As the Philips TDA1543 only supports 16/44.1 as input, does it mean that it accepts everything up to 24/96 but treats it anyway as 16/44.1, right?
Yes that is right
I'm also curious about the design choices, for example could you tell us the reason because you picked the old legend TDA1543 over a more modern DAC? I know that pure datasheet specs are secondary to the overall implementation (and an older DAC can still sound great with the right design around), so I'm interested in knowing the technical evaluation behind that.
The last five years I have done tons of listening tests with several DAC chips and configurations.
Those I think sounds absolutely best is those with no digital filters or oversampling.
The only modern chip I know that can be used as NOS is PCM1794
So we decided to do three different solutions based on TDA1543, TDA1387 and PCM1794
But the implementation of the old chips is little bit different than the usual way.
When you look at the TDA 1543 DAC you can see that it is biased on very unconventional way regarding pin 7.
This implementation based on TDA 1543 is the mid-price DAC.
We will release a smaller DAC for RPi, based on TDA 1387 (very unusual implementation too).
AND a bigger DAC (and more expensive) based on dual PCM1794 in NOS made as I said on the beagle bone forum.
ORION
My first DAC was based on TDA1543 (in NOS mode), I really love that kind of sound.
I hope you are going to listen to our implementation of TDA1543 it sounds really nice.
BR G