I have been following the IanCanada projects for over three years now and finally taking the plunge to build my own streamer/dual mono DAC with ultracapacitor linear power supplies. I have basic soldering skills and can follow a schematic and the thing that has kept me from pursuing this sooner is that it looks incredibly complicated. The more I learn about it, it’s actually quite simple and seems to be a fun project with a modest learning curve.

Has anyone here built one of these? I haven’t found any reviews comparing them against commercially available products so I’m curious what they actually sound like, especially driving Decware amps.

I’ll update this post once my parts arrive and I get building but in the meantime I would love to hear from anyone that has experience with this.

Thanks, Crazy Bill. I actively use the DIY Audio site, just looking to hear any perspectives from the Decware community.

The parts are here and I started building out the boards for general proof of concept prior to mounting in a chassis. Unfortunately, due to my configuration I have to use 13mm standoffs for the DAC and output stages instead of the shorter standoffs Ian supplies. I thought I was ordering some standoffs from the US but apparently the order is being supplied from China so it will now be June before they arrive.

In the meantime, I got the Raspberry Pi flashed with Volumio which was easier than I anticipated. The downside is that Volumio free version is pretty much useless. The workaround to connect Qobuz to Volumio is M Connect. This added layer of complexity is small but probably enough to make it too complicated for my wife to use so this streamer DAC isn’t likely to replace my CXN100, or possibly I add another set of inputs to my amp if the sound is good enough and keep the CXN for her and the IanCanada loop for critical listening. Or possibly what I learn from the process is enough to make a significantly improved power supply for the CXN. We will see.