Pictured here : my fave and stallion DAC , Gigawork upsampling DAC with MYKONOS buffer
JACQUES HIFI PAGES
The wonderful world of DACs
Pictured
here : my fave and stallion DAC , Gigawork upsampling DAC with MYKONOS buffer
DAC really are wonderful circuits : they transform one digital code, 0 and 1, into stereo music. I am always admiring the inventors of digital music for this tour-de-force. But after the first one ( philips tda1540 which was mono by the way ), the production of this type of circuit started to expand , thus implying a who's-the-best game we all love. A lot of people thinks that Philips 2nd generation , the famous tda1541, was never equalled to this day. To my point of view, the tda1541 is like the '54 Fender strat, a music icon. I love to collect them ---well, tda1541 not '54 strats, unfortunately--- and listen to them. Nothing can beat their vintage appeal and great tone. But have you tried a modern top-of-the-line Ibanez RG guitar ? ( for non-guitar players , it's the last evolution of the original strat ).
1-Gigawork Upsampling DAC
Same
DAC boxed : jacques dac ! I scavenged the blue led from the usb circuit of the
gigawork...
To my ears, and from my personnal experience, this is the best and ultimate DAC evermade to this day. I met upsampling, once again thanks to Mr. Lampizator, with the Behringer ultramatch and that was love at first sound. Upsampling ( going artificially from 16 to 24 bits thanks to a cyrus logic chip ) really made my CD upcome with incredible details never heard before, precision, wider stereo image, well , sounding BETTER. So I start to use the Ultramatch between CD source and Lampucera , or Ultramatch as a upsampling+dac alone and thought I have reached DAC paradise.
Until I found out this circuit
on Ebay. All-in-one, easy to take-the-buffer-to-the-dustbin, and built-in power
supply : A lazy modder dream.
And he beats ANYTHING. Just plug a 10euros
CD or DVD player into its spdif input and enjoy. In fact, it was this DAC that
sent me into the CD drive/transport
realm, because there was nothing more I could do to improve an audio CD
sound.
Besides, the Ultramatch is quite touchy with spdif signal : if you throw in crude spdif from SAA7220 pin 14 or sony CDX1125,1135,1165 pin 27 or cdx2500 pin 60 ( called DOTX in Sony language while they are the S in spdif ! ) directly, the Ultramatch is likely to shut down. I really mean shut down, one of its led go red and he stops working...I hate this...I was forced to make the resistors network just like it-should-be... No sissy input in the gigawork : you can feed him any raw square wave directly out of the DSP chip and it will devore it and sing like Franck Sinatra...
Here
jacques dac coupled with an old 15euros sony dvd player stock spdif...great
transport but does not accept burnt CDs..
2- LAMPUCERA (c) lampizator
This was my old champion. Before I met upsampling. I used to call him THE BOSS ( or Hugo , but only late at night with an Islay scotch and a good cigar ). Paired with my Mykonos that was a dream come true. I even made a complete CD player based on this dac ( see my CD player section ). I would not go again with all Lampucera advantages you can find on Lampizator, along with different cap mods he advieces. I did them but I still do not know if the sound was better or was it because all that work and big and expensive caps vision on this small circuit. Well , all in all it is an unbeatable price/quality option.
3- The Philips tda1541
The icon himself :
I spent countless hours to take
the best of this wonderful chip you can find in numerous CD players from cheap
secondhands to supermodels from hifi big names. All hifi tweakers swear only
by passive I/V ( current to voltage...as is this chip needs this conversion
to be plugged into an amp ) which I could never performed because of the fear
I have to destroy a CD player loaded with this legend. The Iout pins must be
separated from the circuit, which is always tricky because most of the time
you have to dismantle the CD tray with no guarantee you will put it back correctly.
So I gave up, and use the available opamp conversion directly , shorting the
horrible opamp buffer. I would never know if the passive mod ( or a transistor
mode I dreamt to perform ) sounds really better. I managed to do it with a tda1543
with a transistor conversion and I really liked the sound. While always below
the gigawork.
At this point I strongly suggest, if you have a tda1541 fueled
cd player, to simply make like I do and plug it. Great icon tone.
4-The other DAC chips from the past
As I just said, there were hundreds
of DAC chips made from the tda1540 and today. A lot of them are great. Here
for example a twin set of Burr Brown PCM56 on a nice Sony player. You always
need the datasheet of this chips to mod them out. For example, the PCM56 could
be used alone and give the stereo signal all together on one pin ( you only
need one, I saw this in a Yamaha CDX-560 CD Player ) or sing in Vout but in mono (
like here ).
Headaches ahead with all these different chips and pinout...
Please
note here the nice people of Sony who gently labeled DOTX a big strong wire
for us to solder on in order to get pure spdif from the DSP.
They even put
a ground wire just next to it.
Aligatou gozaimasu.
5-The mini-DAC
Here we have a real good dac,
based on tda1543, which really sound better than most stock cd player . No mods
, just buy it and plug your spdif in it. Cool leds , cheap and easy upgrade
for your stereo. A nice way to start with external DACs.
My personnal use
for this DAC is experiences with hazardous spdif. If the UNLOCK led shut down,
it means that the spdif I plugged into it is viable.
Cool feature for digital-out
burglars.
6-DACs and mp3
How many times I heard 'mp3 sounds like s...t' ....well , what if you start to put them through a real DAC, not your cheapo computer DAC or your mock-Ipod ? You'd be amazed. I A/B CD burnt from mp3 and original CD ( same transport/drive ) through my jacques-dac to audiophile ears and guess what : they never could sort them out. Not one of the usual defects ---there should be in the treble zone but some people criticize even their basses--- appeared clearly enough to give them out. Even on precise jazz recording of Zildjian cymbals...well, to be totally franck, maybe slightly on the -s- of a female vocalist..but slight , slight...no the common bash I am used to....Do me a favor and try your mp3 through a decent DAC ...
MY PREAMP/BUFFER : MYKONOS AMPLIFIERS SPEAKERS CD PLAYERS DAC DRIVES / TRANSPORTS OSCILLOSCOPE TEST DRIVE TURNTABLES DCC PLAYERS