[Dubwicht]

I am considering looking for a DAC and was wondering what to look for.  Should I be looking for a specific chip set?  Any other design features?  There are many kits, boards and other China made devices on Ebay and I have built my own amps from schematics/circuit boards etc and don't have a problem installing a board in a box with all the connections.  Is it worth purchasing some of these low cost boards/DAC's?  Some adds boast certain chips as "best in the world etc."
 
Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Cheers,  Dub
 

 

[Dubwicht]

Thanks

 

[beeman458]

FWIW, stop by a thread I have going.  There's a lot of BS in the beginning to wade through but towards the end, it becomes much more informative.
 
Hope the thread suggestion is found helpful.
 

 

[CountChoculaBot]

AFAIK PCM1704UK and ES9018 Sabre are the top most often preferred chipsets.
 
PCM1704UK DACs are most prevalent with Audio GD's stuff, which is quite literally the BMW of Head-Fi world right now...
 
ES9018 Sabre is the other "top" chipset.  Don't really know what to tell you to look for in a ES9018 DAC; they all seem to be very high end already.  Audio-GD's made a 9018 DAC recently as well.

 

[Dubwicht]

I really appreciate the help.  The information out there is confusion and often contradictory.  Cheers,  Doug

 

[slim.a]

Quote:

I am considering looking for a DAC and was wondering what to look for.  Should I be looking for a specific chip set?  Any other design features?  There are many kits, boards and other China made devices on Ebay and I have built my own amps from schematics/circuit boards etc and don't have a problem installing a board in a box with all the connections.  Is it worth purchasing some of these low cost boards/DAC's?  Some adds boast certain chips as "best in the world etc."
 
Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Cheers,  Dub
 

 
Some of the things you might want to check on a DAC:
 
- Power supply: tranformer, capacitors, regulators, pcb layout
- DAC chip: R2R chips such as the pcm1704 are the best, but recent sigma-delta chips such as the WM8741, AK4399, ES9018 are better than previous generations
- Output stage: opamp based, discrete based... It really depends on the designer and there is no good or bad answers
- Digital receiver: the lower the jitter number the better usually, DIR9001 or WM8804 are good digital receiviers
 
... and most importantly, the overall implementation.
 
I wrote 2 DAC reviews recently where I explain the choices made for each unit:
http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/483899/review-of-the-audio-gd-dac-19-dsp-c2-amp-the-acss-connection
http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/476557/review-of-the-purepiper-dac-a-1-an-excellent-24-96-budget-dac
 
While that was targeted for those specific units, you can probably see what you should look for when buying a new DAC.

 

[ArmyDicked]

I am considering looking for a DAC and was wondering what to look for. Should I be looking for a specific chip set? Any other design features? There are many kits, boards and other China made devices on Ebay and I have built my own amps from schematics/circuit boards etc and don't have a problem installing a board in a box with all the connections. Is it worth purchasing some of these low cost boards/DAC's? Some adds boast certain chips as "best in the world etc."

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Dub

I have the EXACT problem you have so permit me to inflict my pain upon you. I have an Acurus ACD 11 which looks and runs flawlessly (for a 1997 design) but I hate the sound of CDs--- too flat & 2 dimensional for my tastes. So slap in a DAC the masses say. Did that with my little FIio E17 and it sounds marginally better. So Pop for a Good $1,000 DAC, you sneer. PARADIGM SHIFT!
Audio CDs are projected to be withdrawn from the market by 2020 so why force feed my CD Player a $1k part only to have it join my Nakamichi DR3 Cassette Deck and my tapes in the back of my closet joining my Yamaha T1000 Tuner ( everyone plays internet radio these days). Get an integrated Network player and DAC you say? DACs become hopelessly obsolete in six months or less so unless they are hot swapable that's not a solution. My girlfriend tells me to be happy with what you have---which is an anathema to being an audiophile, now is it!!!

 

[cheungtsw]

Driver support is very important if you are using USB.
The DAC is useless if the driver does not work.