HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

When I was a teenager and first got into hifi, I messed about with d/a convertor. I remember putting a td 151414 (that's from memory but it wrong but you know what I mean) in to a cd player.

Why is there no talk of d/a convertors any more as technology made it redundant?

It's just a chip. Plenty of talk on forums about the sound of various chips.

It is ffing boring though.

Loads of talk about DAC's everywhere ...

Digital to Analogue Convertor.

My main DAC uses 16 TDA1543 chips which are dinosaurs in modern audio.

However - Analogue to Digital is a whole different kettle of pilchards (ADC) and most often to be found in making digital copies of LP's.

Analogue to Digital Converters tend to be sold as Audio Interfaces and connect to computers via USB or occasionally Firewire, prices vary depending on facilities but the two channel in versions are all pretty similar. I have a Behringer U-Phoria which allows 24bit 192 Khz audio recording. I have also used an Allen and Heath Qu32 for multi-track recording with Garage Band (not very successfully) and PreSonus Studio One 4 which worked much better. However I suspect DQ isn't thinking in these terms.

So, what is considered the best chip and is there any basis to the chatter other than shifting product.

Some claim to hear differences between chips. How they can do that I don't know because each chip surely needs a differing power supply, anologue filter etc.

TDA1541 double crown (they were tested and best ones got a crown or two) is the legendary dac chip. Don't know which of the modern ones are regarded best through lack of interest.

As you know, everything is mostly marketing bollox these days.

karatestu wrote: ↑Sat Jan 30, 2021 1:27 pm

TDA1541 double crown (they were tested and best ones got a crown or two) is the legendary dac chip.

In it's day the TDA1541 was indeed the chip to chose, but then the arguments turned to whether it was better oversampled, or non oversampled. The discussions continue to this day.

It's debatable whether any TDA1541 available today are genuine, or Chinese knock off copies.

There a difference between copy and knock off.

I've yet to come across a bad Chinese product that didn't work fine.

Daniel Quinn wrote: ↑Sat Jan 30, 2021 5:26 pm

I've yet to come across a bad Chinese product that didn't work fine.

Eh ?

Why would it be bad if it worked fine ?