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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2009 0:34:05 GMT
Maybe if it had valves then Leo would build it. So go ahead and put a valve gain stage.  Miguel I hope you rubbed in plenty of suntan lotion before you fell asleep on Miami Beach ? Alex |
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leo
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Post by leo on Nov 2, 2009 8:20:23 GMT
One of the weiss dacs is reported to be good although I heard rumours a certain diy design gave one a kicking  Are we talking about your fav SABRE DAC giving it a kicking? You won't be disappointed with the Musiland, btw - great sounding stock, even better with external supply. Feeding it to the Buffalo, you may not need to change the crystal? There is absolutely no auditory problem with 44.1KHz on this unit - it may be not be exactly 44.1KHz but it's still within USB spec. It was only word of mouth, the diy dac was supposed to be based around PCM1794 using modded Pass D1 as I/V output stage I've not played about with the Weiss yet so not had chance to compare it against Sabre I'm also going to try it with a couple of other dacs I have including a Beresford Caiman |
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Post by leo on Nov 2, 2009 8:22:37 GMT
Dave Stick with Firewire. Many of the big boys at CA are currently extolling the virtues of Firewire. Could be the next big thing ! More and more upmarket DACs are now featuring Firewire as the preferred source. Alex The Musiland USB device would be purchased more out of curiosity than anything else... and for a bit of a play of course Dave Thats the main reason I want one, its not so bad trying things when they are pretty cheap |
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leo
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Post by leo on Nov 2, 2009 8:28:42 GMT
Maybe if it had valves then Leo would build it. So go ahead and put a valve gain stage. That maybe something I try later for the laugh if I have the parts its easy enough to tap an output socket from the dac chip of the original Buffalo allowing external output devices to be tried. It may make Alex sick though ;D This nutter already tried it with the Sabre www.lampizator.eu/LAMPIZATOR/REFERENCES/Buffalo%20DAC/BuffaloDAC.html |
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jkeny
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Post by jkeny on Nov 8, 2009 1:09:39 GMT
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Post by leo on Nov 8, 2009 1:16:03 GMT
Will have a look though that in the morning, internet is running slow at the mo because I'm downloading the boxing so I'm off to bed!
I'm still waiting for the 01 USD to arrive
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Post by jkeny on Nov 8, 2009 23:37:42 GMT
www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/153191-m2tech-hiface-usb-spdif-24-192khz-asynch-5.html#post1974289Success  The clock needs 1-2mS to initialise so it needed to be powered up before the Cypress chip as I suspected. I re-did the clock - I'll post pics later. How's the sound, I hear you ask . Obviously all this is on my own system so whatever the abbreviation is BUT Bass is much more solid & powerful, mids & highs are more crystalline. What I use for listening is Herbie Hancock's River (The Joni Letters) recorded in WAV to disk from CD. As I said before, I'm using a modded Lepai amp (Tripath TA2020) with no caps on the input (because I'm using a transformer). So no caps from DAC o/p straight through to amp input. My test is to get the brush strokes on the cymbals to sound like brush strokes on cymbals with texture, etc rather than a haze of sound - this gets me closer to it with some texture showing through, not all the way. I haven't heard a system yet that renders this properly so maybe it's in the recording. As for the rest of the album, the voices sound amazingly lifelike (Tina Turner, Corrine Bailey Rae, leonard Cohen, Joni herself, etc), the piano sounds perfect, Wayne Shorter's sax playing is a wonder on this album too & you can just about hear the spit in the mouthpiece Anyway, I would recommend this mod to anyone - cheap too ($3 clock, $8 battery). A lot of the sonic improvement may well be providing a clean PS to the clock, something I couldn't do to the crystal to test it.
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Post by jkeny on Nov 10, 2009 22:39:06 GMT
Guys, You can help me diagnose this, I'm sure: I'm making mods to a USB DAC & as my test CD, I'm using Herbie Hancock's River (The Joni Letters) recorded from CD as WAV to HDD on my laptop. On the recording there are parts (30 secs or so) in some songs that sound like a hiss & I have always assumed that it was a cymbal being brushed but not resolved properly by my system. In the same parts of the recording I can distinctly hear cymbal brushing so I'm unsure what this noise is. It's on the first song starting at 53 secs in So with my modded system I can hear still hear this hiss even though the rest of the recording has more texture & detail to it. Can anyone confirm or otherwise what I'm hearing? Can you tell me how it sounds on your system? Download here: www.4shared.com/dir/8375528/16be1233/Music.html |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2009 23:24:37 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2009 23:39:56 GMT
John
From a listening only POV...
Right from the start you have an irregular double hiss-like sound in the background. It could be a very gentle tap of a brush on a snare followed by an equally gentle, short drag. It's irregularity, namely at the beginning of every main piano phrase could be intentional or could be noise. Not knowing the the piece of music is a disadvantage. The later hiss sound you mention is a "drawing circles" brush on either a ride or a light crash/splash cymbol.
Although the piano sounds quite convincing the drummers input sounds like the producer got carried away. IMHO!
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Post by jkeny on Nov 10, 2009 23:45:20 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2009 23:50:54 GMT
John No, we aren't as paranoid as some . Alex P.S. I have emailed you a screen grab from SF9 |
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jkeny
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Post by jkeny on Nov 11, 2009 0:21:04 GMT
CJ,
So you hear it as a hiss too! Remember, I'm just trying to evaluate my mods on my USB DAC & was using this as my reference. So, I thought that there might be some texture to this hiss that I'm missing which a better resolving system would reveal.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2009 0:51:00 GMT
The early noise sounds like hiss to me too. I hadn't read Chris' note before starting to write this but I was also about to write that I feel when the loud piano notes start I think the hiss is affected by it ie it rises just after the key strike and then reduces again, like some sort of sibilance. I agree with Chris on his observations of the later sounds. It also sounds to me like the producer decided to get his money's worth out of every musician there all at the same time at that 53 sec mark!
Syd
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Post by jkeny on Nov 11, 2009 1:36:21 GMT
Syd, It's good to hear consensus forming on this - this leads me to believe that my USB DAC is resolving enough  As I said above, it's interesting/confusing that a famed engineer, Helik Hadar, & famed producer Larry Klein were involved in it's production - that's why I didn't immediately write it off as a recording artefact as is commonly found on a lot of modern recordings. I guess it might be as Chris said a brush drawing circles on cymbal - he seems to know his drumming |
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leo
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Post by leo on Nov 11, 2009 19:59:20 GMT
Well its here, I have installed 1.0.6.0 firmware I'll let it run in, initial impression is not that great using Foobar with ASIO drivers 44.1k, highs don't seems right, cymbals are smoothed out going ppfff with some sibilance on vocals  bass is a bit weak 96k is better, will give it more burn in |
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Post by jkeny on Nov 11, 2009 20:17:43 GMT
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Post by leo on Nov 11, 2009 20:24:22 GMT
Leo, it will be good to hear your on-going impressions as you have considerable experience with a lot of different DACs/transports. Are you running it into your Sabre? At the moment, yes running it with Sabre and also a Beresford Caiman, will try the Audial AYAII later tbh mate I think its USB crud I'm hearing with the high's, first thing I will definitely be trying is an external supply |
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Post by leo on Nov 11, 2009 20:41:09 GMT
I'm glad you already asked for some more detailed info The separate supply is a no brainer, USB is definitely noisy Those that say all S/pdif sounds the same is talking shite |
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Post by PinkFloyd on Nov 11, 2009 23:27:13 GMT
Those that say all S/pdif sounds the same is talking shit Shouldn't that be "shite"? |
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leo
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Post by leo on Nov 12, 2009 8:19:59 GMT
Those that say all S/pdif sounds the same is talking shit Shouldn't that be "shite"? There you go, changed |
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Post by jkeny on Nov 12, 2009 16:48:46 GMT
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Post by leo on Nov 13, 2009 21:09:20 GMT
Thats interesting, thanks for posting the link.
What I'm going to do is mod just one of the outputs first, the phono socket will be changed to a 75R BNC, try with out the pulse traffo and then an alternative type of pulse traffo etc, I can easily compare against the stock BNC output
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Post by leo on Nov 14, 2009 22:06:45 GMT
Ok, so I converted the phono out Going over it quickly those with one of these units should hopefully understand how to do the changes. Series smd resistor to input of pulse transformer bypassed, SMD resistor shunting to ground removed, pulse traffo removed, added 75R from input going across holes where pulse traffo was (in and out), 10R added joining grounds across other holes where pulse traffo was (in and out) Phono socket removed and 75R BNC fitted Comparing stock BNC output to new converted BNC output was quite interesting, initial impression was where the hell did that bass come from  the sound has more depth My scope is only 20meg so I doubt it'll be able to show us enough detail on s/pdif for comparing, I'll take a look soon as I get chance Adding an external psu next should be quite easy, I'll do that soon as I get time |
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Post by jkeny on Nov 16, 2009 14:25:29 GMT
Interesting, Leo, - you're finding initial benefits to bypassing the output trafos too! What is the voltage out reading on the BNC socket now?
Is this the correct schematic & values for the output stage - jpg attached? How the hell do I attach a file?
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bass is a bit weak
the sound has more depth