Stan's New Dac - any reviews yet?

[Dougr33]

Just curious, Stan, on operation of the HP socket. On the 7510, it would turn off the variable out to the power amp when phones were plugged in (even if just my 1/4" adaptor was plugged in w/out phones attached, which seemed unusual to me).
But on my new 7520, the phones and power amp play simultaneously.

Just curious as to the design thinking. Something to do with cleaner signals and the variable ohm range of phones?

[Krisbee]

The TC-7520 works great in Linux (im running alsa 1.0.19 under intrepid). It get reported as a chip from Burr/TI.

lsusb:
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 08bb:2902 Texas Instruments Japan

aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
...
card 1: default [USB Audio CODEC ], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Thanks for the Linux confirmation. I assume this is just using the generic ALSA usb audio module snd-usb-audio and no special configuration was needed in modules.conf or .asoundrc used.

[rupes]

Thanks for the Linux confirmation. I assume this is just using the generic ALSA usb audio module snd-usb-audio and no special configuration was needed in modules.conf or .asoundrc used.

Yep, went round to Stan's last night with my linux eeePC laptop. snd-usb-audio loaded automatically and played fine using mplayer. Nothing in my modules.conf or .asoundrc.

As the onboard soundcard was seen as the first soundcard and the TC-7520 the second, I used the following command:

mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=1.0
[first device on second soundcard]

Big thanks to Stan for the demo.

[lwd]

Just curious, Stan, on operation of the HP socket. On the 7510, it would turn off the variable out to the power amp when phones were plugged in (even if just my 1/4" adaptor was plugged in w/out phones attached, which seemed unusual to me).
But on my new 7520, the phones and power amp play simultaneously.

Just curious as to the design thinking. Something to do with cleaner signals and the variable ohm range of phones?

I'm also curious about this. In the manual it says the other outputs will mute when a headphone is inserted. But in practice it doesn't seem to do this.

Very happy with the 7520 by the way.

[tizer2000uk]

I have been running the 7520 on my system downstairs this evening listening to a few cd's and running another comparison against the 7510 that lives down there. The dvd player is set to output at 16bit and my system upstairs is set to output at 24bit, both modes make the music sound very different.

If foobar is set to output at 16 bit the music seems sharper and more detailed in the higher registers and I can also hear more background hiss on bad recordings. If I set Foobar to output at 24 bit the sound is more laid back with slightly less seperation.

Is the 7520 employing any kind of upsampling/oversampling at 16 bit?

[Covenant]

My 7520 has been used for about 50 hours, I have just listened to a track by Ryan Adams-Wonderwall and the quality is astonishing bearing in mind it was on 128Kb radio.
So if you have any doubt: ITS BLOODY BRILLIANT-GO AND GET ONE!

The icing on the cake was that I sold my 7510 for over £100 so the extra cost is minimal.

Well done Stan-cant stop-more music to listen to.

[Krisbee]

My box of black magic arrived this morning. Thanks to Stan for the express delivery and for putting up with being pestered by me about Linux compatibility. No worries on that score, as others have said, the USB stage is basically "plug and play" and I have tried it with a few of the popular Linux distros.

It's too early for critical listening, but a quick A/B comparison between optical out from my PC soundcard and direct USB connection left my old ears unable to hear a difference over my hd595 headphones.

It seems a bit incongruous using a bog standard £3 USB cable between my PC and the DAC, and not some esoteric high price optical/coax cable. But who cares, 'cos even now it's making great musical sense of what I've thrown at it. I'm more than happy .....

[drumlins4ever]

Would i be right in saying that most people seem to prefer the sound of the 7520 over the 7510 ?

[StanleyB]

Would i be right in saying that most people seem to prefer the sound of the 7520 over the 7510 ?

I realize that it is a dilemma, but the TC-7510 has won two awards since November. The choice comes down to budget and facilities required. Maybe the TC-7520 is under priced...


Stan

[Labarum]

I realize that it is a dilemma . . .

I am very happy with what I've got - a 7510 6:4.

But I haven't heard what I haven't got!

I am presently listening to

Radio Swiss Classic MP3 128
http://opml.radiotime.com/Tune.ashx?...e&PartnerId=16 d

And the pizzicato bass cellos line is amazing!

The higher bitrate radio stations can be even better - approaching 16/44.1 FLAC.

Tis amazing. I don't know what Stan did.