Stan, you have some competition

[Primalsea]

Have you seen this offering from Musical Fiedelity??

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Musical-Fidelity-V-DAC-Digital-to-Analog-Convertor_W0QQitemZ370130050452QQcmdZViewItemQQptZ UK_AudioTVElectronics_HomeAudioHiFi_Amplifiers?has h=item370130050452&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1300|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A13 18

Hopefully it's not in the same league.

[StanleyB]

It has been plugged by a couple of people on head-fi. the concept I introduced of having a compact PCB and cost effective case was bound to be copied. But compactness has its problems, which only shows up when you want to get more out of a DAC. I am surprised at their high price though. It looks more like a £99.99 product. My new USB DAC is more aimed at people who want DAC1 USB or better performance for less than £200. So....

Stan

[Filterlab]

That MF DAC will be half price by new year.

[leo]

But compactness has its problems, which only shows up when you want to get more out of a DAC.

Stan

Tell me about it Stan! My diy Sabre keeps growing in size, casing it is causing me grief:doh:
You did a good job with the TC-7510, a nice compact no nonsense thing

Regarding the MF dacs, main ones I've heard are the X-dac series, if the V-series is based on the same electronics but in a more compact case I doubt you have much to worry about;)

[StanleyB]

Once you put all your digital and analogue circuitry on the same PCB you can only upscale the performance by so much before the two different types of signals start counter acting each other (contamination of the analogue signal paths by the digital signal paths and visa versa). The same goes for the power supply lines that serve the digital and analogue stages. When you hit that plateau above which diminishing returns starts to compromise price versus performance, you are better off modifying the design and separating analogue and digital circuitry if you want to keep cost in check whilst boosting performance. I lost count of the number of different PCB configurations I had to design, build, burn in, and then test for extended periods of time, before I could say I had found the right solution for me.
What I can say Leo is that you'll have to look at ways of parting your analogue and digital sections. In the TC-7510 bigger brother the pay back for doing just that is as clear as night and day when you A/B the two DACs against each other. And that's something even my beta testers noticed without me having to even mention it to them. The only downside is that the results are far more impressive on expensive amplifier/speakers combinations, and more so when you bypass the use of a preamp.

Stan

[leo]

With the standard Sabre module it used a single 1.2v and 3.3v LDO reg supplying both digital and analogue supplies, ditching these and separating the lines using Paul Hynes regs brought quite a dramatic gain in performance for me even though the Sabre chip has good PSRR, it clearly benefitted with the new regulation

AVCC/VREF pins on any dac are most critical for a dac like this one, separated low impedance over a high bandwidth really gave it a good kick up the arse

[leo]

BTW, separating the analogue and digital supply for even the CS8414 receiver chip brings performance gains

One of the reasons the AYA is one of the best dacs I've heard using the old TDA1541, every part has its own separate supply fed from a transformer with multiple secondarys, it was pricey but certainly worth the expense IMO.
Another unit I tried using the same dac, receiver and similar I/V but using shared supplies was quite a way behind the AYA, infact it only sounded average to my ears