DCAudioDIY.com

I have this board setup:

http://www.diyinhk.com/shop/audio-kits/ ... nd_led_pcb

and this one

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Assembled-AK449 ... 1771770440?

The USB portion does need a regulated 3.3V supply, so we'll be building that. I see that you didn't use a 5-pin connector, just individual wires. Okay, I just need to find a few of those. The other end is simple: just solder directly to the board, the header comes uninstalled.

You might be able to use the 3.3VDC regulator on the AK4495EQ DAC board to drive the USB board. It is the LT1085CT-3.3V 3A regulator that should have more than enough capacity to drive the XMOS chip as well.

The TO220 IC case can be heatsinked easily on these boards.

Good idea, that would be helpful; one less task! although I'm most concerned about software and Windows or Linux, depending.....

If I'm in enough trouble, I'll show up at your doorstep, but not after 1:00AM.

The USB board has the Windows OS USB driver to download. Spotted it when I looked.

Just start with Foobar2000 as the music player and the instructions to get it running on a PC look correct at the website.

I will do that.

Read through the instructions a couple of times.

Already have Foobar2000, we'll see where that goes, with the add-ons.

Was hoping to implement the Daphile setup Roscoe had at the show, but one step at a time!

Just remember if you have the DSDIFF component installed in Foobar2000 to remove it before installing the DSD components. They interfere with each other.

No idea what that component is (doesn't really matter as long as it works), but now it's written on the back of my hand, like a cheat sheet!

DSDIFF is the component that takes DSD *.IFF files and downsamples them to PCM to playback on any DAC.

To playback Native DSD mode files, you need to do the instructions on the USB board website.

I received my AK4490 DAC board, complete with XMOS USB receiver card, digital display showing input and sampling rate, and switch for selecting optical/SPDIF/USB. Wired it up with recommended power transformers (2x9V, 10W each + 12-0-12, 10W) and it is playing! First impression is that this is a very liquid sounding DAC, using 44.1K/16 input from my music server thru the USB interface. No digital hardness or glare. I am going to play around with it (replacing the opamp with a Burson module) and also try some hi-res material, perhaps try upsampling to the unit if it does not already do that internally.

Damn great for less than $100 in parts.

David

Does not the Burson's draw quite a bit more current than the IC's