Hi,
My Zapfilter i installed in my Onkyo Dx-7711 along with LClock XO2 exhibits dc offset on left channel output, about +60mV,
I bought Zapfilter twice from LC Audio, thinking that i may have messed up with the 1st unit while installing, because i was not very careful while working. The first one had 40-80 mV of dc offset, fluctuating on the right output,
Due to a mistake they made on pricing i had almost bought the 1st one for free (285 euro for Lclock + Zapfilter) so i did not bother them very much and ordered another Zapfilter,
I paid extreme care while installing, paid caution to ESD risk, used a 6W soldering iron v.s, i installed it completely in place, did not power on until everything's complete, however this one also has the annoying dc offset on left channel output, about +60mV,
Dc appears 30-40 seconds after power on, disappears after 3-4 hours of playing, the former did the same except that dc did not relieve no matter how long the unit played,
The sound quality is excellent, but this dc thing gives me nausea,
LC did not bother replying my several emails about the issue,
Any help appreciated,
My Zapfilter i installed in my Onkyo Dx-7711 along with LClock XO2 exhibits dc offset on left channel output, about +60mV,
I bought Zapfilter twice from LC Audio, thinking that i may have messed up with the 1st unit while installing, because i was not very careful while working. The first one had 40-80 mV of dc offset, fluctuating on the right output,
Due to a mistake they made on pricing i had almost bought the 1st one for free (285 euro for Lclock + Zapfilter) so i did not bother them very much and ordered another Zapfilter,
I paid extreme care while installing, paid caution to ESD risk, used a 6W soldering iron v.s, i installed it completely in place, did not power on until everything's complete, however this one also has the annoying dc offset on left channel output, about +60mV,
Dc appears 30-40 seconds after power on, disappears after 3-4 hours of playing, the former did the same except that dc did not relieve no matter how long the unit played,
The sound quality is excellent, but this dc thing gives me nausea,
LC did not bother replying my several emails about the issue,
Any help appreciated,
-------------------------------------------------------------dimitri said:
I don't understand how some of these people can stay in business and get free advertsing for good quality. I installed another unit from a different vendor. One channel was clearly faulty with a dc problem, and I had measurements to prove it. It was sent back and they claimed that there was nothing wrong. So I installed it for his client and just warned him about the problem.
LC Audio no longer answers emails on support and so I will no longer buy from them.
I did not receive it yet but hope to!!
Hi all,
He replies if you post in an insisting manner, i did not get a negative reply to any of my posts, just no replies at all many times!!!
))
But when he replies it works.. I did get support as the NPC delta sigma DACs required an RC filter before the Zapfilter and he replied all my questions kindly,
I think he's trying to carry this business with family members and just cannot handle all the calls, he takes only limited time to reply e-mails, maybe a phone call should work better,
I live in Turkey, he has no dealers here so he's my correspondent. Maybe he doesn't reply as he writes on the website that you should contact your local dealer if there's one in your country,
Though i am not pleased with his attitude, i yet do not have enough data to comment on his business morals, I am waiting for the new unit to be shipped,
Hi all,
He replies if you post in an insisting manner, i did not get a negative reply to any of my posts, just no replies at all many times!!!
))But when he replies it works.. I did get support as the NPC delta sigma DACs required an RC filter before the Zapfilter and he replied all my questions kindly,
I think he's trying to carry this business with family members and just cannot handle all the calls, he takes only limited time to reply e-mails, maybe a phone call should work better,
I live in Turkey, he has no dealers here so he's my correspondent. Maybe he doesn't reply as he writes on the website that you should contact your local dealer if there's one in your country,
Though i am not pleased with his attitude, i yet do not have enough data to comment on his business morals, I am waiting for the new unit to be shipped,
We are sorry, that we can not reply to all e-mail inquiries at this moment. Some days we get up to 200 new e-mails, and with the present manpower (none of which are family members .. sorry) we can only reply to a fraction of mails, as we can also only pick up a fraction of the daily telephone calls we get.
We are working on hiring more crew, but it takes time to get skilled crew, that can actually handle the inquiries, not just say: thankyou for your call, this is a standard message, you will get an answer when somebody has time. We want to educate and skill up our personnel for customer handling, so you can all - as you probably expect - get a good answer to your questions - fast!
We have to weigh up answering e-mails towards any other job as a company, that might be, updating homepages, (we have over 300 now), taking telephone calls, actually doing the work people ordered from us, and keeping in front of the markets we have chosen, namely the high end of PWM amplification and CD reference Clocks. Sometimes the latter of these outweigh the first. But as i said we have already hired more personnel to straighten up the situation. And before too long they will be online to assist our growing customer group.
Until then it would be very helpful when you send us inquiries, to keep them short, precise, and with the information you think we might need in one e-mail. So if you need us to send you something, why not include your address in the mail, things like that, so i can save the time asking you that and waiting for your second mail. All the best from Denmark!
We are working on hiring more crew, but it takes time to get skilled crew, that can actually handle the inquiries, not just say: thankyou for your call, this is a standard message, you will get an answer when somebody has time. We want to educate and skill up our personnel for customer handling, so you can all - as you probably expect - get a good answer to your questions - fast!
We have to weigh up answering e-mails towards any other job as a company, that might be, updating homepages, (we have over 300 now), taking telephone calls, actually doing the work people ordered from us, and keeping in front of the markets we have chosen, namely the high end of PWM amplification and CD reference Clocks. Sometimes the latter of these outweigh the first. But as i said we have already hired more personnel to straighten up the situation. And before too long they will be online to assist our growing customer group.
Until then it would be very helpful when you send us inquiries, to keep them short, precise, and with the information you think we might need in one e-mail. So if you need us to send you something, why not include your address in the mail, things like that, so i can save the time asking you that and waiting for your second mail. All the best from Denmark!
Dear LC Audio,
May be you will also tell how you made a fool of me during last three years, writing lies and telling lies on the phone, “I will ship within next month”? May be you also mention how you lied Mr. Mogens Jepsen, my lawyer, a year ago that my ZAPlayer will be send not later than four
weeks from to day. And that you told him, that if not, you will be ready to return my money?
Why you don’t tell that in April 2002 your personally owned business was going bankrupt and LC Audio is now a company with limited warranty - and the shares in this company are not owned by the person who previously owned the business?
Dimitri
p.s I can only warn the diyaudio community about these facts, and describe LC Audio as unfair supplier and personally Mr.Clausen as the most dishonest person.
May be you will also tell how you made a fool of me during last three years, writing lies and telling lies on the phone, “I will ship within next month”? May be you also mention how you lied Mr. Mogens Jepsen, my lawyer, a year ago that my ZAPlayer will be send not later than four
weeks from to day. And that you told him, that if not, you will be ready to return my money?
Why you don’t tell that in April 2002 your personally owned business was going bankrupt and LC Audio is now a company with limited warranty - and the shares in this company are not owned by the person who previously owned the business?
Dimitri
p.s I can only warn the diyaudio community about these facts, and describe LC Audio as unfair supplier and personally Mr.Clausen as the most dishonest person.
Some days we get up to 200 new e-mails, and with the present manpower (none of which are family members .. sorry) we can only reply to a fraction of mails, as we can also only pick up a fraction of the daily telephone calls we get.
---------------------------------------------------------
If you sell on the web, and state that buyers with technical problems should email for support, then you should honour this. People like me have PAID you for services, and I don't care how many emails you get; I want you to be good at your word and help me make the product work.
If you are too busy, then you should reduce the email load by posting more detailed information on applications. VSE does this with a cd and you should do the same; not just ignotre emails.
---------------------------------------------------------
If you sell on the web, and state that buyers with technical problems should email for support, then you should honour this. People like me have PAID you for services, and I don't care how many emails you get; I want you to be good at your word and help me make the product work.
If you are too busy, then you should reduce the email load by posting more detailed information on applications. VSE does this with a cd and you should do the same; not just ignotre emails.
fmak, i have searched all our e-mail contacts for the last year, and it seems we have had no faulty product reports from the UK at all. I don't understand your position, if you complain that we never answer your e-mail, as we actually did not receive any e-mail about product support from your country.
Should you have any need for product support, i will be more than happy to assist you. Send me an e-mail on: lc@lcaudio.dk.
Also i am happy to report, that we have for the last week or so taken new measures to ensure that all e-mails (100%) are answered within 12 hours. And it works! Should you have sent any inquiries more than a week ago, that you did not get reply on, please resend, as it may have been lost during our change of management software.
We will be standing by to support our products to the full.
Should you have any need for product support, i will be more than happy to assist you. Send me an e-mail on: lc@lcaudio.dk.
Also i am happy to report, that we have for the last week or so taken new measures to ensure that all e-mails (100%) are answered within 12 hours. And it works! Should you have sent any inquiries more than a week ago, that you did not get reply on, please resend, as it may have been lost during our change of management software.
We will be standing by to support our products to the full.
Dear Dimitri
I regret very much the events that has lead to our poor treatment of your case.
Shortly after you ordered your ZAPplayer in 2000 we stopped the production of this model due to problems with the SONY transports. WE didn't want to shipanything to you at that that point, before we had found the solution. We never got any support from SONY on this case, and for this and other reasons, we actually didn't get to find a good solution to the problem until now.
We now refit all the ZAPplayers that was made until 2000 with new transports from Philips that has proved to be reliable. We do this as a service free of charge to anyone who owns a ZAPplayer. In your case it is correct i promised you the new version (ZAPplayer 2) this february, as at that time i had a view to the release date, which was at that time around April 1st. However there was a few delays in the software development process, and the new version is actually starting to ship not before now.
However since we have a very unfortunate chain of events leading to your situation with us, i propose that we return your pre paid funds of USD 1178 to your account.
Again i regret this history, and apologise for the inconvenience.
Please provide your banking informations, and we will transfer your funds asap.
A copy of this letter was also posted on diyaudio.com forum ZAPfilter installation ..
Best regards
Lars Clausen
CEO of L C Audio Technology
I regret very much the events that has lead to our poor treatment of your case.
Shortly after you ordered your ZAPplayer in 2000 we stopped the production of this model due to problems with the SONY transports. WE didn't want to shipanything to you at that that point, before we had found the solution. We never got any support from SONY on this case, and for this and other reasons, we actually didn't get to find a good solution to the problem until now.
We now refit all the ZAPplayers that was made until 2000 with new transports from Philips that has proved to be reliable. We do this as a service free of charge to anyone who owns a ZAPplayer. In your case it is correct i promised you the new version (ZAPplayer 2) this february, as at that time i had a view to the release date, which was at that time around April 1st. However there was a few delays in the software development process, and the new version is actually starting to ship not before now.
However since we have a very unfortunate chain of events leading to your situation with us, i propose that we return your pre paid funds of USD 1178 to your account.
Again i regret this history, and apologise for the inconvenience.
Please provide your banking informations, and we will transfer your funds asap.
A copy of this letter was also posted on diyaudio.com forum ZAPfilter installation ..
Best regards
Lars Clausen
CEO of L C Audio Technology
Story continued..
Hi all,
4-5 days following my last post to this thread, I received a replacement for Zapfilter2 from Mr. Clausen, however this one had +200mV dc on the right channel, the previous had +60mV on left channel,
Since then I was busy solving this problem through e-mail conversation with Mr. Clausen,
In summary, i observed a problem with temperature stabilty, mounting small aluminum heatsinks on output transistors seemed to have solved the apparent side of the problem, namely the dc offset on output. However I felt that this made the sound quality a bit dull, and decided to remove the heatsinks.
Mr. Clausen tested a unit in a small enclosure to let it heat and reported that he did not measure any dc on the outputs, so i took the unit out of the cdp, shorted the inputs of the unit as Mr. clausen also did .I did not observe any dc either, but when the unit is hooked in the cd player i got the dc again. My opinion was that the faulty channel of the Zapfilter2 cannot handle the 2.5V dc from the balanced outputs of the NPC SM5864 DAC
I reported this to Mr. clausen and he mentioned me that he just solved a problem of a customer with a Rotel 1070 which employs BB PCM1732 with unbalanced voltage output DAC with 2.5V DC output. This setup is similar to mine though not exactly as SM5864 has balanced outputs. He mentioned a mistake the customer did and when he discovered the mistake and connected the Zapfilter referring to the document given on his site the problem was gone.
However the case with the Rotel was not relevant to mine. The installation scheme for the SM5864 DAC is simple and straightforward, and the original analog stage of my cdp was entirely removed so an installation mistake was out of discussion. Aside from these i get excellent sound quality,
Then he suggested to coonect 180k resistor from Zapfilter inputs to ground, this did not work either,
I asked him a few times to make a test with a player that employs SM 5864 and to test several units as one unit working properly does not mean all are defect free,
Aside from these indirect efforts all the time he was reluctant to spare the necessary means to invesitgate the problem, instead he focused on trying to find a problem on my side,
I attempted to send the replacement unit back to him but this costs too much time and is quite a procedure due to Turkish law( package is subject to same procedure as export).
After 3-4 weeks of effort i was not succesful getting this thing work properly now i am settled with the previous unit which has 60mV dc error. At least this gets stable after some 2-3 hours operating time,
All in all i have to say that i feel just the same as Dimitri and Fmak about LC Audio and declare here that i will not buy their products anymore,
Deniz
Hi all,
4-5 days following my last post to this thread, I received a replacement for Zapfilter2 from Mr. Clausen, however this one had +200mV dc on the right channel, the previous had +60mV on left channel,
Since then I was busy solving this problem through e-mail conversation with Mr. Clausen,
In summary, i observed a problem with temperature stabilty, mounting small aluminum heatsinks on output transistors seemed to have solved the apparent side of the problem, namely the dc offset on output. However I felt that this made the sound quality a bit dull, and decided to remove the heatsinks.
Mr. Clausen tested a unit in a small enclosure to let it heat and reported that he did not measure any dc on the outputs, so i took the unit out of the cdp, shorted the inputs of the unit as Mr. clausen also did .I did not observe any dc either, but when the unit is hooked in the cd player i got the dc again. My opinion was that the faulty channel of the Zapfilter2 cannot handle the 2.5V dc from the balanced outputs of the NPC SM5864 DAC
I reported this to Mr. clausen and he mentioned me that he just solved a problem of a customer with a Rotel 1070 which employs BB PCM1732 with unbalanced voltage output DAC with 2.5V DC output. This setup is similar to mine though not exactly as SM5864 has balanced outputs. He mentioned a mistake the customer did and when he discovered the mistake and connected the Zapfilter referring to the document given on his site the problem was gone.
However the case with the Rotel was not relevant to mine. The installation scheme for the SM5864 DAC is simple and straightforward, and the original analog stage of my cdp was entirely removed so an installation mistake was out of discussion. Aside from these i get excellent sound quality,
Then he suggested to coonect 180k resistor from Zapfilter inputs to ground, this did not work either,
I asked him a few times to make a test with a player that employs SM 5864 and to test several units as one unit working properly does not mean all are defect free,
Aside from these indirect efforts all the time he was reluctant to spare the necessary means to invesitgate the problem, instead he focused on trying to find a problem on my side,
I attempted to send the replacement unit back to him but this costs too much time and is quite a procedure due to Turkish law( package is subject to same procedure as export).
After 3-4 weeks of effort i was not succesful getting this thing work properly now i am settled with the previous unit which has 60mV dc error. At least this gets stable after some 2-3 hours operating time,
All in all i have to say that i feel just the same as Dimitri and Fmak about LC Audio and declare here that i will not buy their products anymore,
Deniz
Mr. Salzman
Your assumption that our ZAPfilter will work differently with 2.5V common mode on the input compared to 0V is not correct.
As can be seen on the schematic we have published on our web page the input circuit is a normal differential stage with two transistors. The current source for the emitters work on 9.8 V DC, so any common mode input voltage between - 5V to +5V will provide the exact same operating conditions for the ZAPfilter.
Our tests show that with 0 V on the input the ZAPfilter works fine with absolutely no DC offset on the output. As it should. We have tested every single unit from our stock with special emphasis on this parameter, after we got report from you, there might be a problem. We did not find a single unit with this problem....
Your own tests also show that the ZAPfilters you have will work perfectly with 0V on the input.
Conclusion: the ZAPfilters you have are OK.
So the problem MUST be incoming DC offset from the DAC of your CD player. This can not be compensated for by the ZAPfilter.
However i did advise you a method on how to remove this DC from your DAC by a simple and cheap method, that will not affect sound performance at all. Why not just solve it?
Your assumption that our ZAPfilter will work differently with 2.5V common mode on the input compared to 0V is not correct.
As can be seen on the schematic we have published on our web page the input circuit is a normal differential stage with two transistors. The current source for the emitters work on 9.8 V DC, so any common mode input voltage between - 5V to +5V will provide the exact same operating conditions for the ZAPfilter.
Our tests show that with 0 V on the input the ZAPfilter works fine with absolutely no DC offset on the output. As it should. We have tested every single unit from our stock with special emphasis on this parameter, after we got report from you, there might be a problem. We did not find a single unit with this problem....
Your own tests also show that the ZAPfilters you have will work perfectly with 0V on the input.
Conclusion: the ZAPfilters you have are OK.
So the problem MUST be incoming DC offset from the DAC of your CD player. This can not be compensated for by the ZAPfilter.
However i did advise you a method on how to remove this DC from your DAC by a simple and cheap method, that will not affect sound performance at all. Why not just solve it?
By the way ... This schematic can be found here:
http://www.lcaudio.dk/zf2dia.gif
(Recommend saving the picture, and viewing in something else than your browser for a good resolution).
All the best from Denmark
http://www.lcaudio.dk/zf2dia.gif
(Recommend saving the picture, and viewing in something else than your browser for a good resolution).
All the best from Denmark
This thread is like to be forced to listen to a private mobile phone conversation at the bus or in public.
Constumer service is all. Be honest if you have difficulties and you will get more understanding.
To get into these troubles:
* Bad product (hard to install)
* Not skilled customers (needs to be skilled for the product)
* Bad or too little information.
* Too few people for the customers support.
I understand that you Lars C, have it hard but the customers must come first, allways!
Discussing business here is totally wrong especially when it's all about complaints. Why don't you set up a forum at your web site. You have much of free software for this purpose.
Constumer service is all. Be honest if you have difficulties and you will get more understanding.
To get into these troubles:
* Bad product (hard to install)
* Not skilled customers (needs to be skilled for the product)
* Bad or too little information.
* Too few people for the customers support.
I understand that you Lars C, have it hard but the customers must come first, allways!
Discussing business here is totally wrong especially when it's all about complaints. Why don't you set up a forum at your web site. You have much of free software for this purpose.
You are right P-A
Until now we have only optimized our products for good audio performance and high reliability.
But we aim to improve this point in many directions. From Sep. 1st. this year (in about 6 weeks) we will have more technical staff hired to support customers with technical questions.
We will provide better instructions for installations, as my own time will be freed up to make this comprehensive work, and we will of course keep on improving our products to 'markets best' as usual.
LC
Until now we have only optimized our products for good audio performance and high reliability.
But we aim to improve this point in many directions. From Sep. 1st. this year (in about 6 weeks) we will have more technical staff hired to support customers with technical questions.
We will provide better instructions for installations, as my own time will be freed up to make this comprehensive work, and we will of course keep on improving our products to 'markets best' as usual.
LC
I gather that you have many satisfied customers so therefore it will be no difficulty to have a living forum at your website if you want to. The cheapest support is if the customers gives it to each other with a little help from you.
One good example is here (OK, it's a freeware), the russian Rightmark FFT software.
http://audio.rightmark.org/
http://forum.rightmark.org
Since you have a bunch of complaints I must give you a
for your ZAPpulse and "The End". Nice piece of engineering and also nice looking pcb's.
One good example is here (OK, it's a freeware), the russian Rightmark FFT software.
http://audio.rightmark.org/
http://forum.rightmark.org
Since you have a bunch of complaints I must give you a
for your ZAPpulse and "The End". Nice piece of engineering and also nice looking pcb's.- Status
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