World's first NOS 24/384 filterless DAC

[PeterSt]

Adrian, yes.

[Flecko]

Adrian, yes. Happy

Ok, alway thought it would be a xx-only unit, very nice. so... I would like to order now but......But you need aims in life

[Gerard]

Peter,

Bit curious overhere... 

How are you doing building the dac's..?

 

[GerardA]

Peter,

Me too a bit curious...

Will you still put an ADC in the DAC?
Maybe one with high bitrate so we can rip lp's or make live-recordings to the best quality (384kHz).
And will it be possible to use that ADC as an input to the (PC-)DAC so we can connect all the old analog sources?
 

[PeterSt]

Just in (very) brief :

The DAC goes extremely well. The batch is expected to be ready somewhere next week.

But currently I don't know what to do first ...

- Arranging for all stupid stuff liking shipping contracts (ok, it's done);

- Arranging for people's special requests here and there ?

- Answering emails and forum questions;

- Setup/finish the administration side of things;

- Finish 0.9z-4 with of course the "Josef tweaks" in there ?

- Suggest to people who ordered the DAC already that for an additional 200 euros A/D can be there as per GerardA's question ...

- ... and thus sort out that again, now I know how to do it in the first place.

It should be the latter two subjects, and I better do that before we're at the particular parts going in.
I actually should send emails to everybody, because they may miss the post here. Anyway :

Assuming it can be done indeed (which merely is about a partial re-layout of the internals of the DAC case), for an additonal 225 euro you can get :

- A/D at 24/192 (RCA or XLR at choice)
- An additional DAC, this time OS (haha), but with the noise specs as the NOS1, 2 channel output (RCA/XLR at choice again). Jitter specs ? don't know yet, but should be as low as the NOS1 specs (< 0.5ps).
- SPDIF (coaxial) input, but only for the OS-DAC part. Jitter will be "lousy" (but has to be measured).

If some people want this, I will investigate it. It's merely the same idea as ever appeared in this topic (rather long ago), but now based on another means of connection which should work (and which my earlier idea did not).

It seems rather late to come up with this (again), but let's say one customer kind of forced me into thinking about this again, and I can't let go ... Of course it would be too stupid if I had this working in two weeks time (all more at rest again), you just don't owning it. You'd come over and kill me.

Obviously it takes away time again, but when I'm fast enough with investigating it, together with a decent implementation of it, it won't hold up the assembly of the DACs. However, there will be a time that the administration stuff must be finished, and that already *should* be finished. It is almost, but not yet. And so, I *must* postpone that for the next mentioned days, but it seems for a good reason.

The most important may be that I'm ready to put out pro-forma invoices, if only the people's data is in the system. No big deal (meaning : no unexpected things there to expect), but even that will take a couple of hours.

Next year I will be working on a time machine.



PS: Don't ask too many questions in this topic about this please. An "huray !" or "bweh" may be nice, also to summarize it a bit for others. But questions via email please (or please none, haha).

[manisandher]

Peter, I'd be interested in the A/D and happy to pay €225 for it. But this would be a 'nice-to-have' for me, not a 'I-really-want'.

Mani.

[Telstar]

spdif input (preferrably toslink) without the A/D would be possible? I just need it for the tv.

yes i know, i still have to reply to your email...

[pedal]

I think the additional digital spdif input is very clever. It makes the DAC more universal. People can hook it to their ususal source (even a cheap CD player costing €100.-) and have instant sound. It makes for a good "back-up" possibility when your PC is down or something. Also, it makes it easier to demonstrate (and compare) the DAC's capabilities when using its dedicated soundcard input. It let people experience the gain of using XX software. I WANT THAT!  ***I hereby confirm the order***

A/D converter is nice, only if the digital signal (stream) is possible to capture and record with a software in the computer. Otherwise I route my analogue sources directly into my preamp.

All the best!

[pedal]

I am like a kid on Christmas Eve every time I get a new component in my system. The search, the waiting, the expectations, taking the unit out of the box, sniffing the odor of new paint, reading the manual, touching the buttons; -it’s very ritual.

When the new unit arrives, I take a day off from work, prepare some good food and I play only selected music. Especially the FIRST track is very important in this ritual. Since I was a kid, I always picked my most cherished recording at the time to play first, -like an act of honor to the new component. Something like Dark Side Of The Moon, Aja or a Sheffield Lab Direct recording.

The arrival of the NOS1 will be very special, deserving my most cherished record ever: Deep Purple/Made In Japan. My very first album. I got the compact cassette for Christmas in 1972 when I was 8. I had a portable Phillips cassette player – made in Holland – so it is all déjà vu. I played the cassette to death. Day and night. Because it is a double album, the tape was rather thin. In the end my cheap Philips turned the cassette into a tape salad. What a loss! The most important thing in my life was robbed away from me. During the years I collected huge numbers of equipment and music, but I will never forget my first love which was so abruptly thorn away from me: Made In Japan – my Rosebud.

When I play Made In Japan on NOS1 in December 2010 the circle will be completed. In addition Peter has told us that his dac magically will bring the band alive, with Ian Paice’s cymbals crashing in my living room like they are for real. Oh my God, I have enormous expectations to the NOS1. It will be just as sensational as it was for Christmas 38 years ago.

[PeterSt]

When our son was 2, he was sitting in the back of the car humming ta-ta-taa, ta-ta-tataaa, ta-ta-taa ta taaa.

So much for K3 !

I guess I must have played it too often even before he was born.

9 years later (this was 2 months or so back) he had his first public performance (drumming) on the melody of Smoke on The Water. Not only to the face of the public and his teacher, but also to Cesar Zuiderwijk (Golden Earring). It was great.

I am not sure anymore, but I think this was my second album. Black Sabbath (1) was the first.

But Pedal, to avoid some disappointment, Made in Japan isn't an all that great recording. Merely, all Deep Purple albums aren't great (IMO). Only "Who do we think we are" has a quality where cymbals may excel, and it is a real test album for me. I must have played it 20-30 times the last year, only for cymbals, and only for wild cymbals. Not because it is so good at it, but because it varies so much with the quality of the source (including XX). Made in Japan is just no(t) good at all. As are the others (maybe Fireball is rather ok too).
Compare this with Led Zeppelin. Always good, if you only stick to the first 5 albums. Good for the smashing cymbals from such a rock band, I mean.
Actually all which is "rock" is quite difficult. It's too much smashing, and the highs just "fill up" and smear because of it. In the end you can't even be within 5 meters of a drummer when he uses the cymbals all over. It's a sort of the same I think.

And for further safety, when I was referring to Deep Purple and that great ambiance (earlier in I guess this topic), this was another album (a bootleg). There this worked superbly. Made in Japen ? I don't know. I guess I played it too often to be able to get involved. One thing I know :
Over time I must have been connecting the turn table maybe 30 times (long ago now). Like once or twice in a year. I always played one album ...

Happy waiting !
Peter

[pedal]

When I was referring to Deep Purple and that great ambiance (earlier in I guess this topic), this was another album (a bootleg).

A bootleg?! 

Well, well. I still gonna play Made In Japan, just to respect the ritual.

-----------

My SECOND album played on the NOS1 will be a special CD: The Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique with LSO/Colin Davis from year 2000 [LSO 0007]. You find it at Amazon.uk costing about €8. One of Tony Faulkner’s earlier attempts to master a CD entirely filterless, using a special mastering technique. So, it will be a complete filterless experience!

I had some interesting correspondence with Tony. He said that probably there are "a few hundred" CDs out there, filterless. He said it can be done as long as the music doesn‘t contain too much high frequency.

[PeterSt]

Hey Pedal, maybe a few words to avoid misunderstandings :

I think the additional digital spdif input is very clever. It makes the DAC more universal. People can hook it to their ususal source (even a cheap CD player costing €100.-) and have instant sound. It makes for a good "back-up" possibility when your PC is down or something.

I won't judhe about the first , the second will be true, the third too, but the latter not;
The PC will still be needed.
Maybe even the third is prone to misinterpretation; that won't use the "NOS1" as such, just the soundcard. But with all "good noise" facilities.

Also, it makes it easier to demonstrate (and compare) the DAC's capabilities when using its dedicated soundcard input. It let people experience the gain of using XX software.

True I guess ! But funnily, also some kind of backup to "hey, I don't like NOS !" -> could happen. Not even a very pricey backup, because the major part of the "DAC cabinet" is about how to get the data in there, how it's clocked, and again the noise level (all totally unrelated to the PC now, while otherwise it would).

A/D converter is nice, only if the digital signal (stream) is possible to capture and record with a software in the computer.

At this moment I have no reason to believe this won't work, although it is similar to my earlier "wong thinking" which was about using the soundcard for input using SPDIF and use the NOS1 for output at the same time. This is all a very strange and (as appeared) a complex thing, and while I was at least able with my Windows 7 install to let something work (but with very poor figures), with Vista it won't work at all. Strange, but in Windows 7 there were options like "listen to this input" (in the Driver settings) which to me looked like a kind of monitoring and a very indirect way which went back and forth to the PC (and therefore had lousy figures), but with Vista ? no such options to find.
All 'n all, this is to awaiten, but later today I hopefully will know more (loads of soldering to do).

Otherwise I route my analogue sources directly into my preamp.

But this may imply a "wrongish" application ! This seems to tell (combined with the previous quote) that it would ever be a feaseable option to let flow your e.g. TV output to the DAC, that A/D-ing it, and next D/A it via the soundcard's output. Of course, with the latter quote you explicitly say the same ("that would be stupid"), but I want to add to it that most probably (the TV thing) won't even work, similarly to pushing through SPDIF to the NOS1 (which I now turned into SPDIF to the soundcard's output).

On the other hand, it just as well may work that analogue soundcard input shows at the NOS1 output, and on this matter all is a "toy" to find the proper combinations. One could get crazy of it. But here too : what to use it for ? Yea, as one of you suggested earlier in this topic : for playing back vinyl with decent RIAA correction maybe.
And so, my A/D suggestion would only be about not having another means to record digitally (while you would have your FireFace IIRC), which by itself can be about anything (could be about archiving vinyl).
Is it not about that or another means of explicit recording ? then it is quite useless. What remains is the SPDIF input for "just in case", which in my situation could be about using my good old DAT recorder again. But not through the NOS1, *or* I must be able to find that right path through the NOS1, which -as said- at least under W7 did more or less (more less) work.

I sure hope this is not all too confusing !
Peter

[PeterSt]

Ok ... All I can say at this moment, is that with all connected the NOS1 part still runs and measures well.

So at least I can play some music now. Haha.

[Nick]

Peter hi,

WRT having an ADC and SPDIF on the NOS1. I personally would not use the ADC at all so I am not keen on this. SPDIF might well be usefull though from time to time, either as an output an input or both (I was not sure if you were suggesting SPDIF output or input to the DAC in your post).

Best,

Nick.

[PeterSt]

Haha, this is a small story the other way around. Maybe more for my comfort than yours ... 

Listening to that soundcard. Direct i2s connected, all the very same as with the "NOS1" herself.

Oh, yesterday -after all was connected- I listened to the whole Made in Japan album. Via the normal NOS1 chain, and just to experience what Pedal would hear. Haha, all quite allright. As said, not the best recording, but nothing changed. Actually I was enjoying the Hammond (oh yes) from Jon Lord so much on Space Truckin' - with all that GREAT distortion he squeezes out of it. A bit similar to distortion guitars I (think I) reported about much earlier in this topic. But today ? today the playback chain added distortion to that, and this is not intended. How ugly that then is ...

So today ? today I tried to play that again. For 2 minutes. Not more.

Today I experienced the one giant leap back from all those larger and smaller steps I have been writing about in this topic. All with their reasoning and argumentation, like OS (which is what this is) rings and even audibly echos. In other words, when I now listen "back" to the ever starting point ? ...  all those steps back are there. It is just one big pile of ugly noise !!

Actually this is a bit to my surprise after a whole day of measuring today. So, figures are only slightly worse and btw the best without any (Arc Prediction) filtering (as should), but listening to this it occurred to me that *I* am the one always saying that measuring OS is fake-fake-fake.

Still I expected more because of the whole (setup) environment, the low jitter (this is not SPDIF fed) and the low noise (which btw isn't all *that* low, because the analogue section of the soundcards adds quite some to it).

Summarized :

- Completely DIRTY.

- False harmonics audible as a recurring high pitched frequency in at least cymbals.

- Woolly as hell.

- Not dynamical at all. Dead. Only the dirt makes it alive a bit.

- Highs seems to be there allright, but without color.

And last but for sure not least :
My wife tends to talk a lot when I try to listen. Normally I don't even hear her, but instead apply some techniques showing her I do. Not so today. Today I listened to her.


Allright. Even when your speakers may not show all that highs, you can expect an unsurpassed cleanness. Not to speak about that separation I left out in above list as well as -from the other side- the completely annoying uneven sounds of a piano. And the suddenly unrecognizeable lyrics.

All 'n all, I am sorry, but I see no reason to stuff this in as a "wow what a number of output connectors". It just makes no sense. And then to think that the SPDIF input (which I did not use) would also add jitter. You would be ripped off for 225 euro extra, and who likes to be ripped off.

Peter