thing is, on paper data, the ESS beats the PCM2704 by many streets.

FOE lab kan ada.

Pergi la sana dan guna.

This post has been edited by LittleGhost: Oct 23 2012, 08:41 PM

I'm around Cyberjaya for a few hours for my ITP presentation.

Maybe I can give you a hand. (if you're lucky to catch me. I'm at the library now. Waiting for 11.30 am presentation) I'm in a rush later. Taking a flight back.


And no, if any, soldering joint quality matters more. Solder lead does not affect sound quality. Their main function is to secure the pins to the pads, nothing more. Besides, solder has six times of resistance comparing to copper, so most if not all signal passes through the copper pins anyway.

This post has been edited by LittleGhost: Oct 24 2012, 10:39 AM

Best bet is to travel to chchyong89's house.

Or screw it, learn how to solder, save yourself millions of dollars in the future. Just tell the lab technicians it's for your FYP.

HUGE Improvement in terms of digital audio interface.

You can basically run 32 bit audio now with little issues. The PCM5102A is a direct competition towards the now-pretty-popular ESS Sabre 9023.

The chip also runs asynchronously with a low jitter external clock.

In essence, a very very compact high performing DAC module.


At the price he's offering, it's a steal. Get it. Even RSA's dac is light years behind this.

superior 32 bit

The bit control is firmware level controlled. I believe he's making it 16/32 bit is so that user either chooses "highest bit" or lowest common bit.

Either way, you should just use 32 bit even with actual 16/24 bit media. The extra padding gives you better headroom in terms of software attenuation.

Aiya, that's not the point.

You should use 32 bit even if you're playing 16 bit/ 24 bits.

The point is to use a higher bit processing rate for everything so you can afford better dynamic range and without loss of fidelity in case you software attenuate.

You're essentially representing the data at a higher bit rate. It doesn't do anything to the existing resolution, but merely gives you the capability to "software attenuate" without losing the one bit per 6 dB.

It's not so important if you don't use software attenuation. Either way it's good to run at higher bit rates.