TDA1541

[SuperDan2u]

The TDA1541 dac by Phillips was designed in the early 80s. The arrival of digital presented an option for manufacturers. Imo, the only choice was go all in for analog. I had stuck with the valves as my preference was for the warm sound of a mono block with a solid sound stage. I went with the Magnavox cd player with tda1541 dac.

My tube amp is gone (long sad story) my magnavox too (more sad). So I have a lovely NAD 2600A with the mod squad line drive. I added a CD transport and DAÇ that imo, doesn't come close to the TDA1541.

Is there anyone who knows a DAC maker using this chip. Or a player with this chip that isn't outrageously priced.

For those of you aghast that I don't go vinyl, my large LP library was lost in the divorce along with the Rega3 and my dog.

 

[solderdude]

Perhaps hunt for old CD players that had them and are now toast because the transport crapped out.
They are probably cheaper second hand and certainly won't have 'fake ones' in them.

The biggest problem you have, however, is that you are of the opinion DAC chips actually matter for the sound quality.
It's not really the chip that matters most but how it is used and what components are around them (and even the physical layout/design).
The TDA1541 has long been surpassed in all aspects and newer DAC chips have much higher fidelity.
In the good old CDplayer days these DAC chips were always over-sampled 4x before it goes into the DAC which is very different from how current 'filter-less NOS DACs' that use these DAC chips in ways they are not designed for is what makes those 'audiophool' DACs differ from 'proper DACs'.

 

[voodooless]

Seems like there is a slight high-frequency drop with the SAA7220 filter. That may be audible, but not If you're 72..

Otherwise, a good implementation should have distortion products more than 100 dB down, which, again, is inaudible.

Have you actually done some objective comparisons, where at least you compared it level-matched and preferably blind?

If you really want a DAC, I guess you can get a board from China and hope to find some genuine chips, something like this:

Measurements of TDA1541 by Cyxchen

This cheap (main PCB less than $60 without 1541/7220) unit is powered by the TDA1541/SAA7220/AK4118. The power section is TPS7A4701/TPS7A3301. MainPCB: I used the 1541A chip. Instead of the 1541AS1 used on the anniversary.

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Mikig]

if you are interested in this chip from a collector's point of view, looking in used you can still find a good number of devices that mount the TDA 1541.
Just check that they are not boiled because we are talking about electronics that are more than 30 years old.
Do a search for "Dac Chip List" and you will find sites that list all the devices produced with the relative specifications of Dac and receiver mounted.
I have also seen some modern production of Dacs that mount this chip, but I have never had to deal with it ....

 

[voodooless]

looking in used you can still find a good number of devices that mount the TDA 1541.

Overview Philips TDA1541 based cdplayers and D/A converters - DutchAudioClassics.nl

Overview Philips TDA1541 and TDA1541a based cdplayers and DACS

www.dutchaudioclassics.nl

Here is a TDA1541A DAC tested by @amirm:

Hifi Forum TDA-1541A DAC Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the "Finished Philips hifi forum tenth anniversary TDA1541 DAC Coaxial input L17-53." It was purchased on ebay by a member for $388. Owner swapped out the fake TDA-1541A for a real one. This was a DAC design created for the tenth anniversary of...

www.audiosciencereview.com

I have no idea if it contains a genuine chip

 

[SuperDan2u]

Perhaps hunt for old CD players that had them and are now toast because the transport crapped out.
They are probably cheaper second hand and certainly won't have 'fake ones' in them.

The biggest problem you have, however, is that you are of the opinion DAC chips actually matter for the sound quality.
It's not really the chip that matters most but how it is used and what components are around them (and even the physical layout/design).
The TDA1541 has long been surpassed in all aspects and newer DAC chips have much higher fidelity.
In the good old CDplayer days these DAC chips were always over-sampled 4x before it goes into the DAC which is very different from how current 'filter-less NOS DACs' that use these DAC chips in ways they are not designed for is what makes those 'audiophool' DACs differ from 'proper DACs'.

Sound quality is certainly in the ear of the listener. Quality is a word that is probably subjective. I would say that to me the tda1541 is designed to do what I personally want the analog conversion to do. It sounds warm, tube like, using my NAD with line drive. The new hardware being designed differently (better?) will sound different too. Ear of the listener again. At the time phillips chip was a star and numerous high priced players used their chip. The prices for vintage players that use my chip are out of line. The player will not last long enough to justify the price. I have gone through three. Usually on ebay, so you can add a couple returns for players sold that were nfg on arrival. Where I'm listening I feel a tda1541 dac box would be a big seller.

 

[SuperDan2u]

if you are interested in this chip from a collector's point of view, looking in used you can still find a good number of devices that mount the TDA 1541.
Just check that they are not boiled because we are talking about electronics that are more than 30 years old.
Do a search for "Dac Chip List" and you will find sites that list all the devices produced with the relative specifications of Dac and receiver mounted.
I have also seen some modern production of Dacs that mount this chip, but I have never had to deal with it ....

I had good luck with ChatGPT. U asked for a list of all make,models with tda1541A.
Viola

 

[voodooless]

I had good luck with ChatGPT. U asked for a list of all make,models with tda1541A.
Viola

I bet you that many items on that list are wrong… you’ll need to double check them all. And as important as the DAC chip is the model of the digital filter.

 

[Purité Audio]

I had good luck with ChatGPT. U asked for a list of all make,models with tda1541A.
Viola

Viola!
Keith

 

[DVDdoug]

Sound quality is certainly in the ear of the listener. Quality is a word that is probably subjective.

Yes and no... "High-fidelity" means highly-faithful (accurate production). People can have different preferences but ideally the equipment should be capable of being transparent before we start using tone controls, or EQ, etc. Some people even prefer the inferior sound of vinyl.

I would say that to me the tda1541 is designed to do what I personally want the analog conversion to do. It sounds warm, tube like

"Warm" isn't really defined. I used to think it was a mid-bass boost but we shouldn't see that in a DAC. Voodooless' post shows a very slight drop at 20kHz but that's not likely to be audible.* Amir's measurement doesn't show it, but it's harder to tell with white noise.

Some people describe slight "pleasing" distortion as "warmth".

Tubes can have either one, or both, but a good tube amp (like a good solid state amp) doesn't have any sound of its own.

Assuming you want a boost in the mid-bass or high-frequency roll-off, EQ or tone controls are the answer and you can dial-in exactly what you want!

with a solid sound stage.

Electronics don't affect the soundstage (unless you are using some kind of effect or processing). It's in the recording, your speakers and room acoustics, and your brain since i It's obviously an illusion with the sound actually coming from a pair of left & right speakers...


The only time I've heard a difference or defect in a "DAC" it was a soundcard that made noise when the soundcard was accessed. I never heard anything wrong with whatever unknown DAC was in my 1st CD player in 1985.

For those of you aghast that I don't go vinyl,

There are a few vinyl-lovers here but very few will claim it "sounds better". Technically it's inferior to digital. Some older records are less dynamically compressed than the re-mastered more compressed CD and in that one characteristic it can be better. But it's the mastering, not the format. And some people actually enjoy the "warm crackle" of vinyl. Even the vinyl days the "snap", "crackle", and "pop" annoyed me!



* Ideally we'd like flat frequency response over full audible range. But even if you can hear up to 20kHz with "loud" test tones in a hearing test, in the context of music they are usually weak harmonics (only synthesizers can make a 20kHz "note") and they masked (drown-out) by less-high frequencies.

 

[AnalogSteph]

If you follow @NTTY's CD player reviews, a theme very consistently emerges: Japanese players of the late '80s with well-adjusted Burr-Brown converters (PCM56 or PCM58) tend to do a whole lot better on low-level linearity than TDA1541(A) jobs. So the thing wasn't anything overly special even by the standards of that time.

tda1541 vs. PCM56

Hi, upper graph is Philips CD880 , lower graph is Denon DCD1500II with PCM56 and accurate distortion adjustment. http://www.beautyphoto.de/pcmvstda.jpg

www.diyaudio.com

I added a CD transport and DAÇ that imo, doesn't come close to the TDA1541.

I have a feeling you are comparing apples and oranges over a span of decades. Assuming your current DAC is a standard design sporting off-the-shelf converters with AKM, ESS or Cirrus Logic and has plenty of headroom for overs when turning down the volume a bit, it's probably going to do its job as well as these things can get. It's usually the component to be least concerned about, way behind items such as your speakers, room and - obviously - ears. Even behind the choice of amplifier.

 

[audio_tony]

I had good luck with ChatGPT. U asked for a list of all make,models with tda1541A.
Viola

Try https://daclist.dnsbits.net/index.php?make=&model=&dac_chip=1541&laser=

There are 291 players listed here using the TDA1541 chip.

 

[SIY]

Sound quality is certainly in the ear of the listener.

This part is true.

It sounds warm, tube like, using my NAD with line drive. The new hardware being designed differently (better?) will sound different too.

This part isn't.

 

[DSJR]

My main CD player has a TDA 1541 (not even a selected or 'crown' version either ). I once believed and felt that it stood head and shoulders above other players, especially its £2800 price back in 1988 or so. You know, I've done an A-B as best as I can with an eighty quid SU1 dac to which it's still connected via coax SPDIF and slight level differences aside, they both sound the same today in terms of reproducing things far back in the mix and so on and overall tonal balance... Things like a particular snare tuning and slight reverb/echo added in to the mix, which 'vinyl' can smear but which is clearly audible on even an Apple dongle into Zero and Zero2 iems... An engineer at Arcam UK at the time, suggested that the digital filter chip, then a separate item, was what in his view dictated any 'sound' to the proceedings...

I'd subjectively suggest that many older players using the above dac chip, could be sensitive to sh*t coming in on the mains as well as possibly spewing nasties out down the cables (no real tech proof but Paul Miller did some tests at the time) (I still use a Roxburgh 6A mains filter on my player and ferrites on all the mains cables for no real reason today I admit). Easy for older UK made players to sound 'dirty' compared to latest digital systems.

I forget the hobby side is so important to so many of you folks, but today and for me, the gear is a tool to do the job and how it does it inside, is a separate thing entirely from the musical enjoyment I can get

 

[NTTY]

Hi, few links:

• Revox B 126 with TDA1541A
• Revox B 226S with TDA1541A S1 (Crown)
• Sony CDP-337ESD with dual mono TDA1541A in staggered mode

And for fun, as per what @AnalogSteph mentioned, let's take the best implementation of these TDAs and compare with the best implementation I've seen from BurrBrown at that time. The below is a view of THD vs Frequency @-12dBFS for the Revox B 2226S, the Sony CDP-337ESD and the Denon DCD-3560:

Yeah, the BB achieved much lower distorsion (11dBr better than the crowned version at 1kHz!).

Also, note that these DACs had only one function: convert a digital word into a voltage and hold it until next word was coming in. So they were complemented with digital (oversampling) filters, and these two were doing the digital to analog job. The implementation of Sony who staggered an 8x oversampled digital signal before feeding two TDA1541A is the best demonstration that the TDA1541 alone is only a contributor to the full D/A process.

And so no, the TDA1541 was not the best, it was industrially limited because of no laser trimming at the time (as opposed to BB) and Philips went for that nice after production selection stamping the best of them with a crown, which probably contributed to the legend and the myth of higher quality. In my above test, the crown version did not equal the staggered implementation of Sony, one more proof that oversampling and converting can't be separated when considering final results (not to mention following analog output stages).

Cheers

 

[sunhuino1]

When I was developing the HI-Player filter, I referred to the ASR test data and added a filter that fully simulated TDA1541, and there was also a slightly warmer tuning similar to TDA1541.

Hifi Forum TDA-1541A DAC Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the "Finished Philips hifi forum tenth anniversary TDA1541 DAC Coaxial input L17-53." It was purchased on ebay by a member for $388. Owner swapped out the fake TDA-1541A for a real one. This was a DAC design created for the tenth anniversary of...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[SIY]

there was also a slightly warmer tuning similar to TDA1541.

As long as the temperature is 60°C or lower, there's not much hazard.

 

[audioxcel]

Below is the official authority for all things Philips. The link below will give you everything you might want to know about the TDA1541 and more. If you scroll way down the page after you open the link, you will find a list of every CD player ever made that had the TDA1541 and all variants in it. If you are going to search for chips in "for parts only" players, look for Magnavox and Philips players that had the 1541A installed. They are going to be the most plentiful and probably the cheapest even if they are still working. .Just do an eBay search for every player you might consider cost wise and click to receive notifications. Some early Marantz players can be found cheap too.

Philips TDA1541 - A Monolithic Dual 16-Bit D/A Converter - DutchAudioClassics.nl

On March 8, 1979 Philips publicly demonstrated a prototype of an optical digital audio disc at a press conference called Philips Introduce Compact Disc in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

www.dutchaudioclassics.nl

 

[kemmler3D]

The new hardware being designed differently (better?) will sound different too.

Maybe a tiny bit since the roll-off apparently starts at 10Khz, but unless something has gone very wrong, DACs should all sound the same. They take numbers and turn them into voltages... any warmth or lack thereof is either in the recording or a mistake in the circuit design.

DACs are pretty much the least interesting part of an audio setup today, they just get a lot of attention anyway because they're the source.

 

[audioxcel]

Sound quality is certainly in the ear of the listener. Quality is a word that is probably subjective. I would say that to me the tda1541 is designed to do what I personally want the analog conversion to do. It sounds warm, tube like, using my NAD with line drive. The new hardware being designed differently (better?) will sound different too. Ear of the listener again. At the time phillips chip was a star and numerous high priced players used their chip. The prices for vintage players that use my chip are out of line. The player will not last long enough to justify the price. I have gone through three. Usually on ebay, so you can add a couple returns for players sold that were nfg on arrival. Where I'm listening I feel a tda1541 dac box would be a big seller.

Some audio equipment with great specs sounds awful. This why I would never buy something I had not listened to. The sound cannot be entirely determined by the specs.

There is almost no tube amp that can match the "specs" of a cheap solid state amp. I prefer the sound of tube equipment because it sounds more natural to me. I also prefer vinyl to CD but the sound of my current CD player is very close to analog. I probably actually listen to CDs more than records because it is easier. When I want to relax and just enjoy listening to music, I put records on my TT.

Look up stochastic noise and resonance. We don't live in an anechoic chamber. That is why good analog equipment sounds "natural".

The irony is that the most expensive solid state amps strive to sound like tube amps. The most expensive CD players strive to sound like vinyl. Why, because natural sound in our normal environment is analog. Analog just "feels" better. You can't measure it, you just know it when you hear it. In fact, my main criteria for deciding on what audio equipment I buy is, "does listening to this this make me feel better?".