Electronics Overview

Electronics Overview

When we disassembled this unit for the review we were pleasantly surprised at the exceedingly clean circuit layout and excellent workmanship.  Truly, at this price point, this type of workmanship is usually not seen.  What comprises much of an external DACs price is components that make it external such as the Chassis, casing, controls, I/O and power supply unit.  These aspects can be incredibly expensive and we havent even got to the electronics section yet.  So, lets have a look here and see what we have:

DIR9001 S/Pdif Receiver module

This chip is an S/Pdif digital receiver chip offering a low jitter rating of 50ps.  Usually DACs at this price point use lower grade digital receivers chips that lock the DAC to 16/44.1 so it is nice to see higher resolution playback in this device.

CS4398 Digital to Analog Converter (DAC)

This DAC has been seen in many high end audio components and is considered a high end converter.  This unit features a dynamic range of 120dB and 107dB THD+N measurement.  This component also has de-emphasis, volume control in half dB steps and auto mutes on Static PCM samples.  This chip has been used as the converter chip in many audio components such as DAC, soundcards and receivers.

OPA2604 Opamp

This opamp is used as a filter for the DAC chip itself and offers low distortion of 0.0003% at 1 kHz. The unit also offers low noise of 10nV/√Hz and a slew rate of 25v/µs.  This unit would be classified as a generic unit although it has been seen in various audio designs over the years. 

OPA2604 Specification sheet: Link