AKM makes the best DACs

The thread probably started when the parts were announced. Then AKM had their fire which rather set things back. Now seems they've recovered.

Thanks for the pics!  Kind of funny that seems like a 2 year old thread.

I suspect Taobao doesn't want people visiting who aren't logged in. I uploaded a couple of pics here : https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/ak4191eq.350733/post-7170781

@abraxalito - Taobao link above seems to be invalid.

I see AKM have a new  4499 EX chip out which separates the digital from the analogue. Actually a pair of chips.

Taobao is showing 'Vezzoso' product using this chipset, pricing ~$1k : https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.13.356b7aa0liXF98&id=684317192966&ns=1&abbucket=4#detail

I notice there’s been no mention of Analog Devices in all of this. 

I see AKM have a new  4499 EX chip out which separates the digital from the analogue. Actually a pair of chips.

I wish they had changed its designation to 4599 to save confusion.

I have the SMSL M400 with AK 4499EQ chip and love it, fed into Benchmark AHB2 then bespoke Quad 989ESL's. 

Added the Gustard U18 to the SMSL. VMV D2 AKM Dac for about a month now.  All I can say is wow, just wow…. More of everything you love about AKM chips, everything is everywhere.  Big air, open and spacious.  Take what a great power cable does to a digital source, (if u believe in such), then multiply it by several times.  $500 well spent.  The DDC’s I2S output and better clocks are essential in ways that make it really easy to hear differences between speakers, the resolution and presentation making various designs more or less desirable and offering up a few surprises in doing so.  Really been interesting rolling thru 5 pr. of speakers I have tried so far, each a different design config more or less, and hearing the differences which become more readily apparent.  Same with amps.  What a great little device…

Good news,  @mahler123 !

Report in Stereophile that AKM is producing chips again

Look at the schematics of the ESS vs the AKM and you will find that the AKM is only processor that correctly processes DSD, DFF and DSF files as 1 bit while ESS converts to Pulse Count Modulation for all.  The EKM is much better in the standard realm as well.  ESS is well behind AKM.  ESS is a mainstream manufacturer for 8 channel surround sound while AKM is much better at targeting the music 2-4 channel realm.  The prices show that the unavailable AKM for many countries of high quality Personal Players and DACS are receiving a much higher price that the original retail price such as FIIO.  A&K's finest is still AKM and so it is with most all but the innovators (dcs, EMM and few others)

I love fish and chips, does that count for anything? 😊

@erik_squires - 100% agree with AKM having the best DACS followed by Burr Brown. Also 100% agree that there is more to the chip itself but the design of the circuit and analog output stage. I have Linn gear and the AKMs are present and very happy with the sound.

The new approach of using FPGA based designs is also very intriguing. Linn has done this in their top tier streamer and Chord has interesting designs as well. I will throw in PS Audio for go measure. 

I sold very piece of gear that has ESS DACs in it seemed there implementations always appeared way more analytic than musical to my ears. 

Glad read AKM is at least back up and running and hope they keep Velvet Sound in their products. Great stuff.

What about AKM ADC's?... Do they count (Technics SU-R1000)... To perform this task, the SU-R1000 utilizes the AK5572EN 1740EAC ADC chip from AKM.

Strata-gee came out w/a story on AKM yesterday. There is still no AKM factory. They still have not decided whether they should rebuild the original factory or build a new one. Right now AKM chips are being built on consignment w/other chip companies. The new facility could be a few years down the road.

Different strokes for different folks. I think the various chip manufacturers are all converging on the same goal of “perfection”

I used to hate Sabre dacs but have some newer gear/chips that changed my mind that I quite enjoy listening to.

AKM is great but I’ve returned or sold off every device that contained one.

burr brown is still my favorite for long term listening. Just sounds more “natural” and “analog” to my ears for long term listening sessions. My burr brown based devices include Naim Uniti Star, Gold Note IS-1000, PowerNode 2i’s, Denon PMA-A110, and a Parasound 200 Classic.

also a big fan of the PS Audio DirectStream DACs for a non fatiguing yet detailed listen.

I updated all. Now I am happy with the result though the change is not huge, it does seem more pleasant. I am using it for my BPO data. I like this very much.

AK4493SEQ:
THD+N [dB]  -115 
S/N [dB]  123
High-rate playback; PCM 768kHz, DSD512

ES9038PRO:
THD+N [dB]  -122
Supports up to 768kHz PCM, DSD256 via DOP and native DSD1024
DNR [dB] 140 (mono) 132 (8-Ch)

It's all silly.  No one has ever listened to a DAC chip.

Disagree with the thread title. Erik is usually not one of the closed minded types ;-)

Disagree with the thread title. Erik is usually not one of the closed minded types ;-)

Would rather say AKM makes ONE on the best DACs.

My preferance is for ESS Sabre.

AKM have the new chip numbers now: AK4490R and AK4493S

Got a AKM 4490 in my DAC (Questyle CMA400i) and a AKM 4497 in the Technics SL-G700. Both Sound great.

So far, I am a fan of the AKM Chips although I would like to hear a good R2R Dac also since I have read so many good reviews of these.

@tomic601 pretty much nailed it IMO. Difficult to just judge a dac chip, the whole package matters. And I've seen atrocious power supply noise leakage from mega buck dacs which are completely inexcusable. The whole package matters and as such I don't think certain dac chips are better than others, but the AKM "velvet sound" for example do tend to target a "type" of sound, and if you are a fan of that then that'll sound good to you. similarly, a NOS dac will have sinc roll-off at the high frequency range and you can be a fan of that, or you can shift the signal by software (up-sample) to ensure the roll off doesn't happen at our listening range (which I do). Deta-Sigmas get a bad rep but I don't think a well designed d-s dac will sound bad.

@havocman :

I have the Wyred for sound 10th anniversary dac, and it has the ESS sabre 9038 pro chip and this is one of the most analog sounding DACS that I have had in my system, one of the reviewers put it up against his VPI turntable with a $5,000 cartridge and he says this DAC was every bit as analog sounding as his turntable and I agree.

That DAC is one I'm considering down the road. I'd be curious to learn which other DACS you compared it to, as I don't do vinyl.  

My Shanling M8 has dual AKM99 dacs, and they are implemented superbly.

Eric_Squires, I guess you haven't listened to the new ESS 9038 pro chip, maybe go listen to the Wyred for sound 10th anniversary dac. one of the reviewers put it up against his VPI turntable with a $5,000 Japanese cartridge and he said it was every bit as analog sounding go read the reviews.

Did they ever find out how the fire in the AKM plant started? Curious.

@buddyboy1 + 1

AKM all the way vs ESS Sabre’s. I have multiple daps and the AKM’s sound better to my ear vs the “brighter” ess chips. I’ve experienced this in multiple Astel n Kern daps….

I agree w/the poster...and disagree w/anyone who says that different chips from different manufacturers don't have their own sound.  AKM is the clear leader [pun intended], closely followed by the Burr Brown 17 series, esp the 1795.

I've got the Hegel top-of-their-line DAC.  Guess which chip they used? To say that it is "highly resolving" is to make an understatement...detail upon detail, which is what I like ~ but not necessarily what everyone is looking for, obviously.

And so, I get why some folks favor the ESS, for their more subtle/somewhat smoother sound ~ not as in your face.  It's about preference, and how it sounds w/your setup, in your room.  What can we not make this statement about?  

Have an older AVA multibit dac and a few AKM  chip based dacs.  They are all well designed and sound nice. Dac chips are like ice cream flavors.  Sometimes you want one flavor sometimes you want another.  It's just nice to have the options.  🙂

If there was a "best" dac....or a "best" speaker...or a "best" amplifier......what a boring hobby this would be. The word BEST should never be used in Hi-Fi discussions. :>)

D70S user here and in my system it performs well. I had a previous dac which used dual ESS chips and I liked it as well.  Prefer the D70S for music but either works well for soundtracks. 

My Hegel h160 uses an AKM chip in its' dac section which sounds great as well. In comparison to the D70S, the D70S has more bass/midbass emphasis and a bit less instrument separation and yields a bit warmer sound. The Hegel is a bit cooler, emphasizes instruments a bit more in sharpness and has a bit more treble extension. I found myself preferring one or the other depending on music. 

They are fairly close to performance but those are the differences I noticed.

The D70S is hooked up to a Keces E40 which together drive Focal 807W speakers. Also drove many other combos well including MA Silver 100s 6th Ed.

Not bad for a budget system.

PS I once had a Marantz CD 5000 which used the Philips TDA 1549 DAC.  While the stage size was smaller, the tone was just so nice. Wish I never sold it.

I just love all the good product reading with everyones recommendations. Really appreciate people posting about their DAC's.

I've had 5 DAC's (3 ES, 1 Wolfson, 1 Burr Brown) and enjoyed them all, but to varying degrees (presently Musetec MH-DA005, and favorite).

I am really interested in a different DAC design in the future (R2R, AKM, FPGA, etc)

Just wanted to say thanks for posts... Good reading.

@melm 

Great post. The main intent of my post is to point out that optimum DAC design is osteopathic and not allopathic. Treat the system and not the symptom. And I say this as a lawyer who sees only MD's as doctors. 

No one will agree on best. I would say AKM dacs are the most ‘listenable” dacs on the market. Not the most in ultimate resolution but never any fatigue. 

Notwithstanding the evident quality of the SW1X DAC (and it is a $13,000 DAC after all) the last place I would look for objective technical info is in on the PR pages of a manufacturer.  No one does that better, probably, than Chord's Rob Watts who is all over the internet in print and in video telling the world that the only way to do it right is the FPGA way he does it.  

But it is true, as was said, that when it comes to the other things, beyond chip set, the SW1X is a great example, and the Chord is wanting.  The DAVE (at $12,600), for example, uses an inexpensive to build switch mode power supply and two $1.50 TI chips at the center of the DAVE's analog section.  Another example of FPGA and not too much else.
 

Funny [to me] that Chord gets mentioned because imho Chord is a company that in Ahab fashion focuses so much attention upon the DA chipset at the expense of many of the other things that matter like the input and output stages. A good DAC should be built like a hybrid of both a well engineered and premium parts-spec'd preamp and amp. And this is also why so many DAC's that John Atkinson proclaims to "measure at state of the art levels" sound boring. Again, from the SW1X website;

The other weakness is monotonous and predictable character, which true for all DAC chips. Those weaknesses are curable with high quality voltage regulation, rectification and careful SPDIF receiver IC tuning. Last but not least is the lack of energy and perceived dynamics. That issue is partly due to choice of materials and components, I/V conversion technique and the choice of an output stage. The later part is plagued by impedance mismatch in almost all mainstream designs with a few exceptions.

The issue of impedance mismatch is critical in 2 places of a DAC design: A) Between the current out of DAC chip after the current to voltage (I/V or I/U) conversion and B) Between the first amplification output stage and the preamp/power amp input. Most common approach in the current out (best possible quality output of an R2R chip, which is impossible with Delta Sigma chips) DAC implementation is to use a passive shunt resistor as I/V converter. This approach works fine but has some drawbacks: the shunt resistor worsens the impedance mismatch further and it takes energy away, therefore some of the dynamics are irreversibly lost and all subsequent stage are lacking the drive. We, at SW1X Audio Design™ on the other hand, addressing the point A) by using a single transistor that does the job of I/V conversion, lowers the output impedance after the I/V stage (the DAC chip sees only 10 Ohm input impedance) and preserves the dynamics. Plus this approach allows us to use a simple but elegant class A, zero feedback valve output stage with low output impedance, which addresses impedance mismatch issue in the point B). On top of that the circuit remains elegant and simple and makes the music come alive with incredible dynamics and extreme analogue smoothness.

I did not set out to buy the DAC III Balanced. I ordered a DAC II Special from SW1X on a lark and with the benefit of the 30 day trial. I loved it. But then when I asked a question of him, Slawa Roschkow informed me that the DAC III Balanced is the "sweet spot" of his range of DAC's not because of being balanced in the sense that most of us think of the benefits of balanced topology but instead because the balanced design of his DAC insures internally matched impedances and further, the transformers utilized in conjunction with caps act like a power amp providing a robust output stage with better dynamics. Something is working. 

Marketing or not, I would not know, but there is an interesting quote from the link provided bellow...

’’So does this mean anybody can design their own DAC’s using FPGAs? No I am afraid not. Creating the internal modules, getting them right, getting the DAC technology right, has taken me 30 years to do. This is not easy to do.’

https://www.the-ear.net/how-to/rob-watts-chord-mojo-tech

by the way, BB also produced R2R chips....for example many of their 1704 variants  were used in different players over the years

And now for a controversial comment.😅 I think FPGA is basically a marketing tool used to differentiate some DACS from the rest of the field. I find it almost impossible to believe that it can be feasible for an ordinary audio electronics company to attempt to out-perform the decades of development into chips by companies like ESS, TI, Philips, AKM, Burr-Brown and others, not to mention the companies producing discrete R2R circuits. After all, FPGA chips are still just chips (and mostly D-S, I think). Yes, they may be altered, but for what? To correct mistakes? To bring them to where they should have been in the first place? Or to bring performance closer to that of conventional chips? Moreover, I find that within most FPGA DACs there is less by way of power supply, clocking, and/or quality analog section than in conventional chip based products at similar prices. Their margins are tremendous. I’ll cite the PS Audio DirectStream as but one example. There are many others.

I’m putting my flak jacket on.

I really have no idea why anyone would lump FPGA based DACs together.

The entire basis for an FPGA is that you have hardware that can be changed via code, so despite say PS Audio and Chord (I think) using an FPGA, since the construction of the DAC in the FPGA is proprietary I would have no reason to expect them to be at all similar.  Unless of course, they were sharing the chip maker and the underlying code libraries to build their DACs which is possible.

I agree there are much more important criteria in evaluating dacs, however, I do observe a fair amount of stereotyping dac sound based on chip/topology. AKM more analog, Sabre high resolution, incisive, R2R more analog. FPGA only one not fitting into single niche.

I presume many hold these biases when deciding on new dac, this sells other topologies short.  The one bias I don't understand is correlating highest resolution digital with increased listening fatigue or digititus. This is fast becoming obsolete, one no longer has to pay price for seeking highest resolution.

This thread doesn’t make much sense to me: clocking, cables and the DAC’s analogue section are WAY MORE determinant of a dac’s sound than the chips used. The whole debate about R2R, Delta Sigma, FPGA is in my mind and experience equally blown out of proportion

R2R, FPGA  then it comes down to te line codes and how the dac works with diffrent Algorithms.

Andreas Koch of Playback Design lead the team at Sony for DSD

I own the gustard X26pro 2x ES9038.

Soundnews tested it, the best dac under 2000$, as good as its dac reference Matrix element X which costs more than 3000$.

I find it so smooth as my Metrum amethyst, but the gustard is more detailed, more faster, more structured soundstage, and especially the instruments are more realistic !

No digital brightness !

To simply say what others have said differently, your statement is tantamount to stating "The GE 9X jet engine makes the best jet plane". I try my best to resist the "what I have is best" tendency so often demonstrated on this Board and all audio boards but be that as it may, I will put my SW1X DAC IIIB up against any DAC in existence. It uses a very "outdated" Philips 1541 chipset. But the secret is in the sauce;

SW1X Audio Design™ DAC III Balanced Features:

• Pure & Elegant NOS (Non oversampling – zero digital domain filtering) Design
• Balanced (& Single Ended) Signal Output Transformer de-coupled Valve Output Stage Topology
• EL84 Power Output Tubes, Zero NFB, Class A, Valve Output Stage
• Passive I/V conversion via a specially selected resistor with the shortest signal path directly connected to the tube grid
• Dynamic Element Matching (DEM) of the TDA1541 powered by an asynchronous E180F Valve Clock powered by EAA91 Valve Rectified & Choke Filtered Power Supply
• Discrete Transistor, Shunt Voltage Regulated Low Voltage Power Supplies
• 5U4GYB/5R4GYB Directly Heated Valve rectified CLC (choke filtered) B+ Power Supply
• Digital Input supports up to 24Bit/96kHz S/PDIF Signal Input

• Specially Selected and Harmonically Matched Component & Material Quality
• SW1X Audio Design™ Copper wound Super HiB DC core Signal Output Transformers
• M6 grain orient EI core Mains Transformers & Chokes (HiB double C-core available as an option)
• Circuit is wired with Specially Selected copper conductors of various geometry (single strand or Litz)
• AN Copper Foil in Oil interstage signal de-coupling Capacitors
• Black Gate de-coupling Capacitors for TDA1541 DAC
• AB 2W non-magnetic Carbon film Resistors in selected places

Tube Compliment:  2 x EL84, 1 x 6N6P, 1 x 5U5GYB/5R4GYB, 1 x E180F, 1 x EAA91

It might be important to remember that audio, high end audio... is not concerned with the 95-97% of the signal and associated qualities, that EVERYONE can obtain with their $1 for a dac chip or $$200 for a dac chip.

Nobody cares about the +95%. it’s meaningless, in this context.

The only thing the high end audio endeavor is concerned about, is those last few percentage points.

This is the sublime part, the part the makes our juices flow. The difference between $1 bottle sherry and $300 a bottle scotch. It’s all in these few percentage points. Proximity to the sun. Icarian.

So we end up in these little almost circular-like arguments where we talk past one another.

To figure this out soonest and get there... and get to the enjoying of a proximity to a perfection we can’t really ever reach. Time. Time in life. Time spent in good spaces.

Time As A Reward