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In Reply to: RE: New DAC and CD Player search posted by airheadair on June 17, 2016 at 23:38:28
[So here is my question. Can people with good digital and vinyl equipment comment on
the sound of Kind of Blue in CD vs LP (and maybe vs SACD as well)? Am i wrong to expect
the similar kind of involvement from digital sources as I get from vinyl?]That, my friend, has probably been the primary question about digital playback over the past 30+ years! You're not wrong to expect at least vinyl's level musical involvement, however, you may continue to be disappointed by the present state of digital - although digital playback does continue to progress closer to that end.
As someone who experiments with his own DAC designs, I'm currently of the opinion that the music is actually captured there, locked inside your existing CDs. That's the good news. The bad news is, it seems that the 'trick' with creating involving digital playback is in carefully attending to all of the many seemingly trivial details. DAC physical implementation details are as important as the design details. Just my two cents.
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Ken Newton
Edits: 06/18/16 06/18/16Follow Ups:
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.
Hi, morricab,
In general, the following are my conclusions after experimenting with DACs of my own design. So, in no particular order:
1. The best sounding I/V circuit I've tried is a simple resistor. This vastly subjectively outperformed the typical op-amp based virtual ground I/V circuits I tried.
2. Power supply common-mode noise rejection makes an audible difference. Meaning, use of common-mode chokes.
3. Digital filtering, or a lack thereof, makes an very audible difference. This isn't to suggest that NOS conversion always sounds best, just that altering the digital filter implementation is very audible. In short, to my ears, NOS does indeed provide a stress free type of sound, yet it also has certain subjective artifacts such as a narrowing of the soundstage width relative to that with digital filtering - although, the soundstage is quite deep via NOS.
4. The analog output reconstruction filter capacitors adversely affect the sound unless they're implemented with care. I'm presently utilizing Wima FKP2 film & foil (not metallized film) units with satisfaction.
5. Regarding, straight multibit conversion versus sigma-delta conversion. I've seen the subjective reports of DSD producing a wispy sound character. While I can't speak about DSD, I've found that the sigma-delta based PCM1794A (a PCM, not a DSD converter) does not have a wispy should character. It produced a sound character every bit as solid sounding as the AD1865 straight multibit converter I've experimented with. I'm presently conducting on-going experiments around the PCM1794A converter.
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Ken Newton
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