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This DAC from China has completely blown me away!

sounder

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Jun 15, 2024
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As shown in the picture, this is a DAC decoder board from China’s Taobao, priced under 70 USD. Below are my questions:
How are they able to keep the price so low?
Who is buying such a large volume of this product?
Does the audio quality of this product truly meet the standards?
 

DiggyGun

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Mar 2, 2021
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View attachment 8091
As shown in the picture, this is a DAC decoder board from China’s Taobao, priced under 70 USD. Below are my questions:
How are they able to keep the price so low?
Who is buying such a large volume of this product?
Does the audio quality of this product truly meet the standards?
So many questions for DAC that blows you away.

DG…
 
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View attachment 8091
As shown in the picture, this is a DAC decoder board from China’s Taobao, priced under 70 USD. Below are my questions:
How are they able to keep the price so low?
Who is buying such a large volume of this product?
Does the audio quality of this product truly meet the standards?
Likely no CE certification compliance, no environmental compliance with regards to manufacturing or legal and safe disposal of waste, non compliance with how they treat their production workers, etc etc.
This pretty much goes for the majority of EVERYTHING that comes out of China, which most people in the U.K. purchase on a daily basis, whether it's a hi-fi component or a washing up brush.
 

twinkletoes

Well-known member
Which is why their economy is booming while we head into recession!
They’re economy maybe booming but very very large parts of the population are very very poor. They have always been a very industrious empire but they do so at the expense of a lot there population and there surroundings.

It will all switch round at some point as things are getting very expensive to import. As manufacturers/designers of toys we’re seeking other avenues as are other industries.
 
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There has to be a tipping point, where the greed of the east outweighs the cost of bringing manufacturing home, or at least to grounds nearer to home. Fyne Audio have purchased a Scottish based factory to bring all manufacturing the U.K., and I feel there'll be a few other manufacturers following suit over the next few years.
 
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podknocker

Well-known member
TDA1541 is a DAC designed by Philips in 1979....
Yup. decent DACs have been around for decades. I bought a Philips CD473 in 1988 and it had one of the TDA1541 DACs. The TDA1541A was released later and there were S1 and S2 versions, including single crown and double crown releases, offering slightly different S/N ratios. My CD player sounded great in 1988 and it's still revered. You can only take DAC silicon so far and I don't think modern DACs are fundamentally better at what they do and new ones don't necessarily sound better. The supporting circuit s play a large part and I bet a TDA1541 derivative could be implemented today and nobody would notice any real flaws or anomalies in its design or sonic signature. It would be interesting to build a CD player using parts used in players from the 1980s just to hear how good they sound. I've said it many times, but the Red Book CD standard is over 40 years old now and reached its technical peak many years ago. CD has reached a technical dead end and there's nothing else to squeeze out of this astounding, but old format. There's nothing you can do to increase the format's 1411kbps data rate, or improve the optics, servo, transport or the error correction used to read discs. Some fanatics run the DACs at higher sampling rates, but it won't really affect the final sound quality. Any modern CD player over £300 is overpriced and spending more is pointless. The most expensive DACs from ESS or AKM are £50 when bought in bulk and they don't offer anything radically different to their 40 year old ancestors. CD data passing through a modern 24 bit DAC won't receive any more sound quality and CD sound quality can't be 'polished' by a modern DAC. The Red Book standard is set in stone. I'd argue any modern format using a modern DAC won't sound much better than CD anyway. Sound quality can't be increased forever and human hearing has its limits. Higher numbers are fascinating to nerds, but don't necessarily translate into incredible sound quality. Companies selling very expensive CD players do their best to trick you into thinking their product has somehow re-invented the wheel and can give you much better sound than a player from decades ago. They will give up eventually and all companies will release streaming devices to replace CD players, when the inevitable CD revival appears and then fades again. Streaming is the future and there are several DACs out there to support all known formats. My Audiolab Omnia's DAC, like the ones in many devices, supports bit rates and sampling frequencies far above any modern available format. It's nice to have future proofing, but when will these super high res sound formats arrive and do we really need them? Been looking for the old DACs and I can't believe they still make the TDA1541 unless someone found a drawer full and decided to use them.

 
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JacquesW

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Dec 24, 2024
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Yup. decent DACs have been around for decades. I bought a Philips CD473 in 1988 and it had one of the TDA1541 DACs. The TDA1541A was released later and there were S1 and S2 versons, including single crown and double crown releases, offering slightly different S/N ratios. My CD sounded great in 1988 and it's still revered. You can only take DAC silicon so far and I don't think modern DACs are fundamentally better at what they do and new ones don't necessarily sound better. The supporting circuit s play a large part and I bet a TDA1541 derivative could be implemented today and nobody would notice any real flaws or anomalies in its design or sonic signature. It would be interesting to build a CD player using parts used in players from the 1980s just to hear how good they sound. I've said it many times, but the Red Book CD standard is over 40 years old now and reached its technical peak many years ago. CD has reached a technical dead end and there's nothing else to squeeze out of this astounding, but old format. There's nothing you can do to increase the 1411kbps data rate, or improve the optics, servo, transport or the error correction used to read discs. Any modern CD player over £300 is overpriced and spending more is pointless. The most expensive DACs from ESS or AKM are £50 when bought in bulk and they don't offer anything radically different form their 40 year old ancestors. CD data passing through a modern 24 bit DAC won't receive any more sound quality and CD sound quality can't be 'polished' by a modern DAC. The Red Book standard is set in stone. I'd argue any modern format using a modern DAC won't sound much better than CD anyway. Sounds quality can't be increased forever and human hearing has its limits. Higher numbers are fascinating to nerds, but don't necessarily translate into incredible sound quality. Companies selling very expensive CD players do their best to trick you into thinking their product has somehow re-invented the wheel and can give you much better sound than a player from decades ago. They will give up eventually and all companies will release streaming devices to replace CD players, when the inevitable CD revival appears and then fades again. Streaming is the future and there are several DACs out there to support all known formats. My Audiolab Omnia's DAC, like the ones in many devices, supports bit rates and sampling frequencies far above any modern available format. It's nice to have future proofing, but when will these super high res sound formats arrive and do we really need them? Been looking for the old DACs and I can't believe they still make the TDA1541 unless someone found a drawer full and decided to use them.

Hi there! I was considering purchasing a cd transport player. I'm thinking either the Shanling ET3 or the Audiolab 6000CDT. I assume both are good transports? Any feedback on these 2? Or perhaps something else? Thanks!
 

podknocker

Well-known member
Hi there! I was considering purchasing a cd transport player. I'm thinking either the Shanling ET3 or the Audiolab 6000CDT. I assume both are good transports? Any feedback on these 2? Or perhaps something else? Thanks!
I've no experience of either model, but I would hope any CD transport's optics and error correction could lift all the zeros and ones from a CD without dropping any along the way. PC drives do it for around £20 and bit for bit copies of CDs can be created. I keep saying it, but CD drives and the required onboard firmware are cheap as chips, no pun intended. The industry offers transports and players costing thousands of pounds and the components doing the heavy lifting cost very little. I read a review years ago of a Cary CD pleyer costing around £6000 and it had a then £7 (seven) Sanyo CD drive inside it. This stuff's ancient and not expensive to make. If you want a decent CD player, go for the Marantz stuff at £300 or so. The matching amps are also decent for the money.
 
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