konut Wrote: > Rereading this thread convinces me that my money is better spent > upgrading the on board electronics of the SB3 rather than trying to > implement an external DAC. What are already very good circuits can be > improved to excellent with a relatively modest sum compared to the > added complexity and expense of an external solution with comparable > performance.
just a side note... i am not fully convinced that running DAC chips direct to the RCA jacks as many suggest is the best idea. i am running a similar DAC chip in my Sony CD/SACD player like this right now, and i've also done this to a Panasonic DVD player which uses a chip practically identical to the SB. while it sounds nice, i do miss the additional drive capability i had with the opamp output buffer... the output level is quite low, and i am missing some "oomph" and depth to the sound. numerous power supply tweaks have improved matters, but it's still a little on the weak side. another issue is the lack of output filtering. the Burr-Brown chips have a very basic 1st order analog filter. additional filtering is desirable to suppress PWM noise from the bitstream conversion process. left unfiltered, it may cause stability problems with some systems. my system seems alright, but i haven't checked with a 'scope, and i feel it might be adding some residual brightness and noise the sound. at the very least you would want to add a simple RC filter to get the effective response to be 2nd order, but the limited drive capability of the DAC output pretty much rules out doing this passively. i have removed all shunt capacitance from the output of the chip as it really kills the sound. still, i suppose compared to a mediocre output section (and obviously the stock one on the SB), the direct DAC method has advantages in sound quality. anyway, an external DAC with a better analog section, despite the drawbacks of S/PDIF, may still yield some sonic advantages due to the analog limitations of the SB. -- dorkus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ dorkus's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3373 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=21415 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
