Who's using Dacs

[leok]

Dave,

I'm not questioning that you can, or anyone can get a more economical, and and even musically "better" sound with a ss DAC. I'm suggesting that the comparison, in this case may be to an op-amp job in a cd player that wasn't done well. I've heard plenty of terrible sounding ss junk, and a lot of even mediocre tube equipment sounds better. So, one could draw the conclusion: tube sounds better. Does tube sound better than well done ss? I don't happen to think so, but one would have to then know which ss to go for. That's all I was, and am saying.

Leo

[WopOnTour]

My "tubed DAC" is a little Dared MP-5 headphone amp. ($299 street) The USB DAC is excellent (Burr-Brown 2702E) at this price point and the 12AX7 tubeset provides drippy rich output. (The dancing "Magic Eye" tube is pretty cool too)

But alas there's no pre-outs (although I've been thinking of adding some) However it DOES have speaker jacks and the 13 wpc OTL actually drives my Lascala's pretty well! Definately a versatile little guy and for the $$ a pretty good value.

WopOnTour

[vman71]

I posted a thread last week about my initial impressions with my newly aquired Bel Canto DAC2. I love it and feel like it is a great match with not only the rest of my 2 channel system but also Klipsch speakers. I was initially looking at the Altmann Attraction DAC and Jim Hagerman Chime DAC, both are a little over 1K and that was just to rich for my blood. The Bel Canto DAC2 came in well below that and I think is worth consideration.

[Rivendell61]

samples up to 768khz.

Lets hope not.

Sounds like either a manufacturer who does not know what it is doing (not uncommon), or they are appealing to the wallets of consumers who have been misled.

High sampling rates have no benefit for sound quality--nor do they improve timing, 'resolution', etc--quite the opposite. But it sells: consumer gear is loaded with 192kHz DACs, at which speed the signal quality has already degraded.

Mark

[Guest " "]

Check out the MDA-1000.

Samples up to 768khz.

I like the push pul DAC implementation which results in a 110 signal to noise ratio as well as the XLR architecture.

MDA1000.pdf

[Mallette]

WopOnTour: 299.00 for that? I'd be tempted just for the looks. Very nice!

Dave

[WopOnTour]

WopOnTour: 299.00 for that? I'd be tempted just for the looks. Very nice!

Dave

Yup, $299 - it IS a fetching little unit and very well built!

Here's a review at 6-moons http://sixmoons.com/industryfeatures/dared/dared.html

The SQ is excellent IMO. Especially using headphones , the speaker might be a bit weak in the bass department but it definatley adds some tube attitude to an iPod or other digital sources. As I said drives my Lascalas nicely, although the little Dared these days sits on my night-table so when the old girl starts to snore, I just plop in my Shure E4s and pick a play list on my ipod and doze off to the pale green glow of the dancing magic-eye tube...

WopOnTour

[Guest " "]

The Dared headphone tube amp DAC uses a 16bit DAC with a max sampling rate of 48khz.  SO a lot of the 300 bucks is invested in the tube headphone amp.

02rz0cxxyirxqelgx9rgw00a4i7y.pdf

[JBryan]

I haven't heard that many DAC's or CDP's that really stood out so I can't give much of an opinion sound-wise but I've had a California Audio Labs Alpha/Delta for the last 10 years and the DAC/Transport combo has worked very well for my purposes. The DAC has a tube output stage using 2 12AX7 although I prefer the 5751 tube for a bit less gain. I have looked at other CDP's but the one's I liked were too expensive (Exemplar 3910 and Audio Aero Capitale come to mind). The Alpha/Delta are built like tanks and had better be considering CAL has been out of business for over 5 years so I guess I'll wait 'til these fail to find another. 

One thing that I've found very useful on the DAC is its multiple inputs. I never thought much about it until I got a Slim Devices SB3 network player and decided to by-pass its DAC and run the digital through the Alpha DAC. I much preferred that arrangement as the sound was much fuller and seemed less brittle/edgy. It may have been that I was just used to the sound of the Alpha but...whatever works right? Now when I want to listen to the SB3, I can simply switch from the transport's input (AES/EBU) to the network player's (Coaxial RCA) using the DAC's selector switch. A side benefit is that I didn't have to run another IC to the preamp. Side-by-side, the Alpha/Delta sounds better to me (and others) than the SB3 and SB3/Alpha combo (I use AIFF format for digital transfer - theoretically a lossless bit-for-bit transfer).

I'm not suggesting anyone buy one as they are a bit long-in-the-tooth but their specs still hold up and the sound is quite acceptable. When they do show up on A'gon and the like, the Alpha can be had for easily less than $500. Have fun...

 

[Audio Flynn]

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?dgtlconv&1179538655

CAL, Theta and Meridian have always interested me. Very subjectively DACs seem to run for years with no issues. Risk is involved in buying an older DAC but certainly far less than a transport.

I have never had access to an expensive transport. Mid Fi changers and players with digital outputs are indistinguishable to me.

[Guest " "]

I don't know about these old DAC's. The DAC chips have been thru numerous evolutions of enhancement as well as speed in processing power and bit path. I can't help to think buying an old DAC is like buying an old computer.

Let's see, 10 years ago, folks in the used PC market were casting their 386's aside for 486's, and some folks were were buying new PI's and PII's. Today the processing power of todays CPU over shadows those of 10 years ago. You cant even run todays software on these old machines.

Now back to DAC's. I can't imagine that a 10 year old DAC with only a 16bit DAC chip and limited to 48khz can even compete with the versions that have since followed such as 20bit/48khz, 24bit/96khz, 24bit/192khz, and now we even have 24bit/769khz samplig DACs.

[leok]

speakerfritz,

By 10 years ago 8x interpolation (oversampling) was the norm. That resolves to 352.8K samples per second. The norm for DAC resolution was 20 bits or more. What has improved mostly is the low level distortion characteristics of the op-amps used as current to Voltage converters and buffers. You can get a 10 year old DAC, install pin-compatible op-amps from Analog Devices or Burr-Brown (TI) and have a very competitive DAC that is inexpensive.

The 192Ks/s upsampling converter in my Philips DVD 963SA is just a tad smoother than the 8x interpolation/20 bit system in my Sonic Frontiers "Transdac" in which I have upgraded the op-amps.

The "old" DACs got us 90% of where we are now. They can be very good additions to a system.

Leo

[Guest " "]

leok

There's been a few Parasounds 1600HDs on ebay lately...I think 3 last week, Lots of relist on them. They finally sold for the 450 - 500 range.

Those were 20bit/48khz, but the good thing was they had a balanced architecture supporting XLR.

[WopOnTour]

The Dared headphone tube amp DAC uses a 16bit DAC with a max sampling rate of 48khz. SO a lot of the 300 bucks is invested in the tube headphone amp.

The Burr-Brown 2702 even with it's paltry 16bit 48KHz sampiling seems to do fine in well regarded DAC equipment like the Sutherland 12dax7 ($1600) , the PS Audio CGHA ($995), and numerous expensive ($500-$600) "Red Wine" upgrade mods for media devices such as the Musica Olive and Slim Device's Audio Squeezebox.

So I figure to have it INCLUDED it in a $300 12AX7 based headphone amp was nothing but gravy.

WOT

[Guest " "]

WopOnTour

"So I figure to have it INCLUDED it in a $300 12AX7 based headphone amp was nothing but gravy"

Sure, thats a nice looking package.

I bought a used DAC to tinker with and it only set me back 50 bucks. It was the AMC DAC8. It worked better than the DAC in my SAT reciever, my HTPC and my 10 year old CD player, but did not keep up to the DAC in my media server (24bit/96khz) or my HT reciever (seven 24bit/192khz).

I'm close on buying a decent DAC, probally in a week or two.

[WopOnTour]

Yea, I hear a Fritz

My point was the physical implementation of the DAC (circuit design/layout, op-amps, passives etc) is just as important as "the numbers"

I have a an Audigy 2 NX USB with 24/96 and this slower Burr-Brown unit chews it up and spits it out in terms of SQ . But maybe it has more to do with the amp itself (although I must admit I've never connected the Audigy to my 300Bs or anything, hmmm maybe I'll try that)

By the way , I finally put those Nationals into my HK on the weekend (and pretty much let them run in for 24 hrs) they sound FINE! Thanks Again for them. If you ever need some vintage SL or SN 7s hit me back and I'll return the favor.

Good luck on the DAC quest!

***

[Guest " "]

WopOnTou

"By the way , I finally put those Nationals into my HK on the weekend (and pretty much let them run in for 24 hrs) they sound FINE! "

I ran into some small quanities of other new tubes.  Some higher in MU.  Depending on what you we replacing, you might want to experiment furthur.  If intrested, I'll send you a list and you can exchange the tubes you bought for another flavor for free, just pay postage.  

[DrWho]

All CDs are 16 Bit at 44.1kHz...so there's really no advantage to running higher bit/clock rates at the output. Oversampling is just a method one employs to use cheaper analog parts. I suppose you could always oversample and use the better analog parts, but then you're not accomplishing anything except a higher pricetag. For what it's worth, most DAC chips have their own processing built into them, where they digitally filter the waveform to compensate for 'flaws' in the analog output stage...because of this, they're almost always working internally at different rates than what is advertised on the box. In other words, if you want to compare performance, then look at things like distortion, noise floor, and bit-error rates...not the clock/bit rates. At least this is what they're teaching us in school...I'm sure there's more at play, but you're still always limited by the bit/clock rate of the input.

You may now return to the magic.

[WopOnTour]

OK that makes sense to me Doc

But what if your using an encoder to create files using higher sampling (frequency or bit rate) from an analog source! (i.e. NOT CDs)

WOT

[Guest " "]

This is where things get tricky.

My media server supports 24bit/96khz sampling.  Runining music to my system using the 24bit/96khz option sounds better than any of the lower combos.  I know that the transmission stream is different at 24bit/96khz than at 16bit/44.1khz, because if I route it into a legacy DAC which only supports 20bit/48khz, or set the ditigal input to manual 16bit/44.1khz in stead of automatic on my 24bit/196khz DAC, it won't lock.  

This means to me that the transmission content is different if 16bit/48khz is used vs 24bit/96khz.

Sort of like saying I'm sending to 100mb (24bit/96khz) per second but you can only recieve and process 10mb per second (16bit/44.1khz).