About the Matrix Audio ND-1 DAC

@audphile1 

Logic suggests they must be selling gear at such prices or else they’d be charging less but I know nothing about business so there may very well be factors involved of which I’m unaware. 

@curiousjim 

So which direction are you thinking of going at this point? 

@stuartk 

not much has changed other than adding the Mystique Z to my short list. I haven’t had time to find out more about the Burr-Brown's legendary PCM58P DAC chip, like why the call is vintage and legendary. Just how old is this chip anyway? 🙂

I’m also really curious about what the differences are between the chip verses the whole resistor ladder. My wife has me booked through Saturday, so I won’t have a lot of reading time until at least Sunday.

The Burr-Brown PCM58P DAC chip was introduced in 1988. I joined Burr-Brown in 1987 working as assistant to the president. I worked for Burr-Brown for nearly twenty years. 

I remember... reading a Luxman (?) advertisement... I think they used four of these chips instead of the normal two and raised their price by something like $500 for the CD Player. Which I found amusing since we were selling the chips for ~$5 each. I understood the real reason high end stuff cost a lot and it wasn't the sub-component cost... but still I found it amusing. 

I’m still getting emails about the HifiRose RD-160 and I still don’t have any idea what “Switched resistor” really means or is it another way to say ladder DAC. I definitely want to know more about “VELVET-SOUND” technology is. 😳

“HiFi Rose's RD160 ($5995) is a D/A converter built around a pair of Asahi Kasei (AKM) chips: the AK4191EQ delta-sigma modulator and the AK4499EXEQ DAC. The AK4191 receives digital audio and applies filters, noise shaping, and oversampling. The AK4499EXEQ, a cording to the Asahi Kasei website, "is a stereo premium DAC chip based on the Switched Resistor DAC method employing VELVET-SOUND technology.”

@curiousjim 

Didn’t the guy from Pursuit Perfect System do a review of that DAC?