Hifi News

Weiss Engineering’s DAC501/DAC502: also features a DSP

The DAC502 uses a larger frame but else sports the same features as the DAC501. Except for an an additional 4 pin headphone socket at the back of the unit

The DAC50x uses a stainless steel chassis with a solid 10 mm aluminium front plate.

DAC502_Back

A non-switching power supply is used, “All sensitive voltages have their own regulators which are separated between left and right channels,” said the company. “The result is an analogue output free of digital noise and channel crosstalk,” it said.

The power switch activates a semiconductor relay which only switches on or off at zero crossings of the mains voltage. The two mains transformers are toroidal types while mains voltage selection is done automatically by measuring the mains voltage before power is applied to the rest of the electronics.

DAC502_Front

An internal clock generator is responsible for clocking the D/A converter section. The sampling frequency of that generator is fixed at about 195kHz. All standard sampling frequencies up to 384kHz plus DSD x64 and x128 are supported.

There are a total of five inputs: AES/EBU or S/PDIF via XLR, Toslink and RCA sockets, UPnP / DLNA via Ethernet and USB.

The following DSP algorithms are currently implemented or implemented soon:

Room Equalizer, Creative Equaliser, De-Essing, Constant Volume, Vinyl Emulation, Crosstalk Cancelling (XTC) and Out Of Head Localization algorithm.

DAC501_Back

Two 32bit DAC chips are used with two DAC channels used per audio channel.

Analog Outputs includes: Line out unbalanced on RCA connector; Line out balanced on XLR connectors, Headphone out on 1/4″ Jack Analogue and for the DAC502, additional headphone output on a 4-pin XLR connector.

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6 Comments

  • Reply
    Geoffrey
    22nd May 2017 at 7:38 pm

    A fantastic company.

  • Reply
    Geoffrey
    22nd May 2017 at 7:54 pm

    Do you know how much these cost?

    • Reply
      Paul Rigby
      23rd May 2017 at 12:02 pm

      I think the DAC502 retails at £8,100, Geoffrey.

      • Reply
        Geoffrey
        23rd May 2017 at 6:53 pm

        Auch! That’s a lot of money.

  • Reply
    Thomas Kozakis
    7th April 2019 at 5:27 pm

    I’m late I know but curious … your article says: “Two 32bit DAC chips are used with two DAC channels used per audio channel.” What DAC chips are these? ESS? Burr-Brown? Etc? And what is the model number of the chip. THANKS.

    • Reply
      Paul Rigby
      8th April 2019 at 11:07 am

      Hi Thomas – apparently 32bit ESS Sabre ES9018K2M DAC chips used with a SHARC DSP running Weiss’s own digital filter.

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