I just had a look at the 9023 (replaces 9022) data and did a bit of poking around net.
Looks like 9022 (3) is very good value for money at around $2 each - they must be selling 10's of 1000's of them.
The upside is very high performance from a single supply dac that has an inbuilt OP driver. It's a no brainer if you
want best performance on a tight budget.
The down side is the internal negitive voltage supply for OP opamp is derived from a charge pump, (sort of switch mode supply).
I would imagine the 1.2v core voltage is also derived from some sort of DC to DC converter.
It is a good example of how far technology has come to get this performance from a 2 buck single supply chip.
Which dac chip does WFS use Bill?
T
Zen, I answered as I did because I wanted people to judge the sound of this JKDAC on it's sonic merits & not have expectation bias based on specs, etc. which happens all too often. We don't just hear with our ears but with our brains & bring all our expectations to this audition, sometimes clouding what we actually hear!
When I first investigated this DAC chip, I too had initial prejudice against the internal opamp output stage, the charge pump & the internally generated negative supply for all the same reasons that your state Zen - probably SMPS & charge pumps have a bad press in audio as do opamps. I even posted such comments, about a year ago, along these same lines. My initial experiments, were not very encouraging but I realised I had a noise issue which I solved & then heard the sound of this DAC & frankly was surprised by it's sound as were those few who subsequently tried it. I've refined it since then & find it an even better sound now. I have compared it to a friend's Buffalo II DAC with all the tricked out power supplies & IV output stages that Twisted Pear supply & he & I both agree that the JKDAC sounds as good if not better than the Buffalo.
This fact & that it also beats the W4S reinforces the fact that it's all about implementation - the superiority of discrete to opamp output stages is only realised by the few who know how to do it properly. And there are plenty of examples of it not being done properly in both the commercial world & DIY world!
As I've said all along, it also has the benefit of portability as a headphone driver. If you do a bit more googling, you will find that this is the DAC chip used in the Nuforce UDAC (& UDAC2) - you will see that they also used it to drive headphones directly (in the UDAC anyway) so if you want to check out what headphones work with it, look up the Nuforce uDac. BTW, the DAC's output impedance is stated by others to be 200ohm. I have driven 32ohm headphones without distortion or lacking in bass.
It's also the DAC chip used in the soon to be released, Peachtree DACit.
They haven't realised how to maximise the performance of this DAC chip & as a result are lagging behind in the sonics. Of course neither of these DACs use my version of the Hiface USB front end & as a result I reckon their sonics suffer! The uDac initially used a PCM2707 & now a Tenor chip. I don't know what the DACit uses probably a cMedia USB receiver chip?
So there you have it - all the detail you wanted to know & a bit more maybe?
