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Showing 1 of 268 conversations about:
Tup3x
100
Sep 6, 2018
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The choice of DAC chips is rather disappointing. It's old, really cheap and quite average. At this price one would expect something a bit better. AKM AK4452VN are less than 2,5 € a pop when ordered individually. In large batches can be even half of that (one could buy a 500 pieces for a bit over 700 €). I would have expected something better (like AK4490EN or AK4490EQ which is about twice the price but still quite cheap, especially in large batches) for a price like this.
jaydunndiddit
3262
Sep 13, 2018
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Tup3xMost of the time, it isn't only about the chip itself, but its configuration in the system that matters the most.
Tup3x
100
Sep 14, 2018
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jaydunndidditObviously but it can't do better than the chip. I'd still expect higher end chip at this price range. This particular chip is nothing spectacular. It's a bit disappointing choice for balanced DAC which people will pair with other high end devices.
jaydunndiddit
3262
Sep 14, 2018
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Tup3x I don't think I follow your logic. Just because a DAC has a newer version of a chip doesn't inherently make it better than a previous generation. Especially, at this price point. Since you have some piece of objective information that I'm obviously missing, how do these other iterations compare to this version of the SDAC? I'm sure you have specs and information on the configuration of the chip in the system as well? Above, Mr. Grace was very thorough with information and graphs that show this "lesser" chip in a marvelous light at this price range that seemed to really be extracting everything out of the AK AK4452.
Tup3x
100
Sep 15, 2018
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jaydunndidditIt's a mid range chip and a rather cheap one. There are better performing chips that don't cost ridiculously more. At this point it would make more sense to me to use something better. I have a DAC/AMP combo that has better DAC on paper and it does measure well in practice. It's implemented well so it's really clean and around the same price range. It has very nice AMP but doesn't have balanced outs. I don't want to side step or potentially downgrade while paying more. They have managed to to the job well enough that it looks like the DAC might be a bottleneck. Maybe the next iteration...
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