Is there any DAC compatible with FreeBSD?

Cannot recall the manufacturer and model, but a "stick" DAC cannot drive my Fostex T40RP mk3n nor FiiO E7 (aux input, wants line level), while all earphones I had were OK.
 
There appear to be two basic grades of 'stick' or 'dongle' dacs, 1V output and 2V output, depending on the module they have used internally. The low voltage versions - the CX31993, NICE-HCK and JM20 are really intended to drive IEM's, and low impedance IEM's at that. For higher impedance headphones, I recommend get the 2V versions which are the 'MAX' variants I tested, those typically have an additional audio op-amp buffer driving the output rather than relying on the dac chip's built-in audio amp; typically an SGM8262 from SG micro (also used in the Fiio K11 R2R). The exception to the rule being the TRN Black Pearl which contains 2 x CS43131 dac chips, so that each chip only has to drive one headphone drive unit (one CS43131 chip per side).

In any case, when driving better quality headphones like the HD650 and DT990, I recommend using a proper headphone amplifier to get the best possible sound quality. Even the cheap Douk Audio U3 from aliexpress can do a reasonable job, for very little money. And in my case I have the Firestone Audio 'cute beyond' class-A, which is very nice, and also the Canford 'bbc' broadcast quality headphone amp, that's probably a bit hard to find outside the UK. And if you have $3000 Focal headphones... I guess you already have a good amp to use with them, and you can ignore everything I say! 😁

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Of course you can get much better headphone amps than the two above. If you want something really good, get the Musical Fidelity X-cans V3...
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Or if you can afford it... the Graham Slee SOLO is of course very nice, really, you can't get much better than this no matter how much you spend. Well, something even more expensive might measure better, but I will bet 10 dollars that you won't be able to hear it! 😁 Graham is one of the world's top analog audio designers.
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Of course with the exception of the Firestone which comes from Taiwan these are all British designs.. I'm sure there are very good Japanese and US designs as well, I remember Audio Technica AT-HA5000 is another good class-A headphone amp, using the famous Hitachi power mosfets. This one, I wish I could get some day... :-)
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Remember, whichever amp you have, one secret is to use a good quality linear regulated power supply, not a switch-mode wall-wart. A good linear PSU will give you a big upgrade to the sound quality, even with a cheap amplifier.

Of course anyone can spend $10000 and get a good sound, that's the easy way. It's much more interesting to think "how can I get good sound from $200". :-)
 
I don't like Mr Behringher, because of what he did to the famous Tannoy loudspeakers company here in the UK, so sad. I still have my Tannoys of course, they were really some of the best speakers made. But this is politics... maybe the dac product is ok by itself.
 
I try to find out the platform a given app was written for, then run that platform.

I am not a gamer but I dearly loved win7 as an operating system. It is FAR more responsive than win10+ even with the bloat stripped out.

I’m forced to win10 due to planned obsolescence with my dailies that no longer launch on win7.

This means dedicated hardware and win7 OS for my DAW and others that are not forced into eternal OS upgrades.
 
I don't know about using FreeBSD as a DAW... but there is a very nice series here from Alien BOB about making a DAW based on slackware. Hopefully the moderators won't mind me posting it. It would probably give a lot of useful pointers to anyone who wanted to make a DAW based on FreeBSD. Eric has done a great job writing this series of articles, it is very comprehensive. I think if you browse around his site you will find some more recent updates to the DAW series as well.
blog.slackware.nl

Configuring Slackware for use as a DAW

Welcome, music-making (Slackware) Linux-using friends. This article will be an interactive work and probably never finished. I am looking for the best possible setup of my Slackware system for maki…
blog.slackware.nl blog.slackware.nl

Well... there is a thread here https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/using-freebsd-to-build-recording-studio.79617/
and something here https://github.com/marcelbonnet/freebsd-ports/blob/master/FBSD-DAW.md
.. although the second one is a little old.
 
In the spirit of "what can I do for a little money", I tried the following system out.

1. thinkpad X220 running freebsd 14.4
2. CX31993 DA06 dac
3. Douk audio U33 headphone amp ( https://www.head-fi.org/threads/dou...on-on-power-supply-voltage-amp-rating.953409/ )
4. 15V regulated linear PSU
5. Beyerdynamic DT-990 PRO headphones
6. 2-RCA to 3.5 mm jack cable (free, had one lying around)

If we ignore the price of the thinkpad, checking the current prices gives:-
CX31993 - 5 pounds (aliexpress)
Douk U33 amp - 25 pounds (aliexpress)
DT-990's - 135 pounds (amazon)
sub-total - 165 pounds

regulated 15V PSU - 65 pounds (aliexpress)
total - 230 pounds

The regulated power supply definitely improves the sound quality over the small switchmode that comes with the U33; particularly more extended bass, much fuller sound.

How does it sound? Not too bad. The amplifier has plenty of power to drive these headphones.
However after listening for half an hour, I think the weak point is the U33 headphone amp, which gets a bit harsh and fatiguing after a while, depending on the type of music being listened to. So I would choose a better headphone amp if possible, if going this route.

Still, this exercise gives you an idea of what can be done.

Alternatively, you could just buy a JM20-MAX or JM98-MAX dongle and drive the headphones directly, and it will probably sound at least as good, for less money.
 
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