Unfiltered NOS DACs sound


I Have been experimenting with some NOS DAC chips and redbook material.
I very much like the NOS sound, and frankly think in terms of transparency it trumps any of the modern DS DACs Ive heard. The biggest drawback is THD and noise levels, on paper the modern chips out perform the older NOS chips and I think thats easy to hear but its superior ability to preserve of timing and spatial information in the music makes that problem relatively insignificant.

I have experimented with high quality software based upsampling, the conclusion is that any form of oversampling loses the ’’special’’ NOS sound.

Steep analogue filters did not affect transparency as much as software digital filtering, but the sound became dull and lacking vibrancy. I would choose the ’’processed’’ digitally filtered sound over this dull analogue filtered sound any day, but still NOS remains sounding the best.
I tried gentler (simpler circuit) analogue filters and more extended (filtering higher into the ultrasonic range), and the gains from the filters were never worth the filters influence on audible frequencies.

So as it stands the best sound I can achieve with these NOS chips is with a raw unfiltered PCM output.
The artifacts within unfiltered 44.1kHz PCM are very significant but ultrasonic, so it seems that the audible influence of this ultrasonic noise has on the system is not as siginificant as the means of removing it.... but this is probably not true in all systems.

What amazes me the most is that this is with redbook material... DS DACs and upsampling are supposed to be the more advanced methods of dealing with the limitations of 16 bit 44.1kHz data.
Unfiltered NOS naturally seems the most transparent and accurate way of experiencing Hi Res DXD and 192kHz material.

I know that unfiltered NOS has a sort of cult following, are there any other fans of it here?

suix6

Showing 2 responses by suix6

Thanks for the response.
I use a TDA1387 based DIY DAC. The chips costs pennies and is as simple as it gets as far as building DACS go. Performance for the price is quite astonishing.

This was one of the last NOS chips made, and features newer type of techonology compared to older ’’R2R’’ types which I dont have a hope of understanding, but some have said on DIY forums that this newer multibit technology is superior to older R2R in some ways due to not using internal resistors which inherently suffer from accuracy issues.
The drawback is only 16 bit support, luckily high sample rates are still supported which I think is the most important aspect of Hi Res.
Hello @abraxalito,  you are also a member of diyaudio? thank you for work with these DAC chips!

I have used RC and LC filters. For IV resistors and LM4562 Op amps. What you describe sounds like part of the filterless sound. The sound could be described as more wild and hazy compared to filtered. The calmer sound of filters would be the gains described above. 
Digital upsampling was the preferred choice for getting a more accurate detail and presentation.