I use the Soekris DACs in the DAC we offer along with a 30lb power supply!Very nice, which Soekris diy boards did you use?
http://www.soekris.dk/products.html
Cheers George
A great balanced R2R ladder DAC: Mhdt Lab Balanced Pagoda
After reviewing balanced DACs that cost right around $5000 for the Stereo Times website, I received scores of Emails from Gon members requesting if I could find and review a truly balanced ladder R2R DAC for less then $2,500. Well, my review on the Mhdt Lab Balanced Pagoda just went up on the Stereo Times website. It will give you all the details why I put it on the " 2020 Most Wanted Component List". The Balanced Pagoda easily matched the overall performance of the twice more expensive, highly regarded DACs. The only caveat to get its best performance you most run it through the XLR analog outputs, not its single-ended RCAs, into another balanced preamplifier. Hope, you take a look at the review, if you are looking to get a balanced DAC to run in your system.
Showing 5 responses by georgehifi
However, it’s a different kind of chip than delta-sigma DACs. Yes Delta Sigma (DS) is not R2R, it took the place of R2R chips because it was far cheaper to make and it could do sacd and dsd. But to me it (DS) can’t do PCM Redbok 16/44, 24/96 or DXD "bit perfect" like R2R' can, it can only give a "facsimile" of it Cheers George |
Can a R2R DAC also have a chip? I am as usual confused. R2R chip dacs were the old obsolete PCM1702 PCM1704 TDA1541 etc etc, all were stopped being made because the laser trimming of the microscopic R2R resistors, it was too expensive and time consuming for a chip to be sold for $20 They went for delta sigma because it was far cheaper and no laser trimming involved. Today we have R2R back again but this time discrete normal size resistors that are even better matched today without doing anything to them, all good for the sound of digital. Cheers George |
That's good, I thought being new it would be discrete R2R, I was referring to the new era of killer "discrete" R2R dacs available now, that MSB championed first off the rank over 10 years ago. The Texas PCM-1704's chips in Mhdt haven't been made for over 7 years now, they were the last and arguably the best of R2R "chip type" d/a converters made though. Cheers George |
Real "Discrete" R2R dacs, need twice as many R2R resistors as discrete R2R single ended ones. This is where the expense is. Many just have pseudo single ended to balance opamps on the analogue output stage to get balanced output, so really your better off just using the single ended output unless you want to run 3mt+ interconnects. Ask the manufacturer if the discrete R2R resistor DtoA stage is also balanced, or just the analogue output stage. From Soekris Audio http://www.soekris.dk/ they have some of the best R2R dacs, here is the difference between their "single ended" and "real balanced" dac boards. Single Ended https://ibb.co/V2hR2Y7 True Balanced https://ibb.co/hB1Ff1y Cheers George |