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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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In Reply to: RE: New DAC and CD Player search posted by knewton on June 18, 2016 at 08:20:54:
What, of the DACs that you have experimented with have given you the most "analog" overall results?
I have/had the following DACs:
Monarchy Audio M22Bse (first serious DAC I bought and a homerun the first time at bat!!) Great soundind DAC with PCM63K chips and a sophisticated I/V conversion (2500uV/sec trans-impedance amp) that is only bettered by passive conversion.
Monarchy Audio M24 DAC: not the current PCM1704 version but the original PCM63 version, which sounds considerably better. Still my main DAC because it has a quite analog like sound quality. No transistors in the circuit at all (passive I/V to a tube SRPP output stage).
Audio Aero Prima DAC: Essentially the Audio Aero Capitole 24/192 cd player without the transport. Tube output stage as well, nice power supply. However, it has that sigma/delta "wispiness" that I find somehow synthetic (it has the Anagram Tech digital filters and AD1853 (I think) DAC chips). I found the Monarchy more correct and sold this even though it was quite nice to listen to for the most part.
Kinergetics Research KCD-55 Ultra: Very rare DAC with two of the Ultra Analog D20400 DAC module. SS output but all discrete. The SS output died and I Lampizated it with their "amber" output stage. This thing does space and solidity very well indeed. Nice DAC both as SS and now Lampizated.
PS Audio Ultralink II: This is using one of the UltraAnalog modules but the later "A" version. It also has the UA AES21 input receiver (at least until it dies...aparently they overheat) and the Pacific Microsonics PMD100 filter (I plan to replace with DF1704). I don't have it yet but I got one cheap so I thought I would try it out. Maybe I will Lampizate it as well if the output stage sucks.
A DAC board from ABC pcb, who seems to have been making the DACs for Audio Aero. It has the Anagramtech S2 digital filter module (an updated version of what was in the AA Prima DAC), 4 dac chips (AD1853s I think) and then some opamps for filter and output stage. I also have the ABC pcb clock that is very advanced and links to the DAC. Power supply is an issue here and probably a culprit in the mediocre and overly bland sound from this setup. Or it could be the multiple opamp outputs...but darn aren't they pretty boards to look at. I will try it again with a better PS sometime soon and see if it helps.
As you can see I gravitated to the R2R ladder DAC sound, particualrly with a tube output stage.
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Follow Ups
- RE: New DAC and CD Player search - morricab 09:22:14 06/20/16 (1)
- RE: New DAC and CD Player search - knewton 07:58:12 06/22/16 (0)
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