When are we expecting to see a bug-free example? :-"
Alan, no, as Ug said, it's going to be a "free sample" for us Young pioneers.
Seriously, I have minimal interest in the nxt DAC, as I'm v. happy with Young. Really very happy. I suspect the gains to be made do not equate to the quantity of reddies needed to get there. Nxt move for me is new speakers ... something that shifts a little more air....oh and building a new pair of power amps :-)
It's gonna be this evening, I think, before I get it all back together - I took the system apart when I was trying to figure out what had gone wrong, and it's remained that way.
my name is Tom and I'm new to this forum, though I've been lurking for quite some time I signed in today as I had some questions concerning alternative PSU for my Young Dac. Alan and Dave have been very helpful in direct contact and I appreciate their quick response a lot.
As I understand it, you want to upgrade the PSU you're using with your Young DAC, but a Teddy Pardo PSU will take too long to arrive. So, what do we know about PSUs for the Young?
I think these are the options:
Home-brew, based on the TeddyReg circuit. Build it yourself or find someone who's happy to build it for you
Teddy Pardo's own product, although I'm not sure anyone here has one
A variable bench-type PSU available from places like Maplin and Rapid
Home-brew battery supplies - although I found it difficult to find a 'container' (what is the proper word?) for the batteries, which are easy to come by on fleaBay
Keith's mysterious battery supply, which I think he's still keeping to himself ;-)
Is there anything I've missed?
And, probably most importantly, does anyone know of a PSU that Tom can obtain quickly from/in Germany?
Well, I'm in sales.. So I better keep hands off electronic wiring and DIY challenges. I've been searching the web lately to find a fully qualified alternative but this seems to be a tough one and battery is no option for me. Always dry when needed. So, I guess I'll be the first one here to use a dedicatTeddy Pardo Young Dac PSU which is currently being offered on his website. Just dropped my order 30 min ago .... In 2-4 weeks time I'll be able to report if it was worth the wait. ;-)
Yeah, I have the Teddy Pardo Zodiac PSU here, in order to power my Antelope Zodiac Plus, but I come to find out that Teddy didn't use the locking connector for it...so it would have worked on the Young too!! (same size tip positive plug) Argh...I have already sent the Young back to Italy for repair (right channel static, swooshing sound intermittent).
Ha - I said (almost prophetically) months ago that Young ownership would be like owning an Italian car - plenty of frustration but that just makes you love it more. Think Alfa Romeo (and the be glad Marco made the case out of aluminium).
Ah don't say that Alan ... I'd rather draw the analogy of the way the Italisans used to make wine in stinky old rotting vats, followed by the revolution in their industry in the 80s where stainless steel vats were introduced prior to bottling. Wow, Itallian wine is fabulous. Bold, deep, dark undertones, and brick-red for a nice Amarone ... hick!
Found another promising source for a potential alternative Young PSU at a german digital highend distributor. They alreday have linear PSU in stock for Squeezebox Classic/Touch, ARCAM rDac, Duet, Calyx, Evo and Vdac unfortunately currently not for the Young. But as german digital audio magazine Einsnull (Onezero) reports the range of PSU branded under BOTW (Best of two worlds - whatever hat means) are to be expanded for additional devices. Prices around 135 € or ca. 118 pounds (sorry no pounds sign on the keyboard of my MBP). So definitely something to keep an eye on ... though my TeddyPardo Young PSU is already on its way.
Since you said that I can share my thoughts freely I think I will report on my findings hoping not to disappoint anyone. Mind you that my English though decent is not native, I will use words that may sound odd but that's the best I can.
I compared the stock PSU to a sigma11 and to a pack of 5 A123 LiFePO4 batteries. The sigma11 brought better low end to the sound, better meaning that I found the Young a little light in more in the midbase which was the reason I used the word agressive when I was first describing the sound I was hearing. So the sigma11 was definitely a step up - though subtle I could easily pick up which one was playing at the time. Some would call that not insignificant but let's say not dramatic.
The battery pack was much better than the sigma11 - not only brought it even better bass definition but also the separation between instruments is better, you can hear more of the hall effect and the stage is wider and deeper. Now the Young was sounding delightful with everything I threw at it, the only problem is that the battery is a PITA to charge as there are no commercially available solutions and I had to have a friend redesign a charger for me which has died already three times in two weeks. Not very convenient. But for me the difference is too big to go back to the sigma11.
Regarding the cap change - again, that is one tricky procedure as everyhting is very thight spaced inside but the change was quite positive, don't know how to characterize it but the change was greater that the difference between the stock PSU and the sigma but may be not as pronounced as the sigma11 to A123s.
Now comes the controversial part - as I have stated in the beginning I have been in DIY for quite some time and some of my friends have been in DAC DIY for even longer, some of them are chips designers for Alcatel for example, others program FPGA chips for living and let's say they have a good idea about electronics. The first thing I did was to show them the board and they loved it - it does have quite a lot of proprietary technology inside, stuff that is not very easy to implement and that justifies what we are hearing - fluid musical sound that sounds natural and engaging. However their opinion is that the design is good but there is something they would avoid in a cost no object project - the DC to DC convertors inside because as good as they are impulse PSUs are not good in DACs. Their advice was not to go nuts on the external PSU as the mentioned DC/DC convertors will minimize the effect of a really good supply, something that will probably be quite different in the Vaughan. The explanantion about the much better sound from the batteries for me is that it gives galvanic isolation and that definitley has great impact on the Young. I am really really tempted to let them butcher the Young board and play with the supplies but I will be a good boy and listen to it the way it is. At least for now.
Again, take everything with a grain of salt as we all have different eyes(ears) for everything. But people that need a fantastic DAC at a reasonable price and have not heard it yet a missing quite a lot, this little thing is a game changer.
You are right, should have said something about it - well, it is supposed to be a good regulated PSU with very low noise, kind of "good enough to be better". Technically good, not sure if anyone has proclaimed it as the best ever, I just had it on hand and to be honest I expected much more.
The Sigma has decent noise measurements- but they only give it measured unloaded- call me cynical but I guess the noise increases significantly with load, it certainly by their own admission increases with output voltage. Also they only give an Rms measured noise of 12uV, rather than show you a graph of frequency vs level so it could have some huge thin spikes in there, but then again, maybe not.
There's more to life than low noise though as the difference between a good battery supply and a well regulated supply shows. You also want low impedance, batteries perform almost perfectly here, especially if you use high current rated ones like the A123 or 18650's LIfePo units. Low impedance typically means a faster more dynamic sound. That's the reason I replaced the capacitor in the Young for a much lower ESR cap. The Teddyreg performs well in terms of impedance, it's not as low as a battery supply, but it's effectively a purely resistive load which is the next best thing.
The 4 dc-dc convertors are indeed the major bottleneck in the remaining power supply in the Young, they do spit out some very high frequency noise, but it's low level enough not to worry about it. If you did wnat to have someone go to town on the power supply internally, then replacing each of these with very low impedance discrete regs, Paul Hynes, tentlabs shunt, ClassD, Spower, Superreg or similar would be the way to go.
Sadly the SMT board is beyond my ability to re-work i'd end up lifting tracks and pads if I modded it. I'll take it along to Colin at Chevin Audio for a look see in a few weeks, see what he says.
What about sealed acid-lead battery, as for example those used in electric bicycles? can be found at very reasonable prices, and are very capacitive, I've found 6v / 10Ah at 15€, using 3 of them would give 18v and at least 20h of autonomy (500mAh, I seem to remember that Young is rated at 300mAh).
Comments
Yessir, Simon!
Hopefully I will have a chance to compare/contrast tomorrow!
Keith.
vb Keith.
Is this the German website for power supplies ?
http://www.squeeze-upgrade.com/index.php
I don't know - page 30 posting on the Young and still waxing lyrically !!!!All being well I should get mine by the weekend or on monday next week, cant wait
Lee
I compared the stock PSU to a sigma11 and to a pack of 5 A123 LiFePO4 batteries. The sigma11 brought better low end to the sound, better meaning that I found the Young a little light in more in the midbase which was the reason I used the word agressive when I was first describing the sound I was hearing. So the sigma11 was definitely a step up - though subtle I could easily pick up which one was playing at the time. Some would call that not insignificant but let's say not dramatic.
The battery pack was much better than the sigma11 - not only brought it even better bass definition but also the separation between instruments is better, you can hear more of the hall effect and the stage is wider and deeper. Now the Young was sounding delightful with everything I threw at it, the only problem is that the battery is a PITA to charge as there are no commercially available solutions and I had to have a friend redesign a charger for me which has died already three times in two weeks. Not very convenient. But for me the difference is too big to go back to the sigma11.
Regarding the cap change - again, that is one tricky procedure as everyhting is very thight spaced inside but the change was quite positive, don't know how to characterize it but the change was greater that the difference between the stock PSU and the sigma but may be not as pronounced as the sigma11 to A123s.
Now comes the controversial part - as I have stated in the beginning I have been in DIY for quite some time and some of my friends have been in DAC DIY for even longer, some of them are chips designers for Alcatel for example, others program FPGA chips for living and let's say they have a good idea about electronics. The first thing I did was to show them the board and they loved it - it does have quite a lot of proprietary technology inside, stuff that is not very easy to implement and that justifies what we are hearing - fluid musical sound that sounds natural and engaging. However their opinion is that the design is good but there is something they would avoid in a cost no object project - the DC to DC convertors inside because as good as they are impulse PSUs are not good in DACs. Their advice was not to go nuts on the external PSU as the mentioned DC/DC convertors will minimize the effect of a really good supply, something that will probably be quite different in the Vaughan. The explanantion about the much better sound from the batteries for me is that it gives galvanic isolation and that definitley has great impact on the Young. I am really really tempted to let them butcher the Young board and play with the supplies but I will be a good boy and listen to it the way it is. At least for now.
Again, take everything with a grain of salt as we all have different eyes(ears) for everything. But people that need a fantastic DAC at a reasonable price and have not heard it yet a missing quite a lot, this little thing is a game changer.