Audio Story

DAC:

The Source. I have DAC implemented by pkrecz. Receiver DIR9001 and WM8740 chip. Very good power supply. Desymmetrization on AD8021. Filter on LM6171 and Silver Mica capacitors. It is a second-order Bessel in Sallen-Key topology at 75kHz. LM is more natural than tested AD825. AD has strong bass, but lacks of sopran quality. There is 5mV DC offset without capacitors. That's just great! Better dynamics, resolution and overall sound than a budget dvd player: ^

New DAC:

Musical Fidelity M1DAC. Current DAC Texas Instruments Burr-Brown DSD1796. Upsampling by SRC4392 sample-rate converter. Used with optical input and RCA output. Of course we hate capacitors in audio path, so I removed bipolars I found in this DAC. Those 'NP' black one at the photos. A higher DC offset around 18mV, but it is really worth it.^

Buffer:

Audio buffer is one of the most important audiophile's device. Here is buffer designed by Peter Daniel and Damian Antoniak. It's inspired by Mark Levinson's output stage circuts. There are a good quality components: Vishay Dale, Bennic XPP, Elna Silmic II RFS, Silver Mica and Analog Devices SSM2220/10. It uses a DC-Servo: ^

Loudspeakers:

There is a lot of good speakers. I have just a cheap and tiny one: Magnat Monitor 220. They stay on nasty stands and are angled to equalise phase differences between tweeter and midrange driver: ^


Changed drivers for Seas U18RNX and Morel MDT32S:

Speaker cabels:

I tested: solid wire, QED Silver Anniversary XT, CAT5, UBYTE-2 and copper ribbon. I find the UBYTE-2 quite good. What cable is the best? Definitely a copper ribbon. We want a low capacity - done! (Don't put one ribbon over another - the capacity will be huge!) We want thin cable due to skin effect - done! But we want a width cable due to current - done! I have 12 AWG: 47mm width and 0.07mm thick: ^

Interconnect cables:

My interconnects are DIY UTP. The best would be a ribbon of course. But there is low current, so we don't need so width cable. Standard UTP solid core pair do the trick. It's thin, so has low capacity and we care about skin effect. It has no shield, but I can't hear any hum: ^

Crossover:

Loudspeakers have upgraded crossovers. There are new capacitors and resistors. (If you're looking for coils values, here are measurements: the greater has 0.8mH and the smaller one 0.18mH. Hope this is helpfull). I choose a quite cheap caps from Clarity Cap a PX series. They have a good score on Tony Gee's test page: 8-. Coils from Polink. Jantzen Audio Denmark Cross-Coil - 16AWG copper ribbon. Resistors are 1% tolerance, non-inductive TY-OHM NKNP.^

Transport:

My transoprt is a budget Pansonic DVD-S29. I changed an output capacitors. There are Clarity Cap PX. Since I have DAC there is only S/PDIF output in use: ^

Main amplifier:

Like I said, it's a budget system. Tiny and inexpensive chip amp? Of course the Gainclone (chipamp)! I have non-inverting, minimalistic version on LM3875 chip from National Semiconductor. In the photo below, there is only 1000uF (Panasonic FC) per rail. But it's only for a better shot. There is actually 10.000uF + 1000uF + 100nF. With small caps, there is no bass, no midrange. There is no magic, only bright sound caused by lack of low frequencies (in fact, lack of current): ^

Subwoofer:

Budget subwoofer. Closed 50 liters. Driver is STX 10-2-150-8: ^

Others:

There are some other equipments like subwoofer amplifier, usb to spdif transport, but a lack of photos force you to wait. It will be described here soon! ^

Links:

Buzzer DIY Audio - Friend's DIY audio page [PL]
Dalton's collection of bootlegs - Friend's bootlegs page
Xed's homepage - My homepage