Valab DAC from Taiwan

[Historicus]

I thought it was another toy DAC from China then it arrived and after a burn in of about 200 hours this little Valab NOS DAC from Kevin (price: 180 USD, shipping included) that adopts eight paralleled TDA 1543 Philips chips without any oversampling sounds really natural and good. It makes me like CDs again.
I would be interested if someone bought this DAC to share here his impressions even on DIY mods of the capacitators with Blackgates and a new output stage with big trannys.

Some spoke that the VALAB NOS DAC outclasses even more expensive ones like Zero AN, Aeron DA-10 or Benchmark DAC 1.

here are some links:
http://home.comcast.net/~omaille/audio/valabdac/valabdac.html

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f7/valab-dac-first-impressions-378459/

http://www.dddac.de/ma_dac21.htm

and here the article of Kusonoki San about not oversampling DAC

http://www.sakurasystems.com/articles/Kusunoki.html

http://www.tnt-audio.com/intervis/kusunoki_e.html

[leo]

I don't have that particular dac but know the sort of implementation .
The thing which gives these dacs a smooth sound (apart from NOS) is the lack of active I/V stage, using parallel TDA1543's gives quite a good output using resistor for the current to voltage conversion, you obviously get some HF roll off with the NOS but some people find this pleasing

All TDA1543 based dacs I've messed about with seem highly sensitive to component choice.

Places to look at are the I/V resistors, use your favourite type here , Caddock, Riken, Vishay, tant etc


Signal Coupling caps, supply decoupling etc, if you like BG's then you can go mad