ESS ES9008/9018 Sabre dac

[rolls]

Rolls, what do you mean no regulators? - you need regulated supplies for all the different Ps feeds.

I can understand your preference for transformer IV rather than active IV (especially op-amp ones). What trafo are you using?

Hello
I have already posted in the buffalo forum. probably you read there, but I think Leo has been trying hard to get more out of this chip. I agree that there is a lot more in it.
Yes I work with Batteries, Transformers from S&B, inferior to those from Audio Consulting and ...no regs! I have removed reg1 and the opamp. Just the 1.2 volt is in place at the moment, but will be removed later.

[jkeny]

Hello
I have already posted in the buffalo forum. probably you read there, but I think Leo has been trying hard to get more out of this chip. I agree that there is a lot more in it.
Yes I work with Batteries, Transformers from S&B, inferior to those from Audio Consulting and ...no regs! I have removed reg1 and the opamp. Just the 1.2 volt is in place at the moment, but will be removed later.

Hi Rolls., yes I read some of the Buffalo thread on the other forum & noticed your posts. Apologies if you've already answered these Qs over there!

I applaud you for going an IV route other than the IVY or Counterpoint. Are the Audio Consulting trafos expensive? I'm looking at a different IV stage also.

I don't understand your PS - you must need some sort of regulation (not 3 legged chip variety) on the batteries to get the accurate voltages required by the chip - no?

[rolls]

Hi Rolls., yes I read some of the Buffalo thread on the other forum & noticed your posts. Apologies if you've already answered these Qs over there!

I applaud you for going an IV route other than the IVY or Counterpoint. Are the Audio Consulting trafos expensive? I'm looking at a different IV stage also.

I don't understand your PS - you must need some sort of regulation (not 3 legged chip variety) on the batteries to get the accurate voltages required by the chip - no?

Hello Ikeni
you are the first who actually think about my battery supply. So you must know, that the "father" behing this is Mr. Serge Schmidlin, Audio Consulting, who designed the prototype of this I/V converter that beats my Silver winded S&B easily, even still in copper. Final version will be cryo silver winding, will be quite expensive. We were there with the (mains driven) buffalo for a visit when he asked to replace the power supply boards with batteries. Even with the regs still in place you listened through a window that had just been cleaned. I promised him not to tell anything about the batteries, so you have to make up your mind for youself, but if you think about...., think we have actually no regs between the batteries and the chip.
Look at the datasheet.
At the moment I am designing a new dac with the 32bit chip, mainly the control board with voltage detectors, relays and so on, because a battery dac should not be more inconvenient than a normal dac and security is important, because the batteries could deliver up to 100Amp ....
regards
Andre

[jkeny]

Hmm, intriguing! I can't find the ESS9008 datasheet other than the promotional pdf on the ESS website. Any pointers?

I always liked the idea of batteries and have 8*12V 7ah SLAs. I've used them singly, with some success, in the past but I believe the secret is to parallel them for very low internal impedance!

Keep us posted, please, on your progress with the 32 bit chip (ES9018 or ES9012?)

[rolls]

Batteries and ESS/Sabre, a happy marriage, think what they need..., definitely not 12V!
I have just bought a new buffalo for evaluation, but actually I am just interested in the clock, the chip and the control chip. Unfortunately I am not able to program it.
The most expensive part will be the transformer, but I am sure it is worth the money.
Look at Mr. Schmidlins page:
http://www.audio-consulting.ch/
Don't look at the pricelist!
At the moment i have an Accuphase DP-400 for evaluation, because I am interested to know how my buffalo performs against the leaders. This player costs a fortune outside Japan and nobody bothers, but if they should pay just less than 500$ for a new buffalo....

[jkeny]

I'm not against regulators & believe, like in everything else, there are good & bad ones & some might even be good in one situation but not good in another!

Shunt regulators are generally regarded as good sounding & I've no doubt Paul Hynes's ones are excellent!

I would consider using battery(s) with suitable regulators but I still think that nobody has yet addressed the major limiting factor in good sound ie reducing jitter. Forget about low jitter clocks - none of these will live up to spec unless the clock PS is a separate, very low noise supply. The clock is very sensitive to any modulation or noise on this PS

[jkeny]

Hi Rolls,
An interesting idea was just posted on DiyHiFi by wildmonkeysects in which he says that maybe the sweet spot is to use V out & ensure your AVCC PS is

a really, really clean, preferrably open loop Avcc. No overshoots, no close phase margins if using feedback, no cheezy ceramic caps, no deriving the reference from Vdd

And this

internally, there is probably a sweet spot for the external load where the Sabre's thermal modulation is minimal. Not convinced it would be all I or all V. Dunno yet. Dunno the internal layout.

Now I'm wondering what is the load that the sabre sees using your Audio Consulting transformer as opposed to the S&B? Might this partially explain the difference in sound between them?

Just some things to consider!

[leo]

Interesting chaps, I'm pleased to hear others are starting to post their experiences with this dac.
How about some pics of your work

AVCC voltages are so damn critical to the performance, The separate L&R Paul hynes regs really brought out the potentional in mine tbh.

Since then I have tried quite a few other regs now with varying performance, none yet have got close to Pauls imo

BTW I've been playing about with Counterpoint , one of the prototypes, its quite a nice circuit, it had a few stability problems but I think TP has sorted that out in the production units

Also I'll have the new Buffalo32s to compare soon

[jkeny]

Leo,
Have you tried a separate 3.3V low noise supply for the XO? Would love to hear about this? What regs did you compare to, can you say?

Did you ever try as a Vout DAC as wildmokeysects said?

[leo]

I did try separating the XO and using a separate reg, regs tried here was the one posted on Guido Tents site for XO's, a Pinkfish Flea modified to output 3.3v, One of the older Audiocom super regs, various devices from Linear Technology.
I actually thought all these sounded worse than having it running from the main PH shunt reg.
Maybe the PH reg was far better than the other regs I tried even though it was providing two shared supplies, I'm not sure yet, I may have to try another PH reg separate feeding the XO and see how that compares


Regarding Buffalo as V out, I've only tried it using + and ground of the differential output with a coupling capacitor, its not ideal tbh this way but was the easiest thing to try at the time., I liked it with IVY better
.
The other way to convert the differential out to single ended would have been transformers, I don't like signal transformers though (various reasons) , before anybody chucks bricks at me its just a personal thing