Op Amps in Desktop Dac

[SiR]

Do Op Amps in the Desktop Dacs degrade / affect the performance

 

[nerdemoji]

Depends, but usually not audibly.

 

[SiR]

Are there Dacs without OpAmps ?

 

[IAtaman]

I understand it is not straight forward as a yes or no answer, but maybe a better starting question might be what is an opamp before asking what does opamps do to sound quality and whether DACs need them or not.

Operational amplifier - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[EdW]

Do Op Amps in the Desktop Dacs degrade / affect the performance

Short answer no. With the proviso that the amp is being run inside the limits published in its data sheet. For example, Texas Instruments designers are enormously competent and can usually offer a higher performance solution than DAC implementers and their in house discrete transistor realisation. Probably at lower cost too. But some boutique DAC implementers think that they know better . . .

 

[MCH]

Are there Dacs without OpAmps ?

There are DAC ICs that don't need external opamps, but I think they just have them doing the I/v conversion inside.

Do Op Amps in the Desktop Dacs degrade / affect the performance

There is an old white paper from ess that shows how different op amps give slightly different performance on their evaluation boards (=all other things equal) If you google it you might find it.
Here:

https://forum.vegalab.ru/attachment.php?attachmentid=411678&d=1639376662&shem=sswnst

 

[audio_tony]

Are there Dacs without OpAmps ?

In case you're wondering....

Don't be misled into thinking that opamps are inferior in DACs etc. because they are not.

Also bear in mind that most (if not all) of the music you listen to has probably passed through at least 20+ opamps in the mastering process.