About DAC chip

[momo7G]

It seems to me most mid-fi, hi-fi DAC like to use ESS sabre chip in their products. In some cases, it is used for marketing purposes too.

Is there a reason why they are so dominant? Are they really out perform their opponents by much?? Or the chip is more easy to work with??

Drowning in deep thought...

 

[Veri]

AKM chips are also very often occurring. Most of Sony's products rely on them, including their PlayStation franchise and Nintendo could be using them as well, AKM is Japanese after all. ESS is Chinese(?).

 

[RayDunzl]

ESS is Chinese.

Maybe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESS_Technology

http://www.esstech.com/index.php/en/about-ess/company/

 

[gvl]

I'm no expert but I think ESS chips are popular as they can and usually are run in the jitter rejecting async mode which allows designers to put less attention to the digital signal path to the DAC chip. At the same time I don't know if they are any more popular as say the AKM chips. I does seem however that TI (BurrBrown), AD, and Cirrus Logic (Wolfson) chips are falling out of fashion for some reason, in the audiophile market anyway, which probably is just marketing.

 

[amirm]

I don't know the reason but I suspect ESS is more active in China than AKM. I just searched for ESS office in China and immediately landed on this page: http://www.essaudio.cc/index.php/index/english

I did the same search for AKM and nothing came up.

In general, outside of US, technology from America is considered a plus in audio. So that may have something to do with it too seeing how AKM is a Japanese company.

 

[gvl]

What's the deal with ESS being so secretive about its chips? All other manufacturers publish the specs and application docs, and ESS won't talk to you unless you sign the NDA.

 

[amirm]

What's the deal with ESS being so secretive about its chips?

It is a general trend that started in semiconductor industry about 10 to 15 years ago. The fear I guess is the chip being cloned or competitors learning too much about their products.

 

[NorthSky]

It seems to me most mid-fi, hi-fi DAC like to use ESS sabre chip in their products. In some cases, it is used for marketing purposes too.

Is there a reason why they are so dominant? Are they really out perform their opponents by much?? Or the chip is more easy to work with??

Drowning in deep thought...

"In 2001 ESS acquired a small Kelowna design company (SAS) run by Martin Mallinson and continues R&D operations in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. The Kelowna R&D Center developed the Sabre range of DAC and ADC products that are used in many audio systems and cell phones.

...High end home and portable audio players come with ESS DAC chips. The ESS 9038 PRO (OPPO UDP-205 -> ES9038PRO x 2) is considered to be the best of the shelf DAC chip available today."

Flag-ship ES9038PRO SABRE DAC (Multichannel - 8ch.): http://www.esstech.com/index.php/en...ers/audiophile-dacs/sabre-pro-dacs/es9038pro/

Better than any top AKM Verita DACs (AK4490EQ - Stereo - 2ch.)
* Flag-ship Premium Verita AK4497EQ (Stereo - 2ch.):
• https://www.akm.com/akm/en/product/datasheet1/?partno=AK4497EQ

 

[gvl]

As we've seen, paper DAC chip specs are not easily achievable in a CE device, so any spec superiority is a moot point.

 

[JJB70]

Given the maturity of audio digital to analogue conversion (even high resolution way beyond red book) I would have thought that DAC chips were commoditised many years ago. I still have a 20 year old Sony CD player that sounds great. The chips don't cost much and I think it has been all about integration and which compromises designers go for rather than chip spec's for a long time.

One of the things that hard core audiophiles and the subjective side of the hobby has never allowed themselves to accept is this commoditisation of excellent digital sources and the fact that many telephones are perfectly good hifi sources. The problem now (and has been for many years) is rubbish recordings that waste the potential of digital carriers. I find it slightly ironic that anyone can access genuinely good audio quality at very modest cost but record companies have just thrown the opportunity away.

 

[NorthSky]

What's the deal with ESS being so secretive about its chips? All other manufacturers publish the specs and application docs, and ESS won't talk to you unless you sign the NDA.

In high-end audio I think many ingredients are kept confidential, secret, classified, for national security reasons (patents, copycats, reverse engineering, trades, business, protection, autonomy, economy, capitalism, independence, code privacy, financial affairs).

If you look @ all the measurements in all audio science forums, the DACs that perform generally the best are the ESS Sabre Pro DACs.
And if you read the high-end audio reviews the best subjectively sounding digital audio components (DACs) they don't tell in depth the topography of their multiple stacked DACs...not even their brand names, origins, designers, etc.

 

[NorthSky]

• https://www.soundstageglobal.com/in...f-the-art-digital-from-dcs-and-msb-technology
• http://www.msbtechnology.com/dacs/select-features/
• https://darko.audio/2015/11/the-select-dac-ii-msb-technologys-90000-da-converter/
• https://www.monoandstereo.com/2016/09/msb-select-dac-2-review-part-1.html

 

[NorthSky]

If Amir could get hold of one MSB Select II DAC, and measure it all across, that would be real swell.