TeddyPardo TeddyDAC - Wolfson masterpiece?

Discussion in 'Digital: DACs, USB converters, decrapifiers' started by k4rstar, Aug 19, 2019.

  1. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

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    I picked up this DAC a few weeks ago with the intention of having one DAC for my headphone setup and one for my stereo.

    tl;dr: it's genuinely good but not truly great, R-2R rules and sigma-delta drools

    TeddyPardo is an Israeli manufacturer known for making aftermarket power supplies for Naim gear. The TeddyDAC has actually been in inception since 2011 but I had never heard of it until last month. TeddyPardo in general seem to be a pretty low key manufacturer.

    [​IMG]

    For the technical details about the DAC, here's a link to a white paper from their website which goes in depth about its design elements. I know some people will roll their eyes at a manufacturers' white paper but this one is actually very well written and concise. It is a sigma-delta DAC featuring the Wolfson WM8741 chip. This family of Wolfson DACs has been adopted by many manufacturers including AMB, Arcam, NAD, EAR and PS Audio to name a few.

    First, some personal thoughts about 'chip sound'. All implementations of sigma-delta chips from manufacturers including AKM, Cirrus, Wolfson, Analog Devices, ESS, etc. share a resemblance or house sound. My personal theory is that this sound is dictated heavily by the internal IC logic and digital filtering used for the noise shaping necessary for sigma-delta modulation. To explain this in a gross oversimplification, all S/D converters 'smooth' or 'massage' (in a frankly negative manner) the resulting analog signal that is obtained after conversion. The mathematical formulas and approaches to this 'smoothing' (different filters) results in the different 'chip sounds'.

    Further, since S/D converters have been widely adopted in the mainstream audio industry since the 1990s they are used in everything from mobile applications such as cell phones to 'high end' Esoteric DACs costing $50,000. We can refer to these as 'low-level' and 'high-level' implementations respectively, with a 'low-level' implementation sticking closer to a spec sheet 'intended use' design that the chip manufacturer has already documented. A 'high-level' implementation may go much further with custom digital and analog filtering (noise shaping, thus changing the way the resulting analog signal is shaped) not to mention I/V, output stages, power supplies, etc.

    Where am I getting at with all this? It seems that sometimes these efforts are still not enough to mask or eradicate the undesirable coloration's associated with 'chip sound'. Case in point, I owned a Crane Song Solaris for about a week. It is the best (within reason of cost) AKM4490 implementation I know of. Designer Dave Hill went all out with custom digital and analog filters to work around the sound of the AKM converter, for pro audio mastering applications. In the end it still suffered from the particular AKM coloration of polite transients which I cannot stand and I returned it.

    The WM874x family of converters have the most agreeable (or perhaps least offensive) of these compromises to my ears, and I say this after experiencing what the sound of AKM, ESS etc. boil down to in many different DACs.

    [​IMG]

    The TeddyDAC can then be considered the best implementation of a Wolfson DAC I have yet heard, and to add on to that the best sigma-delta DAC I have yet heard. The power supply to critical sections of the DAC are independently regulated. High quality destination (local) clocks are used for both S/PDIF and USB inputs. Since the WM8741 handles I/V conversion prior to output, TeddyPardo is able to use a discrete JFET buffer similar to what Schiit does in the Yggdrasil.

    It is compact, well built, sounds its best 30 minutes from power-on (though it did take a few days of running signal through it to break in) and really has no glaring flaws in any one aspect of sonic reproduction. Its lack of an obviously identifiable 'chip sound' was very refreshing to discover. Despite this, I still know it is not 'the one'. Why? It's a sigma-delta DAC and not R-2R.

    It took hearing a very good one without glaring flaws to realize that S/D converters, for me, are not true high-end(tm) and R-2R is the only way to go. It is the nagging feeling that something in the reproduction of music is missing and the ear-brain system is disturbed. The illusion is shattered, or worse yet not created at all. I'm afraid the only way around this is to inoculate yourself by either a) never experiencing better or b) being one of the blessed few who cannot tell the difference.

    I could make up some bullshit about how this DAC has a holographic soundstage or black background or whatever but it really would not do much to give you an idea of how it sounds. For anyone actually interested there are other reviews out there for this DAC already that go into all that solid bass, smooth mids, sparkling highs jazz. Instead I offer some very biased perspective :^) This DAC is priced at $1250 USD without the USB module. I would say it is actually fairly close in sound to the new generation Gungnir Multibit which I still own and proves a very interesting S/D vs. R2R dichotomy.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2019
  2. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    Why don’t you just go full Romythecat and buy a Lavry Gold? Nothing else will make you happy. It even has an oven you can shove your head into. You’d even complain about Apogee after opening it up and seeing what’s inside.
     
  3. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

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    Thanks dad but I'll never live up to your expectations
     
  4. MrTeaRex

    MrTeaRex His head's not fat, he's my brother!

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    It's fate... https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649544983-lavry-gold-da2002/
     
  5. mitochondrium

    mitochondrium Friend

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    You did not disappoint me, you trying a D/S Dac is about as predictable as me trying a Côtes du Rhône red.
     
  6. agisthos

    agisthos New

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    k4rstar I'm glad you heard something special in this DAC (relative to S/D chip designs anyway) as so did I many years ago. But not having a headphone amp means it never got any love from the headphone crowd, which is where all new DAC hype is driven by. So its almost unknown.

    It has a non digital, non glare, almost vinyl type sound, but without being warm or rolled off like a tube output would give.

    You did say this has the Wolfson house sound, and I found it so much easier on the ears than any Sabre based design. It's one of the few high end (if you can call $1200 that) Wolfson designs around, which is rare.

    But I think one key ingredient it has is the use of Teddy Super regulators feeding all the digital power stages, 11 of them I think. Teddy Pardo got his start in audiophile land with his custom super regulators which became very popular in the DIY/Upgrade field in the 00's.
     

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