Twisted Pear DAC - ESS Sabre PRO Series ES9038

ALL212 · 392

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Offline ALL212

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on: July 30, 2021, 01:57:29 PM
A friend of mine built a monster DAC with the ES9018 chipset and boards from Twisted Pear.  He then built a simpler rig with the ES9038 and I bought out his old parts.
I put the ES9028 together and ran it via the Schitt Eitr (USB to S/pdif) from Roon into a Bottlehead Crack and loved the sound.  So I put that in the big rig replacing the Schiit Yggy.  Still loved it so I began building an ES9038 with Twisted Pear boards.  Sold the Yggy... (and don't regret it either!).
Had some issues getting the ES9038 working and it turned out I had a chip that was programmed for left channel mono.  Got that replaced and she's up and running. 
The Twisted Pear stuff are just boards and not kits.  No real directions and you supply wires, chassis, connectors and whatever else you think you need.  Support has fallen off so it's a bit of a challenge.
I used my friends chassis after removing the old parts.  I'm using the Amanero USB board stacked on the isolation boards from Twisted Pear.  Each channel of the analog board has it's own power supply.
Fantastic sound!!!

« Last Edit: July 30, 2021, 02:00:00 PM by ALL212 »

Aaron Luebke


Offline Paul Birkeland

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Reply #1 on: July 30, 2021, 04:29:50 PM
That chassis certainly makes it easy to experiment!

Paul "PB" Birkeland

Bottlehead Grunt & The Repro Man