Hi Eduard,
I will certainly be enjoying my DDDac for a long time yet but enough people whose opinions I respect have told me that DSD offers a mjor step up in SQ from pcm. Of course most of these people do not have the luxury of a DDDac, tweaked or untweaked. But if I can convert pcm to DSD in real time and play the output thru a DDD DSD Dac with better results than a DDDac than I for one will be investigating as it means I don't have to change my whole collection and start buying new software. Of course, this may not be possible or even offer imporved results but I'm sure as hell keen to find out.
David
And there are quite a lot of reports on Diy Audio of folk doing exactly what I've described and getting good results
I'm sitting on the fence and enjoy the development when playing music that sounds lovely on my dddac.
Hello Juancho,
I already did spend some time on this thread. Did start constructing the ''mainframe'' to give shelter to the dddac and its power supply.
The power supply is kind of finished. I have to find out which cap values to use to get the right time constant.
Doede did write to me that the dac prints are not really sensitive to radiation from power transformers and/or chokes so the dac prints will be right nextdoor to the power supply. The output Sowters will be further away.
Greetings, Eduard
P.s you can see that the connections between the different elements of the power supply will be short. They say the transformer, diodes, input choke and first caps should be close together
I already did spend some time on this thread. Did start constructing the ''mainframe'' to give shelter to the dddac and its power supply.
The power supply is kind of finished. I have to find out which cap values to use to get the right time constant.
Doede did write to me that the dac prints are not really sensitive to radiation from power transformers and/or chokes so the dac prints will be right nextdoor to the power supply. The output Sowters will be further away.
Greetings, Eduard
P.s you can see that the connections between the different elements of the power supply will be short. They say the transformer, diodes, input choke and first caps should be close together
Attachments
I finished my dddac last thursday. Could not be more happy from the outcome, and from the fact that this was my first ever diy electronics project. I'm even more proud of me, that after making so much modifications it started from first push of the botton! It sounds so sweet that I think, there will not be doing any swaps to a different dacs for some looong time (if not at all), and it is my feeling after just a few days of running. I simply can't imagine the sound with more boards and better ps 🙂
I'm happy to hear about new ideas being brought to life by Doede. More happy about upcoming new version of dddac boards. I can see that Doede is not jocking when comes to serious aproach to the music. My biggest complements for your ideas and quality Doede!
I'm happy to hear about new ideas being brought to life by Doede. More happy about upcoming new version of dddac boards. I can see that Doede is not jocking when comes to serious aproach to the music. My biggest complements for your ideas and quality Doede!
Thanks for the "flowers" and enjoy the DAC. Great everything worked the first time 🙂 nice feeling, right?
In the same time I wanted to thank you Doede for such a huge work, openess and helping me and any music lovers.
Ultimate thanks go to everyone who helped me with all these mods and construction overall, giving time, patience and all the best one could give in sake of help. I have to emphasize that much of special attention was needed to one like me, total rookie knowing nothing 🙂
Thanks to you guys I made it and moreover I learned a lot. Also thanks to you I'm here and will stay here, shering this forum and my greatest audio venture with company of great people!
Supersurfer, Eduard, carlsor, emyeuoi and many others BIG THANK YOU!
Ultimate thanks go to everyone who helped me with all these mods and construction overall, giving time, patience and all the best one could give in sake of help. I have to emphasize that much of special attention was needed to one like me, total rookie knowing nothing 🙂
Thanks to you guys I made it and moreover I learned a lot. Also thanks to you I'm here and will stay here, shering this forum and my greatest audio venture with company of great people!
Supersurfer, Eduard, carlsor, emyeuoi and many others BIG THANK YOU!
Congratulation
You will enjoy the DDDAC for long time and after some burning time will be even better 🙂
Ciao,
Enrico
Here are a few shots of my testing bench (for now) right before I got totally champanised 🙂 You can see some antennas there. They are waiting for another two boards to be connected. Can't compare this humble setup to big dacs here, but it really makes me very happy. I throw on it some music that never before atracted me, but on this I call it "The Magic Box" dac they just shine and reveal so much that I can't just stop to listen to them. It puts you in different dimension and sounds so dynamic, organic, magic and charming I've never heard before.
Nice, nice, nice..
Can't wait for the moment when I'll be done with testings, and put it all togheter, soldering parts directly to the boards.
For now, there are Tent shunts, CCS boards http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-line-level/265228-upgraded-single-board-pcm1794-nos-dddac-48.html#post4267107, mixed big Cerafine caps with small value Silmics (I think it will stay like this), OsCons and Kemet 0.068uf PPS on digi part, Kiwame resistances for boards, and Allen Bradley for I/V (later for 4 dac boards will be AN Tantalums), Sowter's TVC.
Great! It is really difficult to imagine better sound that this now!
Dac layout made on supersurfer's idea. Power supply for now is simular, but will be upgreaded with Eduard's kind help.
Nice, nice, nice..
Can't wait for the moment when I'll be done with testings, and put it all togheter, soldering parts directly to the boards.
For now, there are Tent shunts, CCS boards http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-line-level/265228-upgraded-single-board-pcm1794-nos-dddac-48.html#post4267107, mixed big Cerafine caps with small value Silmics (I think it will stay like this), OsCons and Kemet 0.068uf PPS on digi part, Kiwame resistances for boards, and Allen Bradley for I/V (later for 4 dac boards will be AN Tantalums), Sowter's TVC.
Great! It is really difficult to imagine better sound that this now!
Dac layout made on supersurfer's idea. Power supply for now is simular, but will be upgreaded with Eduard's kind help.
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Edward,
Looks like a very nice power supply there! I can see the bottleneck with that AC cable!
Would you mind enlighten me with working out the right cap values?
@David. I use MPD via Miero Botic driver to downsample DSD to DDDAC. It sounds fantastic, way better than Jriver. I set it to Best in MPD.Conf. DSD will provide the additional resolutions, dynamic extension and effertlessly noticeable 3D sound stage. I have a collection of SACD in ISO, where JRiver pick up and plays direct to a DSD-DAC capable. This put any PCM @192k 24bit wave or flac as superseeded! Why not test it with a musical DSD DAC capable? It is an easy task to disagree/speculate when ones have never seen the light! 🙂
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Impressive result. I see you replaced all the Wima's, seems to be a mix of three kind. Which ones did you use and why?
Reinhard/Doede, Great news that using averaging, reduces noise but doesn't seem to have to great an impact on SQ. The noise (albeit being a romantic "campfire"" feature), would have been a mayor issue in the design, which seems to be solvable.
Doede, any idea what SNR dB you are left with after 8x averaging?
As has been pointed out, the question will be what to do with all the PCM encoded music for this new DSD (only) DDDAC. The two routes to take are pre/re-encode PCM to DSD or do it realtime at the source/transport. SQ of the latter will much depend on software and processing power/buffering of the source (as Chanh has tried a few options already). But accoording to Moorse law and the amount of software development in this area, I doubt this will be an issue in the future. Software embedded DSP anyone..? 😉
Just thinking out loud:
2x (seperate channels) +/-15V & +/-8V PSU? That's 16 chokes! (following the current (unofficial) unregulated design). I need to start training my weight lifting 😀😀😀
Its great reading of the new developments unfolding, can I just clarify what I think to be true, and maybe speak in more laymans terms. With this new DDD DSD DAC am I correct in thinking that it will only play DSD files, and not normal lossless / flac files. However there is a way to reconfigure lossless/flac files to DSD and therefore the new DSD DAC will be able to play both formats???
Thanks
Thanks
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James. as Stijn says above, you can convert PCM to DSD on the fly (as it plays) or convert your PCM files in your library.
Whther all this is worthwhile we will have to find out, but using the new DD DSD Dac there is a possibility of better SQ as it uses a very different conversion process to that used for PCM.
But this is just the start of a journey, of potentially improved SQ over the next couple of years. Meanwhile I'm very happy with where my DDDac is and it's sounding awesome in the background as I speak
David