I take it you're talking about the upocoming x-fi card deandob.
OCAU linked a review the other day, but its unfortunatly a quite useless review as far as getting any hint of there SQ, does show the DAC used tho, same as the 1212.. CS4832
http://www.guru3d.com/article/sound/246/6/
OCAU linked a review the other day, but its unfortunatly a quite useless review as far as getting any hint of there SQ, does show the DAC used tho, same as the 1212.. CS4832
http://www.guru3d.com/article/sound/246/6/Yes, if implemented correctly this card has potential for SQ, however Creative's history is not so good here.... The card does use a great DAC and it does not resample, so its worth exploring, especially as it can be used for gaming without needing a separate card. Would be nice if it had a balanced output and decent connectors.
Regards,
Dean
Regards,
Dean
Hi,
Just tried a demo of the J. Rivers Media program.
Seems like a great program with some nice extras that will just raise overhead.
Anyway I've finally seen the 192Khz Locked lit on my audiodock. I'm guessing I'd need at least twice the CPU I have for it to play half decently, as it stands the media program maxes out my CPU on that mode, and the sound keeps cutting out as a result.
However at 96Khz which I have it on now it plays very well.
Both modes were tested with a lossless MP3 of Jewel.
I'm now well aware of why consumer audio differs from pro audio, it's just too good for the average mortal.
BTW yes I'm still on single ended mono homebrew..... but not for long. I'm really expecting a mind blowing experience now.
Regards,
Chris
Just tried a demo of the J. Rivers Media program.
Seems like a great program with some nice extras that will just raise overhead.
Anyway I've finally seen the 192Khz Locked lit on my audiodock. I'm guessing I'd need at least twice the CPU I have for it to play half decently, as it stands the media program maxes out my CPU on that mode, and the sound keeps cutting out as a result.
However at 96Khz which I have it on now it plays very well.
Both modes were tested with a lossless MP3 of Jewel.
I'm now well aware of why consumer audio differs from pro audio, it's just too good for the average mortal.
BTW yes I'm still on single ended mono homebrew..... but not for long. I'm really expecting a mind blowing experience now.
Regards,
Chris
1802M - good news
I just read on the EMU forums that EMU are about to release a multichannel WDM driver for the 1820M.
Chris, this means that you will be able to use your 1820M in multichannel mode.
I was about to purchase the Lynx 2B (an excellent card but expensive) but now with the ability for PC DVD player software to output all channels on the 1820M, that will be the way to go.
I just read on the EMU forums that EMU are about to release a multichannel WDM driver for the 1820M.
Chris, this means that you will be able to use your 1820M in multichannel mode.
I was about to purchase the Lynx 2B (an excellent card but expensive) but now with the ability for PC DVD player software to output all channels on the 1820M, that will be the way to go.
1820M questions
Chris,
Have you looked into the analog output section of the 1820M? Can you tell if it uses a cap for DC decoupling or a DC servo? What is the opamp in the output and does it use multiple output stages (eg. a buffer)? Are there differences in the output stage for each channel (eg. better opamps for the L+R channels)?
Regards,
Dean
Chris,
Have you looked into the analog output section of the 1820M? Can you tell if it uses a cap for DC decoupling or a DC servo? What is the opamp in the output and does it use multiple output stages (eg. a buffer)? Are there differences in the output stage for each channel (eg. better opamps for the L+R channels)?
Regards,
Dean
Hi Dean,
Sorry but I haven't yet had the urge to take the audio dock apart, not even yet having used it to full potential.....
So while I haven't ruled it out I'M in no rush to dig in there. Also have an amp build on the go and a computer to keep fixing....
Today I just felt like trying out a higher mode so I got the rivers media as recommended by you and I must say I love it. Excellent program.
Oh yeh.. the choppy sounds at 192khz...... that was at a bitrate of 24. So I thought to myself, why not lesson the load at a bitrate of 16 and keep the samling rate maxed at 192khz. I did that and got an immediate error, the application closed, and I can no longer boot the damned computer unless I'm in safe mode, it just keeps rebooting. I just walked away from it I can probably work it out in safe mode by reinstalling the sound card .....
I hope the promised new drivers will address this issue as well, only reason I'm not crying about it more is because I just got the CPU that was promised with my new motherboard and I figure a reformat is in order to use it anyway even though it's only 100Mhz faster. Scenario, is a 1.2Ghz with the bigger cache (256 for a Tbird??) possibly faster than a 1.3Ghz CPU with a smaller cache? Just a theoretical question guys don't beat it to death, I'm not sure which cache the new CPU will have yet, but it can't be much of a step forward and I certainly dont' want a step back.
So Dean as posted before .... It's DC servo controlled inputs and DC outputs.. I'm sorry but I won't be able to confirm that for at least a few weeks and I'd actually not touch until I've broken it in well and played with all settings and features.
I think it's time we had some EMU personal join here to answer such things.. I'm going to look into it.
Will continue to keep you posted and I'll try and get those questions answered eventually.
Sorry but I haven't yet had the urge to take the audio dock apart, not even yet having used it to full potential.....
So while I haven't ruled it out I'M in no rush to dig in there. Also have an amp build on the go and a computer to keep fixing....
Today I just felt like trying out a higher mode so I got the rivers media as recommended by you and I must say I love it. Excellent program.
Oh yeh.. the choppy sounds at 192khz...... that was at a bitrate of 24. So I thought to myself, why not lesson the load at a bitrate of 16 and keep the samling rate maxed at 192khz. I did that and got an immediate error, the application closed, and I can no longer boot the damned computer unless I'm in safe mode, it just keeps rebooting. I just walked away from it I can probably work it out in safe mode by reinstalling the sound card .....
I hope the promised new drivers will address this issue as well, only reason I'm not crying about it more is because I just got the CPU that was promised with my new motherboard and I figure a reformat is in order to use it anyway even though it's only 100Mhz faster. Scenario, is a 1.2Ghz with the bigger cache (256 for a Tbird??) possibly faster than a 1.3Ghz CPU with a smaller cache? Just a theoretical question guys don't beat it to death, I'm not sure which cache the new CPU will have yet, but it can't be much of a step forward and I certainly dont' want a step back.
So Dean as posted before .... It's DC servo controlled inputs and DC outputs.. I'm sorry but I won't be able to confirm that for at least a few weeks and I'd actually not touch until I've broken it in well and played with all settings and features.
I think it's time we had some EMU personal join here to answer such things.. I'm going to look into it.
Will continue to keep you posted and I'll try and get those questions answered eventually.
Chris,
Dont sweat on looking into the output topology of the 1820M.
Sounds like you have a serious problem with the driver, it should not be crashing the PC at startup. I'd say the EMU driver has a setting saved which for some reason locks your system up, and as the driver starts at startup, you can't restart your PC.
Upsampling to 192Khz should not overly stress your CPU but it seems it does. I have a Pentium 3.0Ghz that has no problems with resampling to 96Khz. The benefits from upsampling are dubious, the only advantage is that you dont have the effects of the anti-aliasing filter kick in around 20Khz - you can't extract any more information than what is already in the sample. Also, upsampling to integer multiples of 44.1K will reduce the stress on the CPU, but your 1820M wont support that until the new drivers come out (at least my EMU 0404 doesnt).
I dont think your change of CPU will make much difference I'm afraid. However rebuilding Windows may - you might have corruption of your registry, other driver issues etc. that is causing your problem.
One more thing - are (were!) you able to play games with the 1820M and get reasonable sound effects?
Regards,
Dean
Dont sweat on looking into the output topology of the 1820M.
Sounds like you have a serious problem with the driver, it should not be crashing the PC at startup. I'd say the EMU driver has a setting saved which for some reason locks your system up, and as the driver starts at startup, you can't restart your PC.
Upsampling to 192Khz should not overly stress your CPU but it seems it does. I have a Pentium 3.0Ghz that has no problems with resampling to 96Khz. The benefits from upsampling are dubious, the only advantage is that you dont have the effects of the anti-aliasing filter kick in around 20Khz - you can't extract any more information than what is already in the sample. Also, upsampling to integer multiples of 44.1K will reduce the stress on the CPU, but your 1820M wont support that until the new drivers come out (at least my EMU 0404 doesnt).
I dont think your change of CPU will make much difference I'm afraid. However rebuilding Windows may - you might have corruption of your registry, other driver issues etc. that is causing your problem.
One more thing - are (were!) you able to play games with the 1820M and get reasonable sound effects?
Regards,
Dean
Dean,
I'm not sweating it I just feel the need to get a few more things together at the moment before I start taking a few more things apart, know what I mean?
Have I ever said there's a surprising amount of hiss present on it?
I don't hear it at all when I plug my cheap computer speakers into it. The homebrew amp which drives a most efficient cerwin vega with over 10 feet of input 12AWG unshielded monster cable (least optimal) feeding the amps input "consumer audio" style..
can have the input unplugged and is found to be near silent, until squeezing the 1/8 trs terminal I have on the end of it produces a very faint whistle.
Plug it into the Audiodock though, a quote would be "it never hissed loud like that before, it sounds like it's just cranked right up" and I find that an accurate description of it. You can turn down all volumes and mute all outputs and it still hisses btw.
I'm not worried about it in the least mind you, as I realize the non ideal set up, even a single ended approach should be taken with a bit more basic care. Still it's shocking at first... obviously the first impression has to be "so.. this is -130dB noise floor..uh?"
The fact is, it was definitely quieter given the exact same setup plugged into an old Audigy, and if the old Audigy had that kind of hiss on it.... I'm not sure I'd have ever thought a sound card could be a solution.
I wonder if it might be due to whatever output topology they're using, may not be as up to par when used in a single ended way as it is for fully differential. The same could be true for a servo controlled input stage perhaps? Just theorizing, comments welcome.
Assume all those graphs weren't a lie and the card really can perform, I've never seen any single ended Vs full diff. comparisons, on either inputs or outputs or a combination thereof. We can assume they used best case scenarior to help sales, and why not right.
I fully expect this hiss to become a ghost when used differentially with proper wires and all that.
Also raises another question, which is what it was that they did right on the old audigy... no doubt babied the single ended aspect of it since .... that's all it was good for?
Design is all about trade offs, making the most of something with what you have, preferably less. They took that to a higher level with this card, with multiplexed inputs or something and shared buses, it starts dropping them out to handle the increased bandwidth of higher sampling rates, you lose the DSP at 96khz too, you get the idea.
I think it's likely how they managed to squeeze so many features into one solution and have it ring in lower than the competitions' best offering, so what if you can't use all the of those features at the same time....
Thus we're left with product support, an important consideration. Have you ever known Creative Lab's quality of support? My understanding of it is that it can easily go unsaid.. everybody understands with a roll of their eyes.
EMU got off to a real bad start with this card's drivers. It didn't even have ASIO support for 96kHz sampling, all of the templates were installed and mixed up with those of the other cards (0404, 0404R)..
In the first two patches that's all fixed now, and unlike creative they got it fixed while enabling more features instead of disabling them.
Seems to me they're taking it seriously and are off to a really good start. With the recent confirmation of the driver update I'd been waiting on (BTW do you have a link to that?) I feel pretty confident at this point that I didn't make a bad decision going with "creative" again.
Dean the reason I walked away from the computer was because I just formatted it last weekend and I've done it enough in th past ... it's one of my least favorite things, I just didn't want to look at it.
I knew it was a device drivers settings issue since it happened when I clicked on "apply". What I didn't tell you was that simply reversing the change while in safe mode wasn't good enough (when I walked away).
It took several tries at uninstalling and re installing it, first just the usual way, then with including any left over registry entries... now it was all messed up, it only played in 44.1khz mode and didn't sound too great. I had waaaay too many templates and most I couldn't use because they were for other cards.... somethings wrong with the installation for some reason.... but I deleted everything I could find?
The problem here was of course me, I was too tired to be working on it at this point. I did it right the first time around, installed the card, updated the drivers...... but would all all this ugliness have been included in the original release? yes!
So I updated it and it's working as before.
I found this in the manual for it. just for a laugh:
Sorry too tired to look for it, but it said there may be a need to re install components of it at times...... ??? I hope they'll fix that too.
So is it some strange bug when trying to run 192khz sampling rate at 16bits? Yeah, I went right back to that and it still stuttered at 192khz as it had at 24 bits but .... no evil crash this time.
Pretty well all the overhead that's maximsing my CPU usage is the J.Rivers Media app that I like so much. I see it's even a pig when not oversampling, outperformed by MediaPlayer 10.
I think once those drivers arrive I can do it in hardware and it won't be an issue with my CPU.
I know the extra 100Mhz is nothing ... but it's an extra 100Mhz, since I don't need to format now though it will likely find itself for sale.
I'm not sweating it I just feel the need to get a few more things together at the moment before I start taking a few more things apart, know what I mean?
Have I ever said there's a surprising amount of hiss present on it?
I don't hear it at all when I plug my cheap computer speakers into it. The homebrew amp which drives a most efficient cerwin vega with over 10 feet of input 12AWG unshielded monster cable (least optimal) feeding the amps input "consumer audio" style..
can have the input unplugged and is found to be near silent, until squeezing the 1/8 trs terminal I have on the end of it produces a very faint whistle.
Plug it into the Audiodock though, a quote would be "it never hissed loud like that before, it sounds like it's just cranked right up" and I find that an accurate description of it. You can turn down all volumes and mute all outputs and it still hisses btw.
I'm not worried about it in the least mind you, as I realize the non ideal set up, even a single ended approach should be taken with a bit more basic care. Still it's shocking at first... obviously the first impression has to be "so.. this is -130dB noise floor..uh?"
The fact is, it was definitely quieter given the exact same setup plugged into an old Audigy, and if the old Audigy had that kind of hiss on it.... I'm not sure I'd have ever thought a sound card could be a solution.
I wonder if it might be due to whatever output topology they're using, may not be as up to par when used in a single ended way as it is for fully differential. The same could be true for a servo controlled input stage perhaps? Just theorizing, comments welcome.
Assume all those graphs weren't a lie and the card really can perform, I've never seen any single ended Vs full diff. comparisons, on either inputs or outputs or a combination thereof. We can assume they used best case scenarior to help sales, and why not right.
I fully expect this hiss to become a ghost when used differentially with proper wires and all that.
Also raises another question, which is what it was that they did right on the old audigy... no doubt babied the single ended aspect of it since .... that's all it was good for?
Design is all about trade offs, making the most of something with what you have, preferably less. They took that to a higher level with this card, with multiplexed inputs or something and shared buses, it starts dropping them out to handle the increased bandwidth of higher sampling rates, you lose the DSP at 96khz too, you get the idea.
I think it's likely how they managed to squeeze so many features into one solution and have it ring in lower than the competitions' best offering, so what if you can't use all the of those features at the same time....
Thus we're left with product support, an important consideration. Have you ever known Creative Lab's quality of support? My understanding of it is that it can easily go unsaid.. everybody understands with a roll of their eyes.
EMU got off to a real bad start with this card's drivers. It didn't even have ASIO support for 96kHz sampling, all of the templates were installed and mixed up with those of the other cards (0404, 0404R)..
In the first two patches that's all fixed now, and unlike creative they got it fixed while enabling more features instead of disabling them.
Seems to me they're taking it seriously and are off to a really good start. With the recent confirmation of the driver update I'd been waiting on (BTW do you have a link to that?) I feel pretty confident at this point that I didn't make a bad decision going with "creative" again.
Dean the reason I walked away from the computer was because I just formatted it last weekend and I've done it enough in th past ... it's one of my least favorite things, I just didn't want to look at it.
I knew it was a device drivers settings issue since it happened when I clicked on "apply". What I didn't tell you was that simply reversing the change while in safe mode wasn't good enough (when I walked away).
It took several tries at uninstalling and re installing it, first just the usual way, then with including any left over registry entries... now it was all messed up, it only played in 44.1khz mode and didn't sound too great. I had waaaay too many templates and most I couldn't use because they were for other cards.... somethings wrong with the installation for some reason.... but I deleted everything I could find?
The problem here was of course me, I was too tired to be working on it at this point. I did it right the first time around, installed the card, updated the drivers...... but would all all this ugliness have been included in the original release? yes!
So I updated it and it's working as before.
I found this in the manual for it. just for a laugh:
Sorry too tired to look for it, but it said there may be a need to re install components of it at times...... ??? I hope they'll fix that too.
So is it some strange bug when trying to run 192khz sampling rate at 16bits? Yeah, I went right back to that and it still stuttered at 192khz as it had at 24 bits but .... no evil crash this time.
Pretty well all the overhead that's maximsing my CPU usage is the J.Rivers Media app that I like so much. I see it's even a pig when not oversampling, outperformed by MediaPlayer 10.
I think once those drivers arrive I can do it in hardware and it won't be an issue with my CPU.
I know the extra 100Mhz is nothing ... but it's an extra 100Mhz, since I don't need to format now though it will likely find itself for sale.
Chris,
Yeah, trying to find problems with installation order, driver bugs etc. is the worst. I too have spent many many hours doing this kind of thing for PCs, minis and mainframes in the past, and got paid for it too. I'm no longer in a technical role, I manage technical staff, so am a step removed but still remember all the tricks, approaches, things to watch for etc. I do this stuff for a hobby now
Suggest you check the EMU production forums:
http://www.productionforums.com/index.php?f=46&sid=c6eab9b6657d8a2fa717cd5cc0aae272
The faint whistle you here is likely the Class D output modulation frequency interacting with your input. My Tripath amp does a similar thing, the whistle drops if I move the power supply & input wires around.
I had similar thoughts about differential vs single ended, as I'm thinking the new creative X-Fi top of the range card may be equivalent to the EMU1820M, it uses the same DACs and opamps except the output is not differential, and apparently shares similar output circuit topology. From my EE days I recall that differential had better SNR ratio (better by 3db as I recall but I could be wrong) and of course better noise reduction from the opamp input CMRR. However with a good shielded single ended cable the difference should be minimal. The X-Fi is interesting as I can use the card for movies, games and casual music listening where I would need another card with the 1820M for games. I'm still waiting for a comparison between these cards but the specs only look a little worse on the X-Fi, and all my sources are redbook audio (94db dynamic range), and compressed Dolby Digital/DTS (which can't bypass the Windows kmixer) so the X-Fi should be fine.
I have a M-Audio revolution analog input into an older but reasonable mosfet amp with Dunlavy speakers as my main setup, and for my secondary setup I have the M-Audio revolution with SPDIF input into an all digital Panasonic XR-45 with similar Dunlavy speakers. The setup with the SPDIF input into the XR-45 sounds much better for both music and movies, the attack, soundstage and general dynamics are significantly better on my cheap XR-45, however I know I prefer the dynamic, open Class D sound over the slower, mushier sound of class AB amps. I want to ensure that my main system will sound at least as good as the XR-45 setup, hence the use of UCD and a good soundcard. The soundcard does make a difference, as my experiment with different soundcards for my Tripath amp did make a significant difference, and I dont want my main setup to sound dull and lifeless which it does now with the mosfet amp & m-audio.
For critical music listening I will be building a no holds bar non resampling DAC based on parallel TDA1541-S2 with jung regulators, balanced outputs etc.
Regards,
Dean
Yeah, trying to find problems with installation order, driver bugs etc. is the worst. I too have spent many many hours doing this kind of thing for PCs, minis and mainframes in the past, and got paid for it too. I'm no longer in a technical role, I manage technical staff, so am a step removed but still remember all the tricks, approaches, things to watch for etc. I do this stuff for a hobby now
Suggest you check the EMU production forums:
http://www.productionforums.com/index.php?f=46&sid=c6eab9b6657d8a2fa717cd5cc0aae272
The faint whistle you here is likely the Class D output modulation frequency interacting with your input. My Tripath amp does a similar thing, the whistle drops if I move the power supply & input wires around.
I had similar thoughts about differential vs single ended, as I'm thinking the new creative X-Fi top of the range card may be equivalent to the EMU1820M, it uses the same DACs and opamps except the output is not differential, and apparently shares similar output circuit topology. From my EE days I recall that differential had better SNR ratio (better by 3db as I recall but I could be wrong) and of course better noise reduction from the opamp input CMRR. However with a good shielded single ended cable the difference should be minimal. The X-Fi is interesting as I can use the card for movies, games and casual music listening where I would need another card with the 1820M for games. I'm still waiting for a comparison between these cards but the specs only look a little worse on the X-Fi, and all my sources are redbook audio (94db dynamic range), and compressed Dolby Digital/DTS (which can't bypass the Windows kmixer) so the X-Fi should be fine.
I have a M-Audio revolution analog input into an older but reasonable mosfet amp with Dunlavy speakers as my main setup, and for my secondary setup I have the M-Audio revolution with SPDIF input into an all digital Panasonic XR-45 with similar Dunlavy speakers. The setup with the SPDIF input into the XR-45 sounds much better for both music and movies, the attack, soundstage and general dynamics are significantly better on my cheap XR-45, however I know I prefer the dynamic, open Class D sound over the slower, mushier sound of class AB amps. I want to ensure that my main system will sound at least as good as the XR-45 setup, hence the use of UCD and a good soundcard. The soundcard does make a difference, as my experiment with different soundcards for my Tripath amp did make a significant difference, and I dont want my main setup to sound dull and lifeless which it does now with the mosfet amp & m-audio.
For critical music listening I will be building a no holds bar non resampling DAC based on parallel TDA1541-S2 with jung regulators, balanced outputs etc.
Regards,
Dean
Hi Dean,
Yup the whistle is exactly that, if I didn't hear it I'd worry.
My point was though that the amp is alot quieter than the sound card with the hissing.
As far as games go I haven't tried that yet, I will say this though. I've played enough games in the past, doom 3 half life 2 ect...
EAX only ever impressed me one time and that was with a game called America's Army, does a great job with the echo's and that's it, but was enjoyable enough to leave it turned on. All other games typically had a worse sound with EAX enabled..
So with that in mind I dont' think it will fall short of my gaming expectations for it, when I do get to try it out though I'll post an update here.
The new FX card sounds great but, it won't be EMU making the drivers but Creative... and yeah, single ended.
Regards,
Chris
Yup the whistle is exactly that, if I didn't hear it I'd worry.
My point was though that the amp is alot quieter than the sound card with the hissing.
As far as games go I haven't tried that yet, I will say this though. I've played enough games in the past, doom 3 half life 2 ect...
EAX only ever impressed me one time and that was with a game called America's Army, does a great job with the echo's and that's it, but was enjoyable enough to leave it turned on. All other games typically had a worse sound with EAX enabled..
So with that in mind I dont' think it will fall short of my gaming expectations for it, when I do get to try it out though I'll post an update here.
The new FX card sounds great but, it won't be EMU making the drivers but Creative... and yeah, single ended.
Regards,
Chris
"***Since the next update is now in beta test, we're going to let this little tidbit out...
1.81 will feature
-2 in 8 out MCWDM.
-More ASIO improvements
-88.2/176.4
-new FX presets
-FX import/export utilties
-"load FX on startup" option
-Full installer package
Best,
ICHi
E-MU Systems"
Hi,
Thanks for the link again Dean.
I've just spent some time there and it seems the problems I've had are somewhat common so I trust they'll eventually be worked out. I also found that the fixes which I applied is the common practice.... as is pretty well standard with any troubled device.
It may work better in 192khz if I tuned my PCI latency... we'll see after the new drivers are out.
The full installer package will be a great "UnCreative" like feature that I was really hoppping for after seeing the last few updates.
If it continues like this in the end it will be a very well rounded card.
Regards,
Chris
1.81 will feature
-2 in 8 out MCWDM.
-More ASIO improvements
-88.2/176.4
-new FX presets
-FX import/export utilties
-"load FX on startup" option
-Full installer package
Best,
ICHi
E-MU Systems"
Hi,
Thanks for the link again Dean.
I've just spent some time there and it seems the problems I've had are somewhat common so I trust they'll eventually be worked out. I also found that the fixes which I applied is the common practice.... as is pretty well standard with any troubled device.
It may work better in 192khz if I tuned my PCI latency... we'll see after the new drivers are out.
The full installer package will be a great "UnCreative" like feature that I was really hoppping for after seeing the last few updates.
If it continues like this in the end it will be a very well rounded card.
Regards,
Chris
what an impressive card for the $ .Blown up 2 AMP1B's....
Bad news - today I was trying to solve the whistle that I get out of the bridged AMP1B I use for the subwoofer amp, and I fixed the whistle by increasing the 100uF VNN bypass cap with 1000uF (thanks bgt for that tip).
However I also was debugging the slight hum/hiss I get through the main speakers and placed a 1000uF cap across the +5v line to see if that made a difference, and as soon as I did that both amp 1B modules went into protection (fault LED on) and have never worked since. I think the cap was charged to the rail voltage, 25v, so I'm thinking that the Tripath TA2022 chip is sensitive to even a temporary overvoltage situation.
Does anyone have any experience with debugging the TA2022 and can shed some light? I think I've blown both my TA2022 chips by not being careful enough and discharging my troubleshooting capacitor!! The worrying thing is that I can't locate any supplier on the net who carries these chips, so hopefully Jan at 41Hz can supply a couple for me (and the pain of removing & resoldering new chips....).
Anyway, I have ordered my UCD modules so I'll have them to play with soon (and hopefully not destroy...).
Regards,
Dean
Bad news - today I was trying to solve the whistle that I get out of the bridged AMP1B I use for the subwoofer amp, and I fixed the whistle by increasing the 100uF VNN bypass cap with 1000uF (thanks bgt for that tip).
However I also was debugging the slight hum/hiss I get through the main speakers and placed a 1000uF cap across the +5v line to see if that made a difference, and as soon as I did that both amp 1B modules went into protection (fault LED on) and have never worked since. I think the cap was charged to the rail voltage, 25v, so I'm thinking that the Tripath TA2022 chip is sensitive to even a temporary overvoltage situation.
Does anyone have any experience with debugging the TA2022 and can shed some light? I think I've blown both my TA2022 chips by not being careful enough and discharging my troubleshooting capacitor!! The worrying thing is that I can't locate any supplier on the net who carries these chips, so hopefully Jan at 41Hz can supply a couple for me (and the pain of removing & resoldering new chips....).
Anyway, I have ordered my UCD modules so I'll have them to play with soon (and hopefully not destroy...).
Regards,
Dean
Dean,
Sorry your amp. broke down.
The hiss you can take away with a 10uf cap on the + and 0V psu input plug on the 1B pcb. Its that orange cap.
With my amp. it made a huge improvement. Cannot hear the hiss anymore on standard inefficient speakers. Crosstalk at 15khz is very good for a chipamp, 65db.
BTW I only use 100uf over the 5v regulator(switch type)
I just see that my cables are not twisted back to work(well hobby really).
Sorry your amp. broke down.
The hiss you can take away with a 10uf cap on the + and 0V psu input plug on the 1B pcb. Its that orange cap.
With my amp. it made a huge improvement. Cannot hear the hiss anymore on standard inefficient speakers. Crosstalk at 15khz is very good for a chipamp, 65db.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
BTW I only use 100uf over the 5v regulator(switch type)
I just see that my cables are not twisted
back to work(well hobby really).- Status
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