By Enzo Grazioso
As in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The ugly duckling, can a small, insignificant cheap DAC become a well-sounding high-end DAC? In most cases the difference between an economical DAC and a high-performance DAC is found in the analog output stage. Take for example the Douk Audio DSD 1796 (price below 100,00 euros): it is equipped with an excellent XMOS interface and an equally good DSD1796 DAC characterized by 24 bit resolution, 192 kHz sampling…
This DSD DAC is dedicated to true audiophiles who want to listen the best vinyl like or reel-to-reel tape sound. Stiffelio DSD DAC is a single USB input and use a class A transformer coupled tube circuit plus a minimalist approach filter to remove carrier data from DSD streaming to obtain a natural pure analog output signal. With Stiffelio DSD DAC you can play all type of music files ( Flac, Iso, Dsf, Ape, Wave….)…
This is the ”reference” DAC in my audio system. It’s based on Twist Peal Audio (http://www.twistedpearaudio.com/landing.aspx ) Buffalo III SE board and consist in my implementation for best use this module. The heart of Buffalo III board is the ES 9018 ESS Sabre32 Reference DAC chip, that , whit its stunning performance is probably the best DAC actually available. It can handle 32 bit PCM data via I2S input as well as DSD or SPDIF…
