[orpheus]

I just finished building a Chime last night, and it sounds as good as I remember from the Chime-across-America tour.  

Before I built the Chime, I put the HagDac into a chassis with RCA's, and switches for the digital filter and phase.  It sounded really good powered by 2x12 volt SLA batteries, using the buffered outputs from the onboard opamp.

Here's an idea for your candybag.

Why not take what you learned building the HagDac, and build a compact rechargeable battery powered (2x9 volts?) portable DAC with a USB, toslink, and maybe SPDIF input.  Headroom makes a product that's similar, but the design isn't as good on paper as the HagDac (I've never heard the Headroom product).  The HagDac sounds really good with the opamp output and battery powered.  I bet it would be the best portable DAC available, and it would be cheaper than the Chime.

There are a lot of headphone geeks out there that are into portable gear and would love to have a fantastic sounding portable DAC.  You could include an 1/8 inch line out jack, maybe RCA's too.  

What I described might be a little big, but they fit most of that functionality into the Headroom DAC in a small package.  Heck, you might even be able to get Headroom to sell it for you, they sell competitors products, even other companies amplifiers.  You could even offer it as a kit, there are a lot of guys doing surface mount kits over on Headfi.org now.

You would mostly be combining work you've already done, I bet you could whip up a board in no time.  Put it in a hammond case, something like the 1455 series,  with 2x 9 volts, a battery charging circuit, and a jack for a battery charger, and you've got a great sounding DAC you can use with your computer, a portable device with a digital out, or your home system.  Don't know how much you'd end up charging for the whole thing,  maybe it would wind up costing too much to be an effective product for you, but I think it might be worth considering.

If it was easier to get to the HagDac inside the Chime, it could even be set up so that you could plug the HagDac into what ever you were using, the Chime at home, or the portable case when you're on the road.  

Just something to think about.
-Aaron.[/code]

[hagtech]

Hmmm.  So just how portable do you mean?  Like an iPod?  Something to carry around in a pocket or on your belt?

What the heck would plug into it?

jh

[orpheus]

Yep, portable like an ipod.  See the Headroom product here:

http://www.headphone.com/products/headphone-amps/the-micro-line/headroom-micro-dac.php


People would use their laptop, or a portable device with a toslink digital output.  Granted, there aren't many portable devices that have a toslink output, but there are some.  Of course it could also be used in home system, but a small form factor and battery power could make it attractive to the portable/headphone crowd.  Would be great with a laptop or computer via usb for listening to high quality sound at work, in a bedroom, or anywhere you use headphones,  where having something small and battery powered could be an attractive solution.  

The Chime sounds fantastic, and although I'm sure that the no feedback tube output stage, using a resistor for I/V conversion, and thus having no opamps in the output really helps the HagDac to sound better, the HagDac sounds pretty good on it's own via it's onboard opamp.  Of course I haven't A/B'd, but when I had the standalone, I was very impressed.  I think that there are a lot of people out there who wouldn't spend the $1799 for the finished Chime, or be willing to build one themselves, but would spend less than $1k on a great portable/small form factor DAC with a solid state output stage.  The success of the ACK dac comes to mind.

There is a lot to consider with this project, in terms of competition and potential interest, but it could be something worth looking into.  The end cost might be what makes it difficult, with the HagDac board already being $500, adding to it and putting it in a chassis could add quite a lot to the cost, making it too expensive to work as a portable small form factor, candybag product.

-Aaron.

[Loftprojection]

Pretty funny you mention this orpheus, I'm in the market right now for something very similar to what you are describing.  Let me expand, maybe HagTech can help us out! haha

I think there are currently many people who have a computer (many portable that they carry to the office) and have ripped some of their CDs it.   Most of those people don't have a descent sound card and even the ones who have one, descent sound card mostly sound like crap!

So me right now, I'm thinking about a descent USB driven "transportable" DAC.  There are some commercial models like Apogee MiniDAC, Benchmark DAC1, Lavry Black, all over 1k.  There is also a few "cheaper" offerings like MHDT Lab, LiteAudio,...  All are AC power driven and most don't have a USB input so computer owners still need a soundcard to output in digital.

What I was thinking at the moment was to buy a HagUSB and a Monica2 NOS DAC, combine the two in an enclosure and have a cheap, good sounding, battery driven, transportable DAC.  (by transportable I mean not "pocket" size but more "backpack" size).

I don't know if the HagDAC could be an option, can it be DC powered, it's price on top of USB, battery, enclosure would bring it more into the fierce competitive 800 to 1200 market against well established players.  I think a cheap NOS DAC might be easier to fit in a category of it's own where there is basically only Scott Nixon's offering...

Anyway, fun subject!  haha

[orpheus]

The HagDac as is could fit the bill for what you want.  You could use the HagUSB and then put the HagDac in an enclosure, and it would work as you described.  Then you'd be touching the price of the Lavry and Benchmark, but neither of those has USB input though.  The HagDac could be powered by batteries, I used two large 12 volt SLA's, not exactly portable.  I think that you could use rechargeable 9 volts, please correct me if I'm wrong.


It would be more than the cost of the Monica,  but you'd still have a power supply and usb-spdif converter to worry about with the Monica, so you'd just be paying more for a better dac module.  

-Aaron.

[slwiser]

Loftprojection

As I remembered reading this page, I have though that he had stated that he put the monica 2 dac into this device. But as I just read it this seems to not be the case.  But I think he could put these two together for you.  Or maybe this is what that analog out would add? You could ask about adding the monica dac to the USB Select device noted below.

Check this out at Red Wine Audio;

http://www.redwineaudio.com/USB_Select.html

Pretty funny you mention this orpheus, I'm in the market right now for something very similar to what you are describing.  Let me expand, maybe HagTech can help us out! haha

I think there are currently many people who have a computer (many portable that they carry to the office) and have ripped some of their CDs it.   Most of those people don't have a descent sound card and even the ones who have one, descent sound card mostly sound like crap!

So me right now, I'm thinking about a descent USB driven " ...