[drbluenewmexico]

are there any portable R2R NOS based days out there?????

 

[x RELIC x]

are there any portable R2R NOS based days out there?????

I don't think it's possible within a portable footprint. R-2R requires one chip per channel plus the crucial clean power supply implementation kind of negate portable. I'd be happy as ever to be wrong on this.

 

[evillamer]

  are there any portable R2R NOS based days out there?????

 
Only in production R2R DAP as of 2015(outside of that megaexpensive tera player):
http://www.amazon.com/HIFI-ET-MA9-Portable-Nondestructive-Amplifier/dp/B00DBWYRYY

 

[BucketInABucket]

There WAS the Hifiman HM602 but its discontinued now.

 

[x RELIC x]

Only in production R2R DAP as of 2015(outside of that megaexpensive tera player):
http://www.amazon.com/HIFI-ET-MA9-Portable-Nondestructive-Amplifier/dp/B00DBWYRYY

I've been proven wrong, lol!

 

[stuartmc]

I think the resurgence of interest in R2R is a very good thing for digital audio.  It will help designers focus in on the sound qualities that R2R fans find lacking in Delta/Sigmas.  I think there may still be ways to get the latter to sound much more like good R2R's.  It will take some very careful design tweaks of the chips themselves and it will definitely require some masterful implementations.  Doing this right may in fact reduce the cost effectiveness that seems to have been driving the train in the first place.  I liken this path/evolution to what we have seen in the maturation of digital from the earliest days.  If all us vinyl fans hadn't complained vociferously about the crap Sony foisted upon us as "Perfect Sound Forever," we probably wouldn't have seen these tremendous gains in sound quality over the past 30 years.
 
I was an analog hold out for many years, something of a Luddite when it came to everything digital.  It was around 2000 that I was picked as one of the few in North America to get the Sony SCD-1 and then the SCD-777ES. It was the dawn of SACD and I ended up keeping the SCD-777ES, getting a few modifications and then pairing it with the Ortho Spectrum AR-2000 Analogue Reconstructor.  I finally agreed that this digital stuff wasn't half bad. In fact, it had a few strengths that exceeded the best of vinyl. I had to acknowledge that vinyl playback had loads of distortion as compared to digital. It's was just consonant distortion, rather than the dissonant varieties that haunted digital. I liked the way good analog sounded, and I had to make some hard choices to fully appreciate the strengths of digital.  There are some of these same choices being made when honest audiophiles struggle between purchasing the latest D/S dac and the old school R2R's. I think everyone wins in this environment.

 

[x RELIC x]

Only in production R2R DAP as of 2015(outside of that megaexpensive tera player):
http://www.amazon.com/HIFI-ET-MA9-Portable-Nondestructive-Amplifier/dp/B00DBWYRYY

Just looked this up on Amazon.ca and it's $2126.12 CAD....... Once again Amazon Canada proves that they think we're stupid suckers.

http://www.amazon.ca/HIFI-ET-Portable-Nondestructive-Amplifier-Decoder/dp/B00W6B9J0S


The reviews look good for the sound quality and there's a few on eBay still available. Anyone here heard this DAP?

 

[Wildcatsare1]

I am going to have to set up an Audiophile smuggling ring Stuartmc, we need a hideout near the Border. Take that Trump!

 

[miceblue]

Random question out of the blue, what is the Philips TDA1541A DAC chip exactly? Its schematic kind of looks like a R-2R, but not really since it uses capacitors on its output stage.
http://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/philips-tda1541.asp

There's a loooooot of information to digest in that article so I'm not 100% certain about what kind of technology it uses.

I ask because I have a Sony CDP-950 that I inherited from a friend and I only just recently brought it out to listen to some classic rock CDs that I checked out from the library. According to my friend, this particular CDP-950 unit is an earlier model that doesn't have the coaxial digital output and an unmarked TDA1541A chip.




Anyway, I plugged in a RCA cable from it to the STAX SRS-2170. Holy frick it sounds awesome. STAX 1-2 kHz glare = gone for the most part.
I was going to rip a song and listen to it on my usual Delta-Sigma setup to see how much different it sounds.

 

[kvik]

Random question out of the blue, what is the Philips TDA1541A DAC chip exactly? Its schematic kind of looks like a R-2R, but not really since it uses capacitors on its output stage.
http://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/philips-tda1541.asp

There's a loooooot of information to digest in that article so I'm not 100% certain about what kind of technology it uses.

This perhaps?
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/50355-best-r2r-dac-chip-2.html#post563115

 

[Currawong]

I owned the MA9 for a while and I didn't think it was that special.

 

[x RELIC x]

Random question out of the blue, what is the Philips TDA1541A DAC chip exactly? Its schematic kind of looks like a R-2R, but not really since it uses capacitors on its output stage.
http://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/philips-tda1541.asp

There's a loooooot of information to digest in that article so I'm not 100% certain about what kind of technology it uses.

I ask because I have a Sony CDP-950 that I inherited from a friend and I only just recently brought it out to listen to some classic rock CDs that I checked out from the library. According to my friend, this particular CDP-950 unit is an earlier model that doesn't have the coaxial digital output and an unmarked TDA1541A chip.




Anyway, I plugged in a RCA cable from it to the STAX SRS-2170. Holy frick it sounds awesome. STAX 1-2 kHz glare = gone for the most part.
I was going to rip a song and listen to it on my usual Delta-Sigma setup to see how much different it sounds.

Looks like it's a multibit (R-2R) DAC, not 100% sure as they seem to be approaching it with a twist. There is a lot of discussion in that article about how they are reducing errors, but around 2/3 of the way down they directly compare the TDA1541 to bitstream(1-bit and therefore Delta-Sigma) DACs saying that those are reserved for cheaper and non-audiophile grade devices - paraphrasing here. There is also a lot of references to the laser trimming in the DAC manufacturing as well as the error rate that is categorized in to multiple categories of the TDA1541 chip. The article states that the TDA1541A is a more precise version of the TDA1541, and the top tier (double crown) is the TDA1541A S2.

Very interesting read, thanks for posting it.

 

[x RELIC x]

I owned the MA9 for a while and I didn't think it was that special.

Good to know. I'm guessing you've heard the HM801?

 

[jusbe]

Random question out of the blue, what is the Philips TDA1541A DAC chip exactly? Its schematic kind of looks like a R-2R, but not really since it uses capacitors on its output stage.
http://www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/philips-tda1541.asp

There's a loooooot of information to digest in that article so I'm not 100% certain about what kind of technology it uses.

I ask because I have a Sony CDP-950 that I inherited from a friend and I only just recently brought it out to listen to some classic rock CDs that I checked out from the library. According to my friend, this particular CDP-950 unit is an earlier model that doesn't have the coaxial digital output and an unmarked TDA1541A chip.




Anyway, I plugged in a RCA cable from it to the STAX SRS-2170. Holy frick it sounds awesome. STAX 1-2 kHz glare = gone for the most part.
I was going to rip a song and listen to it on my usual Delta-Sigma setup to see how much different it sounds.

One of the best R2R chips ever made. But requires the same level of commitment and attention that the PCM1704 or a AD1865 do. Just ask Zanden or Abbingdon Music Research.
 

 

 
 
I have a Cambridge Audio CD3 which uses 4 of these in parallel (normal versions, not the S1 or S2). The CD player needs refreshing but the sound is full-blooded and has a fantastic midrange.

 

[Wildcatsare1]

Curawongwhat DAC are your currently using in your desktop setup?