Boss Dac is very popular with the RPI world. The combination of great sound quality with a good price has been the cornerstone of Boss.
However the design is quite old and we started searching for next gen Boss.
With many ICs on the market, we were looking for something that has I2S Master ability (we all know that RPI has jittery clocks) so our choices are ESS Sabre and Cirrus Logic. While I have worked in the past with ESS Sabre, our new choice is Cirrus Logic CS43198.
So yeah we went to work. Every single rail has a dedicated LDO. Every single rail has dedicated PI filters with correct dampening. There are 30 LDOs in total.
There is another advantage..
We discovered (when doing Rev Dac) that I2S noise influences the sound. The advantage of CS43198 is that it needs 1.8V logic instead of 3.3V. So every logic has to be buffered and sent. The obvious upside (disadvantage is cost) is that we used LDOs on every buffer so instead of having the RPI I2S / I2C noisy lines, we have a well controlled, very low noise signal from our buffers, feeding the DAC IC.
We expect to start selling them in about 2 months or less.
Tech specs:
- THD+N at -112 (1Khz)
- Jitter Test distortion under 145db at full signal (no jitters reduction pll enabled on CS43198)
- Output 1.7V or 2.0 V software select
- Filters including NOS software select
- RPI4 optimized .
- $99 including DAC , remote and aluminium casing . RPI4 and psu sold separately
However the design is quite old and we started searching for next gen Boss.
With many ICs on the market, we were looking for something that has I2S Master ability (we all know that RPI has jittery clocks) so our choices are ESS Sabre and Cirrus Logic. While I have worked in the past with ESS Sabre, our new choice is Cirrus Logic CS43198.
So yeah we went to work. Every single rail has a dedicated LDO. Every single rail has dedicated PI filters with correct dampening. There are 30 LDOs in total.
There is another advantage..
We discovered (when doing Rev Dac) that I2S noise influences the sound. The advantage of CS43198 is that it needs 1.8V logic instead of 3.3V. So every logic has to be buffered and sent. The obvious upside (disadvantage is cost) is that we used LDOs on every buffer so instead of having the RPI I2S / I2C noisy lines, we have a well controlled, very low noise signal from our buffers, feeding the DAC IC.
We expect to start selling them in about 2 months or less.
Tech specs:
- THD+N at -112 (1Khz)
- Jitter Test distortion under 145db at full signal (no jitters reduction pll enabled on CS43198)
- Output 1.7V or 2.0 V software select
- Filters including NOS software select
- RPI4 optimized .
- $99 including DAC , remote and aluminium casing . RPI4 and psu sold separately
