DAC with DIN out/Bryston BDA-1

I'm sure the designer knew what he was doing with regards grounding as it was designed to suit 90% of the market that uses conventional RCA or (as its Bryston) balanced XLR. You won't lose much (if anything) using RCA to DIN cables.

James

Hi James,

Thanks, can you tell me if this is your guess or did you try it, what was the equipment and cables, recording you listened to. I tried this with Naim CD player to pre amp, all the combinations of RCA an DIN and the difference is enormous.

Were they the same cables though ? - What is the issue you are worried about as getting the Bryston customised with a DIN output is surely going to limit the resale of this when you want to upgrade.

James

quote:

Does anyone know of a DAC that has DIN out as standard?

A SUPERNAIT will also work extremely well, though one needs a tape-out wired DIN-5 to make this work (via tape out).

I have done a shootout at a dealer's with the Bryston B100 integrated (their BP-26DA board upsamples to 96 kHz) versus the SUPERNAIT and found it OK, just more round-earth–at what is now (with the strength of the Canadian $) a higher price point.

Remember, too, that RCA to DIN Hi-Lines are available, if you absolutely need a DAC right now.

Where is Tuan when you need him?

Thanks Dave, but I need something 5 series or Superline level. My dream is DIN out, any CPU idle while playing, no SPDIF in data path in that order. Any means to stream the data with low phase noise at the input of the DAC itself or some means of getting the file into local memory in around 30 seconds or less. Only really need to store one CD length file at a time (4 CD equivalent would be nice for opera though). I guess HDX is the closest fit.

Jeremy, why don't using a good XLR to DIN cable? I don't know the Bryston specs. but I suppose this is possible although XLR outputs are balanced, isn't it?
What do you mean with CPU iddle?, it CPU is iddle how is going to run the software?

quote:

Jeremy, why don't using a good XLR to DIN cable? I don't know the Bryston specs. but I suppose this is possible although XLR outputs are balanced, isn't it?
What do you mean with CPU iddle?, it CPU is iddle how is going to run the software?

XLR to DIN is even worse, even though the CS4398 DAC output is differential you would have have to dump one half of the signal into the ground at the DAC end of the cable anyway, better and simpler to float the return path to the DAC I would have thought at least for short cable lengths.

I don't want the CPU that controls all the buttons, LEDs, file tables etc to be running when I play the file. The CPU core draws a peak current of between 2 and 30A say, even when it only does an instruction fetch like NOP. So I would like hardware only ie FPGA logic WAV decoder and direct memory access (DMA) for playing the file. Unless there is some way to put the CPU far away from the DAC of course. I don't think we need any software running when listening to music, that will probably be one of the wonderful things about soft media in future, there doesn't really need to be any discs, digital I/O, optics etc being driven while music is playing. It's a similar thought to the option Naim provides to switch off the LEDs while playing. I believe the current iTunes, LCD displays, Toslink discussions etc take us farther and farther away from this concept.

The farther away the control electronics are, the more likely you'll have an antenna that will pick up stray RFI–keeping noisy elements away is not always a optimum solution, however orthodox.

Well the closest I've found so far is Wavelength Cosecant plus Numerator module, might try to have a listen when my Naim HD discs arrive.

Score card for Wavelength is

24/88.2: YES
DIN: NO (but may be customized to fit it)
No CPU, CPU idle or remote: YES (I think)
No SPDIF/reclocking: YES
Data locally clocked jitter-free into DAC: Yes
Play in less than 30 secs: YES
Sound quality: TBD

Anyone heard it?