Frugal DACs...

[opus111]

Thanks for introducing that one to me Bob, I wasn't familiar with it though the name MHDT Labs I had heard of. Looks like an excellent frugal DAC to me, even down to using my favourite 16bit DAC chip, the TDA1545A For myself I'd not use an OPA2604 though, too compromised in IMD terms I reckon but definitely better than a normal bipolar opamp in this position. Worth experimenting with rolling that 2604 into an LM6172.

 

[NorthStar]

-- Well, that is the frugal DAC which I'm shopping for right now; 'better than sex'. :b

 

[opus111]

Not 'better than sex' but rather complementary to sex. You can try playing some Leonard Cohen at the same time : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-wmnXF91Xo

 

[NorthStar]

-- Also, I don't think it is totally fair to talk about 'sex' (Paradisea),
without mentioning the Havana.

=> http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/1208/mhdt_labs_havana.htm

...A little more money though, but worthwhile nonetheless for certain ears and gear.
{Richard, you're gong to remember the BB monolithic DAC chips used here.}

 

[opus111]

Ah I see - BB PCM56 - that has on-board opamp so perhaps a step backwards from the Paradisea where at least the opamp can be upgraded. Here you have no choice.

<edit> I've looked a bit closer at the datasheet for the PCM56 now - the DAC section can be used with I-out, bypassing the opamp. It does rather look though that MHDT has chosen to keep it in.

 

[untangle]

re the Bay Area Audiophile Society "Budget DAC" event

I attended both of the "budget DAC" BAAS sessions (and helped organize them).

I would say that the price-independent preference of members was: 75% Halide / 25% Schiit.

Judging from comments throughout the day, the "price matters" assessment wasn't as clear - the vote would be more evenly distributed among the four units.

I'll also offer that "most expensive wins" is not axiomatic in our comparisons.

Note that this was a sighted test.

This Saturday, BAAS is going to the Blue Coast Records studio to audition three DSD DACs in a production studio environment. But these are not budget units.

Bob

Edit: Since we used 24/96 material for the event, units that lacked 176/192 were not penalized. This may or may not be important to your use case.

 

[vtecths]

I picked up an Aune T1 with the 6922EH a few weeks back and am really enjoying it.

Is anyone else familiar with this one?

Erik

 

[Hxt1]

I gave up on my 'lampucera' with tube output stage (scavenged from my modwright 999) and bought the grant audio dac11, wasn't really all that impressed with it to be honest, rolled in an nos Philips 6dj8, the whole affair seemed, well, slow and 'unexciting' of course, coming from tape, and decent vinyl, the bar is high.. But tonight something incredible happened! I'm probably at the 50hr mark and wow! This thing is sounding GREAT!! I mean, it's really sounding quite good, detail, texture, clarity, depth dynamic impact, and an absolutely silent background! I'm having a hard time pulling myself away from the system to tend to responsibilities... !
This has happened with tape and vinyl, but never with digital... It's much more satisfying than my old modwright or AN dac ever was, and I'm talking about red book!
That Mytek is gonna kill me!!
I'll listen to a tape later and set things straight!! I hope.
Whew... Digital sure has come a long way in the last few years.

 

[untangle]

I guess $850 is outside the "frugal" range, but the TEAC UD-501 trounced all the units tested in the aforementioned BAAS event - and it does DXD, DSD64, and DSD128.

Bob

http://www.teac.com/product/ud-501/

 

[Orb]

I guess $850 is outside the "frugal" range, but the TEAC UD-501 trounced all the units tested in the aforementioned BAAS event - and it does DXD, DSD64, and DSD128.

Bob

http://www.teac.com/product/ud-501/

I thought I read somewhere the Esoteric engineers assisted with the latest Teac products, but I could be very wrong.
Anyway great value for money either way by the looks of it, reminds me of Teac in the past with some products that were very good for the price.
Cheers
Orb

 

[Hxt1]

The teac really does look like a great value, $850 for dsd?
Does anyone know how/if it compares to the Mytek?
Forgive me , I am a digital neophyte, I've been analog only for the last few years, using digital for background and dinner music only... Fine for masking the sounds of mastication... but I've realized, (thanks to U47 and others) that digital is a true high fidelity format, you just need to know how to 'squeeze the juice' out of it properly.

 

[untangle]

The teac really does look like a great value, $850 for dsd? Does anyone know how/if it compares to the Mytek?

see: http://baasnotes.com/blog/2013/02/24/the-great-baas-dsd-dac-shootout/

(More to come from JVS on audiostream.com)

bob

 

[untangle]

blind testing?

also: http://baasnotes.com/forum2/index.php/topic,204.0.html

(near the bottom)

the TEAC sounds great in my system. not Playback Designs great, but great.

bob

 

[Orb]

To add a bit more detail on noise modulation, here's a snippet from the AKM4399 datasheet to illustrate :

View attachment 7468

I'm able to decode these figures to show noise modulation because they also include a helpful FFT plot right at the back of the datasheet :

View attachment 7469

The FFT is showing the THD for a full scale 1kHz sine stimulus. The highest harmonic shown is -109dB for the 3rd. Armed with this information go back to the first snippet and note the THD+N for full-scale 1kHz sine stimulus is shown as -105dB. This tells me that the THD+N figure is not determined by the THD component, rather the 'N' component. With full-scale sine stimulus, the DAC is putting out -105dB white noise.

The noise is not constant notice because the -60dBFS stimulus figure shows a THD+N of -60dB. Therefore the noise has fallen 15dB in level to -120dB.

Note 5 tells us the figures were obtained in averaging mode on the AP2. Thus its safe to assume the peak noise modulation is considerably worse than 15dB.

Interesting where are you getting the spec sheet from opus?
I can only find the full application notes for AKM chipsets bah.
Wondering what is shown for AK4392, as this is used by Esoteric,etc.
Interesting comparing Esoteric D-07 (AKM modern chipset) to Audionote 4.1 (AD1865 NOS) on SP measurements
http://www.stereophile.com/content/esoteric-d-07-da-processor-measurements
http://www.stereophile.com/content/audio-note-cd-41x-cd-player-measurements

I think JA's measurements touches on one aspect I was going to mention possibly about the AKM, some chipset designs-firmware suffer with 0dBFS, they really do need to sort this out as more and more recordings unfortunately suffer compressed dynamics and hit that with their peaks

Cheers
Orb

 

[opus111]

Interesting where are you getting the spec sheet from opus?

http://www.akm.com/datasheets/ak4399_f03e.pdf

Wondering what is shown for AK4392, as this is used by Esoteric,etc.

http://www.asahi-kasei.co.jp/akm/en/product/ak4392/ak4392_f02e.pdf No FFT plot though.

 

[Orb]

Ah that is why I had problems finding the plots, never realised it was near the bottom of the 4399 application notes-datasheet as looked similar structure to some of the others doh
Thanks
Orb