ESS9038 DAC Board

Buffalo is out of business, of course. The design was rather dated anyway.

Do you want ES9038PRO or ES9038Q2M?

Why don't you want one of the ES9039 variants?

Do you know much about dacs? All the stuff besides a dac board that it takes to get one working?

Do you have a scope, preferably at least 100MHz, 2-channels?

Can you solder SMD?
 
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I have a decent experience with DAC and access to measurement equipment.

I made few DACs, two based on the buffalo (D1 and SEN) and two with AD1865 ( Dual mono SEN and tube based IV).

I was interested in a DAC that could decode the hi res format from Tidal Master Quality (MQA). I need two channels only.
I would most probably couple with a Raspberry Pi.

Regards,

D.
 
RPi is a fairly strong source of conducted and radiated EMI/RFI. Also its GPIO bus is jittery. RPi could sensibly be used as a USB host for a USB dac if there is some physical separation and or shielding between RPi and the DAC.

Regarding ESS dacs, if they are to be used with I/V conversion, ESS recommends that the there be a continuous ground plane between the DAC chip and the I/V circuitry (due to the RF currents).

Other than that, ES9039 series dac chips are reputed to sound significantly better than earlier ESS parts. The new Hyperstream 4 modulator is probably why.

Depending on your location is may be possible get ES9039 evaluation board gerbers from the regional ESS distributor (although an NDA may be required for that). If you want the ES9038PRO or ES9038Q2M eval board gerbers we may be able to help with that.

May I ask if you are familiar with fully synchronous ESS DAC design using asynchronous USB?

Also, wasn't quite clear as to whether 'measurement equipment' includes a fast, 2 or more channel scope suitable for RF work?
 
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