Possible New DAC for Discrete Opamp Rolling

glen, nice to hear from you, and you seem to know the benefit of rolling discrete opamps. I have an email sent off to Burson to see what they recommend for my EE Minimax DAC Supreme. I saw one guy put the V5 into it (dual and single), so I know that would work. I presume the V6 would work, and from the highly scientific analysis (facetious; they show a chart of descriptive factors) it seems the V6 Classic would appeal to me. 

But, I'm also talking DACs, and I'm somewhat surprised that there have been no recommendations yet. What does that mean? Aren't there any high quality DACs with swappable opamps? One should not have to go to a megabuck MSB to get to roll opamps. I sure hope that we're not down to cheap headphone combo DAC/Preamps as selection for rolling opamps.  :(

I tried the Burson V5 at one point and wasn't too terribly impressed.  However, the new V6 Vivid op amps are excellent.  Much better resolution and they sing!  However, the best opamp I think are the Sonic Imagery 994Enh (or the 992 if you need a single channel op amp).  They have the absolute best resolution and clarity, but they are huge and are very demanding on the power supply and require power supply capacitors mounted very close to the pins.  I actually have soldered 3 caps directly onto the top of the op amp itself (330uf + 100uf + 47uf + 0.1uf MKP).  If you want a clean/clear bipolar Krell type of sound, these are the best.  However, the Burson are slightly warmer but with excellent clarity if you want something towards that sound.  Burson are very compact, but even they need some good power supply caps very near the pins.

I tried the Orange discrete opamps.  They are okay I guess, but lacked resolution and clarity.  They are probably about equal to the opa627 monolitic op amps.

The Sparkos are nice, much better than any monolithic opamp, but they are soft in the highs and slightly warm in a clean/bipolar way (when you have proper power supply).  Overall excellent, but the V6 Vivid and Sonic Imagery are better.

If you can find a used L.K.S MH-DA003 DAC, that might be a good platform to do op amp rolling. 

auxinput, splendid reply, thanks! You obviously know what you are doing in regard to this subject. 

Are you indicating that the Sonic Imagery 994 Enh (or 992 single) require additional caps? i.e. That it is not recommended to use these without modification of the EE Minimax DAC Supreme? Or, are you indicating that optimal performance will not result without addition of caps? The way you described the use of the Sonic Imagery opamps it sounds like damage could result if the unit is not modified. 

I'm not sure if Sparkos Labs has changed their discrete opamps in the past several years; they appear the same. NewClassD looks revolutionized, and I have a message in to them, too. 

Hey douglas.  None of these op amps will cause damage if they are put into an un-modified device.  Don't even worry about that.  They are all designed to work exactly as a standard monolithic op amp.  However, these high current discrete op amps can sound somewhat bright/thin and have a solid state harshness if they are starved for power.  Looking at internal pictures of the Minimax, I can see that there are some capacitors close to the op amps, but I cannot tell if these are power supply caps or if they are DC signal blocking caps.  In any event, if you want to try out different op amps, go for it.  As I said, the Sonic Imagery are the best in my opinion, but they are absolutely huge and will not physically fit in some locations.  The Burson V6 Vivid is second place and gives a little less resolution and more warmth, but it still has more overall resolution than the Sparkos.  The Sonic Imagery are the most demanding, but even the Burson V6 Vivid and the Sparkos can sound a little thin/bright without good power.  Making sure you have a good amount of power capacitance very close to the op amp will make the op amp sound smoother and fuller.

I have tried the previous generation NawClassD op amps and regulators and was completely unimpressed with their stuff.  The op amps were the Special Edition with super fast slew rates.  In some ways they sounded better than monolithic, but after some time listening, I could tell that there were problems with the sound and resolution/air.  The regulators were complete crap and made any equipment sound like low resolution consumer electronics.  I have not tried the new models they have release.  The design is different and uses different discrete components, but I don't know what the result is.

The Sparkos regulators are absolutely amazing!  I recommend them for replacing any existing 78xx/79xx voltage regulators (if you are adept at desoldering/soldering projects).

In my opinion, the best monolothic op amps are opa627, opa827 and ad797, but all three of these have compromises in one fashion or another and are not as good as the discrete op amps.

You may have missed my suggestion, but if you want, keep your eye out for a used L.K.S. MH-DA003 DAC, which is the previous model (maybe on ebay or audiogon). These are excellent DACs and have sockets for swappable op amps. Not many DACs have the sockets and most are soldered directly in. I have a Emotiva XDA-2 DAC and i have to remove the op amps and put in sockets so that I could "roll". You could probably get the LKS for about $1k or maybe less.