I decided to give the S.M.S.L. Sanskrit 6th a whirl recently to see how things stood on the cheap USB DAC front.
S.M.S.L. has long held my respect for trying hard to deliver high-quality audio at an extremely fair price. Just a quick look over the DAC's circuit board tells you that these are people who care about their work - from the etched S.M.S.L logo to the clean, logical parts layout. The build quality is apparent too in the simple, nicely finished case, which matches my Sapphire headphone amp (shown below) in "mini-me" style.
Part 1.
It's all "there", from the Cirrus Logic WM8740 DAC and NJM2114 opamp output with what looks like discrete transistor pair output buffers. The board generates 3.3 V, 5 V, and +/-12 V rails from the 9 V DC input. Other components include a 7805 voltage regulator, cmedia CS6631A USB audio processor, and Onsemi LC89091 receiver. A lot of stuff for the price. So it's a frustrating disappointment to have to report that it doesn't sound as good as I hoped. The sound is smooth, clean, and nicely detailed however. So, for the price, here again, one can't complain: it does what one might reasonably ask of it. It's hard to put one's finger on the source but musically, it fails to rise to the occasion. The sound is weak, feathery, light. Complex passages dissolve into incoherence. There is no power reserve. Perhaps due to the switching power supply whatever charge pump circuits are used to regenerate the internal voltage rails. Perhaps distortion from the transistor output stage, or insufficient filter capacitance near the op amp. These are just educated guesses on my part, but it does raise an interesting point: what does a DAC need to get truly high-end sound?
In Part 2. (coming soon), we'll take a look at exactly that.
S.M.S.L. has long held my respect for trying hard to deliver high-quality audio at an extremely fair price. Just a quick look over the DAC's circuit board tells you that these are people who care about their work - from the etched S.M.S.L logo to the clean, logical parts layout. The build quality is apparent too in the simple, nicely finished case, which matches my Sapphire headphone amp (shown below) in "mini-me" style.
Part 1.
It's all "there", from the Cirrus Logic WM8740 DAC and NJM2114 opamp output with what looks like discrete transistor pair output buffers. The board generates 3.3 V, 5 V, and +/-12 V rails from the 9 V DC input. Other components include a 7805 voltage regulator, cmedia CS6631A USB audio processor, and Onsemi LC89091 receiver. A lot of stuff for the price. So it's a frustrating disappointment to have to report that it doesn't sound as good as I hoped. The sound is smooth, clean, and nicely detailed however. So, for the price, here again, one can't complain: it does what one might reasonably ask of it. It's hard to put one's finger on the source but musically, it fails to rise to the occasion. The sound is weak, feathery, light. Complex passages dissolve into incoherence. There is no power reserve. Perhaps due to the switching power supply whatever charge pump circuits are used to regenerate the internal voltage rails. Perhaps distortion from the transistor output stage, or insufficient filter capacitance near the op amp. These are just educated guesses on my part, but it does raise an interesting point: what does a DAC need to get truly high-end sound?
In Part 2. (coming soon), we'll take a look at exactly that.
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