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budget DAC to compliment the JDS Labs Atom ?

JeffB1961

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thinking of dipping my toes into the audiophile waters and the Atom seems like a great piece of gear for a acceptable price .... going by comments here . but , is there a DAC that would compliment it and/or keep up with it fidelity/spec wise for a similar (or less :) ) price of $100 ? i'm 57 , on a budget and want to treat my ears to some real deal decent audio equipment . currently using SHP9500s but i think a pair of hifiman planars are in my future .
 

jasonq997

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I would focus on functionality. The usual suspects like Topping D10, D30, Grace SDAC (Massdrop), and JDS Labs own OL DAC are all good choices. You are getting close to perfection with all of them so I would focus on other things like which inputs you need or even which one looks nicer to you.
 

Roen

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Khadas Tone Board @ $68.45 + Khadas Case @ $5.70
 

derp1n

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You can also get a OL DAC from JDS labs for 79 or a Topping D10 which can be found on Ebay for around 75 bucks., if you dont want to deal with the DIY aspect of Khadas.
 
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JeffB1961

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thanks folks
my mother board (asus z270 TUF mark1) supports " up to 32-Bit/192kHz playback " and is rated at "120 dB SNR stereo playback output and 113 dB SNR recording input (Line-in) ...... will the DACs mentioned perform better ? will a external DAC be a waste of money for my admittedly non golden ears ?
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/TUF-Z270-MARK-1/overview/
 
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thanks folks
my mother board (asus z270 TUF mark1) supports " up to 32-Bit/192kHz playback " and is rated at "120 dB SNR stereo playback output and 113 dB SNR recording input (Line-in) ...... will the DACs mentioned perform better ? will a external DAC be a waste of money for my admittedly non golden ears ?
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/TUF-Z270-MARK-1/overview/


In general on paper, there should not be a difference as long as you are not hearing EM interference or noise. You should plug some headphones in it and use it for a bit to see if there is any oddities.


In my own experience I have personally never had a motherboard that didnt suffer from pops, clicks, hisses or other weird noises. Many of them can also not output 2VRMS. I have a X370 ASROCK Fatality Pro motherboard which was a top of the line board and its onboard audio still has weird pops randomly.

I also passionately hate Realteks drivers in a way that I cannot overstate, getting a DAC with better drivers can save you a lot of headaches.
 

amirm

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Out of stock.
I have ordered the balanced version which is supposed to ship by second week of December. After review I will likely be selling it so if you are not in a hurry, you can wait on that.
 

KR8NUX

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Uh, I kinda don't trust Zeos. He's fun to watch but he's nowhere technically solid.
 

AnalogSteph

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In my own experience I have personally never had a motherboard that didnt suffer from pops, clicks, hisses or other weird noises.
Not necessarily the board's fault. Finding a case where the front panel does not introduce any ground loops does not seem to be trivial. I've had good luck with some C2D era Fujitsu-Siemens Celsius machines, so maybe those guys care for their audio at least. Other prebuilts, not so much. (And it's not just prebuilts. I've seen complaints about rather expensive cases, too, like some Lian Lis if memory serves.) This is what I just found on a ca. 2006 Asus midtower:
Audio ground from HDA cable connects to one patch of ground, which then goes to chassis ground via the LHS retainer (screw - bracket - screw).
Headphone and mic jack ground joins USB and misc switch / LED ground, going to chassis ground via the RHS retainer.
In practice, this means there is a ground loop running over the front panel audio cable, and worse yet, headphone ground return is shared with USB and whatnot, with some more ground loop action. :facepalm:

Boards by themselves can be messed up, too, of course - subpar grounding schemes, sharing 3.3 V between DVDD and AVDD, less than ideally clean supplies...

Implementation is key with these things.

Now I don't know about modern chips, but one notoriously weak spot of Realtek codecs has always been the mic input. More or less noisy mic bias, usually covering up that the amplifiers themselves are far from state of the art in input noise either. (I know that these chips are supposed to eliminate external components and conserve board space as far as possible, but one capacitor would go a long way in solving this problem.) Periodic ripple in the ADC digital filter also tends to be at rather uninspiring levels in all but a few chips. Basically, everything that doesn't reflect in big numbers in the spec sheet is rather neglected. Recording in multiples of 44.1 kHz does not seem to be a good idea either, it seems to result in massive amounts of jitter with substantially degraded SNR and aliasing. The playback side is far more robust.

In any case, providing a decent line-level output for a headphone amp or similar is the area where I'd see the best chances of onboard audio working well. On the recording side, make sure you stick with multiples of 48 kHz (don't forget to set up sound devices properly).
Many of them can also not output 2VRMS.
I would even say most. Typical output ranges from 1.0-1.2 Vrms on 5 V AVDD and about 0.8 Vrms on 3.3 V AVDD.
I also passionately hate Realteks drivers in a way that I cannot overstate, getting a DAC with better drivers can save you a lot of headaches.
Oh. What sort of issues have you had with them? The most serious problem I ever found was sample rate being set up all wrong when selecting 44.1 kHz in driver versions from about 2011, which was subsequently fixed. (Generic implementation also seem to be limited to 16 bit samples on the recording side even if the ADCs themselves would definitely support 24 bit, which is silly.) Mind you, I have little experience with their latest chips and Microsoft's bug collection version 10... there have been a few changes and issues with sound drivers in general since 7.

I've seen a lot of sound driver troubles over the years, and honestly, the Realtek drivers would seem to be working pretty well to me. At least there are no weird suspend / hibernation issues, that sort of stuff is a total dealbreaker for me. I still have an ESI Juli@ floating around - a no doubt good and unique card that just stops working after hibernation. :facepalm: And don't even get me started on the hoops I had to jump through to get my Asus Xonars to produce the sample rates I wanted, or theiir other driver quirks. (Hint - for Xonar D1 & D2, best use driver builds 1800 or older.)
 
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Ron Texas

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Uh, I kinda don't trust Zeos. He's fun to watch but he's nowhere technically solid.

He is a bit too much in love with SMSL.
 

Roen

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Which case? I don't see any cases. Also, why are there so huge variations between the Khadas units?
The Aliexpress clear transparent case. You can use it as an open air frame.
 
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