DIY ES9018 Hi-end USB DAC

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The IC is hi-end. The PCB is same as many other so the IC will not work at the hi-end. See the missing usb receiver ? This design is common, not made for this special DAC IC.

The question - this es9018 is better than other DAC for this money ? I think probably no. ES9018 is the difficult IC. Unlock problem is common.

Ask the seller about the unlock problem ?
 
I would like others opinions: Is a product using the ES9018 shown above which is built by an experienced designer, but built to a price point, better sound wise, than a ES9023 built as an ultimate HiFi effort but at a fraction of the cost?
In other words, can the ultimate ES 9023 fully tweaked out, better the ES2018 with better specifications?
Both are almost so inexpensive by audiophile standards that a comparison could answer the question, but just wondering what others have to say....
 
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The total cost of the ES9018 from weiliang above, comes out to about $250 with the chip, case, upgraded op amps, caps and transformers.....way way less admittedly than a twisted pear buffalo, or perhaps any other ready made, which is the hook that is nudging me....
I'm not entirely sure what a diy 9023 board plus a power supply and isolator etc will cost, much less my skills at micro soldering....but I am willing to give it a try if the sound is "better" or comparable.
I also want to know if the man who designed the ES 9018 (forgot his name?) is coming out soon with anything new.....
Has anyone used eight ES9023 to build a discrete ES 9018, the way multiple chips in parallel are said to be an improvement?
 
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this board in the first post is a very poorly designed one and is using only SPDIF for feeding the dac chip (even from the async usb card); that manual switch toggles the SPDIF signal between the USB card and the external SPDIF signal fed to the COAX or optical inputs;
so no I2S mode available with this DAC, not even in async usb mode - this is why I'm telling it's a very poor design, not taking advantage of the audiophile, low jitter propreties of this DAC
 
ESS Tech makes a big deal on the SPDIF receiver in the Sabre DAC (you can check the white paper in their site). It is very jitter resistant. After that both I2S and SPDIF stream passes through the same ASRC.

The unlock problem is really a "problem" of the DAC chip. It cannot be "solved" if the DAC is operating under normal asynchronous operation. You can read all about it in my blog. In fact, it is not really a problem. It is just that the DAC has overaggressive settings for the DPLL.

Not being able to see the board in detail, I can't say whether this is a poor design or a "standard" design.
 
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its easy to see its poor, the AVCC reg (and clock reg) is plain vanilla elcheapo IC reg, so that alone will mean the analogue performance is not so hot. the layout is the worst ESS ive sen yet, vias hopping critical signals all over the place, a crapload of parts and vias in the way of the AVCC return from the IV stage. bad quality, small and somewhat distant decoupling caps etc etc. i'd like to know what experience this experienced designer has, because it sure isnt in designing high quality dacs.

cost cutting is the main motivation for everything here
 
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I got one yesterday. late night listening so low volumes and headphones. First impressions are that it plays ok for the money and hints that there is a great dac chip onboard. Quality of components is ok, the mosfets were not the 610 and 9610 pictured but some cheap alternatives. Rest of the components ok. The opamps i opted are the ad797, i will go for a tube stage at some point.
For the moment its spdif for me, no unlocking issues experienced so far. For usb i will try to see if it works with the diyhk xmos module. By the way, delivery was ultra fast within 3 days of ordering.
Pretty busy at the moment so not a lot of time to play around, I will be doing some listening before any mods.
 
I got one yesterday. late night listening so low volumes and headphones. First impressions are that it plays ok for the money and hints that there is a great dac chip onboard. Quality of components is ok, the mosfets were not the 610 and 9610 pictured but some cheap alternatives. Rest of the components ok. The opamps i opted are the ad797, i will go for a tube stage at some point.
For the moment its spdif for me, no unlocking issues experienced so far. For usb i will try to see if it works with the diyhk xmos module. By the way, delivery was ultra fast within 3 days of ordering.
Pretty busy at the moment so not a lot of time to play around, I will be doing some listening before any mods.

Hi,
Now this is the guy who has the right to comment on this board. WE are looking forward towards your comments on this board, esp. if you can compare it against your currently owned DAC(s) and also the construction of this board.
 
cheers guys,
amplifiers are the flying moles dad m-100, headphones the akg 240 studio, source is an xp netbook with foobar in kernel steaming output and speakers some wharfedale diamonds. Current dac is the tascam us-144mkii, I had several other over the years but this ones is a workhorse.
I get no noise from the headphones. I get noise from the speakers, with ears to tweeters and not noticeable in the listening position, but this is something that my setup does in all the dacs i have used. From speakers with no music, max vol and all inputs disconnected i get very low noise much less that when an input is present. The noise remains the same in all bit rates 16/24. Hope that helps

Like i said the quality of the board is ok. Soldering is done by hand of the "i couldnt have done it better myself" quality, so no problems. Capacitors are mainly standard panasonic line, some elna sicmic in the shunt outputs, some panasonic FL, few oscons and the mkps are epcos and piher. Fets look original but you never know..
As for the performance comparing to my tascam this one does things better in terms of clarity, image extension and bass realism, but this needs to be explored further as it needs some listening mileage to give an opinion. I like to take my time with my equipment. So far it looks like its worth the money to play with, by my standards. Whether there is more performance that can be squeezed, it remains to be seen in the future.
 
Hi,
Now this is the guy who has the right to comment on this board. WE are looking forward towards your comments on this board, esp. if you can compare it against your currently owned DAC(s) and also the construction of this board.

what is it with this silly belief that something can be incompetently made and it IS incompetent, but somehow magic springs forth from the speakers... if only you listen to it? this makes all the blatant disregard for proper construction go away. he even posts an incorrect schematic from the datasheet that doesnt match whats on the board ...

because he hasnt come close to meeting basic datasheet recommendations., but specifically hes only using 2 opamps per phase for the balanced->SE output, bot the full instrumentation amp (3 per phase) in the datasheet snippet he includes on the product page, along with snippets claiming the datasheet analogue performance, not a chance.

the guy who has this board and never before this dac, sounds like an old dac, but myself, who has 2 x 9012 ESS dacs (Ackodacs), 2 x TP BII, a TP B32, and i've built others for people and all this since not long after the dac was released in 2009, I dont have the knowledge to comment on the quality of such a basic ESS design when asked to do that? funny.
 
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