still show up whenever i start or stop music.
Do you have any luck get Fabio's mute circuit working?
Lastly, would like to thanks Ray for this nice and great little gem.
Mok