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TDA1541A

The THIRD BATTLE OF GIANTS - last one and BIGGEST TO DATE.


The old champions and new challengers  will be represented by:

1. TDA1541 inside one of the best CD of all times - the Sony CDP227ESD with a full tweaking job, NOS  and a lampizator built in.
2. The new contender will be ROCKNA DAC utilizing AD1865 chip (Audio-Note DAC4 and 5 !) with identical lampizator like in DAC4 and Sowter transformers (Tubes will be Amperex Ecc182)
3. The barely legal youngest stallion - ESS DAC from Twisted Pear - the BUFFALO SABRE - with Lampizator
4. The current residing champion - my personal favourite -  with all the belts - DENON DCD2560 with one of the best DACS ever - 4 pieces of AD1862 with Broskje Lampizator variant.
5. one of the best CD I ever had -Kenwood 8010 with Burr Brown DAC PCM58 and KSS190A mechanism - with lampizator and full tuning/clock job.
6. Lampucera with the best Cirrus DAC CS4397
7. Behringer Upsampler with a AKN DAC AK4393
8. ARCAM CD73 with lampizator (Wolfson DAC)
9. Sony Playstation 1 with lampizator


After this comparative test I will close the CD chapter and rest my case. There will be not much more I can learn from these experiments. I will leave it to  others to work further and find better caps, better tubes, silver cables, better operating points - PERFECTIONISM is what I leave to the followers.

A year later (dec 2009)

Ok, Ok, I admit - making a valuable comparison of 9 devices, all so good that almost perfect - is practically impossible and possibly impractical.
Anyone claiming such verdict would have to have his head examined.
But I have lived with all of them for a year, listening and tweaking, and I can say what I generally think.

The TDA1541A continues to surprise me. When I thought that I know its limits, I discovered website where there was a ready recipe for non-oversampling mod in a Sony chipset environment and this mod pushed the TDA quality to another level. My favourite solution is double paralleled TDA and SRPP lampizator based on Siemens e88cc tubes. I have a preference for Sony demodulator versus the Philips one. So the choice comes down to two players: sony CDP-227ESD and 337. Despite the 337 being MUCH heavier built - the 227 actually sounds more attractive to me.
Broadly generalizing, the good old TDA is unbeatable. It can only be just about equalled by the other DACS which sound "different". The TDA in the car kingdom would be the BMW B28 M5 from 1992.

2. While the original Rockna sucked, the AD1865 NOS concept as for example in Audio Note DAC4 and DAC5 and some 3's and kits too - is a hell of a dac. It is infinitely easier to implement than TDA1541A and its sound is very attractive. Direct comparison to the TDA makes AD a slight winner in every area but the AD never gets me emotional as much as the TDA does. I could really live with any of them, or rather - with both.

3. The ESS dac is a mixed bag. While I really love its sound - I am angry about poor availability of the product.
I mean - offering a DAC only through a one man company from USA is not the way to be admired, applauded or recommended. Such sales channel limitation leads to monopolistic practices, market degeneration and unrealistic pricing. Lack of competition will kill ANYTHING in the world.
And there we are: the DAC itself, as a chip, is in my opinion the best DAC in the world today. It is a class of its own.
Especially with Behringer upsampler before it.
But I will not recommend you to buy BUFFALO dac which when we tied it in stock form with many too many op-amps - sounded uninspiring and flat.  And I can not expect anybody to desolder 80 % of that PCB and rebuild it for Lampizator output. That's unrealistic.
So we can now wait for someone to offer ESS Sabre Reference DAC in a more user friendly package. Chances are - I will be that someone.

4. Denon 2560 is a player of limitless possibilities.
The DAC AD1862 is magical, arguably even better than the AD1865. I have managed to: a) lampize that DAC from current outputs (biig improvement) and I also managed to B) convert the balanced PCB into paralleled mode. I gave omitted the digital flip of absolute signal phase and I floated all 4 DAC inputs and I fed them with the same signal and I gained the idling DACs from negative phase - being now positive again. The paralleled signal in analog domain makes the already explosive sound - even better.
If I could only do C) NOS for this DAC - it would probably be even much better. Seems impossible but true - AD1862 is one of those DACS to die for.

5. one of the best CD I ever had -Kenwood 8010 with Burr Brown DAC PCM58 and huge magnetic mechanism, a class higher quality than similar Sony KSS190A mechanism - with lampizator and full tuning/clock job. Do you think I am crazy, or on glue? Kenwood???  - those people who make kitchen toasters ? YES. They used to be in top three of Japan makers, alongside Sony and  Teac. In my opinion, Kenwoods DP8010, 8020 and x9010 represent the highest level of technical excellence ever achieved in the history of audio engineering. I am talking about the mass products, not Forsell Air Reference.
Anyhow - I digress. The 8010 which I happened to use for the past weeks - is very good but not GREAT ENOUGH. It does everything well, mechanically, visually and sound wise, but the PCM58 is holding it back. This is a great DAC chip but not as great as the above described kings.
The lampized Kenwood would beat EVERY player out there from the stock crowd, but not the lampized champions.

6. Lampucera with the best Cirrus DAC CS4397 - I did not use Lampucera for the past couple of months so it gets excluded from this set of divagation. I will return to it in the next 2-3 months.


7. Behringer Upsampler with a AKM DAC AK4393   - This is the black horse of this contest. Initially I treated it like a joke, like a fun project to test my skills, and eventually it impressed everybody to a serious degree. It is very close or equal or even above the TDA1541 and AD1865. It does not beat the ESS Sabre32 but it is damn close, definitely in the same league. What attracts me to the AKM dac is that it is both cheaper and easy to purchase inside the Behringer Upsampler or Ultracurve. That easily off-sets the minuscule difference in sound to the advantage of still best ESS Sabre32.

I haven't tried the AKM's AK4395 or 6, Some people say the higher models are better, other people claim that the 93 is the best shot, the one with pure magic spell.  I cant say.

8. ARCAM CD73 with lampizator (Wolfson WM8742 DAC)
This is great DAC and great player - but not as good as the ESS SAbre or AKM DAC. Today, Wolfson is the most popular choice of many manufacturers and it can be had for little money, implemented in hundreds of players, DVDs, squeezeboxes and DACs. I really recommend it even if the Sabre ESS I recommend even more.


The other DACs I like are: TDA1543 in 8x parallel  application and also the  Philips' TDA1549.
I also like the B-B PCM1794 and B-B PCM-63. They can be - with good application and tube stage - as good as any of the chips mentioned above.

If you download and read my WORD TUTORIAL DOC ver 3.0 - I will put there the ready recipes for the best Lampizator circuits for all these chips.

Also read this story of a Mikrolampizator in Behringer Ultramatch