Shouldn't for sure.
It will be a great comparison with PCM between it and the R2R volume control, with my other buffer and HQPLAYER volume control.
Hi Acko,
I just wrote a mini review on Sonny's DAC with my impressions of the DSD.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/vendors-bazaar/274456-ak4490-usb-dac-dsd-support-51.html#post4516925
I just wrote a mini review on Sonny's DAC with my impressions of the DSD.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/vendors-bazaar/274456-ak4490-usb-dac-dsd-support-51.html#post4516925
Thanks Mike, this is excellent!
I will be getting Sonny's discrete plus a number of native DSD albums for evaluation. Many thanks also to Flochinni and Nikola for these contributions 🙂
Didn't realize that Sonny's DAC uses DoP that takes up more CPU load.
From your reports and also that from Ray, it appears that amplifiers do not really present a simple resistive input impedance and could vary with signal amplitude and frequency. So somewhat complex impedance just like driving speakers. So buffers, drivers, preamps will be beneficial.
Speaking of which, I was wondering this Burson's Soloist could be suitable. It has the attenuator also. There may be other similar
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No problem. It's supposed to be native DSD capable with Linux and Mac. Although I haven't confirmed. I don't have the Mac version of Hqplayer. It's just a matter of licencing the Theyscon drivers for Windows to enable the Native DSD via ASIO. I'm not sure what they charge. XMOS driver details can be found here:
https://download.xmos.com/XM-003139...sMTQ0NzQ4NjMyNywiWE0tMDAzMTM5LVBDLTE3LnBkZiJd
The input impedance of my NC500's is very unique. This is because it's just the output stage. It's missing the input buffers most amps have. Sonny's discrete output board is more than powerful enough for pretty much any other amp. It's more powerful than the robust output stage in the Mirus as well. The Burson soloist may have a hard time matching the quality of Sonny's preamp. It's hard to say for sure, but it's far above the quality you'll find in commercial product's with around $1000 MSRP.
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I had a quick look at the preamp schematics but the R2R digital volume has OpAmp outputs before going into the ClassA drivers. So the sonics of OpAmp comes in also?
that's because it needs a gain stage to operate. It's the same system Mark Levinson and Sim audio uses. It's state of the art.
Checkout the M-eVOL2 volume control in this integrated amp. It's pretty much the same thing using the TI8812:
http://www.scanteknik.fi/moon-hifi.fi/userfiles//MOON_700i_Lit.pdf
The original design is still the reference but needs external Vol and possibly buffers/preamp. I trying to see if the digital volume version does not affect the sound quality too much going through the extra processing. So the final cut depends on further evaluation.
I can also look into this integration with this DSD DAC if all goes well. Special cut, evaluation sample for you 🙂
Possibly I'm missing something, but if the plan for most people will generally be to upsample red book pcm to high rate dsd, but one of the challenges of doing so is that dsd has additional carrier information which must be filtered out if using a direct drive dsd solution like this, couldn't there be an option for using an adapted software driver to output the basic dsd music signal without the extra bit to be stripped off?
Didn't quite get the last part but the DSD carrier is far removed (high MHz) from the audio base band signals and can be easily removed by even a simple LPF (hardware or software), so we usually do not talk about the carrier pollution on the final output
This morning I reworked the OS on the Intel Atom motherboard that feeds my JLSounds USB board. I was using the AudioLinux distro but that couldn't do native DSD, just DoP. I've replaced it with an 'off the shelf' Debian Stretch core (64bit, Kernel version 4.2, no desktop etc.) and loaded the HQQ NAA onto it (along with some required libraries). It all worked straight off and I'm now streaming native DSD256.
I can't tell if it sounds any different as it's a bit early here to fire up the main system.
Changing from DoP to native DSD doesn't seem to have had any noticeable affect on the CPU loading of the HQPlayer workstation so I guess any extra processing DoP imposes is light compared with the upsampling of 44.1KHz PCM to DSD256
Anyway, well placed now with upstream infrastructure for when Acko's boards become available and my DIY LP filter will suffice until then.
My efforts to equip the BBB/Botic combo with the HQPlayer NAA have come to a halt as I don't have the expertise to understand and debug the issues. I've requested help so we'll see.
Oh, and I'm now driving HQPlayer with Muso,
http://klarita.net/muso.html
which makes navigating the library rather easier, though not having a tablet based remote is a bit of a shortcoming.
Ray
I can't tell if it sounds any different as it's a bit early here to fire up the main system.
Changing from DoP to native DSD doesn't seem to have had any noticeable affect on the CPU loading of the HQPlayer workstation so I guess any extra processing DoP imposes is light compared with the upsampling of 44.1KHz PCM to DSD256
Anyway, well placed now with upstream infrastructure for when Acko's boards become available and my DIY LP filter will suffice until then.
My efforts to equip the BBB/Botic combo with the HQPlayer NAA have come to a halt as I don't have the expertise to understand and debug the issues. I've requested help so we'll see.
Oh, and I'm now driving HQPlayer with Muso,
http://klarita.net/muso.html
which makes navigating the library rather easier, though not having a tablet based remote is a bit of a shortcoming.
Ray
I just bought Audiolinux an hour ago for the exact same purpose. To try to get native DSD 256 and The HQplayer Daemon going. I hope I can get it to work!
The Audiolinux I was using (very recently updated) didn't have support for native DSD on the JLSounds USB board, only DoP. A later version of the kernel was required, which is why I went for Debian Stretch (which was free too). Audiolinux is nice but has a lot of stuff you don't need for an NAA, which really needs to just be a black box appliance. I believe the Audiolinux kernel does support native DSD for some devices so you may be lucky.
Ray
Ok thanks. Yeah may be overkill for dedicated NAA use. But I wanted to try it. Hopefully goes well! 🙂
Can I ask how big your Stretch image is? There's a 4gb eMMC drive on this SBC I'm using. It would be awesome if I could install stretch and the NAA daemon on it.
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I've loaded Debian Stretch onto the eMMC of a Beaglebone Black so it shouldn't be a problem, especially if you just load the core. I can point you in the right direction but you'll need to see what architecture your device has to make sure you get the correct version. Remind me what an SBC is?
Ray
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