Caper
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2016
- Posts
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maybe that ddc on ebay is good, but I don't know. It just looks cheaply made.
the crystek 957's are good, and the NDK's are even better![]()
no joke. Bass is tighter and more textured. I love bass so the NDK's really impressed me. There isn't a better deal than NDK's too! only around 10each approx. something like that anyways.
BUT, they are a pain to solder unless you have the right tools. which I spent a ton of money on all the right gear to do the job
I'm about to start taking orders for NDK's on dip14 boards! haha. I have extra boards, extra crystals etc...but don't want to work for free either. I may consider building them with good tight murata 1% bypass caps. I have a bunch of Ian's adapter boards from DIYboard and also my fav boards are from RHEA. and RHEA actually makes prebuilt crystek 957 boards! but no bypass caps. Personally I think it's better to run a bypass cap than not. as most tcxo's are close enough to their power supply to make a diff. almost all DDC's are made that way. <shrug>
but consider the intona. it's not hype. I've tested in on 4-5 diff peoples setups and all of them were blown away with the results. It's a fantastic piece of gear to own.Think of it as the holy grail for making USB function as though it should have this whole time. The thing manufacturers leave out is the critical plagued issue of usb's packet noise issue of 8khz spikes. It's truly bad for about 99% of usb implementations for audio. The intona may very well have the lowest packet noise of any device.. around -142dB for 8khz noise. compared to the average of -110dB or a fancy fiber optic usb cable can bring the noise down to around -118dB but not even close to what the intona does.
try it yourself though. But keep an open mind.
-T
I was skeptical and didn't hear a HUGE difference in my system considering how damn clean my power is. I did hear it after listening long enough and found the top end to clearly improve a bit. Not night and day as it was for most of my friends setups. Their dirty ass laptops were like high performance sources with the intona attached. some of them barely recognized their dac! no joke!
ps, I forgot to mention that that DDC on ebay has a much lower grade usb clock than the Breeze DUU8.... and possibly the same usb clock that is currently in his Hegel usb module.
that's the first thing I noticed.
There are several components that are downgraded from the DUU8 with that ebay ddc. It's great it's DC powered though. But modding the USB clock would be ideal. that happens to be one of the cheaper ones available. Maybe i'm a clock snob.but i've heard enough ddc's to kinda get a really darn good idea of what to expect based on what components are used.
at least they chose murata da101c's for the output of the coax too.
but I can't tell from the photos if they are using C0G cap for the output. the lighting is tough to tell if it's grey or tan. meh. "maybe grey?"
anyhow, questionable.
BUT it does use a great regulator...just found this out... the ADP150 @ 9uV noise.... excellent. not as great as the pro3a of course...but not too shabby.
pair this with a good lps and might be sounding pretty good.
just wish the usb clock wasn't so el cheapo
Thanks for all info!
As I am a total rookie about this modding and have no solder experience, how hard is it to switch the clock?
Maybe I can find one that can help me out if I just buy the stuff I need.
Thanks!