[Rclark]

 Ships Nov 30. secure yours now if interested.

[jermmd]

Emotiva XDA-1

[turkey]

That's a pretty impressive unit for $300.

[toobwacky]

At the price I feel like I'm "looking a gift horse in the mouth" by asking this, but why are they using an op-amp after the DAC for I/V conversion when they went to all the expense of following it with a "Fully Discrete Differential Reference™ Output Stage with fully independent balanced and unbalanced drive stages?"

I'm not saying an op-amp is a bad thing in this design, but I'm curious. if a discrete design is better for the output stage, why not for the I/V conversion as well? Obviously use of an op-amp is cost effective, but is its use here a bottle-neck of this design in terms of sound quality?

Just to be clear, I'm not knocking this DAC, in fact... I'm probably going to buy one. I'm just wondering about this one aspect of the design.

Anyone?

[mbakes]

Someone else raised the same question on another site.  I'm curious as well.

[roscoeiii]

I believe that there are two threads on this topic for some reason? There was an earlier one with more posts begun sometime in the past couple days. Can we consolidate the two?

[Occam]

Toob-

This piece of kit is built to both a price point and marketing points.
The built in volume control (I assume a Crystal or BB) would also incorporate a built in integrated op amp.
From what I've read, this dac is a tremendous material value. As to its actual objective and subjective performance, that remains to be seen. But to choose a more orthodox, high end IC solution such as 2 AD797 or LT1028 for each channel would raise the msrp substantially.

Given the price, this is (assuming a good implementation) potentially a very high value product.

FWIW

[Jon L]

why are they using an op-amp after the DAC for I/V conversion when they went to all the expense of following it with a "Fully Discrete Differential Reference™ Output Stage with fully independent balanced and unbalanced drive stages?"

Uhh, it's probably because they spent most of the production budget on that discrete output stage that they could only use an op-amp for I/V.  It *IS* a $299 product    I have one reserved, and I just hope that OPA-2134 is socketed for some more op-amp rolling fun.  One could even try one of those "discrete" op-amps from Audio-GD or Burson if desired..

[Turnandcough]

Looks like it could be the Oppo of the DAC world.

[soundbitten1]

Is this supposed to better ERC-1's internal dac?

[roscoeiii]

soundbitten,

According to Emotiva on their forums, yes it is supposed to be an improvement.

[etcarroll]

Well, if its socketed, and you can roll the op-amps, then this baby may be just the ticket for my SB.

Uhh, it's probably because they spent most of the production budget on that discrete output stage that they could only use an op-amp for I/V.  It *IS* a $299 product    I have one reserved, and I just hope that OPA-2134 is socketed for some more op-amp rolling fun.  One could even try one of those "discrete" op-amps from Audio-GD or Burson if desired..

[MaxCast]

Wonder if a tube buffer could modded in there.

[etcarroll]

Regarding opamps, I don't know if you can tell, but there are some internal pics here:
http://emonatics.com/XDA-1.shtml

[woof]

That's a pretty impressive unit for $300.

I don't get it:  No balance control!  I can live without tone controls but balance is just a necessary evil.  I've never had a dedicated listening room with perfect acoustics and I think this is a serious oversight of most manufacturers.

[Charles Calkins]

Got a call from Jana Riggs of Emotiva. XDA-1 will be in around Nov. 24. Ordered one. Being shipped by FEDEX.

                                                  Cheers
                                                  Charlie

[Phil A]

I signed up to be notified and will be picking it up for the basement system for use with an HDMI audio de-embedder to extract hi-rez PCM from SACD.  Glad to hear it is close.