DAC kit recommendations

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RevoliAgain

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Joined 2010
#1
I am in the Market for a DAC. A kit would be handy as my expertise on DAC architecture is limited. So far Audio Note and Lampizator have caught my eye. I have thus far relied on a Marantz CD52se but time to step up and get my digital set up on a parallel to my vinyl. Is digital the new black? Views and recommendations appreciated
 
#3
I don't 'play in the high-priced end of the pool' (e.g AudioNote) but I have several (good-sounding) cheaper DACs.
There are lots of pretty good DAC 'kits' on eBay - check out Gigawork among others. (Gigawork 'BigDAC' has up sampling and USB input, comes ready to put in a case.)
If you like flashing LEDs and want to play with balanced outputs, the Behringer SRC2496 sounds good and can be had used for not much $$. Lots of reviews online. Not a kit, though....

Cheers
John
 
#4
You could try the Audiosector dac. Peter Daniel who designed it is a forum member and he sells it in kit form or ready made in a number of configurations. It is a nos dac which will give you that close to vinyl sound, much better than an upsampling one imop.
Had mine ready made. It uses Blackgates/Rubycons and i have read Blackgates take quite a while to burn in (if you believe in it). Bass from this is impressive.
 
#12

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#13
Thanks for all recommendations. I am going to take a two stage approach. Firstly I am going to mod the lampucera DAC as per lampizator. I intend to take this as far as it can go. This will enable me to play with different ideas and quite frankly if I %^{#{%*r it up for the price of the DAC it is not an issue. Depending on the outcome of this little experiment I will build or acquire another DAC. One for office, one for living room. Just makes sense. What I am not clear about yet is what I am going to do about cd drive or PC. Lots to play with and greatly looking forward to learning from the excellent members of this forum. I am sure you will all be sick of my dumb questions before too long. I am wondering if I should be documenting my project in a discrete thread - I may if I think I am either trying serving slightly different or if I find useful stuff that may be good for others thinking of similar projects. What's the form on this sort of thing?
 
#14
I settled on the Lampucera kit from Hong Kong with mods as per lampizator. I have completed the basic upgrades; yet to complete the valve output stage but even without this and just using the onboard opamp I am mightily impressed. Connected to squeezebox (also recent addition) this is extremely good. I am waiting on a hand built power supply to complete the project but I am so impressed with the output of the cirrus chips on the circuit that I ordered more. At £60 ish a pop for the basic DAC this is
mind boggling. Do the onboard upgrades for another £20, wrap some old mdf around it and for sub £100 you have sound quality that you would easily pay £1000 for in a hifi shop (ok the one in the lounge may get a nice alloy case when I get round to it). I was looking at a DAC costing best part of £2000 but this meets my expectations. If you don't believe me try it! I am going to build several to dot around house, office and workshop - now I just need to build more amps and speakers....

The lampucera has recently changed, I recommend the cirrus chip receiver and dac based model. Was available on eBay but if not advertised email this chap (lawtro_jvw4307qco@members.ebay.com) who still has them available at time of writing. One last note - if you do this project many threads recommend modding required to enable 24bit 192khz. This is no longer necessary as the board he ships was updated to correct this fault.
 
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