TSS Two Chassis Super DAC

Déjà vu:

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So great to have a front seat view of the development of this project. Really amazing that Ted is letting us into the process. Thanks @tedsmith

Ha…my mother just suffers from a medium dementia since a few years, I hoped it didn’t start yet :wink:

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Slightly better picture:

First thing is always mastic on the 120V:

And feet to keep the bottom from shorting:

Old and new:

There will be more sporadically as I bring them up.

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Safety first :slight_smile:

Just FYI
Here’s a plot of an older unit I built with a resistor before the first caps. Note that the cap takes about 2/3 of a cycle to fill and that the current draw is much smoother than using no resistor. The important thing to me was to soften the transitions from conducting into the caps vs not. The spikes in more traditional linear power supplies can generate a lot of noise.

Just after the bridge here’s the input voltage (in red) and the voltage on the cap (magenta.)

Here’s the current (before the bridge):

The TSS obviously does better, but I’ve always thought that a power supply should be nice to the incoming power as well as to the rest of the device. It’s the whole system that the user listens too.

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Very neat!

When I was a kid I used to wish “mains supply” was DC. Of course there are countless reasons why that would be a bad idea, but it might make the Audiophile world a little easier :slight_smile:

Hi ted, looking at your graph it looks like your Vin is modulated on a 0.5hz (if my maths is right) signal. Is that the case, and if so is that normal?

I took the plots from a simulation of an old board. It was using various modulation frequencies to check for power supply rejection ratio, hence all of the horizontal lines. There were a couple of pages of FFTs, etc. later on. That board had discrete regulators and tho high frequency PSRR was easy I thought I needed to test the low frequencies explicitly. The actual board ended up with a power supply reference with a noise floor at about -140dBV according to the Audio Precision.

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Is there any news on the upcoming/planned TSS? Haven’t heard anything in neither this nor any other thread for a looong time. Makes me a bit worried :wink:
I have the Junior but don’t think it is worth upgrading to the Senior, but the TSS would certainly be something to test!

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It’s still coming but not as quickly as I’d like.

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I am sure there are a good number who agree with you, Ted.

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Hey Ted, keep on, keeping on. One unanticipated advantage for us readers is the free consulting advice received in the meanwhile.

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I already have a SuperDac. It may be a spelling mistake as it came direct from China at a cost of $70, but it does a very good job with the USB Audio app on my phone and my MrSpeakers headphones.

What are these two boxes? The only multiple box DACs I’ve heard are 3 boxes: DAC, upsampler and master clock.

Great post!!! Wow!

Yep, quit the challenge to come up with an idea dor a user interface, develop and test it “this year” (its now November 2020).

Equally testing digital and electronics boards this complex when software isn’t quite done.

Mind you a unit that goes for sale for 3 x the Direct Stream DAC SR, better work flawless when it hits the market.

So give PS Audio the time to do it right.

I do count the boxes and cables. The less the better.

With the amount of dust and a dog in our home housekeeping is a major issue. The more boxes and cables the bigger the housekeeping issue. I enjoy listening to music not cleaning the system.

Again large rooms where you can walk around the system make a big difference, but cramming a lot of gear and cables in confined space is not wise.

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It’s going to be two boxes each with their own power cables and power supplies. They will be connected by an optical cable. So, if you want fewer boxes and cables, this new DAC is not what you are looking to get.

That is one correct conclusion.

But you missed the other one which is:

A product is ready to be released when it is released after it is tested and working flawless.

So this is also not a DAC for those who can’t wait till that process is finished, there is no need to push for release dates as the outcome of testing is extremely hard to predict.

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Great that PS Audio won Stereophile’s product of the year for the stellar phono device. Also interesting is the DAC of the year that they picked, the HoloAudio May, that has separate power supply vs digital boxes like the future TSS super dac? By the way all the high end Mundorf etc. parts and the workmanship quality seems amazing, all for $5k. Tough competition. But no easy way to try it out.

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