[guzzler]

Given the current recession, I was going through my parts bin looking for things to make up on the cheap when I came across the old Monica DAC. Looking at the board, basically it's a piece of junk - terrible layout, passive I/V (shocking for the TDA1545), generally a waste of space. It does, however, have a CS8412 and TDA1545 going spare so I decided to design my own DAC based on these parts.

The result is the NothingNew (NoNe) DAC. The design goals were to have an above average design taking care of layout, power supplies, and keeping the general cost and complexity fairly low. Thus, a single rail supply was essential. A lot of things are taken from other designs, and adapted on to the board. The two notables:

Differential S/PDIF input: Jocko Homo

Active I/V: rbroer

PCBs were made by BatchPCB. A couple of pictures and a (mostly right) schematic are below. I'm happy to send anyone the files (Eagle) if they're interested.

I'd also like some feedback if you have anything at all. The build is going to be quite slow, and also waiting on some more parts but I'll update as I go.

 

[insyte]

I like the naming concept

 

[nullstring]

your images are very small.

 

[tomb]

Only the layout and schematic are small - probably with good reason at this point.

Looks great - especially the onboard active I/V. Is it too late to ask about USB, though?

 

[nullstring]

but how is one suppose to contribute to the design without proper images of the schematic and layout.. >_>

 

[Pars]

Nice idea Guzzler. I like the inclusion of rbroer's output stage (diyaudio is down currently so I can't see which one you are using.) Jocko's SPDIF input also.

 

[guzzler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nullstring /img/forum/go_quote.gif but how is one suppose to contribute to the design without proper images of the schematic and layout.. >_>

Sorry, for some reason H-F won't let you use full size .png. Have changed to GIF and you should be able to see now. Also reposted below. This is absolutely a one off, you can't even buy the CS8412 or TDA1545 anymore but I wanted to use them up and get a new project out of it. I'm not doing a "group development" of it, just wanted to put it out for people to see and maybe get some ideas from...

Again, as a warning, the schematic isn't complete! If there's enough interest I'll do a complete revision of it - all you need to do is ask!

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomb /img/forum/go_quote.gif Looks great - especially the onboard active I/V. Is it too late to ask about USB, though?

Thanks

I thought about USB for this, but this is going to be my home DAC so the two sources are my desktop computer and CD player both of which have S/PDIF outputs already so I didn't go the USB route. Also, as I mentioned the main point behind this project was to use some parts and have a bit of fun with it.

 

[FallenAngel]

Looks pretty sweet, but how easy are the parts to source?

 

[guzzler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FallenAngel /img/forum/go_quote.gif Looks pretty sweet, but how easy are the parts to source?

Not at all easy - you can still probably find them on eBay or over on diyAudio sometimes. The TDA's probably easier than the CS8412 but you get CS8414s on adaptors slightly more easily.

 

[hopeless]

Very nice job. I think it would've made more sense though to make such an effort starting with parts currently available

but...enjoy your unique sample.