HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

montechristo358 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 12, 2018 7:10 pm I can see why you did, on paper at least it should be good

Exactly, hopefully it'll pan out well but if not hey ho

Ah yes, simplicity. I am currently mulling over pulling all the super duper regulators i put in my cdp and trying something simple.

I can't believe this little Chinese dac is so cheap. Have you looked inside one Doc ? Must be uber simplistic and as we know that is a good thing.

As far as the power supply goes i am thinking of building one myself as i have lots of bits and bobs in my parts bins to do it. 5V regulator will be easy to knock up. LM317, a couple of small caps, one resistor and a couple of green led's.

At £5 i could blow them up to my hearts content and not be too bothered

I wanted small and a case, it just wasn't worth building one when it is that price. The DAC is all minute surface mount components including the chip, I really can't see what is going on in it

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote: ↑Thu Apr 12, 2018 8:20 pm I wanted small and a case, it just wasn't worth building one when it is that price. The DAC is all minute surface mount components including the chip, I really can't see what is going on in it

Ok, cheers. Surface mount - that will be the reason they are so small. Makes it hard to trace power rails. I will still make a psu for it as i have all the bits sat around doing nothing. And you have seen my beautiful cases

Just ordered one as it said last one - not sure if that is a porky ? Anyway the postage is free and there was an offer so i got it for £3.76 WTF ?

Im partial to tda1541 based dacs, i just find them more musical.
I used a tda1541 based arcam delta black box 3 for a long time, tried the musical fidelity x24k which I think was a wolfson dac, have heard the mf m1 dac and have a beresford tc 7510.

The arcam was always the musical one, the 2 musical fidelity ones were clinical and the beresford is boring.

I have a philips cd160 that is a 1541 player with a coax out and did some a b with the 1541 internal dac and the beresford. Much prefer the internal dac.

The 1541 is more sensitive to the decoupling caps and the regs and clock, than modern stuff, but i like it in most guises. Dual 1540s in a modern standalone build would be lovely though.

But do bear in mind that I dont care that much about digital, its analogue for me

The £3.76 dac with the psu will be a bit of a shocker. It compares with my Teddy Pardo dac which cost a fair bit more. The only downside I have found is that the output is a bit on the low side so I have to crank up the volume control. When I get the TSS settled in I intend to do a proper bake-off between the 2 dacs. It’s going to be interesting.

Stemcor1990 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 12, 2018 9:25 pm The £3.76 dac with the psu will be a bit of a shocker. It compares with my Teddy Pardo dac which cost a fair bit more. The only downside I have found is that the output is a bit on the low side so I have to crank up the volume control. When I get the TSS settled in I intend to do a proper bake-off between the 2 dacs. It’s going to be interesting.

I will await your findings Stem. I have never heard a Teddy Dac or any of his other offerings. Did have a play with some teddyreg pcb's at one time and was not overly impressed. How much is a Teddydac ?

Stu

I was lucky to get on ebay Arcam Delta Black Box (MK1) without SPDIF (that was MK2)
Since then I was hooked to TDA1541!!
If you come across one of those on 2nd hand market it is a very good ( and cheap - under 100GBP) option