ECdesigns

[realDHT]

I have been experimenting over the last months with my modification project of the PowerDAC-r.

Main differences from my earlier modifications that I reported here previously:

Power supplies:

I replaced the 3 Salas shunt regulators that I previously used for

5 VDC supply.

3.3 VDC supply for the DAPI 

3.3 VDC supply for the Squarer circuit

I now use new shunt regulators, my own boards, circuit design mainly based on Walt Jung shunt regulators with very low noice references.

Also implemented further galvanic separation , now every individual regulator has its own r-core transformer winding and choke-input rectification. 

 

Clocking:

I use the same Driscoll Sine Oscillator by Andrea Mori, with a Salas 17 VDC shuntreg for its power supply, like I did before.

I now use a new squarer board/circuit of my own design (simple minimalistic design with a single unbuffered inverter), this has replaced my previous Andrea Mori squarer board.

To my ears/mind, both the squarer regulator and the squarer itself have quite some impact on the sound (no blind testing possible).  

 

Capacitor changes:
The 16V/10000 uF electrolytics now replaced with 0.1 uF copper foil / oil capacitors.

Added 0.1 uF polystyrene capacitors on the DAPI board for the 5V and 3.3V supplies.

 

It sounds marvellous! I will probably end my modproject in this configuration.

[realDHT]

6 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

Great work - listening impressions?

Thanks. My impressions are a lot of "musical enjoyment", great resolution, a lot of spatial information, very natural sibilance in voices etc.

I still have my Fractal/U192 setup, when I went back for a while to this combo the difference was not subtle.

 

In the upcoming weeks I might have more impressions from comparisons in other systems.

 

      

[realDHT]

5 hours ago, hopkins said:

 

Have you had the opportunity to try the PowerDAC-R with any headphones that do not require a seperate amplifier ?

 

I did not try that, but it's a good suggestion. I think I have the neccesary connectors to make an adapter cable, if I try it out I will report.

 

My dynamic headphones are far from high end, old Denon AH-D750, but they sound ok and should be fairly easy to drive. 

 

 

[realDHT]

8 hours ago, Huubster said:

And the PD is way better then the Fractal DAC..

I agree with this. I still keep my U192/DA96 combo, and a while ago I put it back in my system temporarily and the difference to the PD-R I normally use was really big.

[realDHT]

On 12/16/2022 at 5:27 PM, mhhd said:

Would anyone of you be so kind to elaborate a little more on the difference of the PD-R to the U192/DA96 combo? I am still a happy owner and I am curious what I am currently missing :-) How do you experience the difference in detail and extend?

Thank you very much in advance!

I should add that since a year or so, My PD-R has been substantially modified, not only with several independent powersupplies and shunt regulators, but also the clocking. You can check the post below for more detail.

 

However I do remember also some impressions of comparing the original PD-R to the Fractal, before this mod project.

I agree that they share a similar basic character, but the PDR was in comparison more resolving and and more enjoyable, made it easier to "follow the music" in rythm/melody. Also showcased larger and more natural "color of tone" difference between separate intruments in  orchestral recordings for example. 

 

A big advantage with the PD-R is a much better RFI isolation from the source, in my opinion the isolation is perfect or at least close enough, I do not hear a difference between sources (music servers/computers) with the PD-R. With the Fractal I can clearly hear the impact of source.

[realDHT]

8 minutes ago, matthias said:

 

Interesting, what about differences between software players?

 

Matt

I did not try different players, I always used JRiver MC. With the fractal DAC I did some experiments long time ago comparing different dithers in the player using plugins, that is supposed to be a very slight manipulation of the signal but it was audible for me. Most damaging was resampling, both upsampling and downsampling in the player made things clearly worse. The 64-bit digital volume in JRiver worked fine for me, although I know John always recommends bitperfect. With the Powerdac I never tried those things since I always run it bitperfect.

 

   

[realDHT]

21 hours ago, Michael L said:

Power Dac B is looking increasingly desirable but I'm wondering if I need to spend extra on peripherals. I have a combined headphone/optical output on my MacBook but I still have the ATOS usb to toslink from my MOS16.

The limitation is I believe playing >96Khz files without splashing £££ on a usb convertor with Electrotos. I'm wondering if I would miss out at all and doubt I would hear any difference between files of 96 khz and 192 Khz with the same bit depth.

 

https://www.videoproc.com/resource/why-24-bit-192-khz-music-downloads-make-no-sense.htm

Using an optical cable between your mac and the PDAC should work, but I'm guessing it would be limited to 96 kHz (at least my computer optical out is limited to 96). BTW the PDACs do not use electrotos, just standard toslink. The advantage using a usb to toslink converter is that most of them support 192 kHz. It does not need to be expensive, I use this one, works/sounds great for me https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185730627006?hash=item2b3e6875be:g:fKkAAOSwxGthKZsr&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAsHUOtW5aJ9cTZedMZ2YwEETgNeWy2nKXAS2%2Bld7rccH7zo7TVmeLqc0hjVl6HuSAAAQJqbfDCh%2FA5lfYOqTvL8cA30HqMDTV2LTzJ9HSE1aC2aIK2aikafQOWDfllUVzZ9GswNYqm%2BJAlMCWGHTRK8fbV3JZsdgEElWKQ4n%2BJD90rh722DaZemqlSceV6pbGZOKMTIc8OSj2B%2FfBT8qRxYxQsP2OTlOE8xe6cEh4yflh|tkp%3ABk9SR_Tn1924YQ

 

However as Hubster said, 192 KHz will put much higher demands on the cable and connectors to work reliably. 

[realDHT]

31 minutes ago, Huubster said:

 

I can't help with the output restrictions of your laptops, but this cheap Toslink cable plays 192khz without any problems :) And it's my best sounding toslink cable too.

 

https://www.ruconnected.nl/kabels/16-optische-kabel-toslink-1m.html

Nice, looks good too with the braided sleeving.

 

I use this one that works the best for me out of the 2-3 ones I tried https://www.thomann.de/gb/sommer_cable_toslinkkabel_075m.htm