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burr-brown vs. sabre vs. ?

just curious if any people here have experience-based impressions the differences various converter chips make, assuming they're roughly the same vintage. I'm looking to buy a digital interface for digitizing LPs; it's a more mass, consumer-driven (not high end) type of market, so features are pretty uniform at any given price point, which makes me wonder if the different chips have a 'sound'. put another way: if you were choosing an interface for audiophile purposes (my preference in 'neutral', when it comes to component choice), would you gravitate towards any particular manufacturer?
musicslug

Showing 3 responses by coli

coli
291 posts
 
burr-brown sounds very nice. Sabre sounds digital thin. NOS R2R sounds heavenly. 1bit DSD sounds super digital thin.

If you are looking for a ADC instead of a DAC, looks at the Ross Martin PCM4222.
coli
291 posts
 
Lynx is crystal (cirrus logic), same DAC as in many sound cards.

All the DACs with the same chip when properly implemented sounds similar. So first figure out which DAC chip you like the sound of, then find an implementation with the biggest bang for the buck.
coli
291 posts
 
Robertsong: most NOS DACs today are based on old R2R chips. Outside of custom R2R NOS dac (Metrum, TotalDAC), Soekris is a recent one but no one has commercialized it yet...

Someone has managed to turn Burr-brown PCM1794a (6 bit R2R + rest in Delta sigma) into NOS mode (DDDAC1794)!!! I wish more people copy that design...
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