why not a pcm chip tho?'

some of the higher end burr browns have really nice specs

the pcm has this noise at all times

maybe i just got chinked 🤔

that's just a shit implimentation

if you don't mind not having a housing, i got a SA9023 + ES9023 DAC for like $19 AUD which works nice

and has a pretty damn low noise floor

slap it in an altoids tin if you care about a housing

otherwise there are a few cheap dongle dacs

no idea how they perform

but sabre chips seem to be pretty easy to impliment other than the whole glare issue

but you probably wont hear that unless you have a lot to compare with

do i find the SA9023 + ES9023 on ali?

dunno if its on there, i got it on ebay

lemme look 1 sec

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/DAC-Earphone-amplifeir-Stereo-SA9027-ES9023-USB-to-SPDIF-I2S-Coaxial-Sound-Card-Supports-24-Bit/32786557311.html

price went up a bit

but i still like it

also has I2S if you ever have USB issues

that looks quite nice

is pretty decent

i dont get hiss even with sensitive IEMs

pair it with a CMOY/RA1 and youve got a pretty damn good portable amp/dac

if you want something smaller, i have one of those "MUSES" PCM2704 DACs that was kind of okay other than the stupidly oversized housing

smaller wouldnt be necessary, but where do i find thid cmoy/ra1 amp and how would i go about installing it?

cmoy is an open source extremely simple opamp based portable amp

and a grado ra1 is essentially the same with a diff gain strucutre

youll only need one if youre using headphones with a lower sensitivity though, or if you really just want a volume knob

https://www.ebay.com/itm/JRC4556-Battery-version-RA1-Dual-Channel-MINI-headphone-amplifier-finished-board/132173131332

tho that one doesnt have any protection circuitry so youll want to unplug stuff before turning on/off

at least with sensitive transducers

if you wanted a proper one you could grab one of these https://www.aliexpress.com/item/WZ-RA-DIY-Assembled-headphone-board-power-AMP-base-on-RA1-with-27-Potentiometer/32351207546.html

but then youd need a ground

so either a proper power supply or a virtual ground is needed

delving too far for what you seem to want tho

also, if youre interested i could try connecting to the Zishan Z1 via i2s since im pretty sure it has support

might fix the whole delay issue

would probably be nice to get into this sort of stuff eventually

and if u could fix audio delay that would really help

tbh, dont mess with chifi source gear too much unless its just a clone of some western design

too many variables