Bel Canto Dac2 I/V stage

[ftorres]

Hi there,

I came upon a review of BelCanto DAC2 in the french magazine "La Revue du Son" (directed by Jean Hiraga 😉). They provide a draft of the output stages, among which I found the I/V converter quite interesting.

It uses a high-speed fully-differential opamp, namely TI's THS4130 in a clever configuration. (I've drawn it from memory, but I think it's pretty close)

I wonder why they didn't make it fully balanced up to the outputs... 😕

I don't know if it's for its output stages, but the DAC is "Highly Recommended" by the magazine...

What about a discrete version ? 🙂

Has anybody tried or already seen such a design ?

 

[00940]

I know that thread is 2 years old but would have anyone tried something similar ?

 

[ojg]

I haven't actually tried it, but I have thought about doing it ever since I first saw the OPA1632 datasheet. My intended DAC chip was the AD1955, do you know which one the Bel Canto uses?

I am thorn between two different choices, one side of my brain feels a current-feedback op-amp is ideal, and the other one feels that a fully differential one is ideal. So difficult to choose!

Hmmm, maybe I should make a fully differential current feedback amplifier! Sure sounds impressive 😀