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burr-brown vs. sabre vs. ?

just curious if any people here have experience-based impressions the differences various converter chips make, assuming they're roughly the same vintage. I'm looking to buy a digital interface for digitizing LPs; it's a more mass, consumer-driven (not high end) type of market, so features are pretty uniform at any given price point, which makes me wonder if the different chips have a 'sound'. put another way: if you were choosing an interface for audiophile purposes (my preference in 'neutral', when it comes to component choice), would you gravitate towards any particular manufacturer?
musicslug
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 

"burr-brown vs. sabre vs. ?"

What you should ask is

Delta Sigma which 1bit, bitstream, and even Sabre are,
vs R2R Ladder Multibit dac chip.

Most of the real high end manufacturers are going back to using R2R ladder Multibit, even some using discrete versions of it. Very expensive chips to manufacture compared to Delta Sigma types.
They say only an R2R Ladder Multibit dac chip has "Bit Perfect Precision" It's all how they are implemented, back in the old days ladder dacs didn't have the great I/V stages we can have today and sounded crap because of it.

Cheers George
coli
291 posts
 
burr-brown sounds very nice. Sabre sounds digital thin. NOS R2R sounds heavenly. 1bit DSD sounds super digital thin.

If you are looking for a ADC instead of a DAC, looks at the Ross Martin PCM4222.
bombaywalla's avatar
bombaywalla
1,958 posts
 
agree with Georgelofi - Burr-Brown vs Sabre is the wrong way to approach the issue.
As posted already, you should hear whether you like a multi-bit DAC (Philips, Burr-Brown) or a single-bit DAC (Sabre, Wolfson, Analog-Devices & some Burr-Brown).
Different strokes for different folks - you might sonically like the 1-bit DACs? Need to listen to find out.
Personally, I prefer a multi-bit DAC including a non-oversampling DAC. YMMV.
ait
480 posts
 
Implementation is everything. I had a BB PCM1704 based DAC then built a tube-output Sabre (Buffalo IIISE based) that blows the BB away in every way. Power supply and output stage count at least as much as the DAC chip.
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