adamus
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 29, 2008
- Posts
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I wanted to build a cheap dac for my father to use between his airport express and hifi.
I bought this from ebay for £30 delivered:
Spdif / toslink in, Digital / Analog converters: CS4397 24bit 192khz DAC Digital receiver : Crystal CS8416
currently house in a cardboard box (but is going in a hifi2000 case).
FOR THE MONEY: This sounds seriously good standard. Drop an opa2107 (poor mans 627) in it and it sounds brilliant. Nice rich sound, darkish but detailed. Organic highs. I doubt this will compete with your stello or benchmark, but i wouldnt be suprised if it caught a few people out.
Nest step? get shot of the coupling caps and replace with a nice film cap. Replace the electrolytics with something better like pana FC's.
In comparison with my alien dac? Its more natural, more body to male vocals, seems to have more slam and generally sounds 'bigger / more bodied'. I wont say its better, because i use my alien for portability, and this is clearly not portable - they serve different functions. However, on my home rig currently this is getting all the air time.
when i remove the stock coupling caps and replace with something like an auricap or claritycap i suspect it will move to new level.
I bought this from ebay for £30 delivered:
Spdif / toslink in, Digital / Analog converters: CS4397 24bit 192khz DAC Digital receiver : Crystal CS8416
currently house in a cardboard box (but is going in a hifi2000 case).
FOR THE MONEY: This sounds seriously good standard. Drop an opa2107 (poor mans 627) in it and it sounds brilliant. Nice rich sound, darkish but detailed. Organic highs. I doubt this will compete with your stello or benchmark, but i wouldnt be suprised if it caught a few people out.
Nest step? get shot of the coupling caps and replace with a nice film cap. Replace the electrolytics with something better like pana FC's.
In comparison with my alien dac? Its more natural, more body to male vocals, seems to have more slam and generally sounds 'bigger / more bodied'. I wont say its better, because i use my alien for portability, and this is clearly not portable - they serve different functions. However, on my home rig currently this is getting all the air time.
when i remove the stock coupling caps and replace with something like an auricap or claritycap i suspect it will move to new level.