They are close to the balanced outputs correct? I wonder if they are being used as phase splitters for the balanced outputs (ie not a true balanced signal out of the dac).
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Wow, certainly not what I would have expected to see!
1) Where's the huge toroid you often see in high end audio gear?
2) The power supply is packed into that tiny little area, I guess not much space for large filtering caps, etc?
3) Opamps in the output path!
4) The same AD185x DAC chip found in devices like the RME PAD and DAC1, that many assail for being too bright (a charge I've never heard leveled against the GO8).
5) Are those output capacitors?!?!?
6) The only particularly distinguishing feature I see of the analog section is that it is very tightly laid-out and right next to the output jacks (short signal path) with plenty of power capacitance very closeby.
So what makes the supposed magic?
PsychoZX, I really doubt that the opamps are used to create a "fake" balanced output, since the DAC chip they use already generates a true balanced output, they would be foolish not to use it. Plus, there are no other amplification devices in that immediate area, so how else could they bring up the signal level before output?
PsychoZX, I really doubt that the opamps are used to create a "fake" balanced output, since the DAC chip they use already generates a true balanced output, they would be foolish not to use it. Plus, there are no other amplification devices in that immediate area, so how else could they bring up the signal level before output?
Well the sony SCD-1's dac is able to output a true balanced signal yet sony chose to use opamps to convert the signal into unbalanced for the RCA outs and another set of opamps to convert it back to balanced. But then again i'm not an expert on the subject so I am just speculating.
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Home Rig: Monster Power HTS3500MKII => Eastsound CD-E5 => Grover UR6 Reterminated w/ Eichmann Silver Bullets => Single Power Extreme Platinum => AKG K1000s / Sennheiser HD-595s
I'm on the list now as well my wait will be about 2 months though. Will be interesting to see if it comes close to being as good as my modded sacd1000.
Wow, certainly not what I would have expected to see!
1) Where's the huge toroid you often see in high end audio gear?
No real need for one with digital gear that does not have tubes.
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2) The power supply is packed into that tiny little area, I guess not much space for large filtering caps, etc?
Yeah, it's pretty tight in there. You can't see in the pics, but there are a few caps laid down, it looks to be a more off the shelf open frame PSU is all.
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3) Opamps in the output path!
See the last quote.
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4) The same AD185x DAC chip found in devices like the RME PAD and DAC1, that many assail for being too bright (a charge I've never heard leveled against the GO8).
As we've found, it all depends on the implementation of the DAC.
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5) Are those output capacitors?!?!?
The red Wima caps? Filtering perhaps? They're not electrolytic.
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6) The only particularly distinguishing feature I see of the analog section is that it is very tightly laid-out and right next to the output jacks (short signal path) with plenty of power capacitance very closeby.
Notice the "exotic" silver diodes there?
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So what makes the supposed magic?
Missed all those Chips I took pics of, including the AMD CPU, RAM, and the DSP chips, including the "mysterious" one that has a heatsink on it? Remember that the G08 does a good amount of processing to the "data". Hence the IDE CD-ROM that still makes me chuckle a little bit.
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PsychoZX, I really doubt that the opamps are used to create a "fake" balanced output, since the DAC chip they use already generates a true balanced output, they would be foolish not to use it. Plus, there are no other amplification devices in that immediate area, so how else could they bring up the signal level before output?
Remember our adventures with the bypassing the AD185x DAC chip in the RME? The output volume was less than stock, so those AD OP275's are there to boost the output signal slightly.
Heh, it looks more like a computer than a CD Player.
Too bad the RIAA won't allow it, but I've always been saying that Meridian should've hard drives to rip CD's to and have all your music at your fingertips.
Yeah, the G08 has a computer inside it, but it puts out some amazing music, much like many computers can .
Just a few immediate comments... The power supply uses a steel cage instead of a toroid. Steel is an effective shield against EMI (copper and aluminum are not), so it's just as good. They probably do it for space. There's enough space for a toroid in this component, but perhaps some of the other Meridian units have less space inside.
That thing that looks like a diode with the orange goop is actually a ferrite bead for separating the digital and analog grounds. The orange goop is glue, to prevent it from rattling.
Lots of power supply bypass capacitance everywhere. Those are fairly big as far as SMD caps go.
AD1852 huh? Like the Benchmark, I doubt they're using it at 44.1kHz.
There is a lot of processing going on there. The AMD chip is just a microcontroller for the rest of it, but there is a custom FPGA (the Altera chip) in addition to the DSP (the chip marked DD/dts). I'd guess the FPGA is a custom resampler, then the DSP does some kind of magic massage (dither?) as well as custom digital filtering.
If the GO8 is still in your possession, it might be interesting to see an RMAA test of the unit.
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