The Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC

[The Computer Audiophile]

10 minutes ago, BigAlMc said:

But at what resolution and which filter would you recommend this ?  😉

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about 😀

[fas42]

4 hours ago, PYP said:

 

The MU1 (perhaps via the DDC function) does improve upon the Tambaqui.  The combo is very, very nice.  Sounds like music.  If the MU2 improves upon that (if nothing else it eliminates a meter of cable between server and DAC), it would be good to hear.   Given your setup, I can see how the Makua would be the preferred Mola Mola path.   Interested to read about your journey.  

 

Straight application of some technology is not the answer for getting a DAC to "sound like music"; IME, all the different techniques and circuit styles of digital converters can deliver convincing SQ; the bugbear is, has always been, combating noise interference factors - don't do enough in this area, and the results can be awful, no matter how much money has been thrown at everything else ... I can "still hear" the most expensive dCS combo at the time, 20 years ago, sounding like sh!te at an ultra high end audio show.

 

If the latest and greatest gets all the boxes ticked, then it will do the job - the mantra, "the devil is in the details", holds 100% for digital playback ...

[dirk koning]

Since almost a week I have a Mola Mola Tambaqui in my system to replace my almost 20 year old dCS Elgar plus Verona clock Netwerk bridge and Mutec ref 10.

I love the beautiful analog sound of the Tambaqui but what I miss is the soundstage I had before.Lots of reviews here and on YouTube with a great soundstage.

Why do I not such a large soundstage?It is all between the speakers.Is it because my poweramps (audio research ref 210) do not match with the pre amp from the Tambaqui?

My audiofriends say I should buy a pre amplifier.

Good advice here very welcome

[PYP]

3 hours ago, dirk koning said:

Since almost a week I have a Mola Mola Tambaqui in my system to replace my almost 20 year old dCS Elgar plus Verona clock Netwerk bridge and Mutec ref 10.

I love the beautiful analog sound of the Tambaqui but what I miss is the soundstage I had before.Lots of reviews here and on YouTube with a great soundstage.

Why do I not such a large soundstage?It is all between the speakers.Is it because my poweramps (audio research ref 210) do not match with the pre amp from the Tambaqui?

My audiofriends say I should buy a pre amplifier.

Good advice here very welcome

Assuming the Tambaqui is new, it does take a while to settle in.  You might simply continue with your setup the way it is for one month and see if the soundstage opens up.  I don't remember having that problem during my first month with the Tambaqui.  

 

I also suggest talking with your Mola Mola dealer about the ideal input impedance for the amplifier.  Knowing that, perhaps you could borrow or demo an amplifier with that input impedance to determine if that is the issue.  The Tambaqui works perfectly with the Mola Mola Kaluga without using a preamp (as one would expect).  The Kaluga has an input impedance of 100kohm.  Your amp has 200kohms in balanced mode.  The other factor is whether the amplifier works well with your speakers, of course.  The only way to know is to try a different one in yourself in your setup.  

 

 Good luck!  

[dirk koning]

Hi PYP,

Thank you for your help.

The Tambaqui is a demo so does not need to burn in for a month.

I paid for a 10 day try out so do I stay free and do not feel guilty if it does not fit.

I use Avalon Eidolons since 2001 Audio Research since 1990 the ref 210 since 2007.I love that sound.

I do not like to change to much but I think there must be an upgrade to my old dCS.

Maybe is the input impedance the problem I did send a mail to the distributor.

Let us see what he can do,I keep you informed.

Have a nice day,

Dirk

[mriguy]

5 hours ago, dirk koning said:

Hi PYP,

Thank you for your help.

The Tambaqui is a demo so does not need to burn in for a month.

I paid for a 10 day try out so do I stay free and do not feel guilty if it does not fit.

I use Avalon Eidolons since 2001 Audio Research since 1990 the ref 210 since 2007.I love that sound.

I do not like to change to much but I think there must be an upgrade to my old dCS.

Maybe is the input impedance the problem I did send a mail to the distributor.

Let us see what he can do,I keep you informed.

Have a nice day,

Dirk

Hi Dirk. Just a quick thought for your consideration. I never thought my Tambaqui lacked in soundstage at all. Soundstage is my most charrished characteristic of true high-end audio systems. That said, I found a signifiant increase in soundstage when I upgraded the Tambaqui's stock power cord to a serious high-end power cords; specifically the Sablon Audio Prince. 

[krass]

5 hours ago, dirk koning said:

Hi PYP,

Thank you for your help.

The Tambaqui is a demo so does not need to burn in for a month.

I paid for a 10 day try out so do I stay free and do not feel guilty if it does not fit.

I use Avalon Eidolons since 2001 Audio Research since 1990 the ref 210 since 2007.I love that sound.

I do not like to change to much but I think there must be an upgrade to my old dCS.

Maybe is the input impedance the problem I did send a mail to the distributor.

Let us see what he can do,I keep you informed.

Have a nice day,

Dirk

 

can you get hold of a preamp within your 10 days Dirk ?

 

In my experience, and contrary to any logic that I had before, I found that a good preamp in between was always better than going direct…. it doesn’t make any engineering sense to me, but my ears told me differently on the 2 systems I previously had without preamps that then made me buy/ add one….

 

Where are you/ which dealer are you using in NL ?

 

 

[dirk koning]

Hi PYP and Krass,

 

A few hours ago I received a mail from the Mola Mola distributer.

The Tambaqui has three different settings for output 0,6 2 and 6 volt

2 volt is for a pre amp and 6 volt for directly to the power amps,he told.

It seems the problem is solved.

Powercords is my next project.

How about Shunyata ? 

Krass I live in Maarssen close to Utrecht.

 

Thank you both for your time and help

Dirk

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, dirk koning said:

Hi PYP and Krass,

 

A few hours ago I received a mail from the Mola Mola distributer.

The Tambaqui has three different settings for output 0,6 2 and 6 volt

2 volt is for a pre amp and 6 volt for directly to the power amps,he told.

It seems the problem is solved.

Powercords is my next project.

How about Shunyata ? 

Krass I live in Maarssen close to Utrecht.

 

Thank you both for your time and help

Dirk

On my systems I run 6 volts into the preamp as well. 

[PYP]

2 hours ago, dirk koning said:

Hi PYP and Krass,

 

A few hours ago I received a mail from the Mola Mola distributer.

The Tambaqui has three different settings for output 0,6 2 and 6 volt

2 volt is for a pre amp and 6 volt for directly to the power amps,he told.

It seems the problem is solved.

Powercords is my next project.

How about Shunyata ? 

Krass I live in Maarssen close to Utrecht.

 

Thank you both for your time and help

Dirk

Great!  You are welcome.  I forgot about the output voltage since I've always used 6 volts.  

 

My power conditioner and its power cord are from Shunyata.  Well-built and well-performing gear.   The NR version of their power cords are the appropriate ones for a DAC.  If budget allows, and you can try it at home, an Alpha v2 NR power cable might work very well.  

[Davidny]

I too use a preamp and a 6 volt setting.

The Tambaqui is very revealing of all of your system’s  attributes.  Changes in cabling and everything upstream of the DAC are easily discernible. 

 

Although I’ve been enjoying my Tambaqui for many years, here’s a setting I only recently discovered that I thought some might be worth sharing.

 

in the mola mola remote app I’m using preset #3 which is the USB input in Direct mode.  If you hit the Edit Preset 3 button, I adjusted  the Volume Offset to -2dB.   

I recently made some changes to my network switch which significantly increased resolution, but made me notice some higher frequency noise.  This setting eliminated that.

Bill at GTT told me this is the “standard setting” he recommends.

[dirk koning]

Hi Davidny

 

Thank you I will try later

 

Regards,

Dirk,

 

 

[Shadorne]

On 8/5/2023 at 5:14 PM, dirk koning said:

Since almost a week I have a Mola Mola Tambaqui in my system to replace my almost 20 year old dCS Elgar plus Verona clock Netwerk bridge and Mutec ref 10.

I love the beautiful analog sound of the Tambaqui but what I miss is the soundstage I had before.Lots of reviews here and on YouTube with a great soundstage.

Why do I not such a large soundstage?It is all between the speakers.Is it because my poweramps (audio research ref 210) do not match with the pre amp from the Tambaqui?

My audiofriends say I should buy a pre amplifier.

Good advice here very welcome

The Mola uses an FIR filter. Not sure about the passband ripple level but Julian Dunn has shown mathematically that the most commonly used digital filters in all SDM DACs are equiripple filters in the pass band. The equiripple can be insignificant but still produce an audible pre echo and post echo for any transients typically anywhere from 0.8 to 0.3 msec before and after the transient. These echos cause sound to collapse to the speaker and no soundstage depth. The only way to completely get rid of this issue is to use no digital low pass filter at all. So converting to DSD 256 or higher and just using a 60KHz analog filter and you are good to go. Unfortunately most DACs don’t allow the option of no digital filtering. 

[dirk koning]

Hi Shadorne,

I do not know so much about filters and that kind of things.

I tryd the Tambaqui and was not happy with it.I like my old dCS combo more.

 

 

 

[Shadorne]

On 8/9/2023 at 2:18 AM, dirk koning said:

Hi Shadorne,

I do not know so much about filters and that kind of things.

I tryd the Tambaqui and was not happy with it.I like my old dCS combo more.

 

 

 

There are many papers on this. In order to prevent excessive delays, filters in DAC chips are necessarily short and simple. This means equiripples in the pass band. This means pre and post echoes which collapse the soundstage.This is why computer based upsampling to very high rates like DSD256 yield better results when fed to a true 1 bit DAC with only analog output filters.

 

see this paper https://www.scitepress.org/papers/2004/11312/11312.pdf

quote 

“Typical Linear phase FIR filters have the disadvantages of having echoes in the impulse response and ringing in the step response due to their sharp cutoff frequency responses. The amplitude of these echoes is proportional to the ampli- tude of the passband ripples. Consequently, FIR filters with maximally flat characteristics in the pass- band are required (Herrmann, 1971). However, the roll off property of these filters is not steep in the frequency domain. Accordingly, to reduce echoes and ringing and to maximize the stopband attenuation, it is important to design FIR filters with maximally flat characteristics in the passband and transmission zeros in the stopband. The design method of such FIR filters by Remez algorithm has been proposed (Se- lesnick and Burrus, 1996; Aikawa and Sato, 2000). However, since the delay of linear-phase filters is half of filter length, the delay of linear-phase filters will become large when high-order filters are required.”

 

Clearly upsampling to high rate DSD and then passing this data to a DAC with NOS is the way to eliminate these digital filter artifacts from the typical DAC chip filters that have either equiripples in the pass band (that cause pre and post echoes) or are very smooth filters (that are very leaky and let in high ghost frequencies that will cause IMD within the passband).

 

Check out also https://www.nanophon.com/audio/antialia.pdf for a description of the problems with digital filtering.

 

There seems to be a fundamental problem with low latency digital filtering on a chip. Only a powerful computer can do the necessary processing (and even then some significant latency must be accepted if powerful processing is desired)

[zerung]

I wonder if I have my setting crossed some where?

Every time I start MMT, the unit is in some different setting and I need to switch this to the AES Direct mode.

Any pointers how to get the system to remember this new base requirement?
Thanks

[PYP]

7 hours ago, zerung said:

I wonder if I have my setting crossed some where?

Every time I start MMT, the unit is in some different setting and I need to switch this to the AES Direct mode.

Any pointers how to get the system to remember this new base requirement?
Thanks

In the MMT app do you have AES as input #1?  If not, try that.  

[PYP]

Also, I keep mine powered all the time without any issues.  

[Low325]

Every time I power mine up from the app, it defaults to last known… at least that’s the way I remember it being. AES on mine is set to 3 and SPDIF is set to 2. 

[PYP]

7 minutes ago, Low325 said:

Every time I power mine up from the app, it defaults to last known… at least that’s the way I remember it being. AES on mine is set to 3 and SPDIF is set to 2. 

that is indeed normal operation.  @zerung 's unit might have a problem.  Perhaps setting AES to 1 might be a work around to the problem.  Thought it was worth checking that "solution."

 

So, you shut off the MMT when not using it?

[zerung]

Thanks @PYP, Yes it seems that I needed to put the AES as 1 on the Preset 1. I have my unit on standby. 

All is good, for now!

[Low325]

Deleted

[Low325]

9 hours ago, PYP said:

that is indeed normal operation.  @zerung 's unit might have a problem.  Perhaps setting AES to 1 might be a work around to the problem.  Thought it was worth checking that "solution."

 

So, you shut off the MMT when not using it?

If this question is for me, yes I do. 
 

I just want to keep stored energy use (AC coupled backup battery) to a minimum.  So I try to minimize as much unnecessary draw as possible.  I can see the kWh draw through an app. 

[janN]

Hello all, I'm new on this forum and have a question.

Now playing  about 18 months with MMT with Etheregen/Teddy Pardo LPS on the internal streamer.

Could I benefit using a DCS Network Bridge on AES/EBU connection or would this be a waste of money?

I've read about  combination with the Grimm MU1  should be very good but this upgrade I think is very expensive.

Suggestions are welcome..

 

 

[barrows]

1 hour ago, janN said:

Hello all, I'm new on this forum and have a question.

Now playing  about 18 months with MMT with Etheregen/Teddy Pardo LPS on the internal streamer.

Could I benefit using a DCS Network Bridge on AES/EBU connection or would this be a waste of money?

I've read about  combination with the Grimm MU1  should be very good but this upgrade I think is very expensive.

Suggestions are welcome..

 

 

The Sonore endPoint has an AES/EBU output which performs very well, with complete galvanic isolation and very low phase noise clocking if one is looking for a relatively affordable AES/EBU streamer.  See some details here:

 

https://www.sonore.us/endPoint.html

 

We do not make a lot of these, as most filks prefer to use our USB output Renderers, but for those who prefer an AES/EBU output this is an option.