Hi everyone!
I am curious how this board measures and if anyone has done any listening tests?
Seems like a nice project.
There is small input board that can accept Amareno USB, coax, toslink, and has screen wwith buttons.
I might go for it since everything together is $100 and adding PSU and case should be result in around $150 for the whole project.
Still thinking on this though
I am curious how this board measures and if anyone has done any listening tests?
Seems like a nice project.
There is small input board that can accept Amareno USB, coax, toslink, and has screen wwith buttons.
I might go for it since everything together is $100 and adding PSU and case should be result in around $150 for the whole project.
Still thinking on this though
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Do you have link to the Aliexpress ad?
Also, typically these low-cost Chinese dac boards are designed to be manufactured as cheaply as possible. Moreover, it isn't just the dac chip that accounts for how well the dac performs. That has largely to do with the PCB design and circuitry around the dac chip. IME it takes a lot of work to make cheap Chinese dac board perform well. If you want to learn how to mod dac boards to get a better understanding of dac board design, they might useful in that way. Otherwise you are probably better off to buy the best Topping or SMSL you can afford and go with that.
Also, when playing around with dac board modding and or development, and good scope is mandatory. Minimum is probably 100Mhz, two channels. 200MHz+ is better if you can afford it. Also good to have a low capacitance active probe, again if you can afford it.
Also, typically these low-cost Chinese dac boards are designed to be manufactured as cheaply as possible. Moreover, it isn't just the dac chip that accounts for how well the dac performs. That has largely to do with the PCB design and circuitry around the dac chip. IME it takes a lot of work to make cheap Chinese dac board perform well. If you want to learn how to mod dac boards to get a better understanding of dac board design, they might useful in that way. Otherwise you are probably better off to buy the best Topping or SMSL you can afford and go with that.
Also, when playing around with dac board modding and or development, and good scope is mandatory. Minimum is probably 100Mhz, two channels. 200MHz+ is better if you can afford it. Also good to have a low capacitance active probe, again if you can afford it.
The power supplies are an important part of the assembly and those are missing, that’s an opportunity to do something good there.
Also a burden if you’re looking for plug/play.
Not having obvious separate digital/analog regulation for the DAC chips would definitely be a detriment, but could also be handled with the onboard lm1763 regulators, that I can’t determine. Could be hacked in if you’re willing to do that work and want a further improvement using another supply entirely.
Looks like there are through hole film capacitors in the output filters, so that’s good. The remaining decoupling caps look decent if not the best.
The source is entirely up to you also; needs a usb receiver chip and an ak4118 or something on a separate board, and another 5v power supply for that as well.
It still remains to be seen/heard whether or not the grounding has been botched or not.
Have had less than good results from that outfit however, so may not be the first one to run out and buy one. After such a long dry spell for affordable AKM project boards, it is about time for something useful.
Also a burden if you’re looking for plug/play.
Not having obvious separate digital/analog regulation for the DAC chips would definitely be a detriment, but could also be handled with the onboard lm1763 regulators, that I can’t determine. Could be hacked in if you’re willing to do that work and want a further improvement using another supply entirely.
Looks like there are through hole film capacitors in the output filters, so that’s good. The remaining decoupling caps look decent if not the best.
The source is entirely up to you also; needs a usb receiver chip and an ak4118 or something on a separate board, and another 5v power supply for that as well.
It still remains to be seen/heard whether or not the grounding has been botched or not.
Have had less than good results from that outfit however, so may not be the first one to run out and buy one. After such a long dry spell for affordable AKM project boards, it is about time for something useful.
nothing? im also interested in this board, since its one of the cheaper good looking AKM boards
currently 58 euro for the complete kit https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005006270358879.html
currently 58 euro for the complete kit https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005006270358879.html
This version is cheaper but comes without op amp and output connectors.
This may be a good choice, but I tried this card with the original JRCs and it sounded really good.
I replaced the 5532 with OPA1656 and the treble became even better defined without being aggressive.
The card is well made, for the price it's hard to find better.
You will hear the sound advantage specific to the AKM chip.
As always, don't neglect diet.
Be careful of the plocs when switching on, turn on the amp last, relays at the output would have been preferable...
This may be a good choice, but I tried this card with the original JRCs and it sounded really good.
I replaced the 5532 with OPA1656 and the treble became even better defined without being aggressive.
The card is well made, for the price it's hard to find better.
You will hear the sound advantage specific to the AKM chip.
As always, don't neglect diet.
Be careful of the plocs when switching on, turn on the amp last, relays at the output would have been preferable...
thaanks, finally someone who tested these... did you compare it to some commercial dacs?
im about to try to build me own dac with a built in ak4137 dsd upsampling pcb after discovering how much better my aune X8 with ess9038q2m chip sounds with hqplayer upsampling to DSD.... there is no doubt that for me that they handle DSD better, it sounds more analog where in comparison PCM sounds really "digital" how people describe digital always
with the ak4137 the upsampling quality is probably just 30-50% of hqplayer but i have to try, a hardware upsampler is much more convenient, it works with all sources
the thing is i could also buy a readymade dac with i2s input and built a usb to i2s output "adapter", unfortunaly there is no way to get native DSD trough other digital inputs
opamp rolling is definitely a must for me, which excludes many dacs on the market... each has its own character and i also like the 1656 for its smoothness, neutrality, no annoying top end and nice low end i also might play around with different power supplys
thanks for letting me know... did you notices some (not very loud) pops/clicks while playing dsd files? thats another annoying issue with my aune X8
the companion board is also quiet interesting ... its called B37 this is the manual (unfortunaly in chinese): https://pan.baidu.com/s/1kiLljrhQWRtL1T_kEfZUvQ?pwd=6666#list/path=/sharelink1262723585-74985640994699/B37数字SRC板&parentPath=/sharelink1262723585-74985640994699 (you need to click on the pdf file to open it, downloading is not possible without a account as it seems...)
it includes a AK4137, so i guess it automaticly can upsample which saves me from buying a seperate board for this exact dsd upsampling usecase
Also, which i never saw on these prebuild chinese boards... their is toslink and coaxial spdif connectors on the board, but if you look closely you can actually solder a AES-EBU, BNC and a second Coaxial connector with wires/connectors to the board, a i2s input would have been awesome but BNC and AES is already a huge plus imo
it includes a AK4137, so i guess it automaticly can upsample which saves me from buying a seperate board for this exact dsd upsampling usecase
Also, which i never saw on these prebuild chinese boards... their is toslink and coaxial spdif connectors on the board, but if you look closely you can actually solder a AES-EBU, BNC and a second Coaxial connector with wires/connectors to the board, a i2s input would have been awesome but BNC and AES is already a huge plus imo
You know that AK4137 performance depends on reference clock quality and power supply quality? IME, it depends a lot on those things, and cheap boards often do not provide for high quality reference clocking, nor for clean, isolated AK4137 power. It turns out the higher performance the dac chip and or the ASRC chip, the more all the circuitry around those two chips affects the final output quality. PCB design can also matter a lot for achieving datasheet performance levels. Only mentioning this stuff because a lot of people think its just the key chips that make the most difference in final output quality. Turns out is the quality of the surrounding circuitry that makes the most difference. The dac chip and or the ASRC only put some limit on the best result that can be obtained if everything is done as well as it can be. The cheap Chinese boards may tend to fail badly on the quality of the surrounding circuitry and or on the quality of PCB design. Its that those things are intentionally designed to be as cheap as possible in order to keep selling price low while still making some profit.
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the thing with the ak4137 boards is that these seem to be the only hardware resampling solution around i could use, designing my own with not much pcb/audio circuit expierence doesnt seem to be a "better" idea than buying premade chinese ones and "hope for the best"
tho i might get my hands around a good ADC (im looking into getting a Universal Audio Volt 2 for another project) which might be enough to do some basic measurments of the dac if i decide on this board here... optically it looks like the best so far... dual mono ak4993 with some nice layout a few opamps and done, can there be so much wrong with it if they didnt completely mess it up?
in terms of clocks, i wanted to feed external clock signals to the right pcb pad after removing the clocks, i still have some of these ( https://www.ebay.de/itm/174216558760 ) laying around and plan to use atleast a seperate regulator for their power, tho i still have to come up with a power supply scheme... im a fan of supercapacitors and battery power supplys but this gets expensive quick...
EDIT: One thing i really like about this modular PCB"s is that you can tweak the dac further later on and everthing is better seperated and could be shielded to eachother etc... some things you just find in very high end dacs..
with the bd93 you "seem" to get a cleanly laidout analogue output board which ticks some nice must have boxes for me:
- balanced outputs + rca
- switchable opamps
- small layout that is easly tweaked with new caps or such
- dual mono is nice to have
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You a gambler? The Chinese dac designer is holding a better hand that you. If you can expect the worst, and be happy if its anything more than that, then maybe okay.
IME back when we were working with low-cost Chinese ES9038Q2M boards, there was only one guy who thought it sounded okay stock. Everyone else was trying to figure out how to get it to sound better. Probably, most of those folks (including me) have moved on from that. It was an interesting learning experience but not a way to get a dac I want to listen to every day.
I think that AKM chip-based DACs are less demanding to implement than the Saber chip...
I have a D50 topping dac based on a Q2M saber chip....
A real sh.t sound! High notes that will pierce your eardrums...