I believe Exogal Comet and Merlot dac are also FPGA, and of course the Metrum dacs. I like PS Audio, own a PWD M2 and it's very good, but I believe that one is delta sigma using burr brown chips.
I love my PS Audio Direct Stream with Red Cloud :)
Yesterday, PS Audio released the Red Cloud FPGA software written by MIT genius
Ted Smith.
With immense delight, I auditioned all through the night.
The beauty exceeds what were my wildest expectations when I purchased the DAC
several years ago, and reconfirmed that I had made another good choice (my
previous good choices include Tannoy 15" DC speakers, Cary SLP05 preamp,
Art Audio Jota HC monoblocks, Wavelength Cardinal monoblocks, Cardas Clear
cables, Acoustic Zen reference cables, Wyred4Sound server, PS Audio Premier
Power Plant, inexpensive HDMI cable, and ceramic corn dishes.
While I haven't heard a great many DACs, I have heard static-state Sabre DACs,
which sound ear-bleeding mediocre IME, and R2R chips which were the thing 20+
years ago. I think that FPGA Red Cloud is superior, and the best thing
aesthetically to have come from a scientist educated at MIT. Make music, not
war.
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with PS Audio, except as a happy customer. It's
just a great company!
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According to Exogal CEO Jeff Haagenstad in conversation with Michael Lavorgna of Audiostream: "The longer version is that we don't do our D to A conversion in a conventional way. We have implemented a 6-core DSP in an FPGA (and we blew the "Read" bit, so we can write to it for upgrades but it can't be read or decompiled...) and we use some signal processing approaches that are unconventional in audio but not in wider signal processing work." "The EXOGAL DSP platform (on which the Comet is the first of many products to exploit the technology) does have some conventional DAC chips but only the final output stages of the DAC chips are used for the final translation into analog. The main output uses PCM4104 DAC's and the headphones use PCM5122 DAC's. The outputs are buffered using TI/National LME49600 buffers. These are high-current, high-impedance, class AB buffers with no feedback. Beyond that, we ain't sayin' " Read more at https://www.audiostream.com/content/exogal-comet-dac#zHAKuQUy8iV0yglU.99 |
- 34 posts total