Resistor but I say ladder to include chips doing multibit as well.
I think you need to do a little research on wikipedia on the terms over sampling. I’m not going to answer every single incremental detail in series. I would start with reading up about Nyquist rates and go from there. I would also consider looking up windows like hamming and black windows. If you really want to have a bit of fun after looking up windows, look at convolution and PID controllers. PID controllers give a good idea (with dampening and such) for how delta sigma DACs work.
Was more of a joke as you can build a Dac from capacitors (Charge scaling). Looks somewhat like this:
Compared to an R-2R Dac:
I can’t say I haven’t built something similar just for fun playing around in the lab… It’s not very linear.
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I would imagine it being very hard to get right with capacitors. Especially since you have to have a very good power supply to “recharge” capacitors in a timely fashion.
The thoughts of how to do that freaks me out because:
- Volatile memory has to do something like that.
- The amount of effort to make that bad idea work may have just induced day drinking.
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While there are parallels between image processing and Audio, they are both just fundamental signal processing the analogy is more akin to.
Given an Grey Scale image
A DS DAC represents it as a massively High resolution image say 1Mx1M (I didn’t do the math for this size) of just black or white pixels
A None oversampling DAC represents it as a straight forwards 512x512 greyscale
and an oversample R2R dac as a dithered greyscale at say 2048x2048.
However you can only look at the image in a form reduced to 512x512, through a filter.
All of them technically have exactly the same ammount of information in them
The 512x512 image doesn’t require any filtering to reconstruct what your looking at the others do.
To confuse this a bit most DS DAC’s are not actually 1 bit, but the principle is the same.
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The way you put it is more complex than how I had tried to do so but it makes the process and structure clearer to me.
So I’ve been saving for about a month for a new ladder / R2R day with sort of targeting MHDT Orchid, Pagoda Balanced or Holo Audio Spring 2 / May DAC.
This has been the first used one that came up in some time that seems appealing.
“The dac was originally purchased new by me in September, 2019. The modifications were done December of 2019. They include six Vishay Z Foil nude resistors, two Audio Note Tantalum non magnetic resistors, two Shinkoh resistors, two V-Cap ODAM 400v 2.2 uf capacitors, and two V-Cap CuTF .01 uf bypass capacitors. I also installed a Synergistics Research Orange fuse. Also included will be a NOS Mullard ECC189/CV5331 tube with adapter (10,000 hour life!), and the WE 396A Military version tube, along with the 5670 tube that comes standard with this dac. I found the Mullard tube to be superior to even the highly regard WE 396A, but you will have both to play around with. The price for the standard dac was $1170. These upgrades parts alone are worth over $600. A truly outstanding dac at this price, and in pristine condition. I will include shipping and the Paypal fee in my asking price. “
I guess the price still seems a bit high but I can’t decipher if these upgrades actually are “worth” it or would improve the SQ over a stock.
My initial hope was to save for Holo but I never see those used and come up for sale. Maybe that says something itself…
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It would prob change the sound, but idk if it would improve it, that would come down to the listener. Using higher quality components will typically yield better sound quality than lower quality ones, but the thing is that component synergy also matters, just slapping in higher end shit without testing how different things sound isn’t always going to give the result you want
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Spring V1’s show up about once a month, I’ve seen exactly one V2 show up.
I personally would not buy someone elses modified DAC for more than list, unless I was absolutely certain the mod was something I would do.
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I would agree, you never know how well they did, and kiss your potential warranty or repairability goodbye, also harder to sell if you don’t like it
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So I’m jumping in kinda late on this discussion, but what are the thought on some cheap DIY options.
Theeeese:
Looked promising, but I’m just a fiend looking for a cheap fix LOL. I’m really interested in R2R to pair with my gear to have an additional option.
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If I were going the DIY route, I would buy something that I will build - not something someone else has built. You need to find a trusted design and do it yourself. Otherwise the likelihood of getting a POS is pretty high.
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Your not wrong LOL, just seeing if anyone has tried these designs before I jumped. Good stuff, maybe the Airist will be available again sometime.(or the cheap Soekris or audio-gd if thats still weill thought of)
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I’m liking the “cheap” Audio-GD and I know that the Soekris is very well thought of on this forum, so if you can afford one of them I’d dive in right there. although you might have to still wait a month or so before the new Soekris line comes out. Audio-GD r2r 11 is available though.
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Yea I’ve wanted the r2r 11 to go with my THX for a long time as an alt take where its about the sound and not the measurements. I know I love my speaker setup and I just know my pre is messing with the sound, but it sounds sooo good I don’t care.
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if you’re in Europe you can’t really lose by trying it out and returning it if you don’t like it. If you find that’s the case you can snap up a soekris when it comes out, or, I imagine, a used 1321, 1431 or 1541 that will probably start appearing for sale used once the first owners look to upgrade
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I don’t know if you have a tube amp but someone mentioned a month or so ago that r2r’s and tubes sound fantastic together and they were right in my brief experience. I’ve had a Feliks-Audio Espressivo for a few days now and they sound great together, really rich and enjoyable sound, Anything acoustic or classical just sounds crazy vibrant and full. But also something like Sarah Janosz’s cover of Prince’s When Doves Cry, on Spotify.
Anyway I only mention this because if you think you might be into the r2r sound, wait till you pair it with a decent tube amp.
That will not be a problem sir, I’m deep into tubes, will be making a personal one soon 
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