Yes this is possible but we wanted to offer our flagship products first and then maybe work back from that with a cheaper version with reduced features and performance etc
It's also a better way to go for the early adopters to be using the best product and to give their own opinions and reviews of it.
It draws people in to then wanting a taste of it with a lower-cost version.
We did not skimp on the case. Most vendors, even high end ones just use powder coated folded sheet steel cases. Our case is a custom designed with 3 mm thick black anodized aluminium panels and 3 mm thick micro brushed solid stainless steel front panel as shown below with the front panel for the matching multi-channel amplifier
Also no need to for VU meters. We have already implemented this in the firmware for display on the LCD
cheers
david
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Yes the master volume control, controls the ESS DAC volume control and is independent of the DSP. There is also a master mute activated by depressing the rotary volume control or the pause button on the remote. There is also a standby mode which pretty much shuts down everything and even enables the relay muting
I will look into the linear phase crossover option. If anything it is a matter of modifying the existing filters in Audioweaver
We standardized on the apple remote because they are abundant on ebay etc. We could look at customizing for other remotes which would just be a firmware upgrade.
Profile setups could be made available although not for changing Audioweaver designs.
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This is a question we get asked often and is pretty hard to quantify as it depends on the implementation of what you are doing. It is one of the reasons why we are offering the UP+ not only because of the ability to add more DSP capacity but to take advantage of many of the audio processing software that is available to run on both PC's and MAC's
However a lot depends on the sample rate. For FIR filters, the higher the sample rate the more powerful the DSP is required so some compromise maybe required between sample rate and FIR length. There are some tricks in Audioweaver to reduce the load on the DSP for doing FIR's such as decimation which allows you to down convert to a lower sampling rate - do the FIR more efficiently at the lower sampling rate, and then up convert back to the native sampling rate. This would typically be used for say the lower frequency bass channels after the IIR crossover.
cheers
david
We did not skimp on the case. Most vendors, even high end ones just use powder coated folded sheet steel cases. Our case is a custom designed with 3 mm thick black anodized aluminium panels and 3 mm thick micro brushed solid stainless steel front panel as shown below with the front panel for the matching multi-channel amplifier
Also no need to for VU meters. We have already implemented this in the firmware for display on the LCD
cheers
david
No David,
Look at the response (lack of) you have received here in the DIY market.... You will NEVER see any return on your time and money here.
Your dream of earning a living by selling commercial quantities of this product are already dead in the water if you continue to think that 3mm alloy and LCD displays are high end....
You are selling $5,000 plus optional upgrade £20K to £50K speakers... The total system will be approx £100K.... The system will be in a designer room in a $1million plus home.... This is NOT DIY!!!
Maybe look at something like
DAVE - The Ultimate DAC, Preamp & Headphone Amp | Chord Electronics
Vivaldi Master Clock | dCS
Anyway its your call... Good luck.
This is only the start of production. Get it out to DIYers first and then work on blinging it up for certain markets.
There are many outfits that would use the unit as OEM and can fit it into their product range themselves with particularly styled casing. I think that is possibly a better way to go, especially for set-up for particular speakers to sell to non-technical consumers. Much lower investment/risk, just a matter of supply contract terms.
There are many outfits that would use the unit as OEM and can fit it into their product range themselves with particularly styled casing. I think that is possibly a better way to go, especially for set-up for particular speakers to sell to non-technical consumers. Much lower investment/risk, just a matter of supply contract terms.
As a DIY'er who's followed this thread for a long time, I'm curious about this myself.
According to your theory nobody would have bought the first batch of preamps and yet I couldn't make enough of them ! In case you hadn't noticed this is an International forum and lots of people from all over the world read it which is fine with me.
Perhaps the issue is you simply can't afford it and expect me to live on fresh air just to accommodate your budget requirements ?
cheers
david
You could have bought one of the original preamps but you didn't ? I don't think it would have mattered if I sold it for $1000. Still to dear for you and on and on it goes
cheers
david
That's wrong. Actually I specifically ordered one in November of 2017. But it was very hard to get a reply from you. This was part of you answer after I had bumbed the email:You could have bought one of the original preamps but you didn't ? I don't think it would have mattered if I sold it for $1000. Still to dear for you and on and on it goes
cheers
david
"The next production run will probably be early 2018 as I make some changes to be more productioon friendly. "
You never got back with anymore concrete information of when it was ready, even though you promised you would. I have a copy of the email.
However, you didn't answer my question. What excatly has caused the raise of around $1400?
Sorry if I confused you with someone else. We changed our strategy and decided to sell fully assembled preamps with all options installed rather than individual boards that people could easily make a mistake with.
I still have one of the original preamps as one of the customers who ordered it has upgraded to a UP+. I am currently using it as the prototype for the new preamp design. It's available at the original price of $2365 USD if you are still interested.
We have redesigned all of the boards in the new preamp. This takes time and money to do this properly. As a result we can offer improved performance and features. If we get a batch of boards made and there is a mistake in production or design we have to absorb this cost and get a new run made or spend time reworking them. I can't just order one board at a time - it doesn't work like this ! It is a big risk to take and this is factored into the price. The original preamp and pricing was a dress rehearsal for this upgraded design. We took a bath on the original preamps and lost money but that is always an issue with non recurring costs and small production runs.
If I had to employ engineers and technicians to do all of this the preamp would cost a lot more than it does. People need to understand that you don't just conjure a design like this out of a thin air. There is a huge amount of effort just to get a working prototype.
Many a design on crowd source funding has failed either because the design was flawed or the asking price was too little even though millions may have been raised ! Here I have a fully working prototype ready to go into production for those willing to back it.
regards
david
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That'a your interpretion and it's quite ridicoulous. Especially the notion of "if you can't afford it", which you know nothing about and I can assure is utterly wrong. I have had a genuine interest in the product. Both for personal use and possible commercial use. I think that should be pretty clear since I actually placed an order for a unit in 2017. I have also asked about the product for selling it to Norwegian customers. My question about the price raise is a genuine question as I want to know exactly what has caused it. Isn't that allowed? Or isn't common to want to know what one is paying for with the extra amount?
David has now answered the question. However, I still don't see exactly what the customer is paying for in extra features and certainly not the amount we're talking about here. Should also be an option for a lower cost unit IMO. Looks more to me that the higher price is mainly due to more work, the risk of ordering parts or perhaps a poor calculation from the start. And I didn't know the earlier price wasn't suppose to reflect the final. Never read anything about it.
The combination of a very cost and what pesonally consider a DIY chassis, and someone who is unfortunately attacking those who ask qustions besides not answering emails properly, I have no more interest in this product and will leave the thread. May actually develop a DSP myself as I know it can be done as much lower sales price. Even selling a complete product with Audioweaver and powerful processor could be sold for considerably less with a decent mark up.
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The word "if" means the statement was conditional. It only applied should it so happen that you can't afford it. Should you be able to afford it, then what was written didn't apply.
That's just normal grammar and nothing to take offence at.
Remember he said that the original pre-amp at the price offered, lost money because the price was too low. If you read back through the thread, developments since the last version have been listed and there has been more software development.
Unless you want a break down and want to nitpick a printed spreadsheet of costs with your red pen in hand there is no way you can say either way if the extra cost is reasonable .. and of course everyone's definition of reasonable is different anyway. I sure i would be very generous in my definition.. you may feel agreaved at even a 1% margin? Who knows.
Given your lack of knowledge of the costs David is incuring and yet you are giving the impression of someone agreaved by the price rise... then it sounds like you've already made unjustified negative judgment which has you coming across as on the troll side of things. Or at least just grumpy.
Do keep us posted on your own DSP though - I'm always interested in these things.
P.s. just quickly looking at your website: a 600mm x 600mm acoustic panel, £105??? What is it made of? Gold? lol - One could easily go the same way with any product.
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This is a question we get asked often and is pretty hard to quantify as it depends on the implementation of what you are doing. It is one of the reasons why we are offering the UP+ not only because of the ability to add more DSP capacity but to take advantage of many of the audio processing software that is available to run on both PC's and MAC's
However a lot depends on the sample rate. For FIR filters, the higher the sample rate the more powerful the DSP is required so some compromise maybe required between sample rate and FIR length. There are some tricks in Audioweaver to reduce the load on the DSP for doing FIR's such as decimation which allows you to down convert to a lower sampling rate - do the FIR more efficiently at the lower sampling rate, and then up convert back to the native sampling rate. This would typically be used for say the lower frequency bass channels after the IIR crossover.
cheers
david
Hi David, thank you for the reply but I admit I am even more confused now - are you saying the UP2 alone is not capable to deliver the announced 3- or even 4-way X-overs with FIR filters @ 192kHz without the help of external PC???
Routing the digital signal out of your devise to some unknown digital processor may cause much bigger harm than benefit!
Do you plan to produce your own DSP cards that can be stacked inside the units for more processing power, etc.?
I think it would be great and appreciated by the customers if in the comparison chart is stated what kind of filters with what tap length at what sample rate can be achieved with each unit without use of external hard-, software.
Thank you!
Ivo
Depends on the tap length of the FIR that you require. The SHARC DSP used has 800 million multiply accumulates per second or 800 MMAC's. You divide this by the sample rate to get the maximum theoretical length FIR you can construct.
For example
at 192K max tap length = 4166 taps
at 96K max tap length = 8333 taps
at 48K max tap length = 16666 taps
And this is the theoretical maximums across all 8 channels without any additional DSP processing so you have to bear that in mind.
As for routing DSP duties to an external PC this should not cause any noise issues as our own proprietary interface has full isolation and noise immunity so injection of noise by the PC will be a non issue. We originally were going to go down the path of rolling our own custom multi processing DSP platform that contained 8 or 16 SHARC DSP devices but that would have created a new set of problems. It would have required a much bigger power supply than we already use and most likely would have to be a switch mode power supply rather than the analog power supply that we currently use. Secondly, no software including Audioweaver would have worked on this board out of the box and basically could only be use for buiding FIR filters. Thirdly, compared to a low cost PC motherboard solution using multi-core CPU's, the development and implementation of this board would have set us back years and cost a lot more whilst PC motherboards are plentiful and readily available.
We plan on making available a fanless PC with matching enclosure to the preamp or alternatively any PC or MAC capable of doing the requisite number crunching should be OK. The UP+ is both hardware and software agnostic to any PC connected to it so compatibility should not be an issue.
cheers
david
My thought, only for statistics.
So sorry to be out of budget for this device i looked at as my next system upgrade, coming from minidsp and DCX2496.
"Our goal is to provide best in class audio reproduction irrespective of price ! You’ve probably seen or heard about the 50K-plus audio systems exhibited at the hi-end audio shows and dreamed about owning the same equipment in your own listening environment but just couldn’t quite afford it. Well dream no more! Analog-Precision seeks to bridge the price-performance gap by producing a series of hi-end audio products without the hi-end audio price tags. Our new Ultimate Preamplifier Plus and Ultimate Preamplifier 2 are no-holds barred digital/analog preamplifer with the versatility that meets and exceeds all of todays hi-end expectations in terms of performance and quality but without the excessive price tag."
At this price tag, (3450 + 30% + shipment) i consider the product stated among hiend prices, because 50-k tags are for fool men and out of comparison terms, at least starting from my actual point of view, the diy world. And to castrate the product in its feature and/or performance to have a product list justifing flagship price, is the usual hifi and hiend industry way.
Anyway, i think your project is great, and the digital pre-amp a must for future hifi systems. So waiting for developments from pro/prosumer market.
So sorry to be out of budget for this device i looked at as my next system upgrade, coming from minidsp and DCX2496.
"Our goal is to provide best in class audio reproduction irrespective of price ! You’ve probably seen or heard about the 50K-plus audio systems exhibited at the hi-end audio shows and dreamed about owning the same equipment in your own listening environment but just couldn’t quite afford it. Well dream no more! Analog-Precision seeks to bridge the price-performance gap by producing a series of hi-end audio products without the hi-end audio price tags. Our new Ultimate Preamplifier Plus and Ultimate Preamplifier 2 are no-holds barred digital/analog preamplifer with the versatility that meets and exceeds all of todays hi-end expectations in terms of performance and quality but without the excessive price tag."
At this price tag, (3450 + 30% + shipment) i consider the product stated among hiend prices, because 50-k tags are for fool men and out of comparison terms, at least starting from my actual point of view, the diy world. And to castrate the product in its feature and/or performance to have a product list justifing flagship price, is the usual hifi and hiend industry way.
Anyway, i think your project is great, and the digital pre-amp a must for future hifi systems. So waiting for developments from pro/prosumer market.