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"The Wiener" TPA3118 amplifier card

In an effort to bring out more bass on the G-Wiener I swapped out the big decoupling caps with these monster KZN 2200 uF caps. For anyone dares to do this simplest of mods will enjoy the bass upgrade :)
 

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Gary,

Is there an intentional message implied when the LED is slowly flashing about every 2 seconds? Fault? My Wiener was working fine outside my enclosure, but when I wired it all up to the back panel, I'm getting no sound, a pop every 2-3 seconds and the LED is flashing. I did some quick measurements and can't find any shorts or opens with my wiring. The speaker posts indicate there is no short to the back panel.

I've got to go driving with my son now, but will look at it more closely when I get back. Ideas?

Thx,
Rick
 
Gary,

Is there an intentional message implied when the LED is slowly flashing about every 2 seconds? Fault? My Wiener was working fine outside my enclosure, but when I wired it all up to the back panel, I'm getting no sound, a pop every 2-3 seconds and the LED is flashing. I did some quick measurements and can't find any shorts or opens with my wiring. The speaker posts indicate there is no short to the back panel.

I've got to go driving with my son now, but will look at it more closely when I get back. Ideas?

Thx,
Rick

That heatsink makes me nervous. Can you re-test with it removed?

BK
 
I don't see the relationship between decoupling caps and fswitch?

If this cap swap brings "so much more bass", there must be something really wrong with the power supply.

My power supply is very high end and was debugged down too 60mv ripple to noise.

abraxalito turned me on to using bigger caps to bump up the bass. Perhaps he can explain the relationship.

The first time I noticed a major bass improvement in swapping caps, was with the Dugg mono block. I had 330uF Nichicon/OSCONS as the decoupling caps. The bass was thin and lacked. When swapped out the caps to the nichicon 2200uF KA audio 50V. Wow...still maintaining the details on the highs, mids, the deep bass tonal textures and boogey was awesome.
I like to tinker, so I still might swap these out for the KA audio and see if there is a difference. The dugg mono pbtl's with the KA 2200 uF caps +the input cinema trafos. Puts to shame a lot of these more expensive high end amps. That's why I would like to see the G-Wiener 2.0 in a pbtl. It would no doubt would be top dog and be in a sq class all to itself relative to the 3116 family.
 
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Well, the "improvement" should then clearly be seen on the voltage rails going the IC.

Would you measure this to show what's going on?

At what levels do you guys listen to music that there are always lack of bass issues? I have my TPA3132 connected to a 300liters backloaded horn and there is more than enough "ompf" for the whole street..
 
Gary,

Is there an intentional message implied when the LED is slowly flashing about every 2 seconds? Fault? My Wiener was working fine outside my enclosure, but when I wired it all up to the back panel, I'm getting no sound, a pop every 2-3 seconds and the LED is flashing. I did some quick measurements and can't find any shorts or opens with my wiring. The speaker posts indicate there is no short to the back panel.

I've got to go driving with my son now, but will look at it more closely when I get back. Ideas?

Thx,
Rick
That means the TPA is indicating a fault, I'm thinking it's going into output overcurrent protection, so there's a short either between the speaker outputs or between the speaker outputs, ground or your supply power.

As BK said, haul that heatsink off. It's quite possible it's touching something it shouldn't.
 
redjr,

It looks like your RCA input jacks are not isolated from the chassis (i.e., no plastic spacers). It's possible there is a short between your inputs and speaker outputs. Use your DMM to check for continuity between your speaker outputs and your RCA input grounds. The speaker binding posts could also be shorted between each other if they are not properly isolated from the chassis.
 
The HS was not the problem. It was working fine outside the enclosure. I did suspect an issue with my RCA jacks and that turned out to be true. One of inputs and ground were shorted. I normally use 'better quality' RCA jacks that do have the isolating plastic rings, but due to limited space on the back panel I opted for smaller RCA's without the insolating rings. Now, before I get scolded for bad practice, this is generally not an issue as they have to get grounded somewhere. Normally I do keep the input/output signals and their return ground in their own domain (isolated from chassis) until the star, or universal grounding point.

As it turns out, I may have enough room to make the mounting holes larger and replace with premium RCA jacks that are isolated. Problem solved. :)

BTW, I did temporarily replace the original RCA jacks and their wiring for two additional small RCA without the isolating plastic and using a TPA3116 amp module everything played together friendly without issue. It was getting late so I did not test with the Wiener, but will tonight. I figured I had traumatized it enough for one night. :D

Thanks for all the inputs guys, but this was a silly(bad) soldering issue that I should have tested beforehand. Now I'm confident I can finished up the amp with better RCA jacks and the Wiener will once again be playing beautifully.

Rick
 
Well, whatever I did to the amp last night must have been something it could not recover from. I tried hooking it back up this evening (with and without using RCA jacks and I'm still getting a blinking LED and pop through the speakers. All completely removed from the enclosure.

I've since replaced the Wiener with a TPA3116 (blue board) and it's working fine - in the same case. I'm open to where to start from a trouble shooting angle, but with so many SMDs not sure there's much I can do.

Rick
 
Do the following:

Set all your DIP switches. All four AMx and MODE set to the right, and the GAIN/SLV DIP switch should have all switches to the left except for the 30- switch.

Disconnect the inputs, keep the speakers and the LED hooked up. When you power on the amp, does only one speaker pop or both? And does the pop happen at the exact moment the red LED turns off?
 
Sounds like the TPA is starting up, but is going into overcurrent protection when it comes out of mute.

Grab your DMM, set it to voltage mode. Measure the voltage relative to power ground:

- Voltage at all four outputs. It'll probably jump when the amp unmutes and you hear a pop, make note of the behavior on all four outputs.
- The voltage on all four of the FBx parts, measuring either end of the device is fine. This should ramp up to 3 volts or so when the amp powers up.
- The voltage at C23, measure the end closest to the TPA3118 chip. Should = input power supply voltage.
- The voltage at C33, the side closest to the PLIMIT text.

Next measure the voltage across C19, C20, C21 and C22. You should measure something around 5V across each cap.

Take those measurements and we'll go from there..
 
Sounds like the TPA is starting up, but is going into overcurrent protection when it comes out of mute.

Grab your DMM, set it to voltage mode. Measure the voltage relative to power ground:

- Voltage at all four outputs. It'll probably jump when the amp unmutes and you hear a pop, make note of the behavior on all four outputs.
- The voltage on all four of the FBx parts, measuring either end of the device is fine. This should ramp up to 3 volts or so when the amp powers up.
- The voltage at C23, measure the end closest to the TPA3118 chip. Should = input power supply voltage.
- The voltage at C33, the side closest to the PLIMIT text.

Next measure the voltage across C19, C20, C21 and C22. You should measure something around 5V across each cap.

Take those measurements and we'll go from there..

Under load (speakers attached)? I presume so to hear the pops.
 
Findings w/speakers attached and PSU = 12VDC

Outputs:

Left + = 0.5 (pop on) 0.3 (pop off)
Left - = 5.3 (pop on) 11.0 (pop off)
Right + = 5.8 (pop on) 10.9 (pop off)
Right - = 0.5 (pop on) 2.9 (pop off)

FB1 = 0.1
FB2 = 2.9
FB3 = 0.0
FB4 = 0.5

C23 = 12.0
C33 = 6.9

C19 = ~6.0
C20 = ~6.0
C21 = ~6.0
C22 = ~6.0