wormcycle
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2016
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New life of DACMagic 100 with Raspberry Pi Digi + Pro and non Cambridge Audio power supply
As cyberridz wrote in his review of DACMagic 100 "Quality control issues prevents the DAC from being the best in its price range, as it is unacceptable,...".
Unfortunately Cambridge Audio is a company that makes their own good audio equipment bad - the build quality of DacMagic 100 power supply is a disgrace. And to add to it the manual warns about using any other power supply. I had problems from day one: sometimes the unit will not power on and after I moved it and reconnected the cable it just died, something got fried inside with a bad smell. After a lot of emails and two months the CA authorized service in Toronto replaced the whole internals of the unit. Go figure how it was less expensive that just sending me a new one.
It was three years ago. Since then it sort of worked: it would not power on from time to time, the sound quality from the same setup was unpredictable: it did sound great one day and crappy the day after.
I decided to get rid of it but not before using it to to test Hifiberry Digi+ Pro. At the same time I read this https://www.cambridgeaudio.com/dacmagic-psu. It simply says that CA was shipping garbage PSUs to their customers for years.
So I connected the unit to simple $17 regulated DC power supply adding some capacitors for additional stability. Then I tested it with coax SPDIF.
It was a complete surprise. First of all it looked like the DAC powered on properly first time ever: when you connect the power but before you push the power switch on the DAC all blue lights are supposed to blink. I kept listening to it for the last two weeks and I never heard such a sound quality from DACMagic 100.
It still sells for $300 with the same garbage PSU and you know it may be worth it.
As cyberridz wrote in his review of DACMagic 100 "Quality control issues prevents the DAC from being the best in its price range, as it is unacceptable,...".
Unfortunately Cambridge Audio is a company that makes their own good audio equipment bad - the build quality of DacMagic 100 power supply is a disgrace. And to add to it the manual warns about using any other power supply. I had problems from day one: sometimes the unit will not power on and after I moved it and reconnected the cable it just died, something got fried inside with a bad smell. After a lot of emails and two months the CA authorized service in Toronto replaced the whole internals of the unit. Go figure how it was less expensive that just sending me a new one.
It was three years ago. Since then it sort of worked: it would not power on from time to time, the sound quality from the same setup was unpredictable: it did sound great one day and crappy the day after.
I decided to get rid of it but not before using it to to test Hifiberry Digi+ Pro. At the same time I read this https://www.cambridgeaudio.com/dacmagic-psu. It simply says that CA was shipping garbage PSUs to their customers for years.
So I connected the unit to simple $17 regulated DC power supply adding some capacitors for additional stability. Then I tested it with coax SPDIF.
It was a complete surprise. First of all it looked like the DAC powered on properly first time ever: when you connect the power but before you push the power switch on the DAC all blue lights are supposed to blink. I kept listening to it for the last two weeks and I never heard such a sound quality from DACMagic 100.
It still sells for $300 with the same garbage PSU and you know it may be worth it.
![]eep](https://cdn.head-fi.org/avatars/m/139/139747.jpg?1273084439){kind=avatar}
