Home Source Components

OK to have one for non-specific vinyl discussions? Vinyl relevant links on Head-Case http://www.head-case.org/forums/home-source-components/4450-hagerman-bugle-dl-103-revisited.html http://www.head-case.org/forums/do-yourself/3931-pass-pearl-pcbs-related-parts.html http://www.head-case.org/forums/home-source-components/6471-linear-tracking-tone-arms-experience.html http://www.head-case.org/forums/home-source-components/3070-zyx-bloom-best-bargain-mc-under-5-000-a.html http://www.head-case.org/forums/home-source-components/5684-mc-phono-stage-review-rogue-stealth-vs-benz-lukaschek-pp-1-t8.html http://www.head-case.org/forums/audio-accessories/5193-what-do-i-need-t…

Alright lets talk about this. Digital audio revolution or just another DAC with a fancy pants implementation? http://schiit.com/products/yggdrasil The FAQ, as usual, is worth your time.

Having been out of the game for a while, the rapid development of DAC tech (or at least the verbiage dedicated to same) appears to have accelerated even more. I'd appreciate it if you fine folks could catch me up as to where we stand. What is the latest and greatest tech? What are some of the basic must-haves in a DAC today? Which chipses tend to sound best? And, most importantly, which ones have the prettiest lights?

Stereophile: Ayre's QB-9 USB DAC Revealed

Auspicious name, though I know not if it is indeed in reference to the goddess. WM8804/2*PCM1794/24 bit-192kHz/Jensen trafo-coupled output stage/$1295.

Right direct from Oppo themselves on their Twitter page: https://twitter.com/OPPODIGITAL Best bets: Dual core at least, 4k, latest Marvell QDEO video processing, wouldn't be surprised to see a higher end variant come out in 2013 to succeed the 95. Overall, I expect to see further improvements and streamlining/addition of features for the Internet, streaming, supported files, etc. etc. That's been their cycle to a tee and it's a safe bet it's going to happen again here if that's anything to go by. Stay tuned.

Ok so I spoiled the entire review/impressions thing with the title but I am just that enthusiastic about this new piece of gear from apogee http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/duet.php The unit itself is designed for the recording musician on the go. The unit is powered by the firewire port and that port also serves as the digital in as well. There are NO other digital inputs on this unit and it is designed for Mac users only. The analog ins and outs are acessed by a breakout cable. The analog outs are 1/4 mono females and are meant to be hooked up to powered monitors for audio playback of tracks you have recorded or to monitor recordings as they happen. There is also…

Turns out some of you are pretty obsessive about DACs. Fortunately, there's a lot of knowledge here about these silly machines, so I figured a thread dedicated to general DAC technology and questions could be useful. I envision questions/discussions about various chipses that our preciousss DACses use, ciruit design, implementation, etc. Here are some that I have to get started: 1) What is meant by a "true" or "fully" balanced DAC, and what would be some of the sonic advantages? 2) What are some of the iconic (canonical?) DAC chipses? And what are their characteristics? 3) What is your favored topology and why? 4) What's with this whole I/V thing…

It was posted on the other forum here: DA11, Lavry new DA - headphone feature - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio It was mentioned that the USB is up to 24 bits and 96KHz. I copied and pasted the info below: Introducing the LavryBlack DA11- Lavry Engineering takes stereo DA conversion to a new level! Features like a USB input, programmable settings, infrared remote capability, and the proprietary >PiC< Playback Image Control

Interesting. Focused on pure playback, it seems. You apparently give up A/D, equalization and 24/192 support (caps at 24/96) for your $1100 savings -- though that's all second hand scuttlebutt.

I know a few here jumped on the Geek Out DAC/amp when offered on Kickstarter. Rumor is the desktop version is going up on Indiegogo in a couple hours. http://parttimeaudiophile.com/2013/10/28/light-harmonic-introduces-desktop-geek-pulse-on-indiegogo/ “Geek Pulse” provides superb sound quality from a wide range of high-resolution formats, in an easy-to-use plug-and-play device. “Pulse”‘s DAC natively decodes PCM files up to 32-bit/384kHz, as well as native decoding of DSD64 and DSD128 files, and features the Patent-Pending 3L buffer introduced by Light Harmonic in Da Vinci DAC. The amplifier is pure Class-A, utilizing a super-quiet DC power supply to produce 3,000 …

The PS Audio PerfectWave DAC is out: PerfectWave DAC : Product Details | PS Audio The DAC is 2995, but PS Audio is offering a trade-in until the end of May. If I understand correctly, send in your DAC and you will receive up to $1000 off (DAC trade-in value appears to be based on MSRP). Brings the unit to $1995. I'm still trying to piece together what exactly this thing does. Is this just a big gizmo, or does it seem like it could be something that sounds good?

Sony's new Top of the line SACD player: Sony SCD-XA5400ES ES Series SACD and CD Audio Player with HDMI Output in Home CD Players at JR.com I'd provide better links, but work filter is killing me.

Squeezebox Touch unboxed and in the wild Looks interesting

We talked a lot about R2R dacs on Stax thread because of some bullshit design choices, And given the attention of the R2R, especially discrete dacs, I wanted to post all the findings in this thread. Discrete modules I found to play with: Transient Modules (the dac modules of 2nd and 3rd gen Metrum dacs) and Diy parts based on it (most of the parts they are selling as oem but diy parts are also avaliable): http://www.transient-audio.nl/ all parts can be found under this website http://www.transient-audio.nl/Ordering.html this is how to order guide Soekris Modules (there are two modules avaliable on each segment [oem and diy line], t…

<p>Since Justin's thread wasn't really about a DSD DAC, I thought I'd continue the discussion here.&nbsp; I'm far too lazy to split out the discussion from there and point it here, so I'll just point to <a href="">it there from here</a>.&nbsp; Of particular interest is Torpedo's post <a href="">here</a>.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>So...seems the cheapest points of entry are the <a href="http://www.teac.com/product/ud-501/">Teac</a>, a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Korg-Ds-dac-10-Digital-Analog-Converter/dp/B009YD4NVQ">Korg</a>, the pre-outs from a <a href="http://www.pioneerelectroni…

Hooray, they let me into the early adoption program. Should have it next week. Looks like it'll be a very nice player for folks like me with a mainly HT orientation and potentially a pretty decent transport for those with higher-rez audio aspirations, too. Let's wank about it right here!

Diebenkorn posted this earlier in the For Sale Elsewhere thread. Though it might merit one of its own. They're definitely trying to tick all the boxes on the wish list, and then some. Will be interesting to see what the implementation is like. If the USB input was asynch, they would probably say so I guess.

Price unknown, but if it's sensible they should sell plenty. Since this is almost certainly using the exact same receiver board that's in the Wavelength and Ayre USB DACs, it'll probably also be upgradable to support 192kHz sample rates eventually.

This journey has been long and painful, after many dacs, and much lost money, I have yet to find a dac that I can settle on, or at least be happy with for now, until i can afford a high end piece of gear. I thought it would be easy.... people with tin ears tell us that just about all dacs sound alike... with wide spread concensus one would think that the decisoin would be easy. well, it's not. 1. The raves about the modded zhaolus convinced me to buy one, but that's where things went wrong. it's not that the zhaolu isn't a good piece of gear, it's that the one I got is horrible. Ori did his famous mod on mine.. and it broke 3 times! wires became loose, there was all kin…

Got the Audio Advisor catalog in the mail today and the big push is on the recently-released $1,995 Bryston BDA-1 DAC, which looks quite interesting on paper. Any thoughts from the resident DAC gurus on the basic design? The manual is here.

Emotiva Audio XDA-1 Digital-to-Analog Converter I saw a thread about Emotiva's $299 DAC on Audiocircle. I will get a chance to check it out at RMAF this weekend.

Hello Head-case, As you can see, I am new here but I have a question on a vintage DAC that will probably be better answered here than at the other place. I recently came across someone local selling a Sonic Frontiers SFD-2 DAC (MK1) locally for a decent price (around USD$900). This DAC is around 15 years old and got glowing reviews from Stereophile when it was released: Stereophile: Sonic Frontiers SFD-2 D/A processor I was thinking of buying it tomorrow evening but I was wondering if anyone here knows any reason NOT to get it? Can anyone guess how it will compare with modern DACs?

I've owned this piece now for a few weeks and have been pretty tight lipped on the sonics publicly. After a few weeks of use in my system damn if this isn't the best dac I've owned. Higher resolution than any of the dacs I've had in the house, greater frequency extension, no top end glare, great tone and just reports the new and does not seem to editorialize. In the house now are 4 dacs and the Sonic Studio 302 takes top honors. I've got an esoteric here on loan, my modded TranDac and the Apogee Duet. I was first turned on to the Metric Halo unit by Ironbut right around the time of the VSAC event. I researched the living crap out of pro audio dacs for a while and it k…

https://www.mhsecure.com/mhdirect/product.php?productid=49&cat=0&page=1 Wow UNL-8 without mic pre amps for $4K great price and now for those that wanted a stripped down version here it is. I love my Sonic 305 (ULN- but this is $2 less and the dac section is absolutely world class.