Soekris Dam Dac

[gstew]

Has anyone here tried using the built-in volume control and noted any sonic degradation with it in? I ask as that's one of my next things to try with the Soekris and if others have found it to be a negative, I won't bother.

TIA!

Greg in Mississippi

[rickmcinnis]

I used it initially and then went with the autoformers.

There were some glitches in the early iterations. It is said they are fixed but I bet an outboard attenuator is still better.

[gstew]

I used it initially and then went with the autoformers.

There were some glitches in the early iterations. It is said they are fixed but I bet an outboard attenuator is still better.

Thanks. I'll give it a try and report back. I will make it easy to plug/un-plug for comparisons.

I'm using an S&B TX102 TVC in this setup, while I'm swapping a lot of gear, I like the isolation of a TVC. I do have an AVC from DIY HiFi Supply I can also use there, not sure which is better, I think the S&B, but haven't tried them head-to-head.

Greg in Mississippi

[rolandpsp]

Hi guys,

I'm new to this forum, came by specifically regarding this soekris DAC because i've been spamming and swarming nigel with questions and he reffered me here to spam all of you guys :D.

Basically i'm an electronics noob ( or less ) looking to use one ( or two ) of soekris board to build the best possible source.

I'm not sure which way to go but right now i'm pretty fixed to trying to make it as small as possible(width and lenght) retaining the width of the board ( 81mm + case = 85mm).

Here are my questions, sorry for the wild ordering of the topics :


Why do you need to remove opamps if there is a raw output which doesn't use them ?

Is the 3.3V battery better or just comparable to a Salas BIB and Shunt regulator ?

How would the smallest unaltering charging circuit look for a 3.3 Lifepo4 ? Could you charge all the lifepo4's powering a board from the same small charging circuit ? Are there any such small charging circuits available on ebay, maybe something like a chip regulating the charging, keeping size to an absolute minimum, using a small laptop psu ?



Nigel wrote several times that Xmos sounds better for him then amanero. Would you recommend the DiyinHK version or is there to be found a better simple implementation ? Nigel told me that a waveio has alot of filtering and in the case of batteries which are clean that might actually degrade SQ. However, wouldn't an unfiltered implementation with multiple clocks be better ? (i don't quite understand the necesitty of multiple clocks nor the exact function of them) - so the question is : would an untilfitered implementation of XMOS with 2 (higher quality) clocks give a better sound ? I'm quite fine with what you guys are using though...



In the case of balanced vs unbalanced - i've seen on the HiFIduino site that there are balanced outputs on the board (but only through the opamps ) I've seen people use XLR's with their single board soekris DAC however the official version doesn't have balanced outs and i'm wondering why, since it's specifically made for headphones thus using opamps. Any idea if it's using the same opamps as the Diy version ?


If one is using the raw output, output stage do you recommend for the best possible sound ?
Secondly - if i would follow my inspiration and go for a build that is smaller than the official version(but most likely thicker) - completely battery powered - with portability in mind ( even though still large but not much wider/longer than my galaxy note 3 ) - how would you feel in using burson or sparkos labs Op-amps ? If however i would abandon the portability for highest sound quality, what output stage would you then recommend ? Could it be run straight from RAW to an Broskie Aikido preamp ?

Please guys, take the time to answer all of my questions, i am in dire need of the educated opinions and valuable experience of each and every one of you.

And also greetings from Romania, the once great country from where thieving gipsies now emerge ruining our people's name ( facts not racism, saying because if mainstream TV made someone think romanians are thieves and criminals, it's very far from the truth - regarding the absolute majority - though all garden's have their weeds ). And also factually we have the lowest rape percentage in all of europe. Regarding the gipsy population ( Which the UE and americans made us call ROMA - get it - they want to steal our name - ROMA / ROMA(NIAN) - ROMAN on our language.

In fact we didn't force them from their homes and made them slaves, actually they invaded our borders a few hundreds of years ago after which they were made slaves because of their very nice behaviours, their slavery span being the shortest(in time) of all the enslaved peoples. Their slavery being abolished amongst the first ( if not the first, dunno atm ).

Short history which i wanted to present since the american ambassador in Bucharest decided a few days ago to speak about how awful the gipsies were treated ( Get it, american ambassador, whose war-waging maniacal non-american century-spanning leadership enslaved people for long before romanians and long after. But he speaks about us, while giving orders to our prime minister and such about how we should treat minorities. And a few days ago we had tens of babies die because of an imported vaccine which proved to be experimental, regarding which quite a few doctors said it was the reason for their illness and death - on big TV stations. Quickly afterwards, while the media people shortened their discourse - they put other doctors say it was .... infested yogurt. Then the minister of health told the ones who spoke against vaccines that they will face consequences.

Tales of demo(no)cracy, sorry for the offtopic, won't happen again, this is mostly since it's my first post :D.


Please feel free to comment/dissaproove/PM if it bothers - after/while you enlighten my DAC noobidity or at least parts of it ! :D

Roland

[tony]

Renua are looking for a new party leader maybe you might like to apply Roland:-)
I think we focus more on the Hifi here rather than politics but welcome aboard. Soekris sounds great after all Nigel's mods but unfortunately he is still using crocodile clips to hold it all together!

[nige2000]

Renua are looking for a new party leader maybe you might like to apply Roland:-)
I think we focus more on the Hifi here rather than politics but welcome aboard. Soekris sounds great after all Nigel's mods but unfortunately he is still using crocodile clips to hold it all together!

thats coz they never get out of experimental stage :)

[sima66]

Renua are looking for a new party leader maybe you might like to apply Roland:-)
I think we focus more on the Hifi here rather than politics but welcome aboard. Soekris sounds great after all Nigel's mods but unfortunately he is still using crocodile clips to hold it all together!

thats coz they never get out of experimental stage :)

That's a blessing!!
I made all my stuff PERMANENT.......and that only last for a couple of days or weeks!!!

[nige2000]

I'm not sure which way to go but right now i'm pretty fixed to trying to make it as small as possible(width and lenght) retaining the width of the board ( 81mm + case = 85mm).

possible but its never easy

Here are my questions, sorry for the wild ordering of the topics :


Why do you need to remove opamps if there is a raw output which doesn't use them ?

every chip will have current draw and noise these four are directly connected to signal and gnd at output

Is the 3.3V battery better or just comparable to a Salas BIB and Shunt regulator ?

yes better

How would the smallest unaltering charging circuit look for a 3.3 Lifepo4 ? Could you charge all the lifepo4's powering a board from the same small charging circuit ? Are there any such small charging circuits available on ebay, maybe something like a chip regulating the charging, keeping size to an absolute minimum, using a small laptop psu ?

you will need at least three batteries for decent sound two power supplies 3.3v and - 3.3v either two wallwart linear supplies or dual secondary transformer and two 3.3v reg ic like lm1084 3.3

Nigel wrote several times that Xmos sounds better for him then amanero. Would you recommend the DiyinHK version or is there to be found a better simple implementation ? Nigel told me that a waveio has alot of filtering and in the case of batteries which are clean that might actually degrade SQ. However, wouldn't an unfiltered implementation with multiple clocks be better ? (i don't quite understand the necesitty of multiple clocks nor the exact function of them) - so the question is : would an untilfitered implementation of XMOS with 2 (higher quality) clocks give a better sound ? I'm quite fine with what you guys are using though...

the diyinhk is as suitable for batteries as ive seen

In the case of balanced vs unbalanced - i've seen on the HiFIduino site that there are balanced outputs on the board (but only through the opamps ) I've seen people use XLR's with their single board soekris DAC however the official version doesn't have balanced outs and i'm wondering why, since it's specifically made for headphones thus using opamps. Any idea if it's using the same opamps as the Diy version ?

his headphone amp has different opamps he spoke about it recently on diya

[nige2000]

got a good improvement with this only clean power mod
after i put another gnd from clk gnd to its pad gnd

well worth doing
unfortunately ive done some damage to this board by a short with my oscilloscope probe
actually very similar type fault as the last board i broke

[rolandpsp]

Thanks for the answers Nigel. Waiting for you to get a new board :D