Does DIY count?
….only listing DACs I have owned or currently own and have done extensive A-B listening tests to contrast with other DACs
1. DIY NOS AD1865 DAC with Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W with Ian Canada ConditionerPi Ultracapacitor enhanced power on Ian Canada StationPi + FifoPI + ReclockPi with Accusilicon AS338 clocks to i2s-PCM board as front end, 62r passive IV, passive LC filter and separate DIY discrete jfet gain stage. Powered with “Studer 900” LRPS’s with 150F+ Ultracapacitors in parallel for each of 3 power supplies to DAC chip
2. DIY NOS AD1865 DAC with same front end as #1 except also Transport Pi i2s over HDMI to HDMI Receiver to HC74 series logic front end, 200r passive IV, passive C filter and no gain stage. DAC powered by 3x 5V of LTO batteries (2 in series per)
3. Chord Mojo
4. DIY NOS TDA1387 DAC with Ultracapacitor + LRPS 5V power, 2700r IV, LCLC passive filter, and no gain stage (fed by Ian Canada stack as per 1&2 but over optical out from TransportPi to ReceiverPi to i2S in)
5. Allo Boss 1.2 with 5V LRPS, Allo relay attenuator
6. Schiit Modi 3
7. Schiit Modi 2 Uber
8. HiFiberry DAC + Pro
I’m just a few years into the hobby and like seeing what I can achieve DIY. I feel I need some higher end off the shelf DACs for better benchmarking, at a minimum, at this point, though, so this thread is very useful.
The next stage on the DIY front end is likely even better clocking, probably with one of Andrea Mori’s solutions. The next stage DIY DAC will be guided by experimenting with LTO batteries in parallel with Ultracapacitors, or, perhaps, pure Ultracapacitor solution, possibly with MOSFET switches alternating between 2 UC banks … either way, for total isolation from the “grid”.I have a DIY build based on TDA1541a in the works to compare with the AD1865 and want to next progress to my own FPGA programming plus discrete D2A conversion…As well as trying the best I can do with Delta Sigma based conversion to contrast.
