ESS Sabre Reference DAC (8-channel)

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#941
Re: Dual Stereo instead of Dual Mono

revintage said:
In addition to my post above:

Could one just solder two ES9008s on top of each other on the same Buffalo card and feed from the WM8804 module?
Click to expand...


And I thought having 8 DAC's in parallel was overdoing it. This would be awsome though, a custom board with an 8 layer Sabre pancake, in stereo mode for a total 32 DAC's per channel. If anyone does this pancake challenge I will need to see the pictures.

AS far a noise goes, you are going to need a serious output stage to be able to show of the noise of the setup. Ideally is would be 3dB less noise from each doubling. so if its measures -132dB this is easily done in stereo meade with 1 Sabre, you shoudl be able to get the noise down to -141dB, and the ouptut impedance would be 24.4 Ohms.


I hope to see this kinda of overkill.

Dustin
 
#942
Re: Re: Dual Stereo instead of Dual Mono

dusfor99 said:



And I thought having 8 DAC's in parallel was overdoing it. This would be awsome though, a custom board with an 8 layer Sabre pancake, in stereo mode for a total 32 DAC's per channel. If anyone does this pancake challenge I will need to see the pictures.

AS far a noise goes, you are going to need a serious output stage to be able to show of the noise of the setup. Ideally is would be 3dB less noise from each doubling. so if its measures -132dB this is easily done in stereo meade with 1 Sabre, you shoudl be able to get the noise down to -141dB, and the ouptut impedance would be 24.4 Ohms.


I hope to see this kinda of overkill.

Dustin
Click to expand...

😀 😀 , I admit this pancake would be something! Though my main concern was to get Zout below 100ohms to suit my application.

So a 2 or 4 layer pancake would be enough for me.

About noise figures these are low enough even without parallelling.
 
#945
The issue was not the soldering problems! The pancake was Dustin´s idea not mine! I am totally uninterested in soldering those little suckers😉.

My inital idea was to parallell two Buffalo cards placed above each other together with a SPDIF I2S card like I asked in my post #935 yesterday.

So Brian and/or Russ, would it be possible to do this and are there any potential, functional problems doing so? (Maybe this should be moved to the Buffalo thread?)
 
#947
BrianDonegan said:
It might be more prudent to have a board with QFP pads on opposite sides and joined through vias. I'm sure it possible to pancake them, but I am not about to try it.
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That's an interesting concept.

We could design a circuit board about an inch square that would have a QFP64 pad layout. 64 holes would go around the perimeter. These boards would be stackable so that you could stack on as many as you want. Somebody could solder up 8 if he wanted to ! 😱

Some RAM chips are made with standard and mirror image pinouts so that they can be doubled up easily in this manner of a pair on opposite sides of a board. Since we don't have a mirror image Sabre8 in a QFP64, it would be hard to design a small board with a Sabre8 on both sides. If just one Sabre was laid out on a board, it would be much more easy to do. 😀

~~~

Another idea would be to use the circuit that we discussed in post 683 and 684 of this thread. Make a circuit board with two seperate Sabre8 chip circuits... Convert each of them to mono with that circuit discussed earlier. Then you would have < 100 ohm impedance on each side with all 8 channels in each Sabre8 chip summed together.

Or, just make a mono Buff board with a single Sabre8 chip in your standard TP form factor.

~~~

This post is all conjecture, I don't have any plans of trying any of this at this time 😀 😀
 
#950
Commercial use of Sabre DAC

When I visited ESS I asked about companies planning to use the DAC in their products. ESS said there were a number of companies that are interesed in the Sabre chip, but ESS could not disclose any more information.

My guess (strictly my guess, I have no real information) is that the first products could show up at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. CES seems a likely place where a manufacturer would introduce a product. Lots of high-end audio equipment there. The next CES will be Janyary 2009.
 
#951
revintage said:
The issue was not the soldering problems! The pancake was Dustin�s idea not mine! I am totally uninterested in soldering those little suckers😉.

My inital idea was to parallell two Buffalo cards placed above each other together with a SPDIF I2S card like I asked in my post #935 yesterday.

So Brian and/or Russ, would it be possible to do this and are there any potential, functional problems doing so? (Maybe this should be moved to the Buffalo thread?)
Click to expand...


Sure it can be done.

You would need to stack the bison.

To keep the DACs in sync I would share a clock.

Just mount only one clock (or disable one clock) and run a pair of wires (up through the two pads) to use the clock from one buffalo on both bison. 🙂

Then just connect everything as usual only in parallel. 🙂

Would I do it? No. But hey... 🙂

Cheers!
Russ
 
#952
Is anyone busy with a pc interface for the ess chip
The Dice chip from TCAT has all the interfacing for firewire.
DFM (www.dfm-audio.com) makes a board (DiceII-prom) with this chip and it has the firewire interface onboard and you only have to attach da (or ad) converters.
Major undertaking is the programming, but I understood that a standard driver is supplied.
Has anyone any experience with this Dice board/chip?
 
#953
Bison

Hi Russ!

To keep the DACs in sync I would share a clock.
Click to expand...

My intention was to use thefirst cards clock. Maybe also using a separate clock.

Also thought of using the DC from after the regulators on the first card. With the low current consumption I guess it will be no problem?

Will using a separate SPDIF-I2S card be necessary or could you use the SPDIF input from the first and link after that one?
 
#955
Hi again Russ,

The boards have on-board regulators. Leave them as they are.
Click to expand...

About the onboard regulators my idea was that mainly the +VA should be used from one boards regulators. This to be sure they are fed with exactly the same voltage.

I am really looking forward to become your "Bison" Guinea Pig 😉!


Brgds
 
#956
revintage said:
Hi again Russ,



About the onboard regulators my idea was that mainly the +VA should be used from one boards regulators. This to be sure they are fed with exactly the same voltage.


Brgds
Click to expand...


Yes, I uderstand what your trying to do there, but if you do that you will need a different way to supply AVCC as the opamp cannot handle that much current. You would want to use an off board regulator of some sort as it would need to be able to handle something like 300ma.

What you could do is cut the trace at the input of one of the opamps(the VREF), and run a wire from the input of the other, that way both opamps will have the same VREF.

Personally, I would rig an external supply if I undertook the project.

Cheers!
Russ
 
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