Good quality pre-made HiFi DAC board? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: tobia
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 07:46:05 pm
content: Hi allI'm in the planning stage for a (hobbyist-level) digital MIDI synthesizer, built using an FPGA for the actual synthesis and a Raspberry Pi + touch screen for the user interface. One critical component, though, is a good quality DAC to get actual music out of it.I've seen several examples of DIY DAC made inside a FPGA, using PWM or PDM techniques. The one I like the best so far is zipcpu'sBit-reversed counter PDMtechnique. It's very clever! I'm still in the initial stage for my FPGA circuit, so I can't test it yet and have no idea what it sounds like. But I'm afraid that, while clever, it won't stand a chance compared to a high-quality DAC board, including all the passive filtering and noise control and whatnot (which I'm definitely not good enough to design and build.)Therefore I'm looking for a good (high quality but not "audiophile"-priced!) discrete stereo DAC board, that I can drive from my FPGA as a plan B, in case I can't get good audio output with the various PWM techniques (which is very likely.)I've found something onHiFiBerry, such as their€25 model(which is more or less my budget) but those are designed specifically for the Raspberry Pi, so I would have to reverse engineer their protocol to drive them from my FPGA. Also they only have RCA jacks, no amplified headphone output, which would be nice to have.Does anybody have any pointers?The reason I'm looking for a ready made board is, as I mentioned, high quality (hi-fi) audio output is tricky, because it depends on high quality components and careful component matching, and I'm more of a software / digital circuit person, so all the analog wizardry is unfortunately beyond me.

author: tobia
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2021, 08:06:45 pm
content: I think this fits my needs:Pmod I2S2Cirrus CS4344 breakout board. It's a 24-bit, 192 kHz audio DAC so it ought to be good, and the board fits my budget.I don't know what Pmod is, but it says I2S and that's fine enough.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2021, 05:54:04 pm
content: That looks like exactly what you want. I would not call it "audiophile" quality but I am sure it is better than needed and plenty.

author: Mr. Wizard
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 05:21:55 am
content: If $100 is in your price range, and you’d be OK with passing data back then using the USB output of the Raspberry Pi, take a look at theTopping D10s. It’s a 32-bit 384 KHz DAC based around the ES9038Q2M DAC chip. We’re using one in a scientific laboratory as a general reference DAC for our instruments; we’ve also used the older Topping D10. It’s a low-priced solution that has worked as well as a $2,000 DAC that we replaced. If you search Google for “ES9038Q2M” you’ll also find lots of other boards and DACs built around that IC, which sells for around $16 by itself. Searching for it on AliExpress will find options as low as $50. It’s a good DAC.

author: Old Printer
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 12:33:33 pm
content: Quote from: tobia on July 18, 2021, 08:06:45 pmPMOD is an open standard defined by Digilent. They built an army of modules based on it to interface with their various dev boards and products.

author: MasterT
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2021, 12:48:12 pm
content: Quote from: tobia on July 18, 2021, 08:06:45 pmCouples years ago I got this module. To my surprise THD level was enormous, ~1% at the lower freq. range. Contacting manufacture's tech. support forum I was informed, that SMD capacitors X5/Z5 - types, for both inputs/outputs. Ask if they change to C0G, or "tube sound" guaranteed.

author: Renate
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2021, 11:13:35 am
content: I bought one of the I²S PMOD a year ago and haven't even gotten around to testing it.I looked at the caps, they're tan colored. Who knows.