Late last year I bought a generation two version of the DS NOS DAC, using a 1543 chip. It comes in an opaque black acrylic case which is slightly bigger than the translucent version, and sounds a good deal better. As I'd heard good things about improving power supplies, I asked around, and Zanash kindly built one. Unfortunately, there's no accounting for ability, and despite great work by Zanash, I still managed to connect up the 12v DC power supply the wrong way round resulting in a rather smelly DAC and not much sound. A couple of weeks on and Zanash has not only saved my bacon by repairing the DAC, but also took the opportunity to improve on some internal components. Last night I got to power it up again, this time with his PSU, dedicated power lead, new digital interconnect and upgraded DAC. The other thing I did try was to connect the speaker leads out of phase, as I've read that the NOS DAC inverts the phase of the signal. I've no idea how that can make a difference on what appears to be an AC style output, but gave it a try. And the results, took just 10 seconds to think "bloody hell that's good". Still has that "natural" presentation that both NOS units I've heard have, but with more detail, MUCH better frequency extremes, more life and more bounce. No it's not a free upgrade, but bearing in mind how much you could spend on say a new pair of speakers, it's peanuts in relative terms and the gains are massive. Lets just say that I'll be listening a LOT more tonight.
