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Cronus - It's about time.

Hi,

Looking for some troubleshooting help. I have just assembled a B3SEPro / Mercury combo. Hooking up via SPDIF the DAC will lock.

When adding the Amanaro / Hermes / Cronus, and switching switch 1, position 1 to off, I get no lock on the DAC.

The MacBook feeding the Amanero shows the Amanero as connected and set as the output device.

The divider is set to 2:1, power is good at 5V, I have checked and double checked all wiring. Any clues as to how to troubleshoot this?

Thanks in advance.

Martin

Is the Amenero flashed for SlaveMode?
 
Hi,

Looking for some troubleshooting help. I have just assembled a B3SEPro / Mercury combo. Hooking up via SPDIF the DAC will lock.



Martin

Hi Martin. How are you powering it all? I had some issues with Amanero/Cronus on my 9018 DAC and Russ suggested Cronus may be getting power after DAC board.

I was using a linear PS for Cronus stack and Placid HD for DAC. I ended up using a different USB input on that DAC.

I am using that same Cronus stack in my 9028 powering DAC and Cronus with TP dual HO 5v supply and it locks every time I power it up.

Just a suggestion.
 
Adding a connection from system ground to earth seemed to help somewhat, now SPDIF will play 44k, but still with the occasional drop out. Perhaps there may be some grounding issues somewhere on one of the boards? I don't recall my BII having any sensitivity to grounding or needing a connection from system ground to earth. Still nothing at all via Amanero.
 
Better connections and the SPDIF input now works fully. Nothing still via Amanero though. I reflashed the Amanero to ensure that it was configured as slave, still no lock. Does anyone have any suggestions? I have tried:

Reflashing Amanero firmware
Checked all solder joints
Verified supply voltage
Checked for bridged chip pads.

The Mac shows the Amanero as output device and progresses through tracks but no lock of the BIISE Pro.
 
What sort of supply? If it's shunt - is it sourcing enough current?

Hi Russ,

I'm using a placid HD. It was set up for a B3 so around 500, I figure should be enough. I tried increasing it, all the way up to 800, but the tp-shunt always measured 0 and voltage never went above 1.8. That seems way too high. Seems like it should be around 200?

I went through the r1-7 SMD resistors and had to re-do a few of the joints on them. I see proper resistance across all of them now. Aside from that, just looked over / cleaned up the joints, of which there weren't too many.

Should I go ahead and re-do all the joints for good measure?



 
Is the Cronus the only thing being powered?

Yes, it's on a test rig with just a transformer and placid.

Does the direction matter for the clock sockets? I got them going in opposite directions, but that doesn't look like it should matter. Aside from that, things look clean / good to me.


Shared album - Ken Li - Google Photos
Shared album - Ken Li - Google Photos
Shared album - Ken Li - Google Photos

The Amanero gets detected by my laptop, so that part is good.
 
What is the input voltage from your Placid? If it is over 5.5V, the ADM7154 will go into over-voltage protection mode.

Edit: Actually, that should not cause the voltage to sag, so probably irrelevant, but worth checking anyway.

Edit #2: Maybe a silly question, but hard to tell from your pictures... You don't have the input voltage backwards, do you? It looks like you might, but can't see it clearly.
 
Last edited:
It's set to ~5.25. Double-checked the input and it's right. Played around a bit and powered up a B2 on it and it works OK, so the Placid is good for sure. Any other ideas?

What is the input voltage from your Placid? If it is over 5.5V, the ADM7154 will go into over-voltage protection mode.

Edit: Actually, that should not cause the voltage to sag, so probably irrelevant, but worth checking anyway.

Edit #2: Maybe a silly question, but hard to tell from your pictures... You don't have the input voltage backwards, do you? It looks like you might, but can't see it clearly.
 
It's set to ~5.25. Double-checked the input and it's right. Played around a bit and powered up a B2 on it and it works OK, so the Placid is good for sure. Any other ideas?

All I can suggest is to start looking for shorts or dead components on the cronus. It's sounding like a dead voltage regulator - which can happen if it ever saw too high an input voltage.
 
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RPi Hermes-Cronus question..

Russ / Grael / Miero,

I'm curious on how the RPi Hermes-Cronus operates with the RPi. I understand from the posted information that a special driver was written. Does it work by operating the RPi in clock slave mode and feeding the bitclock from the Hermes-Cronus combo? Or have you come up with another clever way to get around the RPi's audio shortcomings?

TIA!

Greg in Mississippi