Minimax DAC with ESS Sabre32 chips

[morphsci]

Hopefully someone will build a DAC using the full capabilities of this chip but it looks like most are building to a price-point and are not interested in utilizing some of the more interesting features of the chip. Really rather disappointing.

[Dusty Chalk]

You mean, like DSD over HDMI?

Yeah, I wish.

[Morningstaraudio]

Hopefully someone will build a DAC using the full capabilities of this chip but it looks like most are building to a price-point and are not interested in utilizing some of the more interesting features of the chip. Really rather disappointing.

You could try building one with all the options you want. It probably wouldn't cost you much,consider what you want for your time,parts,testing,tweaking it to exactly your standards that you are holding others too. Maybe you could bring it in at what? I'm guessing $1500 maybe, now maybe you want to build a dozen extra ones for other folks that love music and who just want a really nice state of the art DAC.A dozen it is! Oooohh, should I try and make a $100 on each unit I sell? I'll try it,$1600 it is. Please.

Being just folks that love music like you all, we just thought it would be nice to bring out a really nice tube/SS DAC using the best chip available according to some on the market today

To utilize all this chip does was not our goal.I'm not sure it would be for other manufacturers either as to bring a product in that might be affordable for one tenth of 1% of the market is limiting your possibilities.

For us,having some input from an aero-space engineer as to get the most out of what we wanted to achieve has been a blessing regarding the power supply and circuits to be used.

Morph, if we dissapoint you a little ,I apologize, but all things considered, we try our best to bring affordable products to market.

May Love Always Abide,

Bill O'Connell

[morphsci]

You could try building one with all the options you want. Blah, Blah Blah, please feel sorry for me, Blah, Blah.

May Love Always Abide,

Bill O'Connell

Uh, I am and out of the box, without considering my labor it costs more than your unit. That wasn't my point. My point was that no one seems to be utilizing the full potential of the platform, it wasn't a shot at any one manufacturer. But thanks for being a condescending little prick

[cetoole]

Just wondering, what are you actually doing with the tube? I presume (and please, correct me if I am wrong), that you are taking the differential outputs of the ES9018 and converting to voltage with a pair of standard opamp transimpedance amplifiers, followed by a differentially connected opamp with sallen-key LPF, and then an optional tube emitter-follower buffer on the output or a 3rd opamp buffer stage, each of which with maybe one more filter pole?

I dunno, unless it is something extremely different than this, it would be much cheaper (and more interesting to most here I suspect) to just have a balanced LPF/buffer stage, and lose the tube and associated power supply completely. Heck, a DIO opamp LPF/buffer stage would be pretty cool, and give you the SE and differential outputs with no real addition in parts count. Meh, whatever, its your dac, you are free to do with it as you please.

Edited November 1, 2009 by cetoole

[skullguise]

People get pretty defensive about their products, whether owners or (even more so) manufacturers.

I have dealt with Bill before, and I believe he is one of the nicer folks in the industry. I was sorry to see the sarcasm in his post; he must not have read the intro message

Ultimately, yes, this will be built towards a price point. I don't expect it to sound as good as the TPA-DIY unit I have, which cost me $1250. But at about 1/2 that price, this should be a great DAC to get MANY people a very good taste of what can be done with this chip.

And FWIW I have owned or heard 3 different EE products before (CD, pre, and phono pre), and they all seemed to do more than their price suggests. So I am looking forward to this.

Ultimately, I'd like to see a no-holds-barred unit built around this, too, though!

[boomana]

And FWIW I have owned or heard 3 different EE products before (CD, pre, and phono pre), and they all seemed to do more than their price suggests. So I am looking forward to this.

My first CDP was EE, which I quite liked. It had a decent headphone out and made for a nice compact bedroom rig. If I decide to get someone to repair my Extreme or just plain toss it, replacing it with an EE as a preamp to the F1 for my speakers is one of my plans.

[jp11801]

My first CDP was EE, which I quite liked. It had a decent headphone out and made for a nice compact bedroom rig. If I decide to get someone to repair my Extreme or just plain toss it, replacing it with an EE as a preamp to the F1 for my speakers is one of my plans.

Can't believe I missed this did the extreme break down? I hope not as it sounded spectacular.

[boomana]

Nope. It's still working fine. I guess my wording was unintentionally misleading. I'd be sending it off for a check up and preventative maintenance. If I decide to sell my dynamic headphones, I could also get rid of the SP. Just ideas I'm tossing around in my mind right now as my speakers are sounding really nice this morning.

[guzziguy]

You might as well keep it, Vicky. Even after it is "certified" to be safe, the value of SP products has fallen through the floor. This is not surprising. So it's unlikely that you could sell it for anything near what it's really worth.

I'm going to keep mine until it dies. Then I'll look for something new (or used) to replace it.

[Morningstaraudio]

I'm sorry for my tone, really, I was hoping to have people excited about our DAC and when I came home last night I was a little taken back by what I thought was criticism. I reread Morph's comments and I was out of line. So Morph, please accept my apology, it is sincere.

Business has been stressing and you can probably tell my mood last night was one not of sober mind.

Again, my apology for wearing my heart on my sleeve and being thin skinned to any possible negative comments.

Sincerely,

Bill

[Hopstretch]

... you can probably tell my mood last night was one not of sober mind.

That's not entirely uncommon in these parts.

Don't worry about it and good luck with the DAC. If it upholds the same price/quality ratio as the other EE gear I'm sure it will do well in the market.

[grawk]

You may find honest and helpful criticism here, as opposed to exuberant fawning you'll find at some other forums. We do have several regular contributors with significant design experience.

[morphsci]

I'm sorry for my tone, really, I was hoping to have people excited about our DAC and when I came home last night I was a little taken back by what I thought was criticism. I reread Morph's comments and I was out of line. So Morph, please accept my apology, it is sincere.

Business has been stressing and you can probably tell my mood last night was one not of sober mind.

Again, my apology for wearing my heart on my sleeve and being thin skinned to any possible negative comments.

Sincerely,

Bill

I reread my comments also and I can see how you may have taken it as a personal comment on the your specific DAC. Anyway, since you were not of sober mind last night you should fit in just fine here. Oh and just for the record, I have always been impressed with the quality and value of EE products so I will likely give your DAC a try since I am a fan of the Sabre chip.

[Morningstaraudio]

Thanks for understanding, I'm usually not that big of a jerk.

Bill

[jp11801]

Bill, I'm looking forward to hearing this dac as your pre amp is stellar and the little 8 watt power amp is pretty awesome as well.

[regal]

The tube is a SE 12AU7, so it has to be a cathode follower. So you have a choice of cathode follower or opamp.

I built a DAC for about this price but the switch changes from a SE tube grounded cathode to a Pass D1 discrete stage.

[skullguise]

Bumping this older thread with some news. The first batch of DAC's should be shipping over early next week to Bill @ Morningstar. Some folks (myself included ) paid extra to get some of them air-shipped.

I'm on vacation the following week, not sure if it'll make it to me before I go or if my neighbor will get the box. But I plan on bringing it to the March 6th Boston-area meet, along with my FallenAngel Buffalo32.

Some updates in the Audiocircle thread, with a couple pics.

Todd - skullguise

[Hopstretch]

Dare I say that its appearance is somewhat reminiscent of the audio-gd house style?

Looking forward to hearing it.

[morphsci]

^^^ Wow, the resemblance is uncanny. I do want to hear it though.

[Girardian]

In looking into the Oppo BDP-83 SE player, I see it has a dedicated stereo output that uses an 8-channel Sabre32 Ultra (ES9016) DAC chipset, stacking 4 DACs for each of the Left and Right channels. The EE unit uses the 9018 chipset.