Looking for quality KIT DAC

sailor wrote:The best  chip I know of is  the ESS Sabre ES9018. I know of 2 ways to get a DAC with this chip There may be more but very expensive. The first is to assemble one from parts from Twisted Pair. About 7 to 800 dollars.
http://www.twistedpearaudio.com/digital/buffalose.aspx
Or you can do what I did and buy an OPPO Bluray player which has 2 of these chips plus a separate stereo analog output with it's own dedicated power supply. This will set you back about $1,200. This is the way I went. I sold my Audio note CD play and had most of the cash necessary to purchase it.
This player has flipped the high end Blurays on there heals. $1200 may sound like a lot but it is in the league of the $6,500 to $8,000 players.
http://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-bdp-105/

daveshel wrote:DACs are truly the bane of my audio experience. About 8 years ago, I tried to buy one from Frank Van Alstine. I have and love my Van Alstine tube rig (Ultimate 70 and Super PAS Three) and solid state rig (OmegaStar 170 and OmegaStar Pat5) and wanted a DAC. He had a used model that seemed like a deal at around $700 as I recall. I couldn't get it to work with whatever optical player I had at that time - I don't remember what it was. I was trying to use an optical output and I wasn't getting any sound. Frank quickly lost patience with troubleshooting and had me send the unit back, upon which he declared the DAC was fine and I was an idiot. UPS was the only winner - I lost what may have been a good deal and Frank lost a customer.

Captain Coconut wrote:
I bought a preamp from AVA which was okay, but whenever I had questions, he would answer in a very distinct condescending tone. I sold it and never looked back.

corndog71 wrote:Check out DACs by Schiit and Musical Fidelity for great sound at reasonable prices.  Audio Advisor carries them.

stewdan wrote:
How do you have the Stacked Advents connected to your tube amp?  I recall that the stacked pair should be connected in parallel (+ to + and - to -) which drops the impedance to 4 Ohms, so you would then use the Ground and the 4 Ohm Connectors on the amp, not the 8 ohm connection).

Is this how you have it wired??

Let us know,
Stew

I sold my Audionote for a reason.

daveshel wrote:


Always parallel. I was reading a thread the other day (on AK I think) where several posters were preferring series. This would mean the top would be out of phase with the bottom, which I think would destroy the synergistic effect.

I tried the U-70 on the stacks a few years ago and they sounded kind of muddy as I recall. It could be that the Van Alstine mod isn't particularly tube friendly, but I have since read others describing similar results with various ST-70s, so I'm surprised to hear that you had good results. Also both of my SS amps are known for their ability to work well with very low impedance loads, and I've read that the Stacked Advents can sometimes present loads much lower than 4 ohms.

I'll have to give it another try at some point, but at the moment the banana plugs on the Advents have fixed spacing that won't fit on my U-70. But I soon hope to redo the floors in the current tube room, which means moving all my equipment into the current SS room ,so I'll be revisiting some alternative combinations.

arledgsc wrote:FWIW as I wade through the world of digital audio I am finding low jitter sources have the biggest influence on sound quality - relatively speaking of course.   Lowering jitter is the next great frontier for digital audio.  If you are after USB computer audio then choose wisely in that area.
Great info!

mazeeff wrote:
I concur. Jitter is often misunderstood, and many DAC's do not handle Jitter very well. Quite often, the high frequency jitter is filtered, but the low frequency jitter (or wander) is not. The Nuforce brand of DAC's do a good job of jitter reduction. Also, it is interesting to note, that playing a song on a CD generates very low jitter, whereas playing the same song through a SPDIF interface generates considerably more jitter.

daveshel wrote:

Looking at the Nuforce line, it seems USB inputs dominate. Does this mean using a PC or laptop as a transport, or that everybody is streaming and I'm a luddite still thinking in terms of playing CDs? I wondered if these could be used with an external USB optical drive but I doubt that the USB input would be able to supply power to one of these.

Jitter is often misunderstood, and many DAC's do not handle Jitter very well. Quite often, the high frequency jitter is filtered, but the low frequency jitter (or wander) is not. The Nuforce brand of DAC's do a good job of jitter reduction. Also, it is interesting to note, that playing a song on a CD generates very low jitter, whereas playing the same song through a SPDIF interface generates considerably more jitter.

daveshel wrote:

mazeeff wrote:
Does this mean using a PC or laptop as a transport, or that everybody is streaming and I'm a luddite still thinking in terms of playing CDs? I wondered if these could be used with an external USB optical drive but I doubt that the USB input would be able to supply power to one of these.

I don't stream here in the hinterland where online gigs are precious, but I have ripped all my CDs and most of my vinyl to digital FLAC. I still enjoy spinning records, but the convenience of clicking to play has ruined me ...

A few comments on feeding audio ... Laptop on board audio is notoriously bad for audio playback. Even most PCs tend to suffer severe suckage in that regard. Caveat there is there has been some improvement in recent years, so maybe not as true for more recent machines. Luck of the draw really. If you do decide to go that route, an external breakout box or quality expansion card is recommended. Then again, I tried a couple highly rated expansion cards (E-MU and Xonar) with less than spectacular results.

USB power isn't really an issue if you go with an external DAC - all the USB port is doing is pushing the signal out to the box. Exceptions there are them cute lil Fireflies and their clones, but those have a very small power draw. I've seen some that have a tap for a power brick - I'd suspect that if they provide that, they have doubts as to whether you should be trying to power it just from the USB port.

I'd also be concerned with using a USB powered DAC for the reasons mentioned in my earlier post. There's just way too much happening on the motherboard to give you power I'd consider clean enough for audio. The add on card I use has a power tap that plugs directly into the power supply to bypass all that potential interference.

sKiZo wrote:WASAPI engine, rated to be "next best thing to bit perfect".