Mini Dac TDA1543 X 4 NOS - Page 44

I would be really nice if past Muse TDAx4 modders would give a complete list of mods with priority and details on how to do the mod.
I just bought mine and while its ok its not as good as my RME 9632 dac that was beaten by a 100 emu 1212m card dac.

Bass suck on this dac unmmoded..

I need a list of all the mods in order of priority so that i can justify the buy.. It need to beat at least the RME

Also im running this dac with optical is it as good as Spdif? The un-lock led is not ON.
Edited by sinae - 8/27/11 at 4:43pm

 

I think the most important mod is to change the output cap to something better or the shorted the caps to get best sound from it. If you want the best sound from it, just shorted output capacitors, it will make a huge improvement. How long have you got it? Did you burn-in it? Optical and Coaxial are types of Spdif connector, i think it will be very hard to hear different between these, you just need to get a good optical cable. un-lock led is not ON when it received signal so that's ok.

I dug out a 9v 500mA PSU and the DAC ran just fine with it. However, the PSU got quite hot after a while. I'm mostly using a 9v 1.2A regulated supply for now. It's a brick but it works fine. The 12v PSU that came with the DAC was rated 1.5A.

 

This is with the white PCB DAC with the 15-18v input listed on the PCB. I'm not entirely sure that's accurate as it did get warm quite fast when using a 12v supply as reported by others with the blue PCB version.
 

 

it might need some more running time but for now I find the soundstage incoherant and bass sloppy.
A little mid centric also...
Edited by sinae - 8/28/11 at 6:27pm

The shorted mod really improve the bass and soundstage and it's very easy to do but you must check if your amp have input capacitor.

I might try this but how can I tell if an amp has input capacitors? Short of opening it up and looking (and even then I wouldn't know what to look for).
 

 

Someone said most of amps have input capacitor except portable amps. You should get a DMM then shorted the Muse and mesure the DC out of your amp while connected to the Muse, if the DC current mesured is below 20mV then it's good to go.

Some one plz help me. My new Muse when i turn in on while no music is playing the unlock led  is ON all the time. When the music play, it's OFF but some time it's blink and make noise in the song. And i can't watch video smooth through the Muse, it's slow as hell. I just want to repair it because i can't send it back to get another one.

It seems like there is to much interference on the cable. I had this when I had the inputcable laying to close to the speakercable (from a t-amp, that means lots of high level high frequency signal). Try routing the cables differently or try an optical cable and your relieved of any coupling or interference.

@ sinae
not to be rude, but you can find it all here in this thread. All you need to do is read (from, say page 17) and take your pick. Caps first. And how to change V-input by Iizuka. I bet there's plenty of other parts that can be replaced that nobody has done yet, but that's mostly outside the signal-path so chances are you enter the slope of diminishing returns there.

Thanks for your reply but i'm sure the problem isn't cause by the cable because this is my 2nd one, the old one works fine without any problem.

 

I finally received my DAC after waiting about three weeks. It sounds okay to start, but definitely needs some break in time. If it doesn't improve, I can always replace some capacitors. After running it 2 hours with the 12V adapter, it felt a bit warm, so I switched to a spare 9V adapter. With the new adapter I ran it overnight for 7 hours and the temperature was only around 87 degrees F. That seems to have solved that issue. Eventually I will open it up to see which board I have in it, but for the forseeable future, I will be running 9V through it.

 

The only other weird issue I have is some interference. When listening to music through my Dell laptop, I get interference when scrolling via my touch pad in Firefox. I know this sounds bizarre, but I can't replicate the interference under any other conditions. The interference is like clicking and hisses, it almost sounds like a CD skipping. Scrolling through word documents or Chrome with the touch pad seems fine. It also seems diminished even in Firefox when running off my laptops battery. Has anyone else experienced anything similar to this or am I the only one with weird issues like this?

@ proid:
Maybe not hte cable, but checking never hurts. And the symptom is still the same, so maybe there is a loose connection somewhere. Or a not fully inserted plug or soldering on the board not ok...

@ sharkz:
I have the same on my system: the music on my musicserver/laptop hickups when I scroll in my browser on this pc. That is because the flac-files are on this pc. I think windows prioritises HD-access to your browser according to settings from the browser and the amount of system recources needed by FF. Maybe if you increase the buffer in your music player or give it a higher priority.
It could also be that your internal soundcard isn't that good or to close to the touchpad and/or HD. I use an external Musiland Monitor that works excellent.

]eep, glad I am not crazy and others have issues. I will have to play around with settings and see what I can find. I can also see if streaming the files from my server makes and difference at all. I don't know if using Chrome alleviates any of your issues, but it does seem to make mine better.

 

I also don't think its related to the sound card. I am outputting a digital stream from my USB port to an HA Info converter, which is a good 4 feet away from my laptop. I need to do more experimenting. Right now my biggest concern is that the sound opens up a bit and looses some of the harshness I think I am hearing.

I think windows prioritizes local resources higher than network access. In my case it's not an issue because I am still filling up the USB-HD (wonder when I'll ever be done ) and it was my intention to hook it up to the laptop directly.

I don't know exactly about the HA-info converter, but afaik it does not work asynchonic and relies on what it gets from usb. The Musiland is one of the few that work on handshake basis, meaning it gives a signal when all bits are received and is ready for the next burst. Normal USB transfer behaves like: you just accept what I give you whether you like it or not. So the Musiland requires a windows driver. It's not expensive and it works like a charm. In Foobar I can just use [KS: Monitor 01 US] (or on this PC; 02 US), set the buffer size (50 ms-16 sec) and output data format to 24 bit (from 8-32) and I have absolutely no interference. Perfect 24-192 sound.
The 02 US has it's own 1793 DAC with opamps and is pretty good on it's own. Even the HP-out is quite ok (DT880). But the Muse 4x Mini DAC beats it for bass, naturallness, sense of space and lack of 'zing' (or false feeling of detail).

On my laptop/musicserver I use the Mon 01 USD only for optical out, so that is limited to 24-96. But I don't really care about that much. The optical isolates my DAC+T-amp from any pc related interference and vice versa.

I like the Monitor 02 so much that I didn't want to without for my HP on PC (02 US sounds better with HP than 01 US). So I bought the 01 USD extra. I don't need anything except the toslink out so the better powersupply is moot there.
Edited by ]eep - 9/2/11 at 8:00am

I asked Muse-Audio, if you wanna use 9V, you have to replace something internal to make resistance ohm increase for optimal SQ, the default setting is for 12V. Besides, I have run mine for about 2 weeks without turning it off, it is rather cool because I place it on my amp, and the amp act as a giant heatsink.