More Upgrade On Integrated Tripath DAC Amplifier

I am enjoying my life recently by listening music on this Tripath DAC amplifier. I am not doing any upgrade on it just because I am satisfy with this tiny amp from tripath. Then from my last upgrade here, I combine this little amp with simple DAC circuit from TDA1543. It sound wonderful. I listen to my music albums collection again and again. Until one day, I notice something went wrong. The sound should be more lively especially on the lower octave. The bass shy and this is not right.

What is then rumbling on my head after that finding is the bass on my system are not reveal as the music should. I am pretty sure my little Vifa 3.5 inch driver can deliver bass more for that. Crossing in my mind that maybe I can build a powered subwoofer to adding those missing bass, but this is not a solution. To make sure this finding, I played many music again and feel that the vocal is also thin because of those lacking bass. Why I just notice this things or maybe the components already break-in then all sound reveal naturally now.

So then, I look again to the DAC schematic which I taken from Mao Blog and I am pretty sure the bottleneck is at the output capacitor. They are 2,2 uF and in my opinion it is too small. For further analysis, I guess I should rise up this value to at least 4,7 uF and my final decision is using 10 uF from Elna Silmic.

The others upgrade is adding more capacitor after the regulated power supply in DAC circuit. The default 100 uF is also too small. At that time I am using green Nichicon Muse which they are quite small in size due to limited space inside this tiny little amp. I guess the 'Muse' wording is only a marketing gimmick compares to the Muse KZ which is way bigger. I adding 220 uF after each regulator plus decoupling capacitor 100 nF from WIMA. This little amp is full of components right now. I should stop this upgrade, I cannot adding more capacitor at this moment.

Once I finished with this upgrade, then I test again this integrated DAC amplifier in my system and I was blown away. The bass that I am waiting for is reveal without sacrifice the higher note. The more I listen to it, the more I feel improvement on the sound stage and the warmth of the voice. I could't find any others negative in this system. It sound perfectly just like I wanted.

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