Help me decide which ebay dac please?

For the three and more legged things
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Paul Barker
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#1 Help me decide which ebay dac please?

Post by Paul Barker »

I am confused by the variety on offer.
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al newall
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#2

Post by al newall »

Whatever you buy, it will likely be superceded within a few months.
The AK4393/6 DAC chips have been around for a while, but have been labelled the Superdac.
Consequently they have a big following.

Buy it as a kit or ready assembled board.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Assembled-2496-DA ... 0747438046

Mine is not yet fully run in, but it sounds very undigital, and i can't see that changing.
Its hinting at being generally better than my previous DAC, which was also quite highly rated.

There's plenty of scope for upgrading components on the board and no surface mounts to contend with.
Just add a transformer and a signal.
Much to learn there is.
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ed
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#3

Post by ed »

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/LITE-Audio-DAC-AH ... 2a087463f3

I've had one of these in the studio set-up for about 5 years, I know it's old but it's mustard
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pre65
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#4

Post by pre65 »

What do you want to use it with ?

Some DACs have no optical input, and that could be a problem if you wanted to use it with your TV, as they seem to be 100% optical output.

Although you can get optical/digital converters, I use one for my new TV.

If just to play CDs you could get an oldish Marantz player with the TDA1541 chip and modify it. I'm liking the one I'm playing with quite a lot and I haven't done the valve output stage yet. :wink: Richard seems VERY pleased with his version. :)
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#5

Post by ed »

http://lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/REFEREN ... AHDAC.html

I don't know anything about modding these things but this chap gets a lot of publicity round here and he seems to rate this
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Ali Tait
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#6

Post by Ali Tait »

You could try one of the boards Nick is fiddling with, sounded pretty good at Owston.

Or this one looks a lot for the money-

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 16&afsrc=1

Modding thread here-

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital- ... y-dac.html

I also have one of these NOS ones, it's pretty good, a two box affair-separate PS. Again a lot for the money-

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Valab-TDA1543-NOS ... 3341wt_905

Depends what you're after and what you want it to do.
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JackOfAll
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#7

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Ali Tait
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#8

Post by Ali Tait »

Hope so, Nick is building me one with one of his valve output stages on it. The Teradak I have is only used on the end of the Sky box, but it sounds ok. Currently using an AN dac zero with some AN coppers in it. Sounds pretty good for what I paid.
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Paul Barker
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#9

Post by Paul Barker »

Thanks Clive sounds good.

Just an intellectual enquiry at present. I will be meeting up with Nick sooner or later (to borrow interstages and probably combine the 833a amp parts again) so hopefully he may have that built for a listen.
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#10 AN

Post by IslandPink »

AudioNote use the AD1865 chip, Paul . I thought the DAC 2.1x I heard at Manchester was the only digital source I've heard that sounded like vinyl at the top end. It had proper tone in the mids and treble and real 'presence' on vocals .
Quite likely there are others that can sound right too, but this is one data point for you .

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#11 Re: AN

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Paul Barker
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#12

Post by Paul Barker »

thank you everyone.

What I did in the end was order a built AK4393 by mistake, but on realising this paid $10 for upgrade to AK4396.

I aim to intercept the DAC ship output to a transformer and continue from there on with valves.

But I remain un-knowing about all of this digital malarky.

At present I am using my laptop. So I presume that one splits open a usb leed and takes Data - and Data + and ground. As my dac is only ordered I don't know the connectability. I presume there is a L R Gnd input rail? And pins 2,4 and 3 of USB go to this, right?
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#13

Post by Paul Barker »

Oh I see one needs a usb to s/pdif converter.

Does there tend to be one built into these boards? or do I now have to order one of those?

I have to tell you guys, that this world of digital is really strange. How they can make so much confusion out of binary beggers belief.

So what are u guys on all these multitudious threads about various digital wotzits doing? I suppose you aren't just using a computer. You must have squashboxes and other expensive gizzmos.

I mean you would be forgiven for thinking binary is simple wouldn't you? You would think a dac board would be designed to work with the simple binary flow? Maybe it does and all these add on's are superfluous?

Answers on a postcard please?
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#14

Post by Nick »

You will need a spdif/usb converter to use the boards mentioned.

Binary is (sort) of simple, but remember its not the simple flow of bits you might imagine. In the single line (for spdif) you have two channels of up to 24 bits of data, so you need to signal where the start of one 24 bit set is, and which is left and right (at the least). That in itself means it can't just be a unstructured stream of 1 and 0. Well, it is a stream of 1 and 0, but they have structure.

USB is a much more complex cat. There is a balanced digital signal on two wires. And the protocol needs to decide when to receive and when to send on those wires. It also carries a 0v and 5v line for powering devices plugged into the bus. Because the number of uses USB can be put to, its a immensely more complex protocol than a simple audio stream.

To paraphrase, most binary/digital comms is as simple as it can be, but no simpler.

If you want audio from your laptop, the simple choices are a USB sound card, and take the audio from that or most have digital in out so take that to a DAC, or just a USB audio tp sp/diff and take that to a DAC board.
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#15

Post by richardcooper2k »

I'm using USB to an external DAC

But i've heard some folk say there is a better alternative then USB (and its not the headphone socket !)

But i've never understood what the alternative is and why. Can anyone throw any light on this ? Is there actually anything in it ?
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