Another interesting r2r dac

[rickmcinnis]

Now to hope Nigel will figure out how to do it!!!

I know I could not.

[abraxalito]

See this: http://6moons.com/audioreviews2/lessloss5/1.html

$90,000 dollars SD card player.

That price and they only give out single-ended I2S? Not the (almost industry standard) HDMI LVDS I2S? They have to be taking the p*ss!

[rickmcinnis]

I thought the "standard" IIS instead of the HDMI/LVDS variety was better as long as you kept the cables less than a couple of inches. (There is not a fun way to say 5 cm.)

Since I assume that this player is without compromise maybe they felt this was the best way to handle it? I would think so. SDTrans has that capability built it and I have a LVDS receiver but I have never bothered trying it that way. Used that system with a JULI@ card since one would not want the dac inside the computer.

Does anyone know anything about that other SD player that was mentioned in passing in the article?

One thing not addressed was how they are getting the files on to the SD card. I have found this makes a difference. Loading with USB is not good. You end up with computer player sounds. SATA interface sounds MUCH better.

[jrling]

The most interesting bit is in the second to last para where they indicate that the streamer only contains one clock that is used from input to output. I think that synchronicity is a step that (if DIYers can take it) will lead to significant benefits.

My marketing bull detector antennae were twitching uncontrollably.
Starting with its name. Streamer? Not in my book. "stream digital data off an SD card to a DAC of your choice." I regard that as reading data off an SD card used as the store of the music files.

I have not seen a picture of the inside of the Laminar, but my deduction is that it is an SD card player based on a proprietary FPGA, programmed with their 'Direct Drive OS'. Ringing a bell?

It has two clocks inside actually for the 44.1 & 48 MHz frequencies. But the 'synchronicity' stops there. What I had expected and what I think crom is referring to, is the benefit of synchronicity between the player and the [I2S] connected DAC. Surprisingly, as far as I can see, LessLoss do not appear to synchronise the Laminar player to their Soekris-based 1101 OEM DAC inside the the 'Echo's End' DAC they sell alongside the Laminar.

The obvious competitor to the Laminar is the excellent SDTrans384 SD card player owned by a number of guys on this forum. In 2012, Bunpei planned to offer synchronicity between his SDTrans384 and his ESS 9018-based DAC, via a daughter board with two high quality NDK oscillators on that board. But it did not seem to have been sold due to complexity and high price.

But one contributor reported -

However, the point really is that, especially after incorporating synchronised clock mode where the modification of a ESS ES9018 based DAC gets a sub-board with custom made 90/98MHz NDK clocks and the clock signal gets sent vie the HDMI cable over to the SDTrans where the clock signal gets decided to the 22/24MHz values employed by the SDTrans, the sound of any music file starting with "CD level" 44.1kHz/16bit sounds stunning. It is my opinion that the synchronised clock mode SDTrans together with an ESS ES9018 based DAC sounds on par (or better) than any top level digital system regardless of price (I have heard many candidates with daunting price tags). It makes me very happy every time I listen to music via such an SDTrans based system, despite that my ultimate preference for listening to music is still the analog vinyl record on a top notch turntable system.

So I wonder if there are any synchronised Players/DACs available on the DIY end of the market?

[rickmcinnis]

abraxalito,

Just discovered your imaging filter at DIYAudio.

Are you still using this three years later?

[abraxalito]

I thought the "standard" IIS instead of the HDMI/LVDS variety was better as long as you kept the cables less than a couple of inches. (There is not a fun way to say 5 cm.)

Yeah that would normally mean not going externally via any connector since the wiring involved couldn't add fewer than a couple of inches. I2S is designed to be Inter-Integrated circuit (like I2C) not inter-box.

Since I assume that this player is without compromise maybe they felt this was the best way to handle it? I would think so.

Makes sense to assume so, which doesn't help with credibility of the overall design. For $90k you'd hope for a certain level of competence no? If it were powered by battery then they might be able to get away with running unbalanced but this box is mains powered which means almost certainly the ground connection is going to be carrying noise off the mains to the interconnected kit (DAC in this case). Common-mode noise is going to add jitter.

About your question on the anti-imaging filter, if you mean the inductor-based one then a couple of my historic DACs have those but those DACs sit in drawers unused at present. The TDA1387 DAC I mostly use has a similar filter but implemented actively. I'm still toying with the best ways to realize these kinds of filters, I feel they're essential to the design.

[abraxalito]

My marketing bull detector antennae were twitching uncontrollably.

My BS-o-meter has regularly flicked over to its end stop on offerings from this particular outfit.

I have not seen a picture of the inside of the Laminar, but my deduction is that it is an SD card player based on a proprietary FPGA, programmed with their 'Direct Drive OS'.

I am curious as to why no internal pics for this item. Normally 6moons is an excellent purveyor of audio porn. The only reason could be they've got something to hide. Could it be they've re-purposed a Taobao FPGA-based SDcard player, for example like this one : https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a2 ... =18#detail ?

[jrling]

My marketing bull detector antennae were twitching uncontrollably.

My BS-o-meter has regularly flicked over to its end stop on offerings from this particular outfit.

I have not seen a picture of the inside of the Laminar, but my deduction is that it is an SD card player based on a proprietary FPGA, programmed with their 'Direct Drive OS'.

I am curious as to why no internal pics for this item. Normally 6moons is an excellent purveyor of audio porn. The only reason could be they've got something to hide. Could it be they've re-purposed a Taobao FPGA-based SDcard player, for example like this one : https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a2 ... =18#detail ?

Actually, I do have some respect for LessLoss. They are not afraid to invest massive sums in doing their own thing, quite often contrary to 'normal practice' over long periods of time. The end result is therefore doomed to be either $91,000 or so specialist and left field that they will never get their return. Doesn't seem to stop them though.

Also to be fair, I don't think they are taking others stuff and re-purposing. Lots of other companies out there doing that of course. Looking at the 6 Moons pix, there are two outline drawings like this one -

LaminarStreamer-DRAWING-737px-01.jpg (117.39 KiB) Viewed 1255 times

which bear no resemblance to the Chinese SD Player PCBs and they do say -

We've been busy re-vamping the entire schematic because we decided to add some features which necessitated moving some things around on the main circuit board. And because we already had everything calculated to shortest possible signal paths, it became another huge project to redo the entire schematic.

[rickmcinnis]

A company using a SOEKRIS DAC in a lovely box wold be the definition of using other folk's stuff and doing nothing more than aggrandizing it.

I do not know much about LESSLOSS but have always had a vague suspicion they were a company one should be wary.

I, too, was very disappointed we saw nothing of the innards of this mystery player. We did not see much of the outside other than push buttons in a heavily cropped picture. One of the worst articles the magazine has ever published. No question I doubt many here go to 6moons to read the prose. It is the pictures and I have been very grateful for them.

I am thinking the imaging filter will be a bigger aspect of the AUDIO-GD's performance than with the SOEKRIS due to the SOEKRIS oversampled version of non-oversampling or do you, abraxalito, think they are similar in that regard?

[jkeny]

The reason a synchronous clock greatly improved the sound of the ESS DACs is that it bypasses the inbuilt ASRC in the ESS chip - I did this 5 years ago in my first ESS based DAC