I have a friend in Hungary, who make this complete regulators, the price is approxx 12-13 EUR.
I have bought ES9018K2M board couple years ago from aliexpress when they were new on market. I recently decided to make it sound. I'm now using it with 18V switch mode wall wart adapter and JLSounds I2sOverUSB V2 interface.
I'm quite surprised with the sound coming from this little bard. It seems that there is much more potential with good a ouput stage and better power supply.
I'm quite surprised with the sound coming from this little bard. It seems that there is much more potential with good a ouput stage and better power supply.
I'm not expert in electronics, but I read a hungarian forum about ES9018 K2M DAC panel, where wrote: The main problem is the common power supply, both for analog and digital stage, if we making a separate supply for analog and two digital stage, the sound will very well. Furthermore need replace few caps, primarily the output caps to Nichicon FG or Muse type, and two 100 uF capacitors in 3,3 V supply, after TL117. One is Oscon or Aluminium-polimer cap, the another is the best cap, what you can buy (Blackgate, Nichicon Muse, Elna Cerafine, etc.)
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If the board has potential it would be beneficial to change XO for better (eg. NDK NZ2520SDA). Also maybe change the few cheapest ceramic caps on board for better depending on their purpose in the circuit (film caps or C0G)... And don't bo for Blackgate, nowdays there is more fakes than NOS. Audionote makes Kasei line as most near replacement
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Yes, indeed, there is much more potential. Better output stage, power supplies (especially AVCC), better clock, I2C bus dac register configuration, etc. Even better sounding ESS dac chips out now too, such as ES9038Q2M. If you fix every single thing that needs fixing and then if you send it upsampled DSD256 or DSD512 it will sound better than ever. Of course, its a lot of work to fix everything, and there is some cost for parts too.
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You will get much more obvious sound quality improvement with changing that generic JRC op-amp. Usually, people solder the op socket for an easy opamp rolling.
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Certainly, I agree, with these modifications, you won’t have a high-end device yet, but hopefully enough for me. I don’t want to spend all the money in the world...
Do you mean 4 extra power supplies (Salas' boards)?
Looks like you did not alter much the DAC board itself, are you now satisfied with its sound?
Looks like you did not alter much the DAC board itself, are you now satisfied with its sound?
The 4 extra board is based on Walt Jung's Superreg (2x12V for opamp and 2x7 volt for 3,3 V regulators).
Changed components in DAC panel:
Changed caps.
After opamp: Nichicon Fine Gold, after 3,3 V stabs Oscon SEPC and Nichicon Muse, opamp's power supply: Elna Silmic II,
few unnecessary capacitor and the BD139 removed, the 220 uF/6,3 volt caps in opamp's power supply jumpered.
Opamp's 4. leg: -12V with Silmic 220uf/25V and Wima 100n caps
Opamp's 8. leg:+12V with Silmic 220uf/25V and Wima 100n caps
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@feket663 If you spend some more you'll soon come to the price of TwistedPear Buffalo DAC, which most certainly kicks a. s of this board...
Currently I spend for complete DAC a little bit more of 1/4 price of Buffalo without transformer and analog stage.
I wonder if a nice fet input op amp would allow the removal of that 220uf on the outputs?
I’ll bet the separate regulation on the digital supply really helped.
I’ll bet the separate regulation on the digital supply really helped.
On the hungaryan diy audio forum tried this, but the DAC's output have 1,65 volts, need a servo disable this.
The dac's output is supposed to be centered around +1.65v. The DC offset can be removed in various ways, a servo is not required. ESS has a paper on recommended output stages, and on AVCC voltage regulation at: http://www.esstech.com/files/4514/4095/4306/Application_Note_Component_Selection_and_PCB_Layout.pdf
One way to remove the DC offset ESS doesn't describe but that works is to lower Vref for I/V opamps to less than AVCC/2 volts until the I/V output is centered around 0v.
One way to remove the DC offset ESS doesn't describe but that works is to lower Vref for I/V opamps to less than AVCC/2 volts until the I/V output is centered around 0v.
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