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Deltec / DPA

@Rosewind Keep an eye out for the Little bit mk3 too, it's in a full width case, and is based upon the later DX8 chip rather than a Philips, much better than the PDM1 imo. Although if you still want a PDM1, I'll be selling mine on ebay soon, as I have too many Deltec dacs lol
 
Having owned many Deltec / dpa DACs I'd say the pick of the bunch are the later E DACs - the SX 64/128s in the Chrome cases with acrylic fronts (but have the PSU / heat sinking sorted out) or the Bigger Bit. They hold their own with much of what is offered today - the limitation being no USB input. If you're using CD as source it's of benefit to use the Deltran clock link, but this was not a "night and day" thing to my ears. Of the earlier DACs the little bit 3 is fairly flexible with 2 coax ins as well as an optical in and coax out. I didn't find the DX8 much of an improvement on the 7350. There's an overpriced example on eBay at the moment. In contrast to Hempknight I preferred the PDM Dacs to the little bit; the 1.2 and 1.3 are decent, reliable bits of equipment.
I'd very much like to hear the PDM 3 which Tony has, despite the bumpy ride the resurrected dpa had - too much 'salesman', not enough engineers!
 
Thanks! Very nice of you to share your views. How can you tell the difference between the different versions - on the units themselves?
@Hempknight
Which version?
 
Both Little bits mk1 & mk2 were in the smaller cases, with the mk3 in a 'full' width case, an earlier one in an all grey case, and the later ones with the chrome casing and acrylic front. I'm using an SX128 in my main system, which is great and surpasses the 'enlightenment' dac. If I remember correctly my PDM 1 is the last version with the SAA7350 chip.
 
NeilR said:
Are they still resurrected? or have they died again?
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Dead as I understand it. I suspect mainly due to the PDM3 and matching amp being so expensive/arguably overpriced. I like my PDM3 a lot, but there is no way I’d pay £2.6k for it! If they could have stuck them out <£1k I suspect they’d have faired rather better. IIRC in 2010 (when the relaunch was) Chord were just starting to make big waves with the Qute etc so there was very serious competition. Chord seem to be the ones to complete against, which is somewhat ironic given they are designed by ex-Deltec partner Rob Watts. The 2010 relaunch was Adam on his own as I understand it. How much circuitry was vintage DPA I don’t know, but given the visual similarities of the boards I would guess at a fair bit - the 2010 DACs and amps do look like Deltec inside as well as outside. I bet the pre-power is very good indeed.
 
It is; the architecture is based on a simplified form of the originals, with a new take on the hybrid opamp front end.
 
Tony L said:
Dead as I understand it.
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I am not surprised really. I don't think they could ever have recovered from the former dpa's awful reputation for reliability, of which I have much experience.

In the end, I gave up and went for brands that have solid reputation for reliability.

I certainly wouldn't have risked any more money with them.
 
It's a real shame that the dpa phoenix did not rise from the ashes, my CA-1 is a lovely pre-amp, sadly I don't have the matching power amplifier - although I convince myself that, like the 50S, the pre is the star :)
 
I think they went the wrong way about it, with the reputation that dpa had, they should have re-established a reputation for better reliability, begining with lower and mid range priced equipment, then gone back to high end.
 
What were the reliability issues with the original DPA kit? A friend had the original mono amps with the feedback loop in the speaker cables and they kept blowing up trying to drive his AE1s, but other than that I haven’t heard anything negative aside from dodgy optical connections on the very fancy two-box DAC (which was a third party component fail rather than being DPA’s fault). Are the Little Bits etc a good second hand punt?

PS I’d likely take a punt on the fancy multi-box preamp if a mint one turned up at the right price. That was a very nice bit of kit as I recall.
 
As you say, Tony, if you shorted the speaker cable from the 50S or 100S power amplifiers it was a disaster - both took feedback right to the speaker's terminals and so a short generally took components out(however easy to avoid) but otherwise all was ok. The only unreliable kit I had was the enlightenment power amp which was complex and, well, not very good! As mentioned earlier in this thread there were problems with the optical send/receive devices in the PDM 2 and underspecified power supplies in some later DACs - which I experienced with an SX 64.
I imagine Tom - are you reading this thread? :) - could provide greater insight.
 
Not a short/misuse, just blowing up in normal running. The original AE1 is staggeringly hard to drive, it really takes a Krell or equivalent to wake them up and show how good they can sound. I remember trying my Naim 62/Hi/140 into them and it didn’t touch the sides, it sounded tiny and utterly gutless.
 
Ah, I see, I used my50S with big Dynaudio contours - hard to drive but not in AE1 territory!
 
It was a couple of choices in early SMT parts in those 50S and 100 amps that caused issues (e.g. 5 x 1ohm SMT resistors in parallel as emitter resistors - not good...*) Fix that, and they can be made short-circuit proof (and will drive low impedances incredibly well) - the ultimate limitation then is the comparatively limited heatsinking of the case - likely the issue thrashing something like an AE1 hard.

That said, - these are only '50w/8ohm' rated amps. the fact they are so staggeringly low distorion probably had people long run them into clip.
With mine, and those I've repaired for others they have no problem delivering about 65w into8ohms, and 130-132+into 4W, and a heck of a lot more than that into 2... a test I bottled last time I tried it. Not heard anything I prefer myself, and they measure extraordinarily well to this day, so they remain in use here...

*loose them, and the failure in an amp running hard will then take out the low-level output driver stage; its an unusual output stage design not unlike current dumping, in that there's a class-A output stage that always 'remains in control', backed by some very large transistors to do the heavy lifting beyond about +/-300mV.

ETA1:
The contortions necessary to reduce this into the later amp smaller cases and lower costs (DPA digital and enlightenment series) gave further issues related to insufficient part ratings (transistor choice, and reservoir caps, esp for voltage rating on the latter), and especially, crappy lack of heatsink capacity. The dinky half-width 200S amp is easy to blow up yet a compact pain to fix for all these reasons.

ETA2, to clarify the nomenclature - the 50S was newer, and I think rather better, than the 100s; no difference in power output though.
 
Tony L said:
What were the reliability issues with the original DPA kit?
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every single piece of dpa kit I had gave trouble

CD player: transport faulty, DAC board faulty
DAC: power supply overheated
Pre-amp: volume control unstable
Power amps: biasing fault, amps overheated and blew fuses

I got rid of most of it, although kept the SX128 which Martin has on long term loan. No idea if that is still working!
 
To the amazement of some, I have the Philips-based DPA transport to drive it, deltran and all. can't be many of these left around, let alone working... :D
 
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