The DAC chip I'm going to be using on these boards is a brand new one, I have not used it before, so I can't be completely sure, but my gut feeling on this is that it is going to be way better than what was in the Touch. A big advantage of thisone is that it has a direct output, no need for any other output stage, between the DAC chip and the output jack is one resistor per channel, that's it. This does a lot towards keeping the cost down.
I have a $1200 DAC at home from a company known for very good sound at reasonable cost, this new output is probably going to sound significantly better. That is the level I am aiming at and I think it's quite acahievable at a very low cost. Part of getting this quality is the programable DSP in the DAC chip, by putting the proper filter in here you can get vastly better results than other systems. I have proved this with other systems, that fairly ho hum DAC chips and analog out stages with the right digital filter can sound vastly better than very high end stuff with garden variety filter used in almost all the DAC chips. And this implementation is NOT going to be a "ho hum" implementation. I'm using very low jitter clocks, very low noise voltage regulators, and unusual ground plane techniques to keep the digital noise out of the analog domain. The final result when it is all tweaked up should be pretty spectacular. This is what has me excited, the ability to do all this stuff and integrate it into the system so it doesn't cost a fortune. I just did a quick and dirty cost estimate this morning, and with a single core wandboard module, the wifi module I've talked about AND the audiophile DAC and S/PDIF out we are looking at right around $200 for the complete board cost, the only thing not included in that price is the case, antenna and power supply. A dual core module will cost a little more. The Gen0.5 boards will have a quick and dirty implementation of this functionality, not nearly as good as Gen1, but enough so we can hopefully get the software to talk to the DSP in the DAC chip so I can start working on the filter design. So Triode and Jack, don't expect wonders out of the Gen0.5 board, it should sound pretty good (I expect significantly better than a Touch) but nowhere near what it will be when all said and done. John S. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JohnSwenson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5974 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=97881 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
