[Crowbar]

After several years finally what looks like a definite raise in the performance bar:
Stereophile: ESS Sabre Reference Audio DAC
The 134 dB SNR and -118 dB THD are nice, but there's more interesting things in the white paper:
http://www.esstech.com/techsupp/sabrewp.pdf
Too bad it looks like there's no way to bypass the digital filter so I can feed it data I oversampled in my DSP, though it looks like the built-in filter is very good.
Should be easy for DIY as well, due to the simple interface.

 

[OverlordXenu]

How much is it?

 

[fierce_freak]

Interesting...

 

[error401]

Looks interesting, but I'm not sure about 'easy for DIY'. It comes only in 64-LQFP which would not be fun to solder for most. Can't seem to find any details on the ESS site either, and it might be difficult to source since they're not carried by any of the majors.

Specs are impressive though.

 

[DaKi][er]

Just finished reading the paper, goes into good detail and they've thought about and engineered a fantastic design but I cant help but feel its got a marketing spin put on it, still I'm sure it would be an epic DAC and the measurements are outstanding.

Crowbar - from what I can tell, I'd say the digital filter is an integral part of the DAC and its operation and you would be doing more harm to bypass it, oversampling to 192k might be all you can do

 

[error401]

Just finished reading the paper too. Their strategy is very interesting. I'm not sure I understand it fully though. It seems like what they're doing is accepting the data at any rate and timing its arrival with respect to its 'peer' samples. DSP is then applied to resample, noise shape and quantize to 8-bits for the very high frequency output DACs. This DSP must also be using the arrival timing to somehow weight the time-domain quantization. Anyone find my interpretation incorrect?

Sounds like a novel approach to me, not that I'm an expert. Definitely looks good on paper. And designed in Canada in my home province! I'll have to track down one of these, if I can manage to solder the package...

 

[ezkcdude]

Without any schematics whatsoever it's hard to know exactly what they're doing. I'm sure they want it that way, too. I wonder if the DAC also has a flux capacitor to go with the hyperstream modulator. Marty!

 

[DaKi][er]

I cant quite work out the clocking details either, I even think mentioned that there is an on-chip clock that the input is re-sampled to, and I don't think it is overly different to your average ASRC chip. Though I don't really like their idea that they say it 100% removes jitter, I've seen measurements of people getting a few pico seconds and that is generally regarded as the best you need and will ever get for audio, but never zero

 

[error401]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ezkcdude /img/forum/go_quote.gif Without any schematics whatsoever it's hard to know exactly what they're doing. I'm sure they want it that way, too. I wonder if the DAC also has a flux capacitor to go with the hyperstream modulator. Marty!

I hope not! I find that flux capacitors tend to colour the sound. I think they must be introducing some kind of time-domain distortion

.

 

[bhjazz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by error401 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Looks interesting, but I'm not sure about 'easy for DIY'. It comes only in 64-LQFP which would not be fun to solder for most.

Would be nice for components like this to be sold like computer processors: pre-mounted to a larger piece which has multiple pins. Then we could solder on some kind of zif socket and baboom...you're in!

 

[DaKi][er]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bhjazz /img/forum/go_quote.gif Would be nice for components like this to be sold like computer processors: pre-mounted to a larger piece which has multiple pins. Then we could solder on some kind of zif socket and baboom...you're in!

QFP isn't that hard to solder, you can do it with a regular iron as long as you make the board pads a little longer and pre-tin the chip legs and PCB so you just have to reflow the solder onto the pads. If it was BGA, that would make it a bit harder (but still doable)

 

[error401]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaKi][er /img/forum/go_quote.gif QFP isn't that hard to solder, you can do it with a regular iron as long as you make the board pads a little longer and pre-tin the chip legs and PCB so you just have to reflow the solder onto the pads. If it was BGA, that would make it a bit harder (but still doable)

QFP's not that bad, but the 0.5mm spacing is pretty tight, soldermask isn't really going to help you too much. Doable sure.

But how do you do BGA with a standard iron? I'm interested. Also, ever tried QFN?

 

[Cauhtemoc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by error401 But how do you do BGA with a standard iron? I'm interested. Also, ever tried QFN?

QFN can be soldered with a thin tipped soldering iron and a little bit of patience. BGA can be soldered with a kitchen oven and lot of patience. QFP is easy.

 

[DaKi][er]

Quote:

Originally Posted by error401 /img/forum/go_quote.gif But how do you do BGA with a standard iron? I'm interested. Also, ever tried QFN?

You wont do BGA with an iron, but it's not hard with a hot air station, I repair mobile phones part time and we do quite a lot of bga IC replacements.

Hmm, I think I was thinking of QFN instead of QFP before. QFP is very easy to solder, just need lots of flux. QFN can be done how I said above, just need the pads on the board to extend out so you can heat them up with your iron and have the IC pads flow onto them, else hot air will solder them easily, it's a bit far out of reach for the average DIY'er but if you can get a lend of a hot air station it will only take a few min to put on

 

[dusfor99]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ezkcdude /img/forum/go_quote.gif Without any schematics whatsoever it's hard to know exactly what they're doing. I'm sure they want it that way, too. I wonder if the DAC also has a flux capacitor to go with the hyperstream modulator. Marty!

Hahaha, Totally loved that one. Well, there is no flux capacitor, I was not allowed that layer when designing the DAC. Anyways, I noticed on this forum that people are also not able to get any test information. Well I have changed that in the last day or so, you should be able to go to

ESS Technology, Inc. - Tech Support

now and get a bit more info. By the way, if anyone wants to see certain types of tests or whatever, just let me know.

Dustin