General Information
Burson's HA-160D 3 in 1 unit has been warmly received by fellow audiophiles since 2010. Since then, developing a stand alone DAC based on the DAC section of the HA-160D has always been on our minds. After taking into account feedback and many more valuable suggestions from the audiophile community, we have developed the DA-160, which is fully discrete, more refined in sound, with better compatibility and Connectivity. The result met all of our expectations.
Fully discrete:
Our dissatisfaction with IC based building blocks such as IC opamps and 3 pin power supply regulators have been well aired. The DA-160 is completely free of such cost focused building blocks. Instead we have built the entire DAC with idealistic circuitry designs and top quality discrete components. The focus of our discrete approach was purely on performance.
A more matured and refined sound
Although the DA-160 is based on the DAC section of the HA-160D, being a stand alone DAC we had more freedom to further optimise its performance. We decided to tweak the power supply network into a constant current source power supply and use two power transformers to lower the noise. The result is a more matured sound with even richer micro dynamics and substance.
Connectivity
The new DA-160 is designed to be the heart of an audio system, therefore connectivity is a must. We added two sets of USB inputs to make sharing the DAC between 2 PCs or wireless player easy. Apart from the standard RCA S/PDIF, an additional Optical Toslink was also added. Furthermore there are two sets of RCA outputs running parallel to make sharing the outputs of DA-160 between the two systems possible (eg, headphone amplifier and intergraded amplifier).
Fully discrete:
Our dissatisfaction with IC based building blocks such as IC opamps and 3 pin power supply regulators have been well aired. The DA-160 is completely free of such cost focused building blocks. Instead we have built the entire DAC with idealistic circuitry designs and top quality discrete components. The focus of our discrete approach was purely on performance.
A more matured and refined sound
Although the DA-160 is based on the DAC section of the HA-160D, being a stand alone DAC we had more freedom to further optimise its performance. We decided to tweak the power supply network into a constant current source power supply and use two power transformers to lower the noise. The result is a more matured sound with even richer micro dynamics and substance.
Connectivity
The new DA-160 is designed to be the heart of an audio system, therefore connectivity is a must. We added two sets of USB inputs to make sharing the DAC between 2 PCs or wireless player easy. Apart from the standard RCA S/PDIF, an additional Optical Toslink was also added. Furthermore there are two sets of RCA outputs running parallel to make sharing the outputs of DA-160 between the two systems possible (eg, headphone amplifier and intergraded amplifier).
