[nysulli]

well, i've got the upgrade bug again, maybe i just want to give myself a pat on the back to getting to the point of writing my doctoral thesis, maybe i'm just yearning for better sound, but whichever, i'm torn between upgrading my amp, or the source, but i'm not sure which route to go, current setup is

creative x-fi -> minified pint -> grado HF-1's (you can pry these from my cold dead hands)

i'm actually very happy with the current setup, its not lacking in any area in particular, i think i'm just wondering what better sound might be out there that i have yet to experience, but the contenders for upgrades are

1. M^3 amp, or millet hybrid, i have the MH board, but nothing else
2. DAC, if i could get my hands on an alien dac board, or possibly a modified Dac-AH, or something similar
3. better sound card

my budgets anything under $300 really, and that can be streched a bit, but its best to set limits, otherwise i might end up blowing all my money on a dynalo or a singlepower amp

and of course, DIY stuff is definitly game, had a lot of fun planning/building my pint, and couldn't have gotten more satisfaction out of the results unless i had designed the circuit myself (btw, thanks tangent, now bring it back, this is truely an amazing amp for the price)

i have heard how well the pint can scale with upgraded sources, so i'm open to any suggestions as my experience is fairly limited going into better gear, although another small possibility is a used theta ds pro prime II dac that i can get locally for about 6-700 bucks, which would really require a lot of justification on my part to go over my budget by such a large amount

 

[nysulli]

anyone?

 

[Clutz]

Okay, I'll bite.

I haven't heard the Creative X-Fi, but I do have a PINT, a PPA v2, a Millett-Hybrid and a Dynalo. I also have an early revision of the Alien DAC.

First of all, it is kind of hard to make a recommendation without knowing what kind of music you like listening to (at least for me). I tend to change the equipment I'm using depending on what music I'm listening to. For example, if I'm listening to modern rock (e.g. radiohead, the flaming lips, blur, muse, ash, my morning jacket) or classical, then I prefer my Dynalo over my Millett Hybrid, or PPA because I love the details it helps me pull out of the music, which tend to get blurred away with the Millett-Hybrid. On the other ahnd, when I'm listening to classic rock, and some modern folk rock, I tend to listen with the Millett-Hybrid or the PPA, because I find the dynalo sucks the body out of that kind of music.

My recommendation, if you want to spend all $300, would be to build the Alien DAC (probably cost about $75), and then build a Dynalo (about $150 or so). That'll take up $225 or so of the $300. Then I would take the remaining money, and try to squeeze a HPDAC from it. Here's why:

I think that for the money, the Dynalo is a fantastic amplifier, particularly for the kind of music I normally listen to. If I could only keep one of my amps, it would be the dynalo, even though it was by far the cheapest one I've put together (not including my first cmoy). The Alien DAC is a really great deal, and so is the HPDAC. I recommend doing both of them, because they're both really good values - and have totally different approaches to the DAC problem. The Alien DAC is a typical oversampling USB DAC, while the HPDAC is a TDA1543 based non-oversampling DAC using a resistor based I/V, and it includes a PINT-like headphone amplifier built in - and it's all powered by the USB. By getting both the Alien DAC and the HPDAC you can determine if you prefer the sound of the NONOS DACs or OS DACs before you invest any real money into a DAC.

I think you're getting the best bang for your buck that way. If you like listening to a lot of classic rock and/or folk rock/pop, then the Millett-Hybrid is the way to go, either with the HPDAC or the Alien DAC -if you can afford to do the MH + the Alien DAC or the HPDAC.

I haven't heard the M3, but that's not the only reason I'm not talking about it. Of the options you or I have mentioned, it is the most expensive to implement, and if you did that project, you probably couldn't afford to do anything else.

Anyway, if you want to do the Alien DAC, and need a pcb - pm me. I bought 5, and I no longer have plans for making that many.

CHeers,
Clutz

 

[nysulli]

thanks for the reply clutz, i really should have included the type of music i listen to, usually hard rock, metal, the occasional jazz and techno or classical

as for the alien dac board, i'd be very interested, i'll send a pm your way

the other dac i've been checking out is the dac-ah, which looks affordable, starting at 135 bucks, but very modable for future upgrades

 

[Clutz]

For the kind of music you listen to, I think that overall the Dynalo is going to be a better match than the Millett-Hybrid. For some hard rock, particularly classic hard rock, and for some Jazz, the M-H would probably be better, but overall, I think that the Dynalo is a better match.

I don't know anything about the DAC-Ah, so I can't really comment on it; but perhaps someone else can comment on it's relative merits compared to say the Alien DAC. One thing to point out though, I believe the DAC-Ah only has SPDIF or Toslink inputs, so if you wanted to use it with your computer you'd have to have something that can output Coaxial SPDIF ideally, or Toslink (ideally because, TOSLink has more problems with jitter than coxial spdif) - although you may already have that with your Creative X-Fi.

The DAC-Ah is a non-oversampling DAC, similar to the HPDAC, and I believe they're both using the same chip - TDA1543 - the difference being that the DAC-Ah uses 8 TDA1543As in parallel, while the HPDAC uses only one - and that's not necessarily an improvement. Having 8 TDA1543s in parallel means you're going to have more output current - and the idea here is that by having multiple TDA1543s in parallel, you can average over any conversion errors, but not everyone thinks that this necessarily improves the sound quality. So, I think I would still suggest going with an Alien DAC and a HPDAC, and try to decide which of these two you prefer before going any further. Hell, that may be the best way to start. Get an Alien DAC and an HPDAC - bu ild them both, and pick the one you like best - then sell the other - and then re-invest that money back into an amp!