Please take a min and put down your Top 3 DAC's under $300
And any special mods and briefly,what sound attributes are you hearing that makes them your favorite choice.
And any special mods and briefly,what sound attributes are you hearing that makes them your favorite choice.
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Heavily modded Lite DAC-AH. Regrounding, improved power supplies, DAC chips swapped for TDA1387s, output filtering....
DIY or off the shelf?
I've yet to break into DIY for DACs, but in the spirit of bumping this thread, here are the few OTS ones I've directly compared, in increasing goodness:
Cheap tda1543 x4 - $50 iirc, Muse brand I believe. Sounded not good at all.
Hifimediy async USB es9023 - I forget the model, around $70 iirc. Good for the price IMO, just a bit under...
Cambridge Audio DACmagic (the original) - I bought it used many years ago, maybe for right at $300? This was my "go to" DAC for years, no real complaints, other than a compulsion to upgrade. Recently replaced by...
Emotiva Stealth DC-1. Bought used for just over your $300 ceiling, but the best I've heard to date. Integrated volume control is a perk.
As you can see from my list, I've never gotten into the higher end of things; I've never even heard anything fancier than what I've owned. Never really knew how to approach the whole DAC thing - I've heard many say, at least with OTS units, all DACs are a compromise until you get to the $1k price point. At my current experience level, I'm not yet willing to drop that kind of cash without a guarantee of being truly shocked and awed. Until then, ignorance is bliss?
I'd like to give NOS another try, since I don't think that cheap tda1543 I tried was representative of the NOS class. That lite-ah DAC looks interesting, though I'm not confident enough (yet) in my modding skills to get it where it needs to be (still cutting my teeth on cheap-but-good-and-simple tpa311x amps).
I keep my eyes on threads like these, hoping the tpa311x DAC equivalent will pop up. 🙂
Interesting that you didn't like the Muse 4 * TDA1543, it was one I considered mentioning in my first post alongside the DAC-AH. I did do various mods to mine though to hot-rod it.
With NOS DACs there's the potential incompatibility brought about by them spewing all the image products out (>22kHz) - a NOS DAC in my view should have a filter to give the downstream electronics a chance. Otherwise dynamics suffer from all those unnecessary higher frequencies that get amplified, producing IMD.
I also had a DACmagic, original edition (at least I bought it for my then employer). It was using a Philips TDA1305 I think, I did all kinds of mods to make that chip work with external opamps.
<edit> Forgot to mention there's a very long thread on the Muse DAC over on Head-Fi where I put up some of my mods.
With NOS DACs there's the potential incompatibility brought about by them spewing all the image products out (>22kHz) - a NOS DAC in my view should have a filter to give the downstream electronics a chance. Otherwise dynamics suffer from all those unnecessary higher frequencies that get amplified, producing IMD.
I also had a DACmagic, original edition (at least I bought it for my then employer). It was using a Philips TDA1305 I think, I did all kinds of mods to make that chip work with external opamps.
<edit> Forgot to mention there's a very long thread on the Muse DAC over on Head-Fi where I put up some of my mods.
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I just built a Buffalo IIIse with choke input linear PS, Salas Reflector-D regulators, Lundahl 1676 transformers and 26 DHT tube output. It destroys the PCM1704 based DAC in my CD/HD player. Clarity, transparency, soundstage, bass impact, tone all the best I've heard.
I'm shocked at how much better it sounds. NO "digital glare" at all. I had heard that the ES9018 chip could be sharp in the high, but not in this case.
More details here:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-line-level/267881-when-preamp-not-preamp.html
I'm shocked at how much better it sounds. NO "digital glare" at all. I had heard that the ES9018 chip could be sharp in the high, but not in this case.
More details here:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-line-level/267881-when-preamp-not-preamp.html
PS: I included this because the Buffalo IIIse with the Trident regulator package retails for $279.00, within your $300 limit. You'd need to come up with the power supply, box, etc. however.
It was that Head-Fi thread that inspired me to buy the Muse tda1543x4 in the first place. I'll admit that while I read about all the mods, all I actually did was use a better power supply and replace the output DC-blocking caps with wire jumpers. That was my impression of the most important bang-for-buck mods.
I remember very clearly what turned me off: Gov't Mule had just released their album Shout and I was using that to compare the three DACs I had at the time: the Muse, the HiFiMeDIY async USB, and the DACMagic. With the Muse, the symbols on "Funny Little Tragedy" just sounded poor: undefined, garbled, and dare I say, "veiled". It was one of those things that once I heard it, I couldn't "un-hear" it, so I didn't want to spend any more time on that DAC. The DACMagic and HiFiMeDIY were an immediate, obvious step-up. The edge went to the DacMagic, though only by a slim margin. So in terms of value (i.e. performance/cost), the HiFiMeDIY was the winner of that lot.
I gave the Muse to my parents, so it's still available to me. Maybe I should pull it back and hack on it some more?
Or, is there a representative NOS product that comes in under erik777's $300 ceiling and sounds great out-of-the-box, or requires minimal (read: quick and easy) tweaking?
I seem to recall the best bang for the buck mod was removing the output filtering caps. Removing the coupling caps is only going to work if the input stage you're connecting to is AC coupled. I did find that I was getting noise from my $15 DVD player's SMPSU inducing currents back through the Muse PSU, so re-routing the grounding was called for.
I think the final mods I did to it were really rather drastic, not ones I'd recommend to anyone else to attempt - I changed the DACs to TDA1387s (8 in total, running differential) and introduced AD830s to handle the differential-single ended conversion. That was done before I discovered the merits of LC filters though. The white PCB of the Muse really sucked badly - a nightmare to figure out where the tracks went.
Its probably that I'm uber-fussy but no DAC (NOS or otherwise) satisfies me out of the box, I always have to tweak it, usually massively..... You could always build my 'Ozone Pagoda' though, the components for that come well under the budget. There's a lot of time involved, maybe you'd not be up for wiring up all the capacitor stacks and hand-winding coils....😉
I think the final mods I did to it were really rather drastic, not ones I'd recommend to anyone else to attempt - I changed the DACs to TDA1387s (8 in total, running differential) and introduced AD830s to handle the differential-single ended conversion. That was done before I discovered the merits of LC filters though. The white PCB of the Muse really sucked badly - a nightmare to figure out where the tracks went.
Its probably that I'm uber-fussy but no DAC (NOS or otherwise) satisfies me out of the box, I always have to tweak it, usually massively..... You could always build my 'Ozone Pagoda' though, the components for that come well under the budget. There's a lot of time involved, maybe you'd not be up for wiring up all the capacitor stacks and hand-winding coils....😉
How about this; Weiliang dac5 from that auction site, is based on an arcam circuit that is known for a smooth presence. Add some Mundorf filter caps, nos Silmic made for a hi-end oem, and some film and foil caps, some other hi performing capacitors here and there.
Swap out the op amps for used Burson modules, and an lme49720ha for the buffer, and it will come in just under the mark. I don't think the performance will be surpassed for the $.
But that's just my opinion anyways...
Swap out the op amps for used Burson modules, and an lme49720ha for the buffer, and it will come in just under the mark. I don't think the performance will be surpassed for the $.
But that's just my opinion anyways...
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