edit - Nevermind...looks like kevin covered it...

Here's where I think the metal cage is soldered:

Do I need to just wick that off and pull the damn thing up? I'm always afraid I'm going to break something.

Listen to it, don't break it Dinny.

I don't see anything there that would indicate to me that there were 4 PCM1704s. There aren't enough components or traces to support what I'd expect to see there if that were the case. As such, I wouldn't recommend attempting to take it apart.

That's no fun Nate

Well, it wasn't easy, but here we have it:

OK...so it's SM5847 filter w/ CS8420 Receiver/ASRC.

And what does that mean? Assume an infinitely stupid Monkey.

For its time it is built reasonable. Definitely not crummy diy. But not 4 layer

shielded circuit board either.

Hm, I actually thought I had read that it was 4 layer. I'll see what I can dig up. I'm assuming you can you tell just by looking?

Well, the 5847 is a good digital filter. However, I don't care for the CS8420, personally. It has a bug (at least the revisions I'm aware of) that can make it spit out garbage data if you plug/unplug the digital connection (maybe a few times; depends) while it's on. There is a workaround where you can use a microcontroller to sense the lock detect and reset the chip, but I've heard even that doesn't always work. Besides that, I'd read a while back from John Westlake that its PLL design is poor. As an ASRC, it's OK; not state of the art, but not bad.

Thanks, as always, filburt. The manual says, among other things, that if you have a problem, the processor can be reset by either unplugging the unit or changing inputs momentarily. I wonder if that was addressing the bug of which you speak.

Still sounds pretty good though...

Oh, really? I thought they meant on the underside of the tiny little daughterboards that the 1704 was on.

Oh, really? I thought they meant on the underside of the tiny little daughterboards that the 1704 was on.

Wait, what?

When they said they thought the other two 1704's were under the daughterboard, I thought they meant right under the other 1704's. I'm probably wrong though, don't go disassembling anything on my say so.

Yeah, I tried looking, but I can't see under the damn daughterboards:

Like I said, given the design there, it really doesn't conform to what I'd expect to see if there were 4 dacs. It has, more or less, what I'd expect to see if there were 2 dacs and a phase invert in the output stage. Don't break your new toy

+1. There is no 'ultratech' inside this, but there are obviously many tweaks-corrections: does it sound good? That is the important here, IMO.

You can buy today many converters coming from far east with really nice done boards and component selection and fabrication, great to have on display... but they sound like crap, or not to the high standard one may think after seeing them...

Thanks everyone for your observations so far. As for the sound, I like it a lot so far. It seems a bit quieter than the ECD-1, while retaining the musicality that I like. The mids are very good. And while I usually rely on female vocals to define the mids for me, I've noticed that the Dodson also does a good job with male vocals. At first I thought it could be a slight bit of grain, but I think it's just revealing the fact that male voices are not necessarily "smooth" all the time. For example, Mark Knopfler's voice sounds a bit more gravelly. More like a, well, a man's voice.

So, good stuff so far. But still a lot more listening to do.

I made a mess of the metal cage, by the way.

I made a mess of the metal cage, by the way.

Attamonkey! True wisdom is often expensive to acquire.

I was feeling bad about it. It isn't broken, but it's no longer "perfect." And then my wife asked me if I wanted to learn about it or if I just wanted to have it on display. I like learning about this crap. I just wish I had more tech skillz.

Moar broken stuff = moar tech skillz!!

I guess that's right, isn't it. We learn by doing (and breaking). I've been meaning to get back into DIY anyway, and it looks like I should be able to fix the cage pretty easily. KG was kind enough to give some advice. I'll post updates.

Also, I communicated with a few people about this DAC and it turns out that 1) the designer probably is just retired, not dead; 2) the company that bought Dodson, Silversmith Audio, still upgrades the units, but this one is as close to the 218 version as it can get; and 3) the new DA 218 Palladium version is still being sold--for $8k.

Jeff Silversmith preferred not to share the schematic, but he seems like a pretty nice guy.

I made a mess of the metal cage, by the way.

They keep you in a cage and haven't even cage trained you? Poor Monkey.

They keep you in a cage and haven't even cage trained you? Poor Monkey.

No, they've trained me, but when they keep me locked in the damn cage, I make damn sure they know how I feel.