I built this up to see how the TDA8946AJ DC-controlled volume element sounds. According to the datasheet and comparing the figures with those for the same amp minus the volume control (TDA8946J) there's some additional THD so I was curious to hear how transparent it is.

There are transformers both on the input and the output of this. On the input to match levels (4:1 step down) and to do unbal-bal conversion. On the output again for the same reasons, except bal-unbal to drive my phones which I've not modified for 4 wire operation. The trafos are ferrite (=very cheap) RM10 for the input (under the board) and RM12 for output (behind the board). In order to be able to match a variety of phones, I've wound 4 identical secondaries so they can be combined in series or parallel.

From the pic you'll see the customary array of caps - I need to order up some lowESR (preferably NCC) 1800uF caps to do better justice to the rails. Last night I experimented with some ceramics...

The Schitt Yggy DAC has already created something of a stir over on Head-Fi amongst those who've heard pre-production prototypes. Its of interest not just because of the pre-launch buzz but also because the designer (Mike Moffat) is one of the long-time seasoned guys in the field. He says this is the best practical DAC he knows how to build. And its priced ISTM very reasonably given the amount of tech it embodies ($2300) - the DAC chips come from ADI and are $64 a piece on the manu's website. He's using 4 of them but says he had to address the glitching of the DAC without using a sample-hold which sounds like ***.

The chip is the AD5791BRUZ which ADI designed for industrial/scientific/medical applications rather than for audio. Datasheet attached.

Having looked over the DS what strikes me as interesting is that this is a 20bit DAC (1ppm) yet the 1kHz THD performance (p4) isn't anything to write home about (-97dB) and that figure is given at a very low sample rate...

Here's something very misleading in the 6moons preview of Vinni Rossi's (of Red Wine Audio fame) latest supercapacitor powered kit. They have 18 * 350F supercaps in the box and they say '...the total rating becomes a whopping 6300F'. However each capacitor is only 2.7V so presumably to get any audio signal at all out, they need to operate these caps in series. Caps in series don't multiply, they divide so the total capacitance drops by a factor of 18. Hence only 19.4F. Not a small difference from 6300F or did I miss something?

https://www.6moons.com/audioreviews2/vinnierossi/3.html (the text at this link has since been updated to remove the 'total rating...whopping' remark).

I think I may have missed something - they aren't using all the supercaps all the time, rather there are 9 discharging and 9 charging. So the total capacitance in the audio circuit at any time is 350/9 = 39F. Still an impressive amount of capacitance but the problem is that the ESRs add too....

Thanks to Matthieu (Malefoda) for the heads up on this. It looks distinctly like a DAC inspired by the DAC-AH - note not only the 8 DAC chips but also the PCB layout closely follows that design's. The price on Taobao is about half the AH (368rmb) so I shall be ordering up one or more to have a play. Matthieu found it on another website with prices in USD, here - https://www.cart100.com/Product/42124644877/.
Note there are two options here (blue, black) - the cheaper one is a kit of parts I believe, the more expensive ($84) the finished unit. Going on the translation of the Taobao page, the kit does not include the transformers, mains switch or the case.

Update : here's the summary of the mods so far, for details go to Malefoda's thread linked in the comments.

1) Re-route the output ground so the opamp filtering caps aren't subject to injected CM noise from the destination component (amp or pre).

2) Reduce the supply voltage to the output opamps...

Last night the battery of my I2S source ran out so while it was on charge, I unboxed my last remaining Lite DAC-AH to have a listen to that, fed from my (mains powered) QA550 wav player. I'd bought 3 DAC-AHs a few years back when I was playing with them.

The differences between the stock DAC-AH and the Ozone Pagoda were apparent in the areas of soundstage depth, dynamics (especially at LF) and coarseness at higher levels. So this got me wondering what would be the lowest hanging fruit in terms of mods to it. My procedure before had been to implement everything I could think of before having a listen - this way its not possible to know which mods are the most effective ones and which can be omitted.

This time I'm going to be a bit more disciplined for the purposes of discovering which mods deliver the best bang for the buck. The first one I'm going to try is a passive LC filter between the DACs and the AD847s. Here's the schematic for it - its using the cheap and...

Here's the 'Ozone desktop pagoda' DAC for 2015.

A single TDA1387 feeds a 3 inductor quasi-elliptic filter followed by AD8017s as buffer-amps. The large ferrite cores in the base do the bal-SE conversion. The power supply is 4 * AA NiMH cells which should in theory last for a whole day's music.

The design is really a 'MkII' version of the Ozone portable where the AD815 buffers have been replaced to allow a more compact construction and lower power draw without the constraint of being able to drive IEMs directly. Whereas the portable used a stack of 1387s due to the choice of 7mm TDK inductors, this one's using pot-core chokes giving a much higher working impedance and hence higher output levels from just the one DAC chip. The desktop footprint is about that of a CD.

Update : I found some bargain Jamicon caps on Taobao which give the tower more elegant proportions, as well as improving the supply impedance to the buffer-amps and giving more breathing...

I'll outline here some thinking in choosing the major building blocks (aka ICs) for this card - any comments welcome as this progresses.

First up the DAC chip will be the TDA1387 initially. I don't know for sure that the output from the ARM/Xilinx card is I2S but I'm going to verify that fairly soon. There's nowhere near enough room for the passive shunt I've adopted previously so the bass performance probably is going to have to suffer. I shall pay considerable attention to the power supply arrangements though in an attempt to make up for the LF lack.

After the DAC, passive I/V will follow and then a filter using the TDK 7mm inductors I've used previously. I've slotted them into the gap between the PCB and the case and there's just enough height available. Since space is at a premium I'll experiment with a 3 inductor design - the stop band attenuation will suffer but probably I'll add a secondary LC filter at the output to make up for that somewhat. The secondary...

Thanks to jambul for alerting me to this one - ÕÔÓîΪ×÷Æ· - Aune M1 ±ãЯʽ²¥·ÅÆ÷²âÆÀ±¨¸æ [Soomal¡¤ÊýÂë¶à] (link is in Chinese but its mainly for the pics).

Notice that although its using the PCM1793 chip the D/A and analog circuits are all on a daughter board. This gives rise to the possibility of engineering a daughter board with a much better DAC chip (think TDA1387) and improved head-amp...

Street price here is around 800rmb (£80, $130) so I shall be ordering one to have a play.

Update - looks like I'm rather slow to catch on, Taobao already has somebody's alternative DAC-AMP card, which appears to be selling fairly well, here : https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=...cket=13#detail

I've now placed the order for the M1, hopefully it'll arrive tomorrow and then I'll follow Dave (EEVBlog)'s advice : 'don't turn it on, take it apart'. The main question I want an answer to is how...

NXP's ARM offerings I find to be the most power efficient and I've searched for a long time for a current-sipping M4 which is available in a lowish pin count package. Up until now the best offering in that realm has been STM's F411 with 13mA @ 100MHz. NXP's latest offering the LPC54100 beats that by a healthy margin, turning in a sub-10mA draw at the same clock rate. There's also a dual-core variant with a 100MHz M0+ with around half the current requirement. Respect - the fly in the ointment though is only 2 SPI peripherals which don't support TI mode. Pricing looks great at $2/10k.

https://www.nxp.com/news/press-releas...ng-market.html

Getting isolation from the mains supply is an on-going challenge for me. Here's my latest stab at getting as close to a battery as I can currently manage - a ferrite line-output trafo soon to be pressed into service as a low-capacitance isolation transformer.

The back story is that I'd heard that split bobbin trafos were the way to go for the best isolation from the mains. Having just acquired some for chipamp-drive unit interfacing I was curious to check out their credentials. I measured around 20pF interwinding capacitance which is about the lowest of any mains trafo I've checked. Of that it seems that the majority of the capacitance is directly between the windings, a smaller amount is due to coupling via the steel core (which of course is conductive). So then I figured that even if the windings could be moved infinitely far apart the steel core would be the limiting factor in reducing the capacitance.

Air core trafos are a possibility but then they're hopeless...