I belive it was established that B1 B2 and B3 on jlsounds are to be jumped with 0R or wire for all these dacs, even though pdf that came with it says otherwise.
There is no real bass in that YouTube video. I don't know what the original sounds like, but this just sounds like crap.
And as for the sound of the AD1862 or whatever, there's more to it than the DAC chip itself. USB/I2S, wiring, power supply, OPA, many components are all there and if it doesn't sound good there could be a million reasons.
But there is also this. I'm a bit confused 🙂
Mikorist from what i see on pcm63, b1 to 3 are closed, and no J is jumped.
I know, their MMM is an aproach converting PCM to DSD externally (inside a "furore" chip) and feed the CS4397 directly with DSD, but there is a digital filtering used "externally" ... so new "artifacts" or digital ringing may be added in the generated analog signal
But i have not completed my tda1541! 🤣 ok time to source for TDA1540 chips.
Right. Its a devil of a job to design a low enough noise discrete I/V stage to do justice to AD1862.
It's because you know about them! "To know what I'm listening" - is a huge factor!
If it were just a "black box" - in 99% of cases you would never have guessed the delta-sigma there or a parallel DAC, DEM or R2R, except for the most critical cases (such as TDA1543 or CS4390).
It also depends on the music you listen to, on its genre. Many types of music can be easily listened to even in NOS mode, although for most genres this is usually extremely unpleasant.
P.S. I like the sound of AD1862, but would not even consider using it for 44.1 without oversampling or without the recovery filter.
I have the two pairs - LM6171 and Opa604.
The first one from Mouser and the second - "from the hands". Seller told me about shop where did he buy them. I can post the photos if needs. And the other seller from which I took the chips N-J using them in Dac with digital filter. I talk to him and he likes the sound. I don't know about his Dac and implementation. He bought them on ebay many years ago in some quantity.
This is not totally correct. It is possible to use delta-sigma modulators without any reconstruction filter (i.e. NOS) just as R2R dacs. The resulting frequency response is the same as in R2R. AK449x dacs have a filter mode for NOS (Digital Filter Bypass Mode).
I have both AD1862 NOS and AD1862+PMD100 OS dacs (my designs). Both sound ok but I prefer the latter. But neither of them sound any better than my delta sigma dacs.
The same.
Just I used AK4137 as the digital filter for AD1862 in the latest design).
(4137 also make DSD2PCM conversion, which allows to be independent of the source)
oposit here, although not tried the famous PMD100. For me no needs of reconstruction filter, I do not ear the back ringing in the pass band nore I like the honeyish sound of most filters.
Often I saw people that doesn't like had a not too much good loudspeakers with too much flat poweresponse and they attribute the NOS disconfort because of that. Also people often do not make the effort needed on the layout to make it sounds nice : power supply home work, extended tries with the passive parts and btw it is very seeable here, people want simple past and copy design, put the famed gold caps body because everyone does; the diy for them starts and stops to soldering the parts and wire two devices.
Those should indeed buy modern ESS dacs. But my NOS ref dac digged a very expensive ESS dac, so I disagree on over too much simplifications about NOS VS reconstruction filter and oversampling.
But maybe I need to listen to the top sigma delta production or at least hear one with all the extensive diy efforts made with love !
Last edited: