AMB Gamma 3 DAC

My total cost is projected to be ~$1,900 after casework which is more or less what i expected. The front plates alone cost about $375 for a reference AMB build (not so hard to swallow knowing my much smaller mcubed front plates were about half of that and nowhere near as fancy). I had to buy some additional tooling to make my life easier during the build. I feel a lot better justifying the cost of these things knowing the actual parts cost = the cost. It has more Sigma's than my beta22 and mcubed combined. There's just a lot for the money.

Passive component cost is around $1,500 WITHOUT performance compromises (i.e. using $2 murata input pulse transformers instead of the recommended Scientific Conversion 4 x $25 ones (same stuff that's in the $1,500 offramp/berkeley units), using a lower spec oscillator/clock, chinese trafos vs custom hand wound and shielded SUMR trafos, DAC IC's etc).

Mine is completely built from a electronics point of view, I will probably be done by the end of next month. It's all casework nuts and bolts right now.

I used to think the prices of fancy gear was BS until i tried to do my own FPD and casework. Yeah there's economy of scale, but someone had to come out with that original design and execution. A simple faceplate like the one on the old benchmark DAC1 is a piece of art. The contoured engraving, cutouts, beveling, beadblasted or brushed finished, and then coating/silkscreen across multiple vendors and not have a blemish along the way. That's way more than i'm willing to do on a DIY basis even though i know where to get this stuff done.

What's a post without pics heh