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Celibidache NOS DAC

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abraxalito

abraxalito

Member
Joined 2007
tomek1 said:
A very brave opinion - that is, all DAC, e.g. Mark Levinson etc., are badly made because they use toroids?
Click to expand...

George explained it well enough, I have nothing much to add. Could be they were constrained by needing to place the trafo close to sensitive circuitry and therefore the toroid was the better choice, in conjunction with extra mains filtering.

Or it could be they used toroidals for marketing reasons.
 
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RenEH01

Member
Joined 2020
Just got my hands on an wooden box I intend to reinforce for dac duty. I plan to use parts from a broken computer power supply for the inlet plug, on/off switch and wiring. Could the spdif selection switch be customized with a different kind of switch than what was provided? I’m thinking of something like a modi 3 here: https://www.schiit.com/products/modi-1 but I’m open to suggestions.

I just want to make sure I’ll have everything I need before I place my digikey order. Thanks for the input!
 
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RenEH01

Member
Joined 2020
abraxalito said:
Ah yes, I just checked another example of that board we have here. There are two push-button switches - one with a long extension and one without. You need a push-to-connect function and a biassed toggle will do that handsomely.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I’ll post the digikey link before ordering if you don’t mind double checking :)

Do you have the pin out for this board? Not sure who the creator is.
 
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RenEH01

Member
Joined 2020
abraxalito said:
I have an annotated photo that another customer sent me which I could forward you by email if you PM me your address.
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Thank you for your patience for my barrage of questions as always.

1) Is the reason the master clock is not required because your dac uses some kind of reclocker?

2) Would an i2s signal directly from a pi to the dac instead of through a spdif board sound better? Is your preference still toslink? The receiver board seems to add 50 picoseconds of jitter regardless of input.

3) If the above is a yes, I’ve located the pin out for my pi2aes hdmi over i2s implementation and am considering using one of these https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/chip-quik-inc/CN0002/5978285 to feed the dac i2s. Do you think it would be a suitable solution?
 
R

RenEH01

Member
Joined 2020
RenEH01 said:
Thank you for your patience for my barrage of questions as always.

1) Is the reason the master clock is not required because your dac uses some kind of reclocker?

2) Would an i2s signal directly from a pi to the dac instead of through a spdif board sound better? Is your preference still toslink? The receiver board seems to add 50 picoseconds of jitter regardless of input.

3) If the above is a yes, I’ve located the pin out for my pi2aes hdmi over i2s implementation and am considering using one of these https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/chip-quik-inc/CN0002/5978285 to feed the dac i2s. Do you think it would be a suitable solution?
Click to expand...
Sorry, it appears I cannot edit my previous post, but it appears I2S over HDMI would require a differential connection and neither the passthrough on the spdif board or the connection on the DAC would allow for that. I guess the only question would be if a raspberry pi board in the same enclosure with i2s connected directly would sound better than through the spdif receiver board with a pi connected via coax/toslink on the other end.
 
abraxalito

abraxalito

Member
Joined 2007
RenEH01 said:
Thank you for your patience for my barrage of questions as always.

1) Is the reason the master clock is not required because your dac uses some kind of reclocker?
Click to expand...
No, the reason an MCLK isn't required is because there's no digital filter in my DAC. An MCLK in general is needed for enabling clocks to multipliers and adders and other logic. My DAC doesn't have any of that. (Some DACs that do have logic manage to get by with a PLL though in lieu of MCLK. An example is PCM5102)
RenEH01 said:
2) Would an i2s signal directly from a pi to the dac instead of through a spdif board sound better? Is your preference still toslink? The receiver board seems to add 50 picoseconds of jitter regardless of input.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure 50pS of jitter is a concern with this DAC. The major constraint to SQ is noise from the source and Toslink deals with that very well indeed. If you connect I2S directly you'll lose isolation and likely degrade the sound.

RenEH01 said:
3) If the above is a yes, I’ve located the pin out for my pi2aes hdmi over i2s implementation and am considering using one of these https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/chip-quik-inc/CN0002/5978285 to feed the dac i2s. Do you think it would be a suitable solution?
Click to expand...

I think I2S over HDMI is an unnecessary complication. Some DACs which are more jitter-sensitive could benefit but I doubt a multibit DAC would. You're correct - I2S over HDMI uses LVDS which is a differential connection so needs interface boards to go back/forth to/from single-ended.

An RPi in the same enclosure as the DAC is probably a bad idea, just because an RPi is a strong EMI aggressor.
 
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RenEH01

Member
Joined 2020
abraxalito said:
No, the reason an MCLK isn't required is because there's no digital filter in my DAC. An MCLK in general is needed for enabling clocks to multipliers and adders and other logic. My DAC doesn't have any of that. (Some DACs that do have logic manage to get by with a PLL though in lieu of MCLK. An example is PCM5102)


I'm not sure 50pS of jitter is a concern with this DAC. The major constraint to SQ is noise from the source and Toslink deals with that very well indeed. If you connect I2S directly you'll lose isolation and likely degrade the sound.



I think I2S over HDMI is an unnecessary complication. Some DACs which are more jitter-sensitive could benefit but I doubt a multibit DAC would. You're correct - I2S over HDMI uses LVDS which is a differential connection so needs interface boards to go back/forth to/from single-ended.

An RPi in the same enclosure as the DAC is probably a bad idea, just because an RPi is a strong EMI aggressor.
Click to expand...
Thank you! I’m learning a lot from you! I placed my order at digikey this morning and should have my Akitika Amp done by tomorrow, so sweet music should be filling my house early next week :)
 
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RenEH01

Member
Joined 2020
Amp is up and running, just need to assemble this DAC. Transformer arrived today!

I want to make a few modifications on the spdif board though and it will take a few weeks for the oled screen to arrive. I’m tempted to run it as is lol!

Question, should I be running shielded cable to the RCA plugs? I have some spare cable for that.
 
abraxalito

abraxalito

Member
Joined 2007
You're getting 24.3V from the PSU output so it must be working fine. Be careful not to short circuit the output or you'll destroy the regulator, its not protected from shorting at such a high input voltage.

The RCAs we sent you have cube-shaped lugs, that's where we solder the ground wire. Needs a chunky soldering iron as there's quite some volume to heat. I don't know about tabs as they're mechanical things and beyond my limited electronic knowledge :p
 
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