Building the O2 - A novice's build experience
Building the O2 - A novice's build experience
This is a build description of a O2 with ODAC build made by a novice audio DIYer. The purpose is to share specific experiences and hopefully offer some help to anyone interested in building the O2 with ODAC.
Being a novice audio DIYer with no prior experience soldering or building electronics, a lot of time was invested in collecting useful resources, doing things methodically and going at it slow.
Photos
Received the parts and commenced identifying, sorting and labeling.
Used samstechlib.com 5 band resistor color codes to identify the resistance of the resistors.
All the parts sorted and labelled.
Setting up the work space. Remember safety. Smoke from the resin in the soldering tin can apparently cause asthma so make sure to work in a well ventilated room. Also, the soldering tin can make tiny explosions when tinning the tip of the soldering iron, so make sure to wear glasses.
Soldered on resistors.
Soldered on capacitors.
Soldered on more capacitors, IC sockets and a LED.
Soldered on switches and battery sockets.
After going through the testing regiment, the ICs were installed and the O2 is working according to the measurements on the multimeter.
The underside of the complete O2.
Time for the sacrificial headphones to do their part. Lucky for them, the O2 works perfectly. Time to install the ODAC.
ODAC installed with twisted pair wires from an old ethernet cable. Blue is L, and green is R. White wires are ground.
Scratched out the two ground connections (just above were the green and blue wires are soldered on to the O2 PCB). White wires are connected to the ground. The orange wire is also soldered on to the ground pin and the other end is connected to the end of the enclosure (see this and this for more information).
The completed O2 and ODAC - a thing of beauty!
... and the listening experience is simply awesome.
Build log
The following is a chronological list of specific activities that made up this specific O2 ODAC build.
Resources
Thank you for reading
fineaudiolover
Building the O2 - A novice's build experience
This is a build description of a O2 with ODAC build made by a novice audio DIYer. The purpose is to share specific experiences and hopefully offer some help to anyone interested in building the O2 with ODAC.
Being a novice audio DIYer with no prior experience soldering or building electronics, a lot of time was invested in collecting useful resources, doing things methodically and going at it slow.
Photos
Received the parts and commenced identifying, sorting and labeling.
Used samstechlib.com 5 band resistor color codes to identify the resistance of the resistors.
All the parts sorted and labelled.
Setting up the work space. Remember safety. Smoke from the resin in the soldering tin can apparently cause asthma so make sure to work in a well ventilated room. Also, the soldering tin can make tiny explosions when tinning the tip of the soldering iron, so make sure to wear glasses.
Soldered on resistors.
Soldered on capacitors.
Soldered on more capacitors, IC sockets and a LED.
Soldered on switches and battery sockets.
After going through the testing regiment, the ICs were installed and the O2 is working according to the measurements on the multimeter.
The underside of the complete O2.
Time for the sacrificial headphones to do their part. Lucky for them, the O2 works perfectly. Time to install the ODAC.
ODAC installed with twisted pair wires from an old ethernet cable. Blue is L, and green is R. White wires are ground.
Scratched out the two ground connections (just above were the green and blue wires are soldered on to the O2 PCB). White wires are connected to the ground. The orange wire is also soldered on to the ground pin and the other end is connected to the end of the enclosure (see this and this for more information).
The completed O2 and ODAC - a thing of beauty!
... and the listening experience is simply awesome.
Build log
The following is a chronological list of specific activities that made up this specific O2 ODAC build.
- Bought a complete O2 kit with all components, enclosures and the ODAC PCB
- Bought electronics tools
- Soldering iron (25W)
- Soldering tin (60/40 Rosin)
- Soldering iron stand with sponge
- Semi-flush cutters (to trim lead ends)
- Third hand (to help with difficult components)
- Multimeter (to test the board) - Bought something to practice soldering with
- Blank PCB with hundreds of holes
- Cheap resistors - Set up a work space
- Cork pad on the table as a surface to work on
- Ventilator to remove smoke from soldering tin
- Clear plastic working glasses - Practiced soldering on the cheap resistors on the blank PCB board
- Learned the basics of soldering from CuriousInventors How and WHY to Solder Correctly (YouTube video) - Received package with O2 ODAC kit
- Identified, sorted and labelled each component
- Soldered on the components to the O2 PCB in the following order:
1. R3, R7, R19, R23
2. R9
3. R17, R21
4. R6, R12, R13
5. R25
6. R10, R11, R15, R18
7. R16, R22
8. R1, R2
9. R14, R20
10. R4, R5, R8, R24
11. C11, C12, C19, C20
12. C1
13. C6, C7
14. C16, C21
15. C10, C15, C17, C18
16. D1, D2, D5, D6
17. D3, D4
18. D7
19. IC Sockets
20. C2, C3, C4, C5
21. C8, C9
22. C13, C14
23. BT1 Positive, BT1 Negative
24. S1, S2
25. J1
26. J2, J3
27. VR1
28. U5
29. U6
30. Q1
31. Q2
Note: ICs marked U1, U2, U3, U4 were not inserted before testing required the installation of U2. The rest were installed during testing.
- Tested the O2 according to the method specified by NwAvGuy
- Installed ODAC
- Used twisted pair wires found in an old ethernet cable
- Installed a wire from the case to the input jack ground pin - Enclosed the finished O2!
Resources
- NwAvGuys blog
The creator of the O2 and ODACs blog and the premiere resource for details about the build. - phimusic blog
Blog with posts and details about the build. - Tyler Chilton of Mayflower Electronics YouTube channel
This is a series of videos that document the construction of a O2. - CuriousInventors How and WHY to Solder Correctly (YouTube video)
A guide on how to solder correctly. - samstechlib.com 5 band resistor color codes
A nice tool for decoding 5 band resistors.
Thank you for reading
fineaudiolover
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