Sugden SDA-1 DAC with the world famous Philips TDA1541A single crown DAC chip. Output stage of this DAC is made with discrete parts. The sound is really excellent. The voices, saxes, strings and piano are simply marvelous even compared with today's dacs.
Sound can be described mellow with very fine and accurate timbre. High end British sound with details without being aggressive.
The Philips TDA1541A chip is still renowned as one of the best DAC chip ever made.
The sonic characteristic of this TDA1541A DAC is very easy to distinguish - after hitting PLAY after trying other DACS you can hear a big difference immediately, BUT I can't describe it at all. It is very hard to put in words. The sound is very rich, full, mature, ripe, analogue, liquid, dynamic, and with huge macro dynamics. It has the best midrange, best treble and very very good bass.
The main difference is: that I like it more than any other DAC chip, it is so ear friendly.
Much has been written about TDA1541A DAC all over the world, but I found it without prior opinion seeking - just by my ears. It is funny for a mere electronic component to be worshiped like an object of religion, but this chip is such rare case. Augmented by the fact, that they are no more in production. The chip TDA1541, and especially the single crown selection S1 and TDA1541A/S2 is so desired that there are counterfeit chips on second hand market and unfortunately on ebay too.
There are some fantastic web sites - dedicated to TDA1541A DAC wholly or in part, most famous ones are from Pedja Rogic, Thotsten Loesch, Lesha and some others. These wonderful people spent considerable time researching good CD sound and they all like me reached the conclusion that the good old TDA1541A DAC is still the one to beat. They all use it with non-oversampling mode at 44,1 kHz sampling rate and some of them use tube output too.
This TDA1541A DAC chip is large, it gets hot, it is (was) expensive to build, it is 16 bit compatible and can be used with or without over sampling.
TDA1541 is very strong contender to being the best, some rivals may actually come close, equalize or have an edge in ONE area but no DAC can really seriously beat the TDA. Yes, it is THAT good. Especially in NOS mode and with very good capacitors around it.
So somebody promising a resolution of 24 bits is effectively claiming that he produced electrical device which controls the output signal to a wide range of loads with accuracy of one/17 millionth part of a volt. THIS CLAIM IS NOT VERY SERIOUS. We take it with a grain of salt.
So dear readers (and dealers), there is no correlation between increased number of bits above 16 and sound quality. At least it is not automatically guaranteed. The human ear CANNOT distinguish the difference between 16 and 24 Bits! I suggest we rather concentrate on the best usage of the bits which we have, than worry of these bits we don't have...:-)
I'm keeping one for me, so this is my last unit available.
Pictures are from the actual item.
Comes with the original box (Sorry, NO papers and NO power cord). *Please! Use this unit with a ''high end'' power cord!
Shipping to Canada and USA ONLY !!!
Please note I will NOT ship overseas, so please don't ask. Thank you!
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