ESS Sabre DACs

[juanacevedo]

It will be illuminating to have an article about the state of the art DAC chips. When you go thru web sites you find "latest" but it is from 2017 or so... Some products say hyperthreading but no part #. There are various dongles all using different ESS Sabre dacs depending on various factors. I just bought a Clarus Coda ($300.00) which has a newer dac than my iFi iDSD BL. But, then, I just saw another dongle at $99 with also has a hyperthreading ESS Sabre DAC. Finding out which is the best...( I know time is the essence of "latest"). Opps.. another one just came out at $89.00 ... what?? Don't you get frustrated when mentally you cannot enjoy your latest purchase for at least a couple years...

 

[lovinthehd]

I never even think about dacs, they're inconsequential in my audio systems as they're transparent. Let alone wanting to buy a different one because it has a slightly different spec or a slightly newer chip with slightly better spec. Which particular chip maker or particular version I don't pay attention to either. The implementation of the chip is more important in any case. If you want to see what the latest/greatest measuring dac is audiosciencereview.com is a decent source, tho. Now, the shortage of chips could get interesting for some audio products in the near future....

 

[juanacevedo]

Well, I was using the iFi iDSDBL with JRiver Media Center, but I always had problems with the settings because of the Audio driver required by iFi. Then I found Audirvana which simplified everything. My music room is 30 feet away from the main PC. That required using a Raspberry pi 4 as a renderer. Installed W10 on the Raspberry but it
was extremely slow. That's when I found the Clarus Coda. There is a big difference in "inner" details between the Burr Brown DAC in the iDSDBL and the Clarus Coda with ESS Sabre DAC and let me tell you for an 80 years old person to notice a difference...
I have a 30 feet audio cable (L/R) run from the main PC/Coda to the Denon AVR-x4500H terminated with a transformer unit to avoid hum and other noises in the long Audio cable runs. This I want to get rid of.
I am waiting on the NUC11i7 to be available so I can have a dedicated small PC with a 2 TB SSD music drive in the music room connected to the CODA and I will be happy as ever streaming Tidal thru Audirvana. Sure you can have a better DAC implementation in one of those thousands of dollars units, but for me that is beyond my means.
My speakers are custom 2.5 way Morel Ticw638Nd and a Raal Ribbon 140-15D. A custom crossover optimized via VituixCAD2. Foil Inductors, Clarity and Mundorf Capacitors. Zobel corrected Mid/Woofers. Speaker Cables are 10 gauge twisted pair 99% copper with locking bananas and snakeskin. and Bi-Amp mode for front speakers. 2 - 18" Custom Subwoofers complete the speakers crossed at 80Hz.

 

[lovinthehd]

Inner details at 80, eh? Okay...what are inner details? Sounds like a lot of work getting your music to your system, personally I just stream it over my network.

 

[MacCali]

It will be illuminating to have an article about the state of the art DAC chips. When you go thru web sites you find "latest" but it is from 2017 or so... Some products say hyperthreading but no part #. There are various dongles all using different ESS Sabre dacs depending on various factors. I just bought a Clarus Coda ($300.00) which has a newer dac than my iFi iDSD BL. But, then, I just saw another dongle at $99 with also has a hyperthreading ESS Sabre DAC. Finding out which is the best...( I know time is the essence of "latest"). Opps.. another one just came out at $89.00 ... what?? Don't you get frustrated when mentally you cannot enjoy your latest purchase for at least a couple years...

Never liked ESS dacs, but everyone hears a bit different and has different tolerances. However as you just mentioned newer cheaper higher quality units are always going to be released.

I do a lot of headphone listening and used to not like AKM and now they’re one of my top dacs.

Yet probably to be clear, I think it’s not the dac, rather the way it’s implemented. That is probably far more crucial than any discussion or consideration. Hence why that same DAC chip sounds like trash in one unit and better in another.

Many of these start up company’s from China or wherever are starting to use analyzers and tune units to perfection.

So those articles and all this talk that is out their is trash and usually paid advertisements.