Who is Monica2 of 2017?

[miksin]

So yesterday fried dac as I was rearranging battery bank, and lost order of wires in my hand. Bye bye Monica2.


As I've been pretty much out of DAC business for several years because of LiFePo powered Monica2 I have pretty much no clue at all which chip/kit would nowdays be closest replacement.

Brief requirements:

1) NOS
2) "Passive" I/V. Resistor, maybe tranny. Low output, preferrably >1v to match with gain structure of setup.
3) "plug and play", have very low interest to use any more time in this as is neecssary
4) outboard PS, preferrably 6/12v etc for easy battery power
5) S/PDIF coax/optical input


Twisted Pears COD seems to be closest, perhaps, or not.

any other suggestions?


thanks,

 

[matt_garman]

Brief requirements:

1) NOS
2) "Passive" I/V. Resistor, maybe tranny. Low output, preferrably >1v to match with gain structure of setup.
3) "plug and play", have very low interest to use any more time in this as is neecssary
4) outboard PS, preferrably 6/12v etc for easy battery power
5) S/PDIF coax/optical input

I'm working on a tda1387-based DAC which meets almost all of your requirements: tda1387 dac pcb "front end". In fact, looking at the TP COD, my board is at least conceptually similar.

The only non-matching criteria is (5), as my board is I2S input. But there is no shortage of readily available SPDIF to I2S boards available. If you cover shipping, you can have a bare board or two for free. If you want true plug and play, PM me, I'm thinking about getting rid of one of the populated boards.

If you don't want to try your luck with a design from an admitted hack (that's me!), I'd also suggest the tda1387x8 DAC. It's true plug and play, but spending a couple hours or so on the easy/simple mods should improve performance noticeably. It is active I/V though (but should be fairly easy to mod to passive).

Though I have no experience with them, there are lots of TDA1543-based options. I know the Lite DAC AH is (or at least was) popular.