[SP Wild]

Quote:

Thanks - and welcome back SP! 
 
Did you get your broken Muse replaced?
 


 

I've been a bit slack and haven't had the chance to ship my damaged DAC back to the ebay seller.  It was worth the 60 bucks for the experience and knowledge, it has opened my mind that price does not equal performance.  I do really miss the sound of this dac, luckily I can still enjoy the technical presentation of the setup I have now.  But as of now I am planning a complimentary honey dripping organic setup involving NOS dacs and OTL tube amps. 
 
As all my headphones are terminated for balanced operation...I have my eye set on perhaps the balanced Havana dac and mating it to the balanced OTL LD tube amp.  Tubes in the NOS dac and tubed again in the amp...this will be one sweet and sticky honey pot.  Then I'll have all the clarity and precision as well as organic and flavoured as I can possibly enjoy...within this year I hope to have this alternative setup ready for action with all the best tubes money can buy and a little DIY modding if deemed necessary. 
 
I generally shy away from modding, that's why I pay the bucks, so as to avoid the modding game...so far my experiences with PSU filter cap rolling has not revealed differences as dramatic as reported, between different brands of low ESR caps in the PSU filters...upping overall capacitance firmed up the low bass and bass control...but no tonality change between different brand capsacitors can be heard by me.
 
This is different to capacitors in the signal path...throwing those away made the biggest difference over anything I did in the PSU regarding caps and high speed diodes...rolling op amps have bigger differences.  I'm just not keen to spend my now very limited free time analysing...I'd rather enjoy the music.  Its a different story when I have more free time...without prior DIY experienced, I built a headamp, a balanced headamp and a remote controlled DAC in three days and diagnosed one PSU fault.
 
Back on the Muse DAC...I'm quite happy to fork out another 60 bucks if the seller decides I have delayed for too long with my returns.  I won't feel ripped off at all.  By the way, how is that mentrum DAC overall in the scheme of DAC?
 

 

[petemac110]

Behold the Muse 4xTDA1543 Decor Edition Outrigger DAC!

(If my wife comes looking for the lid for her Decor container, tell her nothing!!)

I removed the standard 10uf 35V Elna Silmic output caps (they used to be garden variety output caps on the earlier Muse DACs... the Silmics were a nice surprise!) and fitted some AXON True Cap 22uf poly film caps that I had lying around. The increase in capacitance to 22uf lowers the low frequency roll-off inherent in the use of output caps, so there should be a slight improvement in low-end extension.

Due to the size of the AXONs, external mounting is a must. I fitted some wires to facilitate this, along with some trusty blu-tac (or yellow-tac in this instance) to secure the DAC and caps on the custom clear acrylic plinth

If I end up leaving the DAC in this configuration, I might actually sit the whole DAC inside a new box, or I will pinch the bottom section of the Decor container to create a clear enclosure. Tupperware-spec DAC!!!

The AXONs have made a very noticeable improvement based upon my short listen at low levels. The output is certainly much clearer with greater definition all-round. Looking forward to having a proper listen in the coming nights, and undertaking more tweaks in future.
 

 
 

 

 

[viatraco]

Quote:

An earthquake still continued, but the heat sink which I ordered arrived.
 

 

 

My "heat" story from the beggining:
1.First 12V included supply.Aluminium case was noticeably warm
2.With new 9V linear supply aluminium case is much cooler but... I removed lit and I noticed that black metal radiator plate is hot ! I can barely touch it for several seconds.I think it's about 80 celsius degrees on plate. Is it not too warm for TDA ? What is tolerance temperature for TDA1543 ? Do I have a problem ?
 
Replacing metal plate to copper mini-radiators will help ? Summer is comming
 

 

[ardilla]

 
[size=medium]

TDA1543

Dual 16-bit DAC (economy version) (I2S input format) in 8-pin DIP package. Operationaltemperaturerange from -30°C to 85°C.

[/size]  
http://www.chipdocs.com/datasheets/datasheet-pdf/Philips-Semiconductors/TDA1543.html
 
2 sec google. Don't take my word for it
 

 

[petemac110]

Quote:

 

My "heat" story from the beggining:
1.First 12V included supply.Aluminium case was noticeably warm
2.With new 9V linear supply aluminium case is much cooler but... I removed lit and I noticed that black metal radiator plate is hot ! I can barely touch it for several seconds.I think it's about 80 celsius degrees on plate. Is it not too warm for TDA ? What is tolerance temperature for TDA1543 ? Do I have a problem ?
 
Replacing metal plate to copper mini-radiators will help ? Summer is comming
 

I don't think you'll have a drama.
 
My situation was exactly the same as yours. Imagine how hot the heat sink must be when the full casing is fitted and when running 12V!!
 
I don't imagine that you'd have any heat-related issues with the TDAs when running 9V. I'm doing the exact same thing. I agree that the heatsink gets quite warm - I think it is probably closer to 60 degrees or thereabouts on my DAC.
 
Seeing that I cannot refit the lid of my DAC due to the externally-mounted caps, I'm thinking of adding a heat sink on top of the existing heat sink. This way, there is additional thermal mass/heatsink capacity, plus additional surface area from which the heat is radiated. It would be a win/win situation.
 
Fitting smaller copper heatsinks as pictured above will not give greater thermal mass, but mightgive a a slight increase in surface area due to the little 'fingers' on the top. The ideal outcome would be a single large heatsink which is the same external dimensions as the standard unit, but with the fingers added on top. More thermal mass, more surface area = win!

 

[viatraco]

Quote:

 
[size=medium]

TDA1543

Dual 16-bit DAC (economy version) (I2S input format) in 8-pin DIP package. Operationaltemperaturerange from -30°C to 85°C.

[/size]  
http://www.chipdocs.com/datasheets/datasheet-pdf/Philips-Semiconductors/TDA1543.html
 
2 sec google. Don't take my word for it
 

 
Yes, I've read datasheet before But -30^°C to 85^°C is "environment" temp , not max tolerable temp of working chip (on TDA's surface).
 
My new observation : after removing lit ,even for long time Muse working, metal plate is very warm but not hot like when case was closed.Air circulation makes better.
 

 

[viatraco]

Quote:

 
Seeing that I cannot refit the lid of my DAC due to the externally-mounted caps, I'm thinking of adding a heat sink on top of the existing heat sink. This way, there is additional thermal mass/heatsink capacity, plus additional surface area from which the heat is radiated. It would be a win/win situation.
 
Fitting smaller copper heatsinks as pictured above will not give greater thermal mass, but mightgive a a slight increase in surface area due to the little 'fingers' on the top. The ideal outcome would be a single large heatsink which is the same external dimensions as the standard unit, but with the fingers added on top. More thermal mass, more surface area = win!

I'm thinking about buying copper plate and making new heatsink
http://img19.allegroimg.pl/photos/oryginal/16/02/96/10/1602961079
 
or as you said, add heatsink for increasing thermal mass and surface area by putting several copper small sinks on top of black metal plate

 

[Chefano]

Quote:

I don't think you'll have a drama.
 
My situation was exactly the same as yours. Imagine how hot the heat sink must be when the full casing is fitted and when running 12V!!
 
I don't imagine that you'd have any heat-related issues with the TDAs when running 9V. I'm doing the exact same thing. I agree that the heatsink gets quite warm - I think it is probably closer to 60 degrees or thereabouts on my DAC.
 
Seeing that I cannot refit the lid of my DAC due to the externally-mounted caps, I'm thinking of adding a heat sink on top of the existing heat sink. This way, there is additional thermal mass/heatsink capacity, plus additional surface area from which the heat is radiated. It would be a win/win situation.
 
Fitting smaller copper heatsinks as pictured above will not give greater thermal mass, but mightgive a a slight increase in surface area due to the little 'fingers' on the top. The ideal outcome would be a single large heatsink which is the same external dimensions as the standard unit, but with the fingers added on top. More thermal mass, more surface area = win!

Hi! I think I did not understand.
Are you running your TDAs in 9V ou are you feeding the circuit with 9V?
 

 

[petemac110]

I participated in some back-to-back listening tests with my tweaked Muse vs a 100% standard Muse. The difference in the overall clarity, particularly in the upper mids and treble, was plainly obvious with my Muse with the AXON output caps. The standard DAC sounds lazy in comparison. For about $65 in total, this mildly-tweaked DAC sounds fantastic!
 
Given that I intend using this DAC with a variety of different amps (some of which will not tolerate DC) I'm not going to try the by-pass mod for the output caps. My friend and I will be trying some different outputs caps too - maybe some 10uf and 20uf Russian PIO caps, and some other metallised poly caps.
 
 
 
 

 
Quote:

Hi! I think I did not understand.
Are you running your TDAs in 9V ou are you feeding the circuit with 9V?
 

I've been running a 9V power supply, so feeding the circuit with 9V.
 

 

[Chefano]

Well, the case indeed gets hot when using 12V compared to 9V, because the regulator gets need to get rid of the extra volts, when using 12V, as heat.
The litle heatsinks are pretty ok to use in each tda, as they are runnig at 7.6V aprox, here they barely get warm .
 
Would be nice to see a big MBGO-2 as output cap =D

 

 

 

[viatraco]

Guys, there is a new DAC in town Not expensive and looks nice.
 
http://cgi.ebay.pl/Mini-WM8740-DIR9001-OP275-USB-Coxial-DAC-Decoder-/260778591048?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb79d8348
http://cgi.ebay.pl/WM8740-DIR9001-DAC-Decoder-Doard-Decoder-Assembled-/370508821668?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item56440bf4a4

 

[ETAHL]

Has anyone try stacking & solder another set of TDA1543 on top of the existing TDA1543 to get a total of 8 DACs in parallel?
Any sound improvements? Any heat issues?

 

[Chefano]

Quote:

Has anyone try stacking & solder another set of TDA1543 on top of the existing TDA1543 to get a total of 8 DACs in parallel?
Any sound improvements? Any heat issues?

Yeap I did.
There are issues when you do that.
Heat issues, and you need to change the I/V resistors. If you want to parallel more chips then you hav.e to change the resistors associated with the Ref pin and output pin. Double the chips, halve the resistances (Thumb rule) . You also may need to change/adjust the resistors if you change the supply voltage.
 
A good start is this site http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/g8hqp/audio/TDA1543IV.html

 

[ninjikiran]

the WM8740 is a Delta Sigma based dac   Not R-2R.  Which is why people are interested in the TDA dac~
 
Still isn't a bad chip.  My dac has the upgraded WM8741
 
Quote:

Guys, there is a new DAC in town Not expensive and looks nice.
 
http://cgi.ebay.pl/Mini-WM8740-DIR9001-OP275-USB-Coxial-DAC-Decoder-/260778591048?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb79d8348
http://cgi.ebay.pl/WM8740-DIR9001-DAC-Decoder-Doard-Decoder-Assembled-/370508821668?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item56440bf4a4

 

 

[wushuliu]

Surprised no one's tried tried swapping the resistors in the signal path. Prior experience modding ubercheap made from china DACs I've learned those resistors can be really bad quality in terms of noise. Don't need anything fancy... just better.