Ultra Analog, The Ghost Company

[Bob Hoshall]

When a person purchases a piece of equipment, one never knows what the future holds. What are the odds the company you purchased the $2,600.00 DAC from would go out of business, and the people they bought the major components for that piece go out of business as well? It happened to me. I joined this group to see if there is a person out there with the technical expertise to say, let me take this challenge on!

I purchased an outstanding piece of equipment several years ago from "the old" PS Audio Company, not to be confused with the NEW PS Audio. The old PS Audio let a company named Ultra Analog build a wonderful product called the Ultra Link II Digital to Analog converter, mine even has the HDCD chip to top this DAC off. The two most important parts in this DAC were the internal Ultra Analog DAC and the Ultra Analog AES 21 Digital Interface or input receiver.

How does the story end, the AES 21 Digital Interface (receiver) goes out, and it's parts are potted in a nice block of epoxy, where no one can know Ultra Analog's secret parts! The old PS Audio goes out of business and Ultra Analog also goes out of business, and then the owner of Ultra Analog suddenly dies. and takes the schematics to the grave. Both companies dead, and no more parts. Is there an audio explorer out there that can bring this beautiful piece of equipment BACK TO LIFE! The challenge is on the table, I would appreciate hearing from that very special engineering mind, (LiteJazz53@yahoo.com)

LiteJazz53

 

[SY]

What are the odds the company you purchased the $2,600.00 DAC from would go out of business

Nearly 100%. Go pick up a copy of a 15 year old high end magazine and see how many of the specialty companies in it are still around. NEVER buy equipment that has unreplaceable components.

Sorry, that's not an answer to your question, just me griping about that market.

 

[rfbrw]

The dac and the dair pop up for sale now and then. Put AES21 into the search engine and it will point to the odd example as well as an AES21 shorn of its epoxy resin casing.

 

[tiefbassuebertr]

Some details concerning UltraAnalog:
Richard Powers, 1952–2006 | Stereophile.com

This is curious.
A DAC device from Adcom - go to
Adcom GDA 700 DAC Photo #331624 - Canuck Audio Mart
The Adcom GDA 600 modification thread — Polk Audio
Adcom GDA-600 DAC upgrade with SS-Audio discrete Op-amp – Burson Audio
and
Adcom GDA-700 D/A processor | Stereophile.com
but schematic therefore from UltraAnalog - go to the attachment

This DAC-Module I have never seen before:
http://vasiltech.narod.ru/files/D18400.pdf

 

[sumotan]

When a person purchases a piece of equipment, one never knows what the future holds. What are the odds the company you purchased the $2,600.00 DAC from would go out of business, and the people they bought the major components for that piece go out of business as well? It happened to me. I joined this group to see if there is a person out there with the technical expertise to say, let me take this challenge on!

I purchased an outstanding piece of equipment several years ago from "the old" PS Audio Company, not to be confused with the NEW PS Audio. The old PS Audio let a company named Ultra Analog build a wonderful product called the Ultra Link II Digital to Analog converter, mine even has the HDCD chip to top this DAC off. The two most important parts in this DAC were the internal Ultra Analog DAC and the Ultra Analog AES 21 Digital Interface or input receiver.
How does the story end, the AES 21 Digital Interface (receiver) goes out, and it's parts are potted in a nice block of epoxy, where no one can know Ultra Analog's secret parts! The old PS Audio goes out of business and Ultra Analog also goes out of business, and then the owner of Ultra Analog suddenly dies. and takes the schematics to the grave. Both companies dead, and no more parts. Is there an audio explorer out there that can bring this beautiful piece of equipment BACK TO LIFE! The challenge is on the table, I would appreciate hearing from that very special engineering mind, (LiteJazz53@yahoo.com)

LiteJazz53

The input receiver can be bought from Parts Connexion. Had a Sonic Frontier SFD 2 once, that input receiver died on me twice hence sold it after repair.

 

[tiefbassuebertr]

When a person purchases a piece of equipment, one never knows what the future holds. What are the odds the company you purchased the $2,600.00 DAC from would go out of business, and the people they bought the major components for that piece go out of business as well? It happened to me. I joined this group to see if there is a person out there with the technical expertise to say, let me take this challenge on!

I purchased an outstanding piece of equipment several years ago from "the old" PS Audio Company, not to be confused with the NEW PS Audio. The old PS Audio let a company named Ultra Analog build a wonderful product called the Ultra Link II Digital to Analog converter, mine even has the HDCD chip to top this DAC off. The two most important parts in this DAC were the internal Ultra Analog DAC and the Ultra Analog AES 21 Digital Interface or input receiver.

How does the story end, the AES 21 Digital Interface (receiver) goes out, and it's parts are potted in a nice block of epoxy, where no one can know Ultra Analog's secret parts! The old PS Audio goes out of business and Ultra Analog also goes out of business, and then the owner of Ultra Analog suddenly dies. and takes the schematics to the grave. Both companies dead, and no more parts. Is there an audio explorer out there that can bring this beautiful piece of equipment BACK TO LIFE! The challenge is on the table, I would appreciate hearing from that very special engineering mind, (LiteJazz53@yahoo.com)

LiteJazz53

check out post #29 under
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/ultraanalog-d20400-data-i-have-it-all.254748/page-2

 

[QSerraTico_Tico]

I once bought the schematic of the DAC on ebay......

 

[tiefbassuebertr]

For understanding the theory of operation of the whole D20400 unit a datasheet of OKI's M72H035 (custom made for Ultra Analog) is necessary.
After reading the information under
https://www.stereophile.com/news/042406powers/index.html
I had send an email to Wadia Digital concerning this datasheet.

under
http://bbs.hifidiy.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1499850
and
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/mp1936-audio-dac-production-record.405192/
are to observe some efforts to find out a solution without this datasheet.