Computer Audio Blasphemy, nige tries Another SD Card Player

[jkeny]

Thanks for the pics, Pearse
I thought from the Taobao pics that it was using oscillators (possibly NDK) not crystals?
TPS7A4700 are good linear regulators

Does the remote show all folders/files when the SD card is inserted into the player or does it continually read info off the SD card & transmit to remote?

Same question as Nige - when you get a chance give us your impressions of sound, please

[Sligolad]

Has it got potential pearse?
Ie does it sound as good as the one we used stock.?

Hard to tell yet Nige but sounds promising using SPDIF through an RME ADI-2 DAC into your Class A amp on your speakers.
Until i get it hooked up on I2S through your DAC i will then get a good idea of how it sounds.
Will try to get it setup next week if i get the kit i ordered.

[Sligolad]

Does the remote show all folders/files when the SD card is inserted into the player or does it continually read info off the SD card & transmit to remote?

The remote does not have enough going on in the display to show more than the 4 lines you see in the pics John.
When you power up the Player it starts playing and the Remote shows you what is playing when you press the Power button.
By pressing the DIR buttons you can quickly scroll through albums/folders one by one very quickly and the folder you stop on begins playing once you stop scrolling.
Same with tracks and it is virtually instantaneous playback when moving through tracks and albums/Folders.

The remote goes to sleep after about a minute and is brought back up by pressing the Power button for a second or two immediately showing what is playing.

Easily handling all DSD, FLAC and WAV so far with instant playback, i believe it also works with MP3 but i have not tested yet.

[jkeny]

Thanks, Pearse
If it sounds good it looks like a good hardware base to have a play with & possibly develop another interface for it?

[Sligolad]

Got the new SD player hooked into the Group Build Caps powered DAC. I have it powered off 8.1 Caps. The HDMI to I2s connector is powered off the 3.3v Caps.
https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/diy-inte ... -9346.html
https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/hdmi-dvi ... 11984.html

Sounds really good and it appears there is a bigger more holographic soundstage and another level of transparency into the music which really surprised me.

I really need to play it back to back with another one of the SD DACs to find out if I am delusional🤔.
Hopefully we will get to carry out this comparison in the coming weeks.

[jkeny]

Good news, Pearse, thanks for doing this
Seems like there may well be lots of areas for improvement which bodes well for final sound quality:
- in the power sections, bypassing regulators with direct supercap supply
- Should be even better sounding with I2S taken directly rather than through HDMI
- That & better clocks along with reclocking I2S - would be worth doing, I reckon

[randytsuch]

Interesting developments guys.

Found this ebay link, looks like the same player
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SD3-75-referen ... 3993060243

Found it with google search, not ebay search because seller is currently closed for Chinese new year.

If we get a more user friendly interface with this, seems promising.

Randy

[jkeny]

A couple of things about this design
- I can't understand how the external clock input could work - there are two on-board clocks which presumably are switched between depending on the samplerate of the audio file being played (which is s good design practise although a good oscillator rather than crystal may well be better) but there's only one input for external clock & no switch signal for the external clock(s)
- the WiFi board used is a transceiver working with the remote WiFi transceiver. This would need to be replaced, I reckon, if a more robust user interface was intended. The ESP8266 web server module seems like the best replacement?

[Sligolad]

A quick point on John's comment on "external clock input", this is a clock output on the board so no facility for a clock input without some work.

An update on the listening session at Micks at the weekend with a lot of good ears in attendance.
We played the DAC with this new SD player back to back against another same DAC but with the traditional SD Player with good NDK clocks.
The unanimous consensus was the new SD Player had a bigger/wider soundstage but lacked sweetness and heft of the Standard SD player with NDK clocks.
We swapped to the Andrei Morei clocks on the Standard SD Player and the sound was preferred by all so it looks like this new SD player could do with better clocks.
We did not have the option to run the A Morei clocks on the new SD player but I will work on this on the coming weeks, i believe i should be able to easily tap into the new SD player by lifting off the 7Z26 output tri state buffers on the clock circuits and feeding in the A Morei clocks.

I will probably lift the I2S signals off the board before the HDMI out as well to see if this improves the sound into the DAC.

[tapatrick]

An update on the listening session at Micks at the weekend with a lot of good ears in attendance.[/quote]

Thanks for the update.



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