They Call Me Mr. Chips


Well, they might as well. I probably have here, at my disposal, a slew of DACS and codecs of all shapes and sizes. I have old Philips TSA1543s, PCM 1702, PCM 1798s PCM 1704, ADM 1852, ADM 1853, all sorts of Delta Sigmas and Wolfsons.

What I find interesting is that you say that each of these chips have a sound of their own. See if this conversation sounds familiar to you:

"Hello, Pacific Valve"
"Yes, I am interested in the Bluto DAC, What chip set does it have?"
"It has an AD1853"
"Oh, forget it, I don't like the sound of that chip."

Really?

For the life of me, as I dig through all the DACs and chips that I have, I cannot correlate a sound signature of the chip with the DAC. I can say that it is easy to make the Analogue Devices chips sound soft, but the Lite CD 22 player has the AD 1853 chip and it sounds anything but soft - as a matter of fact, it has given me joy through its dead neutral sound.

Or how about the ubiquitous PCM 1704UK. I have heard this chip sound soft as in the Lite DAC 60 Modified, sound dynamic as in the Audio gd DAC 19SE, sound romantic as in the Brigatta 2 - well, you get the picture.

The disparity between chips and sound is prevalent in Audio gd's latest round of now discontinued. SABRE DACS. The NFB-1 seems to have the classic SABRE sound - slightly analytical, forward, dynamic. But, the NFB-7 has some of that, but not all of that and sounds more like the REF 7, which means the SABRE sounds like a PCM1704UK - get it?

As I have said before, its not the chip, its the filtering and the output stage that gives the DAC its signature. Take for example the NOS DACs. Some use the TDA1543, some do not - but they all tend to sound the same (dynamic, high energy, "just ok" resolution) probably because of the sampling they use which in turn, effects the filtering. So its really the implementation of the chip and not the sound of the chip itself that contributes to the sound of the DAC. It may be easier, for a DAC designer, to get the sound they want by choosing one chip set over another. But again, they are tailoring the sound, and not using a chip's sonic signature.


All the best,
Vic