Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, lived a Diyer by the name of CY Liew (whom by the end of this article we should give you a nickname!) who can’t decide between the TDA1545, TDA1543 and its many parallel permutations (or mutations). He could, of course, build many many DACs and choose one (what I would do) but he felt that such an approach is sooooooo “unmacho”, soooooo 20th century. So our friend here who, by the way, wears a soldering gun like a cowboy wears his gun, did the most logical thing any Diyer would like to do — build all of them in one chassis and switch to your hearts content.

And so begins the story… *cue music intro*

First of all, let me explain the features. The 4 switches at the right are for, from Left to Right, TDA1545, TDA1543 with active I/V conversion thru OPA627 opamp, then 4xTDA1543 and lastly 8xTDA1543. Cool moi?

Switch at center is power switch. At the far left, this is where it gets better… battery! Yeah our hero here can’t decide which he likes so Mr-Indecisive did the most manly thing there is. Instead of talking about the sound, he built all his doubts into this little box and listen it for himself. Now this is a MAN.

So there you have it! An out-of-this-world, whatchama-call-it, switch-as-you-please, whole-loads-of-fun DAC.

Also known as User-Selectable TDA1545, 4xTDA1543, 8xTDA1543 with passive I/V conversion and TDA1543 with active I/V conversion with both Mains AC and Battery Powered Option Non-Oversampling Digital Analog Converter(s). Phew!

Colloquailly also known as “Gua Tak Boleh Tahan” DAC! [insert foreign phrase of your language meaning “out-of-this-world cool until i’m almost stuck to the wall reading about this”.]

Anyway, one fine rainy Saturday morning, we had a listen to all the DACs in my humble system. It was so easy to select between DACs! All in all, there is a huge difference between them DACs. I prefer the 1545 in my system while CY “DAC Man” Liew prefers the single TDA1543 with OPA627 I/V conversion in his.

As you can see, we Diyers have lots of fun!

So folks, let’s give DAC-Man a round of applause for his wonderful engineering! DAC-Man welcomes praises at liew dot cy at gmail dot com.

PS: Err, DAC-Man, can we have an amp that switches between 45, 2A3 and 300B? Sorry, can’t resist!

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Finally! The inaugural DIYERs Meet Up here in Sunny Penang!

As you can see, Steven brought his Fostex FE167E, built as recommended here. Thank God they remembered to bring some CAT5 speaker cables, as poor me only have one pair of speaker cables. And they are soldered on to the crossover of my Hammer Dynamics.

This is a first visit for CY Liew and, not to be outdone by Steven, he brought his 8xTDA1543 non-oversampling (Damn Evil, Has No Right To Sound So Good) DAC here. And he was thoughtful enough to bring his digital interconnect! Such nice guys!

 CY Liew’s 8xTDA1543 non-os DAC.

 I like his PCB for the 8pcs of TDA1543. Note that macho heatsink underneath.

First off, we began by… me showing off. Everyone got “acquainted” with my system before we started trying things out. We began by trying CY Liew’s DAC. Since I can’t access the SPDIF output from my CDPRO2 (I accidentally destroyed those darn connectors), the old workhorse, the Marantz CD63, has to be called in for transport duties. Well, I’m also using 8xTDA1543 so sonics wise, not much different though the difference in transport mechanism could be heard. My DAC is also battery powered now, so we could hear the (ill) effects of not using batteries. In short, the highs are nowhere as clean and clear, and voices are not as natural. So go batteries, go!

Then, we had more fun! Disconnected the Hammers and wired in the tiny Fostex speakers. The touch of perspex at the speaker binding post lends it an air of sophistication. In DIY Paradise, let only Yours Truly hog the Horrible Craftsmanship award. I intentionally build my stuffs to look so bad so that anyone (you, you, you) can be inspired to do better. (Ha! Ha!)

But bass it not all there is to music. The Fostex not only managed to make beautiful music, it also did so with aplomb. Personally, the Hammers better it in a few areas but the Fostex at almost 3x cheaper, doesn’t even reveal its 3 times lesser price tag. To me, THIS IS CLASS!

All in all, it has been a wonderful afternoon. Not only we finally put some faces to those names, we also learned that there is more to DIY audio than just letting Diana Krall/Norah Jones/Jennifer Warnes/Etc wank you off with their latest and greatest. There’s a community out there and it’s more satisfying and fulfilling to be out there with them. Though this time I played host and didn’t need to take a single step outside but there’s always next time!

So you DIYERS out there! Get off your butt! Call/E-mail your DIY buddies in your neighbourhood and Meet Up!

diyparadise.com

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This page is for macho men (and women) only. Boys
need not apply.

Check out Audio Hobbyist.com
CY Liew and his Versatile DAC
BS Lee and his Foreplay… preamp
Waily and his Wild Things!
Thomas and his excellent Toons!
Arnold Z. Cruz and his 2A3…
Mr. Chang – DIY Extraordinaire
Gabriel Voon and his DIY amp journey…
Nik Azam’s 6AR6 SE amp

Do you think you have what it takes?

Do you think you are macho enough?

Well, if you think you do, write to me and I’ll
put up your DIY work.

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Tripath – Class T Amp

The sad thing about audio is that, over the last 50 years, we have not seen much innovation. Amp circuitry is still variations of the same circuitry used years ago. The unsuspecting public may think that paying loads of moolah for a high end marque is justified as “these firms spend a lot of resources for R&D” but what R&D do you see? Maybe I’m blind but all I see is cosmetic audio jewellery like stainless steel chassis, boutique binding posts, blue LEDs… Better material have been used for passive components but the heart of the sound — the circuit — hasn’t seen much change. Why heck, my hairline and waistline has seen more changes in the last 5 years!

However, one of the very very few innovation(s) in amp designs that I could think of is switching amps. Initially, it didn’t enjoy a bright start and was widely panned by the audio mainstream. But look at it today!

How I got hooked…
A few months ago, I was sent an amp kit from this super-nice guy, Jan Fredriksson. Now, in addition to running “The Thiele-Small Loudspeaker Database”, Jan also runs www.41hz.com and it is through the later that he sells this Tripath magic to us DIYers! By the way, Jan also asked me to try out his kit. Of course I agreed! I’m also a nice guy, remember?

I got the kit way back … err… October ’04 I think, but never got around to building it until late November. Now Jan has made it very easy for DIYers with his very nicely done PCB but you got to have steady hand, nerves and heart to solder all those surface mount components. If you have a cold, don’t start work! Once you sneeze… you won’t stand a chance finding those dastardly tiny components! It helps too if you have IPA to clean up solder flux. I had some problems with this. More later…

Now, the kit I was sent is the AMP1 kit with components. It consists of all those teeny weeny SMT components, their bigger through-hole brothers, connectors, the beautiful PCB and of course, the Tripath TA2022 chip. Size is just slightly bigger than a credit card and it packs a muscular 60W into 8ohm and 100W into 4ohm! And I thought only Mighty Mouse packs so much power into such a small package!

Tripath TA2022
You may ask why DIY when one can buy the Sonic Impact amp for USD20? Well, the Sonic Impact amp uses a different chip (TA2024) which gives up at ~15W. The Tripath TA2022 chip not only puts out more power (2x100W), it’s THD doesn’t rise as you increase the power (the smaller chip used in the Sonic Impact amp does). Why heck, just the TA2022 chip alone is more expensive than the Sonic Impact amp! Commercial amps like the Carver ZR1600 and the Bel Canto Design EVo 200.2, which retail in the USD1-2k range, use the larger 2x300W TK2350 which is also available from Jan in his AMP2 kit.

Read a comparison between the different Tripath chipsets here.

Detour
Have you ever failed a DIY project? You know, instead of beautiful music, all you got is a loud bang and lots of smoke? Well, if you experienced this before, welcome to the club!

I soldered all the SMT components without problems but when it came to building the +/-30VDC supply… I’m a big time charlie! I feel I should be running diy-green-horn.com instead. Yeah, I heard a loud bang! I saw smoke!!!!

For some reasons, I kept on having problems building the power supply. First I managed to get +30VDC, but when I built -30VDC, bang! Then as I debugged, I got -50V! Another bang!

After a while, I gave up [*shame! shame!*] and did the next best thing I could: seek help. And who else but our famous DAC Man! And our hero completed in just 2 days! And even drilled my chassis for me! So if you ever feel bad about not completing a DIY project, don’t worry, look at that idiot yeo guy!

Moving on…
Liew’s craftsmanship is evident here. Don’t think I can ever build an amp so neat like this. From R-L: 200VA trans, +30VDC and -30VDC supplies and the AMP1. Chassis is a tissue box made from Malaysian rubber wood. My pathetic attempt to be patriotic…

Here’s a picture of Liew’s test speakers feeling the full force of 60W.

Here’s a picture of my Coral Flat 6s, first time driven by more than 0.6W…

Other than building +/-30VDC supplies for me, Liew also helped me debug the amp. It was pulsing initially but Liew later discovered some solder flux seeped into neighbouring traces and caused problems. After desoldering those components, cleaning up the board with IPA, here comes music!

Okay, the sound?
To be honest, I’m suprised by how good it is. I’m sure most folks have read those reviews on 6moons.com and tnt.audio but nothing beats experiencing it yourself.

I’m suprised to find that it is very very quiet and has a dark dark background. Smooth, easy going and light on the foot, it also has a thickkkkkk midrange which should appeal to those that love “thick, warm” vocals. Tonally I can’t find anything obtrusive or irritating YET. But all this findings is preliminary as it has seen only 5 hours of play time! I believe this is enough to show how much potential this amp has! As it clocks more hours, I’ll let you know how it sounds.

Thanks to Jan for making this kit available to us DIYers and thanks for the excellent technical support!
Thanks to Liew for saving my arse!

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