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PA5 looks great. Wondering if it could work with a single-ended source. I do not currently have my balanced DAC with me. I also wonder if someone has tried to short out the pot -- all my DACs have digital volume control, and I am very adverse to even the slightest unmatched channels.

Has this been tried? I.e., using a single-ended source with PA5?

I do already have good DACs and amps (for rather power-hungry speakers). But given my newly-acquired speakers that can fill a room with just 1W, I want to see if there is a combo that may work. The speaker amps in the low-power category are typically tubes, which I am not interested in...

My speakers are highly efficient and only need <1W to fill my room -- think Altec A7. The speakers are 8ohm, with actual measurement at 6ohm. Is there a DAC/AMP combo that can output ~1W into 8ohm with minimal distortion? I think JDS Element II is close, but I am wondering if there is a combo...

Just got my Charmtek TPR22 yesterday, which should be the same as Dosmix. Agreed that anything beyond volume level 52 was heavily distorted. Also with Win 10's USB audio 2 driver and ASIO4ALL, PCM only goes up to 32-bit, 192Khz (which is fine for 95% of my collection). Below 52 though, the sound...

I don't have any balanced headphones/amp though. But if this one is as good as the paper says, I will be willing to build a Modulus 86 (which has balanced inputs) just for it -- i.e., a chicken-and-egg situation.

I strongly believe that this BHD version deserves an official review. This could set a new record for quality/price ratio if the paper specs are reproduceable in the real world.

@AndrewMason I typically use my DAC's volume control to adjust volume. Given that I will have no use for the amp's volume control and the circuitry around the pot involves balanced-SE-balanced conversion, is there a way to bypass all the circuity around the volume control (and the converting...

Topping said the op amp supply is +/- 5.5v. It's alright.

Good thing that the Omron relay is gone. Not sure what the new SMD following the output op amp is. Anyone by chance can spot its marking? Also interesting that OPA1656 are used for I/V -- great op amp, but one of its key "specialties" is its high current output ability (100ma), which is of...

A high-rez picture of the output portion of the board would be very helpful as well!

Since rolling the op-amp is an option, does anyone know how many volts are being supplied to the op-amp? As you know, some op-amps won't work/work well under a lower voltage. Also, are there any DC-blocking capacitors following the op-amp outputs? Depending on the design of the op-amp circuit...

Yep, that's my next step. Though I do have to say that the SMD components are getting smaller and smaller -- I am not sure if my hand is steady enough to do any mods on this board other than to get rid of components.

I really hate to have a capacitor in the signal path -- my amp, which I built myself, has no DC-blocking input caps. Without the thump (i.e., when the DAC is working properly), I measure ~2mv DC in both channels, which is OK. After my amp's 22x amplification, I am getting ~24mv at the speaker...

I have this issue too. Very loud thump 30% of the time when I turn on KTB. When there is a thump, it also means that my KTB's audio outputs would be outputting about 1v of DC, which is rather dangerous. These days, I have to make sure that my amp is turned off before turning on KTB. Then I use a...

Good question. I cannot raise the amp's input grounding resistor to 47K because doing so will cause DC offset issues at the amp. But I am certain the DAC's output stage can handle 22k (or lower) because in reality, the 47k will be paralleled with the amp's input grounding resistors in most...

Make sense. And I may very well give up the headphone idea -- I was looking for flexibility, but knowing myself I know that if I really want to drive headphones, I will build an amp for it. But, I may still get rid of R50/R58 and R43/R47 as I intend to put the DAC in the same case as my...

Has anyone tried removing the following series and grounding resistors after the output opamps: R50/R58 and R43/R47? The goal is to lower the output impedance, eliminate components in the signal path, and not have R58 and R57 interact with the headphones' impedance when driving headphones...