I recently purchased a Cosmos ADC from @IVX and I was pleased to see that the main envelope, from inside the package, had my name written on it in handwriting with a pencil, probably by Sunny, the nice lady that takes care of logistics for Ivan (@IVX). That put a big smile on my face immediately after opening up the FEDEX package. Cosmos ADC comes in a small and nice wood box that smells fantastic as...wood, of course, but a brand new wood that somehow made me think at a good old Whiskey.
E1DA Cosmos ADC on its original wooden box
A really low-noise and very performant THD ADC, self-powered from the USB-C computer port
The two ADC inputs can be used in Stereo-mode, as it is, or in Mono-mode (a couple of dB better THD+N),
by simply summing pins 1-1, 2-2 and 3-3 with a XLR FMM Y-cable. Also notice the 43V RMS input from the AUX 4-pin jack
My Cosmos ADC is a Grade-A one, so you can see it written on the board, as well as on the the main wood case.
Grade-A Cosmos ADC
Besides the "world's highest performance 32-bit analogue-to-digital (A/D) converter" chip (ES9822PRO) and extremely low distortions operational amplifiers (OPA1612) I can definitely spot a very nice and clean layout planted with high precision metal resistors, polymer capacitors and electrolytic capacitors rated @105C.
On the board there can also be seen an efficient dual-output DC-DC converter (TPS65130) along with smaller LDO regulators that take care of powering properly each stage of this ADC (separate regulators for both digital and analogue components).
TPS65130 DC-DC converter.
Also, good to see soldering of that screw to the ground.
The backside has a DIP switch with multiple positions for properly adjusting the required input gain and input resistance as well.
DIP switch to select input gain & impedance to cover input voltages fom 1.7 to 10 V RMS
Have a good look to the grounding: most manufacturers (if not all) are relying on copper-by-copper contacts made by the screws and the PCB ground. However, Ivan added soldering on top of each screw, just to make sure the grounding is perfect. Much appreciated by me and hope by others as well!
USB-C port for connecting to the computer.
Nice soldering to the ground!
About E1DA Cosmos ADC there are already couple of ongoing threads, so there’s not much to say here, other than at the time of writting this article this is the best buget ADC in the world that can be used for analogue audio measurements. I was actually able to feed it with my Topping D90 MQA source and ARTA was showing me a figure pretty close to what @amirm measured: 120 dB of SINAD. Quite impressive decent priced ADC, so great work Ivan!
Active forum threads about this very performant ADC:
![www.audiosciencereview.com](https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum%20resources/Two-line%20ASR%20Logo-new.png)
E1DA Cosmos ADC
@IVX kindly sent me a sample of the new Cosmos ADC to try out. Here are my impressions of it so far. The Cosmos is housed in a compact metal case with rubber feet, USB Type C connector on one and dual XLR inputs on the other. Power is over USB only. Beside the USB connector is small LED that...
![www.audiosciencereview.com](https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum%20resources/Two-line%20ASR%20Logo-new.png)
Best spec ADC Chip currently.... ??
I met an interesting dilemma, regardless of great crosstalk figures I still can see how one channel signal affects THD of another one. So, I can compensate THD for 2ch at the same time or independently for each channel(when the input signal at only a single channel). The second compensation for...
Last edited: