Looking for high quality NOS DAC kit

[Deka]

Hello Guys,

I'm looking for a good DAC kit (or assembled).
I'm listening music in CD quality, but some frequency correction is also needed, so a 20bit or 24bit DAC would be fine.

What I already found:

• Ladder DACs on ebay (for 65EUR or much more)
• Some PCM61, AD1865 based products, also on ebay (about 100 EUR)

I afraid, none of them are good quality designs.

I have seen some Abraxalito DACs here (I'm sure they are all well designed DACs), but all of them were 16bit only.
Do you have any recommendations for other valuable NOS DAC kits?

 

[russc]

You had me with NOS.
NOS = New, Old Stock?
No, Google tells me in this context it means Non-oversampling.
That's my todays learning.

 

[YashN]

But a NOS DAC can also have NOS tubes 😉

 

[Gregje]

I am just listening to Abbado 2 from Abraxalito as I type this. True, 16 bit only but it competes with my ESS Sabre 9018 Hifiduino with pcbs from Diyinhk. Abbado 2 is a superb little DAC.

 

[Deka]

@Gregje
I can belive this.
Since my speakers needs some DSP correction, this isn't an option to me. 🙁

 

[PJN]

The Abbado dac has some correction for high frequency rolloff common in NOS dacs built into it's output stage.

 

[abraxalito]

I have seen some Abraxalito DACs here (I'm sure they are all well designed DACs), but all of them were 16bit only.

I do have a PCM58 DAC board that I've not posted a thread about, PCM58 chips are 18bits. But from what you're saying that's probably not enough.

If you're after NOS DACs then very few will use chips with 20bits or more. They'd be PCM63, PCM170X, AD1862 and that's about all of them.

 

[merlin el mago]

@abraxalito do you have PCM63 boards?

 

[abraxalito]

No, having listened to PCM63 against PCM58, I decided it wasn't worth designing a PCM63 board. Especially given the rather large price differential between the two chips.

 

[merlin el mago]

If you will do please let know.

 

[TimA]

I'm getting parts together for a PCM58 NOS DAC. The datasheet shows 3.3uF decoupling caps of the +/-Vcc supplies and I assume that's TI's recommended minimum value but as I have a lot of Oscon 56uF caps could I use those instead?

 

[zoom777]

Hello Guys,

I'm looking for a good DAC kit (or assembled).
I'm listening music in CD quality, but some frequency correction is also needed, so a 20bit or 24bit DAC would be fine.

What I already found:

• Ladder DACs on ebay (for 65EUR or much more)
• Some PCM61, AD1865 based products, also on ebay (about 100 EUR)

I afraid, none of them are good quality designs.

I have seen some Abraxalito DACs here (I'm sure they are all well designed DACs), but all of them were 16bit only.
Do you have any recommendations for other valuable NOS DAC kits?

Have you visited this ?
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/dac-ad1862-almost-tht-i2s-input-nos-r-2r.354078/

Probably a lot to read through but it is mostly summarized here :
https://electrodac.blogspot.com/p/dac-ad1862-almost-tht-i2s-input-nos-r.html

 

[Deka]

@zoom777
Seems to be an interesting project. Also nice to have a summary document for it.

Few questions:

• How do you describe the audio quality of the mentioned DACs? Which one is the most preferred one?
• Are these DACs still available?

 

[weissi]

I'm getting parts together for a PCM58 NOS DAC. The datasheet shows 3.3uF decoupling caps of the +/-Vcc supplies and I assume that's TI's recommended minimum value but as I have a lot of Oscon 56uF caps could I use those instead?

Yes you can use them, I currently run the PCM58 with 33u wet slug tantalum, and it sounds great.