There are in general, 2 different schools of design when it comes to DACs.
The TDA1541 is from the former - more old skool design of DACs where 16 bits of data are interpreted DIRECTLY as 16 bits. These are sometimes known as R2R or ladder DACs - where each bit represents a rung on the ladder.
There's a fairly unique sound that comes from such an implementation.
The TDA1541 also implements non-oversampling (NOS) which means 16/44 gets translated to 16/44 (as opposed to 16/176.4 etc)
Others include the BB PCM1704 and on a different scale, MSB has a custom built R2R DAC on their new range that is not built from off the shelf chips.
The second school of design DACs are called sigma delta DACs which convert 16 bits (or 24 or 32) into a much higher bitrate single (or multi bit usually 5?) stream. Sigma delta DACs are much cheaper to implement and there are some quarters that don't like how they sound. Most modern DACs are sigma delta in design including the Sabre32, and even the new BurrBrown like the PCM1794/1796 etc. A variation of the sigma delta designs are custom built DACs like those from Chord, PS Audio Direct Stream, dCS, Playback Designs and Meitner Audio for instance which use discrete designs rather than off the shelf DAC chips.
Sigma Delta DACs usually measure better in some respects because they shift the noise into higher bands which aren't usually audible. They usually lack a certain "bite" when playing 16/44 material - something quite apparent when playing back the same 16/44 material on say a TDA1541. Whether that is an artefact of the NOS 16/44 R2R conversion process is debatable :) but it does have its charm.
I have an Ayon quad PCM1704K based DAC (and CDP) as well as Meitner and Playback Designs DSD DACs and I like them all. I am a bit more partial to the DSD DACs in this case but I am not a fan of the Sabre32 stuff so it IMHO doesn't pay to generalise.
I have heard a TDA1541 based DAC before and it is IMHO very very good with the CDs I fed it with.
The TDA1541 is from the former - more old skool design of DACs where 16 bits of data are interpreted DIRECTLY as 16 bits. These are sometimes known as R2R or ladder DACs - where each bit represents a rung on the ladder.
There's a fairly unique sound that comes from such an implementation.
The TDA1541 also implements non-oversampling (NOS) which means 16/44 gets translated to 16/44 (as opposed to 16/176.4 etc)
Others include the BB PCM1704 and on a different scale, MSB has a custom built R2R DAC on their new range that is not built from off the shelf chips.
The second school of design DACs are called sigma delta DACs which convert 16 bits (or 24 or 32) into a much higher bitrate single (or multi bit usually 5?) stream. Sigma delta DACs are much cheaper to implement and there are some quarters that don't like how they sound. Most modern DACs are sigma delta in design including the Sabre32, and even the new BurrBrown like the PCM1794/1796 etc. A variation of the sigma delta designs are custom built DACs like those from Chord, PS Audio Direct Stream, dCS, Playback Designs and Meitner Audio for instance which use discrete designs rather than off the shelf DAC chips.
Sigma Delta DACs usually measure better in some respects because they shift the noise into higher bands which aren't usually audible. They usually lack a certain "bite" when playing 16/44 material - something quite apparent when playing back the same 16/44 material on say a TDA1541. Whether that is an artefact of the NOS 16/44 R2R conversion process is debatable :) but it does have its charm.
I have an Ayon quad PCM1704K based DAC (and CDP) as well as Meitner and Playback Designs DSD DACs and I like them all. I am a bit more partial to the DSD DACs in this case but I am not a fan of the Sabre32 stuff so it IMHO doesn't pay to generalise.
I have heard a TDA1541 based DAC before and it is IMHO very very good with the CDs I fed it with.