Agreed.
AK4137 right before the dac chip.
The reviewer only measures, they don't listen. Even when the person does try listening it is clear they do not hear differences between dacs virtually at all. They should get a reviewer who can hear details to work with the measurements guy, IMHO.
And, yes, junk to me.
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Thanks.
I hope their implementation was that good that it's worth the really high price.
The dac I turned into a very good one for maybe around $200 is a Q2M.
The dac I bought as a finished product uses an ES9028PRO.
BTW,
not all my DACs are PCB without enclosure
There are 2 that actually came enclosed.
1) Roccat Juke
2) Behringer UCA202
The Roccat Juke is not musical.
It's based on one of Cmedia's chips, and I definitely cannot recommend it.
(tho it is better than usng your motherboard's Line Out..)
The Behringer UCA202 is much better.
You also hear lower bass frequencies with it.
It's based on TI (Burr-Brown) PCM2902, and costs 30$.
The other 5 I ordered are still on the way.
I am trying each DAC for a week, to get a long enough feeling of what it's worth.
Maybe after all these experiments I will try a several hundreds one.
But it won't be a multiple model experiment like here..
not all my DACs are PCB without enclosure
There are 2 that actually came enclosed.
1) Roccat Juke
2) Behringer UCA202
The Roccat Juke is not musical.
It's based on one of Cmedia's chips, and I definitely cannot recommend it.
(tho it is better than usng your motherboard's Line Out..)
The Behringer UCA202 is much better.
You also hear lower bass frequencies with it.
It's based on TI (Burr-Brown) PCM2902, and costs 30$.
The other 5 I ordered are still on the way.
I am trying each DAC for a week, to get a long enough feeling of what it's worth.
Maybe after all these experiments I will try a several hundreds one.
But it won't be a multiple model experiment like here..
Oh..
So in any case, ESS Sabre is your top DAC, from what can be seen here.
Did you stay with the PCB that it came on,
or completely revised (and printed) a new PCB?
You can see a picture here: https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-line-level/314935-es9038q2m-board-165.html#post5477499
As a bit of push-back, I should mention that not all of us share Mark's view on DACs and find that less extreme implementations work well. But getting an I/V right, good bypassing practices and starting from any number of the good, recent monolithic regulators (which generally supersede historic super-regs) are not a bad start. There's a lot of signal conditioning done in these modern DAC chips, leaving us with a *rather* nice starting point.
Just to give some perspective as well. In general, voltage-out DACs for audio have the I/V built-in.
Not all of that is needed. Some of it was for testing different things.
There is a good, but not super reg, +-15v supply, and a +5v supply towards the left. Down the middle column is the AK4137 board, then the dac board, then a LME49600 headphone amp. The stuff on the right is some extra that was for test but has since been removed. Above the dac board is the Arduino with an FTDI adapter board for real time USB comms (3.3v Trinket does not otherwise support that).
So, a couple of power supplies, a sample rate converter that I happen to like, a dac board, and an headphone amp. (The Arduino helps out a little with the dac.) To Daniel maybe extreme, I don't know. I think its about right although it could all be made quite a bit more compact.
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When your input is a computer, I wonder if software could do the same job, without the AK4137 board..
The headphone amp is before the amplifier, even when connected to speakers?
Are you talking about the board that has a gray ribbon cable connected to it?
That doesn't look like an Arduino.. not even Arduino Mega..
What kind of Arduino is that?
(and what does it do?)
I was more going into the levels of reclocking and screwing with asynchronous resampling versus using the built-in ASRC and the as-supplied crystal.
I use the built-in ASRC. And I have some SRC before the dac chip. Also use a low jitter clock. Same as DAC-3 in those regards. Nothing crazy.
When your input is a computer, I wonder if software could do the same job, without the AK4137 board..
The headphone amp is before the amplifier, even when connected to speakers?
Are you talking about the board that has a gray ribbon cable connected to it?
That doesn't look like an Arduino.. not even Arduino Mega..
What kind of Arduino is that?
(and what does it do?)
Works best with AK4137. Thing is upsampling has some effect of reducing jitter. Doing just before the dac chip means jitter can't be added back in after it has been reduced.
Headphone amp is only for headphones.
Ribbon cable goes to the display and push button for the AK4137 board. I set it and leave it.
Nice to know.
Do you know what model it is?
Oh
Wolfson is a name I haven't heard.
BTW,
from my DAC orders,
the ones that I haven't bought are Cirrus Logic, AKM,
and apparently Philips also make ones.. (e.g. TDA1543)
I believe eventually I'll cover them all..
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