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Current/Upcoming DACs based on AK4499 chip?
Dec 3, 2019 at 12:03 AM Post #32 of 152
I'd be a little surprised to see AK4499 show up much under $500, unless the chip price reduces significantly. At present over on Octopart its listed at $80 in small quantities, falling to around $65 in high volume. To make using it worthwhile it needs a fair spend on power supply regulators and other support circuitry. Even AK's own evaluation board for the DAC (just the PCB, no power or case) goes for $600.
 
Dec 3, 2019 at 12:31 AM Post #33 of 152
Aside from the chip's cost and requirements, we can already see for this new ''flagship'' chip the designers probably feel expected to deliver a flagship feature set e.g every kind of input you can imagine. There are a lot of things that could push the price up compared to previous DACs.
 
Dec 4, 2019 at 12:11 AM Post #34 of 152
Sapientiam said:
I'd be a little surprised to see AK4499 show up much under $500, unless the chip price reduces significantly. At present over on Octopart its listed at $80 in small quantities, falling to around $65 in high volume. To make using it worthwhile it needs a fair spend on power supply regulators and other support circuitry. Even AK's own evaluation board for the DAC (just the PCB, no power or case) goes for $600.
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True. Provided that current price for a chip is approximately $84. You make 50% margin and that is $170 a unit. Then you add in case, board, inlets and outlets, power adapter etc...
 
Dec 4, 2019 at 1:02 AM Post #35 of 152
pallydou said:
True. Provided that current price for a chip is approximately $84. You make 50% margin and that is $170 a unit. Then you add in case, board, inlets and outlets, power adapter etc...
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I think any cheap ak4499 will be based on any current onging design.
 
Jan 6, 2020 at 12:46 PM Post #36 of 152
The AK4499 is now showing up in mobile dac/amps as well, from the +3000€/$ A&K SP2000 to the $540 YinLvMei M400 (somehow I think someone misspelled that v instead of an u).

In previous generations, ES has had a separate mobile version for their chips which have had generally better measurements than products with AK chips in the reviews that I have read.
Would this be likely to continue or change with the AK4499 and the changes in its architecture from previous generations?

Edit: I would also be interested in sound differences between AK and ESS in mobile products.
 
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Jan 6, 2020 at 1:25 PM Post #38 of 152
Acke said:
they adopted the same kind of architecture as sabre for AK4499, the Ak4499 currently has best THD+N of any chip, -124dB vs -122dB of 9038Pro when operated in mono.
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Have there been any indications yet of whether or not it would work well in mobile applications (that in many ways have different electrical properties from desktop dacs) ?
 
Jan 6, 2020 at 2:13 PM Post #39 of 152
In terms of managing compactness and battery life I would say it would be less suited than other chip for portable designs but not necssarily unsuited, otherwise there isnt any special electrical properties that make it different to other chips.
 
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Jan 6, 2020 at 2:19 PM Post #40 of 152
Didn’t FiiO announce that their M15 uses this DAC chip?
 
Jan 10, 2020 at 12:04 PM Post #41 of 152
Jan 10, 2020 at 3:47 PM Post #42 of 152
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