Dak 4396

Dac on the cheap...

Page 2: Modding

Last modified: 30-December-2011

Modification to Dak

I built Dak based on the standard board and components coming from China. After listening to it for a week or 2, I like to see whether I can improve the sound more by using better components, or better power supply etc.

Some reasons:

Some of the parts look a little suspicious and I doubts whether their quality is as good as advertised
Some standard parts can be improved even when their quality is according to the specs.
Some parts do not conform 100% to specs
etc.

Capacitors

First of all, the electrolytic capacitors need upgrade to better one, this time from a reliable supplier. I have ordered a third board in order to experiment with better components. In the version I changed al 1nF caps for quality parts (local supplier), and the Electrolytic capacitors to Sanyo Epcos (Only Nichicon Gold for the 3 large caps in the power supply).

The output stage and LPF (Low Pass Filter) can also be upgraded to something better, although it remains to be seen whether changing some values of the LPF will make that much of a difference. Simulations show that the change is minimal.

And I might buy a fourth sample so I can change the output stage and swap it for a tube based output. Lukas Fikus calls it Lampizator, but as far as I'm concerned it is more like building a cathode follower for the DAC output. (See next page).

Opamps

There are several people that claim much improved results by changing the standard 5532 Opamp with a better one. The 5532 is a double opamp, which means that the replacement must be one also, unless you use a 2-1 splitter (special small stack-on board containing 2 Opamp sockets converting it to a single connector to be inserted in the original Opamp socket).

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