Hello
for memory, I don't know how much power you need but I have speakers with 88db of sensitivity, my dac have 4.5V on XLR output
I bypassed the buffer stage of the Eval1 , I have enough power to tear my head off and shake the walls!
What level is that in room? I live in a rural area, with plenty of room around me, with no need to worry about bothering anyone, and I play music at close to concert levels sometimes. 85 dB average levels and higher are common here. My loudspeakers (Focus Audio FS-888 Signatures) are actually nominally rated at 90 dB, but I think that is overly optimistic (perhaps today I will measure their actual sensitivity at 2.83 V at 1 m just for a more detailed answer here). I regularly push my NC-400 DIY amp to close to max levels on peaks. As my speakers are 4 0hm nominal, they crave some current, and I am hoping the slight additional current availability of the Purifi will give me a little additional headroom. Also, my room is medium/large: 14' wide, opening up to 18' wide, and over 30 ' feet long (I listen at 10' from loudspeakers) so it takes some power to energize the space as well.
I am aware of how close I am getting to the 2 V input level (for full output) of the NC-400 as I measure the DAC output with a pink noise reference track to keep track of this.
I am waiting for some pins from Digikey to get going again on my Purifi amp build (backordered, pins for the wiring harness), so I cannot test yet with that. I would really like to get myself a DAC with enough output to drive the Purifs bypassing the input gain, but as I oversample everything to DSD in software (requiring a -5 dB adjustment before oversampling to avoid clipping) I would need a very high output DAC to do so.