[ScareDe2]

When my Samsung Galaxy player 4.2 finally exploded, I have put it aside and moved on to different sources, but just decided it was time to check inside. It was such a good music player, I really loved it !

A Wolfson WM1811AE Dac chip. Fantastic for songs, videos and audio books. Voices were well rendered. Music sounded natural. Frankly I prefered this player to both Fiio x5 and x7.

 

[ScareDe2]

Anyone know what letters A, E, and all the others mean?

According to http://www.soundbsessive.com/information-about-dac-chips/

Grade: “L” – the lowest (Low) – worse than no grade
“J” – selected to be better than bezgreydovy
“K” – selected to be the best in quality (better than “J”)

But no mention of all the other letters we find on these chips. However, I seem to be lucky with the ones ending with an "E". Here is one in my late 90's portable CD player RCA RP 2010B. Great sound! A Burr-Brown PCM1717e :

 

[theveterans]

In terms of just the DAC chips, my favorites are the AK4499EQ and Analog Devices AD5781ARUZ

 

[ScareDe2]

The realtek alc888 is crazy good. I had it in my previous computer an HP Pavillion. Video games sounded so great and immersive. I was playing that FPS doom new release and that sounded like I was in hell. Scary as can be. Music did sound amazing as well. And I was just using cheap 2 channels computer speakers. Wow !

This is the exact board that was in my HP, looks like there is a lot of capacitors, I have no idea if that is related to the good sound I had :