Buffalo II - Assembly for the Electronically Bewildered.

[James Evans]

Nice one Stefan. Glad to hear you're up and running again.

James

 

[orangeart]

Very pleased, glad it wasn't terminal, I'm a bit surprised the tridents are built to such narrow tolerences though. Once I started looking around the forums it seems like they are the most common point of failiure. Also pleased I happened upon the source of overvoltage on the lcdps or I could have killed another one. Maybe in the long term I'll do the ph reg route as they seem more tolerent from what I've read.

Stefan

 

[Bemused]

Bet your pleased Stefan
I am also thinking the Tridents are only adequate, in terms of durability and performance.
They seem to be built to a low price point.

 

[Bemused]

Thanks for the link Flash, that's lots of regulators

 

[Suffolk Tony]

Wahey, I've got sound again!

Swapped the trident for SF's one (which I've put on a header for easy removal this time) checked the voltages again, and Bob's your uncle. A happy man again. Thanks for all your help guys, I love it here hopefully my lcdps bodge will hold out long enough to get my new placid hd up and running. I'll have to jimmy the layout around a bit as well.


Stefan

Glad it arrived safely Stefan, it's always difficult to know how to parcel up something like a Trident.

Regarding the Placids, I did notice that the voltage tended to wander a bit over time so it's worth rechecking a few times initially. It then seems to settle down. I guess the best option would be to replace the pots with fixed resistors but my one attempt ended in failure - the settings were all over the place when I'd finished.

 

[Suffolk Tony]

Forgot to mention I've now fitted a PH regulator to power the Wave IO and Teleporter sender units. Another lift in sound quality. The music's become easier, more relaxed, and gained depth.

The two 317-based Velleman regs I was using to power these units previously got pretty hot but Paul's reg's barely warm.

Fortunately I had enough sense to give the man a call as I was a bit confused over the connections to the transformer. Luckily Paul's a chap of infinite patience; tends to lose me a bit but once I've dragged him down to my lowly level of understanding it all makes sense. He does make exceedingly good regulators!

 

[flashgo]

FINALLY got my TPA DAC stabilized. It sounded like it was singing through a kazoo. In the end, the Placid HD-BP powering the Legato 3.1 was to blame. I went through the Placid set up procedure from scratch, and now the DAC is singing free of the kazoo.

Twiddling the pots on the Placid was an exercise in frustration. There is a lot of hysteresis (i.e., the value you get at a particular pot setting depends on whether you approach from below or above) and even non-monotonicity (i.e., turning the shunt pot continuously in one direction causes CCS to go up or down 10% in the short term, even though there is a greater trend in one direction).

Suffolk Tony, do you have PH regs powering your Legato? It could be worth it just from the standpoint of stability. Also, did you need to change the transformer powering PH's PR3iAC-05v4 responsible for VD to the Buffalo?

 

[Suffolk Tony]

I've got PH regs powering everything now flashgo! No need to change the transformers, no adjustments to make, you just connect them & they work. There're two rather different-looking regs powering the Legato, one for pos & one for neg.

Those Placids are a real pain to adjust, aren't they? A couple of times I've really thought they were defective & its only after resetting and starting from scratch I've bee nable to sort them out.

Anyway, glad to learn the Buffalo's OK...

 

[flashgo]

Ah, Tony, I found your post with your PH regs powering your Legato. I'm wondering about the transformer situation, however, as Paul Hynes says that centre-tapped is better. I even had the impression that his AC regs were designed for centre-tapped.

I need to decide about replacing the Placid HD BP. I didn't have such a fuss with the Placid HD mono. Perhaps the BP needs a bigger transformer? I've got 90VA behind the mono and only 15VA per channel on the BP.

Another consideration is that PH's non-shunt regs will save some electricity and cut down on heat since I leave my system on 24/7 (29 watts resting just for the TPA DAC = 286 kW-hrs/yr).

And one last thing I'm thinking about: is the Legato even necessary? As I was trouble shooting and narrowing down the problem in my DAC, I pulled the analog out directly from the Buffalo II and fed it into a StarFish. It sounded fantastic. This will require some proper A-B testing, but simplification is a real temptation.

 

[Bemused]

I didn't have such a fuss with the Placid HD mono. Perhaps the BP needs a bigger transformer?

Hmmm I had no trouble setting my Placids, perhaps I did not fiddle enough or have you got a faulty one.
Trying to resist the urge to go and fiddle now

And one last thing I'm thinking about: is the Legato even necessary? As I was trouble shooting and narrowing down the problem in my DAC, I pulled the analog out directly from the Buffalo II and fed it into a StarFish. It sounded fantastic. This will require some proper A-B testing, but simplification is a real temptation.

You just the dumped the converters 16mA onto the pot? the converters outputs are differential how did this work.
Maybe the Buffalo-II is not the same as the Buffalo-III but I thought its still had differential output and four 4mA dacs a side.

 

[flashgo]

You just the dumped the converters 16mA onto the pot? the converters outputs are differential how did this work.
Maybe the Buffalo-II is not the same as the Buffalo-III but I thought its still had differential output and four 4mA dacs a side.

The Buffalo II sends +, gnd, – on each channel to the I-V board. I stuffed a couple of lead wires into the + & gnd holes in the header and clipped them to the RCA jacks feeding my pre-amp. Actually, I found some comments by the TPA guys that it was possible prior to doing the experiment myself. It sounded fantastic, but that was after a week of trying to listen to a kazoo. When I can get to it, I want to add some extra leads to the header so that I can run 2 connections to a pre-amp and just switch between Buff II out and Legato out.

 

[Bemused]

Ah sneeky but obvious

 

[tomek]

Twiddling the pots on the Placid was an exercise in frustration.

Oh yes.

I change the voltage and the current is changing, i change the current, and the voltage is changing.

My solution for easier and faster settings is using two mulitmeters - one is measuring the output voltage and second is measuring current.

 

[Bemused]

Hmmmm


Something sneaky going on here...

Something missing

Some sneaky wires leaving my Buffalo

And into my Gigaworks Dac

 

[orangeart]

Haha, I was just thinking about building a little fleabite and flea combo to power the clock seperately.

Stefan

 

[Bemused]

Yes Stefan, another of my DACs has got fleas again
Just one flea feeding both the AVCC pins, not an optimum configuration just the closest to hand in the old DAC and far from ideal implementation.
I just wanted a quick dirty install to see if I was on the right track before buying more flea boards and chose the analog side of the DAC for starters.
It needs some serious listening but been carried away with an Arduino Leonardo implementation for control of the Buffalo-III.
But listening so far shows a good improvement over the twin Trident but as I said its had little critical listening.

Sometimes when I expect improvement I here improvement, funny that


The Arduino Leonardo has p......ed me off, I bought an
OLIMEXINO-32U4 ARDUINO LEONARDO DEVELOPMENT BOARD

Problem is its bootloader is not compatible with the latest compiler 1.0.1
But the compatible compiler 1.0.0 has not got the Leonardo as a supported device.

Re-flashing the firmware needs a working Arduino to piggy back from or more hardware.

So I have an Arduino, big display, encoder, Buffalo, big learning curve etc, but stalled on the first boot...

Its just a big catch 22 situation. Most probably buy another Leonardo with current firmware as a way out and give a certain ebay seller some crappy feedback.

 

[Bemused]

Leonardo is working

I asked a question in the Arduino forum but got told to bugger off

Bemused, if you're using an Olimex board, you should ask them for help. Unfortunately, we can't support other people's products (because we don't know how they work, etc).

Its open source!

Google became my friend for a change...

Only flashing an led so far but at least I can drop some code in it.

I found the Leonardo profile commented out in the file

arduino-1.0\hardware\arduino\boards.txt” file.


I just took out the comments and the Leonardo appeared in the board choices

Happy bunny hops off to play

 

[Bemused]

Another little step

 

[Bemused]

So the Arduino, screen and encoder are connected all seems well as a stand alone.
I connected the Arduino I2S bus to the Buffalo using three wires and removed the Buffalo firmware controller.
Set the Arduino code for 100MHz and Stereo.

Wiring
Arduino > Buffalo-III
SDA > SDA
SLC > SLC
GND > GND

No lock, no luck.

Anyone know more than me?
Is there something else to do?

Put the Buffalo back to standard and the TPA firmware controller still works so at least I did not break anything...

 

[Suffolk Tony]

I may be wrong but don't you need anther I2s connection Tony? Only I had to use three in addition to ground with the Wave IO device.