Soekris Dam Dac

[rickmcinnis]

Yes, I was in a panic.

RELIEVED it was premature, again.

Take care,

[rickmcinnis]

Battery supply is working.

Funny, with the old PANASONIC on the 12 v rail it booted right up. Before I would have to disconnect the P24 cable and reinsert after the first boot attempt. Would always boot on the second try. Hope this continues ...

Another wasted panic.

First impression, as always, the bass goes deeper and notes are cleaner, more different from each other, lots less sludge. Takes a little time to appreciate the noise reduction.

Tempted to see if JCAT will work now. That would be strange but at this rate entirely possible.

Now for the REGEN. Worst that can happen is I blow it up.My next post will either say it works or I blew it up.

[rickmcinnis]

The jkeny REGEN mod is quite a different thing from the REGEN.

The REGEN made a nice change the jkeny REGEN makes a large change.

It allows what I consider psychedelic sound - somewhere between suspending disbelief and recreating reality.

It is the keystone to making the SOEKRIS sound fine. Like fine art kind of fine.

Well, I think I am finding happiness with digital. Not anywhere as anxious to return to LPs.

An amazing transformation from where I started a week ago!

[nige2000]

yea direct battery supply is the key
regen is easily twice as good with battery bypass

usb card still has a large influence so you need to get that sorted too
theres no reason it shouldnt work

get a diyinhk usb to i2s and you can bypass the regs in the waveio
and leaves the door open for the possible mod to provide clean supply to 48mhz clock to synchronously clock the xmos chip with a frequency divider (suppose its safe to recommend the popular potato 7474 ff for the job)

[jkeny]

Yep, it brings a whole different perspective to the party - glad you've tried it :)

[randytsuch]

Yep, it brings a whole different perspective to the party - glad you've tried it :)

Guess I need to work on my diy regen project over the holidays, I have all the pieces now, I think. Adapter card, USB chip and an oscillator. Oh, and a battery :)


On my dac, I had a little scare over the weekend. I'm changing the FPGA caps for panasonic films, and I started getting a little distortion on one channel. Tried to fix it, and got a LOT of distortion on that channel.

I finally dragged the scope out (which only took a minute, so I'm not sure why I didn't do it sooner), and started looking at signals.

On the shift register side of the caps, about 4-5 caps had a very low signal level, but the level was fine for those same caps on the FPGA side.

So, I carefully replaced those caps, applying just enough heat to install them, and then the signal levels were fine.

After I replaced all the caps which had a low signal level, no more distortion :).

I thought I was doing a pretty good job installing the caps, but I guess not. They appear to be delicate, and pretty easy to damage.

If you have a scope, its easy enough to check and make sure they are working after you install them. I'll try to see if you can check them with a meter set to AC voltage.

I have now replaced 27 of them, or 75%. One more set to go.

I think I'm getting a little more detail, seems a little more real, and a little more impact on the low end.

Randy

[nige2000]

Yep, it brings a whole different perspective to the party - glad you've tried it :)

Guess I need to work on my diy regen project over the holidays, I have all the pieces now, I think. Adapter card, USB chip and an oscillator. Oh, and a battery :)

definitely worth it even if not go straight to synchronized with the with xmos

On my dac, I had a little scare over the weekend. I'm changing the FPGA caps for panasonic films, and I started getting a little distortion on one channel. Tried to fix it, and got a LOT of distortion on that channel.

yea been there :)
i found these caps a little frail too im glad i got plenty of spares
im sure the floor got 20% of what i used

I finally dragged the scope out (which only took a minute, so I'm not sure why I didn't do it sooner), and started looking at signals.

On the shift register side of the caps, about 4-5 caps had a very low signal level, but the level was fine for those same caps on the FPGA side.

So, I carefully replaced those caps, applying just enough heat to install them, and then the signal levels were fine.

After I replaced all the caps which had a low signal level, no more distortion :).

I thought I was doing a pretty good job installing the caps, but I guess not. They appear to be delicate, and pretty easy to damage.

If you have a scope, its easy enough to check and make sure they are working after you install them. I'll try to see if you can check them with a meter set to AC voltage.

I have now replaced 27 of them, or 75%. One more set to go.

i found my dodgy caps by poking at them with a pencil during playback kinda low tech way
if there particularly bad you get some starwars sound effects :)

I think I'm getting a little more detail, seems a little more real, and a little more impact on the low end.
Randy

yes this is along the lines of my findings too, more fluid and realistic although it can seem subtle at times its still a decent improvement i wouldn't do without

[rickmcinnis]

I think my JCAT was defective from the start. Installed it in the office machine and it isn't recognized here either. Funny thing is the SILVERSTONE card I got way back when you posted your USB Card mod - the OS could not detect any hardware with it. Possible to have two defective cards but highly unusual.

Ordered a garden variety PCI-e USB card to satisfy my curiosity as to where the fault lies. This one uses a VIA USB chip.

I wonder if the main thing with the PCI-e card is that it is PCIe and that the clock mod might not be that important with REGEN in the chain? One of these days I will know for sure. JCAT will replace the card.

Those caps are plastic so no surprise they are fragile. Glad for the warning. One of these weekends I am going to do it but for the moment I am going to listen to this thing.

Ordering the DIYINHK i2s card. Will probably install that when I make the caps swap. Have to remove those HIROSE cables and that is not going to be possible until I disassemble the DAC.

Are you using anything in particular for the wire between DAC and card? Figure I would use small gauge silver - same as I used for the batteries to the board. It has a cotton sleeve (from JUPITER).

ALL HAIL jkeny and his battery scheme!

[nige2000]

I think my JCAT was defective from the start. Installed it in the office machine and it isn't recognized here either. Funny thing is the SILVERSTONE card I got way back when you posted your USB Card mod - the OS could not detect any hardware with it. Possible to have two defective cards but highly unusual.

Ordered a garden variety PCI-e USB card to satisfy my curiosity as to where the fault lies. This one uses a VIA USB chip.

I wonder if the main thing with the PCI-e card is that it is PCIe and that the clock mod might not be that important with REGEN in the chain?

no such luck the lack of a good usb card is still plainly obvious here

One of these days I will know for sure. JCAT will replace the card.

make your own card it will be better than jcat with direct battery power

Those caps are plastic so no surprise they are fragile. Glad for the warning. One of these weekends I am going to do it but for the moment I am going to listen to this thing.

Ordering the DIYINHK i2s card. Will probably install that when I make the caps swap. Have to remove those HIROSE cables and that is not going to be possible until I disassemble the DAC.

Are you using anything in particular for the wire between DAC and card? Figure I would use small gauge silver - same as I used for the batteries to the board. It has a cotton sleeve (from JUPITER).

i like the silver alright id say its a good job
still have run of the mill copper wire in for testing
if i ever "finish" ill rewire

ALL HAIL jkeny and his battery scheme!

[jkeny]

....
ALL HAIL jkeny and his battery scheme!

Steady on there, Rick :)