Valab Dac-First Impressions - Page 6

I believe 003 hit the nail on the head about Chinese audio equipment manufacturers, but I think this applies to the majority of "high end" products manufactured in China.
When buying from China, its hit or miss, and the last thing you want to do is roll the dice with a significant amount of money on the line. You definitely get what you pay for, and when its this cheap, your getting a piece of **** covered in sprinkles.
Personally, I would never voluntarily buy anything worth more than $20 from China. They are masters at manufacturing goods which look and feel of high quality, but in reality is more often than not just a metal box filled with crap. Yes, it MIGHT work. Yes, it MIGHT sound good. But I would rather invest a bit more for equipment that is less likely to fail and/or quickly degrade than have to deal with the headache and frustration associated with poor construction and crappy internal components that are passed off as authentic.

Not to turn this into a rant about chinese quality products, but I stand by my decision in buying this amp. At the price, there really is nothing else domestically speaking. Albeit, the seller should have most definitely informed the buyers that the products we were receiving was NOT what was advertised, shady in its own right. Not to say this was an isolated incident, but whatever, it is what it is.

Keep us posted on the new circuit boards and any other updates

Unless they aren't enough volts it has to be the heat. If the dac has been on a bit the heatskink is hot enough to almost burn oneself. I was reading that Sanyo OS-Cons are great in digital gear as long as they aren't in the single path. Maybe it's worth looking into them for our cap swap. I wonder if there is much of a difference in sound between mine having 47uf under the dacs and yours having 100. Are the rest of your smaller caps all 10uf besides the 5 power supply and blue Phillips?

have you guys stumbled across this yet?

先生 的分享空間

looks exactly like what we have but with the original caps pictured.

This is something else we should do. Might clean up some of the hash due to the direct shielded cable run.

http://byfiles.storage.live.com/y1pE...bG6yaAD8aKhNa8

Was going for this dac but a bit disappointed now with the news of using cheap parts.

Maybe i should pay more and get the lite-dac ah CAA Mod MKII
Lite DAC-AH CAA Mod MKII

Problem is that there is no usb-i2s connection to the dac-ah but then again i'm not sure how much better that would be compared to using some usb->spdif converter.

oh well i got more thinking to do but thanks for sharing the info about the caps in the VALAB.

Looks interesting. Know of anywhere else that sells this dac?

For stock dac-ah there is audiophile china and pacific valve got them as well. For a passive output modded ones i dont think there is much store that sell them but of course you can just do them yourself. Note that this dac has been around for more than 2 years or so and i think there is also amodding thread on head-fi for it.

I think VALAB dac is similar to the dac-ah except that it has already been designed to have a passive output and it got a usb interface for it. SQ wise i think based on the paper spec i would probably say that the lite-dac ah CAA mod MKII will be better because of its output caps but VALAB would probably be more bang for buck.

Notice one of the repliers near the begining of this thread is named TeraDac. I'm guessing it is the same person making both dacs.

Biggie.

Yep VALAB will for sure beat the stock dac-ah since the stock dac-ah still uses an opamp. The CAA modded dac-ah is an interesting choice for Aussies though since its stocked and covered by local supplier so its no biggie if something is wrong. I'm pretty sure the VALAB can be modified just like the dac-ah CAA mod as well.

Dont know where the above post get the pics of the cap connected to the rca but the CAA mod dac-ah have the same thing on its pic.

I just went to the page that I posted with the Teradac and scrolled through the albums and saw the output jack wiring. I did it last night but it was late so I didn't have a chance to listen to to see if it did much of anything. One thing I did notice that is disappointing to me is that the 5 2200uf caps don't seem to do anything in the circuit. All of their legs are soldered to the same piece of metal/ground. I'm not a electronic engineer but I'm guessing that doing this would render them useless.

Also in the albums it shows the OEM model and it has the same faceplate etc as the Valab. It makes Kevin's claim about soldering them together himself etc seem highly suspect.