I dabble in audio.

Don't take anything I say as gospel, I don't add nearly enough snake oil to my hifi recipes :-)


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Wouter's page : DIY Audio

As noted before, my interest in all things Hi-Fi started with building amplifiers and other gadgets. And that's the way it will be, I'm as interested in playing with the bits as I am in listening to the results.

Cables

Both TNT-Audio and Chris VenHaus recommend using CAT5 network cable for making your own cables, so if you want to start with something simple, but labour intensive, check it out.

Amplifiers that glow in the dark

Jukka Tolonen built a Peak Level Meter using Indicator Tubes -- I think this will look so cool in a preamplifier. He also built a Tube DAC output stage.

Digital to Analogue Converters

An outboard DAC can improve on your CD player's built-in DAC in three (main) ways, namely reduced jitter on the digital side, a better filter, and a better analogue output stage. You can read up on this on Norbert Bayer and Marc Heijligers' pages (links below).

ESP has, in Rod Elliott's words, "quite possibly the simplest possible S/PDIF receiver and DAC you will ever find", using a CS8414 S/PDIF receiver and a CS4334 DAC.

The ESP DAC is a good starting point, but it does not address jitter on the input signal at all. The Cirrus (Crystal) CS8420 is a sample rate converter which can be used to completely isolate the DAC clock from the input signal clock and its jitter. Norbert Bayer's DAC4 and DAC5 use the CS8420.

Links

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Back to Wouter's Page (This page last modified 2003-07-14)