Nice work snip. I would just like to add that it would be preferable, if you do piggyback four more TDA1543 to use half the value of the existing IV resistors, or you will get distortion and clipping. Some sort of cooling would also be required.
In effect an 8 chip version of the Muse is a Valab dac. For curiosity, I once removed 8 of the chips from the Chameleon (16 chips) and then put them back one at a time noting the change in SQ as I went.
With just 8 chips the Chameleon sounded very similar to the Valab with its native 8 chips, no surprise there.
As I put the chips back into the Chameleon the soundstage grew a little each time in depth and most notably in width.
As I went on the soundstage continued to grow, and the lower mids and highs grew clearer and more detailed. The last two chips from 14 to 16 made the most significant jump.
The impression was moving from a Chamber experience to full concert hall. I cant really say I prefer one to the other, the Valab Chamber soundstage lends an intimate expression, works well with small venue recordings, kinda like sitting at the table in a jazz club feeling. Whilst the full on Chameleon concert hall width soundstage, is definitely the thing for getting lost in, as one of the crowd, in large orchestral, and open air live rock recordings.
I also discovered that these sort of dacs really shine with higher end gear, as in that the delicate subtleties and nuances in their musical portrayal can be lost in lesser downstream gear. Its ironic that the simple nature of the single ended, no feedback, no op amp design and correspondingly low price invites us to bracket them in a certain category; so that they should be partnered with similar price components. In fact they work even better with higher end gear.
This is also demonstrated with using quality components. I use Blackgate FK and Teflon caps for decoupling and coupling. Cramming highly resolving caps like Blackgates into lower end electronics, is no panacea. More often then not it often leads to a less pleasing even unpleasant sound as they will reveal the deficiencies of the rest of the design. I found the opposite to be true with the Chameleon, if I used Wima caps as decoupling it produces a warm, coloured, hifi sound; pleasing but masked, soulless if you like. Better quality caps showed a cleaner window to the recording and a closer connection with the synergy of the performers.
As a result of this, when spinning disks or Foobaring Flacs, my focus is not drawn to the differences between the quality of recordings, (in terms of recording technique) as much as it is to the differences between the various performances of the same piece of music, Same, conductor same orchestra vast difference in the mood. So a 1950's mono recording, in terms of performance, can blow away a modern hi res recording whilst SQ difference becomes an irrelevancy. So when the gang comes around, we don't sit up all night comparing recording techniques or what gear is plugged into the wall socket, we argue instead over what is the best performance of the same piece of music.
