Valab Dac-First Impressions - Page 103

stock is stock, luxery is in between, and the one with the separate psu is the best option. that's the order of sound quality as well.

Did you test them? Or you're just supposing it because the luxury has some more of this and that... and the separate PSU one has even more of this and that?

Well, obviously the bigger PSU improves sound quality, there's no doubt about that, just read the thread. And the only difference between the Luxery Version and the Standard + PSU is the separate PSU is a hair better. (I think it has a better voltage regulator or somthing like that) if you plan to mod, you also get more room in the standard + psu.

I've owned and heard the Version 2.1 DAC and the 3.0 Luxery dac. The Luxery dac in stock form sounded better then my 2.1 dac, I attribute that mostly to the power supply, but the 3.0 dac also had a reclocker that the 2.1 dac does not, im not 100% certain the reclocker helps much though. I managed to break my 3.0 dac attempting to mod it and now im listening to modded 2.1 dac.

also, for what it's worth, the Quality Control and build quality of the 2.1 dac was signifigantly better then my 3.0 version. But im pretty sure that's luck of the draw.

Got it.

I have a weird problem with my VALAB DAC

I bought mine a year ago, it was the revision with the 1ppm clock. Four months before, it suddenly started giving lots of background hiss. Whenever I play a song, I can hear it but there is too much hiss.

The hiss is present even when I have not connected any inputs to the DAC, any ideas what went wrong? I'm well versed with basic soldering so if any component might have died I can do the change myself

I know i'm new to Head-Fi, I have been a lurker since a long time, will soon post an intro in the appropriate section

Thanks in Advance,
Sunny

I solved all the problem of hiss and hum with a 3 to 2 cheater on the power cord of the laptop, the dac is dead quiet now with any connection. Hope this help

Valabulous

my Valab NOS DAC has been running for a few months now, on usb, everything has been working fine, sometimes i have had to turn it on and off for it to work, but i think that may have been about the computer interacting with the DAC

for the price, i am pretty happy, plus it is possible to improve it too

Got my Valab a couple of days ago. Very pleased with it.. Seems like it performs better than the Cambridge DacMagic, no? I borrowed the DacMagic from a local hifi retailer a couple of weeks ago, and the Valab definately sounds better in my ears. I especially feel like it's more air in the valab.

Would you guys recommend drilling holes in these new versions, to help with the heat? Mine isn't that hot really. My HEED Canamp is warmer actually.

it is not the temp of the chassis that you should but rather the DAC chips themselves. I understand that they are connected to a heatsink in the later versions, not sure if that is mounted using heat conducting paste (if not I'd add it as it greatly enhances the efficiency of the heatsink -same thing as having airconditioning without a fan to move the air, IF you are up to dismantling the pieces involved that is)

valab

The DAC I have has a heatsink but did not have conductive paste, which I did add.

My Chamelion does have conductive paste. A very small dab of white paste. I removed the baord to work on it and replace with a drop, way more than enough. Make sure you do not use electrically conductive paste and when you slide that aboard back in the paste will plow up a little and may touch the legs of the chips. Don't want to going to the chassis.

I do not have a later version od the VALAB dac with the chips using the chassis for heatsink so I do not know about that.

Thanks for the response guys. I'll drill some holes and add some thermal paste then. I think I've got some leftovers from when I built my computer.

My 2.1 valab, which uses the chasis as heatsink for dac chips did not have any thermal paste. However, my 3.0 Dac did. I think it's standard practice now. Though I replaced it with a high quality CPU compound. I have not opened chameleon yet.

After reading 103 pages, and yes, it took a while I'm wondering how the Valab DAC really stacks up with the likes of Little Dot DAC_I, iBasso D10 (primarily the DAC that is). And what are people preferences on NOS vs OS? I'm feeling quite lost here in the DAC jungle, but right now I'm considering one of the aforementioned to pair up with my EF2A tube/hybrid amp (bypassing its DAC). Price range around 150-250, maaaaybe stretching up to 275. Sorry for hijacking the thread, but this amp really does look interesting, I'm just a little held back by the negative feedback (quality wise) it's received in this thread, hence my question

my version 2.5 valab has been burning in for about 6 months, everything has been going great, there has never been any clipping or hum. there has never been any vibration from the transformer, i would say burn in improvements levelled off at 3 weeks

i use the usb input and the sound is pretty exciting for digital, it is way, way, way, cleaner than any soundcard that i ever heard

errnst
please, what soundcard have you heard?