Blue Moon Award for Burson Audio's new DAC/Preamp

6Moons quote from YDA-01 DAC review

If Shigeki-San were to ask me for engineering advice on the YDA-01 (he clearly doesn't need it nor would I be competent to give any), I would suggest he at least investigate the AK4397 if he hasn't already. There's something special about it and it's worthy of conjecture to wonder how his I/V conversion and output stages would sound with those chips.

While AK4397 are turly exceptional, the AK4399 are much better in every respect, and by far, IMHO! And, none of these requires I/V converter.

Best,
Alex Peychev
www.aplhifi.com

Yes, I recall that speculation regarding the AK 4397 but S. Ebaen ultimately choose the Yamamoto to replace his then current APL HiFi as his new reference DAC. It seems Yamamoto`s passive/very simple I/V conversion approach is sonically effective.
Regards

...but S. Ebaen ultimately choose the Yamamoto to replace his then current APL HiFi as his new reference DAC.

While everything is subjective, Srajan still suggested to Shingeki-San to investigate AK4397 because of their refined top-extension, correct?

15 years ago I was playing with the 16 bit PCM-53J mono current-output DACs that were the choice for the D/A conversion in the Sony D1 prfessional digital video recorder ($180,000), then I went through all imaginable DAC chips made by Burr-Brown (including PCM1794), Analog Devices, Cirrus Logic, Wolfson and AKM.

AKM is still my favorite, and their latest AK4399 is the best in my book.

Maybe you would consider auditioning one of my new DAC-S boxes and let us know what you think about it compared to yours?

Regards,
Alex Peychev

Alex,
What's the price on the DAC-S? Has volume control?

Hello Rja,

The DAC-S is $5000 with 5 years warranty included. Yes, it does have a remote volume control with 0.5dB step. It comes with 192/24 capable USB based on a highly upgraded hiFace from M2Tech with linear power, 2 coaxial RCA (75 Ohm) and one AES/EBU (110 Ohm balanced) digital inputs. Both USB and built-in upsampler are asynchronous. Please note that the USB allows for “device DMA” when paired with J. River Media Center and ASIO4ALL which allows for much better results compared to Kernel Streaming, WASAPI and Apple based solution, all IMHO of course! The analog output stage is Lundahl-transformer-coupled (Amorphous core), has no negative feedback, no OpAmps and can drive most headphones direct.

Best,
Alex Peychev