by Graham and Denise Woods

[Graham and Denise, very graciously, offers to write a review comparing the various iterations of Monica all the way from Monica2 to Discreet Monica. Thanks a lot for taking the trouble, mate!]

Way back in 2007 I wrote a review of ‘Monica 2’: an NOS DAC designed and built by Yeo, one of the treasures of the DIYer’s universe. Monica 2 is substantially similar to the original Monica (I’ll call her ‘Monica 1’), so my review could fairly apply to both.

I won’t repeat the detail of that review (originally posted on Yeo’s web site: www.diyparadise.com); however I do want to record that Monica 2 blew me and my wife Denise away, and convinced us that non-oversampling DACs have the potential to outperform any competition based on alternative circuits.

Those in the know will know that Monica 2 was followed by Monica 3, which reportedly offered substantial sonic improvements – and even more improvements if you took advantage of some mods and add-ons, most of which are still available (check Yeo’s web site for details).

Enter Discreet Monica: the latest DAC to be created by Yeo and still so recent (in early June 2012) that she’s scarcely half-way toward her first birthday.

Although she is an NOS DAC, in terms of circuit design the new lady is significantly different from previous Monicas. Just HOW she differs is something you can discover by visiting Yeo’s web site; in this review I’ll focus on how she sounds. I will mention her weight, since when I last checked that wasn’t mentioned on Yeo’s site. She weighs a little over 3 kilos: considerably more than all her sisters combined.

HOW GOOD IS DISCREET MONICA?’ THE JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY

For me the most helpful component reviews are those that include comparisons. Comparisons help me to measure the new component against components I’ve heard or at least against components that have been compared with OTHER components, and gradually I build a comprehensive ‘comparison matrix’.

My review of Monica 2 compared her with other highly regarded DACs or CD players that Denise and I had actually heard, all of which she eclipsed (among these were the Rega Planet 2000 and the Rega Jupiter players, two Naim players, almost all the Musical Fidelity DACs, the then latest Cyrus DAC, the Chord DAC 64, and the stratospherically priced dCS Purcell-Delius combination). To Denise and me the appropriate measure of comparison for Discreet Monica seemed obvious. It was the performance of Monica 3, the most evolved Monica until the birth of Discreet Monica and (in 2012) still available for purchase. Even more enlightening, we thought, certainly for us, but also for any potential buyer, would be a comparison among Monica 2, Monica 3 and Discreet Monica.

By good fortune I was able to borrow a Monica 3: well run in, and with no modifications. As a first step then, Denise and I compared Monica 3 with our own Monica 2: also unmodified, and still the DAC we use in our principal audio system.

MONICA 3 VERSUS MONICA 2

Because Monica 3 needs at least 15 DC volts we couldn’t use our regular 12 volt battery supply; yet we wanted to compare these two DACs on a level playing field. The solution was to use as our power source a laboratory-standard switch-mode variable power supply (available from Jaycar in Melbourne Australia), which would take its 240 volts AC from a sine-wave inverter (see below).

For Monica 3 we used 18 volts: i.e. a tad more than the 17.8 usually fed to her from her own wall-wart supply.

For Monica 2 we set the voltage to 12.5: i.e. approximately the voltage that would have been fed to her from her dedicated Trojan battery had we used it.

We used our customary system for the audition: a Rega Planet 2000 as the transport; VTL Super Deluxe preamplifier (actually a PR 1: an upgraded, completely dual-mono version of the Super Deluxe); VTL 90/90 semi-dual-mono power amp (KT 88 output valves; push-pull); tri-wired Whatmough 502i speakers; and a variety of interconnect cables and power cords, all of high quality. 240 volts AC was supplied by a sine-wave inverter fed from a large 12 volt battery bank (this battery supply is separate from Monica 2’s). The digital interconnects for the two DACs were identical except for a small difference in length and in termination (our Monica 2’s interconnects are hard-wired); analogue interconnects were of different makes but are sonically very similar.

Analogue sources didn’t feature explicitly in our comparisons of the three Monicas; however Denise and I play LPs as often as we play CDs, and our analogue front-end is the implicit benchmark for all our digital source components. It comprises a Michell Gyro SE turntable with isolated DC motor, a Michell TecnoArm (Cardas rewired; custom modified) and an Amber (read ‘Grado’) Europa cartridge.

For those who might be interested: our listening room is approximately 5.4 metres long and 4.2 metres wide at the listening position tapering to 3.7 metres wide at the speaker end (i.e. the side walls are symmetrical but not parallel), with a ceiling height that rises from approximately 2.4 metres at the speaker end to 2.7 metres just forward of the listening position and then falls again. Side walls and ceiling are plaster board; the timber floor is carpeted. The speaker-end wall is heavily draped; the listening-end wall is not uniformly parallel to the speaker-end wall but the section that is parallel is also heavily draped.

Before we began our audition we warmed the entire system at idle – minus either DAC – for an hour and a half, to rule out subsequent changes in performance based on factors other than the DACs themselves. Thereafter we connected the DAC that was to be auditioned and warmed it for twenty minutes, while we played an LP to keep the system ticking over.

As our source for the comparison we used what has become our standard test CD: Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Old Friends: Live on Stage’. These days this disc gives us even more valuable information, since we own the equivalent DVD and have attended a concert in a similar-size venue in which Simon and Garfunkel presented very nearly the same material. In line with our usual practice, Denise and I took separate notes and didn’t swap impressions until the audition was over.

THE RESULTS

Despite our different preferences, Denise and I agreed on Monica 3’s areas of dominance.

The main areas of improvement over Monica 2 were:

a more spacious soundstage: wider and with more ‘air’.

greater detail: instrumental lines and lyrics were more precisely rendered.

tighter, more disciplined transients, right across the frequency range.

more extended treble AND bass, but especially the treble.

a more neutral presentation: in comparison Monica 2 sounded slightly veiled, slightly congested and slightly ‘plummy’: more like a warm but slightly compressed production on a much-played LP.

Monica 3’s treble was delivered with most, but not all, of that delightfully non-fatiguing ‘analogue’ quality that we fell in love with when we first heard our Monica 2. It was difficult to decide whether this difference should be scored in Monica 3’s favour or against it, because now we had to decide whether Monica 2’s ‘analogue’ sound was the result of the absence of digital artefacts or the result of her more veiled and plummy presentation. In the end we couldn’t make up our minds on that; regardless, I preferred Monica 3’s treble to Monica 2’s, whereas for Denise it was line-ball.

A definite negative of Monica 3, in our opinion, was a slight additional hardness in the presentation of this particular CD, especially at high volume: to be fair, a volume level that we would rarely dial up for constant listening. It needs to be said that this disc IS slightly hard intrinsically – as can be verified by listening to the equivalent DVD – so one could argue that all Monica 3 was doing was presenting it as it is. Even if Monica 3 was herself a contributor, for me her virtues outweighed that shortcoming and put her comfortably ahead of her older sister. For Denise, however, the contest was still too close to call.

Subsequent comparisons between the two sisters, playing thoroughly familiar discs featuring jazz, rock, folk, classical, male and female vocalists both solo and massed, confirmed the more ‘analytical’ conclusions that Denise and I had reached during our primary audition – and also confirmed that the slight hardness I reported on earlier IS, indeed, intrinsic to the CD itself. However those comparisons also sharpened our awareness of both the merits and DEmerits of each DAC.

Monica 2’s shortcomings remained the same, and I’ve alluded to them already. Monica 3’s flaws were more difficult to put into words; yet they were there: best summarised as a sonic irritation that on some CDs was so subtle as to be not worth mentioning but, on others, so evident that we were tempted to turn down the volume and/or cut the treble (via a custom-built tone control: usually switched out of the signal path). On balance, I still preferred Monica 3, despite her shortcomings, but Denise found herself leaning toward Monica 2, even though she fully acknowledged her shortcomings too. Ideally, Denise would have used Monica 2 for some CDs and Monica 3 for others; I would have gone with Monica 3 for all of them. However, we shared an unavoidable conclusion: neither of these DACs is ‘as good as it can get’.

It deserves to be reported that, powered directly by her own battery, Monica 2’s presentation became cleaner and less plummy. Even so, I still preferred Monica 3, and Denise was still undecided. How Monica 3 herself would sound on a battery supply is, of course, a question I can’t answer, but other users have reported on this, with some preferring battery and some a mains-derived power supply.

MONICA 3 VERSUS DISCREET MONICA

It was now time to compare Monica 3 with the new lady on the block.

As before, all preparation procedures and all system components that could be kept the same were, indeed, the same. The exceptions were the DACs themselves and their respective power supplies. For Monica 3 we used the variable power supply that we’d used in her comparison with Monica 2; Discreet Monica was powered by her own integrated mains-derived power supply, fed to her via a bog-standard kettle cord similar in quality and power rating to the kettle cord that is sold with Monica 3’s power supply. By now we’d discovered that, in our system, Monica 3 sounds at her best on 17.5 volts, rather than, say, 17 or 18, so we used this for the shoot-out between her and her new sister. We set Discreet Monica’s variable output pot to 9: one notch below maximum.

Again our CD for the audition was Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Old Friends: Live on Stage’; and again Denise and I took separate notes and didn’t swap impressions until the audition was over.

Keep in mind that, at the time of our inaugural audition, Discreet Monica had had only ten hours of running-in (via a spare CD player into a headphone amp). This is important because, as with Monica 3 and Monica 2 before her, some of her capacitors are Black Gate n series, which reputedly take at least 150 hours to burn in properly. She also uses quite a lot of Rubicon ZLs, also slow to burn in.

THE RESULTS

It was inevitable that two listeners would have at least slightly different perceptions and would also use different language to express them. Even so, the similarity of our conclusions is remarkable. In what follows I’ve done my best to capture our combined, overall impressions.

I’ll deal with the more analytical, cerebral, aspects first.

Compared with Monica 3, Discreet Monica delivered perhaps a slightly more extended bass; but more compelling was the quality of that bass: tight, utterly rock-solid, with Discreet Monica in total control. Monica 3 is no slouch in this department but Discreet Monica did it better.

Discreet Monica’s treble was at least as extended as Monica 3’s but, again, it was the quality of her treble that set her apart. It was noticeably sweeter and somehow ‘richer’, as though it contained more information in this register.

Discreet Monica’s clarity, air and detail were at least the equal of Monica 3’s; but, here too, there was a difference in quality: more texture, body, the qualities that we’re used to with our best LPs.

Discreet Monica’s staging surpassed that of Monica 3. Basic parameters such as width, depth and height were much the same, but the identity and location of musical elements, including the subtle cues to the position of singers and band members and the crowd, were decidedly more discernible.

Discreet Monica’s timing was breathtaking, significantly superior to Monica 3’s, and puts her at the very top of the column among the DACs and CD players we’ve heard: including the Naim players. Allied to this: vocal and instrumental notes were presented with virtually no extraneous smearing or overhang. As you’d expect, this was particularly noticeable with percussion and with vocal sibilants.

That’s the head stuff. What about the heart and soul?

Within seconds of hearing the new lady sing, Denise and I were captivated by a rich, multilayered, fulsomely textured and utterly riveting presentation that was at least the equal of the best LPs in our collection. The sense of ‘being there’ was better delivered than on any other system and by any other digital medium we’ve heard so far. Further listening didn’t make us blasé: on the contrary, we had the feeling that we were becoming addicted (we discovered that we’d both had these responses when we discussed our impressions after the audition).

Back to the head now: how much better than Monica 3 did we think Discreet Monica was? (This intuitive global rating is one we try to apply to any piece of equipment we’ve short-listed for purchase.) Denise judged at least 40%; my note reads ‘at least 35% and as high as 45%’. So let’s settle on 40%.

AN UNEXPECTED COMPLICATION

In the normal course of events Denise and I would have taken our totally focussed critical listening no further. Certainly we expected Discreet Monica to improve as she notched up more hours, but we expected the improvement to be gradual and modest. After all, we’d heard no dramatic change in our Monica 2 during her first 150 hours.

What we would have done, however, is listen more casually to Discreet Monica playing a variety of familiar CDs, to refine, confirm, or possibly revise our primary impressions. We were preparing to do just that when word came through from Yeo that there might be a quantum leap in Discreet Monica’s performance after about fifty hours. This possibility was something we couldn’t ignore.

So it was back to the bench for the new lady: to be hooked up to a spare CD player and on to a headphone amp (and then a pair of headphones, so that I could check the sonic chain occasionally), with the CD player set to ‘repeat’. We left her like that until she’d clocked at least 150 hours. We were ready to audition her again.

MONICA 3 VERSUS DISCREET MONICA: ROUND 2

Rather than relying exclusively on aural memory, Denise and I put our first impressions on the back burner, and once more put Discreet Monica head-to-head against Monica 3. Again we took separate notes, and as usual we waited until after the audition to discuss them.

SECOND ROUND RESULTS

My impressions and Denise’s were startlingly similar: even down to some of the language we used. As we compared our respective notes – for this audition AND for the inaugural one – the fundamental qualities of this new DAC were easy to agree on, and it was evident that the extra hours of run-in had consolidated them.

The first thing I want to mention is that the nature of the first-audition differences between Monica 3 and Discreet Monica had persisted.

Second: the ‘quantum’ of difference had increased – but not by a huge amount. In other words, there had been no ‘quantum leap’ of the kind that Yeo’s email had prepared us for. (For the record: this time Denise judged Discreet Monica to be ‘at least 40% better than Monica 3’; I wrote ‘at least 40% and possibly 45%’. In referring to Discreet Monica’s first and second performances both Denise and I had used exactly the same words: ‘difference not night-and-day’.)

Third: all Discreet Monica’s qualities as we’d heard them during the first audition were present in the second, but the extra hours of run-in had lifted nearly all of them from ‘sensational’ to ‘sublime’.

One quality that had not changed was Discreet Monica’s timing: it was still so good that it’s difficult to imagine how it could be bettered.

The ‘analogue’ richness and detail (a result of the retrieval of more information), the purity and treble sweetness were still there, but now with more finesse; an analogy is a polished table that has been FRENCH-polished to a piano finish by a master craftsman.

The most striking improvement was in a quality that we’d both registered during the first audition but almost subliminally. Now it was so palpable that it was easy to describe. That quality is ‘effortlessness’. Everything she does Discreet Monica does effortlessly. One has a sense of a calligrapher’s brush allied with the horsepower and speed of an Aston Martin and the focus and precision of a Swiss watch maker. The result is NOT a constantly ‘dramatic’ – i.e. ‘ballsy’ – presentation: rather it’s an overwhelmingly convincing sense of ‘being there’, listening to real music, in a real venue, with all of the nuances, the peaks and troughs, the delicacy, the slam, or whatever qualities the actual performance had at the time it was recorded.

THE MONICA FAMILY: FROM COMPROMISE TO EMANCIPATION

With the second audition behind us Denise and I did what we’d always planned to do: we listened through Discreet Monica to a variety of familiar CDs featuring jazz, rock, folk, male and female vocalists and classical music. With one exception – which I’ll discuss shortly – nothing we heard led us to change our minds about this new DAC, but it did help us to understand what it is about Monica 3 that makes her ascendancy over Monica 2 less clear-cut than we might have expected.

Discreet Monica, in our opinion, does everything better than either of her two sisters does it. She manages this feat, I believe, because she never has to push herself beyond her quite extraordinary capabilities.

In contrast, while Monica 3 gives the listener more than Monica 2, it comes at a cost. Compared with either of her sisters she sounds brash, too much ‘in your face’, slightly unrefined. I have the sense that she’s trying too hard, pushing herself beyond her comfort zone.

Monica 2 avoids these shortcomings, but that comes at a cost too. Monica 2’s solution is to veil the music slightly and to compress it: especially at the treble end. So she sounds ‘sweeter’ than Monica 3, more ‘polite’, even slightly more ‘analogue’, but also less detailed and less dramatic.

With Discreet Monica you really can have your cake and eat it too: she combines the virtues of her two older sisters and then takes off into a realm of her own.

I want to record one more feature of this most recent addition to the Monica family: one that demanded a correction to an inadequately considered assumption Denise and I had made before we extended our CD sampling. Discreet Monica, unlike Monica 2, does not cover up the worst excesses of CDs. An atrociously recorded CD – the sort that cuts you in half and has you wondering about the hearing of the artist or the sound engineers – still sounds pretty horrible: Discreet Monica will not paper it over. As far as I’m concerned that’s the way it has to be. If you want a component that puts the fewest imaginable obstacles between the listener and the moment of recording, and IF the moment of recording was crap, you should expect to hear crap.

DISCREET MONICA IN PERSPECTIVE

I want any prospective owner of a Discreet Monica to keep this in mind: she dominates a proud lineage whose foundation member still outperforms all the ‘non-Monica’ competition Denise and I have heard so far. That competition includes the Chord DAC 64 and others (see above), and, more recently, the best CD players available from Creek and Cambridge Audio, the Sony SCD-XB790 SACD player (playing CDs of course), and the built-like-a-battleship Pioneer PD-S707, which was considered good enough to be a platform for CD audio at the 2004 Milan Hi-End Audio Fair. All the Monica family members are regal performers; Discreet Monica, in our opinion, is the unchallenged Queen.

HOW DO YOU PUT A PRICE ON DISCREET MONICA?

If you’ve read this far you’ll know that discreet Monica is the best DAC (and in fact she’s the best digital source of any kind) that Denise and I have heard; but does she offer good value for money?

The value-for-money question is usually a vexed one. The answer will depend partly on what you’re used to spending on your HiFi gear, partly on the price of the competing components (is it, say, $100 versus $300, or $5000 versus $8000?), and partly on what increment of improvement you demand for each increment in price – and all these factors interact. Whatever your calculus, it’s harder to apply it if you can’t be sure of the improvement you’re going to get – which is often the case if you’re buying a component on-line and you don’t have a friend or relative who can let you listen to the one they bought. Another complication is that it’s almost impossible to personally audition every competitor, either because of time pressure or because some contenders are inaccessible except if you buy them but too expensive to justify your buying them before you audition them.

And that brings me back to the vexed question – except that for me, in this instance, it isn’t vexed at all.

At a starting price of 2000 Singapore dollars Discreet Monica is quite a lot more expensive than Monica 3. However she’s not only in a different league: she’s in a different arena. She’s a radical departure from her older sisters in design and architecture and more expensively dressed, and I believe a prospective buyer should be comparing her with the most exalted competitors currently available, such as CH Precision’s C1, Light Harmonic’s DaVinci and Vincent Brient’s TotalDac D1 Reference. Of these, the TotalDac D1 Reference is the cheapest; including freight charges, import duty and taxes, the most basic version of this French DAC would cost me 8000 Euros. Alongside her legitimate competitors Discreet Monica, in my opinion, is an incomparable bargain.

There are some people, in any case, who will say you can’t put a price on the voice of an angel. For me Discreet Monica connects Earth with Heaven: what price should I put on that?

Graham Woods

[Graham Woods is a Melbourne (Australia) clinical psychologist and professional writer. Denise Oh is a business systems and knowledge management consultant, as well as a classically trained musician. Both are audiophiles and occasional DIYers.]

The post DISCREET MONICA: MISS RIGHT BLOODY FANTASTIC appeared first on diyparadise.

Misc Items

F&T 50+50uF/500V Radial Electrolytic Can Capacitor. Made in Germany to the specs of LCR shown above. RM42
F&T 100uF/450V Axial Electrolytic Can Capacitor. Made in Germany to the specs of LCR shown above. RM36
My experience with F&T caps have been impressive! Great sounding at too low a price!

Illinois Electrolytic Capacitor

100uF/450V     RM22(USD5.80)

Sprague
Atom Electrolytic Capacitor.

8uF/450V   RM14(USD4)   16uF/475V   RM20(USD5.50)

Silver
mica capacitors. Perfect for feedback circuits.

10pF/500V    RM1.80
33pF/500V    RM2.80
100pF/500V    RM2.40
250pF/500V    RM2.80

390pF/500V    RM3
500pF/500V    RM3.20
Wow! addition of 10pf and 33pf is suitable for… building your own clock!

JJ Electrolytic Can Cap 500uF/500V

On my JJ page as well, perfect for use with solid state rectifiers. RM50

Tag board for ease of construction. RM15 each.

Tags for ease of construction.
RM2.00 for 5 lugs.
RM2.50 for 7 lugs.
RM3.00 for 8 lugs.

TDA1543 Digital-Analog Converter IC.   USD2  Datasheet
How to build a non-oversampling DAC for RM20…

TL431 shunt regulator. Datasheet

More electrolytics!
Elna Cerafine 220uF/25V   RM4   OUT OF STOCK
Elna Cerafine 470uF/10V   RM4   OUT OF STOCK
Elna Cerafine 470uF/25V   RM6   OUT OF STOCK
Elna ARE2 audio capacitor 3300uF/25V   RM5   OUT OF STOCK
Elna ARE2 audio capacitor 4700uF/16V   RM5   OUT OF STOCK

CAT 5 cable. You can learn here how to use them to make interconnect/speaker cables.

The post Misc Items appeared first on diyparadise.

DIY Paradise

brings you

Sanyo OS-CON

What is OS-CON?

    Sanyo OS-CON
is an electrolytic capacitor unlike other electrolytics. While the rest uses
eletrolytic solution and manganese dioxide as  eletrolyte, OS-CON
uses a high conductivity organic semiconductor. Organic
SemiCONductor, get it?

What is great about using organic semiconductor?

•     High conductivity (low
  resistance value) compared to other electrolytes.
•     High conductivity –
  stability against temperature.

OS-CON
has almost the same construction as an aluminium electrolytic capacitor,
and the element consists of rolled aluminium foils.  

The
difference between OS-CON and other aluminium
electrolytics is that organic semiconductor crystal is impregnated instead of
conventional electrolyte solution. 

As a result, we are talking of Equivalent Series
Resistance (ESR) that approaches that of film capacitors.

Impedance frequency characteristic of OS-CON
compared to other types of capacitors. OS-CON shows
a nearly ideal curve. At 100kHz, note that OS-CON 47uF
has nearly the same ESR as a low impedance aluminium eletrolytic capacitor of
100uF. 

This means that at this frequency, the 47uF OS-CON
IS AS EFFECTIVE AT REMOVING RIPPLES AS EXPENSIVE LOW IMPEDANCE
ALUMUMINIUM ELECTROLYTICS OF 100UF.

Best used in digital system’s power supplies (like
your CD player, transport, DAC), get your OS-CON from
DIY Paradise now!

470uF    10V

33uF    16V

270uF    16V

220uF    20V

*Note that the SP series now replaces the obsolete
SG series. SP also uses OFC as lead wires.

The post DIY Paradise brings you Sanyo OS-CON appeared first on diyparadise.

www.diyparadise.com

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DIY Paradise

brings you

A trusted name for more
than 80 years!

DIY buddy YH Chow always says, “iron
is good for health” and now DIY Paradise can help you anaemics!  

So here you are, Canadian iron at close
to US prices. Even cheaper once you factor in shipping charges. Prices are per
piece.

Enclosed chokes look great on top of the chassis.
Butt naked ones should go underneath, unless you want a “butt naked
ugly” look. Definitely something different from the crowd!

193C,
193J, 193K, 159P and 159T are great as power supply filters. In my modest
system, having a choke in the power supply moved the stage backwards, shrunk the
image down to more lifelike proportions, smoothened the mids and extended the
bass! What more can a man ask for????? 

Note
that if you want low DCR, the 193K and 159T do this nicely for you. Less DCR,
less voltage drop, less waste. Choke benefits for your current hungry tube.

155C,
156C are meant to load your driver tube. The other alternative is, of course,
build your own current source but for purists who want no sand in their amps,
chokes is the way to go!

157G is an
inexpensive plate choke should you opt to go parafeeding. It could be used as
driver load too if you use THAT much current.

All Hammond output transformers are built
with M6 grade laminations. These are pretty hard to come by locally. (That said,
if you know a source for M6 core, let me know…)

The 1650R is perfect for an
EL34 based PP
amp while the 1650F is great for EL84 PP. The 1650R is HUGE and HEAVY. Think I’m
kidding? Each weighs 12 pounds! Both models come with 4-8-16 ohm speaker and
Ultra Linear taps.

There is no better value
for SE amps than the 125ESE! Look at the primary impedance! This is a great
model for DIYers as you can use it to build a 2A3/300B/211 based SE amp. You can
have your own SE amp for less than RM1k! Serious! Believe me, this iron is good
enough for most people! Don’t listen to those who talk only about specs. They
listen to SOUND not MUSIC. Read this great review here.

If
you want to spend big money, then you need to spend above RM1000 for exotic
makes like Lundahl, Tango, Tamura etc. For real people with mouths to feed, car
loans and property mortgage, the 125ESE is a Godsend!

Adding to line-up is the 1627SE, 1628SE and now 1629SE. These are one step up from the 125ESE. The 125ESE has 3 faults, too cheap, too ugly and not much DEEP bass. The 1627/8SE are much nicer, bigger, heavier, more macho and has great bottom end extension. But they are twice the price of the 125ESE, so take your pick. Adding to the lineup is Hammond’s latest 125GSE.

Please write to enquire. You can estimate shipping charges here.
DIY Paradise is glad to pay up to RM5 shipping charges. As far as I know, no one
in the industry does this!  

More
information on Hammond chokes and output transformers is available from their
website. http://www.hammondmfg.com

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Latest update on stuffs I sell : store.diyparadise.com

95dB/W-m

RM600 (USD170) a pair

92dB/W-m

RM400 (USD105) a pair

94dB/W-m

RM250 (USD70) a pair

diyparadise.com

The post Speaker Drivers appeared first on diyparadise.

Finally! The long-awaited, much-anticipated, long-overdued , oft-asked, finally see daylight… *drum roll please* Yup, in collaboration with Calv Acoustic Labs, DIY Paradise brings you… Non-Oversampling Digital Analog Converter Kits! (if you are cheap, use your business card box to house the dac) (i’m even cheaper. no box is best box!) *see below*

Half a kit, full kit, what the difference?
Yup folks. At offer here is DAC full kits. You get everything you need to build the part. Well not "full" in the strictest sense of the word, but "full" enough. You still need to get your RCA sockets, wires, casing, battery, solder, calories, sweat… The power supply side is not supplied, as it is diyparadise’s aim to promote going battery (though the PCB could be wired for separate power supplies). Remember, have battery, can travel. Besides after you built your DAC, bring your battery powered DAC and a mop to your hifi dealer, so that after listening to your DAC, they can mop up their drool! So here you go.

The TDA1543 DAC kit page.

The TDA1545 DAC kit page. DISCONTINUED

"Monica 2" – The TDA1545 DAC kit with asynch reclocking.

Update Dec 4, 2004: All you need to know about these DAC kits.

Testing, testing… Good!

Palm Top Dac, Pocket DAC, Mini DAC…

Perhaps you prefer a more conventional "box"? With power switch, LED at the front?
Shown here is 4.5Ah battery that lasts ~40 hours with this DAC. Sub for a more petite batt of your liking.

You can easily take out the guts and modify to your heart’s content!

www.diyparadise.com

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…Ode to Charlize… Charlize oh CharlizeThis lass called Charlize Awesome beauty and style All grace and poise Your beauty Calms my spirit and mind Bowls me over Again and again and again…

And you haven’t even heard her sing yet. Yeah folks, in collaboration with Calv Acoustic Labs, we present you… Charlize. Charlize is a Tripath Class-T amp based on the excellent Tripath TA2020. After mucking about with various Tripath chips (TA2021, TA2022, TA2024), the 2020 won us over by a large margin (like Charlize!).   Initially we decided to put out a kit but then we were torn between offering an “easy-to-build-but-compromising-sonics” kit versus a “hard-to-build-but-offers-superior-sonics” kit. So between the two, we went for the latter. Hey, you wouldn’t compromise with Charlize, would you? If you are wondering, usage of surface mount components is indeed a necessity for switching designs. This is because switching at 800kHz, copious amount of noise is released and if you don’t channel this energy away, it’ll get into your music. Let’s restate this. It’s a neccccccessssssssiiiitttttttyyyyyyyy! I have had the priviledge of playing with another TA2020 kit that uses entirely through hole components and… lo and behold! We are happy to be justified in this regard. SMT indeed sounds BETTER. So we’ll be offering you fully soldered/assembled/tested Charlize. Yes! We do all the hard work for you! As PCB size is slightly smaller than a credit card and TA2020 doesn’t even require a heatsink (it runs cool like us), it’ll be really nifty to mount into your enclosure of choice.

Fedex shipping to most parts of Europe – USD25.

Oh yeah, at this price, we are daft enough to offer you Elna Cerafine input caps and Rubycon “Super Low ESR” power supply caps. You can tell we are bowled over by Charlize!

Charlize Vital Statistics

Power ratings are always over-hyped. Some will call this 20W, while some says 10W. But ask them, at what THD? See for yourself here.

You can use a 12V battery or those wall mount adaptors that puts out 12VDC. Just verify with a multimeter it’s really putting out 12VDC and not higher. Above 14VDC, say goodbye to Charlize! You can wire the input to a volume pot of 50kohm to make it an integrated amp or just plain RCA sockets. Please note as TA2020 output stage is bridged, DO NOT tie them to GND.

Please note that 12VDC is wired to square via of J1 and GND is wired to round via of J1.

In other words, when you receive Charlize, the white wire goes to 12VDC and black wire goes to GND.

Mistake here is catastrophic! Charlize will leave you forever!

Now you’ll love Charlize even more!

Yup! Charlize with air core inductors. Smoother, better clarity, improvement all around! At the loss of slight dynamics though, but if your speakers are sensitive enough, get this! We tried many inductors before stumbling on the perfect combo of inductance and damping factor. But there’s more to it! It had to be wound by virgins on a full moon’s night! Any other way, you’ll regret! (I tried winding some myself. It sounded fat at the bottom and thin at the top, just like me.) Since they are hard to come by these days (virgins), again we’ll do all the hard work for you. We have this ultra-cool vendor who can even wind inductors/trans in his sleep do all this.

USD90 (RM315) 

More wiring info for you.

Can’t find such a 3-way selector switch? Wire up a power switch, minus pin 1 of above selector. During OFF, Charlize will see less than 8VDC. She’ll be sleeping like a baby. When you toggle the switch, she gets 12VDC and she’s ready to sing!

Coming soon! Monica and Charlize invites YOU to a threesome!

www.diyparadise.com

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Ever since I put up this CDM12 Controller Kit page more than a year ago, not a month goes by without folks asking for this kit. So Calv Acoustic Labs has decided to be serious about this baby.

The LCD display makes life easier. No more messing with another negative supply as you would have to do with the VFD display. Regular 5V is all you need, and it’s accessible from the main PCB via the ribbon cable. Nice…

The source code is sooooo versatile. Not only can you turbo charge your CDPRO2, if you have another transport lying around, you can add wings to him/her. ; ) This nifty kit is compatible with all Philips CDM12 PRO2 family loader; which includes CDM12 Ind., CDM12 Pro2 & CDM12 Pro2M. Also can be used with Philips Short-Loader. The Philips Short Loader Mk3 is used in the Marantz CD4000 and a few years ago was available for only USD30! Ha!

Assembly shouldn’t take you too long. Just be careful when assembling those tiny connectors/cables…

The 10kohm preset pot is used for adjusting the contrast of the LCD display. (especially useful for folks so crazy with audio that they forgot their eyesight is failing!) The power supply circuitry is also on the board so a tiny 6-0V transformer is all that you need. If you have a DC source, you could bypass this section and go straight to the 5V regulator. Easy…

Where is my mojo?

Like the CDM12 Controller kit before, the clever combination of holding certain controls will program your transport to output the required data format. The default is plain vanilla I2S.

Say you have DAC chips that interface in EIAJ 16-bit (say TDA1545), then just hold PLAY-PREV-NEXT buttons simulatenously during power up. The DSA

Or you wanna try EIAJ 16-bit 4FS (4x oversampling), then just hold PLAY-PREV-STOP buttons simulatenously during power up.
Clever huh?

Now your destiny to be next swashbuckling DAC master is finally in your control!

"Give me ANY DAC chip and I’ll make her sing!", you say.

No more fussing/fiddling around with digital receivers, SPDIF format etc. Oh yeah baby!

Full monty is available in this PDF document. Go ahead, you could download it to read it. It won’t bite, it’s FREE.

There you go! Have fun!

Place your order here! http://store.diyparadise.com.

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Rudolf Broertjes’ SS I/V Gain Stage

Greeings DIY brethrens!

Well ever since Monica conquered our hearts, there have always been questions from insatiable diyers asking for more more more!

Truth be told, Monica’s output is a little on the low side. Passive current-to-voltage conversion has its “beauty and beast” side. The beast side is of course current drive and low output. But the beauty… oh so beautiful… that I just feel that if we can’t find a suitable gain stage for her, then just let her be. Stay with this for now.

Then back in February 2006, CY “DAC Man” Liew shared with us his fabulous Grounded Grid Tube Gain Stage. If Monica sang before, now she’ll dance for you!

But DIYers will always be DIYers. Very soon, there were clamours for more, more, more again.

Then in February 2007, Ronald Verlaan shared on our forum this schematic by Rudolf Broertjes. Rudolf posted this schematic in diyaudio some moons ago.

Simple enough eh? The beauty of this circuit is that it sounds better than the vaccuum stage!

Plus you could power it at 12VDC though 18VDC is said to sound even better. For once, you could have your cake and eat it too!

I then contacted Rudolf but too bad he doesn’t have PCBs made for sale. I built a prototype and it’s rather time consuming. Besides without the benefit of a ground plane, noise issue etc could be a problem. So I requested Rudolf’s permission to build the PCB and sell to DIYers, especially Monica users.

And Rudolf agreed! So here you go.

Since this is not my design, and thanks to Rudolf’s generosity to share with all DIYers, I don’t want to profit from this. So the PCBs will be sold at a very low price, to cover costs, Paypal charges etc. You could order from our e-Store. http://store.diyparadise.com

Well, if that’s all to it, then it’s fine but I’m known to be a klutz many times. And this time is no different.

You see, when I built my prototype, for RSO1A, I used just a 82ohm resistor. And everything worked fine. Also, I couldn’t find any BF245A here so I went for the substitute of 2N3819.

As such, the PCB was designed for this.

When I got the PCBs in hand, then I realized a few things. Having a resistor instead of a trim pot for RSO1A is a BAD idea. Too many variations could give you problems. The LEDs’ forward voltage drop, transistor betas etc… All could affect the output DC voltage. Hence a few builds I did had output DC voltages ranging from 4VDC to 10VDC.

At 4VDC, Monica won’t sing at all. At 10VDC, she sings but off key (distortion!). This is why we want a trim pot! So to adjust output voltage to around half of VCC. So if you power her with 12VDC, then you want around 6-7VDC.

As such, there are a few mods we have to do here, no thanks to my clumsiness. Embarassing moments coming ahead…

For RSO1A shown above, we have R7 and R11 on the PCB. Have to fit in a trim pot in a resistor’s place! Fortunately it’s not as bad as fitting in a square into round hole… or something like that. This is how you do it. Carefully bend leg 2 to leg 3 and solder them together. Then spread it apart so that it sits in the PCB holes nicely.

Now if you prefer to use BF245A instead of 2N3819, there’s a bit more work for you too. You see, the semiconductor world is full of crazy folks who don’t understand “standardizations”. Source/Gate legs on both FETs are reversed! So BF245A has to “cross legs” and wear “stockings”. That’s heatshrink for you!

This is how it looks like. Shown here is for one channel only. Repeat for the other. My apologies again for this mess.

To integrate with Monica, this involves taking out components or if your soldering skills is suspect, just shorting them out. Err, either way you need to take out R19 and R20, then short the 2 inductors beside them all the way till C9 and C16. You could take out C9/C16 and use them at output stage of the I/V board and save yourself couple hundreds hours of running those darn Black Gates again.

A note about the LEDs. At first I tried those normal red LEDs but their forward voltage drop varies quite a lot between samples. In the end, I had to settle for these super bright red LEDs. They cost more but the forward voltage drops are pretty consistent. Only downside is you have to wear shades when playing music.

Okay, I exaggerated.

Building the SS I/V stage is very easy. Start off with resistors and diodes first.

R8, R14 — 820 ohm

R13, R16 — 100 ohm. Schematic above shows 270 ohm (RSI1) but as Rudolf himself said, 100 ohm sounds better.

R7, R11 — 200 ohm trim pot as shown above.

R9, R15 — is the critical I/V resistor. I recommend 3.3kohm if you use 12VDC supply. You could use bigger value with higher Vcc. Splurge on Kiwame, Holco, Riken, Shintoh… anything you like!

Next, we solder in the diodes. There are just 4 pieces of 1N4148 diodes. D2, D4, D10 and D14.

You could plug in the transistors now.

Q1, Q2, Q7, Q8 are all BC557.

Q4, Q5, Q6, Q10, Q11, Q12 are all BC547.

Q3 and Q9 are 2N3819s. If you prefer to use BF245A, then you need to cross its legs as shown above. Sorry again…

Now you can plug in those big fat LEDs. Be careful with orientation! + sign on PCB denotes LED anode – the longer of the LED leads. D1, D6, D9 and D8, D15, D16.

C13 and C14 of course is your output coupling capacitor. I recommend Black Gates N 4.7uF but you could choose anything you like. I left C12 and C20 blank but you could put in 1.1nF as shown in Rudolf’s schematic. Leaving it blank is good for now as we could measure across C12/C20 the output DC voltage.

Lastly C22 is the power supply capacitor. I use 220uF/25V Panasonic FM. Power input is labeled with pin 1 being the positive side.

Voila!

Upon power up, put your multimeter probe on C12/C20 and measure the output DC voltage. Adjust to around half of Vcc but it doesn’t have to be very accurate. I adjusted mine for 6.5VDC on both channels. I noticed couple minute upon power up, the voltages drift a little. Well, adjust again. After this adjustment, everything is fine.

I guess we are done now! Email or contact me if anything is unclear.

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