hotaudio40 's amps - Page 43

I use SUPER HIGH FIDELITY LEDs that the naked eye cannot see...

Shipment arrived!

1 Thunderbolt Max headphone amp
1 DAC-Extasy DAC

It's obviously way too early to make any really useful comments, but I turned angle_shooter on to the T-bolt Max sight unseen, based only on the excellent SQ and performance of the RM-1, so just wanted to say to that I think you are going to be *very* happy that you went with this amp. Even out of the box this thing has met if not exceeded my initial expectations. "Sounds good, man!"

Now I'm just going to give it a hundred hours or so of burn in, along with the nuforce uDAC (though someone said that didn't really change much after even 1 month of burning in), and then do some comparisons. Both DACs compare VERY FAVORABLY so far - it looks like we have two strong winners on our hands - but I don't want to get too ahead of myself. On to burn-in.

cheers dave!

Does the Extasy have a headphone out or is it a pure DAC like the DAC Straight?

It has a headphone out.

Nice. Looking forward to your Extasy/uDAC comparisons, since they seem to be in the same category (performance, design, and hopefully price wise).

I simply can't believe the price performance ratios that are available these days. I'm sitting here listening to these DACs, and I'm just marveling at the high quality that's out there for the money today. There's nothing "budget" about this gear at all -- all except for the price, that is. And that's the way it should be, imo!

Yeah, Wolfson and Sabre DAC's for under $100 is great now.

hmm, this is strange. dmesg is reporting the DAC-Extasy as a Burr-Brown TI chip - is the "wolfson" just a varient or subcategory of Burr-Brown?

V-DAC: uDAC: DAC-Extasy: Whatever it is, it sounds pretty good, but I was under the impression this was a wolfson-based DAC.

I use a TI chip to do the USB to SPDIF convertion, then a DIR9001 to do the I2S convertion, then on to the WOLFSON DAC

You get the best of all possible worlds, as well you get the longevity of the TI chip for future upgraded of WINDOWS OS....

I am wondering....
Does it sound better now that you know it has a WOLFSON DAC ?????

hotaudio40

Not great for the sellers

Okay - sounds good - thanks for explaining.

And when I say "sounds good," it sounds good! For everyone who has been following the uDAC thread, we are talking here about another DAC that is easily in the same class as the nuforce. Definitely apples to apples. They each just have a slightly different flavor, as we would expect from the different chips. The V-DAC (at 3x the price) is more expansive and revealing than both, but so far, with minimal Extasy burn in, these two seem to be in the same league, just voiced a little differently. I am totally liking what I'm hearing.

But I've gotten in enough trouble over the past few days, so I'll shut up now until all burn-in and evaluating is complete.

lol, yes, you have to use differnt headsets, music, etc.... even times of day, as we all know the power supply mains are much quieter at night....

That's when the music really takes on a new "sweetness"....

lol

I just posted these in the uDAC thread - thought I would post them here too for anyone not following that one:

hotaudio, there are TI burr-brown chips that do USB to I2S. Was there a reason to go TI USB > S/PDIF before using another chip (DIR9001) for the I2S conversion? I'm just curious, not trying to bust your balls or anything.

Of course there was a reason

I thought I would go with one of the most popular TI chips that had the USB to SPDIF function, that way in case somebody where to say, oh I don't know, maybe use a different version of windows say... then the DAC would still self install....

Basically to protect my DACs' shelf-life and usability between all the different OS'es out there....

Since I don't, and probably can't write my own drivers, I rely on the built in Windows drivers, which is probably a better idea anyways...

So going with the most popular CHIP just seemed like a good idea....

I had looked at TI's little USB to SPDIF chip and thought about using it as well...

I can't remember the number off hand, but it looked like a nice little unit

And of course TI also sells chips with built in USB to I2S functions as well, and they are very nice

But I just went with this option.

There are SO many options out there...

Oh yes, And I also wanted to use the DIR9001 chip, it is VERY expensive compared to the rest, but I'm pretty sure its' limited 'jitter' makes it worth the extra bucks...

I didn't really believe that "you" could hear a 20ppm difference in jitter, but I think I was wrong...

You VERY MUCH CAN hear the difference, and in another SPDIF ONLY DAC I make, it is even more pronounced as that particular DAC (which I can't name) has a 'wave shaper' or 'buffer' stage for the incoming SPDIF signal.

That buffer "squares up" the digital information before it is feed to the DIR9001....

And here AGAIN, you CAN hear the difference it makes.... just feeding the SPDIF to I2S converter nice clean square waves....

Who would have thought....

hotaudio40