For purely educational reasons (for now), I'm interested in building a discrete Sigma/Delta DAC. I'm not interested in anything high quality/audiophile or in something cheap, I would just like to understand how they behave in practice and play around with them. But, it seems nobody else is interested in this as I can't even find schematics of thought experiments and there are definitely no kits either...
I can't imagine that nobody else is interested in such an experiment. Is it perhaps too hard to handle the high frequencies in a controlled way on a breadboard/DIY PCB? Are the distances between DIY-able components simply too large?
I can't imagine that nobody else is interested in such an experiment. Is it perhaps too hard to handle the high frequencies in a controlled way on a breadboard/DIY PCB? Are the distances between DIY-able components simply too large?
Just the DAC or also the digital sigma-delta modulator?
Although I haven't seen any completely discrete designs, you might be interested in these threads:
Signalyst DSC1
The Best DAC is no DAC
My no DAC project. FPGA and transistors.
Converting PCM to DSD on the fly -- the nuts and bolts
Valve DAC from Linear Audio volume 13
74AHC02 and 74AHC08 DAC with 97 dB(A) dynamic range
Although I haven't seen any completely discrete designs, you might be interested in these threads:
Signalyst DSC1
The Best DAC is no DAC
My no DAC project. FPGA and transistors.
Converting PCM to DSD on the fly -- the nuts and bolts
Valve DAC from Linear Audio volume 13
74AHC02 and 74AHC08 DAC with 97 dB(A) dynamic range
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If it's for educational purposes, how about a sigma-delta ADC and DAC? Then you can leave out all the digital processing.
Simple second-order sigma-delta for checking raw DSD interfaces
Of course you can also leave out any digital processing by making a DSD DAC.
Simple second-order sigma-delta for checking raw DSD interfaces
Of course you can also leave out any digital processing by making a DSD DAC.
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Awesome, thanks for the links, Marcel! There's some great reading material. Nowadays, it may well make more sense to go for DSD and do all of the digital trickery on a general-purpose CPU before sending it to the DAC.
You can do the digital processing with an FPGA, a DSP or a general-purpose CPU; they are all Turing complete, so as long as they are fast enough and have enough memory, it doesn't matter much in principle.
Talking about Turing completeness, I see you are from the city where both Charles Babbage and Alan Turing studied and taught.
Talking about Turing completeness, I see you are from the city where both Charles Babbage and Alan Turing studied and taught.