JDS Labs Atom DAC+ Review

[sharpty]

Sort of. But it looks like it only cost $26, cheesy and underpowered. I had in mind something more beefy, like the old Musical Fidelity X-PSU:

Would be easy(ish) to put a dual secondary Hammond transformer in a project box with a mains filter and fused IEC socket

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Hammond-Manufacturing/1182K15?qs=qPaGMJUC%2BSvS4njxeIcd0g==

Fairly certain that the wall warts are nothing but a transformer and maybe a fuse.

 

[PeteL]

Yes and no. An APx555 is a pretty big outlay, and a lot of smaller audio companies aren't massively profitable.

There are other ways of measuring distortion levels this low. They aren't as polished as the AP box, but they work and they work adequately. There are other distortion analyzers that can come pretty close as well. You can also manipulate a QA401 (or even a cheap audio interface) into fulfilling this task by notching out the fundamental.

I agree that Audio Precision is the industry standard and very likely the best in the industry, but they are far from being the only viable option.

Fair enough, even tough You’ll never be able to measure something properly if the device you use to measure have lesser specifications that the device you are designing,even with some cheat tricks. But really that was not the core of my statement, there seam to be a feeling around here that products start to perform better because engineers started to measure their work. That’s not the case, every electronic designer need to know how it perform on objective metrics. Everybody measure their stuff, that’s an essential part of developpment. What happens is some prefer to not talk about measurments when they know they don’t score good on some metrics. I believe some engineers self compromise the objective performance of their stuff, for irrational belief in their own special way to do stuff that for them trumps the common metrics like SINAD, but the point is, everybody measures.

 

[Georgrig]

Wow, one US corp makes obsolet the Toppings and SMSLs ..... Way to go!!!

Not at all. Still ranks below Topping D10s, and not in the market yet..

But you are a known Topping bigot..

 

[luft262]

I have the older version and I love it. I can attest that if you email them questions they will get back to you right away! Super nice guys at JDS. They're like my favorite audio company! Lol!

 

[Georgrig]

Sort of. But it looks like it only cost $26, cheesy and underpowered. I had in mind something more beefy, like the old Musical Fidelity X-PSU:

Like the Topping P50?

 

[GWolfman]

Good show JDS, good show!

 

[Billy Budapest]

Sort of. But it looks like it only cost $26, cheesy and underpowered. I had in mind something more beefy, like the old Musical Fidelity X-PSU:
View attachment 132006

The Cthulhu was pretty beefy—here it is in my former Schiit Stack. It doesn’t have the bling of the Musical Fidelity, but it’s just a power supply.

 

[H-713]

Fair enough, even tough You’ll never be able to measure something properly if the device you use to measure have lesser specifications that the device you are designing,even with some cheat tricks.

Again, there are ways around the limitations of audio analyzers. Hell, even an APx555 isn't good enough to measure the distortion of modern op-amps.

Bob Cordell's distortion magnifier is a good example. Another way is to use a notch filter with a lesser-performing ADC like the QA401 or QA402. Obviously those notch filters aren't trivial to design, but in practice this solution works well. Is it a calibrated solution? No. Is it good enough for engineering use? Yes, although it's a lot more time consuming than an AP box.

But really that was not the core of my statement, there seam to be a feeling around here that products start to perform better because engineers started to measure their work. That’s not the case, every electronic designer need to know how it perform on objective metrics. Everybody measure their stuff, that’s an essential part of developpment. What happens is some prefer to not talk about measurments when they know they don’t score good on some metrics. I believe some engineers self compromise the objective performance of their stuff, for irrational belief in their own special way to do stuff that for them trumps the common metrics like SINAD, but the point is, everybody measures.

There are also a lot of engineers who hold the view that reducing distortion from 0.005% to 0.0001% won't lead to an improvement in sound quality because even if someone could pick out the difference, it's extremely unlikely that they'd be able to decide which is better. In a sense, it's the viewpoint that once a certain performance threshold is met, there's no point in trying to play the numbers game.

I'm not saying that this is right or wrong, but I wouldn't just assume that it's about an irrational belief. In some cases it is, but not all. And hey, if you can do it with discrete op-amps and still get 0.005% THD+N, it'll sound good and give the marketing department something to talk about.

I myself like to see DACs and ADCs perform to this level because it makes them more useful, especially if they're capable of operating at 192k sample rates.

 

[H-713]

The Cthulhu was pretty beefy—here it is in my former Schiit Stack. It doesn’t have the bling of the Musical Fidelity, but it’s just a power supply.
View attachment 132019

They really couldn't have made it more ugly, could they?

 

[Labjr]

Like the Topping P50?

Most JDS Labs products use an AC supply. So there's no fancy regulation in the wall wart supply just a transformer. Thus a multiple supply would need a separate secondary winding with enough power for each component. However, wouldn't everyone would be wondering if the performance is equal to having completely separate transformers?

 

[PeteL]

Again, there are ways around the limitations of audio analyzers. Hell, even an APx555 isn't good enough to measure the distortion of modern op-amps.

Bob Cordell's distortion magnifier is a good example. Another way is to use a notch filter with a lesser-performing ADC like the QA401 or QA402. Obviously those notch filters aren't trivial to design, but in practice this solution works well. Is it a calibrated solution? No. Is it good enough for engineering use? Yes, although it's a lot more time consuming than an AP box.



There are also a lot of engineers who hold the view that reducing distortion from 0.005% to 0.0001% won't lead to an improvement in sound quality because even if someone could pick out the difference, it's extremely unlikely that they'd be able to decide which is better. In a sense, it's the viewpoint that once a certain performance threshold is met, there's no point in trying to play the numbers game.

I'm not saying that this is right or wrong, but I wouldn't just assume that it's about an irrational belief. In some cases it is, but not all. And hey, if you can do it with discrete op-amps and still get 0.005% THD+N, it'll sound good and give the marketing department something to talk about.

I myself like to see DACs and ADCs perform to this level because it makes them more useful, especially if they're capable of operating at 192k sample rates.

Agree with all that, yes maybe Irrational was not the right term, what I’m sayng is, they made a concious decision to not reduce distortion from 0.005 to 0.0001, but they know they are making that choice, they know because they mesured it and concluded it’s fine. I was not expecting such a deep analysis on my statement, what I’m saying is engineers when developping a product, take measures, and there is no such thing as Since we started measuring we do good products, or our products got better with the help of purchasing a apx555. It’s not like that. Designers that get poor review here know they will, they didn’t put a circuit together blindly and decided by ears that it works, without checking.

 

[gvl]

Isn't ES9018K2M a bit long in the tooth?

 

[JohnYang1997]

Well, they surely extracted great performance out of ES9018K2M with their "carefully tuned six opamp I/V converter" - that is a bit of innovation as it does not appear to be an off-the-shelf solution. On top of that, they offer a firmware where they deliberately tweaked the performance to approximate tube-type distortion. Not that this option will be popular around here

View attachment 131955

Hmm I was curious about the six opamp i/v converter. But looking at the pcb it's just regular 3 dual opamps configuration(yeah effectively 6 opamps), 2 for balanced i/v converters, 1 for lpf or differential amplifier. I guess it's just different from AK4490.

The tube distortion tho, I believe SMSL does support this sound color settings, demonstrated by Wolf here https://www.l7audiolab.com/f/smsl-vmv-d1se-dac/
Tube distortion is not just 3rd harmonics anyway.

 

[MC_RME]

Opt to use an ESS DAC

Ends up forgoing one of the main advantages of ESS chips (the brickwall filter that AKM doesn't have)



Please let them know this

They most probably know this very well, and you seem to have the wrong impression that all ESS chips include a brickwall filter - they don't. This one comes with only two filters (Fast/Slow), others come with three (still no brickwall). Top of the line chips include up to 8 filters, and then brickwall is available (if you get the choice to select a filter, of course).

It would be possible to load custom filters into the 9018, but designing these and loading them is out of the scope for such a low cost product (I have never seen one that does so, no matter what price. Someone knows any?).

 

[JohnYang1997]

They most probably know this very well, and you seem to have the wrong impression that all ESS chips include a brickwall filter - they don't. This one comes with only two filters (Fast/Slow), others come with three (still no brickwall). Top of the line chips include up to 8 filters, and then brickwall is available (if you get the choice to select a filter, of course).

It would be possible to load custom filters into the 9018, but designing these and loading them is out of the scope for such a low cost product (I have never seen one that does so, no matter what price. Someone knows any?).

Indeed 9018k2m only has two(3 after revision V). 9038q2m does have all the different filters tho.

 

[phoenixsong]

Great price, good engineering, stacks nicely with Atom Amp.
What's not to love?
Thanks for the review.

I dunno, maybe lack of balanced outputs? But then it wouldn't be the Atom DAC

 

[3rdShift]

I'd love to see performance side by side comparisons with schiit's lower end stuff. I bet a lot of people would be cross shopping the brands, with the schiit advantage possibly being materials/construction.

At this point they're both so similar I'd just get the one that has the features you want.
The modi 3+ has a coaxial output, metal build and no need for a power brick if used over USB.
The atom dac+ measures slightly better (IIRC, but they're both clean dacs), full size usb port and upgradable firmware.
Personally, since I care less about looks, I'd get whichever ends up being cheaper.
I have both schiit and JDS products and love them both. I'm happy to support american companies.

 

[Labjr]

The tube distortion tho, I believe SMSL does support this sound color settings, demonstrated by Wolf here https://www.l7audiolab.com/f/smsl-vmv-d1se-dac/
Tube distortion is not just 3rd harmonics anyway.

Bob Carver has been doing this kind of stuff with amplifiers since the beginning of time.

https://www.bobcarvercorp.com/carver-challenge

 

[JohnYang1997]

Bob Carver has been doing this kind of stuff with amplifiers since the beginning of time.

https://www.bobcarvercorp.com/carver-challenge

Nah. This is strictly talking about utilizing ESS's thd compensation for that purpose.

PS: I have heard of Bob Carver. I heard the story here.

To me... I'm not really into the thing.

 

[Labjr]

Nah. This is strictly talking about utilizing ESS's thd compensation for that purpose.

I'm talking about adding gimmicks with marketing buzzwords "carefully tuned six opamp I/V converter"