Yesterday I let the cat out of the bag that after a year or so of careful design and testing I have in front of me Buffalo III. The fourth iteration of the Buffalo DAC, and while it is every bit a Buffalo, it brings with is a set of features that make it especially suited to the DIY enthusiast.
Brian and I are in the midst of getting this unit into production. Now is the time you can influence the design of things like the on-board firmware. The hardware design is done and tested (and awesome) with a couple prototypes running now. I have been listening to this DAC for a few months, and it is a worthy successor to the Buffalo II.
Brian and I will be providing more design details soon, but we wanted to share the good news and get some feedback regarding the finalization of the on-board firmware.
Cheers!
Russ
- All 8 digital inputs and outputs are exposed in a neat modular way that makes adding input options very practical.
- Any input format that the ES9018 supports is supported with jumpers on board to make for easy to join channels for 6 bit stereo or mono mode or keep them separate them for multichannel etc.
- An on board port expander to make interface and configuration very practical for both on-board and off-board control.
- An on board controller that supports volume control (same as Volumite) and SPDIF source selection (MUX) out of the box.
- 16 switches for configuration or control. Some of these can be assigned to panel rotary switches for things like input selection.
- It is designed to integrate with existing TPA output stages such as Legato 3.1 and IVY III.
- It is designed so that each power supply is both local and modular with a layout that fits the Trident perfectly for an awesome combination.
- It utilizes the same excellent custom ordered Crystek clock we have been using for Buffalo II.
- The on-board controller even has its own local regulator.
Brian and I are in the midst of getting this unit into production. Now is the time you can influence the design of things like the on-board firmware. The hardware design is done and tested (and awesome) with a couple prototypes running now. I have been listening to this DAC for a few months, and it is a worthy successor to the Buffalo II.
Brian and I will be providing more design details soon, but we wanted to share the good news and get some feedback regarding the finalization of the on-board firmware.
Cheers!
Russ
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Strange my post and another one dissapeared? Does it sound better than B II?
:edit by moderator: I deleted posts that are not related to the BIII discussion directly. The questions in the posts would have been better directed by email.
Sincerely
:edit by moderator: I deleted posts that are not related to the BIII discussion directly. The questions in the posts would have been better directed by email.
Sincerely
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Does green look better than red? 😉
They are very very similar. The only major (audio wise) difference being (if you use tridents on both) that the BII is always stereo or mono.
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On thing to keep in mind folks, is that while I have one of these, it is not available for sale yet. 🙂
I completely agree. BII is a wonderful DAC, and if you will only ever use stereo or mono and don't need the on-board MUX then you won't find any reason not to use it.
Is the Custom Ordered Crystek clock somthing special in comparison with the ones we can buy from Digi-key?
:Edit: accidently hit edit instead of quote:/edit:
:Edit: accidently hit edit instead of quote:/edit:
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does the onboard MUX, as you call it, also also offer switching between s/pdif and I2S?
best
Leif
best
Leif
That is something which you would have to implement externally, just as you would with BII. But it is certainly possible with either DAC. The ESS9018 only directly supportes MUXing SPDIF.
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Well other than that you can't order it from Digi-key? 🙂
It has slightly better specs yes. 🙂
Well this is one reason we really like the new design. On Buffalo II many people are opting for Trident and so it made sense to keep the critical regulators on Buffalo III modular so that we are not wasting board space. The only regulator that is fixed to the board is the controller's regulator.
Very interesting.
Here is a firmware request: can you make a way to connect boards so they use a common digital volume control in an active 2/3 way crossover setup? Ideally this would allow the use of an existing Buffalo for one of the output stages. Can the onboard DSP be used for programmable filters? I am personally thinking of dual or mono subs and high-passed mains, but flexibility would be nice.
Here is a firmware request: can you make a way to connect boards so they use a common digital volume control in an active 2/3 way crossover setup? Ideally this would allow the use of an existing Buffalo for one of the output stages. Can the onboard DSP be used for programmable filters? I am personally thinking of dual or mono subs and high-passed mains, but flexibility would be nice.
Using the loadable filter capabilities of the Sabre32 chip has been one of my wishes. The easy part is to load the filters. The hard part is to come up with the coefficients for the filters. Even though it has been said that there are insufficient taps for a crossover type filter, I find it hard to believe that you cannot create a slow roll off filter, similar to the current one but at an earlier cut off, say 1 KHz. So simple crossover functionality should be possible inside the DAC. ESS hinted an an application for generating the coefficients, but nothing is publicly known about that App.
Maybe Russ will create such an app and give it to us 🙂
BIII doesn't have a DSP, just a microprocessor for programming the registers and loading filters if one exists.
For arbitrary volume control, say control BII in stereo and BII in Dual Stereo (making 6 channels) will require custom firmware. It is not so much about "connecting" the boards but working with the address limitations for I2C (BII and BIII can only support two addresses) and register programming.
Maybe Russ will create such an app and give it to us 🙂
BIII doesn't have a DSP, just a microprocessor for programming the registers and loading filters if one exists.
For arbitrary volume control, say control BII in stereo and BII in Dual Stereo (making 6 channels) will require custom firmware. It is not so much about "connecting" the boards but working with the address limitations for I2C (BII and BIII can only support two addresses) and register programming.
Cool
Russ. Can the controller be configured for an easy way to select the digital filter slopes via an offboard switch? I am also wondering if TPA might offer a simple display/control board which could display volume level (in dB), filter choice, and input choice, perhaps with a single rotary encoder (with push function to select between volume/filter/input).
I am now going amp direct, and am using the (dithered) volume control in Pure Music specifically because it represents volume level in dB.
Love the fact that you isolated the controller with its own reg-no compromise.
Russ. Can the controller be configured for an easy way to select the digital filter slopes via an offboard switch? I am also wondering if TPA might offer a simple display/control board which could display volume level (in dB), filter choice, and input choice, perhaps with a single rotary encoder (with push function to select between volume/filter/input).
I am now going amp direct, and am using the (dithered) volume control in Pure Music specifically because it represents volume level in dB.
Love the fact that you isolated the controller with its own reg-no compromise.
AC2 can easily do what you want. Its just a matter of tweaking the app firmware.
The current version of the on-board controller allows the adjustment you asked for. Filter slope etc. Including choosing modulator schemes and such.
I will share more details on that later.
Cheers!
Russ
How hard would it be to pair the digital board from this project:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/185761-open-source-usb-interface-audio-widget.html
with the BIII as a DAC?
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/185761-open-source-usb-interface-audio-widget.html
with the BIII as a DAC?
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