My CD player DIY project

I decided to upgrate my CD player, but good (audiophile) CD players cost a lot (> 2000EUR). I digged a little but into the CD player construction and found out that its implementation does not justify the price. Moreover, there a design flaws all over...
So said - "I'll do it myself. A very gode one".

As many of you already know CD plater consists of 2 parts:

1. transport (a mechanism that reads CD and outputs data - usually SPDIF or even I2S) and


2. DAC (digital-to-analog converter) w/ output stage (2Vrms output is required, for unbalanced RCA).

Transport

Choosing a transport was an easy thing - CD-PRO2LF. Great transport, no clumsy tray, very turntable alike.

A great DIY (including controller board, remote, PSUs) can be purchased here.
Quite a straight-forward implementation. The only think-about thing is: should I inject DAC clock (and reclock SPDIF) or not. Tentlabs X03 is what I have in mind.
By-the-way, CD-PRO2LF has an I2S output (advantage over SPDIF of avoiding additional jitter), but there are many different I2S standards. CD-PRO2LF can be configured to output a specific standard, but this would require additional work (to sent DSA commant to the control unit). But I want to have transport DAC independed and I will most likely use SPDIF output.

DAC

DAC part is trickier.
I will not write an essay here. I agree with the Kusunoki's "Non-oversampling Digital filter-less DAC Concept".

This left me the following DAC chip choices: PCM1704 (new vesion of PCM 63), TDA1541 (and its economy versions: TDA1543, TDA1545), AD1865.
TDA1541 is very nice (also accepts I2C outputed by CD-PRO2LF), but requires 15V (and lots of decoupling caps).
PCM1704 is also great, but requires additional filter to convert 16-bit to 20-bit.
I found AD1865 most appropriate (all over 5V), very good specs and nice sounding (Audio Note preffered DAC chip).
Simpler is better.

By-the-way, there is quite good CD player available - fully differential (4x PCM1704-K), non-oversampling - Primare CD31. Worth listening, if you do not want to DIY.

I found these three DAC implementations to be really good one (my reference):

• "Tentlabs" DIY DAC


• Extremist DAC


• Audio Note DAC2.1 Kit

At the end, I ordered Audio Note 2.1 Kit w/o M2 PSU (that was to expensive for me). It shoud arrive in a few days. Weeeee :)
But I have some improvements in my mind, keep on reading...