Hi All,

Just wanted to share my experiences about this versatile little gem. I bought this on a punt as an add-on upgrade for my ageing Sony X55ES cd player that uses a 1bit oversampling dac. By itself its a good cdp, but i was wanting more from my 2 channel sound. For those who dont know what NOS is, its Non-Oversampling, which is different to upsampling and oversampling. I wont go into the details between NOS, upsampling and oversampling as this will deter away from the purpose of this user review. Google is your best friend here to be enlightened!

Well, to start off, this unit has a massive follow up on the Head-Fi forums and there are quite a few DAC's out in the market that use the NOS principals, which tends to be minimilistic in design, without any over processing that may change *insert any audiophile word of choice* the final sound of the music. The unit uses 8 TDA1543 16 bit dac chips in a parallel config, a 10v power supply, a DIR9001 Texas Instruments digital receiver rated at 50ps (jitter) which is quite low, 12mhz TXCO chip that re-clocks the digital feed from the USB, Coax, SPDIF inputs to minimise jitter, and uses the unit chasis as a heatsink to dissipate head. The internals of the dac is minimal, uses some decent capacitors, (hence the cost is low) with a passive I/V output stage (no opamps here) that will effect the final sound..

The seller on ebay (Vintage Audio Lab) was quite informative with all the questions I had about the Dac and were all promptly answered, although English is not one of his strong points. So, I bit the bullet and ordered one last week and it took 3 days from Taiwan to arrive at my door in Melbourne. So, when I got it, naturally like with every big kid with his new toy, plugged it in using a DSE toslink cable from the Sony into the Electra. Chucked in some Norah Jones and was pleasantly surprised with the sound. This dac is surprisingly GOOD!.. There are some details in Norah's voice in the "Dont Know Why" track where sibilance tends to glare when she vocally gets into it, but with the Valab, the midrange and high freq dynamics are maintained without that glare and sounds smooth.
Diana Krall's "Quiet Night's" cd sounded very musical and smoooooth..details in her voice were spacious and the soundstage was quite wide, it was almost like she was there, singing and in presentation.

The sound that this dac presents can be best described as warm and 'organic', smooth clear mid's and highs and surprisingly good balanced bass to match. Question is, does this A$280 dac does it all? Probably not, but there are some individuals who have ditched thier Cambridge Audio 740 & 840 cd players for a cd transport and this dac combo. On the other hand, some people people prefer to hear that last bit of detail in thier music, which is where this dac does not do well. To best describe this, with the Chesky's Ultimate Demonstration Disc, using track 27, you can still hear the strings being plucked on the double bass and hear the strings wobble effect, but it is not as *pronounced* as an upsampling/oversampling dac/cd player.

Apparently, this dac is a popular choice for those using a Squeeze Box 3 or Ipod with a Wadia 170i digital transport to stream the digital feed via USB -> DAC -> Preamp/Amp. Also, users with some skills around a soldering iron are replacing and tweaking the sound of the dac with better capacitors to suit thier taste. Also, there are clones that have and look similar to the Valab (internally) but why pay more for a rebadged unit? Also, some sellers use dual TDA1543's or a single TDA1541a or TDA1545 chip. Whilst the TDA1541a is the best of the lot and is highly sought after, NOS dac's that use this chip tend to cost a fair bit. Even some DIY'ers have gone down the path to use 12 or 24 TDA1543 chips for better S/N ratios and performance.

I guess the clincher here is that if you have an old cdp to be used as a transport, or a cheap dvd/cd player and want some decent output for music, or just simply wanting to hear the NOS difference, then this dac will suit. If you have a $3k or more cd player, then i doubt this dac will do much for it to improve on 2 channel sound. Well for me, this one's a keeper for what i've paid for it and i'm definately a convert to the NOS sound. Recommended!


Valab First Impressions Thread - Head-Fi
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f7/valab-dac...essions-378459/

Valab on Ebay
http://stores.shop.ebay.com/Vintage-Audio-Lab__W0QQ_armrsZ1

Saw one on ebay being sold by a local guy in Sydney, but its now gone..

Just an update,

I've had this Dac for about 2 weeks now, clocking around 30 hours of playback. There are subtle improvements to the sound, bass definately tightening up while the mids and highs although smooth in character, more details are presenting itself. I was told that this Dac really shines after the initial burn-in period after 150-200 hours of use. Another user from the Head-Fi forum suggested that using blutac to dampen the TXCO clock and the DIR9001 chipset offers improvements to the sound. May have to test that out at some point after the initial burn in. Biggest improvements to this unit would be to upgrade the power supply unit along with the output capacitors to Mundorf's or Obbligato's, but i'll leave that to those soldering iron slingers..

Any others here have this DAC?

Yes I got one pretty much the same time as you, late April 2009. Running from HTPC via USB into Cambridge Audio 640R driving Adelaide Speakers - Summoner 1093 mains. Very happy with the purchase so far, have been following the Headhifi forums which helped make my decision with no regrets. Only discovered yesterday , that upon first installing the usb device, it showed as being usb headphones in Vista. I updated the driver and it now shows as usb audio device. This gives the option to select full range speakers which dramatically improved low end performance as until then I was a little disapointed.

Ditto with me on the Vista issue. After reading on the follow-ups and did the driver update on my laptop, the sound is sweet as. I'm considering getting a Wadia 170i transport to plug in my Ipod, makes life a tad easier than lugging a laptop and connecting with more cables.

I've been following the Adelaide Speakers thread and the Summoner series looks good. Is yours the one's with the ribbon tweeter? How do you find ribbons compared to standard silk domes etc?

Been trawling around Ebay and spotted one on auction, could be a bargain pickup.

I just got the standard Peerless domes but got the kevlar midrange upgrade, which sound fantastic.