Keces Da-131 Sp Dac

ND13

Does anyone have any experience with this DAC???

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150271580686&ssPageName=MERC_VI_RCRX_Pr3_PcY_BIN_Stores_IT&refitem=150271580380&itemcount=3&refwidgetloc=active_view_item&usedrule1=CrossSell_LogicX&refwidgettype=cross_promot_widget&_trksid=p284.m184&_trkparms=algo%3DCRX%26its%3DS%252BI%252BSS%26itu%3DISS%252BUCI%252BSI%26otn%3D3

jjeckelxz5

i would also like some feedback on this brand, i'm looking for a decent dac for my computer

steveinaz

Never heard of it--be careful, there's tons of these dime-a-dozen DAC's out there...

heiney9

They've used the right "buzz" words as far as the components go. It's sounds like a solid unit on paper. But I don't know. My AMC DAC8 looked good on paper and even had a few great reviews and while it does nicely in my computer rig, it's not as great a DAC as the press and print say, IMO. When I opened it up, I was very disappointed with the lack of hardware inside.

H9

Gaara

Check Head-Fi. This thing is very well thought of over there. Club Polk doesn't really follow the trends like other sites do, for example the Paradisea which was huge on every other site I am a member off never made a wave of any kind here.

sucks2beme

The Keces DAC seems to get a lot of positive feedback, yet I see guys
re-selling them all the time to move up on Head-Fi. The 131
is spdif, the 151 a USB only DAC. The company owner has stated
on Head-fi that the 131 sounds a bit better than the 151.
In the world of DACS, there seems to be little head to head
testing going on. USB DACS are worse, since most most
PC/MP3 guy's opinions are suspect. Most of them have never
heard a good 2 channel to compare it to. I've pretty much
decided the only way to find a better DAC to go through a couple of
them and dump the losers. There's always the modded Zhaolu.
http://www.cryo-parts.com/cryoparts_optimized_zhaolu_d3.html
The Zhaolu still needs a a pc interface.
There's also a tranformer coupled one.
http://www.audio-magus.com/Aeolus_DAC_1_p/adac1.htm
Maybe a couple of you guys can save me the hassle, and buy
a couple of these for review.

steveinaz

As far as I'm concerned, with DAC's you get what you pay for. There isn't any "silver bullet." A $320 DAC is most likely going to sound like a $320 CD Player.

ND13

I just checked and the BurrBrown dacs and opamps that were upgraded in my CD8b were just as good as this dacs. SOOO, I guess I won't worry about it for now. I'll be going after another tubed cdp, after I pay off my pre, anyways.

heiney9

steveinaz wrote: »

As far as I'm concerned, with DAC's you get what you pay for. There isn't any "silver bullet." A $320 DAC is most likely going to sound like a $320 CD Player.

I agree 1000% Steve, my AMC was $329 retail (I paid $100 used) and it's about as good as a $330 cdp. I put it head to head with my Adcom and my Nak cdp; the Adcom walked all over it. The Nak, being 16 years old, did some things better and some thing not so much better.

In the end DAC's are subjective and you generally get what you pay for; atleast at retail.

I will add that the description of the one Noel is looking at has better hardware than my AMC. But all that nice hardware can go in the toilet if they use cheap opamps or other types of shortcuts in the analog circuit to keep the cost down. Not sure if that's the case here.

H9

steveinaz

I'm not saying you won't run into a rare gem, or luck into a desperation sale--but it's not the norm.

ND13

Supposedly these are the test results on it, as posted on Audiocircle.

http://www.audiocircle.com/circles/index.php?topic=45628.0

steveinaz

It looks like a nice, well-built unit, but no specification for jitter, and no jitter reduction circuitry.

One thing I learned a long time ago, better to get what you want and cry once, then compromise and cry twice. A good base system will make practically any CDP shine---tough it out until you can spend the bucks to get where you want to be.

sucks2beme

One thing I have noticed, is it seems the chipset is less important than
what comes after the DAC chip. The best DAC chip with a crappy output
still sounds crappy.
I am fairly happy with my usb Monica, other than the output level being
lower than CDP. I don't want to drop a bunch of cash only to break even
on sound, or fair worse. Thus, here I am sticking with the cheap kit DAC.

Gaara

nevermind

Systems

Looks to have a lot of potential for the price if they have done a good job on the board layout and most importantly the power supply. It has the latest gen SP/DIF input reciever chip although it would have been nice had they used the CS8420 SRC instead to give it upsampling capabilities and greater immunity to jitter.The DAC chip is excellent and the OPA604 op amp used in the analog stage is no slouch.

maniac

GV#27 wrote: »

Looks to have a lot of potential for the price if they have done a good job on the board layout and most importantly the power supply. It has the latest gen SP/DIF input reciever chip although it would have been nice had they used the CS8420 SRC instead to give it upsampling capabilities and greater immunity to jitter.The DAC chip is excellent and the OPA604 op amp used in the analog stage is no slouch.

Hello, I'm the guy that sells this DAC on Audiogon and eBay (the price listed on Audiogon is a bit better than ebay's, wink), and we did consider CS8420, but we decided that 192KHz receive capability is more valuable than the upsampling feature.

It is in our opinion that upsampling/ASRC type of jitter reduction is not the right way to go, as it is more like hiding the jitter and make it look like the jitter does not exist. While in reality (or at least so we believe), the jitter will get blended into the data and make it impossible to correct or detect. It will show perfect signal on the equipments, but it will not provide true jitter reduction. We deal with jitter by getting digital signal path as short and as nicely routed as we can, and use SMD parts so that the digital signal does not have to be tormented by the much more inductive and capacitive through hole parts.


Well, anyhow, for anyone that's interested, a review was just released on Enjoy the Music web site at:
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0808/keces_da151.htm

Enjoy.

sucks2beme

Is there a forum on Keces you don't join?:D

Systems

maniac wrote: »

Hello, I'm the guy that sells this DAC on Audiogon and eBay .

Hello maniac,that looks like a nice little DAC you are selling there .(atleast on paper).

we did consider CS8420, but we decided that 192KHz receive capability is more valuable than the upsampling feature.

Why? not much out there is outputing 192k and the CDP's most likely to be used in front of this DAC will only be capable of outputing 16/44.1k so upsampling could prove to be benificial.

It is in our opinion that upsampling/ASRC type of jitter reduction is not the right way to go, as it is more like hiding the jitter and make it look like the jitter does not exist. While in reality (or at least so we believe), the jitter will get blended into the data and make it impossible to correct or detect.

Well if the ARSC is changing the sample rate and using its own clock ,(completely independant of the transports clock)then jitter will be extremely low.

We deal with jitter by getting digital signal path as short and as nicely routed as we can, and use SMD parts so that the digital signal does not have to be tormented by the much more inductive and capacitive through hole parts.

But you still have the limitations of the SP/DIF(combining the clocks with the data) and these are the sourse of most of the jitter.Using an ASRC after the input reciever can reduce the jitter resulting from the SP/DIF inferface.

sucks2beme

maniac wrote: »

Well, anyhow, for anyone that's interested, a review was just released on Enjoy the Music web site at:
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0808/keces_da151.htm

Enjoy.

How about contacting Polk member Mark at Affordable Audio?
I'd love for one of his reviewers to do a comparision on this DAC.
http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70760

maniac

sucks2beme wrote: »

Is there a forum on Keces you don't join?:D

Well, I do try. And surfing the forums was and still is a habit of mine, so I can't help I guess.

maniac

GV#27 wrote: »

Hello maniac,that looks like a nice little DAC you are selling there .(atleast on paper).Why? not much out there is outputing 192k and the CDP's most likely to be used in front of this DAC will only be capable of outputing 16/44.1k so upsampling could prove to be benificial.

Well, IMHO the upsampling's advantage is also mostly on paper, IMHO.

Well if the ARSC is changing the sample rate and using its own clock ,(completely independant of the transports clock)then jitter will be extremely low.But you still have the limitations of the SP/DIF(combining the clocks with the data) and these are the sourse of most of the jitter.Using an ASRC after the input reciever can reduce the jitter resulting from the SP/DIF inferface.

Yes, the apparent jitter will be small, but did you notice that the ASRC does not FIX the incoming rate before sample rate conversion?

Jitter affects DAC in causing irregualarities in timing, and thus degrading sound quality. I think this part everyone can agree on. The some of the following opinion caused quite a bit of flame war on Head-Fi, so please beware....

Audio related jitter can be as little as couple hundreds of pico-seconds and still have an audible effect. DAC is affected because most does not have any correction capability and simply convert it to analog AS IT ARRIVES.

ASRC fails in similar ways because it also convert signal AS IT ARRIVES, it does not have any large enough buffer that can limit the damage that jitter does. Some of the jitter may be lost in translation, but some get forever embedded into the data itself. Yes, the output signal is very clean, but it is not the original signal anymore.

I personally prefer to deal with jitters via better receiver chip (8416 is actually pretty good if you really take care of the layout, like the PLL circuits' layout), better layout, and possibly signal processing/conditioning.


I think there are a few other DAC makers voiced opinion similar to mine, I feel it is best to keep ASRC in places where you really need SRC, rather than using it as a jitter reduction device.


Well, just my opinion.

maniac

sucks2beme wrote: »

How about contacting Polk member Mark at Affordable Audio?
I'd love for one of his reviewers to do a comparision on this DAC.
http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70760

Well, I got DACs (151 and 131) and power cables (all 5 power cables) up for review, what do you guys want to see? I might start posting info on pure silver power connectors/sockets as well.

Systems

maniac wrote: »

Well, IMHO the upsampling's advantage is also mostly on paper, IMHO.

Certainly not all agree that it makes a big audible improvement,but it must have some merit if companies like dCS are proponents of it.(Ofcourse they are not accomplishing it with a $5 IC.)

The some of the following opinion caused quite a bit of flame war on Head-Fi, so please beware....

Sounds like an interesting read,do you have a link?

possibly signal processing/conditioning.

as in a FIFO type of thing?

I think there are a few other DAC makers voiced opinion similar to mine, I feel it is best to keep ASRC in places where you really need SRC, rather than using it as a jitter reduction device.

Understood,then there are others such as Benchmark that use SRC for jitter reduction in their highly acclaimed DAC1.

If you don't mind I have a couple of questions about your DAC

1)Its hard to tell from the pic in the Enjoy the Music review but it appears you are using a single transformer?(A rather beefy looking one at that.)

2)Can I assume you are using standard 3 pin IC regulators (ie LM78,79 series)for both the analog and digtal sections and how many are used.

3)Do you or would you sell just the complete PCB assembly.

Thanks

maniac

GV#27 wrote: »

Certainly not all agree that it makes a big audible improvement,but it must have some merit if companies like dCS are proponents of it.(Ofcourse they are not accomplishing it with a $5 IC.)Sounds like an interesting read,do you have a link?

as in a FIFO type of thing?

for stuff like dCS, I feel that they did a LOT more processing and filtering than just upsample. IMHO it is those processing with SRC that really helped the sound. Just simple SRC would not really do much other than changing the sample rate.

There's a big flame war on jitter and stuff at Head Fi, I can't remember which one, but it was long winded and rather boring. :P

As for signal conditioning, there are several methods, FIFO is one of them.

Understood,then there are others such as Benchmark that use SRC for jitter reduction in their highly acclaimed DAC1.

If you don't mind I have a couple of questions about your DAC

1)Its hard to tell from the pic in the Enjoy the Music review but it appears you are using a single transformer?(A rather beefy looking one at that.)

2)Can I assume you are using standard 3 pin IC regulators (ie LM78,79 series)for both the analog and digtal sections and how many are used.

3)Do you or would you sell just the complete PCB assembly.

Thanks

1) Yes, a 15 VA transformer, and the DAC itself use about 1VA Light load makes a transformer perform more efficiently, and results in better sound and less heat.

2) We use LM1086 instead of the LM78 for digital 5V and 3.3V (IMHO LM1086 is better than the LM78xx/79xx series), while the analog section uses our own regulator circuit with adjustable output set at +/-12V

3) No, we only sell the complete unit at the moment.

Systems

maniac wrote: »

No, we only sell the complete unit at the moment.

OK thanks ,I have some space in my preamp chassis and thought one of these would fit nicely in there.

heiney9

Based on a little research, a little bit of faith and my budget for the office rig.

I pulled the trigger on a Keces DA-151 USB DAC over the weekend. The price was right, and it seems to get some positive feedback. We will see if it's all it's cracked up to be. It uses 4.7uF Bennic output coupling caps which I will eventually replace with Obbligato's. I am hoping maybe Fred can give some advice for some other tweaks as mentioned above (regulation, etc). It comes with the ability to roll op-amps and since this is the updated version it uses LME47910 instead of the OPA604 as the original did.

I am hoping for some nice results in the office rig.

H9

heiney9

sucks2beme

It was a pretty hot selling DAC before Audio-gd came along.
Let's hope it performs up to it's hype.

heiney9

I may still pick up an Audio GD as well to compare. They should both be easily flippable. Just looking for a smaller footprint at this point and quality performer. Doesn't have to be a stunner since this is a secondary rig. It needs to work without hiccups and be musical. If it has a few flaws compared to the more expensive Dac's that alright if I can live with it.

H9

AudioFilet

I posted almost the exact same question about a year ago, and got no replies, and nobody seemed to have even heard of this thing. I went ahead and bought it because the price was right and it seemed to fit my needs (mine is an earlier version). I use it connected to my MAC via USB, and driving a set of Audioengine 5 desktop speakers. I have no complaints at all with this unit. The build quality is excellent, and it just sounds great. I had no problem at all buying the KECES headphone amp when the time came, and that is a fine piece there as well.

sucks2beme

An Audio-gd/Keces showdown is in order!
There's few head to head DAC tests and few
that I'd trust to do it. Members here tend to do a better
job. Over at head-fi, half the place seems to think they all
sound the same, so cheap is good. A quick run through the head-fi
audio science forum pretty much confirms they spend endless hours
talking about DBT, yet seem never to get around to posting any real results
other than to call others AUDIOPHILES (I think they mean it in a bad way).