Soekris DAC2541 Review And Measurements

See @soekris's post in the other thread. These two threads really should be merged.

 

The R-2R resistor string is simply 28 bit.... Remember this is a Sign Magnitude DAC, so those bits are actually useful, especially with a digital volume control.

 

Sounds like the house sound is consistent then.

 

I would be surprised if it were not the case. Soeren is known for not replying to emails (almost never got a reply to mine – statistically speaking – I indeed got a couple of answers!!!!) but he f'ing knows what he is doing and has a rationale for that. Kudos.

 

I'm really curious to see BAL vs SE performance, in the 1541 there was a discrepancy and I bet that's fixed now in 2541

 

I would expect very little difference. 2 sets of ladders have been removed, the DAC itself is now SE. SE to BAL conversion unlikely to yield significant performance gain...

 

The dac1541 had a true balanced in balanced out amplifier, so the Bal and SE output should sound the same as they was driven by the same amplifier.... If somebody heard or measured differently, it could be cabling or the other end that caused something.... The dac2541 has a pretty good SE to balanced amplifier, again driving both the Bal and SE outputs, so they should also sound the same.... Balanced only really matter for inter device to device cabling. And note that most balanced in amplifier have an extra bal to SE buffer, most of them operate SE internally anyway....

 

Did you use the same filters or something inspired by the community ones? I really wanted a less cold one (people seem to be referring to that "sterility" of the sound in the same way).

 

Possibly a silly question that @soekris or other seasoned members can answer but I was wondering why this top of the line DAC is limited to 24 bit decoding. Not that it matters much since most current music is in 16 bit format but given that there are R2R DACs in the market that do 32 bit decoding I am curious about whether this constraint is due to technical or perhaps economic reasons. I am also aware that other highly respected DACs from well know manufacturers (Schiit's, for example) with different topologies are equallly limited to 24 bit decoding so this could be due to a more fundamental design decision that escapes me.

 

How many 32bit recordings do you have?

 

SPDIF is limited to 24 bits....

 

Same 4K filters as latest DACs, have plan to upgrade firmware at some point to support 8K filters, hardware can do it.... I haven't notice anything "cold" or "sterility"....

 

And, most importantly, do 32-bit recordings make any sense?

 

You need 32-bit to hear all the individual bosons making up the sound.

 

A couple of them in my entire collection. Negligible.

Probably not. Oviously not a difference that I can even dream of hearing.

However, as I stated, I was curious as to why some DACs do 32 bit decoding and others do not, and @soekris explained it briefly and clearly.

Thanks for your reply

 

32bit floating point processing is usually kept in DAW to make gain staging easier. Some DAWs also use 64bit. It has nothing to do with playback.

 

Would you please provide an example of an R2R DAC that does 32 bit decoding? D/S doesn't count, its 32bit decoding has nothing to do with actual bits.

 

It's not that hard to make a 32bit r2r ladder. Not that it will make a difference as precision will be heat noise limited.

 

Yeah, mine was a rhetorical question

 

As pointed out many times:
24 bits is 144 dB. It is already quite challenging to fully utilize this - starting with musical instruments and ending with your ears.