Wolfson Dac´s

[nbaptista]

which is better, the Wolfson 8742 or 8740?
I´ve bought the Rega Dac, I´m only waiting the delivery, and I know it uses the 8742 Dac. I guess is better than the 8740 that cames with the Cambridge DacMagic, but I´m not sure. I know that most important is the implementation!
I guess the 8742 is a step up from the 8740,or am I wrong?

[StanleyB]

All the Wolfson DAC chips sound the same IMHO. So when you ask which one is better, then you would have to look at the specs to figure out which aspect of each chip is important to you, and then pick out of that list.

Based specs alone, the 8741 is the best of them all. But getting it to work to full spec is far from easy. That's why you don't see many DACs with the 8741.

[DSJR]

I think I can say without any prejudice that the DAC chip itself isn't responsible for the sonic differences, but it's what goes on AFTER the basic conversion that can make the differences, either the digital filtering (if any is used outside of the DAC chip itself?) and especially the final audio stage (again, if one os used since some chips have all this onboard - apparently).

All I can tell you in absolute terms is that the designer at Rega has done consistently excellent stuff over the years since the fondly remembered clamshell Planet and original Jupitor/Io two box player. The Planet was so good that tweaks to "improve" it are few and far between without gutting the thing and going mad on it from the ground up (but then one could buy a Jupitor/Io and have much of it done for you at a stroke...)

PLEASE, get the Rega DAC home, try to use either the Couple interconnect, or make your own using the excellent Klotz AC110 cable and some suitable low capacitance phono plugs (I use Neutrik/Rean, but there are loads that seem to come from the same source costing around a quid each :)) and just enjoy the excellent (IMO) reproduction qualities it has :)

P.S. I had a downer on the Philips Bitstream chipset and felt the QED Digit was a bit soft and squidgy in sonics. Lo and behold, I bought one with Positron supply from Mr Burrell who posts here. With the better supply, it was much better but really did take a leap forward doing the twin-supply mod. Now, the Positron needed two of its supply caps changing and left on, it did seem to run very warm driving the whole Digit on its own. With the supply duties shared (the other supply is from a Standac, driving just the audio output 5532 chip), it runs very cool indeed, so hopefully that may hint at the necessity to look at power supplies inside these things... I still felt the sound to be a bit "dirty" so replaced just four caps, the two output ones with modern "audio-grade" bi-polar ones and beefed up the two near the regulator with some larger value Rubycon ones I had spare. The sonic difference was quite noticable to me as a cleaning up of the "dirty" treble and a better bass quality (the original output caps really were standard el cheapo electrolytics,,

So, what the essay above tells me is that in general terms, once the digits have left the DAC chip (of whatever persuasion), it's more to do with the audio buffer stage on the one hand, and the power supply on the other :) (in my current opnion)

[sq225917]

Ask John Westlake, he designed most of the 8471

[BTH K10A]

All the Wolfson DAC chips sound the same IMHO. So when you ask which one is better, then you would have to look at the specs to figure out which aspect of each chip is important to you, and then pick out of that list.

Based specs alone, the 8741 is the best of them all. But getting it to work to full spec is far from easy. That's why you don't see many DACs with the 8741.

I can vouch for the 8741. The twin 8741 chips in my PD-D9-J sound very good to me with both SACD and CD.

I auditioned some very expensive players and preferred the Pioneer to the others for it's natural presentation. I can't say if it is the DAC's or the other components but IMHO it certainly is a step forward in digital replay.

Why is is hard to get it to work to it's full spec?

[StanleyB]

I can vouch for the 8741.

Why is is hard to get it to work to it's full spec?
It has an SNR of 128dB, which is even superior than some of the best audio ICs out there. To design a power supply and a PCB layout capable of producing a SNR of 128dB requires super human effort. Many people prefer to work with the 8740 and 8742, which are less demanding. But even in the specs of some highly regarded DACs the signal to noise ratio tends to be around 106dB, which is a theoretical loss of around 20dB in audio performance from the capability of the DAC chip. Of course, that's assuming there is any musical content to that sort of noise floor level. So it could all be academical if the source itself (i.e. CD player or PC) isn't able to deliver a similar low noise floor.

[philsparks]

I remember an article by Teddy Pardo, he'd looked at loads of different DAC chips and decided that the sonic differences were small. It was the implementation, and particularly the PSUs that made more difference.

Phil


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[goraman]

I remember an article by Teddy Pardo, he'd looked at loads of different DAC chips and decided that the sonic differences were small. It was the implementation, and particularly the PSUs that made more difference.

Phil


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http://www.littledot.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=814&sid=607a5b0dc4e37e3c5b144b5ad4fd4496

This DAC uses the same chip as the DAC Magic, I bought the Little Dot because it was more lively,I think it dose have to do with the large tiroidal
vs. the wall wart. So I think your on to something here. BTW the LD DAC looks small in the pictures but it is pretty good size and so its the transformer.

[DSJR]

I remember an article by Teddy Pardo, he'd looked at loads of different DAC chips and decided that the sonic differences were small. It was the implementation, and particularly the PSUs that made more difference.

Phil





Some of these tweaks offer inaudible improvements just because they can be done, rather than actually improving the sonics.