:)

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djp

You like this DAC that much?

This was recommended to me.

http://www.obadimports.com/catalog/item/6697671/5226912.htm

I think since it doesn't use that PCM2700 burr brown dac (I think that's the common one).

I've been content just to read the CA forum for many months. Loving the debates about jitter, etc and always on the lookout for a possible giant killer. I'm acquainted with Empirical Steve's reputation vs Ashly James at AVI, etc, etc. Very interesting and educational. I appreciate everything you guys have to say about anything.

I'd think a regular reader of the CA forum familiar with Steve and his hardware would immediately wonder why he's bumping a cheap DAC on eBay. I'm also wondering how few regulars caught this little pitch because nobody has said anything about it in a week.

I read this thread a couple days ago, immediately Googled it then spent a bunch of hours reading 92 pages of forum posts at Head-fi about the evolution, trials, and tribulations of this eloquently simple $200 Taiwanese NOS DAC. I suggest anyone interested in DAC-related buzz should research the VALAB DAC. It may be very well worth the time you spend on it. I sure think so, anyway. I'm probably going to order one this weekend.

BTW, Chris... you might want to take a look at it too.

Rand

The point is taken into consideration that Steve is a *very* bright entrepreneur selling relatively expensive computer audiophile hardware at Empirical... and he's saying the VALAB DAC is a no-brainer as the choice for inexpensive DACs.

The VALAB is a simple design using some ancient DAC components, very well implemented (better over many revisions) and it's said to be very, very musical. Of course the talk is subjective, but unless Steve has a hidden stake in the VALAB, just his suggestion that it's the only choice for a cheap DAC warrants a hard look. IMO, anyway. So I had a hard look and I was duly impressed. In fact, I think I'm going to go ahead and sign into eBay right now and buy the darn thing.

Note, it is a NOS DAC for 16/44.1 only. Priority reclocked USB into I2S, then Toslink and coax inputs. (It's primarily designed as a USB DAC with options.) Paralleling 8 TDA1543 DACs (20 year old technology.) NO opamps in the circuit.

If the DAC turns out to be as musically sweet as the guys at Head-fi say it is, it's worth a hard look here at CA. That's a no-brainer too.

Rand

Rand - the Valab is a simple DAC with no digital filtering. It literally has no output stage, just a stack of D/A chips. It is great sounding with a low-jitter input and even better if you upgrade the output coupling capacitors. For modding I recommend:

3.3uFd V-Cap oils bypassed with .22uFd Sonicap Platinums. These require some weeks of break-in BTW. This will be a world-class DAC with these caps. Not as good as my Overdrive, but beating most DAC's in the $10K range.

An I dont sell them either.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

If I were to buy a Valab DAC, where would I get it modded as per Steve's suggestions?

I'm about as good at DIY as I am at golf - for the sh__s!

Mike M

markr -

I'm not really interested in the Valab - already have a good DAC. I would like to know who, if anyone, is doing mods on DACs. I know Empirical used to mod certain DACs. And Pacific Valve sells pre-modded, but they don't mod anything else.

Like, if I wanted to upgrade my DAC (and maybe my 10 year old Aragon amp) is there someone reputable who does this ?

Mike m

I doubt I'm gonna get any mods done anyways. I just spent all my extra $$$ on those Quantum Clips. (Oh my God, I hope they work)

I just like to know about mods. I have friends who ask me if I can mod their stuff - they assume I know how to do this becuase they know its my hobby.

Mike M

Here is a World Leaders retail DAC chip prices for you to compare with the eventual product.

http://www.analog.com/en/digital-to-analog-converters/audio-da-converter...

Here is a list of technical support provided: http://www.analog.com/en/design-center/index.html

This give some idea how a typical Hi Fi Dac Manufacturer will be helped to do the best possible job.

$10K for a DAC is a little hard to justify IMO, especially once you've heard an M-Audio Transit from Pro Audio Giant M-Audio and Pro Tools who are leaders in their field. It's $89 in the US I believe and the size of a pack of 20 cigarettes.

Ash

Before you run off and buy this Chinese DAC being discussed here, please consider that:

1) Audiophiles love tinkering and spending money on gear, are extremely susceptible to psychological bias (hearing what they want to hear) and get a bit over-excited when they think they may have found a "giant killer." Two hundred bucks? They spend this kind of money on feet for their turntables (ie: record players).

2) The DAC in question is built around a 20-year-old chip from the dawn of digital technology. We may have made progress and some evidence of that may be that...

3) The companies making NOS (non-oversampling) DACs are typically about the size of your walk-in closet. There are no pro NOS dacs that I'm aware of. This is a fringe technology, plain and simple, and the science is questionable at best.

4) The guy who originally recommended this DAC manufactures and sells power cords -- yes, the 3 feet of copper from the wall to an audio component -- for $1200. Take that for what you will.

Caveat emptor.

Tim

David

I can't thank you enough for your kind words, they come at a time when I most need them.

It seems that simple provable facts are all it takes to get a thread locked on this Forum right now.

One final point I'd make about the M-Audio is that is extracts 24 Bits from a USB socket and provides an optical digital output that isn't normally on PCs. This is very useful because it avoids electrical connection with a potentially noisy computer chassis and gives the opportunity to compare lots of other DACs with a cheap reference.

Chris argues, wrongly in my opinion that there are big differences between DACs but there is not if they are correctly implemented because they all measure so similarly. They are the best performing part of a hi fi after the noughts and ones from the computer. hi end.

The Chinese DAC suggest by Steve may be using the original Philips TDA 1541 which is fast achieving cult status amongst anacrofiles at the moment. We stopped using it in 1993/4 to switch to the very obviously better 20 Bit Burr Browns and each time we've found a better one we've moved on until we now use the Wolfson WM8741 that Linn claim is the best in the world.

Ash

Ashley James wrote:
I can't thank you enough for your kind words, they come at a time when I most need them.

How so, Ashley? I hope things are OK? You shouldn't be receiving any flack for putting across reasonable and substantiated arguments that benefit the CA forum massively.

It seems that simple provable facts are all it takes to get a thread locked on this Forum right now.

Yes, I agree. As soon as the subjectivist clap-trap starts to wobble it does appear threads get cut short. IMO.

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djp

Heh. This is fun.

Tim, I take Steve's advice weighing that he sells a $1200 power cord. I'm not going to buy one but I'll bet he's sold a few and I'll bet the owners are usually happy with their purchases. I wish I had that kind of money to throw at toys. I'd probably have an Empirical Pace Car. (Why not?) I might even have a set of $200 feet on a turntable just for the heck of it.

I appreciate the little closet-sized Taiwanese electronics companies because they often spearhead the development of inexpensive and refined niche hardware. Who else is going to do that? I'd still be listening to a mediocre consumer grade amp in my ambient setup if Sonic Impact hadn't once upon a time put a Tripath chip in a plastic toy amp and a few little Taiwanese companies jumped into the spectacular wake behind it.

It's important to recognize that giant killers in audiophile hardware will come as technologies evolve and someone realizes a way to implement them. We just have to keep watching and hope the advances come to us sooner than later.

Rand

3.3uFd V-Cap oils bypassed with .22uFd Sonicap Platinums. These require some weeks of break-in BTW.

That's a $230 mod! Not really a big deal but it kicks the 'virtually disposable' aspect of the Valab DAC up a notch or 2. Certainly not something to do right after receiving the DAC. Not for me, anyway. Still very happy to have the information.

Rand

for some maybe. The original request was for a $120 DAC. The Transit would seem to be the best bet and certainly fulfills the portable requirement. There's a review here

www.audiomidi.com/aboutus/reviews/edge_transit.cfm

It's usually in high demand so would be easy to sell on if you decide later to get something more sophisticated.

The DAC in the Macbook itself isn't bad. Alternatively, the Beresford TC7510 is just outside your budget but crops up on eBay from time to time. Ditto the Edirol UA-25, which has rather more facilities than either the other two.

The Transit is a throw-away toy IMO. I have modded them for years - the modded version was my first computer audio product, the original Off-Ramp. If you dont care about sound quality, go for it.

Steve N.

I'll completely agree with Ashley and others that promote checking out the Transit. I used a Behringer UCA202 on a station at work for a while and it worked well enough for a dirt cheap USB DAC. You can get one of those for about $30 USD and it has a headphone jack with a volume wheel, toslink, and RCA in/out options.

I've used M-Audio Revolution 5.1 cards (all purchased used on eBay) in home computers, mid-level music servers and juke boxes for myself, friends, and family. I have one in an old used off-lease IBM workstation that's still plugged into a Sonic Impact toy Tripath amp softly playing ambient music from SomaFM Drone Zone much of the time. (Foobar has counted over 46 weeks of play time on that thing.) It's a good system for the task. The Rev 5.1 cards can be had for less than $50 USD. I've used the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card that Ashley has talked about and it's a notch better and not a lot more $. I believe they both use the same decent quality AK DACs.

If you dont care about sound quality, go for it.

Cheap hardware can set a reference and some people will be satisfied with that level of sound quality. Nothing wrong with that at all.

Rand

I know you lot want to talk about dacs for about $450 but i aint go that much spare cash!!! I am looking for one to cost about £150. So far it looks like the M audio transit is the best bet for the price. Im not expecting anything spectacular just cleaner audio from the PC with no PC noise

Have been reading what hifi and they give the bereford an amazog review. Little bit more than what i want to spend and as my computer doesnt have and optical output i would need to buy one of these too (any recomendations, cheap as poss please!) But the thing i really want is a review of the beresford and the project usb box by the same people so i can compare!

Hi robby.
You might check these out; they all have UBN in and are under $200 US:

> Giga Lab Moon DAC (NOS) $185 @ Pacific Valve & Electric. I used to have one and its an exellent value. Very well built.
> Musiland LILO $99 @ Pacific Valve
> Diyeden SVDAC 06 $169 @ Pacific Valve
> Diyeden SVDAC05 $199 @ Pacific Valve
> Fubar II $137 @ Audiophile Products
> Super Pro DAC707SE $120 @ Audiomagus (might not be in stock)
> King Rex UD-01 $177 @ Audiomagus

The Silverstone EB-01 can be found for way under $100 and does a credible job.

As will be clear in one more sentence, I know absolutely nothing about the construction of DACs. Since the VALAB DAC is so good with ancient chips, why not swap those out with the latest 24/192 D/A chips?

why not swap those out with the latest 24/192 D/A chips?

I don't know the intricacies of how each chips makes the sound that it does, but the manufacturer of this DAC used these chips specifically and tuned the DAC around them. The sound is simply amazing from such an affordable unit, so I wouldn't go making huge changes that would add expense and possibly ruin the sound.

If anyone wants to have their DAC modified, I know a guy in So Cal who does it. He's done a lot of work on my equipment, both tube and solid state and he's a real perfectionist.

Many of the cheapish DACs recommended here only support up to 48kHz / 16 bit signals. With the emergence of the many hi-resolution downloads coming out, don't we need to get DACs that can handle 96kHz / 24 bit samples or better in order to get the most out of the songs?

This would leave out the VALAB DAC since that only supports 48/16, unless you only plan on listening to your ripped CDs.

Also, many of the USB DACs on e-Bay don't specify what sample rate and bit-depth they support. Many seem to be 48/16 at the most.

At least the M-Audio and E-Mu products support the higher resolutions, though arguably in non-audiophile packaging.

Anyway, I appreciate this thread. I'm somewhat in the market myself and would love to own something like the Benchmark DAC1, but the E-Mu/M-Audio toys are much more in my price range!

Doug A.