Latest update from John on Facebook today:
<Lakewest Facebook Page>
Its been a busy couple of weeks - with the added pressure of my wife Renata being ill with a "very bad cough + difficulty breathing" - two Covid test came back negative. It turned out to be whooping cough, but with the concerns about Covid we where very worried... endless nights of little sleep, constant worry and self isolation (limiting my travel)... Anyway thankfully “ONLY” Whooping cough!!! Thankfully, Renata's doing much better - now "just" bad back / chest pains from the constant coughing! Apparently with Whooping cough its common to fracture your own rib cage though the intensity of coughing!!!
The new software programmer is remotely located and we predict its only a matter of time before Covid once again limits travel so we have been setting up remote measurements of the design (via transferee of captured data) – the software programmer has no audio measurement experience so is learning (very fast it must be said) as he progress with the project.
We now have developed a method to instantly share each others results over the internet – so as he works on the software / firmware we can share findings from our own testing of the hardware.
Attached is an example measurement of the ProJect S2 DAC hes working on – while getting to grips with Audio testing / XMOS / MQA / Digital filters etc.
The
Graphs can be zoomed etc. in realtime + the analyzers settings are stored for future reference. (The interface / data dump from the audio analysers required custom software which we had to write).
Asides for setting up the remote audio testing and performing audio measurements’, he is finding his way around the XMOS code and environment… starting with something “simple” the UI engine, proportional fonts / anti-analysing, correct button / encoder denouncing etc. This weekend we will work on level meters (Digital decimation filters are required for DSD mode) this requires working with the audio bitstream and digital filters etc – next step will be moving from “Simple” Project S2 hardware to DevDAC hardware…
He has so far proved to be by far the best software guy I’ve worked with, and I can really see having the first beta of the “full” MDAC2 code within the next couple of months – which is good news
we still have to work on the digital filters but he’s really REALLY good so I have few concerns…
I should have the advanced clock circuit completed in the next couple of weeks (for PCB release / then testing) – intime for MDAC2, so expanding the current DevDAC PCB performance.
Things are also going well with the partner factory, once the covid test came back negative and Renata was more stable I was able to spend 3 days at the factory, setting up an office / lab onsite… I’m really happy with this direction as this eases MDAC2 manufacturing / MDAC2 / VFET / FDAC custom chassis etc.
I’ll spend more time at the factory next week, I'm planning to work on the MDAC2 ID design.