Philips TDA-1541

You will find lots of material on this DAC chip. It can be found in hundreds of players and can be bought for little money and then tweaked to a very high level.

Because there's such a wealth of information out there regarding this chip, I'm not going to bore you with technical details and specs. Instead I'm going to share a few secretes and opinions from my experience with this chip.

First off, when you think of the TDA sound, 3 chips should come to mind: TDA-1540, TDA-1541 and TDA-1541a.


The TDA-1540.

This was the first chip Philips used, or rather "chips" as they are mono so you have one per channel. Philips were the original force behind the Compact Disc format. They had gone with a 14bit word length and therefore their beloved TDA-1540 was also 14bit. However, when SONY got involved with the format, they insisted on a 16bit word length. Oh dear, poor old Philips, there machines were technically inferior due to the missing 2bits of information.

Luckily the boffins at Philips came up with a way to utilize the 16bit word length on there 14bit machines. It was called oversampling and with this Philips were able to sell there machines as 16bit players.

Philips would have to do the best they could until a 16bit chip could be made ready for production.

The TDA-1541.

This was a single 16bit chip capable of converting both channels at once. This was reference chip at the time. Almost all the respected high end players used Philips internals.

The TDA-1541a.

As far as I can tell the only difference between this and the "non a" is that one has a resistor built into the silicon and the other used a conventional component on the pcb.

The TDA-1541a single and double crown chips.

People go crazy for these stupid things!  Now, you may have just fallen off your chair if you'r a tda fan but wait a minute. The crown chips are the same as every other 1541a chip. They come from the same designs, the same production line as the "non crown" chips.

So what is all this "crown" nonsense?

Philips tested "some" of their chips and the ones which measured slightly better were given a crown badge. Philips couldn't test all their chips and this means there are potentially thousands of crown worthy chips out there that never got a badge. This also applies to the "non a" chips as well, even more so in fact, because non of these were tested for crown status.

So the crown chips are slightly better than the normal chips but can anyone really tell the difference? I suggest a far greater improvement can be had by simply upgrading other areas of the cd player. Better de-coupling caps on the chip, better regulation in the power supply, better configuration of the output stage ect.

So in other words my advise here would be, don't waste cash on getting a super high-end Crown player, when you can buy an utter piece of rubbish and tweak it far beyond the standard crown.

The worst TDA machine I have ever heard is the Marantz cd-85, it has looks to die for, amazing build quality, fantastic transport, high grade elna audio capacitors but the worst sound I can remember from a cd player EVER! The Philips cd-160 modded would destroy it, hell, even a standard one would be better.

Marantz cd-85 £200-300 or Philips 160 for around £40-50 ?

Until the next time guys ZzZzzzzzzzzzz

Creek CD60 - The God of TDA1541a

Can it be true?    Do I really hold the rarest of rares in my sweaty grasp?

Yes, for it was written in the stars!

Behold, the Creek CD60!

Philips TDA1541a Single Crown, CDM-4 Transport, BurrBrown OPamps, Toroidial Transformer, Extremely well regulated power supply (15 regulators), Thick steel enclosure and nice small square rubber feet on the bottom.



No fuss and no nonsense on the outside but under the hood this baby looks like heaven. The PCB is the same size as the player! The build quality is like Naim but from a small cottage industry style company in Scotland.

No fancy connections here, just a kettle lead in the back, SPdif output, if needed, and a pair of phono connectors, nice and simple. It also has a remote which is a nice slim lightweight model from philips. You will notice there's few buttons on the front of this player and the remote has little more to offer. There is no random button or the ability to program a sequence of tracks in an order of preference.... GOOD!



This is a "sit down, shut up and strap ya-self in" kinda player, designed with the most discerning audiophile in mind. The looks are sleek and crisp, it looks hand made but industrial at the same time. The whole player oozes a feel of "simply built the right way", the ultimate cottage industry philosophy. No cost cutting, no marketing rubbish, just pure honest design and the knowledge that someone took pride in what they did.

The buttons on the front are not the normal feather touch buttons we find everywhere else, but the clever use of non-latching switches instead. These switches are most common as a latching variant and can be found in a huge percentage of electrical goods as, the main power button. They give a really nice feel to the operation of the machine and such a simple idea, if only more had done the same.



Sound is first class, everything I love about the TDA shinning through and yet it remains clean and crisp while retaining that warmth we all crave. I had a short experience with the Cambridge Audio CD3 and I have to say I'm glad it was short. The upper mid and treble were a little over powering and contained a "frosty" quality that I couldn't get along with.

The Creek has some of that Ice but it retains a perfect balance. I couldn't describe it as "musical", in fact I find it very hard to characterize the sound at all. "Ah, I've got it" neutral.

Its a good player but I seldom feel the urge to player it, maybe the non-oversampling mod and some work to the output stage would improve the musical aspect but I resist the temptation. For now...

Until the next time guys...