Ian,
Very kewl. Curious what your plans are with those.
To followup on our emails earlier this week, I have run your prototype ES9028Q2M DAC board I have here using one of the UCPi boards I built up here... Very nice.
I charged them up from an Uptone Audio LPS-1.2 and did try the setup with the charging voltage connected and disconnected... with these, I heard a little degradation, but not much. AND I tried it with both an earlier LPS-1 and LPS-1.2... I slightly preferred the LPS-1 as a connected energizing supply.
The connected charging results are preliminary and I'll go over that a few more times to confirm... and Ian likely will too.
OTOH, the SQ with the UCPi powering the DAC card is pretty definite... my advice is don't try this unless you want to spend the effort and $ to set this up in your setup powering as many source components as you can. My next try with this is to use the other 2 UCPi I have to power the IsolatorPi and Allo.com Kali in the stack separately and see how that sounds. In both cases they are currently powered from an LPS-1.2 each AND they have local LDOs, so I'd be feeding them 5V.
Too many porcupines, too little time!
Greg in Mississippi
P.S. I just went upstairs to take a picture and re-tried the LPS-1 charging versus not again... my verdict still is that it is a noticeable difference, but not so much that I wouldn't generally leave the charging LPS-1 connected just for convenience. In my experience the SQ differences between good powerline times and bad times are much larger than what I heard... mostly a very slight diminishing of directness and dynamics.
Very kewl. Curious what your plans are with those.
To followup on our emails earlier this week, I have run your prototype ES9028Q2M DAC board I have here using one of the UCPi boards I built up here... Very nice.
I charged them up from an Uptone Audio LPS-1.2 and did try the setup with the charging voltage connected and disconnected... with these, I heard a little degradation, but not much. AND I tried it with both an earlier LPS-1 and LPS-1.2... I slightly preferred the LPS-1 as a connected energizing supply.
The connected charging results are preliminary and I'll go over that a few more times to confirm... and Ian likely will too.
OTOH, the SQ with the UCPi powering the DAC card is pretty definite... my advice is don't try this unless you want to spend the effort and $ to set this up in your setup powering as many source components as you can. My next try with this is to use the other 2 UCPi I have to power the IsolatorPi and Allo.com Kali in the stack separately and see how that sounds. In both cases they are currently powered from an LPS-1.2 each AND they have local LDOs, so I'd be feeding them 5V.
Too many porcupines, too little time!
Greg in Mississippi
P.S. I just went upstairs to take a picture and re-tried the LPS-1 charging versus not again... my verdict still is that it is a noticeable difference, but not so much that I wouldn't generally leave the charging LPS-1 connected just for convenience. In my experience the SQ differences between good powerline times and bad times are much larger than what I heard... mostly a very slight diminishing of directness and dynamics.
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Hi Greg,
Nice set up. Me too have similar experiences to you about the UCPi.
Ultra capacitor and LifePO4 direct power supply are so far the best power supply solution for DAC projects. Nothing can compared. Even the ultra low noise LDO are far from. Because the key thing is not only the noise, but also the load response performance.
Agree with you, once you switched to this solution, you will never get back.
Both solution have unbelievable improvement to the sound quality. Ultra capacitor solution is a bit expensive and complicated. LifePO4 will be cheaper and less complicated and also smaller good for a power supply integrated total solution.
I'm working on both. Developing a best sound quality power supply is one of my dream.
Good weekend.
Ian
BTW. I like you lab
LiFePO PS projects are around for 10 years I guess.
I do think a big pack of ultracaps (we had once a pack that's been feeding the DAC for 15 minutes) charged by a reasonable power supply should do.
Beside performance a setup should also be manageable.
I had once two Northstar 120Ah batteries (ESR=16mR) feeding my
entire system incl. 12V amp on 104db/W speakers.
And just a single!!! plug in the entire system. Best ever! - Annoying to manage though.
Enjoy.
Hey everyone, I’m still around and following the developments.
Unfortunately for the last 6 months I’ve been fighting extreme nerve pain making work on electronics a non-starter.
I’m through first surgery and hope to get the second part under control ASAP.
I wish I could be tinkering alongside you guys. It’s looking great and from what I’ve been reading, it sounds great too.
I’m so jealous. But in a positive way. ;D
Unfortunately for the last 6 months I’ve been fighting extreme nerve pain making work on electronics a non-starter.
I’m through first surgery and hope to get the second part under control ASAP.
I wish I could be tinkering alongside you guys. It’s looking great and from what I’ve been reading, it sounds great too.
I’m so jealous. But in a positive way. ;D
Hey everyone, I’m still around and following the developments.
Unfortunately for the last 6 months I’ve been fighting extreme nerve pain making work on electronics a non-starter.
I’m through first surgery and hope to get the second part under control ASAP.
I wish I could be tinkering alongside you guys. It’s looking great and from what I’ve been reading, it sounds great too.
I’m so jealous. But in a positive way. ;D
I truly hope you get back on your feet very fast
All the best
Do
Hey everyone, I’m still around and following the developments.
Unfortunately for the last 6 months I’ve been fighting extreme nerve pain making work on electronics a non-starter.
I’m through first surgery and hope to get the second part under control ASAP.
I wish I could be tinkering alongside you guys. It’s looking great and from what I’ve been reading, it sounds great too.
I’m so jealous. But in a positive way. ;D
Hi markusA
Me too felt very tired in the past few months. But I get much better after I started donate blood. It was all because of the high iron level.
Just hope you are getting better too. The big party is waiting for you
.Regards,
Ian
Ian,
I'd add 2 more benefits of these 'off-the-grid' power supply solutions:
- Eliminating some paths for transmission of noise on the AC power lines into the audio system. While none of these supplies are designed to produce a fully off-the-grid system, they appear to reduce AC-transmitted noise, especially into the crucial D-to-A conversion stages.
- Eliminating AC-to-DC conversion generated noise. Transformer ringing noise, diode ringing and recovery noise, capacitor charging current surge-related noise all gone.
AND not related to being off-the-grid, they also provide a largely passive power source instead of feedback-controlled regulators. As we've heard with the use of transformer output stages, good passive solutions can bypass the artifacts that can plague many active and feedback-controlled solutions for both output stages and power supplies.
I found this description of the search for an ultimate phono setup very instructive, where the poster went from a setup with active regulation to one with multiple LCLC stages for improved sound:
Izzy Wizzy Audio
Anyway, back to more testing!
Greg in Mississippi
P.S. Glad you like my test setup. Both of my audio systems are really just on-going experiments!
P.P.S. Best to you Mark on recovery. AND glad your high-iron issue is being controlled, Ian!
I'd add 2 more benefits of these 'off-the-grid' power supply solutions:
- Eliminating some paths for transmission of noise on the AC power lines into the audio system. While none of these supplies are designed to produce a fully off-the-grid system, they appear to reduce AC-transmitted noise, especially into the crucial D-to-A conversion stages.
- Eliminating AC-to-DC conversion generated noise. Transformer ringing noise, diode ringing and recovery noise, capacitor charging current surge-related noise all gone.
AND not related to being off-the-grid, they also provide a largely passive power source instead of feedback-controlled regulators. As we've heard with the use of transformer output stages, good passive solutions can bypass the artifacts that can plague many active and feedback-controlled solutions for both output stages and power supplies.
I found this description of the search for an ultimate phono setup very instructive, where the poster went from a setup with active regulation to one with multiple LCLC stages for improved sound:
Izzy Wizzy Audio
Anyway, back to more testing!
Greg in Mississippi
P.S. Glad you like my test setup. Both of my audio systems are really just on-going experiments!
P.P.S. Best to you Mark on recovery. AND glad your high-iron issue is being controlled, Ian!
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Naim don't have any product that uses ultracaps in the psi. Supercap is just what they call their multiple rail regulated psi, it contains pretty standard discrete regs fed by a big tx and large lytics
Your comment about AC-DC conversion noise reminds me of a solution I don't see used very often in audio: the use of mosfet "smart diodes" in bridge rectifiers. While the designs add complexity, they provide noise advantages over conventional rectifiers and much lower losses.
Cheers
Whit
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The current is really limited by the mosfet choice, and they claim up to 100 Amps can be achieved. The LT4320 chip has an upper limit of 72 Volts, so it should be fine for most power amp applications.
There are 2 main advantages: 1) the switching of the mosfets is synchronous with both the AC input and the load voltage, so there is little or no reverse recovery noise or ringing as exhibited by conventional diodes and 2) using low Rds-on mosfets results in very little heat dissipation and voltage drop.
The data sheet is here for those interested.
As mentioned, there are eval kits available, but I think to build a very high current bridge, you would need to roll your own and worry about the thermal aspects of the mosfets.
Cheers
Whit
Unfortunately i have zero experience in pcb design. What do you think of this board?
It does seem to lack the capacitor on board though.
Good find! Yes - you would need to add filter caps, and there does not seem to be any info on the mosfet types he used. Also - it is hard to tell how much dissipation the board can handle - although it is 4 layer, so should have a fair amount of copper.
You can probably email the developer with questions - take a look at his github page. Bersh (Illia Bershadskyi) / Repositories * GitHub
I think this would be a good way to prototype an ideal rectifier.
Cheers
Whit
@redjr,
I'm not very happy with the dynamic performance of single ES9038Q2M HAT. So, I might be more interested in the ES9038Q2M dual mono configuration DAC HAT. I'll post the picture the next. Connections and system integration are coming soon.
Please keep asking for update.
Regards,
Ian