World's first NOS 24/384 filterless DAC

[PeterSt]

Well, the decisions taken and all, the now definitely to use interface I had laying around for two months already, today was soldered next to the DAC. The I2S lines are still 18cm (1cm to be) and the below looks pretty good to me.

Firewire is clocking, buffers set to 1ms (can be less), I'm listening to Taj Mahal - The Real Thing, and I have the shivers for more than 50 minutes now (who needs Viagra ).
A tuba already was an instrument I recognized as a very good representative for sounding honest and real - or just not, but man, this really beats everything and all. Phew, the album just finished minutes ago, and the shivers won't go away.
And then imagine it was the last album I played yesterday, sounding awfully good already (you just can't sit still on that last 19 minute track), but shivers ? no, not that I was aware of.

Or maybe it's because I at last got where I wanted to be for so long (and theories start to work out) ?

[manisandher]

So, the firewire is working, hey? I know this has been a real 'crusade' for you, so well done!

Now, what are the most obvious sonic benefits, as compared to the 18cm I2S lines that you've been using to date?

Are you using a similar firewire implementation to Weiss?

Mani.

[PeterSt]

(sorry for typos, didn't read it back)

Hey Mani,

No, no dice with DICE, haha. Something is just wrong around that chip (the organization), and I can't find my ways there. Nowhere actually, at seeing that it takes 8 months to get somewhere with one of those products, which more often are virtual then real. Anyway, I've signed an NDA, didn't read all the small print, so I better keep quiet a bit (for now).
The implementation itself though is proprietary, and while Daniel never offered me his "implementation" (no name one) I guess I will never do that either. And then we'll see how long this DAC lasts as the only Firewire connected audiophile DAC ...

On the sonic qualities I first must try to explain something else;
During my quest on the analogue stages (man, did I try many) you just won't believe how TOTALLY different every single solution sounds. It is always a difference of night and day, and the worst of all is : most of them sound good. Of course this can't be, and we all would say "but one will be the best". Yes, but it doesn't work like that with night and day differences and both are "good". I'll try to give one example, this time in the area of just the connection;

For many months the connection has been I2S by means of a tweaked soundcard in the PC. This was by means of a Cat5 twisted pair, carefully grounded, unterminated. On the scope it looks slightly worse than the pictures from my last post, but, not as steady which tells me "jitter". 80cm is or ir not too long, but if anything ... too long (ref. Gordon R.). It sounded just GREAT, and everything became very sweet and nice of it. Fragile if you want. On a side note, this is a very dangerous judgement when you're working on the analogue stage at the same time, knowing that a very first thing happening there is ... filtering. Filtering of resolution, of bass, of treble, add colour, add flair and anything you may be able to imagine, also thinking there's no further preamp to filter further, and thus you hear everything. However, compared to SPDIF from the Fireface, the I2S connection was a for me most clear very much more clean sound. Call SPDIF plainly "rough" in comparison. Rough vs. sweet.

In a before post I was talking about buying other products (external soundcards) in order to try out native possibilties for the chip I chose, see whether the I2S lines could be taken from it etc., and since those products never have a native I2S connection, I obviously started off with connecting such a device with SPDIF. Not different from how the Fireface would be connected. This is what I have been using the last 3 or 4 weeks, and I just let it be because this by itself again brought a COMPLETE different sound, with the major property of things being fresh fresh and more fresh. Funny thing is (if you followed the Relase Notes on XXHighEnd) I started using this device right at the moment I eliminated the Mem and LDN checkbox from XXHighEnd and immediately was sorry because here again I had the super dynamics I experienced before, and of which I thought it wasn't good and why the LDN checkbox in XXHighEnd emerged. This is hard to imagine and hard to explain, but it comes down to each and every album you start, starts with some smash which makes you dive away, so frightening.
This is not fatigueing (at all) and merely is the most interesting throughout. It brings detail at a level from another dimension (the attacks), and when you're not all that much analytical you would like it forever. But, in the end I don't think it is reality BUT I cannot be sure because why would an attack be more loud than reality. It can though, and this again is related to the analogue stage (think of overshooting), but how this is related to the digital connection ... hmm ... (not much different from XXHighEnd could incur for it in one of its early (never public) versions).

At listening to it for these three weeks - and if something lasts for three weeks it must be good - in the end I thought "the hell with it, it is going to stay like this, it is just too good". Remember, this was SPDIF. I must tell though (and I'll come back on this in a next post) that this was a Firewire clocked connection, so it could be very different from what I was used to with the Fireface/SPDIF, because I never saw something in there "clocking the stream" (again, see next post).
Now, only because I had to build some PSUs and do some analysis and soldering on another similar device I already had laying around for a couple of months, that ever meant to be a final solution to go into the DAC's cabinet, plus it would be out of sense because it would need (driver) programming which didn't come together, it was only yesterday that I finally stuffed in that interface, this time I2S connected.
Long story short this again outbettered everything, just because everything sounds "normal". So, no smashes and crashes, no superfresh, but also no supersweet from the earlier I2S connection and better colours in the highs (cymbals). And much more important : very much (more) involving, which for me always is a last resort when other judgements fail, or day and night has too much contrast while both seem to sound good.

If you are still with me, in the end it is somewhat (no much) more complex, because as you know I'm also on my filtering project. This is a tough one, because it is so so hard to judge for its merits. So, a little story about this :
When I first started using the filtering (which is in softare, XXHighEnd) it was the most obvious that everything became dead black and quiet of it. This was with the earlier I2S connection, and I imagined things got overdone, and I was listening to an oversampling DAC. Well, of course it was (4x). Now, at moving to the SPDIF connectoin I just talked about, and at hearing those relatively (to I2S) emphasized freshness, I thought to switch off the filtering because if anything this would show the effect of it. I was playing Abdullah Ibrahim - Senzo, and I never never heard such a good recording in my life. Sadly I just received the album, so I didn't know it from before. It is taken a kind of loud, and at all that beautifully singing and interacting piano notes I heard harmonics so much emhpasized, I thought it would be alisaing or whatever. But it did not sound wrong. So, I swicthed ON the filtering and ... really heard no difference on that matter. Thus, really no perceived "anomalies" disappeared, and the only thing I knew is that the ambiance of the superb recording disappeared. I didn't see him working at the wing anymore (this is one long 60 minute recording without breaks) and I didn't hear of feel him breading anymore. It stopped working.

Out of all this was this superfresh SPDIF situation, and while the already so sweet I2S got even more quiet from the filtering which I perceived as good, I expected harmonic anomalies to disappear from the filtering in this SPDIF situation, but it didn't change a thing to that (if I perceived anomalies in the first place,and you really have to listen to that album to understand what I mean ... btw, get that album, it is the best I own (just piano, nothing else)).
And so it happened that I never switched the filtering on anymore, with in my mind "if I ever hear aliasing anomalies or stuff my amps can't cope with, I will hear it with this superfresh and dynamic sound". Well, that too stayed for 3 weeks, and again, anything lasting that long is there to stay.

The now implemented I2S connection (which btw is the one of 18cm long and will be 1cm or less in the end situation) is theoretically the best, and as said, sounds the most normal. If it is still there in a week's time, it is there to stay. I don't know that yet because as always it takes many music styles to judge it to its merits. It sure brings the emotion, which doesn't mean hiphop will sound good as well (somehow hiphop is one of the toughest styles to let sound good via PC playback ... ah ... who cares ).


Well, in the mean time some may wonder how it can get better and better over and over, and the possibility exists I am perceived as that reviewer who always and always finds the again better sounding product each and every subsequent week. Not so. If I say something sounds better from before I mean that, and if I have said it 10 times by now, it really got better over and over, and the only thing it should tell is that by now you can't have the slightest clue on what I'm actually listening to. Well, for those perceiving the sonic improvements on XXHighEnd (of which I hope that's all of you out there), it happened there over time (again and again), and this is the same, but multiply the difference with a before version by 3 or so to get the grasp of the more huge differences which can be achieved at this (hardware) level.
But then I only report the improvements, and not the failures. Maybe I should post a photograph of quite some KGs of failed analogue stages. One of them even exploded (well, some caps).

[PeterSt]

Mani, allow me to ask you a question, since I my self am not certain about it;

I know you are experienced on the Fireface and using the Wordclock or possibly internal clock stuff to create a better (clocked) connection with the DAC (or PC for that matter). I never understood that quite per the lack of devices allowing such conections. With the experience you have on this, can you tell me :

Whether - with a normal Firewire connection used as SPDIF, the "Master" setting or anything else can influence the way the stream from the PC is sent or clocked.
Although I can tick checkboxes in the Firewire driver screen, and supposedly they should do something, I never saw any difference, and combined with the fact that the Fireface does not "lock" to the PC stream - or anyway not visibly by the lock lights present - I always thought it just doesn't do anything.
Is this correct ?

I ask this because the Internet seems to have started rumours that Firewire would be asynchrounous for the connection which I find hard to believe as such, but seems to be in the area of this "Master" setting anyway. Besides, when so much fuzz is made about USB/Async, why would Firewire suddenly be the exact same.
However ...
With what I use now I can explicitly choose for the PC being the master or Firewire being the master, and in that case it really does something (both settings do not allow the same small buffersize).

Do you have opinions on this regarding your own experience ? (I'm not asking for babble from other forums, just your opinion ). 

Edit : Had a slightly different text here before

Thank you !
Peter

[manisandher]

Peter,

A very short response for now - I'm working in Houston all next week and need to get a lot prepared before my flight first thing tomorrow morning. Sorry...

I remember when I first started using the Fireface (slave) with the Esoteric D70 (master), I wanted to experiment with getting better quality sound out of DVDs. Using Media Player to play the DVD, I found that I could indeed control the 'speed' of the video by adjusting the clock frequency on the D70. More recently, I recall playing a programme on the BBC iPlayer and again being able to adjust the speed of the video with the D70.

Ergo, the D70 in master mode was definitely affecting the way the stream from the PC was being sent...

Not sure if this answers your question. I'll post again from the States when I have a minute.

Mani.

[PeterSt]

Hi Mani - thanks so far !
Indeed I knew that, and for the exact same reasons (say, better sync with video hence display frequency). But now I never saw that *not* working. And uhmm ... I did that with the Fireface itself (DDS tab) ...
In the end I guess I never understood it well.

I'll be happy to learn more from your experiences on this one, but don't make any fuzz about it. When time permits, and even then, no obligations.
Peter

[Per]

Fantastic achievement, Peter. 

How does your dac sound when fed a 16 / 44.1 signal from a ordinary CD transport through either SPDIF og AES? Do you have ANY idea if the price of your dac will end above or beyond the 2000 Euro mark and when it will be ready for sale? Are we talking 1 or 2 years from now cause I might be tempted to live with my humble TEC 24 / 96 spdif and toslink dac and rig a PC with XXHighend and souncard with SPDIF out until then. And start saving up....

Keep up the good work - and take care.

Best Regards,

Per

[Telstar]

Phew, the album just finished minutes ago, and the shivers won't go away.
And then imagine it was the last album I played yesterday, sounding awfully good already (you just can't sit still on that last 19 minute track), but shivers ? no, not that I was aware of.

Shivers.
This is what I wanted.
I didn't get them when I heard the very early prototype of the NOS1. It sounded better than most digital sources that I have ever listened to but it dint get into the emotional level. I think (hope) you are there now. I just got back from short vacations and I think I have to fly again soon...

[manisandher]

Besides, when so much fuzz is made about USB/Async, why would Firewire suddenly be the exact same.

I'm pretty certain the RME and Weiss firewire implementations have always been 'asynchronous' (a term which I still find really confusing in the context in which it's being used - but maybe I'm just too stupid...).

Thanks for describing the sonic differences. I have to admit that I lost you a little though - too many different permutations going on.

I'm not sure if I have any other insights to share from my own experiences. All I can say is that 'master' mode has always sounded significantly better to my ears than any other word clock mode. To me, this makes perfect sense because the clock sits right next to the DAC chips... as it should.

The exact mechanism by which this clock then controls the stream from the PC, I have no idea about. Sorry.

Mani.

[PeterSt]

Thank you Mani.

I have to admit that I lost you a little though - too many different permutations going on.

Well, who is asking for differences, not knowing the base (reference) in the first place ?

If I had to describe the sound as how it is now, I would say

- Aggressive;
- Very good separation of individual elements like a plunk on a nylon string;
- Something like the latter being very forward and straight (no vibrato no flanger) indicating few jitter;
- The sense of wanting to jump along. It is "performing".

The "aggressive" is a dangerous one, because it is quite the opposite of "dead bird" and comes along with "not laid back". You could almost say "less suitable for background music". Dynamics are fairly high (but not too much this time).


One other means of, say, objective judging :
Yesterday I sat down to compare a few means of filtering. Never mind why, but this testing needed an SPDIF connection, so I used the same setup but with Firewire used as SPDIF passthrough (still clocked by firewire). Didn't listen to anything else earlier on. Tried many things during 90 minutes or so and couldn't decide for anything. After testing time was up and normal listening hours should start, I connected everything back, and immediately there it was, WAM.

This connection is of huge importance, as in fact everything is. What "you" will never be able to grab without listening, is how in the world it is possible to create such ENORMEOUS differences by these kind of means. I believe it because I hear it. And then to think that people of good reputation exist telling that all DACs sound the same ?! Well, this is one only, and I guess there will be a day soon that I will write out what switches could be there without pain (SQ degradation) so you'll have 5 completely different DACs instead of 1.

Peter

[PeterSt]

Fantastic achievement, Peter. 

How does your dac sound when fed a 16 / 44.1 signal from a ordinary CD transport through either SPDIF og AES? Do you have ANY idea if the price of your dac will end above or beyond the 2000 Euro mark and when it will be ready for sale? Are we talking 1 or 2 years from now cause I might be tempted to live with my humble TEC 24 / 96 spdif and toslink dac and rig a PC with XXHighend and souncard with SPDIF out until then. And start saving up....

Keep up the good work - and take care.

Best Regards,

Per

Hi Per,

How does the DAC sound from an ordinary CD transport ... good question, and also the reason I respond a bit late because I wanted to try. But, I still didn't get around to that. So, before I do (and you might remind me when it takes too long), some general blahblah :

In the last post, and earlier as well, I in fact described the sound coming from SPDIF (well, indirectly). To me it looks like the second best sound coming from "a" connection". It is special somehow, and the character is super fresh without being able to recognize much what's wrong. But, between not-wrong and "working" quite some world exists, see my before post.

We must be very careful here, because what I by now reject, could have been a 100% desire one year ago. By now I am spoiled like hell, and nothing is good enough except for the new and better than before. Stupid example : If you read Telstar's post again (a few posts back) ... we spend a day (that includes a night ) at comparing a perceived good OS DAC with mine of that time. We were honest, and compared with SPDIF only, because the OS DAC could connect to SPDIF only. But, I and "we" knew there was also I2S, and the only thing what happened with that is that I told it was tremendously better, but nobody ever asked to listen to that, and so we never did. Isn't that strange ? (btw, through the tears in my eyes I've seen them in Telstars' but never mind that haha).
I only want to say : after perceiving the sound of the good OS DAC and listening to mine, the OS DAC suddenly sounded as bad as completely broken, which really was the sudden thinking of the owner of it (which btw was not Telstar).
Now, hopping over to I2S would have encouraged for the same idea : "my" SPDIF is broken.

To emphasize further about "being spoiled", since then a few things changed. And, each topic I mention below is really such another step of "the before must have been broken" :

1. The I/V and output stage has been fully replaced with another one. Maybe this has brought the biggest change.
2. The DAC itself has been replaced by a complete new design (before it was differential 4 chips, now it's differential + parallelled 8 chips).
3. In fact including in #2 but of major importance : the means of clocking has been changed completely from the ground up.
4. The direct Firewire connection, that interface being right next to the DAC with internal I2S connection. This too brings "a biggest change".

So what to say, other than that you most probably would have gone for above not mentioned step -1, being the old situation and SPDIF connected, step 0 being the I2S connection Telstar already never heard. And if I say things got better, well, I hope some people trust this.

All 'n all it is my guess that your CD player will improve by many miles. But, to to it really well your CDPlayer should be tweaked for I2S-out;
The DAC board will be as close to the cabinet terminals as possible, and I estimate that maybe 2-3cm is needed internally; If you put your CDPlayer on top of that, there may be, say, 20cm needed to get out of the CDP's cabinet plus 15cm to go to the DAC. All together some 37cm.
In this context I should note that my earlier I2S connection was about 80cm and that worked perfectly. As a matter of fact, I don't see where it fails, BUT the sound is 100% different. In the before post I described the current sound as "aggressive", which is not only the opposite of laid back, but also the opposite of "sweet". That other I2S connection (from a tweaked PCI interface) is pure sweet, also "works" if it is about emotion, but totally different sounding. On that matter it could be such a switch I mentioned in my before post, and with an additional EUR 150-170 you'd have that too. Ehh, for a PC connection.


No, this won't take two years anymore. At this moment it is hard to predict, and I recall telling a few people last spring it would be "this summer". Well, this summer is almost over, and I won't be able to make that. The biggest hurdle has been the Firewire though, and that seems to be behind me. However, as I told in an earlier post, the communication and all with a few companies and people I just need on ths subject, is slower than the slowest snale. Last thing what happened on that is that I was "allowed" to put a purchase order for the SDK/DDK I need, and never heard anything since. And to keep in mind : this Firewire interface was ordered last December, while I received it in June. I guess this is how things go when you're really into something not existing, and you are depended on others. But, I will persist. Maybe "you" can't wait and this is your right.
If you ask me now, I'd say it will be strange when "this year" is not in order. But keep in mind : I said similar about "this summer". And what's REALLY to be kept in mind is that it is all for the good - no, best cause.


The price is still out in the open at this moment, in fact awaitening two things :

1. I must look at the SDK/DDK (system and driver development kits) to see whether what is promised really can be done - and can be done by me. If it can't be done be me (or my company) it will take $$$$ to have it done, and this will influence the price. As said, I never heard anything back on my P.O. so far.

2. The current setup looks like finished for SQ (although programming on the driver may change that more or less), and the current PSU used for the digital section is a good one, but is a kind of large. So, the base SQ known now, I want to "play" with PSUs here, and possibly use a super shunt regulated in the mean time. Because this is for the digital section it shouldn't matter, and *thus* nobody does it. Aha, well, in *that* case I should try it.

But 2000 will not be in reach I'm afraid. My earlier calculations showed 3400; I just summed it up again, and although every single part has changed opposed to the before situation, I now come up with 3310 excl. VAT and shipping. This includes a dedicated manufactered housing (so not a stupid DIY box).
I think it is a bargain since no hours are in there for the design and all, and if it takes, say, 500 hours to get the driver and all where I want, there is no 50K+ calculated in there, which even for a 100 units should add 500 to the price.
Besides, there is hardly anything to find not being in there, and I'd say that everything everybody always wanted comes together in this box.

Although you must go for NOS/Filterless to really like this, do not forget it can behave like a nice oversampling DAC at the same time with filtering of choice to apply in software. The filtering by itself is upgradeable and possibly ... maybe leading to an even better SQ than NOS/Filterless, meaning not ending up in a dead bird. This is what I'm still working on, but unimportant for the NOS die hards. But wait ... if it can get better afterall "we" might give in a little ...

Peter

[Telstar]

We must be very careful here, because what I by now reject, could have been a 100% desire one year ago. By now I am spoiled like hell, and nothing is good enough except for the new and better than before. Stupid example : If you read Telstar's post again (a few posts back) ... we spend a day (that includes a night ) at comparing a perceived good OS DAC with mine of that time. We were honest, and compared with SPDIF only, because the OS DAC could connect to SPDIF only. But, I and "we" knew there was also I2S, and the only thing what happened with that is that I told it was tremendously better, but nobody ever asked to listen to that, and so we never did. Isn't that strange ? (btw, through the tears in my eyes I've seen them in Telstars' but never mind that haha).

I thought I listened to i2s at the very beginning  then switching to SPDIF for a fair comparison with the other DAC.

If you read my post of 6 months ago, after the audition, maybe between the lines, cuz i dont remember, I said that the NOS1 sounded very very good, but it lacked that extra, the "emotion" that I'm looking for and that so far I got only from the Naim cd555.

By all means, Peter, go over the top with the power supplies (in particular for the clock*). I'm pretty sure some of the magic of digital (not sounding such, in the good sense) comes from there.

*if you haven't, take a look at Terra Firma XO writeup on their site (forgot who are they, but they are $wi$$).

[PeterSt]

I thought I listened to i2s at the very beginning  then switching to SPDIF for a fair comparison with the other DAC.

No no ... we never listened to my DAC in the beginning. We just started off with the OS. Maybe you recall I wanted that for an hour at least. In the end I started predicting what the differences would be ...

So, I could be wrong of course, but I think you just never heard the I2S connection. But then remember, it wasn't a show off or anything, and all was under the subject of your friend's OS. Or at least that should have been his subject for the trip. From my part I saw no reason to emphasize "that" (outcome) by outbettering it even more and start laughing or whatever. Not my style.
Strange situation of course.

I'll dive into the PSU matters for sure, and let's not forget, have some (new Firewire) clock connections to test too.

[PeterSt]

Tadaa, something for this topic I guess :

I can confirm that 24/384 input to the DAC with the PC as source will be possible !

As known I wanted this right from the start, and today I managed to let it work.
This gives us acces to native 24/352.8 DXD (so, 2L go ahead with it !), and of course Octad Arc Prediction Upsampling, AKA OAP (haha).

I'm always glad when something works out I set my mind to.

There is one small downside :
The DAC needs a new PCB which design by itself is already there, but which has to be prototyped and after that, produced (yes, again ). This may imply that January 2010 (as told in another topic) is not feaseable, and it may get to February.
But I guess it is worth it !!

Yahoo ! Peter



PS: There is a difference between the practice I just got running, and the real practice with the new DAC board (think in areas of unexpected higher noise levels). So this is the small disclaimer for now (throughput time). The expected upside of it all, is that the new design will once again be about less = more, like leaving out all the SPDIF sh*t because it just isn't needed (SPDIF - for those using a CDP - comes in by other means now). So, it has become a pure i2s connected DAC with no incoming jitter (did I say No ? yes I did).

[Gerard]

  Man you are a piece off ......