Please recommend some easy to implement good sounding DAC chips

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Ghoostknight

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Joined 2022
#1
Hello,

im wondering whether there are more easy to implement dac chips im missing

AK4993
TDA1387/TDA1541
CS43131/CS43198/CS4398

im specially looking for a solution that can play DSD and PCM

i recently found out that CS chips sound quite good, still wondered whether i should try AKM, i also never tried older chips like the TDA1541, really unsure where i should my effort in... do you have some advice?

i had 4-5 ESS dacs, but compared to the recently tried CS chips they all sounded rather bright or even slightly distorted in the highs, so unless you have a good very good reason with recent chips i rather try AKM/CS in terms of new-ish chips or some older R2R designs
 
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#4
mamocel said:
Pcm works very well....Why DSD....
Studio recordings are almost always PCM...
Let someone explain the difference to us then....
PCM for the poor....DSD for golden ears? 🤔
Click to expand...

imo my tests so far showed DSD and PCM sounds slightly different, i would just like to hold every option open and be able to play both pcm and dsd

altor said:
AK4493 required CPU programming, to play DSD.
Click to expand...
you mean controlled by a MCU right? that would be a small-ish problem
 
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#13
bohrok2610 said:
The differences are quite small. The highs with ES9038Q2M sometimes sound harsh or piercing which may be what causes listening fatigue. Of course it may depend on the implementation but I've never had any listening fatigue with my ES9039Q2M.
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i think i had 4 or 5 dacs with chips around the 9038q2m era... and imo they all sounded bright/piercing/distorted in the highs to varying degrees, output stage matters... but the chip too as it seems

havent tried the new ESS9039 chips yet
 
#18
The details of implementation -- notably reference voltage and master clocks -- matter just as much, if not even more than the used DAC chip.
ESS chips are a bit special as they can be operated in many different modes and have tons of settings and not all of these modes/settings are excellent.
Further, as @MarcelvdG just mentioned, different chips may have different issues with intersample-overs. ESS is now known to be picky, whereas other DAC chips react more benign to these ISOs.

That said, ES9039q2m in hardware mode (mode 17, IIRC, an async slave mode) is comparatively easy to implement as no controller is needed, and is reported to sound well (with good reference, good master clock and good I/V and filter stages). There once was a very informative thread about this but it got deleted for unknown reasons.
 
#19
MarcelvdG said:
Do you use digital volume control? Most DACs clip on intersample overshoots when you don't digitally attenuate the signal before it reaches the interpolation filter, see https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...h-and-without-intersample-over-issues.419223/
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yep i do, pretty much all dacs i tested with like a bit of headroom (not only -3db for intersample clipping, but imo most i tested even benefited from having -10db to -15db headroom in terms of SQ)

im just not sure why a bit of headroom sounds better....

in some measurements of some dacs you can see that with a bit more headroom their distortion profile gets burried under the noisefloor.... my guess is its that that makes an audible improvement but in the end im just guessing why it sounds better with some headroom (more headroom than your usual -3db for intersample clipping)

with a passive preamplifier i would set dac volume to max, digital volume atleast -3db and use the preamp for volume


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if you look at AKM/CS chips, these have subpar digital filters that dont attenuate right at nyquist.... imo you can improve this with digital resampling since the resampling algorithm would use their own reconstruction filters, that way you can even use NOS digital filter without a problem

i never see people talk about this tho 😀 imo digital filters matter and thats also part of why upsampling is beneficial, you push the dac own digital filter to higher frequencys and can use a resampling algorithm with "better" filters..

thats probably where i would go with a AKM/CS chip

KSTR said:
The details of implementation -- notably reference voltage and master clocks -- matter just as much, if not even more than the used DAC chip.
ESS chips are a bit special as they can be operated in many different modes and have tons of settings and not all of these modes/settings are excellent.
Further, as @MarcelvdG just mentioned, different chips may have different issues with intersample-overs. ESS is now known to be picky, whereas other DAC chips react more benign to these ISOs.

That said, ES9039q2m in hardware mode (mode 17, IIRC, an async slave mode) is comparatively easy to implement as no controller is needed, and is reported to sound well (with good reference, good master clock and good I/V and filter stages). There once was a very informative thread about this but it got deleted for unknown reasons.
Click to expand...
i believe in good power supplys and clocks too, the thing is my current believe goes more into the direction of "if the circuit is somewhat the same, you will still here differences with different dac chips" because i heared the "ESS signature" so many times, AKM/CS simply sound more laidback/smooth/analog/refined/natural and i dont wanna miss that.... the ESS distorted sounding highs drove me nuts long enough

the video i posted was with a device that actually lets you swap out a "dac board" so output stage/power supply was the same, tho it could be that there were different clocks/LDOs on the dac board


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i mean, if we believe in different topologys sounding different (discrete output buffer vs opamp based for example or different opamps for that mattter) then the next step to believe in different dac chip implementations isnt that far off... and i guess each "chip house" like ESS/CS/AKM has their own design philosophy
 
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#20
Ghoostknight said:
Hello,

im wondering whether there are more easy to implement dac chips im missing

AK4993
TDA1387/TDA1541
CS43131/CS43198/CS4398

im specially looking for a solution that can play DSD and PCM

i recently found out that CS chips sound quite good, still wondered whether i should try AKM, i also never tried older chips like the TDA1541, really unsure where i should my effort in... do you have some advice?

i had 4-5 ESS dacs, but compared to the recently tried CS chips they all sounded rather bright or even slightly distorted in the highs, so unless you have a good very good reason with recent chips i rather try AKM/CS in terms of new-ish chips or some older R2R designs
Click to expand...
I would go for the CS chips. The older Wolfson 8741 is in my opinion unbeated soundwise and the CS dacs are sounding about the same , same owners now
 
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