T+A DAC 200

[Lokesh]

I get it that different modulators will sound different. DAC200 receives DSD 256 in this case so don’t think any conversion is done on DAC side. 
 

In context of Lumin U2 Mini Streamer, I just don’t know what modulators are used to resample to DSD256. This is why I thought @wklie is best placed to comment. 

 

I’d love to try the HQP, but it has to be a simple one box solution with the necessary processing power with USB in (from network streamer like U2 Mini) and USB out to DAC 200.  
 

 

[agisthos]

@OE333 How does the DAC 200 handle the single ended outputs? Second class citizen running through op-amps like most DAC's do? Or does it have its own discrete output stage? Taken from one leg of the balanced?

[OE333]

21 hours ago, agisthos said:

@OE333 How does the DAC 200 handle the single ended outputs? Second class citizen running through op-amps like most DAC's do? Or does it have its own discrete output stage? Taken from one leg of the balanced?

 

The DAC200 signal path for both - balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA outputs - is fully discrete.

i.e. there are no Op-Amos between the D/A converters and output. And this is true for PCM and DSD signal paths. Even the I/V (current/voltage) converter stages in the PCM path are fully discrete.

 

And yes, the unbalanced output is derived from the positive balanced leg.

With "derived" I mean, that not directly the positive pin of the XLR socket is used for RCA. The RCA output has its own decoupling and emc filtering network. So when connecting sinks to the XLR and RCA outputs at the same time, there is no cross influence.

[Woolf]

Hi,
wanted to ask if anyone has experience connecting a Roon Nucleus via USB directly to the DAC200. I'm thinking of taking out my Auralic Aries G1.1 in between, since it doesn't seem to give me any advantage since I bought the Nucleus and switched to Roon, or am I missing something?

[Woolf]

or maybe even via HDMI.
Before doing a bigger change to my system to test it myself I am interested in Your experience or maybe suggestions I even haven´t thought about.

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 hours ago, Woolf said:

Hi,
wanted to ask if anyone has experience connecting a Roon Nucleus via USB directly to the DAC200. I'm thinking of taking out my Auralic Aries G1.1 in between, since it doesn't seem to give me any advantage since I bought the Nucleus and switched to Roon, or am I missing something?

I can test this to see if it works, but you will need to be the arbiter of sound quality in your system :~)

[Woolf]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I can test this to see if it works, but you will need to be the arbiter of sound quality in your system :~)

Would be great, thanks. 

I'm sure your perception of a change in sound for better or worse is not really different from mine. I would base my decision on whether the effort to rebuild and run a network cable has a chance of improvement.
The basis of my final assessment would be the sound of the CD as a reference. If I could get close it would be great.
I see two possibilities:
1) Connect the Nucleus+ to the DAC200 via USB cable (AQ Diamond).
2) Connect the Nucleus+ to the DAC200 via HDMI cable.
Currently: Nucleus+ via WLAN to the Auralic G1.1 and from there via USB cable (AQ Diamond) to the DAC200.
Thanks!

Wolfram

[barrows]

9 minutes ago, Woolf said:

Would be great, thanks. 

I'm sure your perception of a change in sound for better or worse is not really different from mine. I would base my decision on whether the effort to rebuild and run a network cable has a chance of improvement.
The basis of my final assessment would be the sound of the CD as a reference. If I could get close it would be great.
I see two possibilities:
1) Connect the Nucleus+ to the DAC200 via USB cable (AQ Diamond).
2) Connect the Nucleus+ to the DAC200 via HDMI cable.
Currently: Nucleus+ via WLAN to the Auralic G1.1 and from there via USB cable (AQ Diamond) to the DAC200.
Thanks!

Wolfram

I will not comment on what subjective results of various approaches might be...  But from a technical perspective: anyway one can reduce the amount of high frequency noise coming into the DAC will offer a technical advantage.  Despite the claims form some DAC manufacturers that their DAC is "immune" to source component noise issues, I never experienced a DAC which does not improve along with source quality (noise level) whether the connection is USB, Ethernet, I2S, or SPDIF/AES.  Considering that, it makes sense to audition source components connected to the DAC which are designed specifically to reduce noise levels on their outputs, these would generally be well designed source components made for producing high end audio sound (presumably, such as your Auralic).  I am pretty sure the Nucleus + just has a standard commercial MoBo inside, with a board mounted USB jack, which would offer fairly poor performance in terms of noise level, as standard MoBos are not specifically designed to have low noise on their outputs.

In the end, what matters will be what you hear in your system, but it might help to consider the technical details of different configurations in order to sort things out to try.

[The Computer Audiophile]

40 minutes ago, barrows said:

I will not comment on what subjective results of various approaches might be...  But from a technical perspective: anyway one can reduce the amount of high frequency noise coming into the DAC will offer a technical advantage.  Despite the claims form some DAC manufacturers that their DAC is "immune" to source component noise issues, I never experienced a DAC which does not improve along with source quality (noise level) whether the connection is USB, Ethernet, I2S, or SPDIF/AES.  Considering that, it makes sense to audition source components connected to the DAC which are designed specifically to reduce noise levels on their outputs, these would generally be well designed source components made for producing high end audio sound (presumably, such as your Auralic).  I am pretty sure the Nucleus + just has a standard commercial MoBo inside, with a board mounted USB jack, which would offer fairly poor performance in terms of noise level, as standard MoBos are not specifically designed to have low noise on their outputs.

In the end, what matters will be what you hear in your system, but it might help to consider the technical details of different configurations in order to sort things out to try.

Agreed Barrows. 

[droffen]

As I have finally decided to get the MP 200 as well, the dedicated T+A dongle for firmware updates of the DAC 200 & HA 200(without MP 200) is now available to sell for anyone who is interested 

Please contact me via PM!

[droffen]

10 hours ago, droffen said:

As I have finally decided to get the MP 200 as well, the dedicated T+A dongle for firmware updates of the DAC 200 & HA 200(without MP 200) is now available to sell for anyone who is interested 

Please contact me via PM!

Dongle is reserved and currently not available anymore. 

[kishoreburidi]

2 minutes ago, droffen said:

Dongle is reserved and currently not available anymore. 

But, are there any significant firmware updates which we (customers without MP200) are missing?

[droffen]

My HA 200 in 2023 had a very old firmware from 2020 at the time, so it was the only chance, instead of sending it back and forth to T+A. 
see firmware version history what has changed since then. 

[kishoreburidi]

8 minutes ago, droffen said:

My HA 200 in 2023 had a very old firmware from 2020 at the time, so it was the only chance, instead of sending it back and forth to T+A. 
see firmware version history what has changed since then. 

Thank you, doesn’t seem to miss a lot

 

http://updates.ta-hifi.de/firmware/auto_download/DAC200/docs/versions_DAC200.txt

[Woolf]

Looks like I need a firmware update. But I have no MP200 and no T+A dealer that has one here in Graz. 

[droffen]

34 minutes ago, Woolf said:

Looks like I need a firmware update. But I have no MP200 and no T+A dealer that has one here in Graz. 

Best is to contact T+A directly. 
They might do it in-house if you can live for some days/weeks without your DAC

[droffen]

16 hours ago, droffen said:

As I have finally decided to get the MP 200 as well, the dedicated T+A dongle for firmware updates of the DAC 200 & HA 200(without MP 200) is now available to sell for anyone who is interested 

Please contact me via PM!

Any recommendations for USB cable between MP 200 & HA 200?

how good is the one supplied by T+A?

[The Computer Audiophile]

On 8/22/2023 at 11:17 AM, Woolf said:

Would be great, thanks. 

I'm sure your perception of a change in sound for better or worse is not really different from mine. I would base my decision on whether the effort to rebuild and run a network cable has a chance of improvement.
The basis of my final assessment would be the sound of the CD as a reference. If I could get close it would be great.
I see two possibilities:
1) Connect the Nucleus+ to the DAC200 via USB cable (AQ Diamond).
2) Connect the Nucleus+ to the DAC200 via HDMI cable.
Currently: Nucleus+ via WLAN to the Auralic G1.1 and from there via USB cable (AQ Diamond) to the DAC200.
Thanks!

Wolfram

Hi Wolfram, I did some testing this morning. You may want to think twice about going direct into the DAC200 from a Nucleus. Here is a video showing the incoming signal quality on the DAC200's meter. notice how terrible the HDMI output is.

 

There i definitely audio and it definitely works. Please ignore the air conditioner noise in the background. It's going to be 100F here today and I just wanted to make this quickly to show you.

 

 

[Woolf]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi Wolfram, I did some testing this morning. You may want to think twice about going direct into the DAC200 from a Nucleus. Here is a video showing the incoming signal quality on the DAC200's meter. notice how terrible the HDMI output is.

 

There i definitely audio and it definitely works. Please ignore the air conditioner noise in the background. It's going to be 100F here today and I just wanted to make this quickly to show you.

 

 

 

Thanks a lot for Your effort! It´s a great idea to use T+A´s own Signal quality analysis tool. Your test clearly showed that I will keep my Aries G1.1 and look for other optimising potential.

Thanks an greetings from Austria!
Wolfram

 

[jonniema]

On 8/22/2023 at 11:24 AM, Woolf said:

Hi,
wanted to ask if anyone has experience connecting a Roon Nucleus via USB directly to the DAC200. I'm thinking of taking out my Auralic Aries G1.1 in between, since it doesn't seem to give me any advantage since I bought the Nucleus and switched to Roon, or am I missing something?

 

Hi, although not a Nucleus, i am using direct connection with Nordost Heimdall 2 USB cable from a NUC to DAC200.

The NUC has some tweaks similar to a Nucleus (akasa fanless case, Sotm sps500 power supply, win10 with Audiophile optimizer, bios tweaks to reduce CPU speed oscilations…etc).

 

I have tried some devices between the NUC and the DAC200 before, but did not find them to be adding benefit.

• Intona USB Isolator
• iFi iUSB 3.0
• Audioquest Jitterbug

 

PS. The cable (upgraded from an audioquest carbon) was a nice improvement. 

[Woolf]

Yesterday I took a closer look at the Nucleus Plus motherboard and I noticed that there are also USB2 interfaces that are not routed to the outside (there are only USB3 interfaces).
Somewhere I read that for audio USB2 is preferred because it is not so susceptible to noise.
I think I'll try USB2 and hope that this brings better results.

[SPAZ]

Has anyone had any issues with the DAC not picking up the signal from PC? I've had to change the output back from one input and back to that pretty frequently. My Yddrasil never needed that to happen and that was the only change to my setup. The Out light just blinks almost like it doesn't pick up the signal until I switch to another output and then back to it.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Just now, SPAZ said:

Has anyone had any issues with the DAC not picking up the signal from PC? I've had to change the output back from one input and back to that pretty frequently. My Yddrasil never needed that to happen and that was the only change to my setup. The Out light just blinks almost like it doesn't pick up the signal until I switch to another output and then back to it.

In my experience the DAC200 picks this up right away without any user intervention. 

[Allan F]

On 8/29/2023 at 4:15 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

In my experience the DAC200 picks this up right away without any user intervention. 

Ditto.

[Woolf]

On 8/22/2023 at 6:17 PM, Woolf said:

Would be great, thanks. 

I'm sure your perception of a change in sound for better or worse is not really different from mine. I would base my decision on whether the effort to rebuild and run a network cable has a chance of improvement.
The basis of my final assessment would be the sound of the CD as a reference. If I could get close it would be great.
I see two possibilities:
1) Connect the Nucleus+ to the DAC200 via USB cable (AQ Diamond).
2) Connect the Nucleus+ to the DAC200 via HDMI cable.
Currently: Nucleus+ via WLAN to the Auralic G1.1 and from there via USB cable (AQ Diamond) to the DAC200.
Thanks!

Wolfram

 

Now I did it, took out the Auralic ARIES G1.1 of my streaming line and connected the Nucleus plus with its internal 8TB SSD directly via an Audioquest Diamond USB cable to the DAC200 and what can I say, wow, now I finally got the same SQ from the ripped CD-flac as from the CD itself. To optimize it I used the USB2-connector of the Nucleus Plus, my Keces P6 as Power supply (24V) and the ifi Lan Silancer at the Lan port of the nucleus.

I am so happy and I want to thank You for Your support!
Greetings from Austria.

Wolfram