This was something like my diy dac in 2000, terribly old school.

I also have the ifi nano idsd for headphone purposes but connected it the other day to my main rig. Big surprise: excellent sound and fun. You can trick this one into pseudo NOS by feeding it a high sampling rate from xxhe like 384khz. Then the xx arc pred filter dominates over the internal one and that is audible in a positive sense.

This dac is dirt cheap and does the works for music lovers, portable too if you have other plans. Only nuisance is that quality listening needs to be done over the battery, but its life is sufficient for more than one evening of listening.

No, it does not live up to the phasure dac, but what do you expect really...

Regards, Coen

P.s. Very good sound is also attainable on the mac with audirvana+(Upsampling)

The price does not deter....

Regards, Coen

Hi,

This interesting speaker has a 80 cm woofer . That's right: the equivalent of 4 to 5 15 inchers in one package.
Madness and I also like the idea of the bronze horn. I guess you can buy several Peter/Bert systems for one pair of these behemoths.

http://youtu.be/nnzaKvMF2o4

Regards, Coen

ESS chips (Sabre) are never NOS.

Regards, Coen

P.s. Save and buy a NOS1a 

Hi Chris,

something like this could work:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TALEMA-25VA-Linear-Power-supply-DC5V-DC9V-DC12V-DC15V-PSU-for-choose-L154-22-/121643341873

Must be many more offerings cheaper and more expensive.

I've got the HDPLEX 100W (VA) unit for my PC, which also has a fixed 12V out (and also a 19V for the laptop). That unit is somewhat more expensive of course.


regards, Coen

Hi Chris,

A few words to set the expectations.
Lead acid is in principle a bad idea for audio. Its discharge is very noisy. Maybe there are specific implementations with low noise, but for the usual purposes this is not a requirement.
Also the voltage reduces during discharge, you will only hit the design or optimum voltage (and related circuit optimization) only for a very brief moment. Expect your sound quality to drift.
You could use the batteries with a wide input DC-DC converter, but then you re on the switching path again (which is not bad per se).

I would recommend a good linear supply, which should not be so hard to find for 12V.

regards, Coen

Hi,

I would definitely NOT put a capacitor bank after the SMPS. Only the wiring to and from the bank in conjuction with capacitor parasitics would make a resonance horror scenario. The SMPS is certainly NOT designed to take a large capacitance as load. I think that exactly happened with the 'capacitor buffer' PCI card that totally worked counterproductive.

Large banks are ok for dc smoothing in linear supplies provided that the transformer and diodes can keep up charging them. Mind you that all regulated supplies assume a distinct capacitance at their outputs for proper operation. That means that sq change as result of extra capacitance at the regulators output is likely yet an improvement Less so.

This is not a new territory. In the pre cambrium of computing all computers used only linear supplies. You can still find the big, big, big 'computer grade' capacitors you cound at the dumpstores. Also overclockers are fond of linear supplies because they are rumoured to allow for even more cpu juice at lower temperatures.

I've personally made a simple wiring change in the computer that made my LPSU (HDPlex) setup leap forward in SQ to an unsuspected level. I'd rather focus on the aspect of proper currentloops and creating the lowest noise by optimizing wiring than extra capacitance.

Regards, Coen

P.s. i found win8 and w10 also to be quite similar, but that was on the same pc with identical parts and setup. Yet I still favour win10 over 8, and win7 over them both.

Hmm, I typo'd and mixed the version codes on my side, not useful for communication. Anyway in the phasure control panel driver version is displayed as 2.08.00. Phasure control panel version is 2.03.58.

In the mail (from Januari this year) the driver I downloaded is referred to as 2.8.a.

And yes I flipped the switch (and back again)!.

regards, Coen

Hi Peter,

After the OS-X update last week I tried to play some tunes through the Mac, but no sound. After selecting and loading a track, no player in my Mac "suite" starts actually playing through the NOS1a, they just freeze at the start.

This looks like a driver compatibility issue. I'm running v1.08a on the MAC.

Is there a new version in the making or is anybody else experiencing this issue?

regards, Coen

Sure mani,

R cores have an air gap by their nature. This makes them capable of handling much more DC current than a toroid that has none. Remember the use of DC blockers (anti parallel diodes bridged by a capacitor)? These are applied to toroid PSUs just for this dc reason.

Next to that are r cores easier to wind and have a similar if not better form factor.

Regards, Coen

Hi

I was there and the ONLY room where bass was ok was with Peter and Bert. The worst bass was in the meridian MQA demo room where the basedrum sounded like a THX theatre style Meteor impact and double basses like a herd of Tyrannosaurus Rexes on the run. I was almost literally blown out of the room.

Nevertheless I think the MQA sounded like a format with a lot of potential. On the positive side music sounded dynamic, with clearly defined instruments having very good fundamentals (like in realistic 'body'). Despite the over done bass and highs with digital 'clarity' this could really be something. They are on track to bring it mainstream in i.e. Samsung phones and the software catalog is not focussed on audiophile classics. The demo guy even dared to play a MQA Metallica track. I think it would be a nice complement to the XXHE player provided that it passes Peter's ruthless scrutiny.

What surprised me is that so may big names where present but many really did not have their act together, delivering an uninvolving flat or dry sound with horrible bass. Also the expensive vinyl setups I heard did not deliver the delightment at-all that can come from the medium. I wonder if the demo-ers thought it sounded fine. I did not ask.

Anyway it was a pleasure at the phasure BD design room for both sound and company!

regards, Coen


   

Hi Mani,

I experienced a similar issue with my pc somewhat out of the blue, but not completely. My sudden and unsuccesfull reboots started a while after I rearranged the harddisks on the sata ports.

The root of the problem turned out to be a poor sata connection on the OS harddisk. No more problems since I 'fixed' it by placing the cable in such a way that it has some tension to keep it connected. A 'spit and tape' solution for now.

I would check the sata connection(s) just to be shure there are not involved in the problem.

Regards, Coen

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for your contribution! Likely you have a far more accurate system than me to assess the tonal differences between windows versions. In retrospect I concur with you about the upper bass/ lower mid being stronger in WIN8/10.  This undoubtably plays a role in my experience.

The thing is that I do not experience any of the mentioned negatives with neither my Phono rig nor with the mid-fi Rega player of the 90s. They are both as clear and flowing as can be through my system. At best my NOS1a rig extracts way more nuance out of the recording in tone, space and dynamics whilst sounding soft and delicate, just as in real life. This adds up to a total music experience that is my ultimate goal: awakening the sense of beauty and connection to the music. This is a whole different level of listening.

Now my WIN8/10 experience is unfavorable by any standard. How much worse can sound get when you can't understand what the singer is singing and when missing out on melodies played by others. More fundamentally I have a difficulty to connect to the music. The music leaves me cold and this is not only a tonal phenomenon.

When asked the question if the source is the negative influence of the underpowered computer is ameliorated by OS generated noise or that my amp and speaker cannot cope with a strong upper bass presence, I'm inclined to say the first. No such upper bass problems ever noticed with my other sources; yet I cannot rule it out since it all is related to each other.

We'll see in time what's the case, maybe even both.

regards, Coen




 

Grrr,

By now I'm sure the newly introduced loudness is pure distortion covering precious nuance in tone and melody. Intelligibility is down as is the musical structure. I also am annoyed by hardness in the midrange and highs.

Worse, this sound is very reminiscent of my WIN8 experience.

I'm afraid that I am the proving case that a presumably technically "better" environment iow less noise overall does not always lead to better sound.

Maybe it is all about starting to hear more clearly the effects of (mis) matching USB clocks on both sides of the interface. Can "fix" that only in WIN7 (to some extend).....

regards, Coen

***newsflash****

Peter,

You reminded me of placing back the isolated Silverstone USB3 card. That was not possible before because of the lack of a proper plug on the simple LPSU/SMPS wiring. I however rewired it lately and realized that it now could be done.

So I did replace it and the first thing that I noticed when playing music that it consumes way LESS power, actually identical to my WIN7 setup with the no-name card: 68 Watts.
CPU graphs are much cleaner in the cores not assigned to playing music. So the 11 extra watts have been dissipating because of software reasons NOT associated with XXHE processing.

Now in the device management panel I saw the same RENESAS driver (no new hardware found) that is apparently used for the Silverstone.

Anyway imo the native RENESAS WIN10 driver is now the prime suspect of the power supply consumption 'enigma'. The WIN7 version works as advertised for the no-name card, but not on win10. Likely some incompatibility with this typical OEM version. I did not try but I suspect the silverstone card will perform identical in WIN7 and WIN10.

Another thing that occurred to me immediately is that the sound is louder and more dynamic. So i'll have restart the win 10 parameter discovery all over again (sorry Joachim).

regards, Coen